ASL.js American Sign Language Javascript
So I was unwinding after work today, and I thought it'd be fun to create a little Javascript function and mobile-optimized site for changing textual words to American Sign Language. *FYI I throw stuff up on my GitHub all the time, and it doesn't always make the blog. Everything runs on the client browser, nothing is ever sent to my server and it's safe to embed in applications. It only took about an hour to throw together, mainly because the only public domain images are that of the manual ASL alphabet. That in itself seems like a problem somebody should do a Kickstarter to solve (seriously). Anyway you can check out the page here, and check the source out here.
For those copy-pasting on a mobile site or tablet (I didn't use any libraries, it should run on pretty much anything), it's www.hunterdavis.com/asljs/
This is the sort of thing I think we should all take more time to actively do. Just write some code for the heck of it, and get it out there to share. Even if it's a little thing. Especially if it's a little thing! You never know what will come of it, and it's a great way to get ideas out there.
Speaking of a Blast to the Past, Here’s an openGL Tron Game I wrote as an Undergrad
I just unearthed all of my homework from my CS courses from my undergraduate degree (1999-2003). While assembling the retrospective gif for the previous post, I recalled I had a web page on my school's csserver back as an undergraduate. Google confirmed this, but more amazingly it was still serving my hand-written redirect page. My amazement turned to horror as I realized I had served many a redhat ISO internally, and they were probably still lingering on there. A quick ssh later, and I'm back in the csserver of my youth. The account was never shut down, and the redhat ISOs were still there. I made a quick copy of all the rest of the data, deleted the data from the account, and logged out. I then realized what I had actually unearthed, a perfectly preserved history of each assignment I had ever completed for every CS class I had as an undergrad (dozens). Not only that, i had written some simple openGL games for the csserver. Sitting in the top level of a forgotten web directory was a compiled windows executable for a shitty little Tron openGL game you can download here.
Update – Quickgrapher Has Been Ported To Android
Besides numerous other interesting forks which have come out of the open sourcing of Quick Grapher, I just got wind of a very interesting fork which ports it to Android. Two of my favorite projects coming together for a peanut butter and jelly style open source sandwich. Sharing for the win! Check it out!
What if HTML5 Equations and Graphs Were Completely Free and Disgustingly Easy? QuickGrapher.com is gone, Lives on as QuickGrapher – An Open Source HTML 5 Multi Equation Solver And Grapher
QuickGrapher.com was one of the research projects spun out of Discursive Labs. One of the most promising projects we worked on, it always felt like a project without an intended audience, and it never really lifted off. I'm quite proud of the work that Mark and I did, and still think it's a tremendously fun and important project.
You can see an outdated version of it in action here.
Check out the drake equation in QuickGrapher here.
Check out the set of video tutorials we did for it here.
(my favorite video)
Download, exploit, and contribute to the source at the github project here.
And check out the permalink page for it here.
What Unlimited Storage Really Means In America – Bandwidth Limitations
So I'm on my lunchbreak, browsing the hot deals forums over at Fatwallet. I stumble upon what appears to be a very solid deal, 24 months of JustCloud unlimited storage backup service for 35 bucks. Can it live up to the hype (EDIT - Nope, it pretty much sucks for me, but their cancellation process is painless...)? Is it even possible to stress test this in the land of bandwidth caps and SOPA hearings? I'm going to find out.
For those of you just finding this blog, I'm a complete media glutton. I've (legally, at least for now) made digital backups of every DVD, audio CD, BLU-Ray, cartridge game, Playstation game or eBook I've ever owned or created. On top of that, I tend to keep a local store repository of my 600+ steam game collection for fast retrieval (and if they decide to later pull any of the games I bought). Add in the couple hundred gigs of personal photos I've taken as well as tons of software projects, virtual machines, disk images, dev environments, half-finished projects, etc and you're looking at about 5 terabytes of data. This is locally spread out over my two Drobo storage bots full of 2tb drives. Unfortunately, some facts about the internet here in America come into play:
Google is my New Cellular Carrier
Yep, I finally made the switch to using Google Voice as my primary number. My cell phone number hasn't changed though, I've simply paid google the 20$ carrier transfer fee and ported my number over to Google Voice. No more bills from Sprint. No more automatic charges. No monthly bill. Ever again. I expect to save 95% of the cost of my cell phone over the next year and lose absolutely none of the functionality.
How is this possible?
Quick Update – The Retrode Works with Android
I was just messing around with an old eee PC, seeing what it could do. First I installed Android 4.0 ICS. It worked fairly well, though the lack of sound on my particular model meant it wasn't a keeper. Still, when I plugged in the Retrode it was immediately recognized and I could play the game boy emulator on the market with the directional pad on my SNES controller. Fun!
Why I’m Hip to Android
This is a short tale of frustration. Upon hearing that GemRB had been ported to iOS and Android, I rushed over to download. This is an awesome reimplementation of the Infinity engine used in the Baldur's Gate series of games. This excited me greatly, as Planescape: torment and Baldur's Gate 2 were two of my favorite RPGs ten years ago. My current Android device of choice is rocking a 1024x600 resolution screen (widescreen) and my iPad 2 is rocking a 1024x768 screen. Wanting to play some Baldur's Gate 2, I set about to install and configure it on both devices. The iPad screen resolution matches my old PC's resolution without a widescreen patch, so I set about to install to that first. It turns out you need to install from iTunes, as apple doesn't allow GPL software on the iPad. I set about to install iTunes. After iTunes finishes, it alerts me that I need to delete all the data from the iPad before I can install RubyGM from my laptop. FINE, I proceed to back up all the data and apps from the iPad and sync to my laptop. Finally, it starts to transfer the RubyGM binary over to my iPad2 and... failure. With a generic error code, my time on iPad came to an end. I'm literally at an impasse, short of buying a mac, signing up as a mac developer, installing XCode, and debugging the install process. A complete black box.
I next set about to install this on my Android device. First I installed it from the App store. This worked great. Then I uninstalled it, and installed from the direct download link on their webpage (so I know my friends with unlicensed devices would be covered). It works fine too. Even if it didn't, there are four separate versions posted up for one to try out, and the android SDK works on all platforms.
End of story: You can find my iPad on eBay here.
Android App – AR Wiki (Augmented Reality Wikipedia)
AR Wiki is an easy to use app designed to allow one to browse Wikipedia while walking. It creates a Wikipedia browser window centered in your Android device, with the rear-facing camera displaying a live feed surround the Wikipedia article. In this way you can browse Wikipedia while you are walking without fear of walking into a tree or a street.
You can buy AR Wiki on the Android Market here. Read more about it on the permalink page here.
Easy Inventory Ad Revenue Increases Upon Open Sourcing?
Hi All,
I thought I'd share an anecdote. After open sourcing Easy Inventory a couple of weeks ago, I figured ad views would slowly die out as more folks downloaded the code, forked the project, made improvements etc etc. On the contrary, AdMob impressions for Easy Inventory have more than doubled in the past two weeks. I've always been one to share code as much as possible, but I never would have thought that releasing the code to a project would increase the viewership for the ad-supported version. Will this trend continue long term? Should I open source all my projects? Should I move from SourceForge to Github? Would folks be interested in the source to any of the games I released?
These are interested questions I'll be wrestling with.