Andrey Vystavkin Blog

So far, we have Android SDK at Google Code page and already some integration Plug-ins for Eclipse. An interface is nice and simple.CrunchGear also some videos on the architecture structure of Androids’ internals. How soon will iPhone OS X be replaced by Android, and will it be better then Mac mobile solution?..*/me will wait*

It’s time when I have to move from Del.icio.us and Google Bookmarks. Twitter Atom subscription gives quite good opportunity of tracking all the interesting things caught from Twitter on daily basis. A combination of GoogleReader and Twitter gives a nice service with:

• Tags and categories can be made in GReader.
• Accessing your bookmarks from phone by following Twitter updates.
• Encapsulated Google Search in GReader won’t give a chance to miss any information once it was tracked through RSS/Atom feeds.
• You can update your twits from phone/IM: fast and easy and clicking less.

After few days of surging, I came out with few NXT programming solutions:

• RobotC

Basic C-language interface from umc.edu, which works with NXT and RCX model

• Microsoft Robotics Studio (MRS)

Nice and easy way of programming Robots with GUI interface, with almost no interaction with code.

• LeJOS

For Java programmers: NXT and RCX Java Open Source interface with simple Java Eclipse installation Plug-in.

To be continued…

Seems that a company leader for image graphics software - Adobe, is about to release a new language which will enhance the capacities of image filtering on the Web. Language’s codename is Hydra, and you can find it at Adobe Labs section. T

That’s what John Nack said about nice advanced technology:

“Hydra is tuned to run ridiculously fast on modern graphics cards (GPUs), and it’ll be tuned for multi-core CPUs as well…Here’s a key point, though: the same Hydra technology is being used to power the fast filters in After Effects CS3. Therefore an AE plug-in developer could effectively also develop runtime effects for Flash, while a Flash developer could leverage her work inside AE.”

Here are some benefits of Hydra language:

• Familiar syntax that is based on GLSL, which is C-based
• Allows the same filter to run efficiently on different GPU and CPU architectures, including multi-core and multiprocessor systems in a future update
• Abstracts out the complexity of executing on heterogeneous hardware
• Supports 3rd party creation and sharing of filters and effects
• Delivers excellent image processing performance in Adobe products

Some of the filtering examples you can find at Kevin Goldsmith’s blog.

Due to the faculty specifics, most of the forth course classmates took Robotics & Automation course this semester.

For catching up the idea of automation procedures, the teacher gave us a small NXT Robot to play around. I couldn’t remember when was the last time I did these Lego stuff, however this NXT amazed me a lot.

This small “toy” is equipped with:

• Light Sensor (black and white spectrum)
• Ultrasound Sensor
• Bump Sensor
• Sound Sensor

Lots of things to play around, especially taking in account the programmatic aspects of NXT generation and Open Source C compiler for these robots: RobotC project.

I haven’t thought that it’s going to be such a headache to find some good software for Video and Audio Editing on Linux platform! At this type of software fields, you realize how much work should be done in future for Unices to reach Mac/Win multimedia platforms.

Win/Mac haters can take a deep breath, because there are no good alternatives for:

• Abode Premier
• Sony Vegas
• Sound Forge

However, I’ve managed to find the combination of Kinovd and Cinelerra. The last one appeared to be a nice video editor, even though some minor bugs arise (which were solved right away with Cinelerra helper). Here are some Ubuntu repositories for Cinelerra editor.

Enjoy editing!