cloud goes social

As I promised earlier on, here’s a small post with some suggestions on how to make AR apps.

When the iPhone OS 3.1 will be released (the sdk and os are now in beta), it will be possible (and approved by Apple) to overlay anything on top of the camera view, exactly to achieve Augmented Reality applications.

At the moment it is not possible to actively analyze the images presented to the user via the camera, unless using some tricks (which may not prove satisfying, i.e. take multiple screenshots of the screen), or jailbraking (or however it’s called the process of removing Apple’s restrictions) the device.

Following are some specs that most probably your application will need to use if it has to display some information based on your current location (GPS) and heading (compass).

In landscape mode:
Screen height: 320 px / 4.99 cm
Screen width: 426 px / 6.64 cm the camera view leaves some space under itself (which might come useful for some buttons/ui components), that’s why it’s not 480 px.
1 cm: 64 pixels
Camera FOV height: 34.6 degrees
Camera FOV width: 50.1 degrees

With these informations you should be able to do all kind of conversion calculations given you have for example latitude and longitude of something you want to display on screen, if you have the height as well you can use it to fine-tune the placements of all the items on the overlay view of the camera.

Hoping that this information can be useful to someone.

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As you have noticed I’ve added a donation button on the top right part of the site.

The other day Mr. William Edmondson, from Comcast has donated me some money. Being the first time such a thing happens I would like to thank him in particular. I hope you have found interest in what I write.

I will add a section of all the donors to my site, so your names won’t be forgotten. And from my side I will keep on writing and coding and keeping you updated.

Following up this weekend a new version of the ImageMagick for iPhone test project (which I know you love to read about) from the comment of another reader of this site. And also following a new post with some nice specifications of the iPhone that you may find useful (and it took me a while to dig out).

So, again, thank you all, and stay tuned!

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Thanks to Karl (see previous post comments and update) the XCode project has now the possibility to work on the images uncompressed. We (me and Karl) wanted to see the difference for ImageMagick to work with a compressed format (JPEG, for instance) and with an uncompressed format (raw data).

I’ve added to the project a simple benchmark, consisting in running the MagickWand creation, filtering and destruction a given number of times (customizable in the beginning of the source file, for instance 10), calculating how long it takes each time and in total.

The results are impressive, and can be better exaplined by looking at this simple graph:

Benchmarks running on the simulator and on the device (click to see better!)

As you can see working with uncompressed data achieves 3x faster results on the iPhone device, with a mean running time of 0.85 seconds to run an ordered posterize filter on an image of size 320×460 (the size of the iPhone screen). Similar results are also on the Simulator achieving 3.7x faster filtering for the same image.

The end line is trivial, working with uncompressed data, while being less easy (but as you can see from the project code not extreme) or intuitive yields much faster results!

You can download a better looking graph and the IM_test project as usual.

For any comment don’t hesitate to write, as you’ve seen I try to pick up my comments as much as I can (even on holiday!)

Thanks goes again to Karl who’s has the idea of working with raw images, and provided with the code to achieve so.

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What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger – Friedrich Nietzsche

Cazzo, Vittu, Foda-se, Scheiße, 狗屁 – Claudio

For those of you not knowing what such quotes may refer to, and for those who do, here is an explanation of the facts, as they’ve happened in chronological order. Or thought so

I do understand that my narrative skills aren’t the best, so for anyone that might be really bored you can jump to the last part!

Thursday – 30th of April – 15.00/2.30

After a tiring week of lessons and exercises at ETH João and Claudio set off to the center of Zürich to buy chocolate. More chocolate. Claudio has tickets to reach his girlfriend, Eppi, in Finland, the day afterwards, the 1st of May.
The weather is fine, a bit cloudy, once home, where Mike was waiting for them, the trio sets off to kick a few times the ball in the nearby park, and then to program a mysterious iPhone application which will see the light in the future.
At around 19.00 João and Claudio decide that it’s about time to bring the luggage to the Airport for a night-before-check-in (which is definitely a very good option for all the people who have their flight early in the morning). After the operation yielded successful results the duo went on to the Chinese restaurant where they decided to grab some food for the soirée.
NOTE: João paid the dinner since Claudio has been helping him the whole previous afternoon being the best money-investor for his reach family (all fake, ETH Human Resources Management course project)

Home again, the trio reformed, dinner is served and eaten, followed by the delicious apple-lime-sugar (re)mix © by João.
Cards are now entering the scene, with a few fast matches of Briscola, and some tricks done (and later explained) by João.

The second part of the evening, beside occupying the same time as the previous spots fewer activities, first the last Lost episode has been watched by the full trio (yes, they are fan of the series) and then João brought up a cool opensource FPS, Warsow, which kept the three guys busy until around 3 in the night.
With very few hours of sleep ahead, Claudio decides to take home João and get some rest before the trip. Or so he thought….

Night – 1th of April – 2.30/4.00

To take João home, Claudio, the driver, needed a car, which he has, parked outside home. Apart from a working car, he needed a license, which he has, safely stored in his wallet. Which he has … Or no, he had. You guessed right, the wallet was nowhere to be found. Not in the house (which Mike has been scanning inch-by-inch), not in the car (which João scanned centimeter-by-centimeter), not in the streets, neither from car to home, nor from Chinese (closed at 24.00) to car park (scanned by Claudio & João meter-by-meter).

With his plane leaving in just hours (2, roughly) Claudio lost his hope to find the wallet. But he didn’t lost hope to reach Eppi, in Finland. Here comes the telephone aid:

1. 117 – the police national emergency number. A friendly voice answers in German (terror!) but then after the start-question: “Sprächen Sie English, Franzosich öder Italienish?” and the comforting answer: “Italiano” the issue is solved. Well, the language issue. The police-guy was actually answering from Ticino (Southern part of Switzerland) and redirected Claudio to the kantonpolizei of Zürich.
2. kantonpolizei – the police for the Canton of Zürich. A not-so-friendly voice answers in German (terror!) and refuses to speak any other language than Deutch (abyssal terror!!!). Asking help from Mike (he’s supposed to know German, but he roughly manages) Claudio manages to explain that he lost his wallet, and needs to take a plane morgen (aka: tomorrow). The guy redirects Claudio to the Flüghafen polizei.
3. Flüghafen polizei – the police of the Airport of Zürich. A sleepy voice answers in German (terror!) but manages to speak English. The problem is explained and a solution is proposed: get to the police asap and get a paper stating that the ID card has been lost. As a substitute the permit issued by the Stadt Opfikon (where I’m living) will be used to identify myself. The flights will be Shengen-bounded so it shouldn’t be a problem

Morning – 1th of April 4.00/5.00

The two iron-forged guys, João and Claudio , leave Mike behind and rush to the airport, where, after some waiting and a grumpy almost-sleepy-badly-awaken police officer fills in the report and gives it to Claudio with the comment: “they won’t let you board the flight”

Back home, Mike is in bed, sleeping and dreaming about jumping sheeps overflowing the maximum integer size, Claudio takes a quick shower while João chats with some Portugues friends still awake.
The time has come. The two heroes reach the airfield, and João gifts lends Claudio some money for the trip, Claudio advances to the gates of heaven the passport check and passes through, without any inconvenience.

João brings back the car to my place and gets some rest. He deserved it!

The holiday

All goes fine, from Zürich to Düsseldorf and then to Helsinki, final destination Loviisa and all the way back. The small holiday has been a charm, a needed refreshening time with lovely people. No troubles encountered at any passport check, nor at at the check-in on the way home (apart from weird looks from the woman at the counter). The wallet was found by João at the Chinese restaurant on the 1st of May, at 11.00, the opening hour. Life is happy, once more.

Conclusion

All is good what ends up being good. And this adventure definitely ended up being good. The sleeping time wasted was gained back with some extra sleeping the following days, and for sure the duo João – Claudio proved to be strong and compact, a good friendship, bound to last for a long time being. I would like to thank João for showing me how good friends can be, Mike for helping out whenever he could, Eveliina for always having encouraging words whenever they’re needed and overall life for giving me adventures and opportunities which should be lived through to learn how to live better and always managing through whatever hard or complicated issues come up.

As for the two quotations, the first looks obvious, the second is a collection of swear words in all the languages related to the posting: Italian, Finnish, Portuguese, German and Chinese, in no relevant order.

After working (almost) the whole night on the AOS (Advanced Operating System) course we went to eat a big fat focaccia, @Il Pentagramma, Zürich!

Guess what was found there, by João? BIG BABOL! I hadn’t eaten them since ages, let’s say 10!! I used to chew a lot of them when I was a kid and a little guy.

Big Chewy Chewingum

Of course immediately between us, friends, started the balloons-fight. Walking around the center and making big-shocking-pink balloons! Just like the old days!

You can see my friend João doing one, while on the tram 11 heading towards Oerlikon!

João on the tram

For a simple silly sequence you can have a look at my DA deviation

Ah, well, so many memories brought back by the chewy experience, and now my facial muscles are all sore! :P

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Living away from home spots, as many other things, two faces of a coin. Let’s try and make a list, or just write down what comes to my mind!

From Como to Zürich, the center of Europe

I’m living in Zürich, Switzerland, away from Como, Italy. The distance is not prohibitive, around 3 hours and a half by car (no speeding!) and three hours and something by train. Nice!

THE GOOD

• Parents – living alone, well, with two other pals (colleague of studies and adventures), surely has as a pro the fact that parents aren’t around. Want to sty up until 3A.M. or eat at 14:00? No problem!
• Cooking – having a passion for it really makes me experiment a lot!
• Inhabitants – staying around with friends who share common interests can’t be beaten!

THE BAD

• Ironing – probably the worst part of it all. It takes much time, things never come out as pretty as mom does them and burns are always behind the corner

THE UGLY

• House cleaning – it’s not a very bad part, but it’s a really repetitive job, therefore becomes boring (spicing it up with music and jokes while hoovering or washing the floor and toilets it’s good and alleviates the boredom)
• Foodshopping – not that bad, but man, it eats up time, much time. And without having a car around makes it a bit heavy, at times. Well, when we have to get the milk at least!

Have any suggestion for the list? I’ll be more than happy to update the list, if your comments apply to me as well! Let me know, I’m interested!

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Good morning/afternoon/evening/(night?)!

I’m starting this new blog because, as the name implies, I’m going social. I’ve always been close on myself, not going on Facebook, not going on Twitter, not going anywhere! ;)

This is all going to change. Stay tuned (who?) for news about, well, everything! Music, Movies, Computers, Travels, \ldots (or for the others: …)

Sorry for my English, which is not my mother-tongue!

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