Linkblog - 3.11.2012 - 12.2.2013

dashclock - Lock screen clock widget for Android 4.2+ - Google Project Hosting. I'm not a big fan of lock screen widgets, but this one is visually quite nice, expandable, and open source. This could work.

php.js - PHP VM with JavaScript. Simply move PHP execution to the browser. Hey, then the security vulnerabilities in PHP will only have local effects for the user and no longer for the server!

The Larch Environment. Another approach to visual programming, but unlike many other approaches, it is a mix of textual Python and visual representation of code and data structures. Looks quite interesting as an environment in which to experiment with elements of the language.

storm-gen - Lightweight DAO generator for Android SQLite - Google Project Hosting. Hmm, I could take a look at that, another ORM for SQLite under Android.

Repetier Software | The software driving your 3d printer. Interesting, this is software that combines all the steps of printing in one interface and is said to be significantly faster than pronterface. There is also a Mac version, so it might be worth a try. It also comes with its own firmware, so I naturally need to find out first whether the Robo3D can work with it (but since it is based on open source printers in principle, this could very well work - and their FAQ already states that they want to use Repetier-Host directly, so the chances are good).

Filabot Personal Filament Maker for 3D Printers - Desktop Extruding System – Environmentally Friendly. And with this, you make your own filament from plastic shredder. Also a cool idea.

Slic3r - G-code generator for 3D printers. Oh yes, another important 3D printing software. Slic3r is used to create the actual print plan from the STL model, which the printer then uses to produce the workpiece. This is about the layer thickness, how the head moves, what the infills should look like, etc.

Printable wood available. Cool - printable wood. Basically just a wood powder-plastic mixture that can be processed like normal wood after printing.

LightZone | Open-source digital darkroom software for Windows/Mac/Linux. Just remembered, it's now free. And because it's Java, it's available on multiple platforms. During my experiments back then, it was quite a cool alternative for Linux. Specifically, the contrast control through a digital zone system is quite cool, and the program saves JPEG previews and the editing steps directly in the previews, so you can easily exchange them between computers. Attention: currently, Lightzone still requires a license key. The whole licensing stuff still needs to be removed, but the source is already on Github, it's just a matter of time.

Thingiverse - Digital Designs for Physical Objects. And you can go there to search for inspiration and starter models. Presumably also on the other usual 3D warehouses, but then you have to convert the models to STL first (and make various preparations to the models so that they become printable).

Tinkercad - Mind to design in minutes. Wow. There's even 3D design software for 3D printers that runs completely in the web. Okay, since you can boot Linux in the browser, nothing should surprise me anymore, but it's still cool ...

repetier/Repetier-Host-Mac · GitHub. And the necessary software to control the printer.

RepRap - RepRapWiki. Well, this will probably soon become important reading for me. Pretty cool stuff, 3D printing.

Pinoccio - A Complete Ecosystem for Building the Internet of Things | Indiegogo. Another exciting Arduino-compatible project. Compact Arduino boards with integrated mesh networking and gateway capability via WiFi to the Internet. All of this as open-source hardware and without a mandatory central server.

i.MX233 Product Summary Page. The CPU used by the Chumby One - pretty cool what's already in the core.

Chumby tricks - ChumbyWiki. If you look around, it's quite interesting to see what all could be done with the Chumby. It was really an open platform after all. So perhaps it's not so bad that the manufacturer is gone and the infrastructure is slowly disappearing, because it shows whether an open system can really continue to live, even if the originally driving force is gone. And apart from that, it can still remain a fun tinkering project. I think I will really replace my old radio alarm clock and do more with this thing. So if I'm late for work in the near future and miss morning appointments, you know what it's all about - then my hacked alarm clock has crashed.

Falling Faster than the Speed of Sound « Wolfram Blog. Interesting analysis of Felix Baumgartner's jump with Mathematica. I'm still in the play phase with Mathematica, so such things are quite exciting to get a better feel for how to approach problems with Mathematica. Working with Mathematica is quite different from normal programming environments.

ZDoc - Browse Files at SourceForge.net. And here comes the provisional salvation - a firmware that works offline and loads the widgets and all the stuff from a thumb drive. Not everything will work, but if I can at least get a radio alarm clock working again, it's already quite okay. So, it seems like another DIY project is on the agenda.

End of Chumby as we know it... Page 1 - Chumby.com - chumbysphere forum. The cloud is not always a good idea - I also have one of these Chumby devices at home, but if the rescue plan here doesn't work, it won't even be usable as an alarm clock. It looks like I should hurry up and root the device to get local software running on it myself. Basically, the Chumby is just a small embedded Linux system with a few hardware sensors and an integrated touchscreen (well, more of a squeeze screen - it's as imprecise as the first generations of Palm Pilots were after one year of use).

Metabones announces Speed Booster lens adapter for mirrorless cameras: Digital Photography Review. The idea sounds compelling - simply use optics to compress the large full-frame image circle down to an APS-C image circle (approximately) and turn the 1.5x into a 1.1x with higher light intensity. But does it actually work as well in practice as described? I'm curious to see the test results.

Permaduino | Indiegogo. Interesting project: an Arduino-compatible board designed for permanent installation but still has a prototyping character (so it comes with a breadboard for wiring additional elements). The idea behind it: prototype with one of the classic systems and then rebuild it with this board to use it permanently - video cassettes with 8mm casing are used as the housing.

Back To Top: Android vs. iOS. An article about a curiosity in Android that has also irritated me several times. On iOS, you can quickly scroll to the top if you tap the title bar. On Android, there is nothing similar as a system-wide gesture. And it is not so easy to build something universal, as this article explains.

SPT100 Pan & Tilt System. Ok, I think I know what I need. With a device like this and, for example, a camera with simple image processing behind it, you can build a follower with which you could, for example, make sky observations. Or automatically created panorama sequences for Google+. Or optical area monitoring with detection and logging of changes. And it's not particularly expensive either.

Reflow Controller Shield Arduino Compatible - Rocket Scream. Oven control with Arduino. In this case for the optimal distribution of solder over circuit boards - but you can certainly modify this for optimal baking results or for curing prototypes or whatever. Pretty cool.

the_silver_searcher - Interesting for anyone who, like me, manages and searches through large source trees. Essentially something like ack - an automatic grep that runs through entire hierarchies and additionally filters files by various patterns, taking into account gitignore and hgignore. And all this not as a Perl script like ack, but in C with various native libraries and various optimizations for searching. It doesn't get faster than this unless you use pre-generated indexes (which come with their own problems).

If you want to use the Atom publishing protocol, you now need to install a plugin in WordPress 3.5 because it has been removed from the core. Of course, the WordPress developers didn't bother to include a corrected version of the Atom Publishing Protocol server in the plugin; it still contains the over 2-year-old bug with media uploads. Fortunately, my patch still works, but now it needs to be applied to a different file. Quite a mess, what they're doing there. And when I see how the bug in the WordPress core was ignored, my hope that someone will take the trouble to fix the plugin is pretty close to zero.

Polaroids interchangeable lens camera is awful hands-on | The Verge. Well, that's probably it then. The first prototypes and images are definitely different from what actually appears at CES, and that doesn't sound good at all. Sure, things could still balance out by the release, but I wouldn't bet my money on it. There are other, better cameras at comparable prices (e.g., the V1 sale, which is currently floating around for 310 euros with the 10-30 on Amazon). Update: this is probably a different camera; Polaroid seems to have released two different models with interchangeable lenses, only one of which has Android. But that the other one is actually good, well, my hopes are rather low there ...

[[[CES 2013]] Bring On The Influx Of Android-Powered Photography Machines: Polaroid Announces The iM1836 Mirrorless Camera With Jelly Bean](http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/01/07/ces-2013-bring-on-the-influx-of-android-powered-photography-machines-polaroid-announces-the-im1836-mirrorless-camera-with-jelly-bean/). Could be interesting to hack. And the system really looks suspiciously like the Nikon J1 as the basis - which would be even more interesting because you could also get other lenses (and in the long run other bodies). Of course, the question remains whether Android is messed up or quite open and if it is open, whether you can also easily put your own apps on it.

Use Your iPhone, Android, Or Windows Phone To Lock And Unlock Your Mac Using Bluetooth | Redmond Pie. Nice little hack - only needs a small open source program and two Apple scripts and you can trigger actions when, for example, a smartphone comes close to a computer or moves away from a computer - here using the example of the screen lock.

Blaze — Blaze 0.1-dev documentation. Hmm, I could have sworn I already had that, but never mind. Blaze is essentially a compiler that transforms numpy-like code and passes it to runtimes for evaluation. Specifically, it also supports many parallel runtimes and parallelization of evaluations. The data types are also significantly more developed than in numpy - the authors themselves consider Blaze to be the natural evolution of numpy. What fascinates me about it is the integration of a quite extensively developed array programming library into Python - since I've been playing around with J, I find array languages fascinating.

IOIO for Android - SparkFun Electronics. Also an interesting project, a friend pointed me to it today: an IO board for Android smartphones. It simply plugs in via USB and is accessed through a simple Java library. It has various analog and digital inputs and outputs, I2C and other goodies. You can even get a Bluetooth kit for it if you don't want to communicate via radio. Pricier perhaps than what you're used to in the Arduino environment, but still, sounds cool. I'll wait for my Smartduino first, though, which also has Android support.

Run Mobile Apps on Mac with BlueStacks :: Mobile Apps on Mac :: Mobile App Player for Mac | BlueStacks. Hey, the beta can now run any Android apps. I should definitely check it out. So one or the other Android tool would also be practical on the desktop, especially if there are not really good desktop versions available.

MariaMole | dalpix.com. If the normal Arduino IDE is too simple for you (although I would say that the simplicity is the great bonus), you can check out this project. This is a rather classic IDE with which you can build Arduino programs.

Java 3D Engine | Learn Java Programming in 3D. Looks very interesting, especially because it has a close integration into an IDE (BlueJ) with a focus on learning to program. And meanwhile, you can also directly generate Android applications from it and, for example, build your own games or toys.

several methods to find interesting areas of an image - and for example interesting for overview galleries where images are brought into fixed formats jd where you want to apply more intelligent cropping and scaling.

imwilsonxu/fbone · GitHub. Not so uncool at all. I'm actually a Djangonaut, but Flask has always interested me a bit, as it's quite a good basis for more compact projects. With the integration of HTML5 Boilerplate and CSS Bootstrap, this could also be interesting for small web projects with frontend. Although Flask offers enough room to grow to realize larger things - it's just that for larger things I often still reach for Django. But especially for the typical web service with additional HTML presentation of the data, this can really be practical.

Cubes 0.10.1 Released – Multiple Hierarchies Data Brewery. I think I've mentioned this before, but hey, TV repeats things all the time. And it looks even better, what you can do with it. I really need to take a closer look, there's a project where I think I could use it. I need to check how to integrate it, though, because my project uses Django and its ORM, and Cubes uses SQLAlchemy. It could be interesting to mix them.

The Ruggeduino. Might be interesting when I actually fry my upcoming toys ... (which, given my electrical knowledge, can happen faster than I would like)

The SQLite RTree Module. And another extension for SQLite, this one a standard extension. R-Trees are tree structures optimized for range queries - that is, range queries such as "is this given rectangle contained in the list of rectangles".

The Gaia-SINS federated project home-page. Just quickly bookmarked in case I need it - spatial data (GIS data) can be efficiently indexed and queried in SQLite with an extension. Since I am a declared fan of SQLite, this is quite interesting. And it is implemented as a dynamically loadable extension (of course, this only works if the SQLite you are using is also enabled for extensions - unfortunately this is often not the case, installation might require a recompilation of SQLite, but it's not that terrible).

plan 9 was the system that took the ideas of Unix even further and, building on that, enabled a distributed system with distributed resources and seamless networking as early as the late 80s. Just think about where we would be today if it had become mainstream. Tablets that directly use network resources, that directly use complex applications on CPU servers in the network and that the developer can directly access for debugging from his workstation, without any hacks.

F-Droid. Quite interesting - an app store for open source applications for Android. So you don't have to constantly check yourself for news. Of course, some of the apps are also in the normal Google Play Store, but not every open source project wants to jump through Google's hoops.

The iDroid Project - Where it presently stands - 0xDEADFA11. On the topic of Android on iPad - it doesn't look good, iDroid was probably the most active project that wanted to provide a complete solution, but the status from July and the project status overview do not look like something will come soon. Too bad.

Ipad optimization - xSellize. I think I'll take a closer look at this - on my iPad 1, I now have the problem that apps constantly crash due to lack of memory (e.g. the official Twitter client). Based on experiences with other systems with Flash, the swap to Flash shouldn't be too bad in terms of performance - and if the battery consumption is also kept within limits, it might be a temporary solution. Even though it annoys me that you can only use your system with jailbreak and system hacks after such a short time. Ideally, someone would port Android to the old iPads ...

ActiveAndroid | Active record style SQLite persistence for Android. Hmm, let's take a look - another ORM for Android, but one with quite interesting syntax. The source also promises a few more things like e.g. Joins. If migrations are also reasonably implemented (this is often lacking), the project could definitely motivate me to switch my little tinkering project.

Official Website | FreeBASIC Programming Language. Just stumbled upon it (don't ask), a free Basic compiler that is oriented towards QuickBasic.

The ElfData Plugin. For future use, more efficient string classes and structures than the standard ones in RealBasic. And basic structures for parsers and tokenizers. Eventually, I want to build my own Markdown processor for my Desktopwiki instead of constantly calling external tools.

Cloud Storage Programming Interface - Store everything. This looks quite interesting - a C# library for accessing various cloud storage. It also supports Dropbox and, most importantly, it supports Mono for Android and MonoTouch, which I could use as a basis to rewrite my small Android project in C# for testing.

F# and MonoGame on the Mac. If you want to build games on the Mac, you have an interesting option with MonoGames. This is a reimplementation of the Microsoft XNA APIs. So basically, it's just the continuation of Mono into the gaming area. Pretty cool stuff - and because a cool thing alone isn't enough, the linked article provides the whole thing with integration in F#, the functional language for .NET from Microsoft. Unfortunately, for iOS, MonoTouch and for Android, MonoDroid are required, which means there is a slight hurdle to overcome in terms of acquisition (the licenses are not exactly cheap, so maybe not quite the knockout for hobbyists).

git-annex. Definitely worth a look or two. In principle, it's something like a manually operated Dropbox - you can link folders with other folders and define sync relationships. But you can also define redundancies, ensuring that there are enough copies of files - if you delete a file, you get a warning if it was the last copy (and it is restored). Many commands for efficient management of various scenarios are added, and there are various backends for the data - for example, you can integrate Amazon S3 and include it as a backup repository with suitable means, or reference URLs from the web and make files always reconstructable (with this you can also integrate your own file server with an http interface). Or even use something like Google Mail as a backend and store your data in file attachments. Or use all the means of git to exclude temporary results of synchronizations, for example. Unlike Sparkleshare - which is also based on git - only the metadata is versioned in git here, not the files themselves. This of course has the disadvantage that file changes cannot be undone via it - for this you would need a versioning backend such as bup, which is then used as a data backup with versioning and definition of backup cycles. The advantage of the git-annex method, however, is that the data does not grow as gigantic as with Sparkleshare if you want to sync large files such as videos or digital images - only at the defined backup interface would the versions occur and you can explicitly determine which data goes there. Not for mouse pushers, but great for command line fetishists.