VideoTrace

A very promising project from the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies.

“Quoting their site: VideoTrace is a system for interactively generating realistic 3D models of objects from video—models that might be inserted into a video game, a simulation environment, or another video sequence. The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object to be modelled over one or more frames of the video. By interpreting the sketch drawn by the user in light of 3D information obtained from computer vision techniques, a small number of simple 2D interactions can be used to generate a realistic 3D model. Each of the sketching operations in VideoTrace provides an intuitive and powerful means of modelling shape from video, and executes quickly enough to be used interactively. Immediate feedback allows the user to model rapidly those parts of the scene which are of interest and to the level of detail required. The combination of automated and manual reconstruction allows VideoTrace to model parts of the scene not visible, and to succeed in cases where purely automated approaches would fail..”
Adrian

The song of 99 bottles of beer

Almost everyone of us has for surely ran into this song. There is nothing special about it except the number of bottles in each verse that decreases until it reaches 0 and then everything starts over - what better example of a "loop".
So why not writing the song in all possible languages we can think about :)

Check it out here

http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/

Enjoy!

Adrian

Execute XBAP in Google Chrome

This is an article for the fans of Chrome - viewing hosted WPF pages in Chrome.
By default this is not supported in Google Chrome (and apparently is not going to be supported officially too soon).
The support can be manually added by copying of libraries from an installation of Mozilla. So to be able to add this functionality, a few steps need to be followed:

Make sure you installed both last version of Chrome and Mozilla Firefox 3.0.0+.

The following libraries found in Mozilla Firefox instalation directory
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
have to be coppied to Chrome instalation directory;

Assumming Chrome is installed in the following directory, USER corresponds to your windows user.
C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application

js3250.dll
mozcrt19.dll
nspr4.dll
nss3.dll
nssutil3.dll
plc4.dll
plds4.dll
smime3.dll
sqlite3.dll
ssl3.dll
xpcom.dll
xul.dll


This is about it. Enjoy Chrome!
Adrian

Eiffel Tower by Night from St Cloud

 
No comment
Adrian

How to check if your CPU is 32 or 64 bit?

When trying to install a 64bit app into a 32bit OS, the OS will report your system as being a 32bit system even if your CPU implements 64bit architecture. At this level it is the OS who reports itself as a 32bit, and prevents the execution of a 64 bit app, but there should be no problems executing a 32bit app on a 64bit OS.

But the question is how to really check if the CPU is 64bit or not.
The 64bit compatible CPU includes a “lm” flag (that stands for LONG MODE) that implements the EM64T instruction. This bit is common for both Intel and AMP CPUID.

Anyways, the fastest way to find if the CPU is 32 or 64 (in windows) would be to download the CPU-Z tool, and once you execute it check under the CPU tab, Processor section.
If in the list of supported CPU Instructions, the option EM64T is present, your CPU supports 64bit. 
    

Adrian

Windows 7 build 7048 x86/x64 Leaked

This release labeled Release Candidate 1 can be downloaded on various sources (torrent, rapidshare, megaupload).

Name: 7048_x64_Ultimate_EN_DVD
Size: 3.31 GB
x64

Name: 7048.0.090219-1845_x86fre_client_en-us_Ultimate_EN_DVD
Size: 2.61 GB
x86

Adrian

The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis

One of the best explanations to this situation.

Adrian

Second Life susceptible to SQL injection

The famous 3D World created and powered by its residents had a big vulnerability that allowed the full access to all client accounts, their personal and payment data.

Even if the vulnerability was corrected by now (after being reported around 3 months ago), we are questioning how a company like Lindenlabs with an yearly profit of more than 400 K$ coming from Second Life, is not capable of taking their database security to a higher level.

Source: HackersBlog

Adrian

Windows Mobile 6.5 Beta Leaked

It is really good news to hear that Microsoft is concentrating his attention on the long-forgotten OS – Windows Mobile. And we are getting closer and closer to the official release day with the leaked version of Windows Mobile 6.5 beta.

The bad news is that the only compatible pocket pc phone for the moment is HTC Blue Angel, so anyone using other Windows Mobile devices is out of luck for the moment (me included).

Judging from the screenshots and the presented features, Windows Mobile 6.5 is no more than a minor upgrade over Windows Mobile 6.1. The biggest difference worth mentioning is the new face that offers a slight improvement of the user experience. 

The leaked version was available on XDA-Dev . Apparently Microsoft did something about this and forced them to remove all the links. But if you got a Blue Angel and wand to give WM 6.5 a spin, it still exists on various sources on the internet.

Adrian

Microsoft TechDays 09

This week I decided to take the time to participate in some of the conferences that were on the agenda of TechDays 09.
Today was the first of the three days dedicated to the conference.
To enumerate some of the objectives of the sessions I found interesting – Windows 7 and Surface, Cloud Platform “Azure”, WPF, Silverlight & .NET 3.5 SP1, Visual Studio 2010 & C# 4.0, XNA, etc.



To conclude, I had no regrets about participating – the presentations were high level and refreshing regarding the technology.

All the videos are available here (French).

Adrian

Experimenting with experiments...

Today I lost around 3 hour sitting in front of my laptop realizing how I, from time to time (and curiosity) willingly but unconsciously test Microsoft's "masterpiece".

After being a happy tester of the Win 7 pre-build 6950 from October (right, the second leaked version), happy not because of stability reasons but because as an experimented developer that puts first time the hands on something new, I took precautions and until January when the official beta was released, I kept myself from messing too much with the new OS, not to mention never even thinking about really working on it. In January, amazingly and unexpectedly, the official beta 7000 installed flawlessly over the 6950, and I thought I should take things more seriously and start deploying the "laboratory" on it.

I still remember that with the exception of a number of annoying bugs (problems with insomnia, or waking from it, memory leaks, drivers ..), the system was relatively stable (conditioned by a daily bases reboot).

But with the unofficial leak 7022 that was supposed to contain kernel patches for some of those problems, I lost 3 hours today and everything I installed on the ex-win7-system. One and a half hour of updating the system, 20 minutess of updating registry&services, crash, another 20 minutes trying to rollback the old system and that's about it. Not to mention the dead periods of time between.

Surely being too confident in M$ developer's skill is a "must NOT".
I ca still hear from some that build 6956 is the most stable of them all. No problemo, I believe turning back is never an acceptable solution. So .. Tomorrow (night maybe) is a new day and I will try a fresh install of 7022.

Adrian

Windows 7 build 7025 leaked

Apparently the leaked Windows 7 build 7022 is already out there. It was suppozed to be officially available starting from April 08.
The leak is already available for download on various P2P networks.
The build was compiled on 15 January.

Adrian

Windows 7 Secrets

Windows 7 is finally officially released. I laid my hands on it since the pre-beta build (the PDC version leaked October 08) and start drilling into the areas that concentrate most of the new features such as the new taskbar and shell integration, ribbon-based graphical UI, multi-touch and gesture recognition.

In this post I would like to focus a number of features less visible to the user but that prove to be very useful in my opinion - the top 8 "secrets" of Windows 7.

1. Window management - docking a window very fast to the left/right side of the screen or maximizing it can be done very quickly, actions that can be performed using keyboard shortcuts:
   Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock;
   Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximizes and restores / minimizes;
   Win+Shift+Up Arrow and Win+Shift+Down Arrow maximizes and restores the vertical size.
   
   
2. Multi-Monitor Windows Management - dock windows from one monitor to another when using multiple monitors using Win+Shift+Left Arrow and Win+Shift+Right Arrow keeping their relative position on the screen
   
   
3. Minimize non-active Background Windows - pressing once Win+Home minimizes all background windows, and pressing it once again puts them back to the screen
   
   
4. Reordering Taskbar Icons and Running Applications - if you haven't noticed, the pinned icons and running applications are no longer fixed, they can be reordered and starting a new instance of any of the first 5 started application can be done by pressing the Win+1, Win+2, ..
   
   
5. Executing another instance of the same app - just Shift+Click on an icon from the taskbar to execute another instance of the application
   
   
6. Peeking the the Desktop - want to have a look at the desktop without minimizing all windows? Pressing the small square in bottom-right of the screen or the shortcut
   Win+Space enables the user to peek at any icons or gadgets executed on the desktop.
   
   
7. Display Projection - for a quick popup that allows selecting how to extend your screen on a extra connected monitor or projector just hit Win+P
   
   
8. Focus and walk the taskbar - now the taskbar can be focused using the Win+T shortcut and once you are there the arrow keys allows you to select one of the applications or icons which you can activate or executing by pressing Enter

Once again those are the "secrets" that I find the most useful, but to see the full list of secrets just visit Tim Sneath's tip list for Win 7

Adrian