We saw the 2D version and I guess there’s a 3D version as well.

This is yet another [...]]]> Yesterday night went out to see this movie with wifey. The story might seem so typical, however it was really fun to watch and after a long time I felt like I had seen a really good movie.

We saw the 2D version and I guess there’s a 3D version as well.

This is yet another movie that should inspire kids into engineering/science . I dont know why kids, especially boys dont see the engineering talent of the hero and emulate that (no, I dont mean go fight crime or villains, I mean go create something. solve your problems). When I was a kid, my heroes were talented engineers, and not genetic abnormalities (batman. I tried creating my own bat cave under my bed, and made my own batman’s belt to carry all sorts of tools.) .

Every movie probably has a core story line that you can extract and this storyline repeats between movies. The core storyline in this movie and another sci fi 3D movie that you can recognize would probably go like this:
hero+hero’s people+nemesis.
hero’s people hate nemesis
hero interacts with nemesis. discovers they’re not so bad.
hero tries to convince hero’s people that nemesis is cool/fun. fails.
hero’s people try to destroy nemesis.
(beyond this point, variations can be introduced…)
epic battle
hero + nemesis + (hero’s people) victorious
happily ever after

So its possible that based on this core line, I can create my own movie.
Maybe we can create a story spewing program as well….
watch out hollywood!!!

There’s also a Youtube channel with a couple of videos of our solutions.

The mediaphone demo [...]]]> Pathpartner, the company I work for, will be showcasing our Android based mediaphone and 3D Graphics solutions @ CES 2010 . If you’re going to be there,  visit our stall and check out our demos : south 4, Booth No 35614.

There’s also a Youtube channel with a couple of videos of our solutions.

The mediaphone demo runs on an Always Innovating Touch Book thats powered by an OMAP3530. The mediaphone multimedia is using hardware accelerated decoders & encoders available on the OMAP.
The advantage of using Android for the mediaphone, is that it provides a ready, open source framework for creating rich UI. There were a lot of challenges with Android’s existing multimedia framework that the team at pathpartner was able to overcome.

One of the guys at work has a couple of screenshots on his blog.

We’re also showcasing our full software OpenGL ES 1.1 library. The library is intended for resource constrained devices which dont have a GPU. The demo video here, runs on an OpenMoko Neo Freerunner. The OpenMoko uses a ARM920T based Samsung SoC thats clocked at 400MHz. The device is running Angstrom based on a 2.6.28 kernel. There’s no X11 and the EGL version here, directly draws to the framebuffer. In the video, apart from the khronos demos, you can see some of the clutter tests that are working with the library. OpenMoko has a 480×640 display and the initial khronos demos are running at QVGA (320×240).

Ok, so the first book is Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash The book is really fast paced but I found that the Sumerian history lessons were a drag. This is one of those [...]]]> There were a lot of holidays this month, and I found the time to chomp through three books. Thought I’d put up some quick reviews.

Ok, so the first book is Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash
The book is really fast paced but I found that the Sumerian history lessons were a drag. This is one of those books where, towards the end, the author seems to get bored and wraps things up real quick

However. The coolest thing about the book is the Metaverse. No fun without a second life comparision. Snow crash probably might have been an inspiration, but the secondlife metaverse beats the pants off snow crash. Some nerd would’ve written a comparision somewhere. Being me, I specifically love the 3d modelling environment and the simple scripting language that allows anybody to try and create stuff that they want to. One of these days I’m going to try hack around my client and try to cut off texture downloads that make rezzing so slow. I’ll probably be like one of the guys in snow crash, who “goggle” in from a “cheap terminal”, but the neat thing is that its only going to appear that way to me

The second book, Stephen Budiansky’s Air Power
The book, begins with early days of aviation, development and advances in aviation and engineering, and sheer stupidity that the human race is capable of. I wont go into details because I want to go to sleep. But there’s always some lesson to be learnt from history and books about history:
1) When something is wrong, fix it. Dont try to live with it and make it sound as though its right. The more stupidity in a society, more examples of this, you will be able to find.
2) Dont let success get to your head.
3) Listen to smart people.
4) Delegate responsibility. If you’re asleep after downing sleeping pills, your next in command should be able to call in the Panzer divisions.
5) Learn from the past mistakes and successes.
6) Dont buy a book at the airport bookstore. They charge almost twice its worth.

Book No. 3, that I chomped down over the last weekend: Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage
It would be wrong to consider the book only as a series of love stories/attempts. There are so many relations that are discovered, built and broken. Quite endearing.
Also, as an interesting aside, I felt that the author used the book to critic the arts of his time. Deep descriptions of art, books, artists and poets, that probably do not carry so much of weight in our current time, can feel tiresome, but I guess somebody researching the past would love to have such a nice written record.