James' BlogJames' Bloghttp://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2012-12-11T22:44:24ZSquarespaceMoving Onhttp://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2012/12/5/moving-on.htmlJames Baxter2012-12-05T22:05:34Z2012-12-05T22:05:34ZQuite a lot has happened since my last blog post.

 

  1. I graduated from Heriot Watt with an Honours degree in Computer Science BSc
  2. I moved to Warrinton in England with my girlfriend
  3. I got a job as a graduate developer for Entropy Software Solutions

 

Well technically I moved to Warrington because of the new job but two things didn't really deserve a numbered list. It doesn't look like much now I see but it's been a very busy couple of months. 

At Entropy I work mostly with Microsoft technologies including ASP.net, VB.net, SSIS Packages and Reporting Services. We are interested in working with mobile technologies especially in combination with the systems we currently develop. Whilst it's unlikely my Augmented Reality knowledge will be applicable to business and resource management systems you never know what the client might ask for.

I still have six blog posts drafted waiting for me to have enough time to check them for accuracy and grammar. I know a few of them are out of date now. As well as the blog needing more content the Yahoo Pipe I made years ago seems to have totally borked. I'm on the edge of redoing the whole blog with Umbraco but if I don't have time to post then I almost certainly won't ahve time for that.

]]>Community 8bit Theme Tunehttp://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2012/5/17/community-8bit-theme-tune.htmlJames Baxter2012-05-18T02:29:35Z2012-05-18T02:29:35ZI grabbed this out of the episode to use as a new ringtone. Hopefully NBC won't mind...

Apologies to the actual composer I just stuck Dan Harmon in for speed.

 

Community 8bit Theme Tune.mp3

 

]]>How To Use Google Drive, as a drive...http://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2012/5/9/how-to-use-google-drive-as-a-drive.htmlJames Baxter2012-05-09T16:49:52Z2012-05-09T16:49:52ZI like to have Google Drive as a drive, or more accurately a partition on my Mac.

It's handy for several reasons partly my OCD, partly organisational (it looks neater in Finder and on the desktop) and it allows me to only have my drive downloaded once across Bootcamp in Windows.

The trouble is that Google Drive creates a folder called "Google Drive" wherever you want it to go leaving you with a partition called "Google Drive" with only one folder in it called again, "Google Drive" I have a method around this.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOU SOMEHOW FORMATTING A WHOLE PARTITION OF DATA!

  1. Make sure your current drive has everything backed up correctly, then delete it. It's easier this way.
  2. Create your partition I've made mine a bit bigger than my paid for storage incase I ever upgrade
    1. You must call the partition "Google Drive", capital "G" and "D" with a space. The same as the auto generated folder
    2. If you want to make your partition useable in Windows make sure you chose "MS DOS"
    3. Or you can download alternate drivers to make the Mac partition visible in Windows or vice versa but that won't be covered here.
  3. Now if you try to select the empty partition as the folder for your Google Drive you'll most likely be told "The folder is not empty". This is because of all the nonsense invisible files that the finder hides from you.
  4. To solve this, head to the terminal navigate to your partition you'll need root or SU acess

I used the following Terminal commands to delete the files that were in the way to allow Google Drive to take control of the partition.

sh-3.2# rm -r .MobileBackups/
sh-3.2# rm -r .Spotlight-V100/
sh-3.2# rm -r .Trashes/
sh-3.2# rm -r .VolumeIcon.icns
sh-3.2# rm -r .fseventsd/

That worked for me, if in the long run Google change how Drive works and this method breaks, at least the folder is backed up...

If your as OCD as me you might want to change the partition's icon to match Google Drive. This is also easy:

  1. Go to applications and open it in a Finder window.
  2. "Get Info" (cmd+I) on Google Drive
  3. Do the same for your Google Drive partition
  4. Now select the Drive icon a the top left of the window (it should go blue) and copy it with cmd+C
  5. You can now select the icon of the drive in the Google Drive partion information window and past with cmd+V
  6. Voila
]]>No Data on Giffgaff using Androidhttp://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2012/2/15/no-data-on-giffgaff-using-android.htmlJames Baxter2012-02-16T00:23:58Z2012-02-16T00:23:58ZJust a quick note to say if you recently swapped to the O2 based network Giffgaff and your Android phone is not connecting to data make sure you have switched to the Giffgaff APN.

 To do this:

  1. Go to "Settings" via the app drawer
  2. Select "Wireless & Networks" The first option on my device
  3. Select "Mobile Networks" At the bottom of the list on my device
  4. Then select "Access Point Names"
  5. Select "Giffgaff"  its at the top of the list for me.

 

]]>Hofstadter's Lawhttp://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2012/1/29/hofstadters-law.htmlJames Baxter2012-01-29T22:28:48Z2012-01-29T22:28:48Z

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

]]>"Worst Case Scenario, You'll be wearing a Bulletproof Vest"http://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2012/1/26/worst-case-scenario-youll-be-wearing-a-bulletproof-vest.htmlJames Baxter2012-01-26T22:04:41Z2012-01-26T22:04:41ZSince Netflix debuted recently in the UK I've been watching a lot of "Mythbusters" and the above quote is one of my favourites. I've always been interested in science especially electronics and mechanics, if I hadn't done Computer Science I'd probably had gone down one of these avenues.

I'm also very much enjoying Netflix, technically it seems perfect it's just the content selection that's disappointing. With media licensing being as complicated as it is, I'm nowhere near a position where I can understand any of it, I'd almost prefer it was a technical problem. While clearly Netflix have a deal with the BBC it seems a shame that Netflix couldn't just operate as an interface for iPlayer allowing users to consume content on all the platforms Netflix is on. I imagine again the issue not technical and again is concerned with licensing and copyright protection issues. Perhaps the news that iPlayer will finally be comming to the Xbox 360 means we'll be watching content through even more alien interfaces soon.

 I've recently started work on an Android application with some friends. We're working on a port of some Windows software for a customer who sells it with hardware. Unfortunately it's unlikely to ever make it to the Android Market. We're using XP-Dev for our project hosting and it's fantastic. I'm a particular fan of their Subversion support and near endless list of task tracking options. I've never worked on a port before and in one day I've already learned a huge amount. The customer doesn't want any modifications to how the application works, used in high workflow environments the user interface is well known and any changes would not be appreciated. It's a totally different mindset to what I'm used to where normally new features are something to get excited about. As the paperwork is quite finalised yet It's probably not safe to disclose our customer but as soon as I have some news I'll post it here as the app is going to be pretty cool.

]]>How to compile the Qualcomm Augmented Reality Sampleshttp://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2012/1/6/how-to-compile-the-qualcomm-augmented-reality-samples.htmlJames Baxter2012-01-06T14:25:40Z2012-01-06T14:25:40ZWhile Qualcomm do offer some instructions on how to compile their samples for the Augmented Reality SDK I find them to be a little too concise. I'd written this How To as reference for myself because I kept forgetting at least one step every time and it seemed a shame to confine it to myself. This was written for version 106 of QCAR with Eclipse Indigo on the Mac with OSX Lion. You'll also need Xcode installed to build with GNU Make and an Android device thats happy with apps for 2.1 also known as API level 7.

  1. Hopefully you have everything installed correctly. To make things easier I recommend you use the same folder structure that I do. I have Eclipse installed as standard. The Android SDK, Android NDK, and the QCAR SDK installed inside the Eclipse folder to keep everything tidy and to a certain extent portable.
    If your getting an error at any stage read your file locations VERY CAREFULLY if your install differs from mine you will have to change them and I imagine this is where most people will run into issues.

  2. Navigate to where you've installed the Qualcomm SDK (QCAR) in the terminal

  3. Then run the relevant ndk-build for your operating system. On the Mac I use:
    /Applications/eclipse/android-ndk-r7/ndk-build

    If you get the error:
    "ERROR: Cannot find 'make' program. Please install Cygwin make package or define the GNUMAKE variable to point to it.    "
    It's likely you didn't follow my earlier advice and install Xcode or your equivalent GNU make utility.

  4. Now head over to Eclipse and create a new Android Project, select the "From Existing Source" radio button and select the root of the folder of the sample you want to compile.
    I'm doing the Dominoes one:

  5. Click next and you'll be given the following options:

    Make sure to select Android 2.1 (At the present time it works best).


  6. If you selected the the existing source correctly the next interface should be populated automatically like so:

  7. Click finish and that's the wizzard done.

Now for some reason running the newly created app doesn't always work. If you get the error:
Unbound classpath variable: 'QCAR_SDK_ROOT/build/java/QCAR/QCAR.jar' I can help you.


  1. Get to the project properties by right clicking on the top level folder in your Package Explorer and click on Properties right at the bottom of the menu.

  2. Select Java Build Path on the left and then the offending QCAR_SK_ROOT build path then edit to fix the problem.

  3. Now click Variable

  4. Remove the current QCAR class path

  5. Create a new one and call it "QCAR"

  6. Click file and browse to where you installed the QCAR SDK. QCAR.java is located in Build->Java->QCAR

  7. Click OK and then OK again

  8. Now type QCAR into the text field like so:

    It seems that by default the Qualcomm SDK creates the path wrong at this stage in the process.

  9. Then Click OK and OK again

  10. Enjoy


I'll do my best to answer any questions but hopefully this will work for you like it did for me.

]]>What I've been up tohttp://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2011/12/15/what-ive-been-up-to.htmlJames Baxter2011-12-15T16:23:53Z2011-12-15T16:23:53ZI've had a very busy semester leaving little time for writing. All of the time I've had I've spent at RootzWiki.com working as a writer on the news team. It's been a fantastic experience so far. I've covered the Google Music launch, the Galaxy Nexus release, CyanogenMod for HP Touchpad (of which I've been a grateful user) and many more stories. I've read so many articles from so many websites over the years it's amazing to see the work done on the other side of the article. The hours spent fine tuning one sentence, the excitement from having an exclusive and of course the hate, the fury in the comments.

I find my main stuggle to lie in the balance of what needs to be succint and what needs to be verbose, this post for example perhaps has the emphasis in the wrong places.

For now it's a great experience and a good way to to earn some money, later it might become a more serious career path.
If it does, you'll get the full scoop here.

]]>Dissertationhttp://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2011/9/10/dissertation.htmlJames Baxter2011-09-11T01:11:50Z2011-09-11T01:11:50ZI've managed to decide what I'm going to do for my dissertation project this year.

With Professor Ruth Aylett I'm going to do an Augmented Reality game of battleships on Android.

Currently it will work like this:

  • Players stand at opposite ends of the same clear table
  • Markers at the corners of the table show the app where the playable area is
  • The players point their phone cameras at the table and each is shown their own grid and can place their ships on it as they wish
  • The players take it in turns to guess the location of each others battleships with 3D models shown to be "floating" on the table
  • When a player hits an opponent's ship the 3D model will be shown to "sink" into the table

I chose the project because I felt It was a good way to gain a wide skill base as it involves:

  • Android programming
  • Augmented reality
  • Networking (over bluetooth or Wifi perhaps)
  • 3D Modelling
  • AI for the computer player

I have a friend working on a dissertation which uses the Microsoft Kinnect camera and Open Scene graph, It might be possible for us to work together and get a PC version working.

The project might be scaled back or changed as I progress as there are still a few decisions to be made.

 

]]>Alice Update!http://jamesbaxter.me/blog-old/2011/8/31/alice-update.htmlJames Baxter2011-09-01T02:15:07Z2011-09-01T02:15:07ZI recently found the Alice file while clearing out an old hard drive. I managed to convert it and upload it for your viewing pleasure.

Do remember this is a very old video now done on a very old pc, It's not an example of what I could do right now :p 

 

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