Computer Graphics
Blender used for hospital design
The Finnish architects K2S recently won a big architecture competition for the design of a new hospital. The main visualisations were done in Blender. Abel Groenewolt tells about the adoption of...
Blender Animation Challenge #1 - Voting Open
The first Blender animation challenge, held over at Blenderartists.org, has finished taking entries and is now in the voting stage of the challenge. There s a huge amount of entries, so it will...
Robots
Cool Mindstorms site
There are many excellent LEGO Mindstorms sites out there. Here certainly one of the most remarkable high level sites from the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland - don't be afraid of the German language; just go through the many projects - :
http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/tik/education/lectures/PPS/mindstorms/
and admire this one:
http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/tik/education/lectures/PPS/mindstorms/cmucam/i....
new pbLua version
Ralph has released a new pbLua version.
Changes in website:
The tutorials have all been reviewed for errors again
Improvements in the firmware:
1. BT and USB Consoles works better.
2. Added some more initialization to the motors and tuned the driver. Now the first regulated motor command works properly.
3. Added (experimentally) the Lua debug library. This allows
Connecting Wii Nunchuk over I2C to NXT
Our forums reader Jens Friedrich (a.k.a t.wolf) posted here how to connect the Wii Nunchuk directly to the NXT. The Nunchuk is an I2C device, with an analog stick and a 3-axis-accelerometer. This mod requires removal of some resistors from the device, and Jens gives detailed description and images of the process, as well as
NXT for $199 from Amazon
Im not sure how long this deal will last, so you may want to buy soon. Amazon currently has the NXT for $199 USD. That beats the $289 I saw it for last week in the local Toys R Us. :P
If you want it for Christmas, youll have to pay the extra shipping costs.
LEGO
Direct Connect of a Wii Nunchuk to the NXT
Jens Friedrich has posted detailed steps on how to connect the Wii Nunchuk to your NXT. He uses a couple of resistors, a diode, a spliced NXT cable and the Lego Accelerometer Sensor from HiTechnic.
Here is a YouTube video of the Nunchuk in action...
And the full forum writeup is here: solved: direct connect Wii
LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT One-Kit WondersNew from No Starch Press
LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT One-Kit Wonders New from No Starch Press: How to Build Innovative Robots with Just One NXT Kit
San Francisco, CA, November 12, 2008When the creative minds behind The NXT STEP blog co-authored The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book (No Starch Press) in the fall of 2007, they hoped to revolutionize the world of homebrew
Design
Top 20 iPhone Apps for Bloggers, Designers Freelancers
This week I'd like to share with you 20 iPhone apps you might find interesting if you are a designer, blogger freelancer.
Some apps seems odd at first, but works surprisingly well once you get going. So below you will find some useful organizational tools, others we thought might help inspire or motivate creativity,
Semantics in HTML 5
The BBC's dropping of hCalendar because of accessibility and usability concerns demonstrates that we have pushed the semantic capability of HTML far beyond what it can handle. The need to clearly and unambiguously add rich, meaningful semantics to markup is a driving goal of the HTML 5 project.
Joomla Developers Toolbox
Joomla is a popular free and open-source content management system (CMS) that can be used to power all kinds of websites. After we published developer's toolboxes for a variety of other CMS', many readers requested a collection of resources for Joomla users and developers, so here it is.
100 (Really) Beautiful iPhone Wallpapers
Few products have generated the kind of hype that the iPhone has. Its beautiful design and large multi-touch screen are irresistible. Although its interface is beautifully designed, some of us want to put a little something extra in it to suit our style, personality and profession and to further beautify this magical masterpiece.
Return of the Mobile Style Sheet
At least 10% of your visitors access your site over a mobile device. They deserve a good experience (and if you provide one, they'll keep coming back).
Converting your multi-column layout to a single, linear flow is a good start. But mobile devices are not created equal, and their disparate handling of CSS is like 1998 all over again.
Stationery Icons, Soccer Icons And Atlantic WordPress Theme
Last year some of our readers complained about the lack of diversity in the sets we have released in 2008. We've heard you, we came up with new ideas and we decided to offer our readers a wide variety of different sets. From now on we are going to release more specific, more practical and (hopefully) more useful icon sets not just social icons or RSS icons.
Tags in news tags
dev
The Ecere SDK and eC go Open Source
EMotion FX v3.7 released, now including motion mirroring, a jiggle controller and much more
MysticGD has launched version 3.7 of EMotion FX, the real-time character animation and model export system.
The release now includes real-time motion mirroring, a footplant IK inverse kinematics solver, which makes planting feet on uneven surfaces easier and a jiggle controller designed to help simulate the movement of hair, cloth and fatty tissues.
DarkGDK.NET v1.1.0.0
The Game Creators have released a brand new, vastly improved version of their games development toolkit for the Microsoft Visual Studio Suite of development tools. Read n for more information.
Visualization Library Alpha 2 released - a middleware 2D/3D application based on OpenGL 2.1
Michele Bosi is pleased to announce the availability of Visualization Library Alpha 2. Visualization Library is an open source C++ middleware for 2D and 3D graphics applications based on OpenGL 2.1, designed to develop portable applications for the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Linux/X11 operating systems. This new release brings support to the latest OpenGL 2.1/3.
Certified Scrum Master Course at GDC
Clinton Keith will be giving a Certified Scrum Master for Video Game Development course/workshop in San Francisco the week of GDC (on Monday 3/23 and Tuesday 3/24) at the Intercontinental Hotel, ne block from the Moscone Center. The course focuses n using Scrum for game development and includes team exercises.
Click here to register for the class.
API: Filter & Find
As the first in the series of API screencasts, but also as a good beginners tutorial, this short episode shows the difference between filter and find.
Please note that I'll continue to include full tutorial write ups with the J4D screencasts - whereas playschool and API will have a limited post accompanying them.
Watch
Watch the jQuery spy
CMS
Module to assist Drupal Theme development added into existing NetBeans plugin to support Drupal.
Hello Drupalers!
Happy to announce the provision of a new wizard in the existing NetBeans plugin to support development of Drupal based websites. The wizard assists developers to create a new Drupal Theme. On providing the new Theme name, the wizard auto-generates the mandatory '.info' file along with template code under 'sites/all/themes//' location.
New life to CSS module: release candidates for Drupal 5.x and 6.x out
Thanks to the help of jchan, christopher_skauss, whispero and the free time of Christmas Holidays I've been finally able to create two release candidates for Drupal CSS module.
The CSS module is a Drupal module which add inline CSS editing to Drupal nodes. This is pretty useful for Drupal power users / designers which are able to create CSS based complex node designs.
Drupal Forum Set up at Pamground --- A place for PHP Developers, Drupal is the #1 Forum Section to set up
Hi All,
I just set up a forum on PHP, MySQL and Apache. I set this up as a way to contribute to the PHP community. The first section I set up is on Drupal. Anyone had anything wish to share on Drupal, feel free to post. Hope this can be helpful to the Drupal Community.
Best Regards,
Jim Thunderbird
30-Second rant: Why I hate Ugg boots
OK, it's cold outside, so cosy is a consideration, but does this justify the footwear phenomenon that, like early adopter Sienna Miller, simply won't go away?
I'm talking Ugg boots, those Aussie clodhoppers that are capable of turning any woman under 5ft 10in into an Oompa-Loompa and the shapeliest pins into the back end of a pantomime horse.
Fake DS games and Ugg boots seized
TRADING standards officers have seized counterfeit Nintendo games and Ugg boots from a home in Hanchett End, Haverhill.
Staff from Suffolk County Council were acting on information provided by the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA).
The 200 counterfeit Nintendo DS games were estimated to have a street value of 2,500, and included popular titles such as Mariokart.
Kaltura Releases Version 1.0 of its Open Source Video Module for Drupal
I'm excited to update you that today we have officially launched our open source video module for Drupal. Kaltura's All in One Video Module enables Drupal site-builders to easily add video and rich-media functionalities to their sites. The module handles all aspects of adding video, including full hosting and streaming of content.
