Eugenia Loli Archive

RED Announces Hardware from the Future

In true uber-hype fashion, the RED Company announced today a series of cameras and imaging sensors that will revolutionize the movie (and still image) industry. Some commenters online jokingly said that this is where all the Roswell UFO reverse-engineering went into. RED announced sensors ranging from 10.1x5.35mm (2/3") size all the way to 186x56mm, and resolutions from 3k/120fps to 28k/25fps (that's 261 megapixels). If you have trouble visualizing that size, here's an image that might help. To add to all this, the RED Epic now supports stereoscopic (3D) capturing.

Getting Started in Android Game Development

Android is a java based environment. This is nice for new developers as Java is widely accepted as a much easier language to get started in than C++, which is the norm for mobile development. Google has also done an excellent job with documenting the API and providing examples to use. There is an example to show functionality for almost 100% of the API, called API Demos. If you're familiar with Java and have already used Eclipse, getting your first app working should be fairly simple. If you've never coded anything in your life before, you will have a lot to absorb as you move forward, but don't get discouraged.

GIMP 2.6.0 Released

The GIMP Project has released GIMP 2.6.0. Among some UI-based changes and additional fixes, it comes the long promised integration of the GEGL library. The promise of 16 bit per-pixel non-destructive editing goes back to 2002, but it's at last here. This means that GIMP is now ready for prosumer (and in some cases even professional) photographer's usage, and this can only be big news and a big win for the F/OSS movement. GEGL will also help in future releases with proper support of CMYK. UPDATE: I guess things are not as good as the release notes want us to think. GEGL was turned "on" in the Color menu as per instructions, but I still got a no-support message for high depth TIFF pictures. If GIMP can't read existing 16bpp pictures, the feature I earlier gave them so much credit for, is useless.

Why We Still Need the iPhone App Black Market

There are no less than five apps to turn my iPhone into a flashlight, yet I can't turn it into a 3G-powered Wi-Fi hotspot. Why? Because the SDK has more restrictions than Guantanamo-devs can't integrate with the OS and have to steer way, way clear of copyright and trademark issues-so the most innovative, game-changing apps might not ever make it to your squeaky clean iPhone." An editorial by Gizmodo. Many kinds of apps (from multi-IM apps running on the background, to copy/paste) require the level of system integration that either is not possible via the existing official API, or that Apple artificially limits via lawyers.

Top 5 New Features of Ubuntu 8.10 Interpid Ibex

As the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) development gets going, many people will probably be wondering what new end-user features they can expect. This article lists the top 5 new features. My Take: Nothing really exciting. I still shiver over the inability of the default Totem installation not de-interlacing my camcomder-derived home videos and DVDs because GStreamer doesn't support it, or no full A/V support on Pidgin yet, or something as simple as this which I've been asking for years now and it would probably take 5 minutes to implement.

KDE 4.1 Beta 2: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

KDE 4.1 is supposed to make everything right with the recently troubled desktop. Everyone agrees now that KDE 4.0 was a mistake. However, what the mistake was -- and whose -- is a matter of opinion. KDE developers blame distributions for rushing to include a release that was never intended for everyday use, while users blame developers for changing everything. More here. Also, Tectonic published an article titled "Beyond the desktop with KDE4", while the now well-known for its sarcasm 'Linux Hater' blog has something to say too (warning: some profanity).

The A-Z of Programming Languages: INTERCAL

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Previously we have spoken to Alfred v. Aho of AWK fame, S. Tucker Taft on the Ada 1995 and 2005 revisions, Microsoft about its server-side script engine ASP, Chet Ramey about his experience maintaining Bash, Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame, and to Charles H. Moore about the design and development of Forth. is interview, Computerworld ventures down a less serious path and chats to Don Woods about the development and uses of INTERCAL.

Why OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Should Leave PowerPC in the Cold

An opinion article at APCMag: "The focus of Snow Leopard is on core upgrades, not shiny new features. A bedrock focused update that delivers a streamlined, enhanced OS X. Stability. Efficiency. A "new generation of core technologies." All this is about raising the floor on the entire system. Multi-core optimization, support for 16TB RAM (yes, Terabytes), and a language to allow developers to tap the power of the graphics processor are just a few of the key upgrades. But you can't lift the floor and let people walk around where the floor used to be all at the same time. Not without leaving holes for a potential rising damp problem further down the track."