Last year was really busy and it doesn’t stop. Anyway I had some time over Christmas holidays to upload a couple of mixes on soundcloud.

Enjoy!

DnB

30home by silentium

Ballin c arts by silentium

Techno & House

Techousefuerunterwgs by silentium

I’m currently in a dilemma. A major App must be built in PHP so I’ve now the framework discussion.

As I’m a new team member and I’ve worked in the past with both frameworks I got the obvious question “which one I’d prefere?”.
I’ve to say that this discussion is my fault because I introduced Cake a few weeks ago. So my colleagues made some research and told me, that the main opinion about these frameworks is that Cake is for N00bs and Zend for skilled developer. This is shitt!

There are two types of frameworks:

• White Box
• Black Box

White Box
In this case the developer must be familiar with the internals of the framework. Basically the developer will extend behaviors by using subclases. This is called inheritance.

Black Box
For this type of framework the developer must not be familiar with the internals. Basically objects were created and behaviors were delegated between them.

In other words for non technical: With a white box you need to code e.g. the “user”. Using a black box you tell the framework “make user” and the code for the “user” appears.
From the performance point of view a white box framework would perform better. This is because a black box fw needs a lot of “features” that were not used in most cases.

Basically every project hast its requirements and dependencies. In my case requirements can be shortened to: “Build a C10K app as cost efficient as possible”. Thus hosting and locale are also really important factors.
On the one hand by using a white box framework the app will have a better performance so that machine power (Server) is less needed but the developing time will be higher than using a black box. On the other hand an app built with a black box framework will need more machine power. So now the break even point between machine power and developer time must be calculated. Anyway machine architecture is important in both cases!

But let’s go back to Zend & Cake.
Zend can be used as blackbox and whitebox. Thus an app will have different performance depending in which “mode” the frame work is used. A developer can use Zend like libraries “the white box style” or heavy weight “the black box style”.
Cake is black box BUT coded in the right way Cake can also achieve a good performance and reduce developing time. This is why I like cake. You also don’t need to bake the whole app thus you can also achieve performance increase. Also by tuning caching, Cake can achieve the needed performance. But now the developer must be familiar with Cake internals too.
Please also keep in mind that Cake2.0 will be released soon. And there will be optimizations regarding performance.

At the end what does this say about skills? In my eyes nothing. For me a good developer will never produce “Spaghetti code, will follow design patterns and produce as rapid as possible so that it’s cost efficient.

I ordered my Kinect a couple of weeks ago but because of this hard winter it was delivered last week. So I couldn’t post earlier. Anyway let’s get started.
First we need to access the Microsoft Kinect USB camera. There is a library called libfreenect which is developed and maintained by the OpenKinect Community.
Now that we have access to some of the Kinect features we need to get the data to Flash. For that a wrapper is needed. Basically it sends the data via a socket to your flash app. The best source for AS3 is as3kinect. There you will find installers and HOWTOs to get the shitt working! For OSX there is an alternative written by Koji Kimura which is based on cocoa…. it’s called flKinect. In my opinion the API is not as “good” as as3kinect but flKinect has a program installer and doesn’t need any action over Cosole. This is good for me because I like others to test my experimental apps – for me, screen recording sucks! When I choose to use flash for an app/website the most important thing is interaction thus I need the feedback of others, mainly simple users.

At this point I have a clear idea of what type of app I want to built but for this I need more information of how Kinect works and how the data can be used/implemented. So I’m currently reading this:

• How Kinect works
• A Bayesian Framework for Human Body Pose Tracking from Depth Image Sequence
• 3D Head Tracking Based on Recognition and Interpolation Using a Time-Of-Flight Depth Sensor
• Object Class Segmentation using Random Forests
• Randomized Trees for Human Pose Detection

But what does this mean for my flash development? Well this means that it was good in the past to get in touch with BitmapData manipulation, collision detection, motion tracking, color and edge tracking etc.. and it’s also good that I have all this clases that I can reuse for this project. But first I need to finish reading – so I hope this post was helpful!

I’ve been chatting in the past month with friends in the states, they are software engeniers, geeks etc.Sometimes I search for certain topics inside the logfiles so I can make background research….Thus I noticed that trending topics were “venture capitalism”, “startups” and how engineers changefrom a big player to an other for millions of Dollaz.Now I read, that Mr Schmidt says “There Was A Time When Three People At Google Could Build A World-Class Product And Deliver It, And It Is Gone.”

I’ve to think about this logs…. Some of this friends are responsable for such products and I mean, I know some of this guys for more than 15 years now and so far I can remember – at that time trendingtopics were – sure, kidd stuff – but also dreams, ideas – a vision. I could start saying all this “sortof magic” stuff, but this would sound like the agency guy.And no one likes the agency guy because “he sold himself”. But nobody recognizes that the agency guyjust chooses an other path for his dreams, ideas and visions. Sure Business needs are not the same,but there is a lot in common.

Hello Everyone ! It was an exiting Summer and I’m really really happy to had the chance to make you dance ! That’s why I have this extra gift for you.

Write down the Track-list for the electro mix and win a special DixonBaxi Poster from Offf 2010.

Just comment your Track-list and don’t forget to enter your email or website. The winner will be chosen in October ! Good Luck ! The winner will be chosen in October ! Good Luck !

Silentium

Some friends were facing character encoding problems on an oracle db.
Well the origin of this problem is that when you install an oracle,
in this case it was a 9i, the NLS_LANG param (if not defined) is set to
AMERICAN_AMERICA.US7ASCII. The language is AMERICAN,
the country is AMERICA, and the character set is US7ASCII.
This is really a problem if you live in Germany and you want to
work with german charachters & CLOB

The best way to avoid problems with the old JDBC they are using, is
to install the DB once again with an UTF8/16. But this is not possible.
There are also some other dependencies for these guys so the best way
for their workflow ist to do an exp, drop the user and imp again. Than
connect with the SQLDeveloper and recheck the CLOB.

 sql | 
 copy |
?
 
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exp scott/tiger filename=mydump.dmp
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sqlplus scott/tiger
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	DROP USER scott CASCADE;
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	CREATE USER scott IDENTIFIED BY tiger;
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	GRANT CONNECT,RESOURCE,UNLIMITED TABLESPACE TO scott IDENTIFIED BY tiger;
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imp scott/tiger filename=mydump.dmp
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than sqldeveloper But please use SQL Developer with causion ! It sucks.

Yesterday a guy was claiming that he had to copy all counterstrike source files from one server to another. He was telling that this takes a lot of time because he had to sftp to desktop and than upload to server.
Well rsync can do this much quicker and better. I wrote a few years ago this little script called my_syncmokey.

 shell script | 
 copy |
?
 
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#!/bin/bash
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echo "***************************************************************"
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echo "*                                                             *"
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echo "*                    - Your Sync Monkey started -             *"
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echo "***************************************************************"
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echo
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echo
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#Logfile
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LOGFILE="PATH/TO/YOUR/LOG.log".`date '+%Y%m%d_%H%M%S'`
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#config
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SERVER="IP FROM THE SERVER YOU WANT TO PULL"
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REMOTEDIR="/PATH/TO/THE/REMOTE/FOLDER"
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LOCALDIR="/PATH/TO/THE/LOCAL/FOLDER "
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SSH="/usr/bin/ssh"
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#output
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echo >> $LOGFILE;
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echo "- Sync Monkey started -" >> $LOGFILE;
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echo >> $LOGFILE;
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echo "Timestamp: " `date '+%Y%m%d %H%M%S'` >> $LOGFILE;
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echo >> $LOGFILE;
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echo >> $LOGFILE;
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echo "command: rsync -av --links --rsh=$SSH $SERVER:$REMOTEDIR $LOCALDIR " >> $LOGFILE;
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echo >> $LOGFILE;
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#sync and write to logfile
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rsync -av --links --rsh=$SSH $SERVER:$REMOTEDIR $LOCALDIR >> $LOGFILE;
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#print output
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cat $LOGFILE | while read line
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do
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echo $line
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done
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Du alter buzzword Abzocker !
Was zur Hölle ist „Digital Communication & Innovation“ ???

Ich werde mal einen kurzen Abriss geben was das ist und was man da so tut. Die meisten kennen mich als Developer, ich selbst habe mich nie als Entwickler gesehen. Obwohl was sich alles Heut zu Tage Entwickler nennt… na ja das ist ein anderes Thema.

Lasst uns zu erst auf einen simplen Workflow schauen.
Ein Kunde kommt mit Business Anforderungen nun gilt es „Kreativ Kapital“ zu generieren. Hier werden meist schon Fehler gemacht. Aufgrund, das Agenturen meist hierfür zuständig sind, bewege ich mich auch in diesem Umfeld.  Hier findet man oft die Gattung „Konzepter“. Oft schaut dieser rüber und sagt „lass uns was mit video & 3d machen“ nun ja ich will nicht unfair sein, diesen Satz habe ich auch schon oft von einen Designer gehört.
Das ist der Punkt wo ich schon weis, das nur Pfosten um mich herum sitzen.
Technologien werden nie die Idee ersetzen können. Ich will euch ein Beispiel geben.
Ich habe dieses Video vor Kurzem auf youtube gesehen:

Hier kann man gezielt Audiowellen auf eine Person richten. Natürlich kommt der drang damit was zu machen. Man könnte natürlich im POS (Point of Sale) etwas damit anstellen. Beispielsweise jmd. tracken  und gezielt ansprechen.
Auch wenn die Idee dahinter mau ist, wird man mit solch einer Aktion viel buzz und Anerkennung in der Branche finden, weil man eine Technologie als erster genutzt hat. Wahrscheinlich wird es dafür auch Awards geben…..

Doch eigentlich ist das der falsche Weg!
Ein Projekt sollte immer mit einer Idee starten. Eine Vision, etwas magisches, großartiges, was schwer zu definieren ist. Man kann die Details noch nicht greifen aber das Gefühl für die Sache entwickelt sich und treibt einen voran. Das ist GOLD!
Als nächstes greift der Kreativ Prozess nun gilt es mit Hirn an das Projekt ranzugehen. Erst jetzt sollte  man Technologien einbeziehen. Hier ist es auch wichtig über Interaktion nachzudenken. Viele gute Ideen verwässern aufgrund mangelnder Interaktion. Auch die Liebe zum Detail ist ein wichtiger Punkt. Nun wo wir eine grobe Vorstellung haben kann man eine Technologie, die perfekt zur Idee passt vorschlagen. Diese Technologie kann was klassisches sein aber auch was völlig Innovatives.
Letztes kann jedoch zu Problemen im späteren Projekt Ablauf führen. Neue Technologien sind riskant oft ist es auch schwierig jmd. zu finden, der dies umsetzt. Deshalb führe ich persönlich Experimente, die mir helfen Aufwand, Leistung und mögliche Probleme abzuschätzen. Dies hilft auch später bei der Umsetzung wenn man den typischen Satz hört: „geht nicht“.

Wie schon vorher erwähnt, dies ist nur ein grober Abriss oft ist es leider wesentlich komplexer auch wenn Komplexität meist zu extremer Verwässerung führt. 

Last weekend I had to answer many questions about Mr. Jobs "Thoughts on Flash".
“What is your serious opinion?”
This thought are something I want to share with you. First I find Mr. Jobs words hypocritical for many reasons. Just to make it short:

“Adopting technologies quickly”
Apple just shipped a year ago the finder in cocoa and other programs are still running on carbon e.g. Final Cut. Dear Apple why did this take so long?
Itunes on Windows is crap. Why does apple not take advantage of the new features of Windows? Apple changed iPhone SDK Agreement so that applications should take advantage of Iphone OS so why they don’t take advantage of new Windows?

“open”
I think all this open bla bla should mask that H.264 is not open! Microsoft & Apple, both members of MPEG-LA, are going to make money with this video codec because it is proprietary and patented. So in Apple’s eyes if the specification of software is free than we can call this open standard? Fine, than Flash is an open standard too.
However, Apple sucks – this is something I was saying for years now. I did not make many friends with this statement at last Adobe MAX. Now I’m looking forward to meet those people and I’m curious if they are still so proud of using MAC Book Pro.

But what is the essence of this discussion?

A few years ago everyone was claiming that software inside the browser is the next BIG THING e.g. Gmail. Now I have the feeling the trend is going more and more towards apps. People are starting to use Apps for things, which could run inside the browser.Not only because of new ways of interaction e.g. Multitouch…

This shows that something is wrong with the web and with content that runs inside the browser. It doesn’t matter if HTML or Flash. And we should keep in mind that apps are not “open”.
I think the Web is loosing sexiness, web apps like Gmail etc. are far away to offer features like mobile/desktop apps do. (Non web apps are also often much faster).
This leak of features is something that the Browser must close. Mozilla and Chrome are on the right way. They must give Developer the option to do more than only W3C “adaption”. But I also know this is not simple…..

I met yesterday a good friend who has a c level position. And he asked me if I would still recommend developing an API for their business. Sure you should! Because it give’s you the option to deliver your content anywhere (Apps or Web) and to track it.  This flexibility is something important for your business……..

What about Flash?

Flash has currently around 98% penetration thus it is not dead! Also HTML5 Browser propagation is poor at the moment. (I still have lots of customers & their consumers that use IE6) I don’t know currently when Google will roll-out VP8 on Youtube. This could change the game. Honestly, I never liked Flash. Not because of its technology. I don’t like flash because it’s mostly misused.

I had a few days ago a couple of minutes and I wanted to take a look into three.js.
I had the idea to use Audio Data API to get the sound spectrum of a song and combine this with three.js particles.
Just for an experiment…

As I needed a song that I could use without get fucked by those labels/artists I started a CC search and found Galdson’s Denilio – awesome.

A few minutes later the Experiment was ready and started. And it was so beautiful in my Eyes! But my computer is really crappy so I couldn’t enjoy and my time was over too…

Yesterday I started the experiment and I was unhappy again because of performance issues. But this was the original purpose of the Experiment, get a feeling for performance…..

Anyway I hacked a quick FPS keeper and voilá.

I promised to share but first you will need a Mozilla with the Audio Data API you can get it here:

Linux:
firefox-3.7a1pre.en-US.linux-i686
Mac builds:
10.5
10.6
Windows:
firefox-3.7a1pre.en-US.win32
The Experiment is here
cheers