RoboCup-2012

While the whole football world prepares for the "Euro 2012" in Ukraine and Poland, the scientific world prepares for the "World Cup" among robots, which will take place in Mexico in June. It will be the 17th tournament in which robots of 40 countries traditionally participate.

One iPad For Two Users

A serious problem occurred with my friend while his daughter is growing up (the girl is older than 2 years!)... And it sounds like: one iPad for two users...

I Grew Up!

It happened that on my 30th year of life I suddenly became an i-Guy. And last Sunday during next sync with iTunes I asked myself "How did it happen?"

All that time (ahaha, not really because I got my first PC when I was 6) I considered myself as an advanced PC user. Not geek, not a programmer. But things listed below were easy for me:
- assemblage of PC (incl. BIOS setup and some hardware adjustments);
- installation of MS DOS and Windows (all versions except Millennium and servers);
- installation of lots of desktop software of different kinds and lots of external devices with all those drivers and ports;
- network setup and administration (10 PCs in 1 net with router, DHCP, server and other network stuff);
- mobile devices usage (Windows Mobile, Symbian and so on).
Overall I used to be co-owner of small internet café, so I was advanced)

But it’s all gone! And now I have 3 Apple devices (Macbook Pro, iPhone, iPad) and I even don’t know what is inside them. What processor or how cool is video card? I do not know and if I knew it in the first day I completely forgot it.

8-bit Nostalgia

Technology companies do not stop to amaze us with new products in the IT sector. And not always, these new items carry a some kind of the benefits, or an interesting solution. In any case, all these things are some short term toys and live to the next exit of "another killer of iPhone"... There is no magic in them. That magic, which is a subject of nostalgia for generation of 30-40 years old people, trying to find some calm in listening to vinyl records and tapes, 8-bit games and retro video clips.

But it is possible to go much further in this nostalgia, and try to recreate that magic manually.

Android Based Sequencers

Today I try to overview music programs for the "Android" platform. A lot of them has been written, and now I review only a few to leave the topic open for further discussion and elaboration.

Android Comics

It is strange of course, but people have a habit to give knowledge about the World through toys and pictures... Instead of to show you a serious science movie on the "Discovery" or at least a plausible photo, you slip a picture with handwritten image of some cheerful bear and say, "Look, this is a Teddy bear!". Your children's little eyes look at this picture and you draw a clear analogy with disheveled teddy bear lying around in the corner. And you do not realize that behind this image hides one of the most aggressive animals whose clutches killed more than one hapless hunter.

Finally it comes out that in your life you have to face with some things or cases which you have seen before only on children's pictures or in cartoons. And you have to re-experience them in real life by yourself. Although of course it is more logical to gain "adult" knowledge initially, because it is always harder to learn again. Definitely all those dead hunters lost their lives by reason of some ridiculous confusion happened with them when they met with a real bear. Probably some of them were confused by bright childhood memories even cried out: "Look! This is just a Teddy bear!" and tried to touch bear's wet button-nose. But "adult" fate was inevitable and took away childhood dreams together with life.

Anyway, love for drawn and puppet heroes sits in us for the rest of our lives. Only this can explain enormous popularity of all those "shreks," "kung-fu pandas", etc. As well as it explains for me constant interest in comic books and artworks of that kind. I do not collect them by thousands but I can't pass through them neither in book stores nor in internet...

Space Invaders

I'm not a gamer... But sometimes, of course, I play "Solitaire" in the office, until there is no bosses, or I can play "SweepMiner". But it is not systematic.

But only when I see those games that I played 20 years ago on console "Dendy", my soul overflows with children's delight! So when I was presented with tablet based on "Android" and visited the "Android Market", I saw a huge number of games written for this platform, I decided to try my luck and typed in the search engine: "8-bit games"...

FLOSS Manuals

Most of my hobbies are somehow related to the computer, so I'm constantly in the search stage of software to meet my needs. But the more professional is software, the more the price of all these developments. But I'm not a professional! So why should I spend big money on the purchase of certain products, if I did not earn a penny from them in the long term?

Use of limited "home" versions or "light" packages is also not an option, because they usually cut a very interesting and useful functions... So I concentrated on testing the "open source" analogues of the various programs, fortunately enthusiasts willing to share their experience are enough in the world (for what they have honor, praise and respect). But here there is one problem: the developers of professional products are focused on "loyalty" of its user, so running in parallel with the development of the product they supply it usually with serious and informative guides. But in the case of "open source" it is not always possible. It could be argued that the "good" software is clear and intuitive for the user at any level, but personal experience suggests that to read manuals is still very, very useful exercise. Because every program has its own quirks, to understand that empirically is not so simple. And manuals speed up the process at times (unless of course, they are not stretched more than a 500 pages, but in any case there is a glossary or table of contents))).

So, in search of regular manuals to music program I dug up a project called FLOSS Manuals. List of manuals decently surprised me: besides the well expected VLC-player or a sound editor Audacity, I found a manuals for such interesting projects as Csound (audio programming) and Ardour (digital audio workstation (DAW)). Well, a manual for Pure Data (a program for creating interactive audio-visual applications) I think one of the most convenient, complete and easy to understand for a standard user!

My pd-patch © :)