There is a primary source I visit to get information about technology – which for me is usually in the realm of software development. It is called StackOverflow, part of the StackExchange Network. It is a question and answer site focusing on all disciplines and languages in the programming world. It is not just a Q&A site, they do few interesting things.

StackOverflow is heavily gamified. You get points for answering, commenting, up-voting, and even asking. Anybody can use it, although I will admit it can be a little intimidating at times. The website has a pretty strictly enforced “get to the point” mentality. Duplicate questions are not tolerated, and are closed almost instantly. It is even important how you word your questions – it will get deleted if it is asking for an opinion. The site is totally user-moderated; everyone who has enough points is a Mod. One of the fastest ways to get your post modified or deleted is to be too wordy or causal, you need to be to the point and direct. This is because StackOverflow is the resident source for programmers to find code snippets or theories. If you are stuck on something, chances are it has been asked, and answered on StackOverflow before. Because of this, I use it multiple times per day – I would guess between 5-10 times on average.

StackOverflow is so successful because of the enormous wealth of knowledge that the massive user base possesses. They may be a tad rude, especially to newcomers, but the service cannot be beat anywhere online (that I am aware of). Without this community, I would waste so much time trying to figure out something that someone else already knows, and has documented!

I thought I would throw my self tracking assignment up here!

Self Tracking

Clear Skies

Virtual reality in gaming is something that has been tried before, with little mainstream success. I would say that the best applications are the Microsoft Kinect and Nintendo Wii. Both work well, but haven’t fully caught on. When I was at Launch Conference in San Fransisco last week, there was a booth for the Virtuix Omni. It was the easily the most popular booth, for a couple of reasons. First, they were at a tech conference; but even more importantly, it was an amazing piece of technology. When I first saw it I thought it would just be another hoaky VR tool, but it looked very responsive and easy to use. Virtuix unfortunately didn’t let us try – they just demo’d it themselves.

There were two core components in the demo: an Oculus Rift and the Omni itself. I will not go into details about the Oculus rift, but they were playing a Half Life 2 port on it. The people talking described the Omni as a joystick that could be used in place of any joystick or d-pad. The user is supported by a harness which, combined with the Rift, allows you to naturally look around (“right joystick”). Wearing special low-friction shoes, you walk on a platform that has around 40 sensors that track the direction you are moving (“left joystick”). I am sure there is a learning curve, but the Virtuix employees made it look very easy, and natural. When they started walking, their player moved immediately. When they turned, their character turned. I was very impressed.

At the conference they also had a Kinect set up, for testing. They were trying to see how accurate the kinect was at tracking skeletal data, to improve the experience of the Omni even more.

If you are interested, check out their website. Click here for the video section!

Here is the link to my book review on ‘delete.’

Keep in mind when reading that I am a computer scientist, not a writer ^_^

0x7F

The layout was done with a jQuery plugin: jquery.fullPage

Hi all

As I promised, here is my GitHub ‘repository’ , where you can find the markdown example (both annotated and plain).

You might also be interested in checking out Leanpub.

If you are interested in these technologies, and have any questions, feel free to throw them in a comment, or email me at pademchuk@gmail.com

Clear skies

The coolest augmented reality I have played with is an app called Star Walk. This app is way cool. It uses your phone’s location, and accelerometer to show you where important stars and constellations are in the sky. If you use the app during the day, it will show you where all the stars are hiding that you cannot see. It is even better at night, when you can see stars. Just move your camera around the night sky and you will see all the constellations that you know of, and even more that you have never even heard of!

The app is fun to play with, but in the end of the day it is a tad gimmicky, and doesn’t unleash the true potential of AR. When I think of a valuable use case for AR, I think of education.

Imagine yourself sitting in biology class, learning about the anatomy of an ostrich. The only ways to learn about their inner workings are either by your teacher drawing on the board/showing you pictures, or by getting your hands dirty. Wouldn’t it be cool if instead of these methods, your teacher brought a live ostrich into class, handed out some special glasses, and gave you a 360 tour of the beasts internals in the form of augmented reality? As you look at the bird, it would overlay the organs, veins, and even show you how the fluids flow inside the animal. You could apply a similar method to physics – the glasses could track how an object is moving, draw tracking lines, and calculate properties such as velocity and acceleration. It can also be used to enhance the arts – as your teacher is talking about something, you could be fed facts and data about it!

It could give an entirely different way of lecturing, that could enhance the learning process. There is no end to what people could do with AR as technology gets more powerful and compact. There are already some great examples of it, whether Google Glass, the Oculus Rift, or…???