I made a page listing my articles, reviews, etc. in Hungarian and put it in the sidebar. It only includes recent articles and at present I have no plans of making a backlist – I’m sorry, but it would simply take too much time. The upside is that from now on I’m going to list absolutely everything someone hired me to write. Blog posts are not included, unless someone hires me to blog!

I have to say upfront that Google Translate does not really work with Hungarian yet; sometimes you can get the gist, sometimes you get the exact opposite! (Sometimes you get nonsense, but nonsense is not as misleading as when a sentence gets translated to the opposite of its intended meaning.) I’m mentioning this because some enterprising friends of mine have already tried to read my Hungarian-language articles using Google Translate and were quite baffled by the results!

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Most magyarul is elmondom – csináltam egy oldalt a magyar nyelvű cikkeimnek (főleg tudományos-technikai ismeretterjesztő cikkek és kritikák), érdemes megnézni és olvasgatni. Mindenkinek különösen ajánlom a Beszédfelismerés a videojátékokban 2. részét, történeti áttekintéssel – van benne többek között beszélő hal Spock kapitány hangjával, sikítozós Pikachu-terelgetés és a világ talán legnagyobbat bukott játékkonzolja! (Nem, nem a Virtual Boy. )

Two of my friends want buy webhosting at Hostgator (where my site is hosted), and I realized there was an affiliate system… so you can click on my button to sign up and I get a commission.

This is mostly for my friends who asked for it, so feel free to disregard this post if you’re satisfied with your current hosting provider! But if you need a new host, click on the banner below and both of us will be happy I apologize to everyone else for the interruption.

Some of the buttons are quite surprising (there is one which advertises “American” hosting, with a flag… I guess there is a market for that!). I think this one looks nice, but I could do without the animation. Also, $4.95 does not get you the ability to have multiple domain names, you need the “Baby Croc” hosting plan if you require that, which is a bit more expensive (but not by much).

You can use the coupon code “TWITTER” to get 20% off your initial purchase and “hgc25″ to get $10 off.

KTamas asked for a post on this, so here we go! Some of the stuff that follows was written a long time ago, some right now, etc. it’s a big mess, but maybe there are some interesting bits in there. Just don’t expect a coherent treatise on the subject.

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Have you ever been to a journal club where someone wanted to present an article, didn’t feel like making a a set of slides, but still had to show something (after all, someone had to lug the projector all the way…)?

If you are a grad student, you probably have Here is a very easy solution that beats putting your average pdf reader on screen and suffering around with the scrollbars! (Scrollbars on an unfamiliar laptop can annoy the heck out of even the most patient presenter. Trust me on that.)

I talked about making complicated zooming presentations with Impress!ve in the previous entry, but this versatile little piece of open-source software can be used for this purpose too, and you don’t need to do anything taxing.

Just install Impress!ve (it should run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, but I only tried the first two) and run it on the article pdf! Absolutely no configuration necessary, though you might want to launch it with the -e parameter if zoomed-in pages are low resolution (depending on your video card and drivers).

That’s it! You immediately have the article on your screen and converted into a nice presentation. Useful commands:

* Left/right arrow to move forward/backward

* Tab to create an overview (choose between pages)

* Enter to create a spotlight (really spiffy! You don’t need that laser pointer)

* Z to zoom in on the page (it zooms where the cursor is placed)

Have fun!

I had to make a presentation and I wondered if I should try using a zooming presentation editor – I usually don’t use them because most of the time I don’t need flashy visuals, and they can be quite distracting if your content doesn’t lend itself to a spatial metaphor. But this time was different.

However, I was faced with an obstacle. None of the major zooming presentation editors like Prezi (no relation to me despite the name! Though I worked together with one of their founders on a research project, Hungary is a small place…) or Ahead offer easy printing. Maybe there’s one which does, but I was in a hurry and didn’t find anything. Also, my laptop only has Linux, so Windows and (especially) Mac solutions like Keynote were also out.

I came up with a solution that worked quite well for my purposes, though it probably wouldn’t work for you if you expect full Prezi-like functionality like the rotating virtual camera, etc., and it only offers three levels of zoom, so I don’t claim it’s perfect. But since several people have been asking about it, here is the howto beyond the cut! Note that it assumes that you can make a regular presentation, and you have some computer proficiency. (If you have specific questions, comment away and I’ll do my best to answer!) (more…)

Sorry for the lack of updates lately – both of my main computers (laptop & desktop) decided they’ve had enough of life, within 24 hours of each other.

Read the scary story including meowing hard disks, laptops breaking in half, software named after huge trees, and actual useful tips on system rescue – click on the cut!

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(I’m moving random Linux stuff from my private journal to here, it’s a bit chaotic at present, but bear with me. And yes, there will be artwork, I know everyone wants the artwork and not random juicy bits of Linux! )

This entry is about using luvcview under Linux for some very simplistic video recording for your eye tracker, or any other purpose. I discovered these things while I was trying to set up the visible spectrum Starburst algorithm, but after trying out several algorithms I decided to use a different one…  so I don’t know if these will be of any use to anyone! Still, here goes.

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Maybe I’m just unlucky, but I ran into this problem head-on a few months back, and it took me a while to figure out exactly what was wrong, as none of the online howtos seemed to have any relevant information… so I’m posting a bit about that. I wanted to fit some of this on the conference poster I’m presenting this Friday (before Shabbes) but I couldn’t shoehorn everything into 90 x 150 cm and still keep it reasonably readable from a distance!

What to do if you experience framedropping, glitches, etc. while recording from two USB webcams at the same time which are not present when you’re only recording from one of them? 1. Don’t panic 2. read this quick howto!
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My new website is finally online, in time for a conference I’m attending… I hope you like it, I think I ended up with something that’s quite similar to what I originally had in mind. Rounded edges and transparency work with all the major browsers I’ve tried, and the rest should be standards-compliant. If anyone has better coding ideas for those, I’m quite open to ideas, as long as I don’t have to do rounded edges with graphics – I once attempted to make a site like that and it was Such A Pain I’d rather not try that again.

Anyway, while I was searching for a Wordpress theme I came across the nastiest idea how to make money off your free theme, I thought I’d share (I was so angry!).

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