I’ve been very busy with Pesach preparations, so I haven’t had time to post here… just two small pieces of news:

1. My friend Sarina has recently co-founded a band, Legionaire Now, and they have a fan interviews feature on their website. (Sign up for their newsletter to become eligible!) They picked me this week and I did my best to answer their questions. Read the interview here! It includes, among other things, autism, pizza and David Bowie

2. This also has to do with Sarina in a sense. I was just about to respond to her comment to my previous entry with “sure, my English might be ‘correct’ in the technical sense, but I always have this nagging feeling it’s not poetic enough”… I logged into my email… and I was very surprised to see an announcement from Astropoetica that they would like to run my poem I sent them (IIRC) sometime in December. It’s my first – and to date, the only -  English-language poem I submitted to any magazine, so this makes me really happy. The poem will probably be featured in the 2010 summer issue.

So I think I need to reevaluate my writing goals! In Hungarian I have been published in professional venues, and now that I’ve managed to sell multiple pieces to English-language semi-pro markets, I should really set my sights higher and submit to pro markets. My last excuse was “my English is not poetic enough”, which has just been thoroughly demolished. If it’s poetic enough to sell an actual poem, it’s definitely poetic enough for prose!

But, butbutbut, I have a brand new excuse at hand namely that I don’t have time to write. Unfortunately this is more or less true… I didn’t write any fiction or poetry in February, and in March I only had time to do scripting for Amesirun, my upcoming video game. (FYI – I moved the release date to April because of the holidays. Right now I think I could sleep for a week straight.)

I have to write more, and submit what I write. I also have two stories I want to revise, and a nonfiction piece on diversity in a recent spec fic video game (you’ll see which) that I need to finish ASAP.

I’ll also have to update this site more often, since it has started to get much more traffic lately than usual, mostly due to 1. Amesirun 2. my Linux posts. So, more Amesirun or more Linux?

I have to admit it… the unwillingness to have an advertisement as my topmost update made me post a new teaser for the game. ^^;

Here is a strange symbol! (I turned off floating images because the image size is quite big this time.)

If you click on it, you can see a cryptic inscription in the top right corner. If you remember the previous teaser, that one also had similar elements… if you wait patiently, I might tell you where they come from and what they mean.

I finally had some time to try out ArtRage 3… I bought the new version with the upgrade discount when it came out, but I was just too busy to install it. Most of the time I draw stuff on my tablet PC, but I run Linux on it and that means I have to mess around with Wine to get ArtRage running (it’s worth it if you ask me). 2.5 is very stable right now, which is why I didn’t feel pressed to install 3.0 right away, even though I bought it and it was a bit more expensive than expected! I mention this because I just tried it out on my Windows desktop (easier install) and used the new watercolor emulation to produce the vertical lines seen in the image. So that was a new feature, and one I’ll be using excessively from now on, especially if I can get 3.0 working under Wine!

In other news, the game is progressing nicely, more than half of the graphics and the script has been made (I think I should also post a story teaser…). This means 40k of script so far, so there will be about 80k of script altogether. You can look forward to lots of branches, points-based scoring and more endings than you’d expect I hope I’ll manage to finish producing the assets and testing everything before Pesach!

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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