Design, Programming, Music and Life

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

OMG! Best Use Of A Billboard I Have Ever Seen.

11:23 AM Posted by Unknown , , , , No comments
Putting a reverse osmosis water collection unit into a billboard is a really smart idea for impoverished nations. Give these people an award!

The link: OMG! Best Use Of A Billboard I Have Ever Seen. http://www.upworthy.com/omg-best-use-of-a-billboard-i-have-ever-seen?c=ufb1 I fricking love engineers.

Friday, July 12, 2013

iOS 7 - Feature: Use camera to redeem

9:08 PM Posted by Unknown , , , , , , , , , , No comments

So I stumbled upon a nice little feature in iOS 7 for my iPad & iPhone, and it is a much needed feature, redeeming a gift card through the camera on the device. I haven't seen much on this feature as of yet, so I figured I would post a few pics of the process.

When you hit the Redeem button in the App Store, you are asked to use the camera or enter a code manually to redeem a gift card. Once you hit the Use Camera button, it ises the front facing camera to identify the code on the back of the card.



Once it finds the code, it will show a box around it for a second, and then blink and show the text (not backwards) and then ask for your account password.




Once the password is confirmed, the box will turn blue and then the camera view will close and go back to the App Store's redeem dialog.



That's about it! Nice feature for iOS 7 I think, and gone are the days of entering a redeem code 2-20 times until it takes :)

Saturday, July 6, 2013

IDEA: A different take on how we record sound.

2:42 PM Posted by Unknown , , , , , , , , , No comments
When we are at a concert or listening to a guitar, we aren't just hearing a guitar, but we are hearing the guitar, the string, the reverb, and they are all coming from different places, so the sound is more pleasurable to our ears. So what we hear is analog when it comes from the guitar. Once we record that sound, we lose the quality of the sound, and it doesn't matter what medium we use to record, the sampling rate is still dependent on the medium used. Currently, we convert analog audio to digital audio in a form that uses sampling, or grabbing a snapshot of the analog wave at a certain rate per second. The way it is stored is a lot like how we store a picture too, where you will only get one sound/pixel per sample.
 
In Graphic Arts, I have learned a lot about using vector information I my graphics for scalability, and the way a vector is made is by grabbing the relative point and curve values, along with attached lie or color info. This could be done with sound too, by initially recording at a high enough ate to be able to analyze the point, frequency and curve values of a single wave. With a high enough sample rate, it is theoretically possible to be able to separate each wavelength by source and curve, allowing for a much higher quality recording, along with a much smaller file size, because all that is being stored is point values, curves and metadata.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Dreams of life on the other side...

10:58 PM Posted by Unknown , , , , , , , , No comments

I have been working part time as a Graphic Designer / IT guy and going to school full time for Application Development. Life has been a bit busy for a while now, and this being the last full two weeks of classes, it is also a tiny bit stressful. On the upside, I am working a job that gives me full creative freedom within reason, and I get to use one heck of a military grade computer while doing so. I do plan on showing some of my work there as soon as it is released, so you are just going to have to be patient a little longer.

I have also been donating my artistic and technical talents still at Frontline Community in Grand Rapids, and things there are also smooth sailing, in fact, this is the first church I have found that doesn't make an overly bureaucratic mess out of suggestions towards artistic direction and visualizing the message. Nice place, you should visit sometime ;) Anyways, I have a few pieces here that I can show from past / current series and a couple proposals for future series... (Will be adding more soon)



After this semester of school is over, my Wife and I plan on doing a role switching exercise, and she is going to be putting work on hold while I will be working full time for Rev-X Products and starting my own personal projects in app development. This will not be easy, since I have pretty much played the role of a stay/work at home Dad for almost three years, but I have all the faith in the world that this will work out for the best for all people involved, and this is where dreaming of life on the other side comes to play. What if this actually works, what if this can actually help us afford to spend time with each other more as a family.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Note to future self,

Treat this as a dream for now, but develop it further based on the way the brain processes and stores impulses. As time moves on, the technology needed will be built.

I got an interesting idea for a processor today that focuses on using memristors instead of your general CPU, memory, L1,L2, & L3 cache. The system acts more like the neurons in our brains, when new data needs to be buffered and stored for quick retrieval, it assigns a group of memristors to handle that function, but instead of using just enough to store the information, each group is assigned the task of storing and possessing multiple copies of itself, so that when a task is needed, it is also treated and a threaded process for nCores available per millisecond. Currently our computers need more memory to save more system device IO information whether or not it is using it, and then when any of that info is needed, it has to speed up to the speed of the processor in order to be used. Doing this with memristors will save time and energy that is currently used in making a process speed up or slow down as it moves from the various caches to memory or storage. We make up for the lack of speed with the process being sent and received from nCores available because each memristor can act as a processor or memory, we can fire one signal off in many directions, and always receive that process in a timely manner.

As I learn more about the electrical engineering involved with the process, I will be further developing this idea to hopefully also include an OS with application, device, and utility runtime services too that each use this way of storing and processing information in hopes of having an OS that is capable of running any OS's applications as a native app and crunching redonkulous amounts of data more efficiently.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Finished Another Site: OneCraneSource

4:03 PM Posted by Unknown , , , , , , , , No comments


December was quite a month, besides the obvious holiday celebration and preparations, I was also helping out my churches Arts Team and creating a Christmas set to remember. I also was able to finish up a clients website and also optimize the site for best search results, which all worked out beautifully ;)

The client was Star Crane, located in Allendale MI. And this job was a two part deal, first, fix their current mail forms that they had on their site, and second, build them a new site that will help them move into the year 2013, and also be flexible and secure, as well as help promote a better search result.

This site took me about 50 hours to complete from start to finish, and with three designs and four revisions, along with a mobile version to boot, that's not too bad. With that said though, this brings me to a place I'm all too familiar with, looking for more work ;) You can check out some of the screenshots of the design below, or you can head out to http://www.onecranesource.com and check it out for yourself.