ISS Flies Over

After missing the longer duration fly over of the ISS (International Space Station) yesterday which was publicized via email, I went out today to see it again. It appeared for 2 minutes and rose from the NW and set in the NNE. It looked like a fast moving medium-bright star. I managed to snap one lousy shot of the thing. You can see it in the image below (you have to click on it to see the tiny spec in the center of the image, just to the left of the trees). I posted a cropped zoom in of the white spec.





This is the actual thing (image source: wikipedia):



The ISS is a joint project by the US, Europe, Russia and Japan. Other parts have been built by other countries but those space agencies are mostly responsible for the construction which started in 1998 and is scheduled for completion in 2011. It is the largest satellite orbiting Earth and currently there are 6 astronauts living aboard it.

Escape from Planet Doom

Our game design course project is up and live. It's a bullet hell shooter (a specific type of shoot 'em up games) with a twist of comic drama.

Try it out (Escape from Planet Doom) and let me know what you think. Use w-a-s-d keys for moving your ship and move the mouse to aim. Beware of the drama ;)!

Here are some snapshots:

King of Kong

"King of Kong: A fistful of quarters", a documentary about the best of the best in classic arcade video games. The story is about the rivalry between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe over conquering the high score position of Donkey Kong :D.

If you dont want me to spoil it, dont read any further and read it after you watch it...



Billy Michell was the first gamer to get a perfect score in pacman and has been known as "the greatest arcade video gamer of all time". He owns a restaurant and sells a line of hot sauces :). He's quite a unique individual. Steve Weibe, on the other hand is a high school teacher who challenged Billy to Donkey Kong. He also held the record for Donkey Kong Junior but Mark Kiehl stole the title back just yesterday (April 19, 2010).

What the drama of the documentary does not show is that the current high scorer is a third guy - a 35 year old plastic surgeon from new york - Dr. Hank Chien who recorded his score via DVD just last month (April 8th). It also does not show that Billy stole back the position after Weibe took it in 2007.

Just watch it...

Color Harmony

Do all colors go together?

Obviously not, there are contrasting colors, colors that match and colors that don't match. There are primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors and many more hues and levels of saturation. Color theory has long set out to find colors that work well together and appear to be in harmony. Color theory can be traced back to the 15th century with the works in principles of colors by Leonardo Da vinci and Leon Battista Alberti. Sir Isaac Newton started the tradition of color theory with his theories on primary colors in the 18th century.

The color wheel can be traced back to the 18th century. Boutet's color circle/wheel can be seen below. This was drawn in 1708. It depicts hues of primary, secondary, tertiary and complementing colors.



As time passed the color wheel got more detailed. The one sketched below was created in 1908.



From this color wheel, harmonic color schemes can be composed. Here I describe the basic color schemes:

- The monochromatic classic scheme is one that is based on levels of saturation and brightness of a single hue. An example of this is the grayscale which I've seen in games and looks exceedingly soothing.

- An analogous color scheme focuses on colors that are adjacent to one another on the color wheel. Only a limited number of hues are selected.

- A complementary scheme involves colors on opposite sides of the color wheel.

- A split complement color scheme takes an analogous color scheme and adds to it the complementary analogous scheme on the opposite side of the color wheel.

- The triadic takes three analogous color schemes and puts them together so that they form a mercades benz kind of symbol over the color wheel. This can be seen below.



- In addition to these color schemes, there is also the double complementary scheme or tetradic scheme which is similar to the previous one but involves a pair of split complementary schemes over the wheel.

For a more detailed description of these as well as the pros and cons and tips on using each, visit this link.

It is very important to pick your colors, saturation and contrasts well and iterate over your color schemes. The more you experiment and get feedback from others, the more you master this art of producing harmonious color schemes. Color schemes also depend on the art style that you are coloring. Some color schemes go well with certain art styles and badly with others, so think, visualize and iterate.

Revolutionary Learning

What youtube has brought us is way more than hilarious moments that break the monotonous cycle of work and viral videos out of control. It has brought about a revolution in learning. Now the lucky bastards of the younger generations can tap into this immense resource of knowledge and information right under their fingertips.

I cant get over the power of learning through visual means. Those of us who thrive on imaginary visuals thought up in the chambers of our brains that allow us to comprehend new things, find youtube and the like an amazing source for learning new things. Things we never thought possible a few years ago.



The days without internet were not long ago for those like me who can still remember the days when the term "Internet" started spawning off the tongues of friends more well-read than I. I can remember the first time I heard it. I couldn't comprehend it.

Anyway, nostalgia aside, say we wanted to learn a song on the guitar. Back in the day, I was lucky enough to be learning during the internet phase but before youtube had matured. I used to read tabs off the net, print them out and study them hard. Nowadays a simple search on youtube will show you a person playing the guitar and playing the song that you want to know how to play and chances are you'll find a visual tutorial on how to play it.

The power of visualizing something has been inscribed in the history of man, for example, the ancient Egyptians conveyed detailed stories of the afterlife in vivid pictures. The steps a man goes through as he is judged before the Gods, is carved out and painted on walls of tombs and temples for the people to see and visualize what happens in the afterlife. Vision is the most powerful sense people have. It is the most perceiving of our senses.



It goes without saying, that the ability to record visuals and transmit them over the internet is an amazing capability. For example, I took a course in linear algebra and found videos from Professor Strang at MIT. In them, he explained linear algebra in a simple way. This was extremely beneficial. I was not physically present in the classroom but could see what was going on. The alternative would be to filter through books on the subject and write up notes or something.

So I'm happy to be witnessing this powerful means of conveying knowledge and thought I would share this with you.

Augmented Reality

Recently I had a computer vision assignment that was loads of fun. The assignment was on calibrating a camera based on images of a calibration grid (checkered board shown below) from different angles.



Once the calibration was done using linear algebra we were able to project clipart images onto the calibration grid. This is the same as the projected advertisements you see on football fields on TV.



Then we augmented images with 3D structures. The first was a 3D cube which looks like its sitting on the calibration grid. Its a bit hard to see the outline of the cube in the image below, so you may want to click on it to view it enlarged. The second is a 3D mesh object which is projected onto the grid.





zoomed in...

Tablet!

I recently bought a tablet to channel out my art skills to the world wild web. I've been wanting to buy it for a bloody long time and finally did about a month ago. I've fallen in love with it :). I'll leave you with some stuff I created for the game design course.
Hopefully soon, I'll link you to the game so you can play :).

Hunter Mountain

Recently I went on a day trip to Hunter Mountain (NY state). It was a ski/snowboarding trip. I've been wanting to go snowboarding since as long as I can remember. I never got the chance because I've mostly lived in countries with an abundance of sand and sun.
It was an amazing experience. Here are some pix.

BitTorrent: How it works

Here's a nice visualization of how BitTorrent works for those who don't know. It shows the relationship between seeds and peers in the BitTorrent network of users.

Check it out: BitTorrent Visualization

Groundhog Day

Groundhog day continues to intrigue me! There is a day called Groundhog in the US (Feb 2nd). Folklore has it that on this day a groundhog comes out of its burrow and if it sees its own shadow under sunlight then winter will continue for 6 more weeks. On the other hand if it sees clouds and no shadow then winter will soon end [source: Wikipedia]. For more info on the origins of this amazing day, go to wikipedia right now and read more about the psychic groundhog!

Indie Games

This semester I'm taking a seminar in video game design and programming. The seminar meets for 3 hours every week and we discuss everything to do with games: from its "fun" appeal (gets psychological sometimes) to game mechanics and dynamics. It's very interesting stuff.

Via this seminar I was introduced to the Indie Game scene. Indie games are the games that are independently developed without the financial support of a video game publisher. Our instructor is an indie gamer himself and was on the team that developed Osmos (link) which won an award at the Independent Games Festival (IGF 2009). Its a really interesting world where pure personal commitment, determination and innovation are displayed in the games. This is due to the fact that most of the developers are part-time and are not being supported financially.

As part of this seminar I'll be designing and creating video game prototypes every single week. I will be uploading them to a website and linking you to them. Please leave your comments.

I'll leave you with snapshots of my first two game prototypes. The first was a game built under the constraint of only using squares and circles. The second had no limitations besides the week to do it in. I even added music and sound effects to the second game. I used opengl and Glut to develop the first game and opengl and SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for the second. Click on each of the snapshots below for an enlarged view.

Goodbyes

So im back in the big nation of the United States of America. I was enjoying my numbered post-masters vacation days. Now its back to work, university life and the expat experience.

Again, I bid my family and friends farewell. Farewells are funny things. No one likes them but they are inevitable. They are like the fading away of connecting threads of existence which develop between us. In the end they become memories. But in this day and age we are fortunate enough to have the chance to revive them continuously through methods like travelling, facebook, email, chatting, video chatting, telephone...etc.

Maybe farewells are gifts in the sense that they are a constant reminder that all things, whether good or bad, end some day and become bygones stored away in the dusty rack of memories. It makes us cherish the present, because all-to-easily it may slip through our fingers. We are like slaves to time which forces us to move on and make the most of what has gone and what is still to come.

Just a thought...

Shackled Slave Frees Himself!

I dont believe in masters and slaves...everyone is free and so am I this day. I'm free of the burden of being a slave to the masters of computer science :). It's finally over. I defended my thesis against an onslaught of a committee so ruthless and blood-thirsty that the earth trembled beneath their feet. Im just kidding they were a very nice bunch - el humdulilah :D.



Stay tuned for a post on the details of my thesis project: "Measuring atmospheric scattering from images of urban scenery using temporal polarization vision". The basic idea is a core problem in measuring air pollution from digital images. Its's bloody interesting so stay around and keep pinging my blog until I get a chance to tell the tale.

Creed - Full Circle

After many years one of my favorite bands has reunited to produce a new album - Full Circle. I've listened to it once already but unfortunately it's not as good as their previous albums. There are a couple of good songs but they cannot be compared to the previous hits the band has produced, like "Higher", "My Sacrifice", "One last breath", "one", "whats this life for", "with arms wide open".

Creed is an American rock band from Tallahassee, Florida, that became popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The band disbanded in 2004 after three multi-platinum albums, selling 26 million records in the United States alone and an estimated 35 million records worldwide.On April 27, 2009, after months of speculation, Creed announced that they had reformed via their official website, which confirmed that plans to record a new album titled Full Circle were underway and was updated with dates for a 2009 reunion tour.[2] The band went on tour in support of the new album, which was released on October 27, 2009 [source: Wikipedia].

Happy New 2010!

Happy new year :). I hope 2010 is filled with health, happiness, wonderful accomplishments and prosperity for you all.
I also hope its a year filled with less violence and positive change.

Some Inspiration!

Unfortunately the easy way exists no more...we are born into a mind-blogging interconnected hub of dreams, fears, hope, commitment and challenges...

But then again, if everything was easy then easy for you would be easy for all and life would be too easy and not much fun... :)

New Music: This is War!

New music is like fulfilling an addiction. I've been listening to this song over and over again. Its from 30 Seconds to Mars's new album (This is War) which was released a few days ago. I haven't got the album yet but this was a single released back in October.

I love Chrome!

Chrome Beta for Mac has finally arrived!!! I missed using it on windows since I've moved to mac.
If you haven't tried it, download it NOW! :)

Chronicles of the Newbie Expat - part III: (Round About)

My first semester at Rutgers is coming to an end. I hope it ends successfully as it has been a tough one. There's two weeks left...

It's been a semester I'll remember for a long time to come. Its my first experience at becoming the Newbie Expat :). I've met new people, made new friends, learned new things, traveled around, been places, ...etc (the list goes on). Simply put, its been a wonderful NEW experience - ahL.

I just want to leave you with a photo essay of where I've been to in the last few months.

Lets start off with....

WAIT A MINUTE ... ITS SNOWING!!!!! :D
Its been YEARS since I last saw snow!

Anywayz I'll deal with the snow later...where was I.

The pictures (click to enlarge) are in the following order:
1. New York
2. Philadelphia
3. Boston

Unfortunately I didn't take my camera with me to Princeton (it was magnificent)...