Stefan’s Blog

1999 i built my first 3D camera by glueing two on way paper cameras together. As 3D seems to be the buzz word of 2009 and more and more display technologies get available, I decided to build a new 3D camera with digital components. On incentive was to get it ready for our this years vacation in Peru.

Thru some internet research I found a Kodak Easyshare M1093 IS to be the perfect camera to buy. It has 10MP, 3x optical Zoom, image stabilization, a big bright display and – best of all – it is able to record video in 720p. Furthermore I made a very good deal at our local store of Conrad electronics. I got two cameras for as little as 220,- euro.

Next step was to construct a frame to hold the two cameras. First of all I took a caliper and made a drew a raw model of the camera using the free construction tool SketchUp from Google.  I focused on the outer body and the position of the lens/blind and the position of the tripod winding relative to the body. You may downlaod the SketchUp file here.

This very simple model allowed me to arrange the cameras and to draw a frame around them. I chose an eye distance of 68mm. The next picture show a very early stage of the final SketchUp. Beforehand I bought a square-cut aluminium bar, 10×10 mm, hollow, 8×8 mm inside (cost about 2 euro per meter). So I did know what to draw, roughly.

The final sketch was more detailed and layed out with all figures to start the construction. I will make it available here as well.

After a lot of cutting, rasping, drilling, finishing etc. I ended up with this construction:

(The picture above is actually a photoshop mockup, as I had to use one camera to take the picture)

The reason why one camera is upside down is, that otherwise the eye distance would not be preserved. This makes it very difficult to construct a mechanic release. For me it works fine to press both release buttons simultaneously.

After all I got a cheap 3D camera. I spent 230,- euro (and up to 8 hours of work ).

Of course there are some lessons learned:
Tripod threads/screws are measured in inches, no chance to get a screw at the next hardware store (when you are in europe, of course)
It is quite difficult to cut the aluminium bar angled. It’s a must to use a bench vise.
It is possible to buy such frames – as I figured out later

If you made it down to here, I’m sure you are eager to know, what the results are: take a look.

We at SumtnSumtn are very impressed about the viral marketing campaign of Tweetboard. The whole day I’m asking myself how the accomplished to get a top position at Twitter trends.
But more important is, in how far Tweetboard could be a competitive alternative to sumtnsumtn.com.
They do have some things in common with SumtnSumtn, but they do lack some of the most important features.
Read more: http://sumtn.wordpress.com/…

I can’t wait until the 15th of July when we go public.

One thing to add: German law is so difficult and slow; it took us weeks until we are able to go public and fullfil all legal requests.

Just two doors away from our hotel there is a shop which creates custom shirts. First I wanted to place the label on the back, but as I carry my backpack when I don’t sit on a chair, the front print suited me better.

Bei herrlichem Sonneschein und nahezu klarer Sicht auf die Pylone der GoldenGate haben wir die Bucht zu Fuß überquert.
Von der Brücke aus liegt die ganze Bucht vor einem: die Skyline, Alcatraz, Angel Island etc. Möwen fliegen zu dutzenden unter der lichten Höhe von fast 100m her – Vögel während ihres Fluges von oben zu beobachten ist ein seltenes Schauspiel.
Unter der Brücke konnten wir Seelöwen und einen Delphin auf ihrem Weg aus der Bucht in den Pazifik beobachten.

The brand new onsite twittering tool SumtnSumtn started its private beta.

Never heared of onsite twittering before? Well, of course – it’s brand new! You all know (or at least the twitterers among you know) several tools to shrink the internet address of websites you want to leave a comment on via twitter.
SumtnSumtn is one step ahead. While being on a site you are to twitter about, you click the SumtnSumtn bookmarklet an a sidebar pops in. It shows a form to send a tweet and, best of all, it shows you, what others had to twitter about the page you’re looking at.

Take a look at http://sumtnsumtn.com/pages/about.jsf to learn more.

A few month ago I wrote an article on our corportes blog on how to set Firefox instead of sfari as the default browser on Ma OS X’s NetBeans.

In summary:
- Choose “General” from the settings panel
- Add a new Web-Browser
- Type in “/usr/bin/open” as the process
- arguments should be “-a firefox {URL}”

I had to setup another NetBeans installation today, and this was what the settings interface looked like:

No “Add” or “Edit” button at all!

I even thought of hacking /usr/bin/open but than it came to me to – resize the settings window.

Ouch!

It took me quite a while to get dojo.back working in that way, that i prevents that the user is leaving my site accidentaly.

As far as I understood the documentation, dojo.back.setInitialState should have been enough to catch the back button action. But I had to add another historyState to get the intended behaviour. Perhaps this might be useful to someone out there:

dojo.addOnLoad(function() {
	dojo.back.setInitialState({
		back : function() {
			if (confirm('Do you want to leave this site?')) {
				history.back();
			} else {
				history.forward();
			}
		},
		forward : function() { console.log("User clicked forward"); },
		changeUrl : true
	});

	dojo.back.addToHistory({
		back : function() {
			console.log("initCompleted-back was clicked!");
		},
		forward : function() {
			console.log("initCompleted-forward was clicked!");
		},
		changeUrl : 'state1'
	});
});

Ich will gar nicht groß auf die Vorzüge von Facebook gegenüber StudiVZ eingehen. Fakt ist nur, dass ich für meinen Teil Facebook für die bessere Plattform halte.

Problem dabei: es sind ja nunmal nicht alle Kontakte aus dem StudiVZ in Facebook.
Wenn also jemand Langeweile hat, hier meine Wunsch-Applikation:

1. Mitteilung an alle Freunde im StudiVZ, dass man jetzt zu Facebook wechselt.
   Am besten mit Link zu einem  Formular (ich bin unter dem Namen xyz bei Facebook) und einem Link zur Anmelde-Seite von Facebook
2. Bei entsprechenden Rückantworten Verlinkung der Leute bei Facebook
3. Mitteilung in alle Gruppen schicken, dass man jetzt bei Facebook ist
   (im Idealfall noch einen Deeplink zu einer gleichen gruppe bei Facebook angeben)
4. Kopieren aller Bilder aus dem StudiVZ in Facebook
5. Übersichtliche Seite zum Profildaten-Abgleich
6. und was man noch so kopieren könnte…

Und wenn mir jetzt einer sagt “gibt’s schon längst”, freue ich mich über einen Link.

Ohne Worte

Für den MediaAssetFinder bieten wir bei Divis auch ein OpenID-Modul zur Benutzeranmeldung an. Oft ist es gar nicht so einfach zu erläutern, um was es bei OpenID geht und wo die Vorteile für den Firmenkunden und den Endbenutzer liegen.

Gerade habe ich einen guten Artikel bei Heise gefunden, der OpenID gut und ausführlich erläutert und das Verfahren auch mit Schaubildern und einem verständlichen Text beschreibt. Viel Spaß beim Lesen!