What will you do in life?

What will you do in life?

This goes to those who haven't decided yet what they are going to do in life. It's important to start thinking about it now, no matter how old you are. You better start early because it takes time, effort and dedication to improve one's skills and to reach goals. The earlier you start, the more time you have to mess up (and you will probably mess up on the way). To decide about what to do, there are basically 3 things you need to consider:...

Lees verder
Dual Shock 3 - Part 3: Device Analysis and Specification

Dual Shock 3 - Part 3: Device Analysis and Specification

The dimensions of the controller are roughly 6 x 3.5 x 2 inches. The Dual Shock has on the left side, the same directional pad found on most controllers. However, on the right, the action buttons are labelled with original symbol; this is also an innovation by Gotoh while conventional controllers normally used numbers and letters to label the buttons, as he states himself: "Other game companies at the time assigned alphabet letters or colors to the buttons. We wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward." In an interview reported by Games Radar, Gotoh explained how it came up with the symbols "I gave each symbol a meaning and a color. The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one's head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent 'yes' or 'no' decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively."...

Lees verder
Dual Shock 3 - Part 2: The amazing story of the Dual Shock

Dual Shock 3 - Part 2: The amazing story of the Dual Shock

We just reviewed the evolution of the game controller in general. Now let’s dip in the very interesting story of the creation of the PlayStation Controller. The facts reported here mainly come from Kevin Gifford who wrote the "PlayStation 1 Design" article and from Reiji Asakura who wrote the book "Revolutionaries at Sony – The Making of the Sony PlayStation and the Visionaries Who Conquered the World of Video Games."...

Lees verder
Dual Shock 3 - Part 1: History of game controllers

Dual Shock 3 - Part 1: History of game controllers

This study is about a device which is probably the best joypad of all times: the Dual Shock. It has many variants and we can expect it to keep evolving in the coming years, however, we will focus here on the current version, the Dual Shock 3. In this article, we will go through the history of the game controller in general and then focus on the history of the Dual Shock itself, so that we understand in which context and how it was built. In a next part, we will then analyse the controller by studying its specifications and comparing it to its most direct competitor, the Xbox 360 controller. Basics There are many categories of game controllers, among which we will retain the most popular one, the gamepad, as that’s exactly what the Dual Shock is. Gamepads, also known as joypads, can have many action buttons combined with one or more omnidirectional control sticks or buttons. They are held using both hands with fingers (typically thumbs) used to provide input; as mentioned on Wikipedia, most modern game controllers are a variation of a standard gamepad. Common additions include shoulder buttons placed along the edges of the pad, joysticks, centrally placed buttons and internal motors that provide haptic feedback (as in, they typically vibrate). Some history In his article intituled “History of the game controller”, Catalin Ivan stated “Ever since the very beginning of video gaming, the controller has been the best (and usually the only) way of man-machine interaction.” That’s actually an interesting fact, and it would be good to follow the evolution from that “very beginning” to see how we reached the current gamepad technologies. There had actually been many, many gamepads released throughout the history, we are not going to study all of them, we are just going to review those who appear like important milestones that we observed from a study by John Honnibal and that we are summing up in the following table:...

Lees verder

Launching Your Application At Windows Startup Without Hacking The Registry

In this post I will show you two methods to configure your .NET applications so that they would launch as soon as Windows starts. These two methods do not require any change to the registry, hence you don't need to worry about cleaning up that database if the user uninstalls your application. The first method: From the Windows Installer Deployment Project, follow these steps:...

Lees verder
Instant Messaging For Your Website : Have it the Giant Way

Instant Messaging For Your Website : Have it the Giant Way

You have probably used the in-browser Instant Messaging service of one of the Internet "giants", whether it's Gmail, Msn or Facebook. You know, that small window with your online contacts at the bottom corner, which can be extended into conversations. Wouldn't it be cool if you could have a similar system right into your own website ? Well, now you can, that's what the new Mango Chat is all about....

Lees verder
Paper Prototyping

Paper Prototyping

Last week, I had to make a paper prototype for a mobile application I was working on. I ended up building a quite nice thing (picture above) but at the beginning I was not sure about how to go about it. So I just thought I would write about it to share how I proceeded....

Lees verder

What (un)motivates us When We Run a Blog

Let's start with the dark part of this post. When you decide to start running a blog, you are likely to fail before the end of the first three months. It is not easy to write, and moreover, to write things that interest others. Professional life and personal constraints (family, schedule, etc.) are often the first causes of slacking. In the same vein, one can also note the useless pressures and deadlines that we impose upon ourselves. For example, some may start by committing to writing at least one article every day at a given time. This is not really necessary because you need a minimum degree of inspiration to write. And when you don't have it, you should have a way to get it....

Lees verder
GOOSE (GOOgle Supply search Engine)

GOOSE (GOOgle Supply search Engine)

Shopping is a time consuming process; the rhythm of our lives, jobs and other activities goes so fast that we hardly find time to shop properly. The current technologies provide us solutions to speed up the process by shopping online. But even online, shopping remains a task that involves some effort, thinking and time for every purchase. Sometimes you just don’t feel like doing it; or you got a lot of other things to do. Further, we are sometimes so busy that we may just forget to do it. Another thing is that it may be such a pain. Sure, it's fun to shop for new clothes and shoes. But it’s not fun to go get vegetables and meat every week. The solution What if you could just decide once what should be there in your fridge at all times and not worry about it again? You could just have what you want at all time without having to regularly spend the effort, time and thinking that food shopping require. And that's what the new Google Supply Search Engine (GOOSE) is all about....

Lees verder
Data Visualisation : Thematic Maps VS Bubble Charts

Data Visualisation : Thematic Maps VS Bubble Charts

This study is a comparative study of two particular types of visualization techniques in detail. We chose to study the map-based visualization and the bubble charts because they had been the most fascinating visualizations throughout this study. We are going to compare those two types on many factors. Defining the visualizations A thematic map is a type of map or chart especially designed to show a particular theme connected with a specific geographic area. These maps can portray physical, social, political, cultural, economic, sociological, agricultural, or any other aspects of a city, state, region, nation or continent....

Lees verder
Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))

Maandelijkse Archieven

Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))