Tuesday, December 20, 2005 – 22:30
Yes, I will travel to San Francisco, CA early tomorrow and stay there the rest of the Christmas vacation. Me and my family will depart at 6AM tomorrow from Arlanda Airport near Stockholm and transit in Frankfurt am Main.
I will hopefully be able to keep the blog up-to-date when I’m there, since the US of A is supposed to be a quite nice country when it comes to computerization 
Perhaps I will make my first try to do some photoblogging and post some pictures from the trip.
If anybody has anything to recommend me to do in the SF area, I would like to know.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 – 13:01
The three different groups in the project are moving onwards. I and the LED group are contacting manufacturers of custom electronics, to enquire about prices and the possibility of producing such a specialized solution.
We had a group meeting today, briefing about our current tasks, where we stand now, and where we are moving. By middle January we will decide which solution to take, the Electron Beam solution, the DLP Projector solution, the LED solution, another solution, or if we just will make it a research project.
If we are going to build anything, which doesn’t seem feasible from the way I see it now, I hope that we will chose the LED solution. The programming is the simpliest, and most of the problems in the design (except for the rotating disc) have been solved. Otherwise, the electron beam seems very interesting and possible, even though the graphics programming is way over my experience and will require me to invest at least a few hundred hours in programming. The problem lies in disassembling the planetary system into angular slices and projecting up each image in adequate speed.
This is the last day of school this year, and the christmas vacation starts tomorrow.
Monday, December 12, 2005 – 15:38
Another project roundup. The group has dissolved into three small groups, each one investigating one of the three possible techniques for building the 3d display. My group is investigating the diode technique, but the greatest challenge for this group right now is to find a large enough diode matrix in which the diodes can be individually controlled. It is possible that we will make one ourselves, but we are not fond of the idea to solder 20 000 LED:s to a board.
Sunday, December 11, 2005 – 21:52
Most of the time I have the great program MPD running in the background, playing music that is independent of X running. I just fixed some small bindings for Gnome to integrate it more with MPD, and allowing direct control from your keyboard.
First, install “mpc”.
sudo apt-get install mpc
Then create a script called “~/.bin/mpcinfo”
In this script, write the following:
#!/bin/sh
mpc --format "[[%artist% - ]%title%]|[%file%]" | head -n2 | gmessage -timeout 5 -buttons "" -borderless -nofocus -wrap -geometry 500x20 -file -
Make it executable:
chmod +x ~/.bin/mpcinfo
Now launch gconf-editor
Go to apps->metacity->keybinding_commands
Edit the following values:
command_1: .bin/mpcinfo
command_2: mpc next
command_3: mpc previous
command_4: mpc toggle
Go to apps->metacity->global_commands
Edit the following values: (You can use whatever keybindings you want)
run_command_1: F12
run_command_2: Right
run_command_3: Left
run_command_4: Pause
Done! You don’t need to restart anything, Metacity will pick up your changes immediately.
Now try controlling mpd from your keyboard. Pressing “F12″ will popup a box for a few seconds that shows the current song, the Windows key + left/right moves to the previous/next song. Pressing the “Pause” key pauses or unpauses the music.
Enjoy!