Hi. So I'm some guy who doesn't like it when people die. And I'm not unique. Sucks doesn't it? Solving this is, umm, a bit out of my reach. But within reach of the human collective? It's fine if you disagree, but my answer is a strong "yes". Within our …
My current project requires some complex software on the Raspberry Pi 3 B+, which has 1GB of RAM. For my technology stack's primary components, I've chosen Scala, OpenCV, and TensorFlow. Typically C++ or python is used with OpenCV or TensorFlow....
It's...Functional Friday! :party-parrot: Option, SelectMany, and why C#'s coming nullable reference type is totally meh null has been called "the billion dollar mistake" (and many say that estimate is low) because of all of the bugs caused by...
Save the Cows: Official Release Here it is, the latest and greatest video game of 2018: Save the Cows VR version coming soon! No, there will be no VR version. Ah yes, and the source code on github. How to create your own game or app for Macintosh...
Just thinking out loud... Work contributes to the needs of people. Play is for enjoyment and for rest from work. Today is my first day of part-time work-for-myself. Working three days a week (after working hard to get my finances well enough in...
!yadirF lanoitcnuF...s'tI Today I'll use a slide from a presentation I gave to the Omaha Java User's Group Tuesday night, "Graph Theory in Software Design". This piece if code decides if a word is typed with left hand only using standard touch...
At Farm Credit Services of America where I contract, someone, I believe it was our Chief Applications Officer/SVP, brought in a good ol' Macintosh 512k (produced 1984-1986). For the first week, every time I'd walk by it, it made me smile, with...
It's…Functional Friday! So how would you write a function that, given a list of train cars, returns the food cars which are directly behind a hazmat car? (Maybe we don’t want to eat the food from ‘em.) At first we might try using LINQ, but then...
It's...Functional Friday! Being the first one, I think some background for Functional Programming (FP) makes sense. So a bit on programming paradigms... First, it is interesting to note that the very first Turing-complete languages were of the...
Concensus is in on the validation of the solution! (More details on what the solution is later when we're going public, but...) concerning go or no-go, respondants to the solution validation survey were motivated to use a product that provides...
The votes are in from the problem validation: the problem is real! Actually I "cheated" a bit, by validating six different problems, to find the biggest need among them. Several of them actually have a lot of potential, but people seemed to...
Pre-Validate, Pre-Validate, Pre-Validate, Pre-Validate! In previous startup attempts (including Percebe Music's successful launch), I would spend about three months building an MVP to put in front of potential users to find out if it's what they...
The other day I discovered js-dos, a port of DosBox to javascript! It does require a keyboard, so I don't know of a way to make it work in mobile browsers ...though I haven't tried connecting a keyboard to my phone to use it, but sounds a bit...
In the game of starting up a business, it's best to know people want to pay for something before you invest your resources into building it. This is often spoken of as a problem and solution: the customer -- either consumers or other businesses...
Yes I'm actually still here, just quiet the past seven months... Concerning Percebe, there is little new since the last update; it's still an amazing product ("if I do say so myself"...), but it's just going to take time for the piano teachers to...
After just over a year in development, Percebe is finally being introduced to thousands of people, via a Facebook ad campaign that just started...about two minutes ago! ...plus however many minutes from the time I wrote this to...yeah. We were...
Typically when we think of poetry, we picture poetry of regular rhyme and rhythm. For example, eight syllables per line with every other line in rhyme, four lines per stanza. When those poems are put to music, they are often set to music that is...
Before the conferences a few weeks ago I didn't have a minute to "flip the burger", working all day, all evening, many late (early?) nights, weekends. But during the week of Thanksgiving, as well as the weekends before and after, I certainly did...
Recently I got back from our first two conferences for introducing Percebe to the public. The Florida Music Teachers Association had their conference in Orlando, and the Georgia Music Teachers Association in Macon, Georgia. Both of them were...
Thursday, May 10 of this year I woke up with a musical theme laying on my pillow, so to speak. Developed several variations of it while getting ready for the day, then finally had several hours on Saturday to work out a fully-scored composition....
We're finally here: the launch! Which, if I remember correctly, also means that we go public with our company and product name. So here it is...wait, maybe I should try to create more suspense by...neah. Our product is called Percebe, which...
With needing to get our first release out fast, it seemed like a good use of our money to outsource the web development, so that all of the user account management and subscription payments would be taken care of in parallel with my building the...
I don't know how long it had been since I had spent an entire day working for the start-up without writing a line of code. But it happened last Monday, while preparing the various necessities for two conferences in which we will be exhibiting in...
Amongst all of my business today, it was nice to take a step into the imaginary world of this little piece composed about 11 years ago when I was still in Pensacola, and a bit of a predecessor to Symphony No. 1. Maybe you'll find it a nice little...
Have you ever worked on one thing day and night for several weeks straight? Maybe 60 or 70 hours per week at work? Do you get more work done? I think for a time. But what happened after about a month? You don't have to tell me because the studies …
In AI search algorithms, one of the biggest challenges is creating an algorithm that reduces the amount of time spent searching. Search algorithms are navigating a search space that is too large for brute force search (...else we wouldn't need...
It's been six months working full-time as "CTO" and sole programmer for the start-up. Soon, by the way, I'll be able to finally unveil (to my billions of readers) what we're all about, and all the features of the program! While I'll always want...
Pulled my first all-nighter for the startup last night. Hopefully not the first of many, but given we don't even have any customers yet, I have a feeling it will become more common. We are working with a marketing firm to produce a professional...
"Huh? Wait, isn't that the thing that basically just does stuff with files and opens dialogs?" OK so I have this tradition that whenever I learn a new computer language, I have to write a game with it. BASIC on Apple II and Commodore Amiga 1000,...
This is my only symphony so far. It was written and recorded in 2006, primarily as a soundtrack for a planetarium show at Pensacola Christian College entitled "Stair Steps to Space." It was, of course then, written primarily to support the...
Same Office Twas a packed three weeks on the road. I worked a full week at my in-laws' house in the middle of the Appalachian mountains -- and it's amazing where you can have a decent Internet connection these days -- then traveled down to...
Spring of 2015, a friend of mine who is a piano professor (not my business partner; a different friend) said his piano students need some more character pieces, and suggested I compose a set. Since I love composing and the idea of seeing my music...
One of the most important things we need to do as a start-up is learn. Actually at the core, the most important thing we need to do is survive, and the best way to survive as a start-up is to grow, and to grow as fast and as big as …
Your code is a diaper. No no, don't be offended. Have you ever smelled a diaper fresh out of the box? They smell good. They're really white and clean with a touch of pleasant scent added to them. Diapers are actually nice. Then once you start to...
It's been one month that I've worked full-time for our start-up company. I really wish I could tell all about the code and algorithms I've been working on, the product details, and so on, but that will have to wait for a non-confidential time....
Since I wasn't able to find anything on the Internet for how to make a Windows/OS X/Android/iOS app using Scala and JavaFX, I'm sharing what I figured out for how to do it, along with an example/template project for your own use. Why Scala and JavaFX …
...in my case at least. But likely for you too! Here's why. I'm building an application for our start-up company that is to run on four of the major desktop and mobile platforms: Windows, OS X, Android, and iOS. Also, being on a relatively small...
Such an elaborate book-ish title for a short post. Yet I love brevity. Some developers might say, "Before using a new technology, first take the time to read the user guides so you know it. Then use the technology, applying what you've learned."...
[Original post: 10/12/2010. This is an article from my old blog that I think is interesting enough to restore.] Overview The previous (and first) article on video motion tracking featured a video which touched on the workings of my motion...
[Original post: 6/29/2010. This is an article from my old blog that I think is interesting enough to restore.] Motion tracking is a computer vision algorithm which tracks the movement of real-world objects seen in video. Note that this is...
New to Eclipse Mars (possibly Luna; I haven't checked), eclipse.ini is no longer in the Contents/MacOS folder of the Eclipse application package (and most Google results have that out-of-date information). It can now be found at...
So you're using Synergy to use your Mac and Windows machines as one; you press Ctrl+C on Windows to copy, move over to a window on your Mac OS X machine, press Ctrl+V to paste, and it doesn't paste what you just copied, right? If your problem is …
There it was, the first (funded) day at our start-up. I spent the first day planning and mitigating risks with the chosen technologies and target platforms. In summary: Wore the project manager hat for the first couple of hours, organizing the...
I came home Friday from my last day at Farm Credit Services of America (as a sub-contractor), and was welcomed by my wife and kids congratulating me with home-drawn cards and a delicious cake for after supper. After the weekend I would be...
The quickest way to build a boat to cross the river, is to cross the river without building a boat. Sometimes we get so caught up in building the boat that we forget to check if there's a way to cross the river without it. And if there is (and …