Prehacked http://prehacked.com Bill Moorier's journal of hacks-in-progress. posterous.com Thu, 26 May 2011 22:17:00 -0700 Untitled http://prehacked.com/54603250 http://prehacked.com/54603250

I got something working end-to-end for the first time today - a whole chain of grabbing frames from the camera, doing some image processing, and displaying the result on the screen.  Very satisfying!

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/676492/bill.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4wKnukRWgRfH Bill Moorier billmoorier Bill Moorier
Wed, 25 May 2011 10:08:00 -0700 Untitled http://prehacked.com/54418808 http://prehacked.com/54418808

Sometimes it gets frustrating to only have an hour or so each day to work on side projects, but I have to admit I am managing to make good progress!  I got a bit of a speedup, and am now grabbing and decoding frames from the Android camera at about 17fps, which is more than enough for what I want.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/676492/bill.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4wKnukRWgRfH Bill Moorier billmoorier Bill Moorier
Tue, 24 May 2011 09:14:00 -0700 Untitled http://prehacked.com/54275938 http://prehacked.com/54275938

Second day in, Android development is surprisingly good.  Everything is much much easier than on the iPhone - I'm really happy with my choice to develop here first, and only on iOS once something has been proven.  I'm working with the camera, and already have it grabbing and decoding frames at a rate that I think is nearly acceptable for what I want to build (around 10fps on my LG Optimus).

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/676492/bill.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4wKnukRWgRfH Bill Moorier billmoorier Bill Moorier
Mon, 23 May 2011 08:47:00 -0700 Untitled http://prehacked.com/54141780 http://prehacked.com/54141780

I started a new project today - my first Android app!  So far it's just a "Hello World", but it was nice and easy to get up-and-running (much easier than iPhone development was).

Zoe is a few days past 9 months old.  She's spent more time outside of the womb than inside it!  It already seems to me like years have passed.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/676492/bill.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4wKnukRWgRfH Bill Moorier billmoorier Bill Moorier
Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:01:00 -0700 Untitled http://prehacked.com/50107491 http://prehacked.com/50107491

I've started working on something new:  A mobile app that helps you figure out what's causing your migraines, and how to prevent them.

It pings you regularly with short questionnaires about your recent migraine incidence and lifestyle habits, and learns over time to identify your triggers.  It gives you analytics to correlate triggers with headache occurrence and severity, and makes suggestions on how to change habits to stay symptom-free.

Eventually we're hoping to tackle all chronic conditions, but we're going to start with migraines, and then allergies.  We hope one day our app will be discovering new causes and factors, and processing data from enough people that we can give something back to the medical community and make people's lives better.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, please register here and I'll let you know when the app is ready.

 

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Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:09:00 -0700 Untitled http://prehacked.com/48100766 http://prehacked.com/48100766

I just wrapped-up my Flash pitch-detection work into an open sourced library you can use in your own web-apps:  Timber!

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/676492/bill.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4wKnukRWgRfH Bill Moorier billmoorier Bill Moorier
Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:20:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/43955382 http://prehacked.com/43955382

It's been a while since my last post!  I managed to write about my progress here every day for more than 140 consecutive days though, that's not too bad.

My wife and I have started working on a new side-project, so I'm shelving Tunologist for now at least.  I'm proud of what I did - realtime pitch detection in Flash isn't a simple thing to get working.  But I'm more excited about this new project than I have been about any other idea for a long time.

We're getting close to having a working beta of this new idea.  If you're the kind of person who loves to try out new things, send me an email (doctorbill at gmail dot com), and I'll get you access to the beta when we're ready.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/676492/bill.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4wKnukRWgRfH Bill Moorier billmoorier Bill Moorier
Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:20:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/43199495 http://prehacked.com/43199495

I came up with an easy fix to the problem of being able to cheat by toggling timed play.  Now any time you switch that setting on or off, the game restarts - so in effect, a single game is always either timed or not timed.

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Mon, 14 Feb 2011 19:49:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/43091381 http://prehacked.com/43091381

I just finished the control for disabling the countdown timer.  It works fine, but I'm not totally happy yet - right now you can switch the timer on and off whenever you like, which lets you arbitrarily cheat at a timed game.  I'll have to figure out the right way to make that impossible.

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Sun, 13 Feb 2011 20:06:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42985741 http://prehacked.com/42985741

I'm nearly done putting together a new mode where you can play without the countdown timer - just a few more bits and pieces to finish off, it should be done tomorrow.

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Sat, 12 Feb 2011 19:43:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42878130 http://prehacked.com/42878130

A bunch of people said they would like the option not to play against the clock, when they're just getting started.  I've added a user interface for that, and I should be able to make it work tomorrow.

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Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:48:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42778660 http://prehacked.com/42778660

Restart is all done - when a game ends, you can click anywhere and start playing again.

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Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:58:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42670053 http://prehacked.com/42670053

I got some great feedback from reddit, most importantly I somehow overlooked adding a way to restart the game without reloading the page!  Just added the UI for that, and tomorrow I'll make it work.

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Wed, 09 Feb 2011 07:56:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42500689 http://prehacked.com/42500689

Feedback from Hacker News yesterday was disappointing - just 5 upvotes and one comment.  Posted to reddit this morning to see if it will get any further there.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/676492/bill.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4wKnukRWgRfH Bill Moorier billmoorier Bill Moorier
Tue, 08 Feb 2011 08:05:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42392764 http://prehacked.com/42392764

Just posted to Hacker News about tunologist.  I'm really looking forward to hearing what people think!

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/676492/bill.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4wKnukRWgRfH Bill Moorier billmoorier Bill Moorier
Mon, 07 Feb 2011 20:13:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42340877 http://prehacked.com/42340877

Zoe's cold is finally getting better - I put her to bed quite easily tonight!

I just finished writing up a little blurb about what tunologist is, and how I made it.  Hopefully some people will find that interesting - I think I'll make the site live tomorrow and post it to a few places like Hacker News.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/676492/bill.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4wKnukRWgRfH Bill Moorier billmoorier Bill Moorier
Sun, 06 Feb 2011 20:10:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42224623 http://prehacked.com/42224623

Zoe's cold is still really bothering her, poor thing.  I had to do tonight's task with only my left hand availale, as she won't sleep anywhere but lying on me!

I wasn't completely happy with the way I was displaying note names, so I decided to spend just one more evening working on that.  I'm glad I did!  I managed to come up with a nice effect that makes it look a bit like the targets are burnt away when you hit them, and the note names are the charred remains of each target.  I'm happy with it now.

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Sat, 05 Feb 2011 21:03:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42126053 http://prehacked.com/42126053

Just finished fixing the text positioning from yesterday.  I didn't get time for anything else today - Zoe has a cold and is having a hard time sleeping, I think it's going to be a long night!

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Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:20:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/42027368 http://prehacked.com/42027368

Note-name display is very nearly done.  It has a nice fade effect that's a bit hard to explain - maybe I'll just make a video of it tomorrow.  The text isn't quite positioned correctly, but that's the only thing left that needs fixing.

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Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:10:00 -0800 Untitled http://prehacked.com/41921600 http://prehacked.com/41921600

A friend said he wanted to see the name of the note he was singing, so I've added that.  It's functional, but not pretty at all - I'll make it look nice tomorrow.

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