A bank just told me they are sorry

Posted on: November 15 2012 Comments: 1
Followup to my Letter to the Bank Austria: Today, they actually called me, and told me how sorry they are and that this was a big mistake, and so on. They at least tried to excuse this fail about a dozen times, it was quite embarrassing. Additionally, they now offered me to drop my account maintenance charge for 3 months. Which actually reminded me that I even pay for giving them my money. Hm. Sounded to me like they are afraid of loosing a lot of customers. [Read more]




Irrlicht 1.8 released!

Posted on: November 09 2012 Comments: 3
After quite some time, there is a new release of the Irrlicht 3D engine available today: version 1.8. Yay! The Irrlicht team did quite some work on this, the changelog for this version is about 5 screens long :) Some of the new features are: New loaders for mdl, wal, smf Cg support Support for custom hardware cursors Improved support for 64-bit platforms Major OSX device improvements Occlusion culling Improved collada support Improved shadows Polygon offset support ISceneLoader interface Suppor... [Read more]




Android Performance Tip

Posted on: November 04 2012 Comments: 2
When developing high performance code for android there are already a lot of tips on the web to use. One thing I learned today: Don't believe other people's suggestions on performance if you haven't tried it out yourself. One common misconception I came across multiple times for example is that it is a negligible trade-off when you use ArrayList instead of a real, Java array. For me, this wasn't true. Replacing an ArrayList with the Java array at performance critical parts of my code resulted in an overall ... [Read more]




My letter to the Bank Austria

Posted on: November 03 2012 Comments: 6
The local Austrian Bank, "Bank Austria" introduced their new online banking website/system a week ago. I still have an account with them, although in my opinion they are slow, unreliable, and even not an Austrian Bank, altough their name might imply this (they are italian). Reading comments on forms and various twitter feeds, it appears that all customers have problems with the new system. I thought it might be not a that big problem, but today was the first day I was actually able to log into the system. T... [Read more]




Again an anti-spam update

Posted on: October 26 2012 Comments: 6
I again changed a bit of the code of this blog in order to fight a new spam wave. I hope it's better now and that it works. Unfortunately, I now had to introduce a senseless fourth field when posting comments, where you have to enter a specific word in order to get trough. I hope this is understandable by people who want to comment. Let's see. :) [Read more]




Game weekend summary

Posted on: October 18 2012 Comments: 5
So finally I tried out the beta of Minerwars, a game I was quite excited with, at least from the videos I have seen. Unfortunately, I didn't like the game at all. I have some fairly decent hardware, but the game ran incredible slow on it. So slow, I had to use the lowest graphics settings, and then, you weren't able to distinguish anything in the game. Maybe it was slow because it appears to me the game was written in some .NET language. (Saw it installing the latest .NET framework.) Who knows. But then, be... [Read more]




The mysterious Finalruct

Posted on: October 11 2012 Comments: 3
Just worked through some big java code base of a client. Quite often, I would come across a method call named like this: finalructDatabase(); Finalruct? What the hell does that? My english is not perfect, but I'm pretty sure this isn't a word. Some company internal term maybe? But then, something similar popped up in a comment: // but can be implemented without this finalructor, in this case And suddently, I understood what happened. Do you see it? That code has obviously been ported to java from a la... [Read more]




Minerwars beta

Posted on: October 04 2012 Comments: 0
I can't wait for this game to be released: The game's name is Minerwars, and IMO, it's feels very much like the old Decent game series, which I loved. Minerwars is currently in beta, so you can download it and try it out. I haven't yet myself. If only I had more time... [Read more]




Drawing 3D scenes in HTML 5's 2D Canvas - Part 2: Textured Triangles

Posted on: September 29 2012 Comments: 2
Last week, I created a small test application using HTML 5 canvas, extending the CopperLicht webGL Javascript library to be able to draw 3D graphics without WebGL: misusing the 2D canvas for drawing 3D triangles on it. Back then, the demo only drew wireframe 3d triangles (try the demo here). Now, I extended it to draw fully textured triangles, giving 3d models a bit better look. It works on IE (9 and newer), Firefox, Chrome and Opera, and probably also Safari (didn't try). The 3D scene itself was created... [Read more]




Wikipedia article halflife

Posted on: September 27 2012 Comments: 2
Well, there is now a Wikipedia article about CopperCube. It's not long, but it is a beginning. I wonder if it will be erased again as well. Not sure if this is the same in the english Wikipedia, but the german one has a very bad reputation of deleting articles all the time. Let's see, I'm curious. [Read more]




Drawing 3D scenes in HTML 5's 2D Canvas

Posted on: September 22 2012 Comments: 4
I just programmed a small test application using HTML 5 canvas, extending the CopperLicht Javascript library: I'm misusing the 2D canvas for drawing 3D triangles on it. Right now, I only implemented a 3d transformation and clipping pipeline, and not material renderers, so you only get empty wireframe triangles, but it looks nice anyway. Try it out yourself, it should work using InternetExplorer (9 and newer), Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Didn't try with Safari yet. Use the Cursorkeys or WASD to move the ch... [Read more]




Still waiting for HTML 5 audio to happen

Posted on: September 20 2012 Comments: 4
Take a look at this table, it shows which audio format can be played back by which browser, using the HTML 5 audio tag: Browser Operating system Formats supported by different web browsers Ogg Vorbis WAV PCM MP3 AAC WebM Vorbis Ogg Opus Google Chrome All supported 9.0 Yes Yes Yes Yes Currently in Dev and canary channels Internet Explorer Windows Depends No 9.0 9.0 No No Mozilla Firefox ( Gecko ) All sup... [Read more]




Captured

Posted on: September 14 2012 Comments: 4
Usually, I don't like posting cat pictures and animal videos, but sometimes I cannot resist. Yesterday, I captured this mouse: It was actually quite cute, although you can't see it very well in that movie, taken with my phone. But still it's no match for the office hamster, of course. [Read more]




The Cabin in the Woods

Posted on: September 08 2012 Comments: 1
I just watched the movie The Cabin in the Woods, which just lauchned in the cinemas here in Austria. It's a teen horror film by Joss Whedon (known from Buffy, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along blog, and of course Firefly). The film is actually very good IMO, it is funny and has an unusual twist, I can really recommend to watch it. What I didn't understand was that although this was the second day the film was watchable in our cinemas, the hall where we watched it was completely empty. We were the only ones in tha... [Read more]




Back again

Posted on: September 07 2012 Comments: 3
Sorry for the lack of updates recently, but a quite big change happened in my personal life recently, and additionally, I was on vacation during the last two weeks. Updates to this blog will continue from now on. Starting with the first small one: Before I left for holidays, I forgot to upload the latest version of irrEdit, the irrlicht editor, in version 3.5. It's it's available now. I usually generate the installer package at the same time I do the CopperCube one, but this time, I forgot uploading it bef... [Read more]




CopperCube 3.5 released

Posted on: August 17 2012 Comments: 2
I just uploaded CopperCube in version 3.5, which is a major step forward: It finally includes unicode support, long awaited by many users. The update is free, just download it here. I also improved the user interface with new and bigger icons, as discussed on this blog before, thanks for the suggestions, this was really helpful. CopperCube 3.5 now looks like this: While rewriting much of the source to support unicode, I also updated the UI to wxWidgets 2.9. The guys at wxWidgets really do a great job dev... [Read more]




Linker Errors from Hell

Posted on: August 16 2012 Comments: 7
Oh I love the time when you introduce some major changes into your code base which adds new dependencies, and you simply cannot get your code to link correctly on all platforms anymore. That's one of the really annoying part of C++. You are happy that you finally worked through hundreds of compilation errors (which you even aren't responsible for), and right when you fixed all of them, the linker aborts with a strange error, complaining that he cann't find a function you've never ever even have heard of. Or... [Read more]




Google+

Posted on: August 08 2012 Comments: 3
I'm currently trying out Google+. So many options. And it feels a bit empty there. Mostly fellow programmer people on there. Add me if you like. Or however this is done there. Have to figure out that circle thing first. :) [Read more]




R

Posted on: August 08 2012 Comments: 0
Andy Campbell created a 3D world game in WebGL/HTML5, narrating a short story about a guy who has a surreal, recurring dream. It has been created using CopperCube and has a quite surreal atmosphere. It works best in chrome, you can try it out here: start. Here is the corresponding thread on the Ambiera forum. [Read more]




Beginning of the death of Facebook?

Posted on: August 02 2012 Comments: 8
A few months ago, I told everyone my opinion about the facebook share: I think it would be worthless in at least a few years. Reasons: All people in favor of buying Facebook shares anticipated a big growth. But where should that thing grow to? All people and their mum are already registered there. Also: remember MySpace? Orkut? StudiVZ? All social networks in the past died a quick death, and most people even don't remember those names! The facebook chart currently looks like this: Uh, what a surprise. :... [Read more]




Pixel Prospector

Posted on: August 01 2012 Comments: 0
A few years ago, I blogged about a site reporting about indie games, named Pixel Prospector. It seems the site still exists today, and they now even have their third anniversary. Congratulations! :) Since I decided Diablo 3 is boring, I was looking for some games to download and try out. They created a 4 min video showing 44 free indie multiplayer games. I think I'll pick something from there. :) [Read more]




Advertising gone wrong

Posted on: July 25 2012 Comments: 4
I know, it's not that important, but after seeing it at least twenty times now, I got a bit annoyed. For at least a week, this ad is currently running on this blog via Adwords/Adsense: It is german, and reads translated: HeadingLine 1Line2 And adsense being adsense, I've seen this ad on other websites now as well. Someone should probably tell the poor guys of Biotherm.com that they are currently wasting their money on a wrongly entered ad? I hope they didn't pay an expensive ad agency for advertising t... [Read more]




How much do you earn writing a book?

Posted on: July 20 2012 Comments: 7
I recently saw an interview with a successful german book author (don't remember his name), who was just opening a shop (I think for shoes?) in his local city. The interviewer asked him about his success, and why he is opening this shoe shop, if he hasn't earned enough with his two very successful books so far. The author looked angrily at the interviewer and said: "Do you think I could live from my two books? Of course not." The interviewer then was a bit confused, but I understood this man: The book I... [Read more]




Dancing Bunnies or Why I'm not going to use signed installers

Posted on: July 18 2012 Comments: 6
Recently, developers noticed that Microsoft introduced a new 'feature' in Internet Explorer 9, named 'Smart Screen Filter'. In most cases, it manifests as annoying and scary looking popups which appear after you downloaded some program from the Internet, telling you that this particular program is evil. This 'smart' screen filter simply checks if the binary has been signed, and if not, it apparently checks if the program is very, very popular at least. If both of this isn't true, and this is the case for 9... [Read more]




Thoughts about icon sizes

Posted on: July 13 2012 Comments: 8
I just uploaded a new version of WebsitePainter, including some new nice features, but the first big visible change in that website editor is the new icon toolbar. Before, the editor used a standard, 16x16 toolbar, but now, I made this twice as big. Here is a comparison: I really like the new toolbar: It wastes a bit more screen space, but it's now immediately clear what the buttons do, and they also look more nicer. On big screens with huge resolutions, the small icons were probably even not very visibl... [Read more]




Diablo 3 review

Posted on: July 06 2012 Comments: 3
I'm probably a bit late, but finally, I've managed to play through Diablo 3. The game was nice, but it's not a particularly good diablo game, to be honest. It plays like Diablo 2, but without the fun. Blizzard obviously has decided to take all the character development out of the game, and replace it with items. The reason for this is obvious: Blizzard will earn money by this. (They have that Auction House where you can buy and sell items.) There is no skill to choose, every character at the same level has... [Read more]




Small discount for 3d models

Posted on: July 05 2012 Comments: 1
If you are looking for 3d models and textures, readers of this blog and CopperCube users can get a 15% discount on 3dexport.com. Use the discount code 3de15off3 for this (expiration date: 12th July 2012). Have fun :) [Read more]




Babelfish

Posted on: July 04 2012 Comments: 3
The day has come where I worked through so many contracts, agreements, and licenses that I now am fluent in legalese. Yes, I don't seem to find any difference anymore between normal written text and stuff created by lawyers. I even can write this stuff on my own, and it reads completely complicated, meaningful and senseless at the same time, as it should be. Isn't this sad? But wait, there is more: Not only have I done this stuff that often that I do now understand it in my native language, German, and Au... [Read more]




CopperCube 3.1, and WebGL engine Copperlicht 1.5 released

Posted on: June 28 2012 Comments: 2
I just uploaded the latest free update of the 3D editor CopperCube (version 3.1) and at the same time also the newest update of the WebGL 3D engine CopperLicht (version 1.5). I added an improved material window which now groups similar materials, the possibility of attaching any object to a camera (like weapons in first person shooters as described in the previous blog post), improved dynamic lighting in WebGL and Flash (it's now working exactly as in the fixed function pipeline of Direct3D and OpenGL),... [Read more]




SEO

Posted on: June 27 2012 Comments: 1
I wonder if it would be OK to create a mail filter which automatically moves an incoming mail into the spam folder, if the mail body contains the word 'SEO'. Would anybody ever send me a mail with that word in it, and I would want to read that mail? Hm... [Read more]






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