Going Android!

 

So here it goes.. as the title might suggest, this post is somewhat ‘techy’, so those of you out there who don’t like to read this kinda stuff might find it a hell lot boring but i can’t help it.. m usually like this

For those of you who don’t know, Android is a mobile operating system cum platform that was unleashed by Google almost 2 years back. The move was not surprising coz Google is a company which always tries to do something different (they might have found the usual search-engine stuff a bit boring ). The OS is targeted to compete against “iPhone OS” (which is by far one of the most elegant mobile OS that has ever made, IMHO), with a difference that it is crafted to be more ‘open’ and ‘reachable’ from both the developers and consumers’ perspectives. It has the similar capabilities as the “iPhone OS” like the multi-touch and gravity-sensors support as well.

Android is based on Linux kernel so it is expected that the consumers may get loads of free applications for their handsets. Developers also don’t need to buy a separate licensed OS (with compatible hardware), SDK and developers’ license to build the applications for Android based phones as they would have required in case of iPhone development. The OS (or platform) is available as open source under an Apache license (src: Wikipedia). Google has done well by making the SDK flexible enough to support multiple platforms including Mac, Windows and Linux. More details can be found on the official developers’ site (http://developer.android.com).

The first handset that featured android was HTC’s Dream (aka ‘G1’). Released in October 2008, the handset wasn’t able to get much positive feedback from critics because of a somewhat premature OS. It had some serious performance glitches which made it fall down on its face. Developers also had some issues with that release due to poor documentation. Google has managed to reach out to a number of other vendors including Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson and LG. The latest version of the OS is number 2.0 and it is the most stable and feature-packed release to date. So far HTC has released the most number of handsets featuring Android OS. You can find more handsets backed by android platform on http://www.androphones.com/. 

More information and news about Android OS can be found here. I found an interesting video which introduces the platform in a very basic manner:

This marks the end of this post. I hope this was useful for some of you at-least

Until next time,

Fi AMANILLAH!

Making of a logo!

Assalamo Alaykum Readers,

It has been a long time since last time this poor blog saw a ‘fuzool c post’ i could not say that i’ve been busy ‘n all. But been thinking hard to do something that i haven’t tried before. Two days back an idea came into my mind and it struck me so hard (:P) that i instantly decided to do something about it.

I would try and walk you through the whole designing process in order to let you get the idea about how this was done.

First of all i created a curve resembling a mark that includes the initials of my name:

Left side of the curve in an ‘A’, ‘B’ on the right side… ‘U’ can be seen in the middle of these two and it extends to create ‘Y’ as well . After that all was pretty simple, created a rectangular curve and used the loft object to create a solid object similar to the curve:

  

While i was thinking of what to do next, another thing came into my mind. I copied this same curve three times and arranged the figures. Then assigned different material to each one and came up with this:

Not enough… created a terrain as well and assigned a grass texture to it. Placed the logo into the scene and changed the environment to carry a sky texture. Following are some final renders of the scene:

That ends the post!

Until next time,

Fi Aman Allah!!!

Hi-Tech One-liners ;)

Assalamo Alaykum Readers,

Here I am again with another ‘faarigh post’ . This time around I want to share some one-liners that I recently compiled (more precisely… recently = today ). So… witout further ado… here they are:

• I do know everything, just not all at once. It’s a virtual memory problem.
  
• Code so clean you could eat off it
  
• A core dump is your computer’s way of saying “Here’s what’s on my mind, what’s on yours?”
  
• A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. – Doug Linder
  
• A program is a device used to convert data into error messages.
  
• Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
  
• All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?
  
• Application has reported a ‘Not My Fault’ in module KRNL.EXE in line 0200:103F
  
• Behind every good computer… is a jumble of wires ‘n stuff
  
• Beta. Software undergoes beta testing shortly before it’s released. Beta is Latin for ’still doesn’t work.’
• C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg. – Bjarne ‘Stumpy’ Stroustrup
• Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.
  
• Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.
  
• Error: Sector not found — search behind couch? (Y/N)
  
• If the ‘Start Windows Restart when Windows starts’ check box is checked Windows Restart will start automatically every time Windows is started. – Actual excerpt from a windows program help file
• Marketer to coder: “You start coding. I’ll go find out what they want.”
  
• Real_men_don’t_need_spacebars.
  
• The three most dangerous things are a programmer with a soldering iron, a manager who codes, and a user who gets ideas.
• You know you’re obsessed with computer graphics when you’re outside and you look up at the trees and think, “Wow! That’s spectacular resolution!”
• You’ve heard about the computer programmer that died while washing his hair in the shower. The instructions said, ‘Lather, rinse, repeat.’

I hope you like them as i did. If not.. you have wasted your time.. now get back to work

Sony Bounces Back: Motion Based Gaming Experience

Assalamo Alaykum Readers,

It has been quite a while since you saw my post related to the same sphere (motion based controllers for consoles) and I wasn’t expecting to return to this very topic with some new name behind this technology. This year’s E3 saw the unleashing of Microsoft’s highly anticipated Project Natal and Microsoft must be given due credit for the way they have marketed the product so far. So much so, that we almost forgot to check what the industry’s leading name (i.e. Sony) has in its pockets to counter the hype.

Yesterday, while i was exploring gamespot.com, I got some glimpses of Sony’s step into this new war fought among industry’s giants for changing the gaming experience as a whole. The shocking thing is that the technology was introduced in the same E3 conference where Microsoft showed-off theirs.

So, here’s what I learned about this new tech up to now. First of all, this technology is not controller-free (as Project Natal, which according to Microsoft is a complete controller-free experience). Instead, it has a wireless controller having some sort of glowing ball connected to one end that can change its glow color. It has some internal sensors for detecting acceleration etc.  It will also host some buttons for performing different functions (trigger for firing a gun??). There would be a device (called PlayStation Eye… man!! this sounds SO familiar to me ) placed on top of your TV. The PlayStation Eye has the ability to detect motion, color and voice… all at once. The interesting part is that every motion of the controller is detectable, even if you rotate the controller along y-axis by just twisting your wrist.

Sony has definitely come up with a pretty interesting stuff here and it is expected to give tough time to its competitors (it has more potential than Wii Remote.. that’s for sure). Though the official name for this technology is hard to find yet, but some sites are referring to it as PlayStation Motion Controller.

As always, I am sharing a couple of videos for anyone who’s interested

 

Pakistan Zindabad!!!

Assalam-o Alaykum readers,

Here I am again with another effort, this time around in accordance with our very own ‘Independence Day’, making us remember the efforts and sacrifices of our forefathers which led to the creation of our dear homeland. I remember those days when i was a kid, and we used to celebrate the ‘birthday’ of our motherland with huge excitement and passion. Decorating our homes, wearing badges and participating in functions held at our school level. Nowadays, I don’t observe such things maybe due to the changing trends and priorities. Channels airing irrelevant concerts to mark the ‘so-called’ celebrations, thinking that they have played their part.

Anyways, another event is round the corner and I decided to do something related to that. So I came up with an idea (again?? ) and started creating another ‘piece-of-art’ . (Those who are not interested are warned to leave, otherwise they might end up having a headache due to ‘Extreme Pakaofying’ ).

Lets jump straight into the action then…

Firstly, the flag (with cloth material) was designed with a stand.. tried to give its stand a golden metallic look. Created a table (ajeeb sa design ). Flag placed on top of it. Created a shiny material for the table top and added some reflection map too.

I want the table to be a bit more smooth, so applied a MeshSmooth on it and to my surprise it turned out pretty cool

Pretty unique (rite? ), flying table it is Up to this, i was planning to create legs for this table and while i was thinking, another thing came into my mind so i did some beveling on its base and …. Created a photo frame (m loving these since i created that cricket-kit scene ), this time with a stand on the backside though:Created two more with a fantastic tool (c-c-p ) and the scene started to get some shape:

Added a spotlight with volumetric light effects, a marble floor added beneath the table.

Added another one (frame):

Still, this didn’t look finished, so i decided to put some more into the scene And here are some final renders for ya.. (whooooshhhhhhhh)

So, that ends anther ‘aiwaein post’… I hope i have managed to waste your time again, like i always do

Thanks for coming in. Until next time… Fi Aman ALLAH

Here you go… Fedex!!!

Linking to my last post, that humble tribute from my side didn’t do any good for the Pakistan team. They have lost the test series in a miserable way against the same side they have comprehensively beaten a couple of weeks back. That put aside, while i was designing that artwork, another project was already in my mind. Just today i started working on it and it was all done quite quickly in mere 2-3 hours . This time it is for Roger Federer… and his fans too . I hope this doesn’t prove to be the same for Fedex as the last one was for Team Pakistan

Here is how it started off:

The top of the racquet was a torus reshaped to form an oval like shape. the upper part of the handle (blue in above image) was initially a single rectangle that was extruded and morphed to form the final shape.

With handle places in, the racquet looked like this:

Here, i replace the torus with a custom designed shape (using rectangle n Lathe modifier). The supposed-to-be ‘Net’’  of the racquet was basically a plane. After assigning materials, following was the output:

 

Ball going in…

 

With some enhanced material allocation, the racquet looked pretty cool

Finally, i put the REAL THING in.. and here’s what i got after adding lights in the scene.

So, that ends my post… hope to see some positive feedback from the readers

A tribute… a little one :)

I have been doing 3D modeling for quite sometime now.. m not a professional though… doing it just as a hobby :$ (visit asadullahby.spaces.live.com to catch-up with my earlier projects ). Recently, i was short of ideas about what should be my next project until a couple of days back, when i was thinking about Pakistan’s historical win in the T20 world cup. So i decided to pay them a tribute from my side and came up with an art work (not up-to-the-mark I think :$). A couple of renders attached here:

This was an initial render of the helmet. Seriously, i thought i won’t be able to give it a good finishing but here you go:

Then came the bat:

 

Ball coming into the scene as well:

Pads in.. with all the materials set in place:

Now the final output…

   

That’s all for now.. lets c what would be next

Your feedback and suggestions are more than welcome

… and Microsoft steals the show!!

Microsoft is not a newbie in the gaming console world, but through the evolutionary times whereby the technology behind consoles has changed drastically, Microsoft, unfortunately up to this point, has not been able to prove itself as a big name in this industry.

Unlike, the Sony’s PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo’s Wii, the Microsoft’s XBox 360 (aka X360) has always been underrated. The PS3’s proprietary titles along with its superior graphics and stunning performance has given tough time to the X360. Meanwhile, the Wii, with its motion sensing innovative controlling scheme (through specialized controllers), has also been scoring points among critics.

This year’s E3 conference witnessed the unraveling of the new project by Microsoft, called Project Natal (pronounced as “na-tal”, same as you pronounce Nadal ). This project is taken by experts as a step towards new era of gaming, putting aside, the need to sit and play with controllers. Microsoft terms it as a “controller-free gaming and entertainment experience” because of the same reason. It is basically an add-on device that is attached with the X360 and sits besides you TV screen. It makes use of 3D scanning, motion sensing and advanced voice interpretation technology to enable the controller free gameplay. It has the ability to track and handle more than one players at the same time and doesn’t need ANY sort of controllers to aid its functionality. This lets user indulge deeply into action and places him/her right into the game world. Microsoft will surely hit two birds with one stone here, fighting back its war with Nintendo and Sony on the gaming platform.

Initially, there are a very few titles that are being made compatible with the device and one can anticipate more coming out in the near future. Visit Project Natal’s official website (based on Silverlight… who says Microsoft itself doesn’t use it ) to find out more about it.

For interested readers, I have pasted some videos here

 

 

Do check out the first video, i was stunned when i first saw that …

All in all, if this thing turns out to be the same as promised by Microsoft and shown in these videos, I can surely bet that X360 will get on to the top of the gaming console world with this

Turning on the Heat

This blog entry was not preplanned.. just something clicked in to my mind while i was visiting my FB account and noticed a video shared by more than a couple of my friends. The video was a short commercial by ZONG, and is supposed to be a slap on the face of another telecom giant, the UFONE.

The battle between well established and experienced UFONE v/s not so old ZONG has really turned into something… leading to quite aggressive and ‘bad tameezee walee’ marketing campaign . The 12-15 seconds long commercials have been launched by both of these telecom rivals and it was UFONE who started the war. Due to their nature, these commercials have not been aired on any TV channel, rather both the companies (realizing the capabilities of social networking sites and YouTube) are quite content with launching them on these networks.

For those of you who haven’t seen any of these ads, i have share them right here, on this very space

UFONE:

ZONG:

Now.. it’s UFONE’s turn, lets see what they come up with

Windows Live Writer

I have been using Windows Vista for quite a while now, almost one year. A couple of months back, while i was being notified by Windows Update about the availability of some new updates, i noticed an entry by the name of ‘Windows Live Writer’ in the updates list. Out of curiosity, I starting googling about that and came to find out that it is a tool that lets you link to your blog and enables you to write blog even while you’re offline. Since I hadn’t started this blog at that time, the tool went into the background although i downloaded and installed it on my machine.

More recently, before setting up this blog, i thought about trying out the tool that has been there on my machine for quite some time. Initially, my perception was that since it is a Windows native tool, it will only allow me to link to my ‘Spaces’ profile and blog. But i got a surprise when it came up with the option through which you can attach this blogging tool to any other blogging website (wordpress, blogger, TypePad etc). I liked the idea and just for experimentation purpose, i linked it to my wordpress account.

So far, Windows Live Writer is looking pretty solid to me, having ‘spellchecking’ feature, you can insert videos, tables, pictures etc quite seamlessly. It even downloads the theme that  you have set up currently and unlike the online editor, it lets you write the post as if you are writing a document having a theme of your website. Look at the screenshot below to get the idea:

It has a pretty clean interface giving you features of a handy editor and allowing you to maintain more than one blog through the same interface. I am no expert in the blogging world but the “Windows Live Writer” seems quite promising to me. Definitely worth trying it!