First Data Glove Experience

While i was looking on UI engineering notes, i saw some 3D UI research results. Article was about data glove usages, problems&solutions etc. After that i ordered a cheap data glove name called p5. Yesterday, i received and installed&configured it. (Note : 1024x768 will be the right screen resolution)

P5 is an excellent glove for its price range. It's offical api (p5dll.dll) was enough for beginner level programming(to handle 2d tasks like mouse movement). But if the things become harder you will need extra programming skills and libraries especially to deal filtering problem. For the first day experience, i used an unoffical api that converts glove's samplings to OSC messages. Also found an pre-ready implementation which maps glove events to GoogleMap keyboard inputs. So i started to implement this task using C# and .Net Framework. Paul Varcholik's OSC Framework was really helpful solution in this project.

Anyway, here is the video that shows my code&data glove in action:

Thin Client Experience

Last month, i was thinking about an economical solution for tasks like p2p(emule, bit torrent, limewire etc.), http downloadings, ftp file sharing, remote connection needings etc. These tasks keeps my desktop pc running all day. As you know running pc generates disturbing sounds so i decided that i can't continue by this way. Started googling with keywords like mini-pc, economic computer, fanless pc etc, i saw results which contains keywords like "thin client" and "zero client". After ten minutes of research, i decided to buy wyse s90 serie thin client and 120 gb 2.5 inch external hdd from ebay.

I received them last week. First i installed emule, torrent and flashget. To handle ftp tasks, i setup filezilla ftp server & client. While they all running also installed ssh and vnc server to secure remote connections. Finally, i registered a free domain name from dyndns.org and configured required ports & security needings(like firewall etc.) on my adsl modem. (Yesterday i installed .Net Framework 2.0 to run background services and some research bots)

Up to date there was no problem occured about thin client. I can shut my desktop pc down without stopping any tasks. There is no tiresome sounds because of thin client's fanless design. It's also power-saving solution, average power usage with device connected to 1 keyboard with 1 PS/2 mouse and 1 monitor is 5.6 Watts/hour. Anyway, I believe that it's a recommendable solution.