The Free Rider Problem applies to free and open source software really well. If you’re a maintainer, read it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem
Take a deep breath
The Free Rider Problem applies to free and open source software really well. If you’re a maintainer, read it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem
For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it. (Adrian Bejan) If you’ve never heard of the Constructal Law, a good place to start is Wikipedia. While we can criticize at length its universal validity as a “law”, there’s some pretty good evidence that it applies well to human-made processes and designs. And software is a human-made design. How […]
It’s been a while since I’ve designed some icons. I’ve based some of them out of the IcoMoon dataset, made some from scratch and colored them to match a palette. These are going to be available as part of VirtualGIS‘s first Maple release. Stay tuned.
AR is a particularly interesting technology when combined with geospatial. AR provides an intuitive interface to navigate and understand the world in 3D. Some geospatial applications need precision. Consumer phones and tablets’ GPS units are not particularly accurate, so this is often not a concern. If we encode latitude and longitude data using single precision floats, we can expect to be off. How off? So if we need sub-meter accuracy, we need to exercise care. Mapbox Unity SDK makes it easy […]
Installing ROS on Arch is a pain in the rear. The fact that Arch is a rolling release distro makes it difficult to compile most of ROS dependencies. Even if you eventually manage to compile everything, you will find yourself running into all sorts of trouble compiling third party libraries, fixing problems between Python 3 and Python 2 and don’t even ask what happens when you do a system update. Save yourself the trouble and use docker. You will be up […]
I ended up having to read the CGAL source code to figure this one out. There you go. You’re welcome.
You can share a terminal session using your Kindle, which means you can use it as an external monitor for text-only applications. You won’t be able to do much web browsing or design work beside ASCII art, but if you’re a coder or a sysadmin, I’m sure this is not really going to bother you. Here’s a brief list of steps required to get this hack working. Jailbreak your Kindle. Install a Terminal application on it so that you can open […]
Back at the beginning of May, while my wife and I were getting ready for our upcoming trip around the United States, I picked up the following challenge: Build a Flappy Bird like game. No commercial software allowed. Three weeks of time. Bring it to as many platforms as possible. Sound and textures had to be made from scratch. After some research, I ended up choosing the following open source tools to achieve my goal: Libgdx: a great multiplatform game […]
If you’ve seen the pictures that I’ve been posting, you might be wondering about what kind of camera equipment I’ve been using. Today I’m proud to show you the powerful and expensive equipment that I’ve been using to take the shots of my travels. Canon PowerShot Digital ELPH SD750 – Around 50$ on eBay Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to spend hundreds of dollars for a good camera, but that is not part of the living small philosophy. Plus I love to push the limits […]
A few days ago I received the usual e-mail I get every year from a Google Recruiter. Apparently my name must be in one of their databases of possible candidates from the days when I was actively seeking a position there. They like to check on me every once in a while. Here’s what I wrote back: Hi <recruiter name>, thanks for getting back to me. I understand that this is a general position open to anybody who applies. I’m quite familiar […]