2009-07-13 Software Roller Coaster

I've been on a delightfully enjoyable and crazy software roller coaster these past few months.
It all started with trying out the new Qt Creator.

My original idea was to write a surveillance program that would use input from webcams. Sort of like a primitive video recorder with time lapse capability and maybe even motion detection.

Then I thought it would be nice to visualize the input in 3D by projecting the image back on a model of the room that is being monitored. I learned OpenGL (properly this time) and started to create a virtual model of our apartment. That was when I complained about the alpha/z-order problem.

Then I saw the zombie game on YouTube. I spend an entire day trying to figure out the math of inverse projection. Eventually I discovered OpenCV and was hooked for at least two weeks. OpenCV makes computer vision look easy. Very impressive.

Now it turns out that my scene description (the apartment model) is less than ideal. So I'm re-engineering my parser, using the Qt XML module. Creating an XML format was straight forward enough. Creating an XML schema (XSD rocks, DTD stinks) is on my agenda for tomorrow and maybe the day after that. A render engine is nothing but a different kind of XSLT, when you think of it.

Moral: If you're into all sorts of stuff, a short attention span is an asset, not a liability.

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Jade excursion to Clip'n Climb.

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15 days!