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On June 21st 2011 announced Ren Ng launch new camera company Lytro. Company is going to introduce new type of camera, which will allow to capture multiple focused scene. Bussiness plan is based on his PhD thesis from Stanford University with title DIGITAL LIGHT FIELD PHOTOGRAPHY.

Under Un*x like command line environment is nice way, how to compare files in two sub directory trees, current-dir and new-dir, two versions of the same command are shown:

$ cd current-dir
current-dir$ find . -type f -not -exec cmp {} ../new-dir/{} ";" -print
current-dir$ find . -type f ! -exec cmp {} ../new-dir/{} ; -print

find – search for files in a directory hierarchy
cmp – compare two files byte by byte
diff – compare files line by line

New IBM supercomputer Sequoia will be built, tested and benchmarked in IBM’s Rochester, Minnesota plant, home of the Blue Gene class of supercomputers the company builds for ultra-scale computational applications.  The hardware and software development will by provided by IBM engineers in Rochester and by researchers in IBM’s Yorktown Heights, N.Y. research lab, in partnership with the Lawrence Livermore National Lab and the Argonne National Lab. Sequoia is expected to deliver world-leading efficiency of 3,050 calculations per watt of energy. See PostBulletin, IBM Press release.

As soon as one needs more than just to connect small/office/bussiness network to the internet, there is a need for more router specifics. Here are some interesting options:

• Belkin Play Max Wireless Router: + 2 USB ports for printer, scanner, external hard drive, Gigabit WAN port, 4x Gigabit WAN ports, not sure how many VPN connections. It is #2 from Top10 list
• Cisco WRV210: 10 VPN connections(QuickVPN client), 5 net to net, 10/100 Mbps, looks like full of features
• Cisco RV120W:  newer than wrv210, 10/100Mbps, 5 VPN connections, also IPv6,…
• Cisco RV220W: is probably the newest small router with VPN capability, full of features., price is about $270 on Amazon as of Mar-3 2011.

Typical price is around $100, of course there are more devices for more bucks…

Recently I copied directories – databases. Each table had files  with extension  frm, MYD, and MYI. Later,  I saw in phpmyadmin db name #mysql50#mydatab instead of expected name of database (and directory) mydatab. I was able to fix this problem by following command:
…\mysql>bin\mysqlcheck.exe -u root --check-upgrade --fix-db-names --fix-table-names #mysql50#mydatab
The reason is simply MySQL is now allowing all character sets.

To find a files is helpful tool, if debugging some problems. Unix utility find allows many arguments, today I found useful argument mmin. Command  
find . -mmin -10 -mmin +5
finds files modified between 6 and 9 minutes ago.

Almost all modern web browsers are nowadays able to render SVG code. Here is example of the pies. From SVG to PNG format converted by http://www.fileformat.info/convert/image/svg2raster.htm  Bellow is code highlighted by tohtml.com and resulting picture.

<svg width="480" height="180" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<!-- Pies examples by Josef 2011-Feb-23-->
<defs>
 <g id="quarter_pies">
  <path d="M0,0 L0,-200  A200,200 0 0,1  200,000  z" 
    style="fill:#ff0000;fill-opacity: 1;stroke:black;stroke-width: 1"/>
  <path d="M0,0 L-200,0  A200,200 0 0,1    0,-200 z" 
    style="fill:green;fill-opacity: 1;stroke:black;stroke-width: 1"/>
  <path d="M0,0 L0,200   A200,200 0 0,1 -200,0    z" 
    style="fill:blue;fill-opacity: 1;stroke:black;stroke-width: 1"/>
  <path d="M0,0 L200,0   A200,200 0 0,1    0,200  z" 
    style="fill:pink;fill-opacity: 1;stroke:black;stroke-width: 1"/>
 </g>
 <g id="one_quarter_pie">
  <path d="M0,0 L0,-200  A200,200 0 0,1    200,0  z" 
    style="fill:#ff0000;fill-opacity: 1;stroke:black;stroke-width: 1"/>
  <path d="M0,0 L200,0   A200,200 0 1,1    0,-200 z" 
    style="fill:green;fill-opacity: 1;stroke:black;stroke-width: 1"/>
 </g>
 <g id="exploded_quarter_pie">
  <path d="M30,-30 L30,-230  A200,200 0 0,1  230,-30  z" 
    style="fill:#ff0000;fill-opacity: 1;stroke:black;stroke-width: 1"/>
  <path d="M0,0 L200,0   A200,200 0 1,1    0,-200 z" 
    style="fill:green;fill-opacity: 1;stroke:black;stroke-width: 1"/>
 </g>
</defs>

 <rect x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" fill="#fde"></rect>
 <text x="110"  y="28"
   style="font-family: Arial;font-size: 26;stroke:red; fill:red;">Quater Circle Pies</text>
 <use transform="translate(60,100) scale(0.25,0.25)" xlink:href="#quarter_pies"></use>
 <use transform="translate(180,100)  scale(0.25,0.25)" xlink:href="#one_quarter_pie"></use>
 <use transform="translate(300,100)  scale(0.25,0.25)" xlink:href="#exploded_quarter_pie"></use>
 <use transform="translate(420,100)  scale(0.25,0.25) rotate(-45)" xlink:href="#exploded_quarter_pie"></use>
</svg>

Update: There is now tool to create pie chart.

Would you like to have a self-replicating machine? What about self-replicating 3D printer? There is a  free 3D desktop printer capable of printing itself, or it’s own plastic parts, to be precise. The metal parts and electronics are not printed. Yet.

Printer RipRep can print various plastic parts, including it’s own parts. After initial model Darwin came second generation Mendel, the latest stable model  is variant Prusa Mendel. Distribution and copying is under GPL like license. Principal author is Adrian Bowyer from Department of Mechanical Engineering,  Faculty of Engineering and Design, University of Bath, UK. It’s possible to build own printer for maybe less than $700. There is a lot of usefull things, which can be printed, like glasses or shoes. Objects are described by files with extension AOI – Art of Illusion.

Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is the name for the Annex G extension of the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression standard. One of the leaders in implementing this standard is company Vidyo with their solution. It looks like the major problem with SVC  is interoperability betwen various implementations. There are several articles/posts regarding this issue: Network World, December 13, 2010: It’s Time to Take Another Look at H.264 SVC,  VTC talk, November 8, 2010: Polycom adopting h.264 SVC, SVC++ from Magor Corp.a Is Scalable Video Coding Interoperable? , Telepresence Options September 25, 2009: Is H.264 SVC the Video Conferencing/Chat Panacea? – Excellent Telepresence Industry Professionals Discussion.  Company IMMEDIA Semiconductor is making chips processing SVC, and it has nice pictures describing how SVC works. And more...

IBM announced that its inventors received a record 5,896 U.S. patents in 2010, marking the 18th consecutive year it has topped the list of the world’s most inventive companies. IBM became the first company to be granted as many as 5,000 U.S. patents in a single year.Here is  table compiled from readily available resources:

2010: 5896
2009: 4914
2008: 4186
2007: 3148
2006: 3621
2005: 2941
2004: 3248
2003: 3415
2002: 3288
2001: 3411
2000: 2886
1999: 2756
1998: 2658
1997: 1724
1996: 1867
1995: 1383
1994: 1298
1993: 1085(2)  #1 US Goverment:1165
1992:  842(6)  #1 Canon:1106
1991:  679(8)  #1 Toshiba:1014
1990:     (9)