A good electronic store in Sham Shui Po

It is ashamed that there are not many stores in Hong Kong providing great services. WECL is not one of them, despite it is located in a rather poor neighborhood in Apliu Street, Sham Shui Po. There are many street hawkers on the street and all sorts of electronic stores along both sides. Check out photos of Apliu Street on flicker.

The store is well organized and the stuff are and helpful. I believe the management of WECL has done a good job and deserved much kudos for them; I hope more retailers in Hong Kong would follow suit.

Store details below:
WECL 華輝
G/F & 1/F, 201 Apliu Street, Sham Shui Po, Kowloon.
Hotline: (852) 3182 0888 Fax: (852) 3182 0808
Email: cs@wecl.com.hk

First Arduino Test: Blinking LED

Just to test if the Arduino Duemilanove (ATmega328) board works. :-)

'Frankencamera': A Giant Leap For Digital Photos?

Computer scientists at Stanford University say the new camera works something like an iPhone: It can be altered in nearly infinite ways, depending on the applications downloaded to it...

According to Computer science professor Marc Levoy of Stanford, these are just a couple of examples of how programmers could change the future of photography with the Frankencamera. The key is that the camera uses a Linux operating system. All digital cameras are essentially minicomputers, says Levoy, and they can be modified a bit by the photographer. But the manufacturer determines what features are available. Linux is "open source," which means the camera owner can change everything about the electronic guts.


Still, the Frankencamera is only a prototype at the moment. Presumably, it will become smaller and more elegant over time. But Levoy says his team is not planning to try to compete with Canon or Nikon. "Our goal is not to make a product. Our goal is to try and push traditional camera makers to incorporate more of these flexible ways of producing images in their cameras."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113692571

MIDI and OSC for mobile devices

Mobile devices like the DS and iPhone have become very popular in the world of digital music since they allow for making and interacting with music without sitting in front of your computer. There are complete composition studios for both the DS and the iPhone, but there's also a lot of software for controlling synthesizers and other music software in live performances. The problem with these is is that most music software is controlled via the rather dusty MIDI standard which is not designed for wireless communication. Thus, developers have to invent their own workarounds for using MIDI over Wifi. DSMI is an easy to use library that spares developers this trouble and allows you to focus on your application. The DSMI server running on your computer receives MIDI commands and feeds them to your MIDI applications. DSMI is available as an open source library for the DS and the iPhone. The DSMI server is available for all three major operating systems and it's open source as well.

http://dsmi.tobw.net/index.php?cat_id=1

The Fun Theory

TheFunTheory.com
This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

http://www.rolighetsteorin.se/en/

Finally received the "Getting Started with Arduino Kit"

For the project of Thesis Project - Studio I, I have ordered the Getting Started with Arduino Kit and Making Things Talk from Maker SHED, along with some books (Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, Digital Art & Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art) from amazon on Sep 22.

Got a note in my mailbox to pick up a package on Oct 8, saying first delivery attempt was on Oct 2. The order was shipped on September 24 from CA; it takes 6 business days to reach Hong Kong by priority mail. However, I did not get my hands on it until Oct 9; roughly two and a half week since Sep 22.

Inside the Arduino kit...

• Arduino Duemilanove (ATmega328)
• Getting Started with Arduino book
• USB Cable
• 10 1K Resistors
• 10 10K Resistors
• 1 Tactile Switch
• 1 Photoresistor
• 2 Force Sensing Resistors
• 1 Red LED
• 1 Green LED
• 1 Superbright Blue LED
• 1 RGB LED
• 140 piece Jumper Wire Set
• Breadboard
• 9V Battery Pack w/DC Plug

Along with a couple books received from amazon last week (another by normal shipping), this is going to be a very busy semester...

New links added

• Rhizome
• OpenProcessing: Share Sketches
• DSMI - Nintendo DS Music Interface
• Create Digital Motion
• Create Digital Music
• Maker SHED
• Hack a Day
• Pure Data
• Quartz Composer