Hacking

[da]

This week started off slowly at work, but wow, it picked up nicely. I've been working on the most interesting project I've had in many months: a c++ program to process data from a large IR emitter and sensor array, which reports 3-d positions (within 1/10 a millimeter) for a set of markers within a 3m x 3m x 4m cube space.

I was asked to learn how this machine talks with the computer over the serial line, and figure out if it can report raw 3-d position data for each of 4 sensors, instead of reporting the aggregate position and orientation of the sensors. There's a sample C++ project which fully demoed the program's capabilities, which I've been hacking on. There's no tricky math- and their code is quite well documented. And a friendly support engineer helped me determine that I had the right approach to get the data using their API. I also found a bug in their code, which we're fortunately able to work around.

So I've gone from zero to almost-but-not-quite-there in the last 48 hours. This involved: learning Visual Studio, learning the API, and figuring out enough of this C++ program to be useful. This is what I wish I'd been working on for the last year. I'll be done with this project on Tuesday... (at least I hope I will, because I'm leaving with melted_snowball for Florence on Wednesday, not back until the following Thursday!)

Visual Studio is the best Microsoft product I've ever worked with; I got up to speed quite quickly and the only thing holding me back was, um, a bit of fuzziness on C++ datatypes. Also, I wish I could get the debugger to use the breakpoints I set; I'm having to do more debugging-via-print-statements than I'd prefer.

Comments

[kraig.livejournal.com]

VS 2005 was the first IDE I've used since Borland Pascal 7. Tab completion on function names was a bit unsettling, but it's downright *weird* on variable names. It's nice though, even aside from that (and I've left it turned on while I learn myself some C#.)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

I'd certainly use it again after I finish this project. Though, since I've asked Jason for a mac desktop- if I do use VS for work, it'll likely be via Parallels. :)

[kraig.livejournal.com]

nommy! I'm using it under Fusion, but only at home. Work desktop is a G5. Maybe in a couple or three years, when it's up for evergreening.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

I actually just read that fusion is stabler than parallels 3.0, which is good to know; and indeed my fingers are crossed that Jason's offer in response to my question was an intel mac. (I figured it didn't hurt to ask for a mac, since I much prefer my home mac than my work PC, and expect I'll feel the same way about mac interface vs ubuntu since I haven't done any desktop linux in almost two years! (server, yes, of course)) .

Anyhow: vee shall see.

[kraig.livejournal.com]

I saw an RT to purchase a workstation for "new employee", but didn't look at the details. Unless you really wanted my spare G5 (d's old one ;) ) I don't think you could easily get a PPC Mac even if you wanted one.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Ha ha. I wondered if there was an RT for it yet. ;)

Yeah- intel imac > G5 spare as far as I'm concerned. I don't need to put a RAID inside it, or any other custom h/w, or ...

[kraig.livejournal.com]

I got snoopy and went to look, but now I can't find it again, maybe I imagined things. At any rate, you wouldn't be saddled with some old piece of junk, which is effectively what any PPC hardware is nowadays. (My Powermac G5 is the absolute last revision of the hardware, and it's now over 2 years old...)

[kraig.livejournal.com]

I closed this tab, then went to close the other one and saw the item right there. If you're curious :) -> 20" iMac, 2.4GHz, 2GB, miniDVI adapter cable.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. those are great specs.

Next I guess we'll see if he took my suggestion that a second screen would also make me more productive. :)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

*nods*

*glances at 8-year-old box sitting under his desk*

*considers even more elderly box sitting in the closet as web server*

I should really replace my server with a mac mini. :)

[kraig.livejournal.com]

heh, well, work stuff is work stuff, home stuff is home stuff... :) I have a < 1 year old iMac, but that replaced my 5 year old P4 which went to Linda. :) router's a p3-866 of no particular age, since I put it together from used parts about 4 years ago.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

:-) Yeah, it mildly amused me when da_lj said, "I wonder if I can get a desktop Mac", and I said, "well, I know there's at least one floating around..."

[kraig.livejournal.com]

hah! Dunno if you noticed, but I finally found a use for that 20" Cinema from your lab too... your ex-G5!