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June 11, 2005
3D Mice
Tim O'Reilly had an interesting little write-up called O'Reilly Radar > Report on visit to Sensors Expo over on O'Reilly Radar. Jonathan Gennick went to see this expo where companies were showing off some of the current advances in ZigBee based sensor technology.
One of the devices was a small "three-axis accelerometer about the size of your little fingernail." The demo involved moving this device around to select items on a menu. Jonathan made a suggestion that this could be used to make a ring that you could wear on your finger and use as a mouse in three dimensions.
The funny thing is I had an equivalent device in the mid-to-late 90s. It was called a "Ring Mouse" and it was ultrasound-based. My wife was looking at various alternatives to a traditional mouse, and this was one of the ideas we tried.
It sounds like a cool idea and the "ring toss game" that came with the mouse made it look like it would actually. Unfortunately, in actual usage it was horrible. Any time you moved your hand (in the field of the sensor) the mouse moved, whether you meant it to or not. When you did want to move the mouse, you ended up with your arm up in the air instead of resting on the desk. I found my arm was always tired and using it was uncomfortable. I did give it a couple of weeks before giving up.
This is definitely one of those ideas that sounds better in demo-land than in actual use.
January 30, 2004
Review of SVG Essentials
SVG Essentials
J. David Eisenberg
O'Reilly, 2002
A little over a year ago I bought and read SVG Essentials by J. David Eisenberg. At the time, I was moving from dabbling in SVG to beginning a contract which required the use of SVG.
This book provides a good working overview of SVG. I have seen several articles that showed how to produce specific effects or that explored a piece of SVG functionality. I've also read the W3C specifications. This book provides the practical information you need to actually use SVG.
One interesting point about the book is it's lack of spectacular graphics. The author states that this is by intent. Most of the pictures only illustrate one, or a small number, of features at a time. He also states that he doesn't want the pictures to overwhelm the novice SVG user that would be discouraged by not being able to produce beautiful work equal to the art in some books.
If you need a refresher on vector graphics or if you want to explore this new XML application, this book is definitely recommended.