ICTExpo 2013, Helsinki

I was to the ICTExpo yesterday, the most interesting thing must have been these old computers that Tietotekniikan liitto had on display :)

TeleType KSR 33 (1963-1981)

Osborne 1, C64, Telmac TMC-600 and a Nokia MikroMikko

Also, I like to dabble with NFC and got myself a demo/testing pack with a NFC card and a USB reader (ACR122U).

ACR122U reader

This was also nice to play with, on display at Cubio:s booth, a BlackBerry Z10. (Should be available in Finland next month, price quote was a "very clear" 600-700€. I'd recommend getting it from Amazon or some other out-of-Finland shop for now.

Z10

GPS, Mapping and picture taking

This news reminded me of how absurd it can sometimes be when doing mapping work. I was a couple of years back in Limnos, Greece on a two week holiday.

Mmm, good food

As I've been an OpenStreetMapper since about 2006 I of course wanted to check out the if it had been mapped or not. Only some very rough main roads had been drawn there. This was just a bit after OSM got the nice Yahoo/Bing aerial photos and luckily for me there where quite good aerial photos of Limnos. So mapping I went, from my home and couple of thousand kilometers away. And got it mostly mapped in time for my travels.

Limnos map, looks good or what ? :)

Yeah, whatever I hear you thinking, what does this have anything to do with China ?

Limnos has a heavy army presence, there are many military bases and bunkers all around and a large radar installation. And for example the airport/airfield is a military area (you can even make out the planes/helicopers in the aerial images). And of course you aren't allowed to take any photos anywhere near these places.

No, not a military base (but there is one not far from here). Myrina.

What makes this absurd is that everything is available on the Internet anyway. And if some neighbouring enemy country would like to bomb the hell out of some base, all they need to do is fire up Bing maps or Google maps to find them.3

So why the hell can't a tourist take photos of these places ? Just wondering...

More QML Box2D progress and github

To start with, I pushed my enhanced version of the qml-box2d bindings to github.

It is based on Box2D 2.2.1 and adds more features:
Joint release/grab, WeldJoint, WheelJoint, FrictionJoint, Edge shape support, more properties and methods (gravityScale, getMass(), getInertia(), angularVelocity, etc) and Body fixture iteration.

Here are some videos showing usage of PulleyJoint and RopeJoin:

PulleyJoint

RopeJoint

Have fun! (oh, Qt 4.7 or 4.8 only!)