Saturday, January 29, 2011

Native Client is releasing in February

Just got the news. They'll be releasing a Beta version of Pepper2 in February. WHOAH!!! That's big news. Finally, a way of releasing on the Internet without redesigning the entire interface from the desktop program. They're doing a service to the world with this one. In my book, this is history in the making. Changes my life, that's for sure.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Break Time

Took a break from Virtual Urantia code. Writing code for the automation system. The truth is, whatever I do for either system is used by both but I am concentrating on aspects that allow the system to be put up on the net for selling of automation products. I'll be concentrating on the timeline for the Urantia book in a couple of weeks. An artificial brain can be used for almost anything, that is, if the entities are basic enough to be able to be put together so that they work in harmony. If this interests you, you can download the system from www.virtualurantia.com and look at the brain or schematic and see how it functions as the thoughts are in graphic form and you can see the language I used to represent the type of interconnections that exist between the connected thoughts. Programming from graphic entities, that's the way to go, that's the future of programming.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Finding words in the Urantia Book and the web

It's getting really close now. I can see the traffic on Native Client going up everyday and I know it's going to happen. This time, I'll have a way of putting the system on the net. It's a sure thing since it's my programming that'll be there.

Right now, you can find multiple words that exist together in the Urantia Book in a paragraph. Fairly easy stuff to do by todays standards. But I'll dig a lot deeper than that. As it stands right now, you can jump really rapidly to any part of the book by using the index. And you can do stuff like make the font large and stuff like that. More, though, is coming. For instance, tell me how far away from a word you want me to look irrespective of paragraph or page. If you choose 200, for instance, I'll give you every 2 or more words that exist within 200 words from each other in the book. For instance 'love' and 'father' 200 words from each other. But there's more, that's just the beginning. Synonyms: Ask for a 'house' and 'Matthew' 300 words from each other and I'll give you  everywhere home, house, abode and place exist 300 words away from Matthew. I did this sort of thing for the publishing system at Douglas aircraft with very little difficulty. Put quotes around some words and I'll give you only the ones that are exact in the book.

Create PDF's of only certain parts of the book. Save notes alongside of your favorite parts and I'll index those also so you can search through your notes. And do this from any computer on the net. I'll have you password protected so that you can hide the notes you don't want seen but any you want shared, you can mark those notes public and the system will pass those on to Urantia book readers and index those also. With the language and the experience I have, I'll be able to do some really wonderful things.

And then when you're feeling artistic, you'll be able to add to a library of Urantia 3d information graphically animated directly on the Internet.

And when you're really feeling like you want to program animated or automated views that connect directly to the book, you can create ways of accessing the book that we have no idea could have existed. You can also take those ways and present them in your own user interface using QML from the QT toolkit. Your graphical ways of animating and connecting buttons will cause things to take place from the Urantia Book. For example, a page full of buttons that start animations, videos, audio or text information relating to Life Carriers. I can't wait to share this programming effort on the Net and have people take advantage of it.

Part of my plan is to make it really easy for Urantia people to intercommunicate about the material of the book. Can you imagine people actually interplaying with the stuff of the book instead of concerning themselves with having to organize, which, of course, is a noble endeavor?

I have a lot of dreams driving me.

Soon now, Native Client will release and my Internet problems will have changed overnight. It's going to be a really fantastic year. If something happens to me, then maybe my dream won't happen but it won't be because I haven't given myself to this endeavor with everything in my heart. This book is just too beautiful. I have to give everything I have to open it's doors to humanity. I can only believe the Universe (Seraphims) are behind me.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Scene Objects and Jerusem Circles

It is in the middle of these times of hardship that we find ourselves. Transitions are always difficult but remember, we're evolving towards perfection and these times are very special. They remove the weeds out of the garden. Failure is the only true mirror of your character. It is from failure that you are freed to decide a new direction for your purpose. These are the times when you find the ones who are sincere in the love for you. It is also the moments where you find more humility from the embarrassment of the lesser side of life. Find someone to love and help them with all sincerity or allow someone to love and help you.

Fixed a few problems with the keyboard manipulation of scenes. Did some code documentation and cleaned up code manipulating the display of complex objects. The initial stages of Qt3d working, very unstable. I still haven't been able to get a good Jerusem object that looks decent into the system. It looks good in Blender but is really bad looking when moving it to the system.

Friday, January 14, 2011

OpenGLES2 with complex objects

One step closer to the Internet. Complex objects now showing with Qt3D. That means the Jerusem Circles will now work on the Internet when I get Native Client up and running. Well, they show but I can't position them yet. Bit by bit, that's the story. Never give up! Never Give In! Tomorrow is another day.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Jerusem Circles

The basics of the Jerusem Circles are pretty much done. I'm having a problem importing 3ds objects from Blender, seems they've changed the way they save mesh (X,Y,Z edges) information on objects exported or my system just doesn't handle all iterations properly. I'll work on getting an input from X3d type objects which Blender does export to also as I'm having a really difficult time trying to figure out why and time is sliding into 2011. I wished I'd done that in Collada, maybe later. Without this one, I can't get complex objects on the screen like the Circles, my system will probably never be used to create these complex objects. I'm about creating, viewing and manipulating the views rather than creating the objects themselves.

I will eventually use the import system that Qt3d is using now, but my mesh arrays are still based on the soon to be deprecated OpenGL system. I still have a picking problem to resolve in Qt3D before I can use it, I think though, I've bugged them enough for a while, their priorities, for now, lie in getting it up and running rather than large scene management and efficiency, at least, that's my guess. I'm waiting for a problem I found before Christmas on their system.

A note about the system itself. The system uses a primitive brain made of schematics that connect thoughts together and these thoughts can output to any 3d scene, that is, to any 3d object. Whether it be sensors from the real world or internal sensors from buttons or events, the system is able to animate objects directly, either on an on/off world or the world of analog (0 to100% ranges) and more. Events control these 3d object in such a way as to represent a directly animated view of position and events using size, position, rotation, color, transparency and the like. For instance, I can easily animate the size and color variation on blood vessels in a 3d body so that you can see, in real-time,  the blood pressure. Our brains thinks in 3d, not in 2d, so there is no conversion necessary, as is the case with writing like this tome. You get used to seeing blood vessel sizes and color variations. I could easily show a beating heart that follows the heart beating accurately on screen. There is no limit to the world of 3d, that's why I believe it is the answer to presenting detailed complex information out of the book.

The financial side of the system is very important and I am making strides there also, without funds, I can't hire 3d object creators and view creators. At this stage I can't imagine being funded by anyone within the Ubook's community. With this in mind, on the automation front, I should be receiving the instrumentation for a Wago based system and that uses a protocol called Modbus Ethernet. I can use it from any operating system and I prefer Kubuntu Linux over Windows. I'll probably get into Apple but they're too proprietary and I'm trying to get away from anything that locks me in, that is, on direct automation control. Also Linux is the king of embedded devices, like phones and small controllers, like 3d TV and such. Viewing is a different story though, that, I will, I hope, run from any browser on any operating system using Native Client. A protocol, by the way, is a way for computers to talk to the real world of sensory data, it's a language where the real world can synchronize to the high speed of computers. Up to now, I've mainly supported OPC (Open Process Control), but that runs only on Windows for now, so it's not really an open protocol.

I had one viewer today, not much traffic on this blog, but at least I'm not just writing this for just me. A large part of my life has been given up to this system and it is a labor of love. I really want to do something worthy of my time here before I leave this place. That is, if I'm diligent, persistent and continue under all the circumstances that befall a programmer/developer like me.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Scene Objects and Jerusem Circles

Finished the basic structure of the Jerusem Circles. Actually pretty simple stuff, the complications will come when I add animations to the promenades. I tried placing the Jerusem circles into it's own scene as a prelude to actually installing them onto the sphere of Jerusem itself. Seems I've introduced all kinds of problems (bugs) into my complex scene object library going over to OpenGl ES2. And to top it off, I didn't document how my scene objects get imported into my library from the source itself. It's time to do more documentation of the source code. So, study, study, study, that's the theme for a while. Doxygen seems to be the eminent package for creating source code documentation. So, a bit of study and I should be on my way to documenting and understanding the code I created for inserting the Circles into my library. I'll be using the same code for all complex objects like the 7 other circles that are on Jerusem. Still, it will take a while to finish these circles as I have a multi-headed problem here. First, the level of complexity in these objects preclude being able to present them in the Jerusem scene all at once. Most computers will just be taken to their knees if they have to deal with that level of complexity and present all the spheres of the system at once.

To handle this situation, I'll develop my own level of detail (LOD) engine. The LOD engine works this way; say Jerusem is a small dot on the screen, the computer doesn't know that it shouldn't draw every detail on the face of Jerusem. It just crunches all the math for every detail of every circle no matter the size of Jerusem. That 's the nature of traveling closer and farther away from objects in a computer scene. So it's up to me to put in code that says, Jerusem's a dot, control how detailed the circles and Jerusem are. What you want is that the detail level increases the closer you get to any given circle. So I have the computer say to itself, 'Hey I'm this close, so increase the LOD'.  When you're on the circle itself, the whole thing is really clear. Even then, how can I possibly show 150,000 pearly gates with full detail? So a lot of math to be done here. On any of the newer computers, there is an engine that reduces polygon count on an object, it's called a geometry shader. Well I'll have to use that when it's available, if not, brute math will need to be done to get it working on a computer that has no shader for it.

No one said this was going to be easy!!!! I have no idea how I'm going to figure this out. A lot of study to be done for that one. But first back to complex objects for today. And picking on OpenGl ES2? Well that'll have to wait for now. Native Client may be close to release but I'm not ready for it yet. At least, I'll be able to put the basics of the whole system on the Internet, with or without the ability to select an object on screen. 

God, I hope my brain keeps working in my old age, after all, I am almost 60 now. I really need to get this system to a place where others will grasp how important it is to place Urantia Book information into a 3d system. The thing about the Urantia book that stands out above everything else is it's unwavering consistency when addressing structurally complex information. When the depth of the interconnected complexity is seen, I can't imagine anyone ignoring it's unwavering consistency. It outshines even the scientific community of our day. 

There's a strange stubbornness to the human race in general, a kind of built in resistance to change and the Urantia Book is a really big change to common religious belief. First, a lot of it is deep intellectual stuff. This resistance is there for a reason, of course, it's a built phenomena that helps us from drifting backward when we take a jump in evolution, either physically or socially. If you resist a change then when you adopt that change, the level of resistance you had first to the change has two effects. First, it makes you question the change, the more the resistance, the more the questioning so that insures that the jump you're going to take is well founded. Second the same resistance will keep you from changing back. 

I remember a 67 year old women that did accounting in 1986 for a firm I worked for. She looked at the keyboard of her computer and said 'Do you really expect me to learn this crap?'. She was working up to 6 days a week and didn't want the difficulty of learning computers. The boss was forcing her into using computers to account for the business. After the accounting training, I didn't get a call from her. The call came from her boss 7 months later. He wanted me put in an upgrade to the program I had written for them. When I got there, she didn't want me touch her computer, she had gone from working 6 days a week to doing it all in one day a week and she didn't want to take the chance that I would send her back to the old days when it would take that long to do the work.. Funny huh! She resisted going into it and would resist going backward after accepting the change.
 I started the system on June 2nd, 1996. It'll be 15 years come June 2nd and it's just now beginning to be capable of animating parts of the Urantia Book.