How to Touch Your Music, RFID and the Arduino

By Peter Backx | Published: January 18, 2011
160inONE_electronic_project_kit

Get back something physical in this increasingly virtual world. The latest experiment of “I Miss My Pencil” (embedded below) really struck a chord with me. It allows you to store music digitally and still have an analogue way of interacting with them. I had been thinking of ripping my entire CD collection and replacing it with a set of RFID-enabled cards for a while. The idea is that you pick a card, touch it to the reader and the music starts playing. So I set about to figure out what it takes to create an RFID interface.

Read More »

Posted in Music | Comments closed

The Trouble With NoSQL

By Peter Backx | Published: January 14, 2011
nosql_tapes

If you’ve been following the developer community in 2010, you’ve probably heard the term NoSQL mentioned thousands of times. Maybe you’ve heard it mentioned so many times you’re sick of it and might have missed what it’s all about. And that would be a bad thing, NoSQL does in fact solve some hard problems and is here to stay. Don’t worry if you’ve missed the boat last year, there are a lot of great resources on the net to get you started right away.

Read More »

Posted in Java and JavaScript | Comments closed

App Inventor, Android Development for Every One

By Peter Backx | Published: January 11, 2011
lots_of_androids

App Inventor opens up mobile Android development to the masses. Last summer, Google released App Inventor, a tool that lets you create Android applications without writing a single line of code. If you want to quickly get up to speed, try out the following resources.

Read More »

Posted in Java and JavaScript | Comments closed

Creating a Blog Post Idea in 15 Minutes, the Web Application

By Peter Backx | Published: January 7, 2011
writers_block

If you’d like to write better blog post and in less time than you’re used to, we’ve got a web application for that. The interactive blog post idea generator helps you focus your thoughts and structure them in an understandable and clear way. It’s not a magic solution but it might help you when you’re low on ideas or morale.

Try the post idea generator right away, or read on for the technical details.

Read More »

Posted in Java and JavaScript | Comments closed

Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Modding Overview

By Peter Backx | Published: January 4, 2011
gta_bttf_loading_screen

Are you ready for a serious time drain?

Game enthusiasts and developers are taking the Grand Theft Auto games’ world and expanding it beyond your wildest dreams. Come and join the fun.

Read More »

Posted in Games and Oldskool Fun | Comments closed

Looking Forward, Streamhead in 2011

By Peter Backx | Published: December 31, 2010
happy_new_year

The end of the year is not only a time to look back, but also forward. Read on for what’s in store for Streamhead. It’s going to be a great year, so make sure you don’t miss a post. If you become a Facebook fan, you not only get the latest posts, but also a bunch of supremely interesting links. Or if you prefer to receive the posts by mail, use the field just below this post. And of course, there’s always the feed to bend Streamhead to your every wish.

But enough about that, let’s get to the plans.

Read More »

Posted in On Streamhead | Comments closed

Building the Io Language on Windows

By Peter Backx | Published: December 28, 2010
io_building_on_windows

Trying out new programming languages is fun, building Io on Windows is not. The Io language is developed on Mac OS X and it shows. There are no binary builds and you need a fairly standard *nix based system to compile it. Here are the steps to get Io running on Windows (and why you might want to).

Read More »

Posted in New Media and the World | Comments closed

Natural Language User Interface for the Social Web

By Peter Backx | Published: December 24, 2010
language_of_the_birds

Ubiquity lets you browse the social web by typing, not pointing. In 2008, Mozilla Labs launched an ambitious project: a natural language interface for the web 2.0. It is now no longer in active development, but is still maintained to be compatible with the latest Firefox. So you can still enjoy this mature piece of research.

Read More »

Posted in Graphics, Visuals and Texts | Comments closed

9 Guidelines to Enjoy Blogging

By Peter Backx | Published: December 21, 2010
three_year_of_blogging

Two weeks ago, Streamhead turned 3. Combined with the years end, it seems like a great idea to look back and reflect on why you might want to write your own blog and how you can enjoy the process in the long run. Because if you don’t, you’re probably not going to last a long time. So in this post I present 9 guidelines that help me keep going.

Read More »

Posted in On Streamhead | Comments closed

Continuous Testing JavaScript with Jasmine and Rhino

By Peter Backx | Published: December 17, 2010
Jasmin & Rhino for JavaScript BDD

“I found the shift from thinking in tests to thinking in behaviour so profound that I started to refer to TDD as BDD, or behaviour driven development.” – Dan North

Jasmine is a BDD framework for JavaScript. It is similar to easyb, which I mentioned previously in my Eclipse plugins round-up. It does have a few problems: running it involves opening a browser, which is cumbersome when doing continuous integration. The Build Doctor has a solution.

Read More »

Posted in Java and JavaScript | Comments closed