Sunday, September 23, 2012

Film Photography: Visita ao Zoo


Filme é coisa do passado, certo? Mais ou menos. Algumas pessoas ainda insistem no filme. Não é tão fácil como antigamente, mas em Piracicaba, minha cidade natal, conheço dois lugares que ainda revelam filmes coloridos. É possível comprar filmes nas lojas de fotografia, mas comprar no Ebay sai muito mais barato. Há também  a moda da Lomografia, mas não vou falar dela aqui.

Film photography  is dead, right. I would not be so sure. Some people still prefer analogic photograpy. It is not so easy to find photo shops which are still  processing film. However I know two places at Piracicaba, my hometown, that process coloured film. You  still can buy very cheap film st at Ebay.  There is a new trend called Lomography, but I am not going to discuss it here.

O Zoológica Municipal de Piracicaba fica no meu bairro. Faz mais de dez anos que eu não ia lá. Como a entrada é gratuita, resolver tirar algumas fotos lá

The Piracicaba's Zoo is located on my neighborhood. It has beem more than a decaded that I do not visit it. As the entrance is free, I decided to go there and take some shoot.

Equipamento/Equipment

Eu usei a Canon 3000N Date que comprei no Mercado Livre por R$200.
I used Canon 3000N Date that I bought from Mercado Livre, an "Ebay" for Argentine and Brazil

O filme é um Ilford XP2, um filme britânico que, embora seja preto e branco, pode ser revelado como se fosse colorido, ou seja, ele é cromogênico. Comprei no Ebay.
The filme is the british Ilford XP2. It is a cromogenic film. The final result is black'n'white, but is processed like a color film. Bought at Ebay.



Algumas Fotos/ Some Shots


Arara/Macaw


Avestruz/Ostrich


Iguana



Ilha dos Macacos Pregos/Robust capuchin monkey's island

Jabuti/Tortoise


Jaguatirica/Ocelot





 Pavão/Peacock


Tucano/Toucan




Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Learn, Develop, Package and Ship!


After more than 6 years writing code that would anyway end up  in a mobile phone, I finally wrote one that people can opt out :-)

I am in pretty busy stage of my life trying to finish my Master before the end of the year. But I found a couple of hours to learn something about AndEgine. It is a Game Engine for Android. that I learned about in the StackOverflow site. You certainly should give it a try. It makes the thing pretty easy.

So I tried to implement something simple and silly: the classical bouncing ball example. I used the Physical Extension of AndEngine to make the ball react to shaking and gravity. The physics are not perfect : how can it be if you are using 2D vectors for a 3D world? Here is the result:


And then I thought: "Why not turning this knowledge I've just acquired into a product?". So I put this lovely Live Wallpaper  in the Google Play. Click on the badge bellow to get it :

Android app on Google Play


Some stats from the first week:

  • 35 installs
  • 20 of them are active
  • Users from US, Italy, Spain, Egypt, India, Chile, Panamá, Croatia. 
  • Mostly Android 2.3
Those numbers give some insights to those wondering whether to enter or no in the mobile market.  The app is simple, I haven't done any announcement about it so far, and yet it got pretty decent download numbers. Of course, it's a free app, so people are more willing to download it.