The Great Phone Debate

I've been in far too many discussions about what smartphone people should jump to.  I've seen people argue for everything from iPhones to Blackberries (Right when they were dying).  It's always interesting to see why people choose the phones they do, but I do think that each phone (iPhone, Android, Windows Phones, etc.) serve their own purposes.  So with the announcements of the new iPhones, Android phones, and Windows phones, I figured I would make a short guide based on my observations for this.  As a couple of notes: I have owned multiple iPhones, Android phones, and of course the classic flip phones.  I've used Windows phones and Blackberries that friends have, and have of course looked into each of these based on my needs.

The Oculus Rift vs The HTC Vive

Last week, I got the chance to go to Oculus Connect and try out all of the latest demos.  It was a blast, and I met a ton of incredible people.  Shortly after arriving back in Virginia however,I found out that HTC and Valve's Vive Truck Tour was in Washington D.C. for their final day, and proceeded to head up to D.C. to try out their demos as well.  It was great timing, as I had already had time to think about the Oculus Rift demos I tried, and got to make some fantastic comparisons between the two.  The following is a quick write-up of my thoughts on both of them.

The Millennial Gold Rush for Data

Before you start reading, I would like to stress that I am not an expert in this field.  These are my ramblings based on what I have read, patterns I have noticed, and my own personal theories.  There may or may not be truth to this, and while I have done a decent amount of research, I do not work in this field directly, and cannot specifically comment on all aspects of it.  With that said, let's begin:

With all of the "hype" in regards to big data, I've slowly begun looking into what the growth for big data is going to be like as far as the job market is concerned.  What's interesting is that this entirely depends on which part of the market you plan to go in to.  For example, if you plan to learn about processing this data, your market value is very high from what I have read, probably for the next five to ten years, until we have the process mostly automated.  But if you plan to go into the gathering sector, there really isn't a way to determine how long you'll be able to rely on your skill set.  The reason for this is that gathering data is becoming more and more like a gold rush, instead of something long term.  This is what interests me, as I believe it is a very valuable skill set to have right now, partially because I believe more "gold deposits" will be found in the future still.  Thus I have been analyzing these "gold deposits" in order to gain a better understanding of what they are, where they come from, what their value is, and how to find them.

Journey into the World of Hardware

Deciding whether to focus on software development or hardware development has been a very difficult choice for me.  Due to the cost of hardware, I decided to focus on software, but now that I am working full time and have the ability to purchase hardware, I've slowly begun focusing on catching up in the world of hardware.  This is a short brain-dump of what I've learned so far, good starting points, and more, for those interested in getting started with hardware development.

What not to do on a resume

With the job and internship hunting seasons among us, I've had a few people ask me to look over their resumes, and wanted to share some public advice for those that are job hunting, and want to further improve their resumes.  I'll try to remember to link mine once I've finished updating it again (Even though I have a job, I like to maintain it still), but for now, here's a few tips for polishing your resume.  Please note that these tips are geared more towards technical resumes, though some of these tips may apply to non-technical resumes too.

HoloLens is Just the Start

If you've looked at any tech website in the past week, you've probably seen something about HoloLens, Microsoft's fantastic attempt to finally bring augmented reality to the world.  I have to hand it to you Microsoft, they did this very well, and what they have looks fantastic.  While I've been impressed by Google Glass, I've talked about the one thing its been missing to make it perfect: A depth sensor.  Based on what I've seen, it looks like HoloLens is finally adding that, and boy does it look nice.  The best part is, this is only the beginning of augmented reality for consumers!

Why to wait on 4K

I've seen a few people start getting excited about 4K TVs, monitors, and more, and I keep coming back to the same question: Why is everyone buying them now?  Don't get me wrong, higher resolution screens are nice, and 4K screens look fantastic, but that's not the next step in resolution jumps.  In fact, 4K is just a beginning step, and upgrading this early on is kind of like buying a 720p television when HD was just coming out: It's better to wait!

Standing out in a World of Code

This is an interesting question that I've been asked a whole lot recently.  A lot of people want to know how they can make their code stand out for jobs, and what it takes to do so.  The interesting thing is, you don't have to be a fantastic coder to do so.  In fact, standing out is pretty simple in the world of software development, you just have to know yourself fairly well.  So for today's post, I want to go over a few ways that can help you stand out, whether it's at your school, a job interview, or just online in general, here are my top three tips for standing out in today's world of code!

Is C++ a Relevant Language?

This has been a nagging question to me for a few years now, and is part of the reason I stopped coding as much a few years ago, only to pick it back up again over the past two years: Just how useful is it to learn a programming language like C++?  No, I'm not talking about python wrappers for it, or C#, or something "similar" like Java (and no, they are not similar like you may think).  I'm talking about low level C++, down to the metal, with just you and your compiler (IDE optionally too).  Had you asked me 2 years ago, I probably would have said C++ is just for gaming.  Ask me now, and I'll tell you it is still one of the most relevant languages out there.  Let's go over a few things about why C++ is a big deal, and why you should learn it if you don't know it.

Launching Into 2015

Man, it seems like I was just starting this blog a year ago when 2014 began.  While things have slowed down in recent weeks, I can assure everyone that it's not for a lack of what to write about.  In fact, as of now, I have almost too much to write about!  Thus, to save some time and make a quick post about what to expect from me in 2015, read on!

Setup for 3DS Homebrew

Well, it's finally here!  The 3DS homebrew scene is live and ready to start.  With everything out in the open, I thought I'd do a quick tutorial on how to install everything to your 3DS, and what you can and can't do with it.

Setting up your 3DS

The first thing you will need is a 3DS (duh), an SD Card, internet access on your 3DS, and the game "Cubic Ninja".  This can either be a physical cartridge, or the version off of the Nintendo eShop (Japan only) [This has been taken down as of now].  Once you have this, go to the main menu of Cubic Ninja, select "Create", then select "QR code", and finally select "Scan QR Code".  This should open up a view from your 3DS' camera, and allow you to scan a QR code with it.

Once there, go to http://www.smealum.net/ninjhax/ and select your 3DS version, click submit, and it should present you with a nice QR code you can scan.  Scan this with your 3DS and you should see a screen like this pop up:

Don't forget to make sure that your 3DS has an internet connection as well to download part of the exploit.  Now you can choose to either run a homebrew application, or install it to the save file of the game.  This allows you to not have to worry about using the QR code in the future or needing an internet connection, so I highly recommend doing this, as it can be uninstalled later if you so choose.  Once this is done, you are all set and can begin using homebrew applications!

Running Homebrew

To run homebrew applications, you simply need to put the a boot.3dsx file on the root directory of your SD card, and then when you launch NinjHax, it will run your application.  My recommendation is to download a homebrew launcher and just leave that as the file, so that you can launch other homebrew applications with it.  It's a pretty simple process, but if you have questions, feel free to post them below.

To add other homebrew applications to the homebrew launcher, simply create a folder called "3ds", and place folders contain the boot.3dsx files of homebrew applications within there.  If you wish to make icons for your games, simply place them in an application's directory as "icon.bin" files.  You can use the SMDH tool included with devkitPro to make them, or look into my application over at https://github.com/gemisis/SMDH-Creator (Windows only).

When it comes to what you can run, please be aware that this does NOT run pirated games.  It ONLY runs homebrew applications.  We do NOT support piracy and will NOT be adding support in.

Deleting Homebrew

Should you ever wish to delete the homebrew save file on Cubic Ninja, all you have to do is hold L+R+X+Y on the main menu, and it will prompt you to delete the game's save data.  Click yes, and poof!  All of the homebrew stuff will be gone.  This can also be used to update the launcher in the future, as you can just delete it, and then reinstall it.

Creating Homebrew

Creating homebrew is a bit trickier, and requires knowledge of C.  As of right now, most of the tools are available from https://www.github.com/smealum/ctrulib.  There is also a quick install tutorial there, though I may add one on here in the future if a need arrives.  Using the libraries is a topic for another post, so I'll try to go over making a simple application at another time.

I hope this all seems pretty straight forward!  If you have can questions or comments, post them below!  Happy homebrewing!

Photos of the Month - August 2014

A bit more delayed then I would have liked, but here are my favorite photos from the month of August!

A nice dinner one night!  I await the inevitable criticism of my cooking though XD

An icy cold warehouse, with ice forming in the warm 85 degree weather.

The mountains of Virginia!

Sadly no traveling for this picture, just a trip to Busch Gardens!

This upcoming month will prove to be challenging since my phone's camera is now destroyed.  Guess I'm gonna have to look into upgrade to an actual camera!

Photos of the Month - July 2014

The month of July was a rather crazy month.  For those who don't know, I got the chance to go to Mountain View California and interview with Google at their headquarters.  It was an insane experience, and while I still don't know if I got the job, I had a great time and got a ton of pictures!  So for this month's photos, here are a ton of neat pictures from California (With one or two from Virginia too)!

Cooking up Hash Tables

Originally I was thinking I should rename this post, but I've decided to go ahead and keep the name since I find it kind of funny. That said, hash tables are super cool, and a really important data structure that I believe you should absolutely know.  Even Googlers says they are one of the most important data structures around.  So how exactly do you implement a simple hash table?  Let's go ahead and explore this!

A Shady Browser

Before I begin, this is yet another post inspired by Michael C. Johnson, so I just want to give another shout-out to him!  Most of the code from this is just re-purposed code from http://www.learningwebgl.com/ as well due to laziness, so shout out to them too!

With all of this talk about shaders, I started thinking about the best way to demonstrate shaders through my blog.  I think they're pretty neat to mess with, and are very important to understand how to use due to the fact that they play such a huge role in 3D graphics today.

Fading with Shaders

This is a fun little post I thought I could do really quick.  While I'm still getting the hang of using shaders and such, recently I thought of something that I thought was kind of clever to do with shaders.  This is a quick post about what the problem was and how I solved it.  Shout out to Michael C. Johnson for suggesting to blog about this!

Photos of the Month - June 2014

With June finally over, it's time for some new photos of the month!  While not as high of quality as last months, I still found these to be quite good!

Google Cardboard - A Perfect Start for Virtual Reality

Man, it seems like I've been on a VR rant these past two days now.  Let's cut straight to the point on this post: Google Cardboard is the exact thing virtual reality needs right now.  It's cheap, it's (fairly) high quality, and anyone can get it right now.  This kind of access is the perfect push for anyone who wants virtual reality to succeed, and while the Oculus Rift and Control-VR might have a nicer case, Google has managed to blow them both out of the water.  Let's go ahead and review everything really quickly.

The Current World of Virtual Reality

For the past few months I've spent some time with the Oculus Rift, and have gotten to learn the basic ins and outs of how to make virtual reality applications, where the market for it is going, and some of the challenges that come along with it.  It's been quite a fun experience, and while I am no means an expert now, I feel pretty comfortable with my ability to use these technologies and develop applications for them should I ever need to.  While I plan to slowly add-on new features to Project Virtua as needed, there is not much more to do on it as of now, and so I've decided to start looking into other realms of technology to mess with.  This post is a quick summary of some of the things I've learned, as well as some of my views on where this technology should go.  While I won't be super active on these technologies, I will still post some things about them, so don't count me out completely.  Specifically, I have a few games I would like to code for it that I plan to start sometime over the summer if I can muster up the free time!

Photos of the Month - May 2014

Phew, it took me a while to get all of these ready to post online!  Many of these have been edited based on things I learned in my digital photography class last month, so I hope everyone likes them still! (Assuming people like them in the first place haha)