on code.

This little project started out as trying out some HTML5 canvas demo, but soon I became amazed with the speed I got up to coding and actually focussing on what I was trying to achieve. I had been playing with the canvas before, but suddenly it “just worked” as I expected – and that’s a relief coming from a web development background.

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I have been working on a really exciting project last year, that’s in it’s final stages right now. It’s a 3d scanner based on laser triangulation ( laser what? ) for a project called “Architektoon!”. There’s sourcecode, instructions and pictures, available here, here and here.

Altough the technique has already been developed in the 1970′s, I still had to figure out a lot. The quality of your scans depends a lot on the resolution and image quality of your camera, the number of rotations, focus and proper calibration and framing. So it helps to have a trained eye for video. The biggest challenge was to build something robust enough to be transported over and over again,  and to be used by many different (non technical) users. Altough I frankly must admit we haven’t really left prototype stadium yet, we’ve had two scanners operating on our workshop recently, and even without me being present.

It’s funny how you can stay under the radar for a long time, and then somebody suddenly just puts up a short youtube clip with your name on it ( actually, it has my face in it too ) and it pops up on my first page of google already :0)

Code style among programmers touches a sensitive subject. It may be hard to understand for an outsider, but code style can make the difference between grasping the function of a piece of code within seconds, or having to plough trough each line individually, correcting or changing markup as you go. Even while typing, a certain way of “doing” things may influence the logic you’re writing down.

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