I have been struggling with a way to get my Google Chrome extension to be able to list a user's directory in order to automatically load and display files from that directory. It turns out, there is no easy way to list the files in an arbitrary directory in a user's filesystem using Javascript, even in a Chrome extension.

Rest of the post (I'm switching my blog to a pure HTML 'system')

I have recently started using cloudHQ (this link has a referral that gives you, and me, one month free premium), and I really like the service they provide. In a nutshell, cloudHQ synchronizes your cloud files from one storage service to another, WITHOUT you needing to have any client installed in your computer. Currently, they support Google Drive (Docs), Dropbox, Evernote, Box, Sugarsync, Basecamp, and Salesforce.

For me, this is really a godsend. I had been syncing Google Drive and Dropbox by having one computer running the two clients but (mainly because Google Drive is not yet fully stable) it never really worked well.

I had been having this problem with TeXStudio (formerly TeXMakerX) for some time now: whenever I tried to compile a project with pdflatex I would get a "sh: epstopdf: command not found". This only happened when I added or changed some eps files.

Running pdflatex from the command line would solve the problem until the next time I changed or added an eps file. Very annoying. 

The problem seems to be that TeXStudio does not inherit the environment variables, more specifically, the PATH variable. So when pdflatex needs to run epstopdf, it does not know where to find it.

I have no idea when this started to happen, or why, but today I finally found a solution. 

Grounded Theory is a methodology to produce theory based on empirical data. Instead of starting with a well defined hypotheses, GT starts with an area of study and inductively derives a theory from the data gathered around that area. So, the purpose is not to prove a theory, but to generate one.

GT was developed by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss and published in [1].

Phases 

GT can be roughly decomposed in 5 parts (which are not totally sequential):

I just noticed that there were lots of comments from last year's posts awaiting moderation... Sorry for that. Somehow the blog system stopped sending me email alerts on new comments. It should be fixed (I hope).

I'm going to TEI 2012 in February to present the Garden of Time interactive video installation (see previous blog posts FAD: The garden of time and The Garden of Time - Interactive Video Installation) included in the Art Explorations category of the conference. 

The long abstract that is going into the conference proceedings can be found in my Mendeley account. 

The Pervasive Advertising book where I co-author a chapter is just out! Check it out, particularly this chapter :)

About the book (from Springer webpage): 

Following decades of exciting developments in laboratories around the world, pervasive computing technologies are starting to reshape our world in real ways. Computers, visible and invisible, are everywhere: traditional signs and billboards are being replaced by digital signage, projections, and interactive surfaces. Communication is digital and ubiquitous—the majority of the world’s population uses mobile phones. Physical computing and robotics make physical environments digital and interactive. It is apparent that analogous for developments on the Internet, advertising will be the business model driving pervasive computing. These new computing technologies are powerful tools for advertising and they will supersede traditional advertising in the near future. Pervasive computing is the disruptive technology for advertising. This book presents the core principles of Pervasive Advertising and makes accessible to practitioners and researchers alike research findings in pervasive computing, modern advertising, and human-computer interaction. The major opportunities addressed include: symmetric communication, the long tail, powerful experiences, personalization, context adaptivity, audience measurement, and automated persuasion. The major challenges addressed include: calm and engaging advertising, privacy, and ethical persuasion. This book presents and discusses innovative applications based on digital signage and mobile advertising, venturing into new territories like music and scents. This book is intended as a guide for: Advertisers who want to understand how new technologies revolutionize their field. Pervasive computing engineers and researchers who want to understand what business models will drive their technologies in the real world. • Anyone who is interested how pervasive advertising will shape the future of urban life.

The last project at the FAD festival in Belo Horizonte, Brasil:

Sismo

This was a non-interactive, dynamic, painting (or drawing) installation that reminded me of the work of the portuguese artist Leonel Moura. The installation was composed of a drawing horizontal surface with a toy remote controlled car on top of it. The car was equipped with a pen so that its movements generated a drawing. The remove control was modified so that its input came, not from a user, but from the drawing surface itself. Underneath the surface, sensors detected the movement of the car and generated electric signals that were fed into the remote control, which in turn would act on the car. The result was a closed-loop drawing device. Unfortunately, the authors had some problems setting it up and it was only working during a brief period of time during the first day.

By Filipe Norkus (Brasil)

Another installation at the FAD festival in Belo Horizonte, Brasil:

The Garden of Time

The Garden of Time is an interactive video installation, inspired by Jorge Luís Borges short story - The Garden of Forking Paths - which addresses the possibility of narratives with many possibilities where time forks and joins later, creating endless possible stories. The installation is composed by a wooden 3D labyrinth where you can drop a marble into its entry point and see it come out through one of three possible exits. Those exits trigger random videos segments according to the current narrative state, allowing you to experience the endless possibilities that were mentioned in Borge's story.

By Carlos Sena Caires & Jorge Cardoso, (Portugal), http://artes.ucp.pt/si/ai/tsuipen/#void

Another installation at the FAD festival in Belo Horizonte, Brasil:

timeLandscape wool rythms

This was an interactive video installation, similar to the Garden of Time in this general approach: a textil machine was adapted to control a video projected in front of it. The projected video was a landscape in Italy, from a region with an important textil industry. As you rotated the machine's crank, stripes of video would show the same landscape but at different times.

By Juliana Mori & Matteo Sisti Sette (Brasil)