Inside of very german Coca Cola cap is a code to download a fourth iTunes song, so 4 caps = 1 song. I do not drink coke, but my brothers have a high Coca Cola consumption. Manually type in all the codes is very annoying and I always wanted to do some research in image recognition. So I have written some code to automatically detect the key inside the cap.

The first problem is take a good image. I made a mark on my desk where to put the cap. The code has to be in the upper part of the image. The next step is to find the center and crop the image. This is done with simple pattern matching of a mask. Removing the colors and adjust the brightness is a simple batch job.Arrange the code in a straight line is done by a simple program I have written with OpenGL. It uses the image as a texture and draws a quad strip with circular texture coordinates.

In the end I pass the final image to an open source OCR tool. At the moment the recognition rate is around 50%. But maybe I can improve this.

P.S.: The pictured codes are unused. So this is your chance to get a free song.

After working on a lot of other projects, enjoying my life and the totally disapointing iPhone SDK (The greedy Apple). it is time to pick up the Quake 2 PSP project. It is nice to see that some people still waiting for the game. I do not know when I when will release the next version but I will start coding again soon.I never really gave up Quake 2 PSP, I just favor some other hobbies like improve my guitar skills, programming some highend 3d stuff and playing on the PS3.

Burnout Paradise is a really amazing game. The great single player titles are also fun, but only multiplayer games can offer this everlasting motivation. Burnout made the online mode so easy and perfectly integrated. So if you want to challange me or just collect some online challanges with me, join the chat.

I am also looking forward to Wipeout Pulse HD with a hopefully more addictive and feature packed multiplayer mode. Wipeout Pulse was a little bit poor in this case.

Codesign error: no certificate for identifier "iPhone Developer" was found in your keychain

They want to have money for being a registered iPhone developer, so I can sign my code for the device. I am so disappointed by Apple like never before. I had written such a nice game perfectly fitting to the touchscreen and now that.You have to pay for the iPod, you have to buy an Intel Mac and now I should pay for being a developer that wants to support this platform to make it more popular. Fuck you, you greedy idiots! I think a lot of people think the same way as me. So a lot of great programs will never be written or released.

My girlfriend is afraid of jailbreak the iPod, but it seems to be the only option.

I am happy wih my Mac after the phase of being really annoyed with it. The USB issue is not really a probem for me and I know it will be fixed fast and reliable as soon as I hand in my computer for a few days.