Missing Fonts with Flash Player 9 on Linux

Here’s one for Google: If you suffer from the widespread “missing text”/”missing font” problem with Flash Player 9 (or earlier i guess) on Linux, one possible cause might be Flash Player’s simplistic way to choose it’s default fonts. The trick is to add replacement mappings for “Times” and “Courier” to your ~/.fonts.conf:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="pattern" name="family">
 <test name="family" qual="any"><string>Courier</string></test>
 <edit name="family" mode="assign">
  <string>Bitstream Vera Sans Mono</string>
 </edit>
</match>
<match target="pattern" name="family">
 <test name="family" qual="any"><string>Times</string></test>
 <edit name="family" mode="assign">
  <string>Bitstream Vera Serif</string>
 </edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

Props go out to Mark for spotting the solution.

Using Xinf to publish SVG content via FlashPlayer

You’ll need flash to see this, sorry.

as a little Xinf demo project, and maybe useful for publishing open-standard vector graphics on the web, i’m releasing a little Xinf/Flash-based SVG viewer. It might prove useful while SVG is not as
widely supported (and does not render as consistently) as we might wish.

Details are here.

Employment

Amazing, how fast the academic buerocracy can shoot: I’m going to be employed as “half” a research assistant at the VR Group of Uni-Weimar’s Media Faculty by March 1, mere days after official application.

I’m looking forward to following my research interests on touchability and working with a great team. It’s weird but good to be back in little Weimar.

Keyboard, SpringGraph, PhotoApp

You’ll need flash to play video, sorry.

Progress on the multitouch table: detection uses a much simpler and better algorithm, a few test applications including the multitouch “standard” photo app. Rendering improvements thanks to xinf 0.4.

Table in Ljubljana

You’ll need flash to play video, sorry.

My touchable table was presented in Kiberpipa, Ljubljana, from October 1st to 5th, 2007. Recognition is still lacking but there have been some improvements (and a new game). As always, staying with the ‘pipa crowd was a very enjoyable experience all around.

Introduction

Daniel Turing conducts empiric research in post-intuitive interfaces and other novel techniques for human-computer interaction. He strongly believes that trying too hard to be easy is what got us into the desktop metaphor mess in the first place.

This blog is to document my endeavours into HCI and related technologies. I am currently concerned with three primary projects:

• xinf is not flash: a cross-runtime, cross-platform graphical toolkit for the haXe language, and the base for most if not all of my programming.
• Construction of a touch-sensitive display surface for a table-like device. The first prototype is working (more or less) and I am currently preparing a second stage of research over the 2007/08 winter.
• Preparatory thinking about my (eventual) PhD thesis. Starting from the (new) properties of the multitouch table, I want to rethink current paradigms in HCI and GUI.

I have closed comments for this blog, but you can reach me via email to [spam protected]

Drag’n'Drop Testing

You’ll need flash to play video, sorry.

Documentation recording of a drag’n'drop test on my multitouch-sensitive table, at Performance Arts Forum Summer University in St. Erme, France. This video primarily shows where the touch detection is still lacking- on one side of the table, it’s too sensitive (touch is triggered even with a few centimeters distance), on the other, it’s not sensitive enough.

Pong at Uni-Weimar

You’ll need flash to play video, sorry.

Second public presentation of my multi-touch-sensitive table during my (old) uni’s annual presentation week (”Summary”). Some technical improvements to the older version, but still lacking on all ends.

First Public Presentation of Pong

You’ll need flash to play video, sorry.

Short video documentation of my multi-touch-sensitive table project running a remake of the classic “Pong” game. Prototypical hard- and software with many errors/imprecisions. Presented at our village festivity in Engerazhofen, Germany to a bunch of local kids.

what the machine sees (part 0)

In our latest collaboration, BADco. and me strive to explore none less than the differences in human and computer perception. At least that is what I’m looking for in what the machine sees. One outcome of the project will be the whatever toolbox featuring various (technically relatively simple) analysis visualizations and other devices that hopefully will be of help in the performer’s rehearsal process.

Technically, apart from OpenCV/GStreamer-based analysis, the project circles around visualizing these technologies’ output with xinf and making the tools available to the performance-oriented audience (in form of either a Linux LiveCD or downloadable Windows/OSX versions).

Part 0 - Prerequisites is the zeroeth element in an at-least-two part series of working along the two big topics Time and Space.