Posted by Ryan Gordon on December 26, 2010 under LabView, Programming | 
So I resigned from MyBB and I disappear from the internet for 3 weeks… What have I been up to?
Well, I’ve been up to this: 
What is this you ask? This is a piece of software that is actually a programming language. It’s called LabVIEW and this programming language was built for “real time data acquisition.” Essentially, LabVIEW is a programming language that is built for things that need to happen in “real time” and also allows for analysis and debugging in “real time” which is much different then any other programming language out there.
So what is the Kinect and why did you write it for LabVIEW? Well, I am a technology enthusiast by trade; One of my favorite things to do is mess with robots and think of new ways I can put everyday technology to use with these robots and LabVIEW is the language that I can do it in. The Kinect itself is a product created by Microsoft that essentially creates a 3D camera and this allows Microsoft to use it for controller-free gaming on the Xbox. Now, this is only one application out of tens of thousands that can be realized with the Kinect and it’s 3D Camera. My mission is to use the Kinect to help open up the possibility of a wide array of applications and do something cool myself while I’m at it, but there’s a lot to do before we can get there.
The first step was to reverse engineer the Kinect and figure out how it works and how we can make it work for us. This became a huge task over the past few months currently being accomplished by an initiative and community called OpenKinect. These brilliant minds are behind what will soon become a entirely new Minority Report level of technology that will interact with you naturally and intuitively to accomplish everyday consumer tasks. My part to this puzzle is only a very small part to the much larger picture that is coming together very quickly with this amazing new technology.
Now down to business. So far we have a three stage process to open up 3D imaging technology to the world.
- First, 3D Camera technology must be widely available and at a price point worthy of investing in for most consumers. The Kinect accomplishes this step.
- Second, the technology must be widely available on many programming languages, allowing developers to program code on top of the data it provides. The OpenKinect community is making great strides towards this goal very quickly.
- And third, code must be written to analyze the data that the Kinect provides and then do something intuitive or cool with it. This step is where I come in and this area of technology is still very widely unexplored and untested.
So what does this mean for me? This means that there is a long way still to go until we can see this technology doing something really intuitive or cool that hasn’t been seen before. I’ve been able to make a lot of headway so far by getting the LabView drivers to work but it’s going to take a lot more work to make it do something really cool.
Next part to the Kinect Trilogy soon. Stay Tuned.
Posted by Ryan Gordon on December 5, 2010 under Life, MyBB, Programming |
For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been on the MyBB Team for 5 years and in this time I’ve lead development for over 2 years.
Recently I resigned from the MyBB Team to pursue separate endeavors.
“All,
As a few have noticed, Ryan Gordon, the lead developer of MyBB has parted ways with us. A message from Ryan is below.
All of us here at the MyBB Group wish Ryan well in his future endeavours, and I personally am extremely grateful for the role that Ryan has been able to step up and fulfil over the past few years whilst I’ve not been able to dedicate much personal time toward the project. Ryan’s dedication and passion for everything he did, as well as bringing us some of the greatest MyBB releases to date, will be missed.
What does this mean for MyBB?
The most important thing to keep in mind is whilst this is a big change for us, you can still look forward to exceptional releases of your favourite forum software. Work is underway planning out MyBB 2.0, and from our top-secret prototypes, it’s already looking great.
We’ll have more to announce shortly, but again thank you for your continued support.
A message from Ryan to all…
Dear community,
It is with time that with every profession, interest and passion fade and something new comes along to take over it’s place. It is with this in mind, among other things, that I have decided to enlist my resignation from the MyBB Team.
Over the past 5 years I’ve had the unique experience of journying with this team and working on this product that has taught me so much. Together we have built hundreds of thousands of communities and I know that this will continue for a long time into the future.
I wish the MyBB team and the community best of luck in the future, as I open up this new chapter in my life.
Sincerely,
Ryan Gordon”
Source: http://blog.mybb.com/2010/12/05/ryan-gordons-departure-from-mybb/
Preface: Firstly I want to note that I will not be revealing any information that isn’t already public. Secondly, what I have to say here is merely a summary of the “main” events. There are countless smaller details that I could spend hours and hours writing on, but distract from the point. Finally, I want to say that MyBB is and always will be a great piece of software and it will continue to get better. The effort put behind the scenes for MyBB was and always has been amazing. To do all of this, to pour time, sweat, blood, and energy into this project for not one cent from thousands of people across the globe unofficially and officially, has always been an amazing concept to be. In fact some might say that those of us who do this for free are part crazy and they are probably right.
The first part of this story begins 5 years 2 months ago when I first joined the MyBB community. Over the next 7 months I went on to create a couple very prominent plugins and also add some content to the wiki, when it first opened. 7 months later I was asked to join the team as Wiki Maintainers along with Justin S. Now I didn’t particularly care for maintaining the wiki forever, but I was new to this game and I wanted to participate in the development of MyBB, so if this was my way in then there was no way I would turn this down.
The next 6 months consisted of aiding MyBB 1.2 Testing and bug fixing in which during this time I was offered development access. On the 7th month, I was promoted to the Project Manager of the new MyBB Merge System. At this point I had submersed myself in learning PHP (at the time) to it’s maximum capabilities and 4 months later the first version of the MyBB Merge System was opened up for beta testing. Following this the next year and a half I started helping out by fixing MyBB 1.2′s bugs and preparing their releases as well as continuing work on the MyBB Merge System and MyBB 1.4. This was probably the most intensive period of my time at MyBB not only because of the large amount of work but because Chris Boulton’s time was now much more limited due to his full time job. At some point during that time I was promoted to Lead Developer of MyBB as a whole and a few months later, Chris officially announced stepping down from day-to-day manager and Dennis took over these day-to-day operations.
From here I lead development on MyBB 1.6 and the planning phase for MyBB 2.0 begun, for the next year and a half. Over the next year my interest in MyBB’s development began to lessen over time as the necessity for time to be dedicated to school and other activities increased. I talked about this several times over various conversations between management staff members and thus began the activity of a recruiting campaign to bring on the next wave of developers and staff members to fully take over all the necessary operations of MyBB and it’s development that I would be leaving behind. This eventually lead to, over a few months, Dennis stepping down as product manager with Tim B. stepping up. A couple months later we had successfully brought on several new staff members to help. Now I had the MyBB staff and more specifically, the development team, in a stable position. The last thing that needed to happen was my resignation, but that wouldn’t happen for a little while longer.
A couple days ago I was having a discussion with Chris Boulton on MyBB 2.0 and this is when I truly realized the different paths we were both now on. The decision to resign was simple at this point and that’s where I am today. I have come out with a new chapter in my life opening and I am excited to put my talents to use on new projects and to see where this different path takes me.
Thanks to everyone who has read this – I wanted to make sure that the right story was out there and to clarify that the terms for resignation weren’t because of, or left on, any bad notes.
