“Freelook allows you to use movements of your head to accurately control your mouse cursor. This translates to hands-free viewpoint control in games such as IL2 Sturmovik and Lock On: Modern Air Combat, as well as providing a mouse alternative for handicapped users. Freelook is similar in execution to the excellent cam2pan and TrackIR systems, although unlike the latter, Freelook only requires a cheap off-the-shelf webcam.”

It requires a marker (piece of paper or LED) for proper detection still, but I can’t complain.

Nouse tracks the nose without requiring a marker, but it seems tied up as they figure out how to commercialize it.

Cam2Pan is only $10 and seems to be a bit better than Freelook.

Has anyone found the perfect cheap webcam for this solution?

Has anyone tried Freelook yet?

Interesting Excerpts:

“Quest markers are provided in a clear form which means you’ll rarely, if ever, get confused about where you’re meant to be. This may be the first MMOG we’ve considered playing without a web browser open on a second screen to look up the quests we’re doing.”

“.. but by far the best of them is the Conjunctions system. Now, we confess that we’re still getting our heads around the potential of this system to some extent, but in effect it’s a timer-based system which allows you to fire off hugely powerful combo moves. When a Conjunction is available, a set of “gems” appear on your screen; click one and you’ll perform a Conjunction move, which may in turn open up further moves in the chain to other players.”

“Annoyingly, that also means we can’t talk about PvP today; the game is purely PvE (player versus enemy, meaning no inter-player combat) up until about level 40, at which point players can take part in a unique type of PvP battle in one large zone, the Ettenmoors. This works by allowing other players to temporarily don the form of famous monsters from the Lord of the Rings universe - which you can do from level 10, although of course, that’s not much use if there’s nobody to fight against yet.”

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qC1UYnJuFsY
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yZmLKCoWe3A

Sounds interesting. Anyone try it yet?

~/bin/burn:

#!/bin/bash
SPEED=8
echo ----------------
ls -l "$1"
echo Burning $1 at $SPEED x
say Insert new disc now!
hdiutil burn -speed $SPEED -forceclose -noaddpmap "$1"
echo Complete.
say Disc burning complete!
say Label. $1
ls -l "$1"
echo ----------------

~/bin/burnall:

#!/bin/bash
find -P . -mindepth 1 -type f -iregex '.*.ISO' -exec burn {} ;

Run burnall to quickly burn all ISO (case-insensitive) files in a directory and any subdirectories. When a disc is done, it will be ejected and you will be alerted with the ’say’ command to retrieve your disc and replace it with a new one, which will continue the burning process. No hunting ISO files down.

If you use MythTV, you could use easily use mythosd to alert your myth frontends that burning is complete.

Certainly not pretty, but it is AppleScript after all:

set front_app to (path to frontmost application as Unicode text)

--True Monitor size
property monitor_width : 1920
property monitor_height : 1200

--Thicknes of titlebars (to prevent overlapping; should probably remain set to 23)
property menubar : 40

--Margins to make room for iTunes, Dock, Desktop items, etc
property leftmargin : 1500
property rightmargin : 12
property topmargin : 40
property bottommargin : 2
property gap_val : 2

(* notes on space values:
iTunes @ top left: topmargin = 68
small dock: bottommargin = 30
*)

property open_info : false -- open the info window?

--Height and width of the Info Window
property info_width : 330
property info_height : 335
property info_gap : 2 --gap beyond info_width to leave

--set one of these values to 1 (rather than 0) to leave space for info window

property info_top_left : 0
property info_top_right : 0
property info_bottom_left : 0
property info_bottom_right : 0

property hide_others : false --hide other visible applications?

--set folder defaults
(*
options for folders:
0. root (all volumes)
1. user home directory
2. user documents
*)

property folder1_pref : 0
property folder2_pref : 2

set startDir to path to startup disk
set homeDir to (path to "cusr" from user domain)

tell application "Path Finder"
--set default directories (see properties above)
if folder1_pref = 0 or folder1_pref > 2 then set folder1 to startDir
if folder1_pref = 1 then set folder1 to homeDir
if folder1_pref = 2 then set folder1 to ((homeDir as string) & "Documents") as alias
if folder2_pref = 0 or folder2_pref > 2 then set folder2 to startDir
if folder2_pref = 1 then set folder2 to homeDir
if folder2_pref = 2 then set folder2 to ((homeDir as string) & "Documents") as alias

-- necessary to use system events to set posix path
tell application "System Events" to set posixF1 to POSIX path of folder1

set vSpace to (monitor_height - (topmargin + bottommargin + gap_val + menubar))
set win_vSpace to round (vSpace / 2)
set win_hSpace to (monitor_width - (leftmargin + rightmargin))

close every finder window

-- TOP WINDOW
open folder1
set top_window to finder window 1

set bottom_of_top to monitor_height - bottommargin - win_vSpace - gap_val
--{left,top,right,bottom}
set the bounds of top_window to ¬
{leftmargin + ((info_width + info_gap) * info_top_left), ¬
topmargin + (menubar), ¬
monitor_width - rightmargin - ((info_width + info_gap) * info_top_right), ¬
bottom_of_top}

-- BOTTOM WINDOW
open folder2
set bot_window to finder window 1

--{left,top,right,bottom}
set the bounds of bot_window to ¬
{leftmargin + ((info_width + info_gap) * info_bottom_left), ¬
bottom_of_top + gap_val, ¬
monitor_width - rightmargin - ((info_width + info_gap) * info_bottom_right), ¬
monitor_height - bottommargin}

-- INFO WINDOW
if open_info then
--Applescript currently can't set the position or bounds of the Info Window.
--Just move it to where you want it, close it, then open it. From then on, it should open in the proper place
PFInfo posixF1
end if

--Reactivate windows
activate
if hide_others then
tell application "System Events"
set visible of (every process whose visible is true and frontmost is false) to false
end tell
end if

end tell

try
tell application "Finder"
repeat while window 1 exists
close window 1
end repeat
end tell
end try

try
tell application "TextMate"
activate
set bounds of window 1 to {210, 400, 1498, 1198}
end tell
end try

try
tell application "iTerm"
activate
set bounds of window 1 to {42, 702, 1200, 1198}
end tell
end try

try
tell application "Adium"
activate
set bounds of window "Contacts" to {42, 400, 208, 700}
end tell
end try

try
tell application "X-Chat Aqua"
activate
set bounds of window 1 to {42, 30, 442, 398}
end tell
end try

try
tell application "Firefox" to activate
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Firefox"
tell window 1
set size to {1054, 880} --width, height
set position to {444, 30} --left, top
end tell
end tell
end try

try
tell application front_app
activate
end tell
end try

.. Then, using iKey I set this script to launch with an easily-accessible hotkey.

A veritable goldmine of Quake goodness.