My Birthday again

Hi folks,

It is my birthday again, and I am having great time :-) .
I also got a great gift yesterday from a good friend in Germany, a Z scale Marklin train set:


It is a lot of fun! I have been fascinated by the Z scale products for years, and it is even greater gift, to have one of their 150 years anniversary sets :-) . Hopefully I will have time and chance to expand it in the future to a full scale miniature world :-) .
While enjoying the birthday, and the train set, I have not forgotten you guys, and I am working on a number of new surprises to be available as Betas early next year, but I will leave them as surprises for now, so the joy will be real when you see them for first time ;-) .

Cheers,
Boian

Warning: Dangerous Windows Vista update

Hi folks,

Microsoft got me again!

Last night it has installed a new update, and this morning my system was unable to boot, blue screening each time :-( .

After spending many hours first removing hardware to barebone, and then repeatedly running the Vista restore utility from the install disk, I was able to recover the system to a working condition from restore points.

Now a lot of my configurations and products are in a messy state, especially my VMWare installation, but at least the system seems to work fine otherwise.
I guess I have at least one more day ahead of me fixing installations, and configurations. Thank you Microsoft, for the great damage you did again!

Now I have surely disabled the automatic updates.

Today I have also heard from a customer that the same thing happened to 3 systems at their place yesterday, so it seems to be not only my system, but a much bigger update problem :-( .
As for my VMWare, some genius there has decided to use .MSI installs. Guess what? The install states that there is installed already version, and I have to uninstall it first, but when I open the Installed Applications window from the control panel, the VMWare is not listed :-( . So I am stuck! The VMWare on my system is not operational at the moment.
I have also tried the "Windows Install Clean Up" utility, but no luck with it either. It does not list the VMWare install :-( .

Please let me know if you have had similar experience in the last 1-2 days!

Be careful when installing Microsoft updates. I would suggest waiting couple of days and checking if there are reports of problems before updating.

Cheers,
Boian

ITDevCon presentations posted

Hi folks,

I am back from ITDevCon in Italy, and now have finally uploaded the presentations and the demo code from the sessions:

Developing multithreaded applications with Delphi:
www.mitov.com/MultithreadingITDevCon.zip

Artificial Intelligence with Delphi:
www.mitov.com/ArtificialIntelligenceITDevCon.zip

Video and Audio processing with Delphi:
www.mitov.com/VideoAudioProcessingITDevCon.zip

Delphi friendly GDI+ with the free open source IGDI+ library:
www.mitov.com/IGDIPlusITDevCon.zip

Computer Vision with Delphi:
www.mitov.com/ComputerVisionITDevCon.zip

Some of the demos use few VideoLab and VisionLab components. You can download them for free from www.mitov.com .

With best regards,
Boian Mitov

ITDevCon day 2

Hi folks,

Ohhhh boy... It this conference a great fun!
The second day is just kicking in, and I am in the Pawel Glowacki's session on "Delphi Natural Input". Although I have seen sessions on the subject before, Pawel is a great speaker, and being at his session is a real joy.
We also visited Verona after the sessions last night. We went there from 8 PM to midnight. The city obviously has a great night life, and it is very beautiful. I hopefully will have chance to see it at daytime, and make better pictures than the poor night time ones I did with my cameta. Hopefully I will have something to post here :-) .
The Italian people a great! They are very friendly, and I had a lot of joy. It is also great to be able to drink real Italian coffe again, and have real Italian pizza :-) .
I will be doing 3 sessions today. The good news is that there will be at least one gap, and they are not completely one after another. Yestarday after 2 sessions back to back I was exausted :-D . The Italian wine we had after the sessions however surely helped me recover fast :-D .

Ok... Time to focus back on the sessions. More to come later.

Cheers,
Boian

ITDevCon Day 1

Hi folks,

I have made it to Italy and now I am at ITDevCon, enjoying the Italian hospitality, the beautiful weather today, and the first great sessions :-) .
Later today I will have to do my first 2 sessions on Artificial Intelligence, and Video and Audio processing with Delphi.
If you are at ITDevCon, I hope you will join and enjoy the sessions :-) .
The BitTime folks have surprised me with a small table for my marketing materials, and you are welcome to stop by for a chat :-) .
I will see to post some updates as the conference goes.

Cheers,
Boian

IGDI+ available on SourceForge

Hi folks,

I have added IGDI+ to SourceForge and now it is available there both
as download and Subversion repository:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/igdiplus/

I hope you will enjoy the project, and some will contribute to the development.

With best regards,
   Boian Mitov

The first Lazarus version of OpenWire is available.

Hi folks,

The first Lazarus compatible version of OpenWire is available in SourceForge SVN:

https://openwireproject.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/openwireproject

This is the first attempt to get the library Lazarus compatible and to compile under Delphi and Lazarus from the same code base.

There are some issues. It has also been tested under Windows only. I am working on a Linux version, but it is not available yet.

Cheers,
Boian

OpenWire available on SourceForge

Hi folks,

OpenWire is now available on SourceForge :

https://sourceforge.net/projects/openwireproject/

You can use SVN to access the files, and create patches.
Please let me know if you are interested to get involved in the development.

Cheers,
Boian

Come to see my presentations at ITDevCon.

Hi folks,

I am glad to announce that I will be doing 5 sessions at IDDevCon in Verona Italy.

• Artificial Intelligence with Delphi
• Video and Audio processing with Delphi
• Delphi friendly GDI+ with the free open source IGDI+ library
• Developing multithreaded applications with Delphi
• Computer Vision with Delphi

I hope you will join and enjoy the sessions :-) .

With best regards,
Boian Mitov

Version 4.3.1 released

Hi folks,

We have just released a minor update of the libraries. Mainly debugger visualizers for RAD Studio 2010 have been updated.

With bets regards,
Boian Mitov

Version 4.3 released

Hi folks,

We have just released version 4.3 of the libraries.
There are also new versions of OpenWire and IGDIPlus released.
InstrumentLab is now available in Visual C++ and .NET versions.

Cheers,
Boian

False virus warning when installing Version 4.2 P4 or 4.3

Dear customers,

If you have existing installation of 4.0.1 on your system, please delete the LabPacks directory before doing the 4.2 P4 or 4.3 install.
If you don't do that you may get false virus warnings from some anti-virus applications.
They will detect the virus in the old executables that are in about to be overwritten with clecn version by the installer.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.

With best regards,
Boian Mitov

TBitmap Debug Visualizer for Delphi and C++ Builder 2010

Hi folks,

Over the weekend I have created a set of debug visualizers for SignalLab, AudioLab, and VideoLab buffers, and I also created a TBitmap debug visualizer.
The TBitmap visualizer is posted as open source at http://www.mitov.com/html/free_downloads.html .
I plan to expand it so it can handle not only TBitmap, but also TIcon, TImage, TImageList etc.


I hope to have updates soon.

Cheers,
Boian

CodeRage 4 is over

Hi folks,

CodeRage 4 is over, and the session replays are now available at:
http://conferences.embarcadero.com/coderage/sessions

I have also posted the source code of the sessions on www.mitov.com :

http://www.mitov.com/CodeRage4_ArtificialIntelligence.zip
http://www.mitov.com/CodeRage4_OpenWire.zip

I hope you will enjoy watching the replays, and using the code.

Cheers,
Boian

Join CodeRage 4 for free and see our sessions!

Hi folks,

The CodeRage 4 is here, and it is free.

This time I have 4 sessions and I hope you will enjoy them.

There will be 2 sessions showcasing some of our products, and some of their more advanced and exciting features.
You will see how the libraries can be combined to empower each other, how you can add InstrumentLab components directly in the video, or how you can add video in the InstrumentLab, or PlotLab components.
You will learn how you can create composite instruments, or scope components and much more.

There will be also session on developing OpenWire components, and another one showing how to write Artificial Intelligence in Delphi.

I hope you will enjoy the sessions.

Cheers,
Boian

Are you affected by the Virus?

Hi folks,

Here is how you can check if your system is affected by the virus.
1. If you don't have Delphi 5, Delphi 6 or Delphi 7 on your system, you are not affected.
2. If you have Delphi 5-7 installed, check the $(Delphi)\Lib directory for SysConst.bak file.
If the SysConst.bak is not there, your system is not infected.

If you are infected here are the steps you can take to disinfect the system.
1. If you have downloaded the Delphi version of the libraries version 4.0.1 please download updated version 4.2 Prerelease 4 from www.mitov.com .
2. Delete the $(Delphi)\Lib\SysConst.dcu
3. Rename $(Delphi)\Lib\SysConst.bak to $(Delphi)\Lib\SysConst.dcu
4. Use an anti-virus scanner to scan your system for any other executables that may contain the compiled code.
Currently only some of the anti-virus software applications detect the virus. The online PandaSoftware scanner does not detect it as of today. I have detected it with Avast - http://www.avast.com/ as it seems to be the first AV package to detect this virus.
Avast has free 60 days trail, and can be used to detect any infected executable. There should be very small number of those since the virus does not infect executables, and only modifies the SysConst.dcu file.
Once again, we are really sorry for the problems, but we had no way of detecting the presence of the malicious code since no anti-virus software was able to detect it :-( .

With best regards,
Boian Mitov

New versions available

Hi folks,

I am pleased to announce that all Delphi libraries have been updated, and are available for download at http://www.mitov.com .

In this version the libraries include some significant upgrades.

VideoLab has screen capture functionality added.
Both VideoLab and AudioLab have new components for sending, receiving data to/from any DirectShow filter.
The ImageDisplay now can be added as a layer, and effects can be applied to it.
The Scope, Waterfall, AngularGauge, AnalogClock and GlassPanel can host components internally, even when rendered in a layer or Matrix.
All InstrumentLab components can be hosted inside Scope, Waterfall, AngularGauge, AnalogClock or GlassPanel, or rendered in a Matrix.
SegmentText, Spectrum, and Matrix components have been added to InstrumentLab.
The new Matrix component can render Text, Images, Video, or any PlotLab or InstrumentLab component.
ImageDisplay can be rendered inside Scope, Waterfall, AngularGauge, AnalogClock or GlassPanel.
ImageDisplay can be rendered in a Matrix display.
More hands can be added to an AngularGauge, including additional data sources, or Min/Max hands.

Those are only some of the new features in this release.

We are also working on updated .NET and VC++ releases. We have succeeded in porting the InstrumentLab to .NET and VC++, and prereleases are available on request.

With best regards,
Boian Mitov

Virus attack!

Dear customers,

We have discovered that the Delphi versions of the installs have been infected by a Delphi specific virus.
Unfortunately the virus was not detected by the Anti virus programs until yesterday. The only good news is that the Virus is fairly harmless and can't infect any file on the system. Instead if Delphi 5-7 is found on the system the virus modifies one of the library DCUs so any newly built application will contain the virus code.
We have removed all the affected downloads, and have started work on a new set of installs that are expected to be ready by the end of next week, since the full cycle of testing takes many days. In the mean time anybody interested in new version can contact me at mitov@mitov.com to receive updated install.
We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we had no way of detecting the virus since no AV software was detecting it until now.

With best regards,
Boian Mitov