I went to the cinema last night with the full intention of seeing V for Vendetta. It’s not the same as the graphic novel, but I think that it hit the spot in terms of what’s happening in the world today. I enjoyed it and would recommend it for other folks. A bit schmaltzy at the end, and missing the point that ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose‘. Go, see, enjoy a bald Natalie Portman.
IMDB link.
XP on the mac
It’s unofficially doable; a few folks won the $14,000 odd prize for it. Practically nothing on the machine works, though. I am reminded of the situation of Solaris on X86 – noone wants it because the hardware support is so poor. The reason for the poor hardware support is that there isn’t anywhere the number of driver developers as there would be for such beasts as Linux or Windows.
640×480 (or 800×600 I think) VGA graphics drive, no wifi, no networking, no bluetooth. Pretty much useless from the usable laptop front. I’d take Linux on it before Windows if that’s the case. Of course theres a fully functional unix machine under the hood for Mac OS X, and while someone will probably want to shoot me for it, the fact that it’s proprietary isn’t too much of a big loss.
I was talking to my mate Mark on St. Paddys day about Hyper Threading processors, and he was mentioning that they’re not the best at high-performance computation (without extensive and expensive hints in the code). I agreed, mentioning that the latest generation of multi-core processors offer roughly equivalent cost and scale almost multi-processorly. I then went on to explain that the multi-threaded processors are better for I/O workloads, you shove a lot of the scheduling cost back into the silicon where it belongs, rather than having the OS deal with it in software.
For a big server, performing lots of I/O, a multi-core and multi-threaded processor would be the best of both worlds, and based on the direction that Sun is taking with the Niagra system, one can see that this can be taken to a scary extreme – consider 8 core with 8 threads per core all on the one processor module. The power-savings alone would be enough to warrant buying these machines.
Im still waiting for quotes on a few more laptops. I can wait, I just don’t know for how much longer. Meanwhile I’ll probably buy a phone. Nokia 6230i looks like a cheap and easy option – buyable from €260.19. Or maybe an annoying smartphone like the iMate PDA 2K (it’s the original of the O2 XDA IIs).
Slow composition
I have a set of hand written pages of the next 20-30 features to implement/changes to make to pocketcity in order to make it 1. better and 2. more easy to port. One of the things I’m planning on doing is moving the water pipes underground. This will change things quite a bit.
I’m considering getting a new laptop (again) and I’ve reached the point where the hardware that’s available is reaching what I want. It needs dual-core processor; I’m not getting another uni-processor machine again. Acer have dual core centrino models, with a decent graphics card. The only problems are the DVD drive and the video card. It’s a DVD-RAM drive. It won’t region free! it’s the same problem as the Ferraris. I don’t want to re-code all the non region-2 discs I have. That would be a pain in the ass. The video card isn’t supported in Linux either, which is another annoyance. I hope that ATI release a driver for the X1000 family soon.
Alternatives are Alienware and their Aurora m7700, which has an athlon processor. Has a more supported graphics card, but it’s about twice as expensive as the Acer. Then there’s the Widow PC laptop. Still the price tag problem.
Until I get a new laptop, I’ll have to be happy with the one I have. It’s an early generation centrino, so I’ve only got a/b wireless, and an integrated GPU. It works well for what I’m doing (programming, watching movies, occasional game).
Shame that Dell haven’t caught up on dual core for the gaming laptop.
There were vehicular commitments
I was driving this evening from Cork back to Kerry, so I was unwilling to participate in the drinking of many, many pints. While heading for the car at about 10.30 in the evening I noticed a few very unsteady people, but it didn’t remind me of the worst excesses of previous years. It was bitterly cold, which probably kept people indoors and out of trouble. Pubs haven’t let out yet, so the storm is probably on the way.
Network protocol design
Let’s make this one easy for the protocol writers. Front load the important information in the packet. That way we can more easily detect it and send it on to the correct handler. Stop putting the decision making information in the middle of the packet. We don’t have infinite processor time on these handlers.
This complaint was brought to you by people who care how network bandwidth is being consumed.
Where’s my ROT13?
There i am reading rec.humor.funny and I encounter a ROT13 joke. I can’t find the ROT13 button/choice in the menu structure of Thunderbird. Has this arcane skill been lost to us? <sarcasm>I must compose a letter of complaint to the Times. I think they should know about such an egregious omission</sarcasm>.
Splinter Cell – I really should have read the manual
I didn’t know about the electronic disruptor until the last level. I’ll have to replay it now that I know about it, to see how much of a difference it makes.
Back to F.E.A.R. 1.03 problems
Finished Splinter Cell. Way too much fun to be legal. I decided to return to F.E.A.R. and the 1.03 update. I reinstalled the game, applied the correct patch, and still could not run the game. It took about an hour to find my solution to the problem. From the VU Games Community Forums we have, down at the bottom a link to securom that contains a replacement binary for F.E.A.R. so it now works correctly again. For those of you who care, this is just to get the game to work, you still need to be legal.
Watching Kill Bill Vol. 1 for the umteenth time
And all I can think is… damn, I want to see Battle Royale again.
If I was listening to music at this time, I would be listening to Stinkarelli; I watch too much TV
and then the new update breaks the application
I download the european version of the patch. Bleugh, another 200MB download. I apply the patch and now the game no longer works as it claims the game DVD is incorrect. Piece of s**t. There’s no way to unpatch the program so I uninstall it to reinstall it. I forgot to have the game manual handy. Hunt the install key.
Could it be that having Splinter Cell and F.E.A.R. installed on the computer at the same time could be causing problems? Or was it an incorrect patch, as it worked before I applied the patch.
Annoying, I’ll just have to stick to playing Splinter Cell until I’m finished it.