Archive for Geeky
March 25, 2008 at 12:49 pm · Filed under Geeky
There are two robots currently on the surface of Mars under the guidance of scientists at NASA. They are both four years old, and have been doing a wonderful job of exploring the red planet and performing research for the scientists back on terra firma. They are both still fully functional and have plenty of “life” still in them.
Sadly, budget cuts means one of these Mars rovers, Spirit, is to be put to sleep and the other will have reduced duties. While the US government spends the amount required to keep this research alive for a year every week in Iraq, NASA are forced to reduce funding. It costs $20 million per year to keep the rovers running, a pitiful amount compared to US defense budgets, but the US government are too busy killing people to be interested in science (unless the science helps with the killing people).
The team are planning an appeal against the cuts; I hope somebody listens.
January 9, 2008 at 10:54 am · Filed under Geeky
My Mum bought me a GP2X for Krismas. Well actually she just sent money, I used it to buy a GP2X. This is my review after playing with it for a couple of weeks.
The GP2X is a portable media player, similar to a PSP or Gameboy, except it’s linux based so the platform is completely open. It’s slightly cheaper than a PSP.
The hardware seems to be well built. It’s bigger than the iPod I got used to carrying around, being slightly smaller than a PSP but that’s to be expected as it’s more than just a music player. It runs on two AA batteries which bulks it out a little bit more but means I can take extra batteries on long trips.
The screen is a good size and the buttons are well placed. I got the new F200 version, which has a direction pad instead of a joystick and also has a touchscreen display. The touchscreen seems like a strange addition but maybe it will come in useful for something.
The only thing missing is a switch to lock the controls, which I realise can be done with software but a hardware option would take the onus off the developers.
The machine has various orifices: SD card slot, headphone socket, USB port, EXT port, AC adaptor socket. These are all “protected” by little rubber things, which don’t fit quite right and are just terrible. I’m guessing I’ll end up chopping them off.
There is no hard drive in the device, so I had to go buy an SD card for it. I picked up a pack of two 2Gb cards for $50 which is enough for a big chunk of music plus all the software I want to install on it. Despite dire warnings I found on various websites, the SD card was “plug and play” and connecting the GP2X to my laptop via USB caused it to be mounted as a drive.
The software that comes with the machine is fairly basic. You get a movie player, a music player, an image viewer, an ebook reader and some built in games. I’ve only really used the music player and image viewer so far.
The music player plays MP3 and OGG formats, which is good because most of my music is in OGG format. Unfortunately it doesn’t play AAC format, and I have some of those downloaded from iTunes. A quick hunt around got me OMMPC, an alternative music player which has a very cryptic interface but does play AAC files (non-DRM of course). The biggest problem with playback is the volume; the minimum volume setting is still very loud. Unless I find a solution for that I will have to buy some new headphones with built in volume control.
As for other software, because the F200 model is so new, the community is still playing catch-up so most software out there is still for the F100 but will still work with the new model. As with most open source software the quality varies, but I haven’t found anything really terrible so far. The biggest problems I’ve had have been knowing which buttons to press to make things go, as documentation is often lacking.
I’ve just started exploring the games available. So far I’ve concentrated on games written or ported directly to the GP2X. The other option is emulation, as it is capable of emulating many popular gaming systems as well as some of the good old favourites like the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64 and the BBC Micro. I’m looking forward to playing with some of those for the nostalgia.
Many of the native games are silly little puzzle games which can be amusing for a little while but I soon lose interest. There are a few platform style games, and I’ve been having fun with Cave Story and SuperTux. I also discovered Sqdef, a tower defense game which is fairly unique and fun to play on the metro.
Overall I’m very happy with the GP2X. There are a few minor annoyances, and it is a little rough around the edges compared to more proprietary devices, but if you enjoy a little bit of hacking around it’s a lot more fun than an ipod.
December 18, 2007 at 12:37 pm · Filed under Geeky
I used to enjoy computer games. Having a small child means time becomes a lot more valuable, and one of the casualties for me was the gaming. I’m still interested in the gaming industry though, so some announcements catch my attention.
One of the problems I always had with games which try to present a reality containing actual humans was that the humans never looked quite right. That lack of rightness had a fundamental psychological effect which made it difficult to believe in the characters you were seeing. This isn’t just a problem in gaming; animated movies have the same problem, which is why the more successful computer animated movies are those that don’t have too many humans, or that make the human characters ‘cartoony’.
For example, Polar Express was a good movie, but it tried too hard to make the human characters look really human, and it didn’t quite work. The animated Tom Hanks just looked slightly wrong.
What I didn’t know until today was that this phenomenon has a name. It’s been called the “uncanny valley”, the point where human likeness is almost, but not quite reached. And apparenty the valley has been bridged. According to the chief honcho at game developer Quantic Dream - “I can officially announce that there is no uncanny valley any more, not in real-time.”.
I’m skeptical until they release a demo, but it has to happen at some point.
October 5, 2007 at 11:56 am · Filed under Geeky, Rants
While standing in line to pay at Omar De Serres recently, I heard the cashiers asking each person, regardless of payment method, for their postal code. I found this a little odd, and un-necessarily intrusive. So when I got to the cash, and the guy asked me for my postal code I said “I don’t have to give you that, do I?” and he said “Nope” and continued with my transaction.
What is this un-necessary data collection for? At first I though it was so that they could send junk mail to known customers, but my wife pointed out that a postal code usually only targets a set of addresses, not a single dwelling. Jen thinks that it’s so they can analyze sales data per customer area, but what would be the point, and why not just asked for the first part of the postal code?
Whatever the reason, I’m pretty sure it’s not of any benefit to the customer. It slows down the transaction, making people wait longer, and it’s just another small erosion of our privacy.
If someone asks you for personal data, ask yourself “do they need that?” before giving it to them. That’s especially true in an online setting.
September 24, 2007 at 9:05 am · Filed under Geeky, Local, Montreal
Walking to work this morning I spotted the Google Streetview car touring the streets of Westmount. I will have to wait until Montreal goes online to find out if it spotted me.
Google Streetview is a fantastic idea; I love being able to take a stroll along Hollywood Boulevard without leaving my office (I’m really hoping the implement a “walking between two points” feature to eliminate all the clicking) and I love the idea of being able to explore a new city before actually going there.
Of course, it does have its privacy concerns, but it doesn’t bother me as much as other intrusions; I’m not sure how doing something on a public street can be considered “private” anyway. Having said that, I’ve always had a problem with public security cameras and the whole Big Brother fear so I have to consider what the difference is.
Firstly, Google Streetview is just a still snapshot of any one location whereas security cameras tend to be recording in full motion twenty four hours a day. The amount of information that can be gathered by the Google car about any “private” event on the street is minimal compared to what a video camera can capture.
Secondly, Google are doing this as a service to their customers, not as a way to monitor the public. The company motto of “Do no evil” has so far not been breached. I have to admit to a certain discomfort about the sheer number of services Google provide and how much data they are collecting from those services but until they do something overtly bad I’ll give them the benefit of doubt.
Finally, Google Streetview is a valuable service to me. I get no benefit from security monitoring. Some might say I would get a benefit if a crime was committed against me, but I’m guessing even if my bike theft had been caught on camera I still wouldn’t get my bike back.
August 22, 2007 at 11:42 am · Filed under Geeky
There are certain things in computer programming that some people do right, and some people do lazily. There have been times where I’ve taken the lazy option, but those are very rare, and when they do happen they don’t affect the user experience.
The worst kind of laziness is the kind that the person using the software can immediately notice, and nothing is more noticeable than bad grammar. A computer program doesn’t understand spoken language grammar, but the person writing the code should.
The classic example of this shoddiness is when an email program tells you:
You have 1 new messages.
It’s uncomfortable to read, and it’s completely un-necessary. Some programmers might take the next level of laziness as acceptable and show you:
You have 1 new message(s).
OK, it’s better, but it’s still up to the reader to decide if the s in brackets is needed to make the sentence work. It’s still incredibly lazy, because the code required to make it perfect is so trivial:
print(”You have “+msgs+”new message”+ (msgs == 1 ? “.” : “s.”));
So now, if the user has 1 message, there will be no s, otherwise message will be pluralized. A simple piece of extra code has given the end result the polish it deserves. You could even take this example a stage further by converting ‘1′ into ‘one’. The code for that isn’t so trivial but it would be a nice touch.
The example that made me write this post is a little different. I’m currently addicted to the Traveler IQ Facebook application, which reports in my news-feed when I improve my traveler IQ. The latest report says:
Mark now has a Oceania/Australasia Traveler IQ of 91.
Ignoring the fact that my southern hemisphere geography seems to suck, it’s a sloppy sentence. I can’t read it out loud, or even in my head, without cringing slightly, and it’s another trivial piece of code to make it right:
print(name+” now has a” + (substr(challenge,1,1) in (’A',’E',’I',’O',’U',’H') ? “n ” : ” “) + challenge + ” of ” + score + “.”);
(Note I’m using pseudo-code in these examples, but most languages have similar constructs.)
So if you’re writing programs which output information to the user in plain English, please take a moment to consider if that plain English will be correct for all possible values of your variables. It doesn’t take long, and your end product will look more professional.
June 5, 2007 at 9:41 am · Filed under Family+Friends, Geeky
My wife has been having secret email conversations with some of my work colleagues. This is a good thing.
I recently had a conversation with work colleague E about the universal remote control he has. It sounded cool, so I relayed the conversation to Jen. She didn’t know work colleague E, but she did know work colleague D. So she emailed work colleague D asking him for the email address of work colleague E. Work colleague D sent Jen the email address of work colleague E. Jen emailed work colleague E asking for details of said remote. Work colleague E replied with the details of the remote and where he bought it.
The result of all this clandestine communication was a belated birthday gift for me of a Logitech Harmony 880 universal remote control. It has replaced the four remote controls we had littering the living room before and was very easy to set up. The press of a single button turns all the necessary things on to watch TV or listen to music. It has full control of the TV, the PVR, the receiver and even the Mac Mini. Sadly the IR interface in the Mac has a limited number of commands, but that’s a limitation of the Mac, not the remote.
So if you’re in the market for a universal remote, I highly recommend the Harmony 880, available at many online retailers. Or you could just mention it to your wife.
May 23, 2007 at 9:28 am · Filed under Games, Geeky
I play Magic: The Gathering. I’m not very good. The people I play with are very good. I get beaten. A lot. I need to fix this.
We all know that the only way to get better at something is to upload the skill from the Matrix practice, practice, practice. So with that in mind, I’m heading out on Sunday night to a Magic tournament so I can test my skills against some different people and maybe pick up a few hints and tricks. Who knows, I might even win.
With a hectic social calendar small and demanding child to look after, getting nights out is difficult, and these things have a nasty habit of clumping together, so I’m actually missing a rum cake party (a rum party may have been irresistible but rum cake I can handle) and another celebratory event just so I can sit in a room full of guys playing cards. Luckily I have a very understanding wife who happens to have a thing for geekiness.
May 8, 2007 at 10:58 am · Filed under Geeky
I have an account with BMO Investorline from back when I dabbled in the stock market and got burned. I tried to log in to it the other day to change my address and discovered something disturbing.
When I first created the account, the password could be any length, so I chose a password which was 10 characters long. Apparently at some point since then BMO have changed their system so that passwords have to be six characters long. This is a disturbing trend that I’ve seen popping up in a few places, including where I work.
Fixed length passwords are a bad idea for one very simple reason. They are easier to guess. The number of possible combinations of six characters is much, much smaller than the number of possible combinations of random length passwords. Granted it’s still a fairly large number, but why not make it as large as possible?
So I called the bank to get my password reset. They asked me a bunch of security questions, which is good, although a determined cracker could probably find out the answers, but then they reset my password. They reset it to something very, very simple. Now I can only assume they use the same very simple password for all password resets, and I’m guessing they get more than a few password resets every day, so it’s probably a good password for those evil crackers to try.
I understand that banks are treading a fine line between making their online banking as user-friendly as possible while keeping it as secure as possible, but security has to come first. Always.
May 1, 2007 at 12:12 pm · Filed under Geeky
A while ago I wrote about the possibility that Dell would be offering PCs with Linux pre-installed.
Today that came a step closer to reality with the announcement that Dell will be shipping Linux PCs in a few weeks. The best news of all is that they have chosen Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) as their distribution.
So which will you choose, a Windows PC with no software on it, or a cheaper Linux PC with everything the average user could need pre-installed? How long will it be before Microsoft are forced to bundle MS Office with Windows?
April 26, 2007 at 11:41 am · Filed under Geeky
Tuesday night was a scary one. First of all we encountered a strange hound whose terrifying howls sent me into a blind panic. Out of my senses, I ran in the opposite direction to the howls, smashing into a door and scrabbling at the handle until I got it open. As I was running through the door I caught sight of something very ugly with tentacles out of the corner of my eye but I was still too panic-stricken to react. Suddenly my entire body went rigid and I collapsed to the floor.
Having recovered from my paralysis and panic and discovering my party had quickly dispatched the ugly tentacle thing we continued onwards, only to be set upon by two very unpleasant lions. While trying to avoid those nasty claws, a massive spider suddenly blinked into existance next to me. In a panic I started casting a spell but before I could complete it the spider had sunk its fangs into me and I felt poison coursing through my veins. Before my colleagues managed to kill the nasty arachnid it had bitten me once more.
I was very close to death and still badly poisoned. Luckily we managed to make our way to the swamp to get help and healing from the lizardmen. Free from the poison I was able to sleep un-interrupted for 24 hours thanks to the protection of Antonio and Nedgie. The following day I was able to restore myself to full health.
That was a close one.
March 29, 2007 at 9:11 am · Filed under Geeky
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The latest announcement from Dell is that they will be offering desktop PCs and notebooks with Linux pre-installed. This is great news for the Linux community, and another step towards Linux being accepted as a desktop operating system.
Bringing this to the marketplace may seem like a daunting task, but it shouldn’t be that bad for a company like Dell. Back before Linux was a viable OS and before SCO were the bad guys, Dell were offering PCs with SCO Unix pre-installed. I was one of the few to own one and it was a great machine; nowhere near ready for the non-technical user but fantastic for geeks like me. Since then Dell have continued to support *nix based servers, switching from SCO to Linux which they have continued to support in the server market to this day. They have a support infrastructure in place so extending it to the desktop should be easy.
My only concern is that in the server market they promote the Red Hat and Novell SuSe distributions. These would be ok for the desktop too, but they should seriously consider something like Ubuntu instead.
Maybe with a company like Dell supporting desktop Linux other companies will sit up and take notice. Can we hope for Linux support from Videotron and Bell Sympatico anytime soon?
March 27, 2007 at 9:00 am · Filed under Geeky
When we had our house, our music collection was stored in the basement on a clunky old PC with a noisy fan. Our pictures were stored on my laptop along with our home movies. We played DVDs on a regular DVD player.
Living in an apartment without a basement, big noisy PCs are an annoyance. Having all the pictures and movies on my laptop is a pain because to show them to a group involves hooking it up to the TV and if Jen wants to look at pictures when I’m not around she’s out of luck. Playing DVDs on a regular player just means one more piece of ugly kit in front of the TV.
The solution to all these problems? A Mac-Mini! I ordered one online last Monday and it arrived on Friday. It now has pride of place in front of our TV, hooked up to it with a DVI to HDMI cable. And it really is Mini, about the size of a box of teabags, and quiet to boot.
It now holds all our music, pictures and videos and plays our DVDs too. It even comes with a teeny tiny remote control for casual use, and I’ve hooked up a wireless keyboard and mouse for more serious usage.
All that remains is to install some decent email software (Postfix, Fetchmail, Procmail, SpamAssassin, imapd and Mutt) on it, then I can use it as my mail server too, eliminating the other big noisy PC we have sitting in our dining room.
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