Grammerjack

Android system-level development can be done on either Linux or OSX. For the past few years I've been using OSX, but recently I've switched over to using Linux. Why? Mostly for the higher performance. The full Android system build takes about 30% less time under Ubuntu 8.04 LTS than it does on OSX 10.5 on the same hardware. Not to mention that it's much cheaper to buy a generic PC workstation than the equivalent Mac Pro. I have had some early troubles: It took me a while to get used to typing the "Ctrl" key instead of the "Command" key, and the ugly Linux fonts bothered me for a few days. But since I'm mostly using the exact same programs on Linux as I was on OSX (FireFox, Eclipse, Android), after a few days everything clicked, and I think that I'm just as productive as I was before. And the faster builds and file system stuff (like grep) are wonderful. It helped a lot to install the Blubuntu theme and some nice wallpaper to get away from the awf...

A few years ago I tried Ubuntu and predicted it would become a serious challenger to Windows, in about 18 months. Well, it's about 18 months later, was I right? Not exactly. Ubuntu seems to have stood still, if not actually gone backwards. In particular, the newer releases have much worse sound and video performance on my hardware (Intel CPU/GPU Mac Minis) than earlier releases. The sound driver issue is because Linux, in its typical decentralized fashion, is trying to figure out how to provide a standard audio subsystem, and has two or three competing standards that are duking it out. Since they all suck it seems odd that people defend them so much. Just pick one already. The video driver issue is because Intel decided to take several years to rewrite their Linux video driver stack, and Ubuntu decided to ship the new broken drivers rather than continue to use the old unbroken drivers. Very very lame on both Intel and especially Ubuntu's part. And Phoronix's performance te...

I just bought a Logitech diNovo Edge Mac Edition keyboard for my Mac Mini HTPC. I bought the diNovo instead of the Apple Bluetooth keyboard because: Built-in trackpad. Built in volume control slider. Dedicated media transport controls. Nifty dock / recharger stand. It's my first Bluetooth device. So far I think Bluetooth works a lot better than IR, because you don't have to point it at an IR receiver. The diNovo does have some flaws: No key backlighting, which makes it hard to use in the dark. The mouse buttons below the trackpad are mushy and hinged at the outer edges, making them hard to press. (Happily tapping works and there is a separete left-mouse-button on the left edge of the keyboard. So for typical Mac usage you don't need to use the mushy buttons.) A skim of the Logitech support forums indicates that the function keys are not as programmable as some people wish. I don't use function keys that much so this hasn't been an issue for me yet. My TV is a 40...

Here's the first public version of the slides from Tom Forsyth and Michael Abrash's GDC 2009 talks on Larrabee's instruction set, by way of Japanese magazine PC Watch, as seen on Beyond 3D's Forums. (You have to manually click on each of the little thumbnails of each slide.): http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2009/0330/kaigai498.htm Hopefully Intel (or GDC) will release a better version of these slide decks sometime soon. Say, was it just me, or was blogging really light about GDC this year? In past years I was a lot more technical writeups than I saw this year. I wonder if blogging is down in general? Is everyone on Facebook and Twitter now? I can't imagine Twitter being very useful for reporting technical information. Here's Michael Abrash's Doctor Dobbs Journal article on the Larrabee instruction set. http://www.ddj.com/hpc-high-performance-computing/216402188 Here's the Intel GDC 2009 Larrabee talks: Rasterization on Larrabee: A First Look at t...

The Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is a nifty open-source application for watching videos. It was originally designed for use on modified Xbox video game consoles, but has more recently become popular for Intel-based Home Theater Personal Computers. It has been ported to Windows, Mac, and Linux. It has no PVR features, instead it concentrates on displaying streaming and downloaded videos. Its big advantage over using the Xbox 360's similar application is that it handles a much wider variety of streaming video sources and downloaded video codecs. I've been running Plex , an OSX-specific version of the Xbox Media Center, on my Mac Mini for several months now. Overall it's a good product, but I had some issues for my application. I wanted Plex to serve as a consumer electronic device that my mother-in-law (who doesn't use computers and can't read English) could use by herself to watch videos. The system I put together didn't work very well for her. The problems we ran in...

Perhaps in preparation for Friday's GDC talks by Michael Abrash and Tom Forsyth, Intel has described the Larrabee instruction set: Prototype Primitives Guide Intel includes a C source file that implements their new instruction set, so people can play around with the instructions before Larrabee ships. The instruction set looks alot like a typical GPU shader instruction set. Lots of "log" and "rsqrt" type instructions. But there are also some interesting variations on MADD, such as MADD233_{PI,PS}, which I assume help shave cycles off of inner loops. The compress and expand instructions also look very useful. I look forward to reading code examples from Abrash and Forsyth in the near future!

For some time I've wanted to listen to my home music collection on my computer at work. I tried a bunch of different approaches, and finally came up with one that works pretty well: I run the free SqueezeCenter program on my home machine to serve music. I run the free Softsqueeze program on my work machine to listen to the music. To keep the whole world from listening to my music, I set up an SSH tunnel . The resulting system works pretty well. In case you're wondering, the SqueezeCenter program's main use is to serve music to the Squeezebox brand of internet radios. The ability to use it with a regular computer, without purchasing a Squeezebox internet radio, is a nice gesture on the part of the Logitec company that makes and sells Squeezebox internet radios.