A fully operational and empirical blog...タイラーマクアーダムズのブログ

SGI + LinuxDNA = Supercomputer

2009-08-30T00:04:00.000-07:00

I am glad to announce that we are now officially sponsored by SGI! We will be working on engineering a supercomputer ICC kernel for the ALtix 4700 IPF architecture. This is not to be confused with a "cluster" in that this system utilized NUMA and therefore has one kernel and one system image for anywhere from 128 to 1024 cpus using SLES 11 for the OS. RHEL is also supported. ICC patches for earlier kernel versions show great potential and we can not wait to see how well our kernel scales.

LinuxDNA Wallpaper :)

2009-05-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

Available for download a www.linuxdna.com

Optimized...

2009-02-10T01:15:00.000-08:00

The present state of golf instruction

2009-01-27T18:46:00.001-08:00

This blog post was inspired by two instructional articles... one in the ever popular Golf Digest and the other in Golf Magazine. Both articles were published about the same time and both address the exact same part of the swing - impact.

First, in Golf Digest, Vol 58, No 11, page 167 Bobby Clampett talks about how at impact the club should be still travelling down - even with the driver.

Second, Golf Magazine Jan 2008, page 89 top 100 teacher Charlie King gives "empirical" data on how if the club is moving up at impact (the driver) the golfer will gain a measurable increase in distance no matter if the speed of the club is low (75mph) or high (120mph).

I've got to say guys "Stop the violence!". Really... you're taking a way too complicated game and making it impossible. Shouldn't we just be happy we hit the ball? Bobby... you make mention of "The Golfing Machine" book as your cite for technical correctness... yes, the book you read backwards skipping chapters and then randomly back to other chapters. Tell me, are you as crazy as the book? Next, Charlie... what is wrong with impact at the bottom? Is it really worth it to encourage a chilly dip for a measly 5 or so extra yards?

So here is the conclusion for all golfers in my own special laboratory tests:

1.) Try to hit the ball

2.) Try to hit it in the middle of the club face

3.) Try to hit the ball down the middle of the fairway

Follow these highly technical tips and watch your score get better and better! (And you didn't even have to have a magazine subscription for this one)

You should have seen this one coming Arch

2008-11-24T17:35:00.000-08:00

squirrel mail: return to stable branch

That's one crazy squirrel...

Getting Green with Linux

2008-11-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

Being that Linux is free it is already relatively more green than other OS choices, but there are many things you can do to make Linux more economical than it may be from a default install:

1.) Spindown - Spindown is a daemon that can be configured to watch over all of the drives that you may have running on your system. Since I like to do video editing I have several disk arrays attached to my main workstation - without spindown they would stay up, wasting power and money, but since spindown can handle each drive (or drive array) separately, I can choose when I want to spin down a drive *individually* - based on demand. To my knowledge this can not be done in Windows... if you spin down one disk, all the other disks in the system must come down also. You can check out spindown at: http://code.google.com/p/spindown/

2.) OnDemand cpu scheduling - If you are using kernel 2.6.21 or higher you should be able to enable or compile in OnDemand scheduling for your cpus. Without OnDemand scheduling your cpus behave "normally" - running at their top clock speed no matter if the system is completely idle or not. This is a big waste of energy since there is no reason for the system to be running that way. You can check out detailed information on what is waking your system up the most with Intel's PowerTop application (once you have OnDemand scheduling enabled) http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/

3.) Power off your monitor(s) - The biggest chunk of energy wasted comes from what your monitors eat up. Schedule your monitors to go asleep when you're not around. In KDE 3.5 you can do this by going to the Control Panel > Peripherals > Display > Power Control > Power Off After

These three things are the biggest energy eaters in your systems. After following these tips you should be saving around 50% of your normal power consumption for systems that you never power off... but you do power off your systems, right?

Desktop Linux has Become Palatable!

2008-11-09T07:07:00.000-08:00

Could it finally be that I can have my cake and eat it too? The more I spend time customizing my Gentoo installation for the desktop the more time I wonder to myself why I'm running Vista or OS X. Up until now, the payoff with Linux for me has always been on the server side of things. When economic times are tough like they are right now, Linux often gets the OK where the Windows Server Family and proprietary UNIX doesn't. The ability to really get in the the kernel and code where you'd get arrested for even trying with Windows means that I can take the time to really understand what is going on under the hood of the OS... and thus gain a skill level that does not exist with Windows. This ability to hack around has made it's way to the desktop for me... right now in the form of KDE 3.5.9 stable. No GNOME... even though everybody on the planet seems to be using Ubuntu 8.10. I'm not saying it's not a good way to go, I just like way KDE give the ability to highly customize the gui. Being that I have always been interested in design KDE once again lets me get my hands dirty so that I can put together something that is not only functional but pleasing to the eyes. That's important when you get glued to a computer for the amount of time I have been lately. So all in all I'm seeing some very significant gains for Linux on the desktop right now no matter what distro you choose... So much so I'm almost ready to give up the ghost on Vista and OS X completely. Seriously Microsoft... I spend ridiculous amounts of money on your products year after year. What's there to keep me? Your system is always getting infected since everybody is stuck using it. It's like it's got a big target painted on it... and guess what? It's out of control. The amount of patches that constantly go out combined with the heap of security applications that you have to run are retarding the system. Not to say you should not practice good security or have those kinds of applications at your disposal... it's just that a single switch over to Linux and you don't really have to worry as much... which cuts down on the end user's paranoia. Plus the fact that there are perfectly compatible applications that are free to use on Linux. Take OpenOffice for example... You keep switching up your Office user interfaces so we have to relearn the simplest of tasks each release... why not take that opportunity to switch to a completely free alternative that stays the same each release? The same can be said for Vista. You keep changing stuff up that people have got used to. No wonder everybody went back to XP... they were used to it!

So with all that said I still must remain fair. Linux still has a long way to go yet. Things like X11 are still cumbersome. Perhaps the Redhat project Wayland will fix that. It needs to be ironed out quickly though. I would love see things like X forwarding being a simple compile option. Seriously... who even uses that anymore? You could add security and sweep out unused features all in one blow! This is one area where Windows has it right. That is what made them great on the desktop... the ease of reconfigurability with multiple monitors and for gaming. Right now I run dual monitors on my Gentoo system but when I want to play something like Doom 3 it ends up running on a small square on my secondary monitor... if I want to actually see the game I have to use nVidia's settings tool to reconfigure X for a single monitor. Not good! Also windows need to remember where they last were located... a small issue but annoying none the less.

So that's it fokes. Increased security plus a palatable, functional, free desktop with 3D effects. hmmm... you want to keep me around M$ it's time to show me the money! As one of your employees once put it to me, "Know thy enemy!" Bad economies could take you the way of Irix and not a fine wine. Believe that.

Today is multi-core, tomorrow is multi-arch

2008-10-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

So today the industry has finally made real progress at accelerating computing by introducing the multi-core architecture. Intel has a 6 core Xeon now that is amazing when parallel programmers tap in to the power of smp code. There is no way that it can be denied that multi-core cpus have changed the face of computing and have unlocked the brains of the industry's talent to think differently about the way things work. But what is next? What will bring to the table a system that can keep scaling the way that multi-core technology has kept performance scaling despite the fact that Moore's law has been broken? I want to bring to the table the next evolution in cpu arch... the multi-architectural cpu. Imagine a system that has a single multi-core cpu that has a CISC core, a RISC core, and (why not?) and EPIC core. Each single architecture with multiple cores, side by side, on the same silicon as two other completely different cpu cores. The reasons that this can be a true break through is the following:

1.) Optimization - Face it, no matter how long you spend writing your code it just runs best on a particular core. This is true because of the very nature of the program... For instance - the OS network stack on the RISC core. Few would argue that this is not ideal. In theory, I have this on my Windows system right now (it has a "Killer K1" nic that uses a PPC core to run Linux - thus offloading the processing and freeing the CISC cpu for other tasks). If this function was moved to the core further increases in performance would be had by reducing system latency.

2.) Ease on the programmer - leveraging a multi-arch computing cpu brings together the best of the best programmers. Right now the industry is in some what of a disarray. Programs are highly optimized for one core while another core never even sees the code! Take the x86 architecture - few would argue that the most easy core to get Linux, and pretty much any Linux application you want running, is the x86 chip. Yet other chips are the same for other OSes and applications. What if you could bring the best optimized code for the x86, RISC and EPIC architectures all running on one single chip? This would not only bring the best code together it would be relatively easy for the programmers to merge. This strategy unites the best code with the best programmers and diversifies the industry. It can also make porting your main kernel to a new architecture much easier. People may wonder how an OS could work with several different cores together on the same chip, but those people do not realize that this is not as hard to get working as they may think.

3.) Redundancy - Imagine the daily usage of your workstations and servers. Millions of the exact same tasks are carried out over and over again... in most cases in a very unoptimized fashion. What if you could test your code on different cores of the same ship to see where it runs best? Better still, what if in off hours your computer runs auto-optimization builds and reorganizes application code to different arch cores for efficiency? All sorts of variables could be accounted for... for instance, code optimization that runs not only faster but at a lower power consumption. This is not unlike what many super computers do already with FPGAs - redundant tasks are weeded out of the code and the FPGA takes the bulk of the redundancy and optimizes it.

If you look at the GPU right now you'll notice that the future of the multi-arch gpu is arguably already here. I tell you the future of cpus will follow a similar path! Combine mulit-core with mulit-arch and watch the new Moore's law emerge. We'll call it here the "Law of architectural diversification" ;)

My thanks to the Army and Durham Police

2008-06-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

I would like to thank both the Army and the Durham Police publicly for their top notch support at my Grandfather's funeral. You brought honor to his service and a tear to my eye. Thanks again.

Well I knew my Linux box would be faster but not "~" twice as fast!

2007-01-21T21:44:00.001-08:00

DOOM 3 mods were these: (per partition)
set com_videoRam "128" (Quadro FX1000 128MB agp x8 card)
- Everything else is the same settings as Doom 3 "out of the box"

Time demo average 3 timdemos
Windows: 25.8 fps
Linux: 50.7fps

I know what your thinking.. that can't be right. Well it's not exactly right. I've spent weeks in regedit on my XP Pro box trying to stretch it out for both stability and speed. But I've also spent weeks optimizing Gentoo for... well, just SPEED. (CFLAGS: http://tyler.mcadams.com/make.conf) Gentoo is still plenty stable though.

So how did I get such different test results? First XP Pro is tested in a dual monitor configuration. I have heard that this splits video memory for both monitors in two taking memory down to 64MB for the main monitor. (But even then I choose set com_videoRam "128" and got higher scores than without the setting.)

The thing that made probably the biggest difference is that XP has a lot of small apps loaded in memory where Linux did not even have a real window manager in the last test sessions.

So if you want to run DOOM 3 on Linux and get up to 10fps more than normal on Linux choose to log in via "failsafe" and run doom3 from the command line. Bottom line that makes Doom 3 a little faster when you're on Linux! Does it even out real benchmarks? Well I don't know DOES IT?

P4 system - 3.0ghz HT enabled - mobo: http://www.supermicro.com/products/m.../875/P4SCT.cfm
512MB RAM CAS 2.5

Obligatory Gentoo Linux Screenshot Post!

2006-12-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

emerge kde ~ 4hours

2006-12-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

P4 3.0ghz
RAM 1G PC3200

Gentoo 2.6.18-r3

-march=pentium4 -03 -pipe
MAKEOPTS="-j3"

USE="kdeenablefinal threads qt4 dri sse2 opengl alsa"

Why I send my administration time on performance tuning

2006-12-11T18:14:00.000-08:00

Some people wonder why I spend a large part of my time on performance tuning skills. The reason has to do with the way people use computers today. Most people want a fast computer with a fast internet connection with fast web browsing and fast downloading. I can provide that... *relatively* speaking. That means that what you're complaining about is slow on my systems is several orders of magnitude faster than what you would normally have. Even though it appears slow it's nowhere near as slow as it would be on an untuned system. The reason that certain things are slow on a normal system has to do with the way today's infrastructure uses computers. Until that changes computers will remain to appear slow and security issues will still be a very high danger to those type users. With this in mind the larger portion of the demand for what computers are used for equates to high performance aspects. Yet still security is a big factor weather understood by the end user or not. In this aspect I do what I can but guarantee nothing.

A scientific overview of speed glue and speed glue effects.

2006-10-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.tomveatch.com/tt/speed.glue.patent.text.html

Globe 999 National - Kong Linghui style

2006-09-28T23:25:00.000-07:00

The first thing you'll probably notice about this version of 999 is the special blue sponge made for Kong Linghui. A 39 degree hardness sponge that you can not normally get from Globe. That's because this is a "National" version of 999 that is hand picked and assembled for China's National team players like Ma Lin and Kong. Note the stamp on the back. This is a sign you've got the real thing and not one of many knock offs that some people are selling on the internet.

The topsheet is extremely tacky and will hold a ball for about 10 seconds. The sponge works great with speed glue for being 39 degrees hardness and you can really notice the effect on hard shots. When you go after a loop shot you get an nice click sound that gives you the confidence to know you're going to land that shot since there will be plenty of extra topspin on the ball. Serves and pushes have a ton of spin that gives you control over the point so that you are the one with the opening shot. This really sets up a 3rd ball attack strategy since you've got the control over the ball's spin.

I'm using this as my new forehand rubber, switching tentatively from Bryce 2.1mm and Juic 999 Elite Ultima SV Max. Bryce had the speed, Juic 999 had the spin.. put them together and you've got Globe 999 National. If it's good enough for Kong's forehand it's good enough for mine!

Bryce: Surprisingly spinny

2006-09-15T01:00:00.000-07:00

After using bryce for a few weeks I am really impressed with actually how spinny it is. It seems to be able to generate a pretty high amount of spin even though it is classified as a high speed rubber. Slow loops have a lot of control and a good amount of spin. Serves seem to be just as spinny as a tacky rubber produces. I would still like to try Bryce Hard which just made it to America. I think it would be really good with a little Ecolo Expander II and speed glue.

Maximize your speed glue effect

2006-09-10T00:12:00.000-07:00

Here is a great way to maximize your speed glue effect to last longer and add a lot more performance.

First buy a speed glue friendly rubber. I use Butterfly Bryce 2.1mm

Next you need to prep your rubber with Juic Ecolo Effect 1 or 2. I have yet to use EE 2 but I use EE 1 and apply several coats over a 7 day span until I get a dome effect from the sponge. This adds a permanent glue effect to the rubber to start off with and helps accentuate the speed glue when used in conjunction. EE 1 does a good job at a rather controlled weak glue effect, but when used with speed glue you get an extra ordinary effect from the glue.

After the sheet is prepped, for the first 3 or 4 times you play use whatever speedglue you want to use. After 3 or 4 applications you should have a thin layer of rubber cement on your sponge.

Once you have a good build up use Spintech's speed booster or ASTI speed glue booster to apply the solvent directly to the thin built up layer of glue on the sponge. Apply several coats of booster and wait 10 -15 min for the rubber to dome up like it does with regular speed glue.

While you're waiting 10 -15 min for the solvent to kick in apply a small coat of speed glue to your blade. Let the glue on the blade dry completely.

Once the rubber has domed and the blade's glue dried use a cooking pin or something round to lay down the rubber to the blade. Roll over it to make sure you have no bubbles in the rubber. At this point it is recommended to use a Yasaka Clicky Press to hold the sheets to the blade to dry. This is because when you use both EE and speed glue/booster you get an extreme curl in the rubber and you really need to apply pressure to make sure the rubber dries to the blade correctly. I would recommend to do this at home just before you leave to go play.

This extreme dome effect will expand your rubber so that it hangs off the blade's tip anywhere from 1/8th to 1/4th of an inch or so. It may be necessary to re-trim your rubber so that it does not hang too much off the blade.

When you've finished play make sure to remove the rubber sheets from the blade. But do so after about 4 hours after you finished playing. Peeling off sooner might leave chucks of speed glue that glupe up the sponge that can cause bubbles the next time you speed glue. The reason for removing the rubber is to let the rubber and sponge shrink back to it's original size for the next time to apply the solvent booster or speed glue again. If you leave it on until the next time you reglue/play you will stretch the sponge and rubber even more and this will start to damage and rip the sponge layer.

This technique with Bryce gets a great long lasting effect for up to 5 hours if you follow these directions correctly.

Doing it this way with booster makes sure that the speed glue build up does not get too big and does not start adding weight to your blade. Also, a thin layer of build up keeps the sponge more flexible for optimal expansion. Too much speed glue build up will take more and more glue to expand the rubber next time you play causing more and more build up. This technique will keep your rubber more like the first time you put it on and got a good effect from it.

Oh my God! They killed IRIX! You bastards!!!

2006-09-06T23:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.sgi.com/support/mips_irix.html

No Sir I didn't like it

2006-08-10T12:17:00.000-07:00

With the heightened level of terror awareness I thought that I should share this:

About a month or so ago I went downtown to pay a court fine where I needed to go through a metal detector to get to the courtroom. I took off all of the metal I had on and put it in the x-ray machine and then stepped through. As soon as I got through the gate I noticed I had forgotten to take off my watch. The metal detector did not go off. I asked one of the guards if they knew why it did not go off and they did not know. I kept going and was not asked to go through again. I was not happy about this and now reflecting on it I probably should have said something then. Obviously metal detectors are not the end-all of security but in this terror driven climate that we must live in day-to-day it might be a good thing to get that fixed.

I will not give the exact location of this detector but only say that they should all be double checked coming in to this time of year. Every little thing we do right can help in a big way!

Vmware finally coming to Apple OS X

2006-08-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6102730.html

Forget CSS for a second - think embedded fonts

2006-08-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

As the web evolves we now have an excellent set of tools to communicate with. HTML, Flash, CSS, Javascript... The tools we have you use are almost endless... with the exception of one very over looked issue: Embedded fonts.

Why in the world has nobody picked up the ball and ran with the idea that the web, in order to be successful in communication, is going to need an embedded font solution that not only works for any chosen font but is also universal for browsers and has an accepted standard?

Right now there are a few different ways to embed fonts if you really want to, but they only work on certain browsers and sometimes need the approval of a download on the viewer's behalf in order to work correctly. This is way too much work to be effective. Right now the only truly successful way to browse a site with the company's fonts in place is for the web designer to use a gif with the fonts printed on them. Not only does this add to the total size of a site's download, these text gifs are not selectable or easy to copy. Once again end-user functionality is compromised in order to communicate.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to go to the NY Times website and have an end-user experience that feels the same way as picking up and reading a newspaper? All the fonts accessible to the mouse and the look and feel of real type!

While inroads in layout techniques are being made with CSS let us not overlook the more important idea behind web design... communication with typography!

I got my Wacom 6x11 Intuos3 tablet today

2006-07-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting for this thing to arrive for a week now and boy was it worth the wait! After installing the drivers and photoshop plugins I've been tweaking out the tablet and it's working perfect. The 6x11 is a great match for my widescreen Viewsonic monitor and the brushes work great in photoshop with it.

I can't wait to try it out in Final Cut Express HD... which I'll be buying soon, (My original FCE v1.o no longer works in OS X 10.4.7 for some strange reason)

E-mail: Your_IP_was_logged! Department fbi.

2006-07-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

If you get an e-mail like the one below take care not to open the attachment. I have contacted the FBI about this and it is a trojen. The e-mail will look like this:

Dear Sir/Madam,

We have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.

Important:
Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.

Yours faithfully,
Steven Allison

*** Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI-
*** 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 3220
*** Washington, DC 20535
*** phone: (202) 283-2300

SGI Altix 4700 Supercomputer Attains World Record for Memory Bandwidth

2006-07-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

SGI Press Release

Latency

2006-07-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

It takes 8.5 min for light from the Sun to reach Earth. No wonder I'm lagging!

AVID Free DV -Why not?

2006-07-09T23:12:00.000-07:00

AVID has released a free edition of it's NLE interface that runs on Mac OS X and PC's. Free DV uses the same "industry standard" AVID interface which makes it a great entry level tool to get used to the AVID NLE interface. It has many effects for a stripped down version but the best part is the free training videos you can watch on the AVID sight to keep the learning curve fed with new techniques specific to AVID NLE's. I would recommend it to anybody who uses Microsoft's Movie Maker or Apple's iMovie. If you're going to learn how to use a NLE you might as well make the learning curve count for something!

Download Free DV

Free DV Forums

Training Videos

Pixel - Multiplatform Image Editing

2006-07-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

Pixel is an image editing program similar to Adobe Photoshop and the GIMP program. The advantage that Pixel has over both of the programs is it's available over many different types of Operating Systems and has support for CMYK colorspace. Since Pixel is in the beta sage there are a few bugs to work out but the main advantage of buying Pixel is you have a licence that allows you to run Pixel on several different computers, no matter if the Operating Systems are different. That means I can use the exact same program on my Linux, Windows and OS X boxes. I love that. Not to meantion the price is pretty darn cheap right now at $37.00. I give Linux journal Magazine the credit for my discovery of Pixel. Linux needs a good image editor... not that GIMP is not a good one, it's just that Pixel supports CMYK and has a more familiar interface than GIMP does. I always find that the more tools I have at my disposal the more creative I can be. Support is good and there are forums for the users as well.

Check out Pixel here:
Pixel

Support I would like to see hammered out would be Wacom tablet support although this should be technically possible once Photoshop plugins are fully supported.

Turbo Linux 11F FUJI is finally out!

2006-06-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

Anybody who knows me knows I love Turbo Linux. Turbo Linux is a great desktop Linux and even comes with PowerDVD so that you can *legally* watch DVD's on Linux. I have 10F and it was great and I just ordered 11F Fuji. Turbo Linux is the most popular Linux in all of Asia... it's distro that is based on Red Hat but has a lot of extra functionality that Red Hat does not. That includes support for my favorite files system XFS, dynaplug, Windows Media player codec and Active Directory authentication.

Turbo Linux is easy to use and is the most complete and well rounded distro out of the box in my opinion.

Here is a screenshot of my FUJI desktop:
http://www.tyler.mcadams.com/snapshot1.png

Seti@home project

2006-06-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

If you want to give up your spare cpu cycles for something interesting, you might be interested in the Seti@home project:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/index.php

Why not?

Silhouette Vectorization Software

2006-06-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

This software is really interesting. You can take scanned art, technical drawings or blueprints and the program will "vectorize" the images in to line art. You can then use and modify the vector art in other programs like Freehand or Illustrator. Not only is this a way to edit that which was not editable before but it also decreases the size of the drawings once in vectored form.

http://www.silhouetteonline.com/

Adobe had a product called Streamline that did the same thing but it is now discontinued and merged with Adobe Illustrator as the "Live Trace". Silhouette is both a stand alone product or a plugin for Illustrator. The only thing I don't like is the lack of plugin support for Freehand.

Scientific Linux

2006-06-06T00:12:00.000-07:00

As many scientists will tell you empirical data is best when test conditions are as close to the same as possible. The goal of the Scientific Linux community is to make a distro that has "a common install base for the various experimenters" to run their tests and collect data from.

https://www.scientificlinux.org/

Boxx Workstation's APEXX 8

2006-05-24T17:59:00.001-07:00

Holy Cow! This thing has 8 dual core AMD Opteron cpus!!! It also has SLI video graphics, holds up to 128MB of systm ram and 13+ TB worth of local storage! My God! The things I could do with this system... Boxx hook me up!!!!

http://www.boxxtech.com/products/apexx8.asp

Autodesk completed the acquisition of Alias.

2006-05-21T01:11:00.000-07:00

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=5970886&siteID=123112

Googled over 10,000 times.

2006-05-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

I would have never thought my site was that popular but according to the leapfish.com domain name resource center I have the following stats:

www.tyler.mcadams.com

Combined Value Score: 151
Top Level Domain Score: 1
Unwanted Characters Score: 10
Dictionary Word Score: 100
Length Score: 15
Archive.org Score: 0
Google Search Results: 10,600
Yahoo Search Results: 0
MSN Search Results: 209
Search Engine Score: 25

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estimated Base Value: $453.00
Estimated Actual Value: $34,202.00

How much is the US in debt?

2006-05-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

If you don't know you should know:

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

$8,361,899,806,709.45

That's 8 TRILLION + btw... not Billion.

Chuck Norris

2006-04-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

If a wood chuck chucked wood in the middle of the woods only Chuck would hear it.

Objectivism and Judgement

2006-04-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

How do you judge other people? Do you take your point of view, expirence and personal falts to the table... then somehow superimpose them upon what looks to be the individual in the situation you've been? Please explain to me... How? What is judgement? Well, it's supposed to be as objective as possible. And if that's the case then you've got a whole different instruction set to work with. You can't judge off your situation... why? Well, you're not that person. The idea is that a person is unique and therefore dirven by a complete different set of dynamics than you are. That's my thoughts anyway.

Full stop! Crazy Ivan post!

2006-04-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

I feel like an adolescent school boy sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Guess what? Your orders are *at the very least* 7 bloody hours old!!!

Adidas sneakers

2006-04-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

Why do I wear my Adidas shoes? They're my Addidas. See how very simple that is? :)

The good news / bad news senerio.

2006-03-21T09:18:00.000-08:00

The good news:

I placed 5th in the under 1100's at the Cary Cup and I feel I placed pretty good considering the pressure.

The bad news:

Trophies make me proud and generally give me a big head.

Enable 3D acceleration in VMware Workstation

2006-03-11T20:41:00.000-08:00

One of the experimental features in the latest release of VMware 5.5 is accelerated 3D. This feature will help if you want to play games or you're running an Intel OS X VM and want better gui interface functionality. To enable:

- Locate your vm and find the .vmx configuration file.

- Add the following lines at the bottom of the first set of configuration settings:

mks.enable3d = "TRUE"
svga.vmramSize = 67108864

Save the file and start your VM. (Do not make these changes with a initialized vm)
The vram variable is set to 64MB (67108864) It can be increased to 128MB if needed.

If there actually was a Matrix...

2006-03-07T09:15:00.000-08:00

God would be the only system administrator I would trust.

Achieving my goal.

2006-03-06T06:35:00.000-08:00

A long time ago I set out to achive a goal... To be in a particular place in a particular state of mind. I am happy to say that I have achived that goal! Things that went in to achieving the goal, were social engineering, technical skills, and a little bit of luck. The goal itself is kind of hard to explain and really can only be understood by those who share this type of perspective since at first glance you can not really distinguish the situation from it's surroundings... thus I can not go in to details about it. Only know that it was a personal goal and I still can't get over that I actually hit it! Also thanks to all who helped me achieve this goal! Even though I am a "do it yourselfer" I recognise the help given to me from various sources and give thanks to all who helped push me to achive this personal goal!

New rubber sheets on there way from Japan!

2006-02-28T07:55:00.000-08:00

This is my first international order of anything. I've got to say it's got me excited to think that I can order all the great Japanese and Chinese table tennis products that you just can't get in America from this shop:

http://www.iruiru.com/e/acn/

What I ordered:
1 sheet NITTAKU KYOUHYOU2 JS red for me, 1 sheet red and one sheet black for my good buddy smanders.

NITTAKU KYOUHYOU2 JS is the Nittaku branded Hurricane 2 that is originally made in China for the National team by DHS. (Double Happiness) Hurrincane 2 is supposed to be really spinny (more so than Hurricane 3) and the JS Nittaku version comes with a Japanese sponge so it'll be better for reguling (not to mention lighter). Lot's of great products at this shop. You have to order in Japanese Yen amounts so you've got to know your exchange rates though. Who know's when it'll get here, but I'm hoping before my tournament!

Table tennis equipment lowdown

2006-02-16T06:36:00.000-08:00

When most people think of ping-pong they think sandpaper paddles, an "expensive" $100 table and somebody's garage to play in. What most people don't know is that short of automobile racing table tennis is the most equipment dependant sport on the planet. First of all, you can not play in table tennis leagues or torunament level table tennis with a sandpaper paddle. (nor would you want to) One side of your paddle must be red and one side must be black and must use any of the hundreds of ITTF approved rubbers in order to play. Each side of the paddle can have it's own type of rubber, or if you play Chinese/Japanese penhold style you must have the non-used side painted either black or red depending on the color of the rubber on the other side. The rubber on the paddle can be one of many different types, inverted spinny, antispin, pips-out short, medium, or long depending on what style of play you choose. Defensive players usually use one side long-pips out and one side high-spin inverted rubber while offensive players will usually choose a fast, spinny inverted rubber on both sides or a fast pips-out rubber. This choice in rubber makes a big difference in how you can play since the main factor besides speed of play in tournement level table tennis is spin. If spin is not accounted for properly your retruns will never hit the other side of the table. In fact, they will shoot off in different directions that must be compensated for in order to return the ball correctly. Many people who watch tournament level table tennis for the first time often wonder why players are missing shots that look relatively easy to return. This is the spin factor... it is impossible to explain to someone who plays garage ping-pong how this effects play. Instead, they must usually first play someone with high spin levels to understand why these simple looking shots turn out to be very hard to return. Many defensive players will then turn to a type of rubber called anti-spin to make these shots more controllable... this helps but can waste one side of your racket. Defensive players then flip the racket in their hands to use different sides of the paddle so not to limit their shots to just non-spin. This technique is called "twiddling". This style of play is also the reason one side of your paddle must be black and the other red. Originally, you could have both sides of your racket one color, but since the other player could not easily track what type of rubber you used to strike the ball the colors were put in to use in an attempt to make things more easy. You are also allowed to question your opponents before matches as to what type of rubber they use so to know what style of play you'll be up against. Highspin rubber is the best rubber to serve with since you can put massive amounts of spin on the ball in an attempt to either have your opponent miss the table on the return of serve completely, or augment their return of serve with a popped up ball that can be easily smashed. Table tennis is less like regular tennis in this respect since the idea of serving the ball is rarely about actually aceing your opponent but making them mess up the return placement instead. Other highspin type rubbers will also focus more on the actual speed of the rubber to make smashes faster. Both types of rubber are hard to control and take years of practice to master good technique. Some offensive players like to use a fast pips-out rubber that focuses on high speed and better control of spin. This type of rubber is less effected by high spin shots from an opponent but can not produce much spin themselves either. Long-pips rubber is used by defensive players to reverse the spin of their opponent's spin completely. Long-pips rubber can be highly unpredictable for both the player using it and the player returning shots hit from it. The racket or "blade" as it is commonly refered to is not always completely wood. Many highend blades use carbonfibre and titanium to make them both lighter and faster. Offensive players love these blades since they can swing them faster, and are generally stiffer. Both factors combined help produce faster shots. Ping-pong balls in torunament play will not uncommonly reach speeds in excess 125mph. It actually hurts to get hit by one. Other equipment differences from novice table tennis are the Japanese and Chinese style blades refered to as "penhold" blades. They get the name penhold because they are held upside down similar to the way one grips a pen. Japanese blades are more often square in shape where Chinese blades look like regular rackets with a shorter handle. Traditionaly, these 2 blade styles only use one sheet of rubber and the back is painted the opposite color from whatever is used on the front but newer styles of play are requiring penhold style players to use 2 sheets on either side now. The last type of commmon blade is the defensive bat. The defensive bat is made of slower type woods that bend more when hit. This type of blade gives extra control to slow down offensive shots and also gives more "dwell time" for the ball, enabling more spin to be applied. Defensive blades are used mainly by the "chopper" style of play where high amounts of underspin are the bread and butter type shot. Choppers were once the dominant style of play in tournament table tennis, but has now been all but completely replaced by the offensive style player. Most table tennis leagues where tournament players get together to play use a hardwood floor or a hard plastic-like surface to play on. Tables for these leagues are the same that tournaments are played on and cost upwards of $1000 to purchase. Playing tournament level table tennis in one's garage is not a good practise since the area one needs to play is much larger and higher than what a regular garage can offer. Many players will stand 15 to 20 feet back from the table in order to hit high lobs in defense of an opponent's smashes. Don't try that in a garage!

Check out highend table tennis equipment:
www.paddlepalace.com

I like the smell of speed glue!

2006-02-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry nobody likes the smell of speed glue but me. It's smelling up the townhouse and everybody I play with hates it. Is that an advantage on the table? I think so ;)

Mind Control Parasites in Half of All Humans

2006-02-13T07:39:00.000-08:00

I don't know what's more scary... the idea of parasites controlling a human's brain or the stat that it's in 50% of humans already.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060211/sc_space/mindcontrolbyparasites

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/12/0738233&threshold=-1

It has been documented in the past that there are certain parasites that take control of a grasshopper's brain and make it seek out water to drown itself in so that the parasite can start it's underwater lifecycle. Also, there is the wasp that stings a cockroach in the head and injects a similar nerotoxin that takes control of the roach enough to lead it back to the wasp's home so that it can lay eggs inside it. I guess the Aliens movie is closer to the truth than originally thought.

Warcraft 3

2006-02-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

What it is: A game you play on your computer.

What it isn't: A psychotherapy session.

Why I play it: I'm board and it's the only game I own.

What I like about it: It's got somewhat good strategy and is time consuming.

What I don't like about: The amount of people who are either rude online or cheat playing it.

Am I a gamer? I gave up gaming when I went to college 12 years ago, so no.

How do I play it? Only one vs one.

Am I looking to join a clan? No.

Do I want to AT with you? No.

Do I do it to meet people online? No. I do it because I like working on my multitasking skills and it is good for that.

Will I hit Alt-Q for extra gold? Sorry dude, I'm like totally on a Mac.

GG newb? Come play me at my house talking that trash.

What kind of person do I enjoy playing? The kind who doesn't chat the entire time they're playing.

Juic 999 Elite Ulitma SV 2.5 is where it's at!

2006-01-22T18:09:00.000-08:00

What can I say about this ridiculous monster sheet of table tennis technology? The question should really be what can't you say? It gives an insane amount of spin... enough to maybe even see a pysc about. The SV (soft version) sponge is excellent for re-gluing and you get plenty of auditory feedback... enough to let you know that you might have upset the planet's rotation since now the ball you just hit has it's own rings and moons. If you like to get 5 to 8 feet of space between you and the table and just get sick with the amounts of top spin your loops can produce, then this is the sheet for you. It's also good for service since the tackiness of the rubber will keep the ball stuck on it upside down for an easy 10 to 30 seconds. With that kind of tackiness you might wonder how the ball ever leaves the sheet in the first place. Why go for 2.5 max sponge? Come on now... if you're going to buy 999 you might as well get it as thick as possible. Otherwise, it's like going to a Bar-B-Que and not licking your fingers. Here's the Colonel's secret recipe:

- x2 Juic 999 Elite Ulitma SV sheets with MAX sponge.
- Based generously in Juic Ecolo Expander - applied for at least 48 hours.
- Top with speed glue of your favorite flavor... make sure when finished you can serve rubber like potato chips (not sliced ham).
- Apply speed glue at least 2 hours before match since it will take a stack of cooking books a mile high to press the rubber firmly to blade after rubbing out all bubbles with a cooking pin.
- To keep fresh use 2 zip lock bags on both sides of rubber to keep sheets from attracting giant hungry dust bunnies.
- Finally, serve up anybody talking table tennis smack.

XFS still king of Linux filesystems

2006-01-06T19:25:00.000-08:00

The second round of linux filesystem benchmarks has been posted to Slahdot.org:

http://linuxgazette.net/122/TWDT.html#piszcz

Improvements to all new filesystems have been made with most notables to ext3 and XFS. XFS still has the best overall filesystem performance and scalability according to the articles findings, I'm inclined to agree. XFS has been my filesystem of choice since 2.4 and will continue to be for a long time. It's delayed allocation and realtime capabilities simply make it the best choice for a workstation or sever that needs high-end filesystem performance.

Buddy Jesus

2006-01-06T18:05:00.000-08:00

I had to buy him. Who wants to look a Christ on a stick all day? Only $20 and I wouldn't ya know he's even got a kung fu grip!

Court Etiquette and Handmade strokes.

2006-01-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

All those "players" deemed to be playing with what has come to be known as "hand made" strokes are now eliminated from possible means of contest at any mile high stadium.

Fair usuage of my G4 workstation

2005-12-24T20:27:00.000-08:00

Below is the preamble to the declaration of Independence of my G4 workstation. Lines that might be of most interest are:

*No disabling of disks or disk arrays.

*No crashing the system

*Files have been added with intention of personal usage under the "fair usage" act

If you don't like these rules I would suggest the "Become a monk in Thailand" route since you're obviously Holier than thou... here's the link: http://www.fpmt.org/imi/firstletter.htm

*************************************************************
Welcome to Thaidog's G4 Digital Audio running OS X Tiger
You are welcome on this machine as long as you have contacted
me before using: Tyler@McAdams.com
*************************************************************

Proper use means:

- No deletion of files without prior consent
- No addition of files without prior consent
- No rebooting or crashing of the system
- Using the system as if it was yours
- No sudo or root access without prior consent
- No execution of programs without prior consent
- Progams admitted for use are used with the program creator's intention

All files on this system:

- Have been written to disk and configured by the Administrator
- Have been purchased through legitimate means
- Have been added freely by personal benefactors in legitimate channels
- Have been added freely under legal licensse agreements such as the GPL
- Have been added with intention of personal usage under the "fair usage" act
- Are used for both personal and business purposes

Security measures on this system:

- Have been put in place intentionally to counter act malignant usage
- Are checked and updated regularly
- Will be used as evidence of malignant usage

************************************************************
YOU ARE RESPOSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS ON THIS MACHINE
- Misuse and crashing the system are grounds for prosecution
- Logging on to this system implies that you have read
everything above carefully and agree to those terms
************************************************************

Happy Holidays!!!

2005-12-24T11:52:00.000-08:00

I wish everybody the very best this Holiday season! Be merry, be jolly, and be safe!

Like

2005-12-10T13:13:00.000-08:00

like1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (lk)
v. liked, lik·ing, likes
v. tr.
1. To find pleasant or attractive; enjoy.
2. To want to have:
3. To feel about; regard: Archaic. To be pleasing to.

I would like some coffee.
How do you like her nerve!
Iike I'm an orphan... dig this get up, it's the most!

753

2005-12-07T13:54:00.000-08:00

Anybody know what 753 is or if it has any special meaning? For some reason this number has some kind of significance to my life. Every morning I look at the clock at 7:53. It also happens at night... at exaclty 7:53. I must be on some sort of "biological clock" for lack of a better term. Laugh it up but look at it like this... if *you* looked at your digital clock every morning and every night at exaclty 7:53 you might start wondering who injected you in the Matrix!? AHHHHHH!!!!!!

VMware Workstation 5.5 is out!

2005-12-06T12:59:00.000-08:00

VMware finally released VMware 5.5 out of the beta stage. The upgrade path is free from VMware Workstation 5.0.

A good reason to upgrade is the ability to have a smp aware guest VM running on VMware. One thing to remember though if you have a dual Xeon box is to make sure to assign the processor affinities to use only the physical units and not the logical HT units for best guest VM performance. An easy way to make this happen automatically is to use the freely downloadable application made by the Tom's Hardware group in this article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040528/index.html

Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-25T20:47:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to friends and family! I hope all is good for everyone during this holiday season.

SSHTerm Professional now free

2005-11-13T14:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.sshtools.com/products/applications/sshterm-pro/sshterm-pro.jsp

Under a free, limited commercial use license. (Up to 25 users)

So what happened to all the old dictionaries?

2005-11-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

I don't like it. No sir... not one bit.

Knoppix + JAP - the only way to be safe on the web on your Windows compatible computer

2005-09-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

Many people who use Windows ask me how can they protect their systems from viruses, spyware and hackers while connected to the Internet. The answer from a Windows OS perspective is that you can't. I've been in the industry for 10+ years now and I have to be frank with you... it's never been uglier! But you don't surf porn or gambling or espn! Guess what? It doesn't even matter! And while features like a popup blocker makes the internet look more tame to endusers, the amount of attacks that have no visual traces have never been higher and have never been sneakier. I had one friend boast that his computer had been online for more than two years and he had never been infected once... that's when I laughed and told him he only thought he had not been infected. So what can you do? The answer is Knoppix. Knoppix is a Linux distribution that is burned to a cd-rom “iso”. You put the cd-rom in your system and restart your system. Knoppix now boots you in to it's Linux environment directly from it's cd. From this Linux environment you can now safely pull up a web browser and surf the web. But you might be asking how this is any safer than using Windows to surf the web with. The answer to that is that because Knoppix has been burned to cd it is on media that is read only. This means that any spyware or viruses that would normally be downloaded and installed on your system with out your knowledge are now unable to find a finite place to sink their teeth in to your system. Want to be extra careful? Unplug the power cable to your hard drive and then boot in to knoppix. This is the first step to making your system safe for the web. Now that your system is safe from viruses and spyware we also want to protect your identity and IP address from becoming exposed. For this we will turn to a product called "JAP". JAP is what's known as an anonymous proxy service. When you download JAP and start the program you will connect to one of the JAP service's proxies. Once connected, your system will look as if it is the proxy server and not your actual computer and IP address. This will protect your identity from being stolen by seemingly innocent sites that you might surf regularly.

So what are the steps?
1.) Download and burn an “.iso cd” of Knoppix. (make sure you burn in the .iso format or it will not work.)
2.) Open up your computer case and disconnect your hard drive.
3.) Boot your system with Knoppix and connect to the internet.
4.) Google for "JAP Anonymous Proxy" and then download JAP.
5.) Read on the JAP site how to connect with JAP. (Don't forget to change your browser proxy settings)
6.) Surf the web like you usually would.

(Don't forget to read up on JAP at it's site about the certain things that JAP can protect and the other things that it can't protect you from.)

So you're now complete safe... right? Not exactly. There still is one catch. Go to www.auditmypc.com and take the firewall test. What happened? It still gets your internal IP address! Still don't think it's a big issue? Go to your place of work and try it behind your corporate grade firewall and get ready be shocked at the ease at which this app picks up every single computer's IP address on the network. And this is a “good” version of this kind of program... it can be easily altered to spread throughout your office the same way an undetected virus does. In a matter of seconds it could have the entire office mapped out and ready for any hacker who uses it. I have found only one way to beat this test... and that's on a Apple PowerMac workstation running OS X. Here is how to beat it:

You need a couple of programs:
Little snitch
JAP
a firewall

With little snitch installed the app that tries to get your IP address must first be filtered... when you visit the page a box from littlesnitch will open and ask if you want to let the app communicate. Block the app with littlesnitch and now the app can not get your IP address.

Other musts for safe surfing:
Virus scanner
Spyware scanner
Firewall

BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Magic brush' paints visual world

2005-09-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4184160.stm

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/17/2355255&threshold=-1&tid=227&tid=126

Why Windows will always have security flaws.

2005-09-16T22:46:00.000-07:00

Windows is the most used OS on the planet. It's also the most marketed OS on the planet. What keeps the sales going? New features! So what's the big push at Microsoft? It's to get it's OS out the door with the new features that will make the OS sell more copies. When a product is pushed out the door quickly, especially a product that requires programming you're going to get features first... and security second. So you say "What about the old stuff? It should be fixed in the new release right?" Yes, but now you've got a dozen new security flaws to deal with so the security level stays the same. The old stuff finally gets fixed but by the time it's solid there's something new marketed that's taking it's place. Dovark said something that made a lot of sense a few years back... he said "If we could just freeze Windows for about 5 or so years we would get the quality we're looking for." He's absolutely right. So what's stopping it? People... People are stopping it. Because the human tendency is to want everything... NOW!!! And "To @#$% with it! It's working isn't it?" When will it stop? It will stop when people start to understand that a computer is not a toy. It's not a plaything to be twisted to your liking. When a computer actually gets put to use correctly it has to be used a certain way... there's really no say in how *you* get to use it... it either works and you're glad it did the job or it doesn't work because you don't want to use it that way. When will we learn? When we freeze it for 5 or so years. When will that happen? Never.

legitimate

2005-09-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

le·git·i·mate Pronunciation Key (l-jt-mt)
adj.

1. Being in compliance with the law; lawful: a legitimate business.
2. Being in accordance with established or accepted patterns and standards: legitimate advertising practices.
3. Based on logical reasoning; reasonable: a legitimate solution to the problem.
4. Authentic; genuine: a legitimate complaint.
5. Born of legally married parents: legitimate issue.
6. Of, relating to, or ruling by hereditary right: a legitimate monarch.
7. Of or relating to drama of high professional quality that excludes burlesque, vaudeville, and some forms of musical comedy: the legitimate theater.

In a sentence:
- All my software is and always has been bought through legitimate means.
- Legitimate software costs a pretty penny.
- Matt that steak was legitimate!

What is a closed network?

2005-09-12T19:58:00.000-07:00

A closed network in most basic terms is a network of computers that are unacessable by any means possible from any other network of computers. Best defined, a closed network is a network of computers that has absolutely no physical networking (RJ-45, wireless, etc) to any other computer, device or network other than the computers that make up that network. Closed networks are to be used when security is of the utmost importance... say national security. This type of network in my opinion should never, ever have any part of it touch the internet, weather through vpn, dedicated line or both. A closed network should also have physcial security features such as biometric identification in a heavily fortified location. The computers on the network themselves should run operating systems of a "trusted" nature and should be kept after by a group of dedicated security operators. Many orginaizations fall in to the trap of putting the network on a vpn so to make it more convenient. The truth is that there is nothing convenient about securing a network. It takes a lot of hard work to protect and opening a hole to the entire world... no matter how small is not to be accepted... EVER. There is no acception. Convenience and security are never, ever in the same ball park. They are to be treated as opposites and it is never possible for these variables to coexisit together. Not on a network and not in the real world. If you have files that you consider important then they should never be on a computer that is connected to the internet... EVER!

New Scientist Breaking News - Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive

2005-09-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

New Scientist Breaking News - Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive

First Four-Way Dual Core Opteron Workstation

2005-08-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=33905

Equipped with SLI eventually... schweet.

Spyware removal

2005-08-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

The programs I have grown to love for this operation are Adaware and Spybot. Why use more than one scanner? Because the scanners pick up different packages that other scanners don't. A commercial version has been even added to the cocktail: McAfee Spyware removal. This is for my home workstation, of course :)

The Cell Cycle & Mitosis Tutorial

2005-08-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

The Cell Cycle & Mitosis Tutorial

Osmosis

2005-08-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

osmosis.
os·mo·sis ( P ) Pronunciation Key (z-mss, s-)
n. pl. os·mo·ses (-sz)

Diffusion of fluid through a semipermeable membrane from a solution with a low solute concentration to a solution with a higher solute concentration until there is an equal concentration of fluid on both sides of the membrane.
The tendency of fluids to diffuse in such a manner.
A gradual, often unconscious process of assimilation or absorption: learned French by osmosis while residing in Paris for 15 years.

What's deeper than the minds of Minolta?

2005-08-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

The Halls of medicine.

Carbon Copy Cloner now compatable with Tiger 10.4.2

2005-08-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

CCC is finally out for OS X Tiger. Up until now you could only use the older CCC to clone Tiger disks by logging in and running the program as root. Carbon Copy Cloner is free and has many features that assist in cloning images and disks manually or by automation.

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

Technologies properly used

2005-08-21T18:48:00.000-07:00

When people discover technology, what they might not know is that the technology has been around for a long time... longer than what they might get the impression once first introduced to the technology. The solutions that technologies provide are usually always around in one form or another being applied in one way or another. The main problem with applying a technology is that "normal" people get scared about technology and reject it... even though the technology in some cases is the only solution that will implement properly. The rejection of technology and the unwillingness to embrace a commitment to find a solution using technology are usually the first problems with administrating a proper solution with a technology. In my estimates upwards %90 of all technologies that people can only conceive of are already possible... but it since there is no conception of the technology on the part of the consciousness it can not be used since it appears not to exist. This equates to a situation where the answer might be staring you in the face but you can not see it. This puts a serious damper on the effectiveness of technology in general since the perception is always skewed, negative, and improperly perceived. Technology then becomes a "plaything" and generally useless since it now has bias. My personal solution is though love... those deemed competent should be placed knee deep in technology and entouraged to take new perceptions and point of views while sampling technologies since the danger of improper perception is in my opinion the biggest issue when finding and experimenting with technologies. Once the scientific community decides as a whole to stop acting immature, proud and overconfident in the their relatively nerrow views of technologies they "know", the solutions that technology can provide will increase exponentially. This point of view calls for an exceptional level of soberity to be perceived correctly along with a sharply trained eye. It also calls for the exceptance on the part of the culture to use the technology properly. This may never happen.

sarcasm

2005-08-20T16:50:00.000-07:00

sar·casm Audio pronunciation of "sarcasm" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (särkzm)

n.

1. A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound.

2. A form of wit that is marked by the use of sarcastic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule.

3. The use of sarcasm. See Synonyms at wit1.

Windows XP Pro for better Technical Workstation configurability

2005-08-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

The requirements of a "Technical Workstation" are extremely complex. The ideal configuration has both the assets of a client side desktop and the back end reflective of a server configuration. Client side requirements often call for configurations that require several monitors of varying resolutions and technologies along with different brand graphics cards that support different API technologies for rendering 3D space. Such configurations can be confusing on the Operating System's desktop server (X11 in the case of Linux) Windows' window manager is extremely configurable... enabling an ease for integrating video cards that are made for different technologies. This ease with Windows that is not avalable in other OSes is due probably to the fact that Windows started it's life as a client-side minded architecture. Other window managers that are favorable in this respect would be Apple's OS X Quartz Extreme. Windows also makes it easy to find and use the graphics card driver control panel, which helps administrate driver optimizations for certain qualified applications that the card might be certified for. There are more bug free drivers, applications and graphics cards that work with Windows than any other OS. Problems with other OSes window managers, namely systems that use X11, start to crop up when you try mixing graphics card brands with mulitple monitors while needing 3D acceleration. Windows is the only OS right now that will handle this type of configuration gracefully while still supporting applications that require workstation graphics cards with certified drivers.

The difference between knowledge levels and enlightenment

2005-08-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

Many people go to school to study different subjects. After they graduate they know that subject, but usually only in an isolated manner. This is the biggest problem with today's educational system. What gave you that knowledge in school? The ability to memorize the material that was important to the subject... once you know the subject you can easily get a job in that field using the knowledge you've attained. This much is true. But even that is not a true education since it brings no enlightenment. For example, you know nothing of computers, but you get drafted in to the army to fix them... after boot camp you know how to turn on and off a computer, add programs, configure settings and how to build a computer. This is your job that makes you part of the whole in your platoon. But now think about the big picture, you might not know how to make a program that makes the computer do the things it needs to and worst off you might not know even what the computer is for. But it gets you through the day so you really do not care. Now lets go back in time to where computer did not exist. What caused the demand for someone to want to create a computer? That is the beginning of the road to enlightenment. This is the big picture. A man had a dream (ex: Seymour Cray) to solve a problem... the super computer solved the problem so it was invented. It turns out that there are many other problems that can be solved with this solution so it was changed to adapt to the issue at hand. Finding the problems that computers can solve and then taking the computer and using it correctly to solve the issue is the correct learning process. Without this type of learning education becomes a positive enforcer to simply memorize, dump the knowledge, rinse and repeat. This kind of cycle is unhealthy since it enforces the idea that you can just run through life without ever taking any knowledge and putting it to use... with out that you have nothing but theories and equations that solve abstract problems which by themselves do not apply to anything.

Furthermore it's easy to notice people in the industry who do this... which turns out to be quite a few in my industry. You see them come in to work, learn a skill, use the skill and then leave.... calling it a day of hard work. When you ask them a question that they should know given their position they will not have an answer nor care. This type of behavior is similar and in a lot of ways the same as that of todays "script kiddie". You want to get a lot of music so you know you can use your computer to download the music. That is the "solution" in the eyes of the individual when in reality they are only adding fuel to the fire. This person did not write the program, knows little to nothing about the computer they used, and did not pay for the music they downloaded. All they know is that the computer will do that so they use it. This is the obvious part about this thinking because it forms a enforced habit in everything else in their life. It changes the very personality of the person and shows up in patience levels and the ability to deal with situations that cause stress. Instead of problem determination regarding the stressful event, they get mad and reject the reality of the situation completely. This is where the flaw is finally exposed - they do not know how to handle real world problems and situations. This finally contaminates in to a complacent personality that uses excuses like they are too busy or it's not really their problem. What happens is that the person now only knows of one way to satisfy needs that should be handled in a different manner. not to mention the better solutions that would give you the music you wanted in the first place. Now your eduction is worthless because it makes you look like a fool when you try to use it.

In today's America the integrated workplace calls for a much more intuitive approach to problem solving or you stick out like a sore thumb. In the end there is not real easy way to enlightenment... you must learn it by experience, problem solving, experimentation and being aggressive with applying that knowledge. Memorization is only the mechanism for databasing the statistics and possible solutions for the problem at hand. Memorization used only for dumping data and then applying again is worthless in the real world. You can easily test this by taking two people with different experience levels and asking them to both solve a problem that looks simple but actually turns out to be very subtle and complicated under the surface. The person with little knowledge of the subject will always go for the obvious answer... a more experienced person will recall similar situations that turned out to be bigger issues and look for that problem. The difference is experience, the only true learning mechanism that produces extractable results for different situations that do not relate at all or seem to not relate.

So what is Enlightenment? Enlightenment is when you compile all of your experience and use it in your brain in the form of a relational database. Once this "relational database" has been constructed problem solving issues that are seemingly complex becomes several orders of magnitude easier... not to mention so does the noticeable complacency level of people who do not have such enlightenment when put in the same or similar situation. How can you solve it easier? Because you can predict possible outcomes with a much higher degree of accuracy. On average, a regular person only achieves this level of understanding later in life if left unchecked... which is exactly what happens in today's educational system. While it is good that the knowledge is finally attained in some form or another it is bad since the learning process has been skewed in to bits and pieces of memories that are fragmented across the individual's life time line. What's more significant is correcting the problem of the time it takes to compile such a database in one's mind as a coherent truth and then getting the person to make it a part of their way of life and finally their personality. Also, it will not be obvious to the person who does not have enlightenment but once again will be obvious to the frineds and family that do understand. Many refer to this as a maturity level, but I feel that this level should exist well before a person is considered mature in age. To understand that in the end all problems can be solved if given the possibility to examine and test solutions over a broad range of datasets.

Enlightenment also has another added benefit. This benefit is to be able to find a more ideal solution for a solution that was previously considered only fixable only one way. When a solution for a problem is originally conceived and put in to action it is usually in an unmatured form. Further troubleshooting creates a better solution. This is good but many solutions have side effects and in many cases these side effects will go unnoticed and unchecked creating other problems that will only be found and fixed at a much later time. What can slow this problem? Better data and more experience that has been used *before* the solution is actually put in to place. More variables considered means more possible side effects taken in to consideration to fix a problem. This is why it is very important to have somebody administrating solutions that has a high level of competency in problem solving. When you put a person who just knows computers in to a lab where big problem occur regularly they will not know how to handle the issues nor will they know where to look for the issues or have any speculative process for the prediction of the problems. Where an experienced person will see the problem form even before it makes it's way to the lab and in most cases will already be ready to administrate a solution by the time it finally crops up.

Koenig Specials

2005-08-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

Who is Koenig? Koenig is a company that does aftermarket modifications to exotic automobiles... most famously Ferrari. Chances are though, the company itself would never admit to calling itself an "aftermarket" to the original car since the car is completely decked out after they are done and thus a totaly new animal. Koeing is not another conmpany that is caught up in some nitrous trend, but Koeing might be what started the trend. For example a 1986 Ferrari Testarossa was modified with a twin turbo package that decreased the 0-100km, by close to 40% down to 3.8 seconds. There were aftermarket companies at this time, such as Callaway, but these companies were conventional in manner still, in that the modifications were only done for exotic cars such as the 1986 Callaway Corvette Twin Turbo. There was no such market for clear plastic Civic headlights at that time.

http://www.koenig-specials.com/

Must you have the fear of God put in you to be successful?

2005-08-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

Over the years I've noticed that there are a lot of people who have been put in to positions that they work that should not be. Some of these people get there because they have friends or family members that got them the job, others seem to have chosen to be there because they thought it would be fun or make them rich, or seemed to be an interesting job. What is the the fundamental flaw with this situation? Lack of knowledge about where they are. They get frustrated or down when things start to require focus or things get frustrating because they where expecting one work atmosphere when another is expected out of the clients or co-workers. Although there are factors like these that are sometimes random or unpredictable, I still see a number of my peers who become frustrated when they saw the career one way when indeed it is another. What caused them to be mislead? Not paying attention to the details. It will get you every time, and the reason is that anytime you have complex situation where many factors must be taken in to account, not everybody is going to see things exactly the same... which is not the problem.... the problem is that people *act* on this assumption, looking before leaping in.... weather they are right or wrong. This is my strategy, find something you're interested in, then before you do anything CHECK to make sure that really is the actual case. How many times has your boss told you this and that was in your budget only to find out it's been brushed aside because it's not the bosses priority? (only yours) What do you do? You make sure first that it is a priority for your boss. (or at least make him focus enough so that you let him know it's a big issue to you and it needs to be done) Get it in witting. This is good practice by itself but unfortunately it is not enough... you must also take in to account that which is taken for granted as well and put the same kind of effort behind it as well. How many times has something very important become side tracked because of some very small detail that actually turned out to be the tip of the iceburg that stops your entire assignment? Inside information is the key. You must know *exactly* what you are doing, at all times. You must know the situation *exactly* then you know what to expect... and then what to expect further down the road. A friend of mine and I were at a restaurant one night when he saw the group beside us eating Dolphin fish. He had never eaten it, or even knew what a Dolphin fish was, but it looked really, really good... the people eating it so happy and at peace, the smell was great. Have you ever had "Dolphin Fish"? I said. "No, But I am tonight!!!" he said. "Are you sure? You've never had it before how do you know you like it?" "Shut up, I'm eating it!" "Ok..." A little while after the meal his mouth started to itch and his face was turning red... I dropped my friend off at the hospital that night because it turned out he was illurgic to Dolphin Fish. This situation is also only the tip of a rather large problem that seems to plague America today. The larger problem gets into the perception of one's self, vs the perception of that others have, vs the actual situation. This seems to happen in America all the time... we have too many toys and are too rich. This is dulling our senses. Why cut the yard when you can pay somebody else to do it? The truth is being productive and not lazy keeps you mentally conditioned also. This brings me to my point of this blog, and that is that only hard work and focus will bring lasting prosperity. Case in point, my freshman year at college... my friends an I were pledging our fraternity when our Brother had asked us, the pledge group, to memorize a few lines out of our pledge book so we could show the brotherhood that we were excited about pledging the fraternity. We went back to our dorm room an practiced to the point where we could all say the lines to each other without any hesitation or need to look at our book. When we got to the dinner where we were supposed to know the lines every last one of us completely forgot them. Obviously, this did not go over well at the dinner. At that point it became our mission to know this material front and back for the rest of the pledge time. The brothers in the Fraternity knew this... in fact every single pledge class that ever made it in knew this too because the Fraternity pulls the same prank on every pledge class every year... the reason being is to shake your confidence that is false in believing that you know something "perfectly" and to better understand what it actually takes to truly know something word for word. By the end of the semester we could say our lines in Spanish, backwards, in the dark, and at 3:30AM. What was the only way we would know something that well? We had the fear of God put in to us to learn it. Some people might think the lesson a bit harsh, but the truth is that this learning process is still the one I use for everything today because it was forged under pressure and has many "failsafe" since the material I choose to study has been digested several different ways... if one technique fails to make me remember, another will. Obsessive? Anal retentive? How about insightful? :) What does this mean for the average American? "Unfortunately, it means a complete overhaul of your entire point of view and the willingness to commit yourself to a better life. Is it painful? Yes. But does it work 100% of the time? Yes. People usually complain and say it's too much work, but how do you know what too much work is if you never done any? I'd imagine any amount of work looks like too much at that perspective. lazy. And because of this lack of being able to just "deal" with situation that call for a lot of work that also causes stress I'd bet that 90% of America will NEVER get out of this habit. Why? For one, they don't have to learn since money can pay for the solution to the problem and second lack of understanding that this type of work is not just to "Get you busy" but is actually a very important critical function in being successful and effective at work and everything else it can be applied to (which turns out to be a lot).What do I say? Cut your ulterior motives, you're drowning yourself in them and you don't even know it.

Gzip level 5

2005-08-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

What is the optimal compression level for gzip? Gzip level 5. Why? Don't ask.

Flexall 454

2005-07-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

What releaves gaming tension best? Flexall 454. Found on sale here: http://www.painreliever.com/454.html

Transgaming Technologies

2005-07-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

Transgaming Technologies is a company that sells a product that interests me... they have a technology that lets you play video games made for Windows on Linux. I have been a customer of Transgaming for over a couple years now but have noticed the downloads link, a very needed link, missing. Obviously, being a computer technology company you'd like to say you have the technology needed to enable this capability more gracefully. Perhaps an oversight on the part of the webmaster. In any event, I can change that problem for you with a visit to your... ehm, campus. For 19.95 plus gas and plain ticket. Maybe I can pick up a copy of your technology that I PAID for while I'm there.

Hooked on Turbo Linux

2005-07-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

When people ask me what my favorite distro is they usually end up scratching their heads and asking me "What's Turbo Linux?" This does not take me by surprise however, since Turbo Linux is not big on the US east coast but is big, in fact the most popular distro in the Far East. (Japan, China, Korea, etc) Turbo Linux has a lot of good things going for it... for example it's a Red Hat based distro, which makes it very rpm friendly, and it's the most Laptop friemdly Linux desktop I've ever used. (specifically the 10F version) 10F comes with something that no other Linux can boast of, and thats a dvd player that can play region friendly DVD's without braking the law. (which is what happens when you use olge, a free open sourced DVD player) 10F uses a special linux port of Cyberlink's PowerDVD player, the most popular software player out for Windows. (TL 10F is the only place you can buy PowerDVD for Linux) The down side is that 10F costs money since it comes with commercial software and codecs, but in my opinion, it's well worth it. Should you buy it? It feel it boils down to if you're in need of a Linux that's designed specifically for the desktop and you're a big Red Hat fan then this is the distro for you. The support is just as good as any other big distro, not to mention it carries hardware certifications and is frequently used in enterprise enviornments for web and database serving along side it's Red Hat and SuSE counterparts. Turbo Linux will take you outside your normal Linux pov and help remind you that there are many places other than the US where Linux is highly successful.

Projects that need to be ported to OS X

2005-06-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

OS X has it's heritage in FreeBSD, an open sorce operating system that is well kept and has many open source projects underway for it. There are a few of these projects that affect my administration area and usage of OS X for the better if ported from FreeBSD. The first is a project called "Vinum" Vinum is an open source LVD subsytem for FreeBSD. It brings in volume managament similar to VxVM (Vertias Volume Manager) and the other UNIX/Linux LVMs. I feel that OS X could use and NEEDS a LVM style system today. In fact, I think this is really the last step in graduating OS X Server in to the ranks of the enterprise server market such as the commercial UNIX's and Linux's. The second project is a project to port the native IRIX filesystem, XFS, to FreeBSD. (http://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigc/xfs/) OS X is a very much up and coming mulitmedia platform for both workstation and server usage for movie prodection houses. (Thanks to FCP and Shake) However, most of the big production houses are deep in to legacy SGI equipment that uses the XFS filessytem. This project moved to OS X would create better interoperbility between the existing server/workstation infrastructure and the new Mac workstations/servers. What does it take to port such a project? Not as much as you would think... and now that OS X is offically on x86 hardware even less than before. It is my suggestion to Apple to look in to these projects and others like it for deep consideration on portage.

Apple has offically moved to Intel Chips

2005-06-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs announced today that after 5 years of secret development at the Cupertino site, OS X on Intel will be released to the public. Not just a another platform but a move off of the PowerPC RISC style chips and on to the P4. PowerPC's will still be supported, in fact the PowerPC code itself will run on the P4 thanks to a PPC binary emulator. (It does not support Altivec instructions however) Among other spectacles Jobs showed off OS X running on a quad-xeon (P4) server.

I for one could not be more happy. A lot of people are screaming "What about Altivec?!" First, Altivec is dead with the G5... it's a similar SIMD but not exaclty Alitvec because Motorola owns the Alitvec trademark, and IBM makes the G5 (PowerPC 970FX)... so only the Power Books still have Altivec in the older G4's they use. Try also not to forget that the P4 has a very strong SIMD unit itself, SSE1/2/3. Others are wondering can they pick up a mobo at CompUSA and build their own OS X system on the cheap... not going to happen either. More than likely Apple will take the same route that SGI did with it's x86 series of workstations (The 320's & 540's) and use a special frimware designed only for OS X. I think moving to Intel in short means, better development, cutting edge hardware, and a bigger target market for Apple.

Most Readable Font Types

2005-05-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

SGIAltExB

Got my Dual G4 1.8Ghz upgrades from Gigadesigns today...

2005-05-10T18:38:00.000-07:00

The install was dead easy... the performance difference is truly noticeable. Applications like Virtual PC are actually usable now. Under the old dual 533mhz cpu's I had VPC was nothing but an exercise in patience! (the old dual 533 card was what came with the G4 when I first bought it) The only thing that went wrong is that now my Macromedia applications do not launch for some reason. I emailed support... hopefully they will have a fix for me tomorrow. The good news is that my rig is now "real time" capable with all the new Apple applications like FCP & Motion.

http://www.gigadesigns.com/

Just got OS X Tiger!!!

2005-04-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

Panther was good... but at this point I'd say you're really missing a lot if your not on OS X for at least one of your rigs. The effects in the gui are awesome... the widgets are easily accessible via the F12 key (beside the expose keys F9, F10 & F11) The speed is not bad, even though the minimal system requirements are a little higher. Apple really hit a home-run with Tiger! I can't wait to upgrade my G4 Digital Audio Workstation with the dual 1.8Ghz G4 upgrade I just bought from GigaDesigns.. that and 2 ultra320 drives I'm going to stripe in to a software RAID 0 array. There is no reason now for me to "recover" to windows to do anything!

SGI releases the Prism Deskside Workstation

2005-04-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.sgi.com/products/visualization/prism/

The Prism starts at $8500 which is not a bad price point and possibly affordable by the individual or SOHO. Many people are wondering why Itaniums and why dual AGP x8 instead of PCI-E. The answer is that the Prism is made for graphics... the Itanium 2 has probably the most exploitable FPU units in the cpu arena right now. Also AGP x8 for now is actually more optimized than PCI-E (for the time being). This is especially true for Linux. AGP has a facility, the "graphics aperture" that can be marked as "write-combined" with video memory and any system memory that has been allocated to the aperture. PCI-E lacks the graphics aperture function which makes it perform slower even at x16 in certain situations. PAT (Page Attribute Table) support is making it's way in to the 2.6 kernel but has not been released yet. PAT functionality can decrease the system bottleneck associated with heavy PCI-E/memory bus dependent traffic. Once it's fully supported PCI-E will be a lot faster than what it is now. Not too sure if that support has been added in to XP yet but I highly doubt it. The best time to buy SLI is when it goes x16 & x16 native and has PAT support. (most SLI configurations right now are 16X-8X) So given that and the option for up to 9MB of L3 cache and you've got one formidable deskside workstation that's faster than most supercomputers.

Prism Workstation specs:
http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/3800.pdf

Forum Threads started on the Prism:

http://www.jinx.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=33226&whichpage=1

http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?t=5780&sid=b1f6c7325d189bfb68513831bb023ae3

http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?t=5693

A fully operational and empirical blog...タイラー マクアーダムズ の ブログ

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