Zach's Blog and Stuff

So, i’m currently on a train heading to Manhattan moving at about 60-70MPH. I’m connected via usb to my Nokia N95 at the moment, using it as a wireless broadband modem. Now, of course its nothing like wifi/landline 100MBit but darn if this isn’t usable. Not only can I aim/SSH wherever from the comfort of a full laptop keyboard and screen but I was also able to VNC into my home computer (on very low setting but it worked nonetheless) and actually accomplish some tasks using a graphical interface remotely.

Take that apple fans.

Update: I’m now at penn station and I’m guessing theres a tower nearby. Latency and bandwidth here are excellent: I’m browsing the net and its barely noticeably different from home wifi. Pages load in a low-single digit number of seconds.

Excuse the French: Holy smokes! I’ve just been flat out blown away. Alright, preface:

I like video games, I used to play a lot more than I do now, I get at most 2-3 hours a week now-a-days. Recently i’ve been playing a quick match of “onslaught” in UT2004, takes about 20 minutes its good times. Anyway, to the point

The Unreal Tournament 3 Demo was released a few days ago, yet somehow I only found the link today. I’m at home, so no BlueSata to really put this game to its test. So I played the game on the following setup:

Laptop. Core Duo (not Core II Duo, this is a Yonah not Merom) 1.6Ghz
1GB Ram
60GB HD (I abuse this poor hard disc)
x1400 Mobile (Gimpy gimpy gimpy)

So… I download the 700MB demo, my computer crys for about 20 minutes extracting the game / installing aegia drivers (software emulation i guess) / installing the game. I then proceed to turn the CPU to max performance and crank the GPU to disable power saving in every way shape and form, i’m going to need it.

I load the game (bearable load times) and immediatly log in and dive into video options. Now, I’m fairly accustomed to playing at low FPS for the sake of superior graphical quality (i’ve usually had a midrange graphics card which does well at _good_ quality with _mediocre_ fps). But this graphics card, for a brand new game, is not “midrange”. No, it sucks. Anyway, to the point: I go from 640×480 to 800×600 simply because I’m not that masochistic. Crank up the texture values a bit and leave everything else alone — figuring i’ll be lucky if this plays at all

To my surprise, I got a (for me) manageable 15-18FPS and G-d Damn if this isn’t the most Beautiful Game Ever. This is on a crappy resolution, small crappy screen, ‘last gen’ DX9/Windows XP system with a ‘behind the times’ graphics card. And i’m blown away.

You know all those screen shots comparing DX9 to DX10? Get over it, its just an API. UT3 demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that DX9 is fully capable of looking absolutely amazing. Now I’m sure theres alot im missing in just the DX9 experience alone due to this system, and I’m sure the DX10 variant has even more detail and awesomeness but just pure first experience: this was outstanding.

The textures were amazingly detailed, the lighting (in ‘sunlight’) was superb (looked like some really really really good HDR). The models for the guns were fantastic, vehicles had a really new and appreciable bad-ass look to them. Heck, even the sound effects seemed to be more realistic and just more enjoyable than UT2004.

Verdict? I’m anxious to see what this looks like on my 7900GS when I get back to BlueSata. Even then its still a DX9 experience but if im this impressed at 800×600 x 15FPS I expect i’ll enjoy.

Conclusion? Modern game artists and creators have gotten really, really good. Even if you’re not a gamer, but somebody who can appreciate graphic art, attempt to bootup this 700MB Demo. It’s worth it for eye-candy value alone.

Oh, right. Gameplay. After about 20 minutes of exploring the Vehicle-CTF level for its graphical majesty I tried actually playing, needless to say it was a great time.

So its been more than a year since I’ve made Gentoo Linux my main operating system of choice (win-xp was previous). Needless to say I am extremely happy with my system now. I would like to share some of the tips and tricks i’ve discovered which have a particularly large ‘wow’ factor for an audience:

Screen is fantastic. A bit of screen -rx magic (perhaps with some Screenie) is not only very useful when SSHing in remotely but it makes a great tool when you want to mess with the guys head who is currently on your box while your sitting across the room on his laptop.

X11Vnc – For similar reasons as why screen -rx is so cool you can have somebody working on your machine while you ssh in, start x11vnc, then (tight)vnc in and again, make some heads spin.

MPD — If you’re on linux and still using a standard music playing application like xmms2 or audacious you should really think about switching to MPD. Its a fantastic little thing because you can bind keys to MPC via your window manager (i use the 3 buttons on the side of my Logitech MX 1000 (RF version, i’m not a fan of bluetooth mice) to control your music, always. 100% of the time. Not when the window is open, but always. Another perk? If your gaming and for some reason your hotkeys no longer work, SSH in via another box and use MPC straight from the command line!

Tint. Tint Is Not Tetris. Because who doesn’t love playing tetris in a virtual terminal?

StumbleUpon has struck again with this curiously interesting article on Black Holes. While I have some quantum physics background (okay, so even ‘some’ may be an exaggeration) I found this article easy to read and written for the lay person. So fret not, clicking on the above link will not turn your brain to musch with strange greek symbols galore.

Instead it opens up with a story and proceeds to go through the history of what we know of black holes. Then your stuck in the modern world of how information actually can leave or ‘evaporate’ from a black hole. I know perhaps my writing skills are not as formidable as the author’s however I encourage you nonetheless to have a read. Good stuff

There were a handful of updates to the gadcon in E17 recently and one of my favorite modules, my taskbar, called itask was broken by it. Because itask isn’t in E CVS it wasn’t updated. The official maintainer is far busier with itask-ng, which i don’t particularly love. So i guess it came to me to update it. Patch was sent to the ML tonight.

Microsoft’s effort to “Fasttrack” their OOXML standard has failed, and people around the world rejoice.

In reading the above link you will likely encounter the following Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office. Everybody should install this. Everybody.

BlueSata is back! Expect fairly frequent updates now that BlueSata’s (re)location is complete!

Been a while since I put in the effort to really blog on much of anything. As the post will tell you, its nearly 1:15am and I’m kinda tired. But I just finished V2 of the-warforge.com and its live. So, giant sigh of relaxation. I’m currently at penn again, working on the SAAST program. It’s alot of fun, keeps me very busy. I’ll attempt to put something insightful in the next couple days in this space.

So, you’re saying that the company that created Betamax, ATRAC encoding, the S-Link protocol, Minidisc players, Super-AudioCDs, Memory Sticks and Universal Media Discs might actually lose a format war?

As much as I love 50 200 GB optical discs (Blu-Ray) gotta admit, thats a damn classy comment.

p.s. Topic is a reference to Vonage’s ongoing legal troubles with Verizon.

In much much more interesting news, scientists have found the first near-earth like planet to date. Its a bit bigger than earth, but is the first planet to be found which has a temperature inbetween water’s freezing and boiling points (0-100C). Its also cool because this thing is so close, 20 Light years. Feasibly we could detect radio waves from them, according to the article. O_o.

Also found this today. Good read about camera phones, especially the N95 :).

So, apparently there is this guy out there, whose remarkably talented and decided to combine some Halo, Samus Aran, Star Wars, Matrx and Final Fantasy all into one action packed (rediculously awesome) video. http://www.joystiq.com/2007/04/18/battle-of-the-fps-titans-samus-vs-master-chief/I’m sure its up on numerous other sites, this is the link I “stumbled” upon.

Also — Found this one. Puts our galaxy into perspective, especially the end. 1/1689794’th of a single pixel.