29 Sep 08 Tumblelog: 080929
Graphical User Interface Gallery is a collection of screenshots from several desktop platforms and operating systems.
Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures contains a rather comprehensive database of algorithms (and data structures). The library is maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The Kernel Boot Process by Gustavo Duarte explains the Linux kernel boot process on an x86 platform. Very well written with descriptive and good looking diagrams.
Tristan Perich : 1-Bit Music, this guy goes on an exploration into the truly minimalistic by building an electronic circuit that plays 1-bit music.
About the British, some really funny quotes from British newspapers and things heard on the subway.
DUI test Perfect Score, a guy appears to be intoxicated but passes all the tests. I can’t tell whether this is fake or not but I still found it really funny. (requires Flash)
Preventing SPAM in Form Submissions without using a CAPTCHA by using various techniques in order to figure out that it is a bot and not a human.
24 Sep 08 Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow
Joel Spolky’s (Joel on Software) and Jeff Atwood’s (Coding Horror) new site, Stack Overflow, has finally opened its doors to the public. It’s a collaboratively edited QA site for programmers (think moderated news groups meet wikipedia) which from day one already has a ton of useful information.
If you are a programmer I highly recommend that you keep a link to Stack Overflow in your toolbox.
22 Sep 08 Tumblelog: 080922
Top Ten worst uses for Windows, PC World takes a look at ten cases of the wrong tool for the job. Clearly some serious pruning needs to be done in the world of IT workers.
worms.c: formatting of complicated conditionals, Kragen Javier Sitaker takes a scheme approach to rewrite an especially ugly passage of code from worms (bsd-games).
Apartment Block by Don Ellis
More C++ Idioms is a wikibook aimed at people with an intermediate knowledge in C++ that want to exceed to the next level.
New otto malloc helps spot ancient bugs by moving some allocations to the end of a page. This particular bug was found in yacc(1) and appears to have existed there since 1975.
It’s the End for 3.11!! If you want to buy a copy of Windows 3.11 you better do it before November 1st 2008.
cpu-collection.de has a rather extensive library on CPUs and coprocessors. If you are interested in CPU history or just general information you should pay this site a visit.
old-computers.com is in line with cpu-collection.de but for computers, they complement each other pretty well.
Due to my current work load I don’t have much energy in the evenings. For that reason the tumblelog will only be updated once per week until my schedule clears up a bit.
19 Sep 08 Tumblelog: 080919
Today is the Day, this is really creepy.
Macintosh on Nintendo DS, Ken Fager managed to install Macintosh System 6 on his Nintendo DS using an emulator.
Principles by Mike Malloy from Mind of Malloy.
MSDN Search Shows Mono Results, I wonder if it is accidental or intentional. Probably the former but you never can know for sure.
Pencil Project is a Firefox extension which allows you to make diagrams and prototype GUIs. It runs on top of Gecko but it is also available as a standalone application.
Nokia haptikos tactile touchscreen details emerge, it’s a touch screen that can raise parts of its surface in order to increase friction. The result being that you can feel which parts of the screen that you can interact with and which parts are only presenting information.
Cinema Redux is a method of compressing an entire movie into one large image. An interesting method that can be used, among other things, as a movie DNA.
A slightly advanced Introduction to Vim, for the everyday user of Vim who hasn’t reached the expert’s level yet.
18 Sep 08 Black Mystery Box
I’ve been having some problems with the power windows on my car. They always go down but sometimes they refuse to go back up again. I started fiddling around with the haywire of cables located under the panel and eventually managed to get the windows to move again but while doing this I also found a very strange black box.
It doesn’t seem like the box was installed by GM. The electrical work can only be described as shoddy as the wires are all tangled up in a bundle and several of them had the insulation cut for no apparent reason.
The black box has “M3U Quasar” written on it along with “Milan - Italy”. There is a terminal block with a lot of wires attached to it along with two positional switches. The purpose of this box remains a mystery.
Here are a couple of poor pictures I took with my cell phone camera.
M3U Quasar (front)
M3U Quasar (back)
15 Sep 08 Tumblelog: 080915
Nicehacks is a directory of open source/free software projects which are a little more interesting than the rest.
Hello, my name is: The annoying Flash Layer Bug, it’s signed by the entire Internet!
The Perfect Hawaii Chair will definately get you in shape thanks to it’s patented Hula motor. Watch as Ellen DeGeneres demonstrates it during her show. (the latter link requires Flash)
PICs in Space, build your own Space Invaders. Details how you can build your own games for the TV at a minimal cost. Includes full schematics and software.
Pending commits is a concept introduced by Andrés G. Aragoneses as a way to allow anyone to commit to subversion without actually having an account with write access to the repository. The commits are placed as pending and the user appointed as maintainer of the affected path will have to moderate the patch. Should prove an interesting concept to free software projects.
Reklamnyie Fishki, clever ads.
The Prime Number Pages is a good resource on everything about prime numbers. I especially recommend the prime number history page.
12 Sep 08 Tumblelog: 080912
Alternativa3D’s “Bunker” demo using a 3D engine written in Flash. This is pretty impressive. (Obviously requires Flash)
Sin & Cos: The Programmer’s Pals! An article about the use of the sine and cosine functions in game programming.
Teach the Controversy - Intelligently designed t-shirts urging you to show both sides of every story, I want one!
Building a Ray-Tracing 3D Renderer from Scratch Over a Weekend, a log of the progression made during the weekend. Source code included.
Vintage Ads - 10 Funny Reminders Of How Time Change, my favorites are number 8 and 10.
Laser nail and skin scarification appears to be the latest fad in body modifications.
Cpp bignum arithmetic: part I, by using the C preprocessor it is possible to add bignum support using a set of macros.
Tips for designing exception classes should be required reading for all C++ programmers along with Boost’s “Error and Exception Handling“.
CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension one of my coworkers recommended to me. It has some really useful features such as streaming search results from Google like Google Reader does with RSS entries. I would also recommend that you disable favicon loading and instead install the GooglePreview extension.
11 Sep 08 Unexpected downtime
On the 12th of July I went on vacation for four weeks. Since I planned to be away for the whole time I prepared and scheduled my regular tumblelogs for the whole time so that my site would be updated regularly even though I was away.
What happened instead was that on the very same day that my vacation began my server decided to stop serving requests. Me being some 300 kilometers away and with no means of remotely rebooting the machine had to accept the fact that all of my hard work would go by unread and forgotten.
Once I got back, four weeks later, I discovered that OpenBSD had decided to kernel panic on me. A week or two before I had upgraded from 4.2 to 4.3 and something changed for the worse.
The server has a noise level which could probably compete with a small aircraft and for some time I’ve been meaning to replace a couple of the fans in it. Considering it had already been down for four (long) weeks I thought I’d leave it off and get some good nights sleep until I could remedy the noise situation. It took a little longer than expected but now I have replaced the three 120mm Nidec fans, rated at a whopping 42dBa, with three Noctua fans, rated at an agreeable 8dBa. I should have done this sooner!
The site should hopefully be back to normal now. If OpenBSD decides to act up again I’ll attempt downgrading the kernel to 4.2. If that doesn’t help I will have to track down an RS232 extension cord so I can debug the darn thing.
