You know, this page isn’t as slow as I thought it would be on my tablet. I’m not sure I’d prefer it over a native client option though, that does better than Google’s own offering.
At some point, I think I need to bust out AIDE :-).
Well, updates to the previous; and a little numerical data:
G+ posts since my last Blogger post: 16.
In thinking more thoroughly about the subject, G+ has one large-scale lacking: no pre-formatted code blocks. While I can live with the available formatting capabilities otherwise, ahem, I tend to post a lot of formatted examples: source code, program output, etc. A fair bit of semi-formatted output such as quotations and lyrics as well.
The simple fact remains, however that my G+ is apart of my journal.
One possible solution:
- Program blog.spidey01.com to point to a “Special” page.
- Display posts from G+ and link to the entry for commenting/etc.
- Display posts from Blogger and link to the entry for commenting/etc.
- Similar technology could be used (and maybe marketed, hehe) for Twitter/Facebook crap, if people wanted to pay or write it.
- Update spidey01.blogspot.com with a note to such effect.
- Redirect tech might even be leveragable for this, given the domain stuff already in use.
- Write a custom client for updating Blogger, with an automated reshare to G+ or a demon that auto-shares my blog posts.
That would achieve the same end goal, more or less.
My Journal (blogs) future
Lately I’ve been using Google+ more and more, and more, and unlike the times where Facebook was apart of my routine, things focus more on G+. In fact, I use G+ enough that I’m considering turning off commenting here and modifying things to direct people to Google+.
That leads me to also thinking about what directions I want to go in. For the short term, nothing will change, except people should probably look at my G+ more than here, perhaps.
Three possibilities for the future years:
- Migration to G+
- Retention of Blogger
- Migration to a custom solution hosted at Cyb3Web.
The Google Plus solution has some merits. It really is convenient for me, and it integrates well with my data flow. Because it meshes with other data, in my stream. It’s so neat. That’s one of the good things about Facebook too, even if their filtering stuff took to damn long. The primary concerns I have with the G+ solution is data access and navigation. It can be hard enough to find things again that I have posted on Blogger or Live Journal, because at best I need to do a site: search in Google or know approximately what time period I posted it in. Tagging has proven some use in narrowing the results down but is only as good as ones tagging discipline and yields to many results!
Pro’s for a switch to G+:
- Convenience.
- Even better and growing integration with Google services.
- Much better privacy controls.
- Search Plus Your World may make it easier to find things again.
Con’s for a switch to G+:
-
Commenter’s would need G+.
- Finding crap again might not be fun +3 years later, even by the current standard of blogging.
- I’m dependent on Google for features/data issues. They tend to do Good at releases but they tend to do Slow at making new features available. But hey, at least things are well tested…
- Limited data access via API o/.
Those who would just say use Facebook, will have their heads beaten in. Yes, I mean it. Fuck you. Just like you may choose Facebook as a hub, I choose Google Plus.
Unlike Twitter but like Blogger, G+ handles larger, “Blog” style posts pretty well. I like it. Some gripes like the limited control over formatting but I can probably live with that, heck it already has more formatting than I strictly need.
Getting data out of Google Plus is not bad. Seems to offer HTML or JSON. I’ve just downloaded my Stream content in JSON format. Something that would be very good for data munging. I cannot exactly say that Facebook can win at control over my data here, and their track record not so good at the completeness part IMHO.
The Blogger solution is what I already am doing really. The only thing I have to complain about with Blogger, is API side effects. Blogger integrates into exterior services better than G+, and more importantly does so better than Blogger integrates into G+! I have to manually share things to Google Plus, where as the process of sending it to RSS, Twitter, and Facebook, is fairly good. Except that getting people to respond HERE instead of e.g. on Facebook, took some stern wall posts, on top of the whole signature saying so… lol
It is much easier to build up infrastructure around Blogger than G+ right now, even for custom shit. The problemo is integrating anything with G+ is a bitch at the automata level. Thanks to whoever wanted to protect us for all those shitty Facebook apps I guess. Don’t remember who posted it.
Some possibilities exist with custom client-side code perhaps but that is what I really am missng I guess. I love Blogger but it doesn’t mate with G+ good enough for me, nor does G+ really mesh with anything outside it yet.
Pro’s of Blogger:
-
Already in use, 85%-90% of my journal data is here in some form.
- The rest is on G+ or in private text files.
- Ease of integration with custom tools and third party services.
- Nice formatting controls that blend ease of use and pure power, for those of us who know HTML :).
Con’s of Blogger:
-
Sharing to G+ is manual.
- Can’t make “Comments” system just link to a G+ entry.
- Have to change web pages to view other content that belongs in m y stream.
Notice that non of those cons are really Blogger’s fault! Google+ seriously needs better integration services, ffs!!!!
The custom solution has it’s merits. I’ve got the web setup and programming skills to cook up something, and I frequently do hack out tools to scratch itches. But I also know canned solutions have great value. Going custom, I get full control: over data, tools, etc. And I have a great web host :-). Doing some custom code isn’t a big issue here, so much as ROI of going Blogger -> Custom instead of Blogger -> G+.
Most of things contra for keeping Blogger, extent to rolling a custom solution. The only difference is the amount of control: if it’s humanly possible to achieve, I can. With Blogger, I have to rely on Google engineers and super system admins.
The real pro’s are also similar, but larger. Namely I can leverage the extra power to do things like automatically copy post data to an offsite data store: like Dropbox or BOX, on top of having backups with my web host.
Another possibility is that since there is an API for reading data out of G+, my “Custom” solution could really just be a way to pretty print my G+ content, and link back to allow commenting/resharing services. What I am not so sure of, is the affordability of that on my wallet. Maybe it’s a good thing that my site doesn’t get hundreds of thousands of views a month.
What I am going to do is experiment with the following issues with G+:
-
Finding things again.
- result: beats Blogger to shit.
- API access to G+.
- Experiments with scripting G+.
Oh, and while I can see people might have issues about e.g. control over visual matters being a big blurb for something like what I am contemplating, it is not for me. I usually find Google has reasonable taste and I prefer content over wizbang themes.
Thoughts on Oracle v Google stuff
Or more specifically after parsing this, thanks Noles ;).
Personally, I think under that context, Oracle will likely win. I do not believe that a language /should/ be copyrighted but that they technically can be, think about how the types involved might mix for various copyrighted works.
I’ll be the first to admit that our system for copyright, patents, intellectual property, trademarks, and the like is a maze with more than a few turns just full of bullshit. But let’s think a moment: what is it really about? Money. It’s not about fostering innovation (patents) or controlling your property (oi). It’s about money. That’s it, simple.
Java is a product and a creative work, sufficient to be copyrighted. So is the GNU Compiler Collection and that last book you read.
What is the jist of copyright? Wikipedia as of this writing, defines it as a sub class of Intellectual Property that is generally “the right to copy, but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights”
Java, as it applies to Android, is not very different than any other language applied to other systems. The devil is in the details as they say. An Android application is a collection of Dalvik bytecode, native code, and resources running under the Dalvik virtual machine: and Android provides a runtime.
The implementation is not “Java” as Oracle ships it. In fact, as Microsoft’s various efforts to make a .NET dialect of C++ and projects like JRuby confirm: you can have a fair bit of abstraction between *concept* and implementation. Android developers typically write code in Java to an interface documented in Java. They could just as easily write in any language you can eventually wrangle into Dalvik bytecode! Android applications can and have been written in other JVM languages, and non JVM languages. The interface, well hell, many things in the .NET world are done in C# but you could just as easily use Visual Basic or F#. Really helps to be able to read C# though. Just like how on many systems, it helps to be able to read C and or C++.
That runtime part that Android applications depend on is quite “Java like”. Many intrinsic components are provided. C programmer’s should think of the stdio library. Because that is the sort of thing that has been “Copied” from “Java”. Essential programming interfaces, not implementations but interfaces (as far as Oracle holds right to). GNU implements C’s I/O library in their runtime. So does Microsoft in their own. They didn’t have to supply crap like printf() and puts(), they could’ve supplied their own pf() and IoConsolePutLStr() functions! Nether group owes the other jack shit over that. But hey, printf() and puts() are what are widely used: even in other languages!!!!
A lot of things in Androids runtime are also unique. For example, the parts that make it Android specific rather than able to compile under Oracles development kits for PC. The implementation is not copied but the conceptual interface, yes.
So that’s a problemo, how far does that level of control and ownership apply to derivatives? And what actually constitutes a derivative work?
Is copying the script of a movie scene for scene, line for line, and reshooting it for your own release and profit, an issue? Yeah. Obvious. Is doing a movie about a train, going to allow whoever owns copyright on some other movie with a train, to sue your ass for it? It shouldn’t unless it’s close enough to the former, or similarly having a legal problem of some other sort.
It’s more of a question like, should Matz and Oracle be able to sue the developers of JRuby for copyright infridgement: because it provides an even stronger resemblance to both Ruby’s and Java’s programming interfaces than Android’s runtime does to Java’s. Things like C, C++, C#, Common Lisp, Scheme, and EmcaScript are formally standardized to some extent. Things like Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, and Lua are not. Could Niklaus Wirth (or Apple) have sued Boreland over Delphi?
I do not feel that it is responsible to exercise such strong-arm aggression against users. It’s bad for Java, it’s bad for business, it’s bad for the continuing evolution of the industry, and it’s bad for those who have already invested.
And as far as I am concerned, enough programming languages “Borrow” stuff that applications of copyright the way Oracle must be seeking, or not feasible—and may very well fuck up language development for the next decade. Now we have to worry what the fuck we name our classes? What next, companies are going to start exerting control over _our_ works made with their tools?
Thanks Oracle, hope your stock plummets and your employees find good jobs with businesses that offer better job security.
Before testing fork(bombs), break glass
Like everyone who spits off a fork bomb during a test, and realizes they’ve forgot the most important thing when testing a multi-process program for correctness and typo’s.
$ ulimit -u
15878
$ ulimit -u 20
$ ulimit -u
20
Lower the max user processes first!
Titanium Backup + Dropbox HOWTO
I set this up today at long last (and assume most of it will apply to Box as well). Couldn’t find much use on how to actually make it sync, so here is a picture!
Go into your Preferences -> Cloud sync settings; and enable dropbox. You can go into Dropbox Settings to control stuff like what to sync and where to sync, etc. Then go to the “Schedules” tab and voila!
I don’t see what is so schedule about that, and I seem to remember reading that you have to do sync’s manually rather than on a schedule but whatever. Couldn’t find crap on Google, so I took a screenie ^_^.
Fly Over States
A couple of guys in first class on a flight
From New York to Los Angeles
Kinda making small talk killin’ time
Flirting with the flight attendants
Thirty thousand feet above, could be Oklahoma
Just a bunch of square cornfields and wheat farms
Man, it all looks the same
Miles and miles of back roads and highways
Connecting little towns with funny names
Who’d want to live down there, in the middle of nowhere
They’ve never drove through Indiana
Met the man who plowed that earth
Planted that seed, busted his ass for you and me
Or caught a harvest moon in Kansas
They’d understand why God made
Those fly over states
I bet that mile long Santa Fe
Freight train engineer’s seen it all
Just like that flatbed cowboy
Stacking US Steel on a three day haul
Roads and rails under their feet
Yeah, that sounds like a first class seat
On the plains of Oklahoma
With a windshield sunset in your eyes
Like a watercolored painted sky
You’ll think heavens doors have opened
You’ll understand why God made
Those fly over states
Take a ride across the badlands
Feel that freedom on your face
Breathe in all that open space
Meet a girl from Amarillo
You’ll understand why God made
You might even wanna plant your stakes
In those fly over states
Have you ever been through Indiana
On the plains of Oklahoma
Take a rideFly Over States—Jason Aldean
Alone With You
I could swear, this song has been on the radio like every few hours this week. Well, at least during the times I work and drive :/.
I don’t see you laugh
You don’t call me back
But you kiss me when you’re drunk
I don’t know your friends
Don’t know where you’ve been
Why are you the one I want
Don’t put your lips up to my mouth and tell me you can’t stay
Don’t slip your hand under my shirt and tell me it’s okay
Don’t say it doesn’t matter cause it’s gonna matter to me
I can’t be alone with…
You’ve got me out on the edge every time you call
And I know it would kill me if I fall
I can’t be alone with you
Please don’t chain that door
I can’t win this war
Your body’s like a pill I shouldn’t take
Don’t put your lips up to my mouth and tell me you can’t stay
Don’t slip your hand under my shirt and tell me it’s okay
Don’t say it doesn’t matter cause it’s gonna matter to me
I can’t be alone with…
You’ve got me out on the edge every time you call
And I know it would kill me if I fall
I can’t be alone with you
I can’t be alone with you
Don’t put your lips up to my mouth and tell me you can’t stay
Don’t slip your hand under my shirt and tell me it’s okay
Don’t say you love me cause you know you’re gonna love me and leave
I can’t be alone with…
You’ve got me out on the edge every time you call
And I know it would kill me if I fall
I can’t be alone with you
I don’t see you laugh
You don’t call me back
But you kiss me when you’re drunk
Alone With You—Jake Owen
Having glanced at news of the new Kelper card running the Smaritan demo, a job that originally took a trio of 580 GTX cards (can you say expensive and smokin’ hot?). I couldn’t help but wonder, just how much optimization work may have been invested between NVIDA and Epic Games, to get that monster running on the new card.
Well, turns out from the sound of it, that it probably wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be or not in the ways I expected it would be. The new FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti Aliasing) technique being one such “Unexpected”. The fairly simple write up in the article hints to normal people, why the amount of video memory on graphics cards have been going up so much. Damn, I remember when 32M was just starting to fade away, and when 256M was the going norm’ alas, times change.
Anti-aliasing is one of those things, people see in their games video settings (usually) but don’t understand. They only can summise it must be “Better” the higher the number gets and that e.g. 16x AA must be better than 0. Ditto for issues like Anisotropic, trilinear, and bilinear filtering. It really isn’t hard to understand. Further complicating the life of a gamer, some games let you choose various types of Anti Aliasing (such as MSAA or CSAA).
Anti-aliasing makes things look “Better” in simple terms. Let’s just say that aliasing is a distortion of the image. Something like this:
The above picture taken from Wikipedia shows the effects of anti-aliasing on the right. SImply put, it makes things better. In some games it can be a lot more noticeable than others, Raven Shield or Call of Duty for example might benefit from AA a lot better than Sonic the Hedgehog or Pong.
The problem is it is expensive. Imagine, you can make things appear less jagged but you must pay a painter to smooth out the image. Now imagine, not only do you have to do this not only for every Frame Per Second of game play, but also for every pixel on screen. On my computer that is 1,920 x 1,080 = 2,073,600 pixels. Most games need at least 25-35 frames per second to be playable smoothly and 50~60 can be noticeably better.
The artist is using your CPU and GPU (graphics card) to do all this work. Because the screen works with “Pixels”, little dots, it can be a hell of a lot of work but hey, it’s easier to smooth out your neighbors than using a paint brush.
Techniques for doing all this shit have varied with time but in essence, they can vastly change the work load on your computer. One way of thinking it, if you can play a game fine in 800×600 with AA, you might be doing more work than playing it in 3200×2400 without it! This site has a great and simple write up about various techniques.
In general a little anti aliasing is good but you are not likely to notice turning it all the way up to 16x FSAA, give or take your computer might cry.
FSAA should probably be avoided unless you want to boast about your hardware or publish screen shots that look good.
MSAA is close enough that for how much less work it takes to do, it’s worth while.
CSAA or CFAA are available on most decent graphics cards since 2006, and is worth consideration. Think of it as similar to MSAA in the way MSAA is to FSAA. If you have a fairly dark game like SWAT 4 or Modern Warfare 2, as opposed to a very vibrant and colorful game, CSAA is probably worth it.
If you have a lower end graphics card, try using CSAA. If you can _actually_ tell the difference or just want to flaunt your cash, try MSAA.
In most cases, it is “O.K.” to use like 2x or 4x AA in a game now. It’s not like the old days when the computers just couldn’t handle it so much without better hardware. By the time you reach and exceed like 8x (MS)AA, you are probably not going to notice the difference all that much, seriously. If the difference between 16x MSAA and 8x MSAA is so easily seen on your screen and it bugs you, you probably should get a top end graphics card.
How to tell what you should use? Welp, just try a value like 4x Anti Aliasing and see how it impacts your game. If your computer can’t handle it, try tuning it down a bit (2x or off). If you can run it fine, hey, feel free to see if you can go up a notch or two.
A little secret though: no one gives a shit as long as the game looks good and plays good. So as long as you don’t turn the setting to high, it’s all good.
Lincoln versus the lighthouse
This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.
Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a Collision.
Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States’ Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that’s one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.
Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
Most awesome urban legend ever.