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In the previous article Seeds of Discontent, I jotted down a few benchmarks to compare OS X, Windows and Linux performance at a system level. In this article, I explore further a test built around graphics rendering engines. In particular, I was impressed by Sintel, an open source movie built with (among others) Blender. I don’t know how long it takes to assemble the movie from source assets into a shipping product but I’ll venture it is quite a compute intensive process. I got the idea for this benchmark while reading on the sintel.org home page that the project is re-rendering the film for 4K and that it should be ready later this year (still a few months away). I didn’t know what 4K was so I looked it up. That lead me to compile a table of film formats and supported Frames per Second (FPS). I also appended three rows for HDTV of which only 720p and 1080p are real. 4320p is something bandied about as future but I couldn’t find material online that would lead me to believe it’s anything but a concept. I included it to define the upper envelope edge. (Note: different formats support different levels of FPS.) ...

I like reading Tom’s Hardware Guide. I liked it better in the site’s early days when it wasn’t so javacript and flash heavy and the articles were idomatically ‘German-English’. A lot happens in twelve or so years. Still, Tom’s is the best source of information on the web. I read a CPU benchmark this morning which got me wondering if there were a possiblity to benchmark on any operating system but Windows. I concluded for the kind of benchmarks seen on Tom’s–not really. ...

I downloaded Unity last week. My first bit of installation geekery was to push the documentation to marmaduke, my CentOS server. I drop the documentation directory into a virtual host and let apache serve the index (since I solved my Apache Directory Indexing problem a bit back.) However, I found that the pages had missing images. Looking at the HTML source, I found that some of the image URLs used ‘images’ (lower case i) while others used ‘Images’ (upper case I). To make matters worse, CSS and javascript files were also stored in the images directory. ...

I recently created an android custom component. To get started, I simply wanted to use the android framework’s CheckedTextView as the starting point. This is because I had an existing project having walked through a tutorial video on safari.oreilly.com. In the tutorial, CheckedTextView was used to create a custom list item for a ListView. I wanted to change the list item to replace the checkbox with something else. ...

It is with heavy heart that I say farewell to Master Chief Petty Officer Rich Dowdy. He passed Thursday, September 2, 2010 at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Balboa. I married into the family thirteen years ago. The first time I met Rich Dowdy, he gave me the hairy eyeball. Somehow I passed muster, even if I was an old Army soldier. In time, I was accepted into the family. ...

An expression piece from my ITP GLBM7600 Intro to Transpersonal Theory class. I thought of it again yesterday while in another class. BTW, ‘eight sides open’ refers to a state of panoramic awareness. Though eight sides open has been described in many cultures, I draw upon the tradition of Musashi. The dragonfly shows utter equanimity and absolute awareness.

I recently finished Paul Bloom’s intro psych course and thought I’d continue my survey with Jeremy Wolfe’s MIT 9.00: Introduction to Psychology. I’m only two lectures in and already I sense Dr. Wolfe’s class has heavier technical leanings. That’s not a bad thing. To read broadly expands awareness. I tried comparing the syllabi from Yale and MIT. There is some overlap but there is far more unique content than not. At least that’s my impression comparing the two sets of reading assignments. I’ll know more when I finish the balance of the 23 lectures. ...

Truffles (1996 – 2010) Loyal and Gentle Friend “Look in my eyes, Lord, and my sins will play out on them as on a screen. Read them all. Forgive what you can, and send me on my path. I will walk on, until you bid me rest.” —Shepherd Book

There are a lot of haters out there but I’m still rooting for Apple. I want Apple to succeed. I’m not going to WWDC 2010 (tapped out of conference budget). I wish I were going. Job’s “you won’t be disappointed” promise has my head spinning. I like surprises. I hope Apple doesn’t disappoint. So, what would I like to see announced? Here’s my top ten list of wishful thinking. ...

I’ve stumbled upon a new means of relaxation at Open Yale Courses. It sounds strange that recordings of university lectures are relaxing but I find they are. Paul Bloom’s PSYC 110: Introduction to Psychology is far more interesting than television. I’m currently on lecture ten of twenty. His has an enjoyable speaking style; the hour flies by. A sidebar at the end of Dr. Bloom’s lecture on Freud exemplifies his sense of humor. ...