Dragon’s Back
Jan 23rd
Today, Fedex dropped off my new ASUS RoG Extreme II motherboard, to replace the one that was consistently overheating. Amazingly, I hadn’t lost any of the hardware since I took the computer apart a couple weeks ago.
I installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64, which I picked up from my university a few weeks ago, and I’m currently reinstalling all of my Steam games, many of which I picked up during the recent Steam holiday sales, but haven’t gotten a chance to play properly.
Currently, I’m going through my dual 1 TB hard drives, cleaning up files and deleting things I don’t need anymore. I’ll get to actually playing some games soon, I hope…
First Impressions: Cities XL
Jan 14th
I’ve always enjoyed simulation games such as SimCity, but it’s been a while since there was a new release in the series. SimCity 4 is 7 years old now, and even the poorly received Societies is a little over 2. So, when my roommate told me about a new SimCity-styled game called Cities XL, I decided to try it out.
Cities XL is developed and published by a French company called Monte Cristo. The game is currently available through Steam as well as the developer’s website. The “Solo” version of the game is $39.99, with the “Online” version available for $9.99/mo. Alternatively, a “Premium” version that includes the single player as well as 1 month of online multiplayer is $44.99. Currently, I’ve only played the single player version.
First impressions are not one of Cities XL’s strong points. My first annoyance came before the game even started, as it forces you to sign into your Cities XL online account every time, even if you just want to start the Solo game, and there’s no way to save your login, so you’re forced to type it each and every time. The menus are a little clunky and lack the kind of polish and attention to detail that a lot of PC games have nowadays. The game also has a steeper learning curve than I had originally expected, and I found myself having to play through most of the tutorials in order to have a good idea how to go about building my first city, which I named “Miranda,” seeing as it’s more than likely going to be a complete disaster.
Once you get to the game itself, though, the experience improves dramatically. The amount of detail you’re able to put into your cities it much higher than city sims I’ve played in the past. For starters, Cities XL includes the ability to create a curved road, which right away breaks you free from the traditional “Grid” that you’ve been locked into in the past, which gives your cities a much more organic feel. There’s also a greater variety of zones for you to choose from. While it uses the same three types of zones SimCity has used in the past, there’s a greater number of options within those zones:
- In housing, you have multiple tiers rather than just densities, including smaller homes for your “unskilled workers,” larger suburbs for your middle class residents, and even larger, more luxurious homes for your executives and other “Elites.”
- When it comes to industry, you have an option of several types of farm area (such as livestock, fruit, vegetable, and grain, among others) as well as manufacturing, “heavy” industry, office space, and “high tech” industry.
- Your options for commercial properties includes a number of different types of shopping and leisure activities in order to keep your citizens happy.
In addition, when you’re building these zones, you have more options than the traditional “grid” method. you can build your zones against a curved road, place plots individually and even mark out an area free-form.
The game does a decent job of letting you know what problems there are and what is in demand or needed. Keeping the city in balance is a tricky process though, and requires paying attention to the alerts at the top of the screen.
Overall, I’ve only played the game for a couple of hours. The download and install alone took up a better part of a day, with the game needing to download updates even though it was downloaded from Steam. I may put up a more detailed review later, but in the meantime, you should be able to check the game out by signing up for an account on the game’s website, and choosing “free trial” when it asks for your game CD key.
2009 Wrap Up
Dec 29th
It’s been a long year, and a longer decade (don’t give me that crap about it being another year), but it’s coming to a close. I just got back to Louisville from my Christmas vacation in Asheville, NC. Most of my mother’s side of the family met up and we rented out a B&B for a few days (don’t worry, they had internet). The first day, we took a tour of the Biltmore House, which claims to be the “largest home in America,” and they’re probably right.
The biggest news from me is likely my new car, which you can (depending on when you’re reading this) probably still see in the Flickr stream to the right. It’s a silver 2007 Civic EX Coupe (5 speed). My old car, the 94 Saturn, is now being used by my younger brother. The Civic has a center console that I think would nicely house a carputer if I ever get around to building one. The cars been getting a few miles on it with a few back-and-forths to Lexington and the trip to Asheville and seems to be working fine. It even has a particularly nerdy startup message (again, see Flickr).
Also, I’ve moved this site back to my personal server and Wordpress 2.9. Squarespace was a great service, but I just can’t afford to pay for hosting at the moment. The SS page still exists, but only for another day or so, I’ll be doing everything here now.
This year consisted of two internships at VMware and one Summer semester of classes. It saw the purchase of my latest overpowered desktop (Dragon, which is now in need of a Motherboard RMA due to a faulty temperature sensor) and my shiny 13″ MacBook Pro (Whelp, whose sensors seem to be working quite nicely). This was also the year I purchased a “proper” smartphone, the Palm Pre, which despite it’s problems is still a nice phone. I had my house robbed, which I’ve since more or less recovered from, lost two roommates, and gained another.
Overall, it’s been a good year. On the plate for 2010 is wrapping up this B.S. at school (and my degree, while I’m at it) and then deciding if I want to deal with another year of it for a Master’s degree.
How the Google Phone can be a game-changer
Dec 14th
By now we’ve all seen it, pictures at least: the Google Phone. Long rumored since before Android was even announced, it looks like Google is finally delivering their own hardware (manufactured by HTC) in the form of the Nexus One.
So far, the known hardware seems to be: a 3.7″ capacitive high-res (guessing 854×480) screen, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 256MB RAM / 512MB ROM, a 16GB microSD card, 5MP camera, and the usual assortment of radios: bluetooth, wifi, etc.
Update 1/3: The Nexus One actually has 512MB of RAM and a 4GB (upgradeable to 32GB) MicroSD Card.
While this may be one of the first Snapdragon phones to hit the market, what’s more interesting is way Google is supposedly selling it. The Google Phone will be available directly from Google as an unlocked GSM phone, which isn’t usually done here in the U.S.
Google also has an interesting opportunity here since they’ve recently aquired Gimzo5, which already had an SIP (calls over wifi) solution for Android. Combine this with Google Voice and you’ve got a cell phone that doesn’t need ANY kind of service plan, assuming you’ve got wifi wherever you are. You, of course, would be able to add a GSM data or voice plan (T-Mobile has some nice ones for people that provide their own phone) or even a cheap prepaid SIM card for emergencies. What will be interesting to see is if carriers allow you to purchase a data-only plan if something like this were to happen, as they’ll certainly be unhappy about no longer being able to nickel and dime their customers for each and every service.
So imagine this: rather than paying countless fees each month, you just get a simple data plan, which all the services on your phone are able to make use of. Imagine paying $59.99/mo (current standard rate for cell 3G cards) for unlimited Voice/SMS/Data/Nav/etc. And, if you’re not being tied in with long-term contracts, competition between carriers could bring that price down further.
One problem with this is our tendency to only look at up-front costs. I know at least a few people that either picked up (or seriously considered) the iPhone 3G when it dropped to $99, but these people fail to realize that the upfront cost of a phone is trivial compared to the cost of the plan they’ll lock you into. Consider that $99 iPhone. The bare minimum plan you can get away with is $69.99/mo (close to the cost of the device), or $1679.76 over the course of the two year contract (which is why I tell anyone looking at the $99 iPhone to pay the extra $100 for the 3GS). If you want unlimited messaging (they’re $0.20 for a text or $0.30 for a media message otherwise) that’s another $20.00/mo or $480 over two years. GPS Navigation? Sure, but it’s another $9.99/mo ($239.76). Assuming you want all these features? $2399.52 over two years. Assuming you never go over your monthly minutes, but don’t worry, we can up to unlimited minutes and bring the plan up to $159.98/mo, so you’d be paying a little over 1.5 times the cost of the device each month just to use it, and $3839.52 over the life time of your “cheap” $99 iPhone.
So, consider the alternative: Buy a phone upfront at full cost, let’s say $600 (probably more than it would be). As long as you have wifi, you wouldn’t even need a plan, but let’s assume your phone does need data, so you pick up a $59.99/mo data plan sans-contract. Over two years that’s $1439.76 for unlimited use. So, over two years, the $99 iPhone cost you $3938.52 and the $600 Google Phone costs you $2039.76. So, a 6x upfront cost leads to an overall cost of about half.
Right now this is little more than an idle daydream for me, but Google already lets you do SMS and Navigation using the phone’s data connection for free, and with a recent VoIP acquisition under their belts, which could be made to play nicely with Google Voice, maybe we’ll see something like this come along.
Home Again
Dec 3rd
I got back into Louisville this (or was it yesterday?) morning. I’m suffering a pretty bad case of jetlag, mostly due to (I think) being awake for 30 hours without sleep. I left my apartment around 4pm on the first and through a combination of Muni, then getting on the wrong – then right – BART, made it to SFO around 5pm. My flight wasn’t until 10:45pm, but thanks to an online promo code googled from my phone, I was able to get free access to T-mobile’s airport wireless internet service. 6 hours and a very expensive airport meal later ($16 for a turkey sandwich and slice of banana bread) I was on my first flight, from SFO to ATL. For some reason, I couldn’t manage to fall asleep, and the supposed in-flight wifi was nowhere to be found, so I entertained myself with a combination of iTunes music and Netflix DVDs until we landed at ATL shortly after 6am. By the time I found the correct gate at ATL (they only moved the flight on me once), I only had to wait about half an hour before my next flight. The wifi in ATL wasn’t provided by T-mo, and I didn’t feel like paying $7 for half an hour of internet access, so I continued to be cut off from the rest of the world. The flight from ATL to SDF was short and uneventful, and I think I may have even managed to nod off for a few minutes before we landed. From there, I got a ride back to my house and tried to stay awake, which I managed until I eventually fell asleep mid-afternoon (only to wake up again at 11pm). Hopefully I’ll be back on a normal sleep schedule by tomorrow…
My MacBook Pro 13″ Review
Nov 1st
As I mentioned in my last post, about two weeks ago, I made a semi-impulse buy of a new 13″ MacBook Pro. I had been planning on buying one for months, but was going to wait for the next hardware refresh. However, my Thinkpad going into a spiral of death hastened my upgrade.
On paper, my new Macbook Pro and previous Thinkpad T61p are quite similar. They both use a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, although the Mac’s CPU is the newer P8700 (as opposed to the Thinkpad’s T9300) which uses less power but has less cache. They also both have 4GB of memory, with the Mac using newer DDR3-1066 memory rather than the Thinkpad’s older DDR2-667. The Thinkpad has a discrete video card (Quadro FX 570M with 256MB of dedicated video memory) rather than the Mac’s integrated Geforce 9400M.
In terms of construction, the Macbook Pro is really a work of art. The unibody construction is solid, and the keyboard and trackpad are a pleasure to use. The new unibody design means the battery isn’t user-removable. However, it manages at least 4-5 hours of user per charge (and I can get 6-7 of lighter use) so the fact that the battery is built-in doesn’t bother me, especially when my Thinkpad was getting around 1 hour to a charge. The Mac is also almost completely silent, including the keyboard. Under heavier use, the drives and fan become audible, but only just.
It’s a fast machine, too. While not the most powerful Mac in the line-up (by a far amount, too), the 13″ MacBook Pro provides great performance for most uses. It goes in and out of sleep almost instantly, and while I’ve only had to reboot once since I first set it up, that was also a quick process (under a minute). The Mac’s hardware multitasks easily, and the user interface caters to that ability with multitouch gestures to easily switch from one task to another.
The screen is something of a mixed bag. While the image is very bright and crisp, the screen is a mere 1280×800 resolution, a far cry from the 1920×1200 I had on my Thinkpad. Due to the low resolution, keeping multiple applications on-screen at a time is difficult. In particular, looking at source code with only 800 vertical pixels to work with becomes annoying. Unfortunately, in order to gain a decent amount of screen real-estate, you have to go all the way up to the 17″ MacBook Pro (the 15″ only offers 900 vertical pixels), and the portability won me over between those two. I’ll look into an external display for my desk at home for longer coding sessions, but I’ve been managing for the time being by making good use of spaces. One advantage to the lower resolution, however, is that 720p content (at a resolution of 1280×720) displays natively with no scretching whatsoever, and looks amazing on the Mac’s LED backlit display.
All in all, I can’t describe myself as anything other than “very happy” with my MacBook Pro. While I was originally hesitant to go ahead and buy a machine based on almost the same architecture as my current one, I really needed a new laptop. Also, if I can get at least two years out of this (which I fully believe I will be able to), I’ll be able to replace it down the line with a laptop based on Intel’s 22nm architecture (assuming they stay on track, that is).
Building a Hackintoshed Netbook
Oct 27th
Last weekend, my Thinkpad was having some trouble. Its battery was shot, the DVD drive was beginning to sound like a jet engine, and my hard drive was getting Disk I/O errors. In the weeks before that, I had started doing some Mac development with PyObjC, and I was wanting to get a machine in order to do some testing.
I looked into getting a netbook and installing OS X on it. The Dell Mini 10v, in particular, was known to work very well with OS X, at least with Leopard (Snow Leopard has since been known to work as well). I also looked into grabbing a Mini 9 (now known as the Vostro A90) and upgrading it to a 32GB SSD and 2GB of RAM. It would have come up to around $500. I decided to sleep on it and make the decision in the morning.
I wound up going out and walking around the Marina later. Guess what neighborhood it turns out has an Apple Store?
I wandered in and started to play with a 13″ Macbook Pro. Two hours later…
Oops.
Why you should insure everything
Oct 26th
Last week, I got a call from my roommate who is currently living at my house in Louisville. He had come home to find the house broken into and quite a few things missing, among them my TV, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii. Fortunately, my custom built desktop computer was left behind, probably due to it being so heavy.
Unfortunately, I’m basically hosed with respect to what they did take. I had never bothered to get renter’s insurance to cover my electronics, nor did I have the serial numbers to my consoles backed up anywhere to give to the police. Obviously, this will all change for me, but you can avoid having to learn this the hard way, and for relatively cheap.
If you rent a house or apartment, look into renter’s insurance. It’s relatively cheap (probably around $10/month) and will cover your belongings if they are stolen.
Secondly, keep a record of your electronics’ serial numbers. I’ve started using Evernote for this, as any information in Evernote is synced to their servers. Without a serial number, your chances of recovering stolen property can drop dramatically.
Finally, back up your data off-site. I was lucky enough to not have my desktop computer taken, but if it had been, that would have been several hundred gigabytes of media gone. There are a couple of easy ways to protect yourself against that. The easiest is to use a service like Carbonite, which gives you unlimited off-site backup of your data for around $50 a year. If you’d rather not pay someone to host your data for you, you can buy a couple of external hard drives and back your data up to them, but you need to be sure to store that backup in a different location that your computers, whether that’s leaving it at a friend’s place, or storing it at your office at work.
As it stands now, I’m stuck paying around $1200 if I want to replace what I lost, but if I had bothered to insure my possessions, I could be paying a $250 deductible instead.
Building a Development Environment with VMware
Oct 4th
Today, I decided to try and start back up with Palm webOS development (which I’m further putting off by writing this post) but before I could do that, I needed to set up my development environment. This time, rather than install it in my host operating system, which can change fairly often, I decided to create a dedicated virtual machine to do all of my webOS development in. There are a couple of advantages of this. First, my development environment remains stable and constant even when my host operating system changes or is upgrades. Secondly, I can have a 32 bit development environment when the rest of my desktop is 64 bit. This is helpful, because Palm currently only provides an i386 *.deb for the Mojo SDK, and while you can get it to work on a 64 bit system, I can avoid having to do these workarounds. Finally, it’s easy to pick up my entire development environment and take it with me from computer to computer, without having to worry about redownloading and libraries or tools on the new machine.
Since I’m using Ubuntu 9.04 x86_64 edition, most of this guide is tailored to Linux hosts, but should work fairly well on Windows or Mac hosts as well.
1. Install a Virtualization Platform
The first step was to set up my virtualization software. If you don’t already have something installed to do this, take a look at VMware Player 3.0, which is currently in the RC stages. You can get it here. Player 3 is improved over the previous versions in that it is now a fully fledged desktop virtualization product. In the past, it was only able to run virtual machines others had created, but it is now capable of creating them as well.
2. Install your Guest OS
Once you have VMware set up, you need to install your guest operating system that you will do your development on. For my example, I chose to use Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS, which is an older release, but is an LTS release and also the version that Palm has targeted its SDK at. After downloading the image from http://releases.ubuntu.com/hardy/ setting up the virtual machine is very easy. All you have to do is create a new VM from Player’s UI, and give it the Ubuntu *.iso image when it asks for it. VMware will automatically set up the VM for you from there, including installing Ubuntu.
3. Set up your Environment
Next, just set up anything you need for the development you’ll be doing. In the case of Palm’s Mojo SDK, this means installing sun-java6-jre through apt, then installing the palm-sdk and palm-novacom packages from Palm’s webpage. You can also install an SDK if you prefer. I installed Eclipse 3.4.2, which was the version recommended by Palm. I then added the Palm and Aptana plugins.
4. Set up Remote Access
Finally, you can configure your virtual machine to be accessible remotely. The best way to do this (for a Linux guest) is via SSH. Install the package openssh-server in your virtual machine, then you can access it from your host through that. If you configure VMware to leave virtual machines running in the background you can close out of Player then run your IDE of choice over ssh by running something along these lines:
ssh -X user@vmipaddress /path/to/ide
which for my particular setup, winds up being:
ssh -X zach@172.16.156.129 /opt/eclipse/eclipse
You can save that command as either a bash alias or shell script, and make a launcher for it. Eclipse will then load up and run looking just like a native application, but it’s actually still keeping everything in the virtual machine, so you can still bundle up your entire environment easily.
There are some additional tricks you can do to futher integrate guest and host. One such thing that can come in handy is mounting your host’s hard drive in the guest via sshfs which will let you easily move files between guest and host.
Hopefully this will help you keep your development environment clean and stable, no matter how much you decide to tweak your host 
Dammit, new project time
Sep 21st
So, FlickrShow worked great… for one album. Problem is, if you want to embed more than one slideshow in a page (possible if it was say, multiple entries on a blog), you can’t. The first element will just sit there while the other shows a spinning loading icon forever.
I figured I might be able to take a look at the source, but no such luck. The code is obfuscated to all hell. This wouldn’t be as big of a problem if the original developer wasn’t completely unreachable. I’ve tried the email on his contact page a few times: nothing.
So, it looks like I might just have to create my own implementation of this. And yes, it will be open source so that other people won’t have to deal with an (apparently) dead project. Or Flash.
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