Matt Croydon::Postneo

Month: July 2003

  • Typical Sunday Roundup

    Here’s a roundup from another weekend spent offline:

    • Aaron Swartz has been dodging trains and dealing with parental units to get his site back up.  Somehow I’d like to think that I wouldn’t take a bullet for my server, but right now I’m not too sure.
    • Via Erik, via Mark, Beggregator is an RSS aggregator of some sort.  I don’t have the energy to try it out tonight.  Does anyone have some screenshots to share?
    • Via my friend Adam, Interakt has some interesting php stuff.  He also pointed out Edit-X, some kind of CMS, but the $495 pricetag doesn’t seem worth it.
    • DrBacchus muses on comunnity and open source.
    • Gizmodo points to a Palm C vs. Palm W celebrity deathmatch.
    • addns.pl is a DynDNS.org updater written in *gasp* Perl.
    • There’s a new development release of Armagetron, a pretty slick Tron Light Cycles clone that I’ve been playing since it was featured on The Screen Savers.  It’s got network play too. Much fun.
    • My colo’d server might be down for a few minutes between 10PM and 2AM Eastern time tonight.  They’re upgrading and rebooting all of their Cisco equipment.  This site won’t be affected as I still haven’t transfered it over.
    • I tried to go to my local Sam’s Club today but couldn’t.  Someone had driven an SUV through the front door earlier in the day.  Needless to say, it was closed.

  • John Robb Is Back

    Spread the meme: John Robb is now blogging at MindPlex.org.  I’ve subscribed to his RSS feed of course.

  • Subscribed to Atom Mailing List

    I’ve subscribed to the atom mailing list.  Previously, I would have set up a filter to move incoming mailing list traffic to a specific folder.  Now that I have a server colocated, I just set up a new email address for it.

    That works.

  • Code Reading

    Keith Devens:

    Code Reading looks like a fantastic book. I happened to see it when I was in Barnes & Noble tonight, and I flipped through it for a few minutes. Check it out.

    That’s eerie.  I was at a Borders last night and flipped through this book.

  • Python 2.3c1: Release Candidate

    From Python.org:

    We are pleased to announce the release of Python 2.3c1 on July 18, 2003. This is a release candidate. If no serious problems are found in the next week, we will release this code as Python 2.3 final. We expect the final release to occur by the end of the month at the latest. The roadmap for the Python 2.3 release is PEP 283.

    You can download it as a Windows binary, or in a tarball for *nixen.  This release also incorporates a bunch of the idlefork improvements in the interactive interpreter.

    Also check out the highlights for the 2.3 series.

  • Preorder Your N-Gage

    CNet:

    The N-Gage is scheduled to go on sale Oct. 7, priced at $299. Nokia announced Friday that specialty retailers GameStop and Electronics Boutique will begin taking advance orders in stores and online starting Saturday.

  • Happy Birthday Amazon Web Services

    This month (actually two days ago) is the birthday of Amazon Web Services.

    I’d point to the original press release that Dave referenced, but unfortunately it has expired:

    Yahoo – Document Has Expired

    The requested document, `/bw/020716/160329_1.html‘, is no longer available.

    It’s little things like this that remind me how temporary the web can be.  Here’s a little disclaimer for todays entries:

    Content freshest if viewed before 18 Jul 2004.

  • Phone Operating Systems

    El Reg:

    Who cares what operating system a phone uses?

    I do!

    I’ve become a Symbian Junkie.

  • New Sony Handheld Runs on Sony-Designed Chip

    An interesting tidbit about the “Handheld Engine,” the processor behind the new Sony Clie PEG-UX50.  CNet:

    The device is also noteworthy because it is the first handheld to use a chip developed by Sony in the same Nagasaki plant where it is manufacturing the chip that will power the upcoming Sony PlayStation 3 game console.

    The chip itself isn’t the speediest thing on the planet, but considering what Palm devices used to run on, isn’t shabby at all:

    The ARM-based chip tops out at 123MHz and includes a graphics engine, camera interface and Memory Stick interface.

  • The Tech of Feedster

    Scott Johnson has posted a great article about the tech of Feedster.  It’s definately worth a read, especially if you think that Feedster is a bunch of PHP scripts thrown together.

  • mjabber Does Not Work on My 3650

    Erik pointed to mjabber earlier today.

    I tried it out on my 3650 with no luck.  It locked up with Logging on.  Please wait...

  • Kensington WiFi Finder: Cheaper Than You Think

    Glenn Fleishmann’s article at the New York Times pointed out something about the Kensington WiFi Finder is only $30!  Not bad at all, I was expecting it to cost much more.  It might be fun at that price point.

  • 240-kbit Over EDGE

    CommsDesign:

    TTPCom is using this week’s Wireless Japan show in Tokyo to demonsrtae a Class 12 Edge reference design that can achieve downlink data rates up to 236.8 kbit/s over an Edge wireless link.

    Obligatory PR fluff warning.  It is a nice achievement though.  The earliest anyone might see production hardware using TTPCom’s technology would Q12004.  Of course EDGE is a hack at best, but speed is speed.  It might not be true 3G, but it’s better than vanilla GPRS.

    It’s also interesting to note that high speed isn’t limited to only the downstream (in theory):

    For example, Matthews said designers can allocate three slots for the downlink and two slots for the uplink to achieve a 180/120 kbit/s downlink-to-uplink data rate ratio.

    This is all theoretical pre-production stuff, but it might be a nice crutch until 3G arrives in the US.

  • Multitasking

    Charles Miller:

    The maximum number of significant tasks I can work on concurrently is two.

    There’s always a difference between your optimal number of tasks and the number of tasks that you are required to work on.

  • Notes From a Parallel Computing Workshop

    developers.slashdot.org points to slides and notes from an introductory workshop and parallel computing systems hosted by the Center for Advanced Computing at the University of Michigan.

    I’m not in front of a machine that can read PowerPoint files right now, but I’ll definately be checking these slideshows out.

  • Interview With Moshe Bar

    Linux Journal posted an interview with Moshe “OpenMosix” Bar.  I really like this answer:

    MB: Most “clustering” companies really are cluster management companies. The reason why so few do real clustering engines is it is difficult to do them well. A few dozen Ph.D.s were done on openMosix over the last 20 years, and it shows in the quality of the code and its efficiency during operation.

  • PageRank

    It looks like I’m currently down from my listing on the top 10 for “Matt” on Google.  Here are my conclusions:

    1. The first rule of PageRank is that you do not discuss PageRank.
    2. The second rule of PageRank is that you do not discuss PageRank.

    I am Jack’s hypertext transfer protocol.

  • Runaway Jury

    I saw a trailer for The Runaway Jury while in the movie theatre last weekend.  I can’t say that it looked like the best movie coming out this fall, but I’m going to see it anyway.  It happens pretty much every time I see a preview for a movie from a book that I have read.  You’ve just got to see it.

  • Roundup: Moz, Perl, Digital and Tomcat

    Some of these links are a few hours out of date, but I’d like to get them posted anyway:

    • MozillaZine: “AOL has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla…”
    • Use Perl notes that search.cpan.org is orange (at least for a few days).  I kinda like it.
    • Imaging Resource notes the announcement of the UMAX Powerlook 1000 and UMAX Powerlook 1120.  I currently have a UMAX Powerlook 3000 in the trunk of my car, but that’s a completely different story.
    • Matt Raible has been poking around Tomcat 5.0.4.
    • DPReview notes that Sony is announcing a new CCD sensor that incorporates four colors: RGB + Emerald.  From what I’ve read, it’s not really about improving megapixels, but improving image and color quality.

  • Beattie on Python

    Russ was able to get a post up about his dabblings in Python.  It’s been really interesting seeing him play with Python for the first time after so many years of Java.  At more than one time, I don’t think he believed how easy getting stuff accomplished could be.

    Yeah, it’s crufty.  It’s just so easy to get work done though.