[geeks] Sun to adopt newest Intel Xeon chips for upcoming servers (link)

[Joshua Boyd]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 02:36:09PM -0500, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> I would not mind having a console for the types of games they do well
> with, but a lot of my favorite types of games are terrible on a console.
> 
> Console games are almost always dumbed down compared to PC games.
> 
> Unfortunately, now that a lot of games are released for both console and
> PC, they are dumbing down the PC versions too.
> 
> Oblivion is one example. Great game, but it has severe flaws that are
> directly because of it being crammed into the Xbox 360.  
> 
> I really like how PC games can be easily modified, and a lot of game
> makers are actively encouraging it.
> 
> You can do mods to (some) Xbox 360 games, but the process is painful and
> it just doesn't work well. Almost no one does it. Also, if you have any
> kind of problem, there is almost no way to fix it.

There are a lot of strong points for PC gaming.  I just found that for
me it wasn't worth the hassle of keeping a windows computer, or even a
reasonably current computer around for that purpose.
 
> Do you use OpenGL for that, or are you doing Windows programming?

OpenGL on Linux.
 
> Is shader programming hard to learn or is it just "yet another 3D
> technique" that you get used to?

Writing pixel shaders is quite a bit different from general OpenGL
programming.  I guess it is yet another 3D technique in that it has been
around for a long time in the form of Renderman or writing your own
renderers, but I would say it is a bit of a different thing than moving
triangles around.
 
> I have books on OpenGL but haven't done much yet. I generally use fairly
> vanilla X11 windows, just enough to get OpenGL up and do everything else
> from there.

Well, that is a fair approach, but if you were to switch to SDL, then
you would probably be more cross platform compatible.  However, if you
do switch to SDL, I don't know how one would handle properly supporting
Xinput devices.

After trying just about everything possible fairly extensively, I think
I've mostly settled on Fltk for X11 based systems, and Cocoa for OS X.
I still haven't figured out how to do pen or other input support
decently though, on any platform.  Someday I will try to get around to
remedying that.  

> I just want to learn the basics for now, I don't have any real plans to
> use those skills yet.

I've done a little OpenGL at work, but only as a fast way to get images
onto the screen with some stuff drawn on top for debugging some image
processing code (which was since trashed and rewritten by an older
programmer anyway).  Otherwise, it has so far been strictly hobby stuff
as well. 
 
> For example, my desktop still has older SCSI drives, and so my dual
> cores and 2GB of memory spend too much time waiting on the drives.
> 
> I want to get a new SCSI drive, but hate to spend the money just to gain
> some speed. They are so expensive, and that's $125 I could use for other
> things.
> 
> Now that I have PCIe, I could also upgrade the SCSI controller, but a
> faster drive would at least max out my 80MB/sec Symbios controller.
> 
> > Anyway, I wish I did more photo-editing, but first I'm trying to get my
> > photo-sorting problems taken care of.
> 
> I finally settled on a system and stuck with it. It's not perfect, but
> it helps to have something and stick with it.
> 
> My sorting system is very simple, mainly because it was the only thing I
> would actually stick with.
> 
> I store things with this pathname:
> 
> 	/files/photos/originals/YYYY/YYMMDD/YYMMDD-<sequence>.<ext>
> 	/files/photos/scans/YYYY/YYMMDD/YYMMDD-<sequence>.<ext>
> 	/files/photos/<other person or source>/YYYY/YYMMDD/YYMMDD-<sequence>.<ext>
> 
> If I scan something, I have to edit metadata by hand, but otherwise this
> has worked out well for me.

I have something like that.  I have a python script and some shell
scripts that generate scaled preview images and web pages, but the basic
file layout is like the above.

However, for files from a digital camera, I keep the camera generate
filename, since the folder already indicates the date.
 
> Problems with it:
> 
> 	- filename doesn't indicate camera used or the nature of the
> 	  non-personal sources

Currently I only use one camera, so that isn't an issue.  If I add more
cameras, a Exif utility could extract the camera info for the .html
files that are generated.

> 	- If I forget to sort all picture for a given date and add them
> 	  later, the sequence numbers will change.

Since I don't change the names I don't have that problem.

My big problems are:

 - I can't find the picture unless I remember the date, or I go through
   everything in the date range.
 - Deb is interested in what has been printed already.
 - It would be handy to have a quick means to take only a subset of
   pictures into a new location for generating web albums.
 - It would be handy to store comments with the pictures, for instance
   to know what the event is, or who the people are.  Of course, if I
   did that, then it probably wouldn't be too hard to have a search
   functionality to take care of the first problem.
 - If I want generic pictures of hills, trees, clouds, whatever, I can't
   find them.

Someday I will probably whip out a web-app to take comments, captions,
and keywords for the pictures, while also allowing assorted pictures to
be grouped into sub albums.

I have some ideas about someday building the ultimate photo management
system.  It would be server based.  It would support web browser usage.
It would have a dedicated client program that was like Aperture.  It
would have a published protocol for client programs so that other people
could make more iPhoto like programs for it, or tie appliances (say
those picture frame devices) into it.  The server program would scale
from home users to large photo studios.

> For edits, I don't yet have a solid system of organization.  Still
> working on that.

For now I have a sub-directory for edits.  Of course, I prefer to save
the edits in .psds or .xcfs, so the scripts that I currently use to
generate thumbnails have no way to generate thumbnails.  

Of course, that last complaint brings up an entirely new kettle of
complaints about the current state of photo editing systems.  x

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/