Archive for the 'Tech' Category

The Mona Lisa in PHP

Published
by
Abyss
on June 9, 2009
in PHP, Tech and Web Development
. 0 Comments

Recently on Hacker News it has become common place to bash PHP. There was an article posted to the site with a title of “At 14, is PHP Finally Growing Up?” which started a slew of flame bait. I took it upon myself to post this morsel of a comment:

I would like to argue the C language argument here. If I want to shoot myself in the foot, the language should let me. If I want to paint the Mona Lisa, the language should let me. PHP does that.

That prompted a few snarky remarks about which resolutions and to what extent PHP could paint the Mona Lisa.

So I did it.

Full size: http://williamriggins.com/mona.php?x=400&y=571

Favicon Size: http://williamriggins.com/mona.php?x=10&y=10

Code (minus base64′d image constant): http://pastie.org/506643

New Headset, Space Cadets and More

Published
by
Abyss
on April 22, 2009
in Tech
. 0 Comments

Well, last night I did something rather crazy which involved jumping up from a game of Counter-Strike and running to the living room. Unfortunately, I took the headset cord with me. I literally ripped the cord in half at the Y connector. I attempted a really horrible splicing job, but couldn’t get it to work. So, off I went to purchase a new headset. There were 3 models on the Best Buy website that seemed like they’d work: GameCom 377, GameCom 777 and the Logitech ClearChat Pro USB. Needless to say, I cheaped out and got the 377.

GameCom 377 Headset

GameCom 377 Headset

Initial impressions were definitely mixed. The sound was good, the cord was reinforced, and the controls were huge. Of course, everything about this thing was huge. For $40, you really got your money’s worth in plastic. The mic tucks away very nicely, but in comparison to the ear cans you’d probably miss it entirely. I honestly looked like a space cadet with those things on. They were pretty heavy, and they made a clear statement: “I have no idea why I’m wearing these, but aren’t they wicked cool? No? Aww, seriously?”

So, my wife came home and I displayed my inner uber nerd and then realized just how crazy these things were. So, a quick check on the return policy, and back to the big blue and yellow box they went. Shay, a good friend of mine and one heck of a shot in Counter-Strike, recommended the ClearChat Pro USB from the start. I gawked at using USB for audio, but this time around I decided I better heed someone’s advice since I apparently have horrible judgment.

Logitech ClearChat Pro USB

Logitech ClearChat Pro USB

Snapped up a pair for $10 more than the 377s and headed home. Opened the horribly designed blister pack and threw them on my head. These things are light. To be honest, it hardly feels like you’re wearing anything at all. The cable is just long enough to comfortably reach my tower, and the thing was plug and play. Vista 64bit just installed them and set my defaults for me. One game of Command & Conquer 3 later and I’m happy with them. Logged into Ventrilo and someone even commented that I sounded much better, easier to hear. Weird. It’s just a headset, right? The build quality is just okay, but if you’re relatively careful (unlike me) they should last awhile. The on ear controls aren’t as strange as they sound. You get used to it.

Anyways, I hope that helps a few people make some decisions on headsets. Just remember that return policy.

i7 Build is Done

Published
by
Abyss
on April 5, 2009
in Tech
. 1 Comment

I finally got around to building a new desktop PC. I’ve been working from my MacBook Pro for the last year or two, and its perfect for getting things done and its very speedy. Unfortunately, it simply cannot handle any of my hard-core games. So, in a fit of insanity, I built a new rig.

Components I had to buy to bring the old box up to speed:

  • i7 920 2.66ghz Quad Core
  • GTX 260 896mb Video Card
  • 6gb DDR3 1600
  • X58 Motherboard
  • 550w PSU
  • Vista x64 Home Premium

So far, everything is working without a hitch. I am noticing some interesting things though. For one, I now understand the frustration that everyone has with Windows Vista. UAC is beyond annoying, and sometimes things are a pain to find due to the new start menu. However, the machine is incredibly snappy. Everything runs incredibly fast, and crash recovery is much better. I can alt+tab from a game to desktop and back without a complete reboot, and games run like melted butter. That said, getting my older games to run under 64bit Vista was… fun. Battlefield 2142 apparently requires the patches to be installed in a certain order, and Punkbuster (the anti-cheat scanner) has to be manually updated. All of my Steam games run perfectly though, and the recommended settings are right on par with what I expected. Overall, I was really impressed with how they handled that. The game knew I had a decent machine, and automatically ramped up the settings. I love it.

I’m still running on some old 17″ LCDs, but a friend of mine has volunteered to swap me his dual 19″ for them. I’ll definitely owe him, but it’ll be nice to have matching monitors again. I should be all set, except for my chair, which is the next upgrade on my plate.

Now, the i7 definitely gets my seal of approval for hardware as does the GTX 260, but if you are trying to build a machine on the cheap go for the raw clock speed. The i7 does a lot of things (at the same time) well, but Battlefield is still not as buttery as it should be. I got the EVGA brand motherboard and graphics, which at the time was due to reviews and cost but in the aftermath I think it was a great choice. Why? Because it came with free stuff. Not only did I get the Newegg bonus Call of Duty: World at War, but I also got 3d Mark Advantage, the ELEET overclocking tool and a bunch of discounts. EVGA also offered to let me return my new graphics card and upgrade it to a higher end model within 90 days. That is just amazing, to me. Also, the extra year warranty I get from registering my motherboard is a wonderful bonus.

One day I’ll get around to installing Visual Studio, for now, Counter-Strike and BF2142 will do nicely for burn-in testing.

Mike Potter, Adobe – Thanks Guys!

Published
by
Abyss
on June 9, 2008
in AIR, Flex, Tech, Web 2.0, Web Design, Web Development, onair2007atlanta and onairbustour
. 0 Comments

So, I was checking my mail today and a mysterious package arrived from Amazon. Now, it could have been anything but to my complete shock and awe, it was from Mike Potter at Adobe. Here are some blurry photos from my phone:

WrappedCardBook

I had added the cookbook to my Amazon wish list shortly after Flex 3 was released, as I wanted to dive in and learn everything I could about the newest version of Flex. I really appreciate the gift, and to all of the Adobe team, thank you. You guys have delivered a great product, and you really know how to reach out and touch the community.

Flex Web Cam Effects Demo

Published
by
Abyss
on February 20, 2008
in Flex, Funny Stuff, Tech and Web Development
. 0 Comments

Just updated the blog to WordPress 2.3.3 and figured it was time for another post. Today on InsideRIA.com they posted a rather interesting post about Flex graphical filters. Now, I’ve wanted to do this sort of thing for a very long time, but only today had the down time to give it a try. Basically, the application I’ve attached shows your regular web cam feed on the left, as well as a filtered feed on the right. I’ve only scratched the surface with what you can do with filters, combining filters, and the like but the demo serves a very useful purpose.

When my boss saw my little demo running his first comment was, “Wow, that’s fast.” and he was right. Flash was rendering the filtered stream in real-time; side-by-side with the regular output. Granted, blurring and practically inverting the colors isn’t rocket science, but the applications are limitless. Personally, I’d love to see a background subtraction library for Flex with other real-time video processing effects. My guess is that someone over at Adobe already has something to this end for working with YouTube Remixer and similarly powered applications.

Code and source after the break…

Continue reading ‘Flex Web Cam Effects Demo’

Updated: MyBlogLog Plugin v0.5.1

Published
by
Abyss
on February 20, 2008
in Site Updates, Tech and Web 2.0
. 0 Comments

The MyBlogLog WordPress plugin is receiving a very belated face lift and a few bug fixes (thanks to those who reported them). Now, as a disclaimer, this code is relatively untested and was dug out of a very old archive from my days at cloudspace (the company who initially partnered to create MyBlogLog), so use it at your own risk. If you find any bugs, just drop me an email using the contact form and I will try to help in any way I can. This release has been activated on at least 2 WordPress 2.3.3 installs, so yes, it works with 2.3.3!

Check the project page to download the latest plugin file.

Oh, and still no readme.txt. ;)

OnAir Bus Tour – Atlanta

Published
by
Abyss
on August 14, 2007
in AIR, Flex, Tech, Web Design, Web Development, onair2007atlanta and onairbustour
. 3 Comments

This post is kind of a stub, I’m sitting in the Fox Theatre ready to live-blog. ;)

The event started awhile ago, and I’ve been blogging it as it happens. As always, you can always hit the live video feed instead of reading my transcripts & witty commentary as well.

A special thanks to WeatherFlow Inc. for flying me out to the tour.

Information: http://onair.adobe.com/schedule/cities/atlanta.php

Live Feed: http://onair.adobe.com/live/

Live blogging after the jump…

Continue reading ‘OnAir Bus Tour – Atlanta’

Chumby – First 50

Published
by
Abyss
on July 9, 2007
in Tech and Web Development
. 0 Comments

The chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web: news, photos, music, celebrity gossip, weather, box scores, blogs — using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows — nonstop — what’s online that matters to you.

I just got an email from the guys over at Chumby.com and they’re about to run a 50 person beta run of sorts. I’ve applied to get on the team, and I’m looking forward to it. The work I’ve been doing recently really would look amazing on one of these, as I’ve been working on a flash version of our companies’ wind graph. Basically, it’s a real-time, on site wind graph of our weather stations. So, the Chumby is really the perfect vessel for this thing, albeit a strange one.

Chumby

WWDC 2007

Published
by
Abyss
on June 11, 2007
in Tech
. 0 Comments

Okay, the WWDC keynote is over and all I have to say is, finally.

Games on the Mac. From two of the largest, most well known development companies ever devised.

Oh, and new MacBook Pros have the 8600M Nvidia chipset…

Via Gizmodo

Subversion: Working With HotCopy

Published
by
Abyss
on May 9, 2007
in Tech and Web Development
. 2 Comments

Well, I am almost finished moving all my data onto my brand new MacBook Pro 15″ when I realized I needed to move my Subversion repositories. I’m not an expert on Subversion, nor will I ever claim to be but this might just help a few people out. When I made the backups of my repository I went with the trusty ’svnadmin hotcopy old_repos new_repos’ option and had a plug and play backup to restore when the time came. Now, I couldn’t find a single reference on how to restore from a hotcopy, and it certainly wasn’t obvious to me so… Here’s what I did:

  1. Download the OS X SVN Installer from Martin Ott’s Site
  2. Install the package.
  3. Make a .profile file in your home directory and paste the following into it: export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
  4. Issue a ’svnadmin recover repo_hotcopy’ to start the BDB again.
  5. Ta da, it’s done!

Strangely, that seemed to have fixed everything! Now, that might’ve been the most obvious thing in the entire world to a SVN guru, but it wasn’t to me. I did issue a ‘killall svnserve’ and then a ’svnserve -d -r repo_hotcopy’ before testing it, but it checked out with SVNx and everything looks good.