Entries in "Tech Stuff"
Politics as Usual
It's been a while since my last update, but that's okay because I'm quite happy about this one. Sometimes I talk about technology here, sometimes about politics: Today I'm talking about both.
There are several webpages out there that will give you an extrapolated guess about the national debt. Or you can read about it in the paper sometimes. It's a pretty big number. Personally, I think it's difficult for people to conceptualize a number that big; it's not something that fits into their established mental models. It occured to me to write a little web script that would express the national debt in terms of things with which people may be slightly more familiar. It's running on my EECS-department webspace now, so you can go fiddle with it here.
(That webpage is secretly part of my "George W. Bush is NOT a conservative and neither are any of the other Republican leaders" campaign -- deficit spending, hello, see the big red number with the dash in front of it? But we can pretend that it's just something for everyone's enlightenment and/or entertainment.)
If you spend some time playing with the thing, do me a favor and let me know what other objects you'd like to see used as measurements of the federal debt.
Plotting widgets for Linux apps
This summer, I've been working for the biorobotics lab at Case Western. Technically, I'm under the supervision and mostly the pay of the biology side, but my work relates more to the robotics side. German researchers recently developed software that uses a state machine of sorts to model the neural system that controls one insect leg. Our biologists would like to use this model to test some of their theories about how that neural system works, so we're building a robotic leg which will be controlled by a computer using software adapted from the German system.
My job is to provide a nice graphical interface with which biologists can alter thresholds in the model. The sticking point, in recent weeks, has been their desire for real-time plotting of data coming back off the leg.
Since the control computer will be running Real-Time Linux to communicate with the robot on a timely basis, I started off using GTK+ to build the interface. GTK+ has several advantages: A big one is that it's easy to understand and program (unlike, say, the Win32 API). The Glade UI-building tool, and its associated library for automatic interpretation of the XML it generates, add up to a big plus too.
However, if you want a graph-plotting widget and you don't want to write it yourself from scratch, you have to go looking for add-on libraries. GtkExtra seems to be the popular choice for such needs, but its behavior has been extremely flaky on my computer from Day 1. (Much as I love open-source software, I find that this kind of twitchiness is one of its real lurking dangers.) I've managed to get one application -- not the one I'm working on -- to compile with GtkExtra, but it refuses to run, citing linked-library problems.
GtkExtra has proved so unbelievably intractable that I've been slowly converting over to the KDE libraries and KDevelop as an alternate means of building the application. KDE, I find, isn't nearly as simple to work with once you're into the nuts and bolts of it, but on the other hand, C++ is a much friendlier language for me than C: Since I learned C++ first, I spend most of my time in C crashing around cursing the lack of classes and wishing I had the STL.
Like GTK, KDE libraries don't include a plotting widget, but there's another poorly-documented add-on for those of us crazy enough to need to tackle something like that: Kde-edu includes a plotting widget. Whether I'll be able to get THIS one to play nicely remains to be seen.
New Computer Case
A couple entries back I mentioned that I purchased a new computer case to deal with some overheating problems. I thought I'd say a couple words about the new addition.
I went into the search for a new case with three basic requirements: It had to cool very well, it had to have plenty of room, and it had to look decent. I realize that the lattermost point is pretty stupid, and that the purpose of the thing is to work, not to look pretty, but I figure if I'm spending that much money the least they can do is give me something that's not totally repulsive. (This is more of a problem than you might be inclined to think, actually. Geeks have terrible taste or something. I can't find any of the truly terrible examples I came across during my search right now, but they're out there.)
Some features I was looking for but which weren't absolutely essential were a removable motherboard tray, a sideways-mounted hard drive cage, and a temperature monitor. Unfortunately, there is no case manufacturer in the world that manages to put all of these things together in one case. I'm not entirely sure why, but there it is. A compromise was necessary.
Eventually, after much agonizing, I settled on Thermaltake's "Tsunami" case. It has none of my extra features, but it does have the two 12-cm fans. I was pleased to find a local computer shop that carried the model. I've come to prefer local brick-and-mortar shops for electronics; it's harder for them to ignore you if you have a problem.
When I arrived at the store, the guy who was working the showroom told me that all their black Tsunamis were out at a show. He suggested a different case, or offered me the silver model (which I didn't particularly want); when I mentioned that I was really interested in the 12-cm fans, he dragged out a similar model by Thermaltake, the S-Viking, which he was selling for about $20 less than the Tsunami. After some wavering, I asked him for his recommendation and was somewhat surprised when he indicated the cheaper model -- his justification being that it was cheaper and the shop built computers with it and didn't have problems.
The S-Viking, in fact, comes with two of my wish-list items: A temperature monitor (and two speed knobs for the case fans), and the sideways hard-drive cage. So I bought it.
Continue reading "New Computer Case"
Computers and heat
For a few months now I've been having overheating problems with my computer. Random restarting in the middle of your work can be very annoying, let me tell you. However, at least the cause was relatively clear: Way back when, I purchased an el cheapo microATX system with no fans, and slowly upgraded, so lately there's been a bigger, heat-generating graphics card; two hard drives sitting right on top of each other; two optical drives sitting on top of one another; and a power supply, less than an inch from the optical drives, appearing to take up half the case.
I had an awesome high-tech setup for dealing with this: Side came off the case, desktop fan sat next to the computer and blew in.
A couple days ago I bought a new mid-tower case, armed with two honkin' 120-mm fans, and moved everything over into it. The result of this grand planning was that the computer continued with its random restarts, particularly under load. In bafflement, I took a closer look at everything and discovered that my CPU heatsink was caked in dust under its fan, probably as a result of three years in the dorms compounded with several months of open-case operation.
However, blasting the heatsink (and everything else in sight) completely free of the insidious dust bunnies doesn't seem to have totally done the trick, either. I suffered another restart shortly after. It seems a touch more stable now, probably a half-hour later, but I'm less than confident here. Wedging the case's temperature probe under the CPU as best I can (I can't seem to get the heatsink off) gets me a report of a running temp around 46 degrees Celsius, which is well under the common 60-degree worry mark and a mile away from the manufacturer's 85-degree maximum operating temperature.
I'm about out of ideas here. Despite my upgrades, this is at heart a three-year-old system, nothing outrageously powerful. Nothing in the computer is overclocked. I can't think of a single reason for this system to be so twitchy.
Battle of the Download Charts
From The Guardian, via Slashdot: Beethoven more popular than McCartney, Bono.
I mean, I'll admit it's not really a fair competition, since it's the freakin' complete Beethoven symphonies for free (and I really really REALLY wish I'd known about that when it was running), but still... Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.
I gotta say I disagree with the LSO Live guy: I don't think legal music downloads are the industry revolution they're made out to be. I don't download important recordings, though I like iTunes. The quality of CDs is still superior to compressed computer files -- quite noticeably, sometimes -- and I like the permanence of the optical storage. I'm quite happy to go through the hassle of ripping a CD for a digital copy. And while iTunes's classical section is much better-stocked than the FYE in the Tower City Mall, it's nowhere near as big as Amazon's.
Smash the Demon Hordes
In a previous entry, I talked about fundamentalist-Christian-themed video games. When Mano Singham suggested the development of a game based on end-times hysteria, I pooh-poohed the idea (which Blackadder should have taught me never to do), citing insurmountable content difficulties. My New Balances were probably lodged firmly in my molars at that point, but I didn't discover it until just now.
It turns out that a group of canny investors saw the opportunity to cash in on the Left Behind phenomenon with a series of video games based on the popular books. They've been quietly working away since 2001, at the height of the Left Behind Inspirational Story and Mass-Marketed Licensed Spinoffs Money Machine's popularity, and claim to anticipate the release of their first game, "Eternal Forces," this year. The website contains a remarkable lack of information for a game that's due out in the next five months, though, and Gamespot places the release in first-quarter 06.
At any rate, it appears I was wrong: You CAN build a computer game based on modern endtimes-based pseudo-theology.
Edit: Slacktivist has some commentary on this one.
HCM UI
Today was another of my biweekly battles with the HCM online time-entry system. I've been marveling over one particular warning message since the system debuted, and today I decided to take a snapshot and point it out as something I feel is somewhat representative of the system's design:
Click to see in windowed context
That's a very easy warning to generate within the system, incidentally. Just make a change somewhere and then try to navigate away from the page without pressing the "save" button first. The system pops a little message at you saying that you haven't saved and offering you two choices.
Check out the semantics of the buttons there. Cancel, in this context, means "Yes, follow through with the navigation I indicated." OK, conversely, means "No, cancel my previous action and leave me here." This is logically nonsensical and inconsistent with the standard uses of the OK and Cancel buttons. OK should always mean "Do what the user said originally," and Cancel should always mean "Cancel the user's action."
(Incidentally -- "go back"? Click the dialog to see the full-screen picture. Go back WHERE? We haven't left the time-entry page yet.)
JavaScript's limited dialog boxes don't provide for a standard Save/Don't Save/Cancel dialog, but one could at least stick with the standard definitions of OK and Cancel -- "You have unsaved changes on this page. These changes will be lost if you continue. Do you wish to continue?"
ProxCards = Satan
Wired tends to be a little out on the fringe of tech news for me, but they have some interesting stories too. Aaron Shaffer blogs a Wired story about a pundit who thinks that RFID tags are (take your pick):
- A major privacy problem insofar as the government could use your groceries to track your location -- presumably by having a CIA operative follow you around with a scanner at a distance of no more than 20 feet, until his/her cover was blown by Karl Rove.
- The Mark of the Beast, identifying sinners, from the Biblical book of Revelation.
I think it's time for Case to come clean about the prox ID cards we were all forced to adopt a couple years ago. Clearly, getting me to carry the thing around in my wallet is a clever way to allow the government to track my movements and habits. Their obvious next step will be to brand the Fat Surfer Dude Logo into students' foreheads.
Searching in Firefox
Google has released a Googlebar for Firefox.
I suppose this might be a good introduction to the proposal I submitted to Google's Summer of Code. One of MozDev's requested projects was a "LiveSearch" extension for Firefox -- a doodad that would allow users to receive results from their search engine of choice as they type. (Many people seem to mistake Google Suggest for a livesearch. It's actually an autocomplete, since it's suggesting terms you might mean to search for, rather than returning results, but the interface is similar to what's usually used for livesearch on websites.)
My proposal wasn't accepted (drat!), but when writing it up I'd constructed a simplistic proof-of-concept extension that the reviewers could take a look at if they chose. I can't say I'm as enamored of XUL as Google engineers seem to be, but since I went ahead and put the effort into the mockup, I figure I'll keep hacking away at it, SoC sponsorship or not.
Right at the moment I'm alternately questioning the UI approach I took with the mockup (which seems to work fairly well for people who've tried the extension but annoys me with its lack of conformity to standards), trying to figure out why Firefox does such goofy things with the styling when I add more information to the result buttons, and wishing I'd retrieved some baking powder from Nicole this morning so I could be making a blueberry buckle right now.
Phew
Just got Trac up and running under Linux. I've been impressed with my (admittedly limited) experience with Subversion, and I have a couple projects underway where I'd like to have the integrated bugtracker (more on those later, possibly). With the bugtracker and other documentation, I can make some effort at keeping my software organized even if my desk isn't. I'm quite eager to see what I can do with this thing.
I'll grant it's probably kinda silly to set this up for one-person work, but... Efficiency! Organization! A wiki! How can I resist?
Top 10 IT Services at Case
This is making the rounds of Blog@Case, so I thought I'd make my own list... Why do I have the uncomfortable feeling I'm going to be echoing other people?
Continue reading "Top 10 IT Services at Case"
On Installing Linux
So a couple days ago my RedHat system refused to start X. None of my amateurish fiddlings with libraries and configuration files could fix the problem, and I kind of need a Linux development platform at the moment, so I tried reinstalling the system. That was a bright idea apart from the important bit where my computer overheats badly (it needs a new case with some room for those things most of us call "fans" but which eMachines, in its cost-cutting wisdom, refers to as "unnecessary") and CD-drive activity exacerbates the problem: The computer restarted itself in a fit of summertime pique partway through the installation, leaving the Linux half of my system with some definite configuration problems.
Oh well, I was looking to make a few upgrades anyway, and RedHat just appears not to be the system for upgrading and expanding as you go. I'd had Debian GNU/Linux recommended to me, and I found that they had a Net-based installation that could be booted from floppy. No CDs involved! So far things seem to have worked out very nicely -- I only had a few bumps in the reasonably user-friendly installation (though, being Linux, it's still a geeks-only kind of thing), and I'm getting along just fine with the system now that it's running.
However, I did run into a couple of problems that I thought deserved documentation on the off chance that anyone out there has the same kind of problems, in which case that person has only to go to Google and never locate this blog because it's result #1,753,492 for "debian install problems"... Okay, so it's documentation in case I ever have to do this again. Therefore, when I state things sarcastically, I'm addressing my future self who will have forgotten all these things -- and I know I will because I ran across at least one of these when I installed RedHat two years ago. The abuse is not aimed at some innocent who stumbled across this post by complete accident.
