Older blog entries for lloydwood (starting at number 72)

Another Christmas, another SaVi development update.

13 Dec 2008 (updated 13 Dec 2008 at 14:13 UTC) »

Warcraft III

Playing Warcraft III beats Battle Chess, Rebel Star or Laser Squad; I'd love to be able to play Warcraft III on a large touch-screen interface showing most of the map area. Warcraft III on the iPod Touch would be a reason to buy an iPod. I don't know of a remotely equivalent open-source or free game.

Playing Warcraft III on the MacBook is an exercise in frustration, though, as it stretches wide to fill the screen, leading to a very odd view of things. Some workarounds to set Warcraft's screen handling and aspect ratio are discussed; none quite work for me.

(Odd to be using ResFool over a decade after I started using ResEdit heavily.)

Our first tests of the bundle protocol in space gained attention from Time Magazine. And Time included us on their list of the best inventions of 2008 as a result.

Next week: IETF in Minneapolis, where we'll discuss that same bundle protocol. Minneapolis is the home of the long-lost Geometry Center, which created the Geomview and SaVi applications that I've worked on. What's worth seeing in Minneapolis - or should I just stay in and contemplate SaVi 1.4.1?

We've tested the bundle protocol from the delay-tolerant networking research group in space:
UK-DMC satellite first to transfer sensor data from space using 'bundle' protocol, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd press release, 11 September 2008.

There's a paper with a lot more detail, and presentation slides that will be given at the end of the month:
Use of the Delay-Tolerant Networking Bundle Protocol from Space, Lloyd Wood, Will Ivancic, Wesley M. Eddy, Dave Stewart, James Northam, Chris Jackson and Alex da Silva Curiel, 59th International Astronautical Congress, Glasgow, September 2008.

...and we made Slashdot.

++ungood; on video: Danny O'Brien's talk on Living on the Edge, Open Tech 2008.

Still photos of the talk and t-shirt, too.

I've been attending IETF 72 near Dublin, and noticed that the IETF Journal being handed out included a photo of me.

I've also noticed that, in describing Apple as one of the world's leading makers of multimedia telephone equipment in 1994, I was eerily prescient.

25 Jun 2008 (updated 26 Jun 2008 at 07:28 UTC) »

Cheap American knockoffs

I've just discovered that my ++ungood; T-shirt design has been copied badly by someone called Stallion00 on Zazzle.

And there's another bad knockoff by powerfulgood over at Printfection. And another by ddblplusungood on Cafepress itself, where my own ++ungood; store lives. Odd how... similar... all these knockoffs look.

Stallion00, powerfulgood and ddblplusungood missed the point of the semi-colon. So, not programmers, then. But definitely proles.

I've just released SaVi 1.4.0. It's been eighteen months since the last release, and in that time I've added better texturemapping, better graphics, and a whole bunch of fixes. It seems that I'll have to make a release at least every couple of years to keep up with changes in compilers and Tcl/Tk just to prevent breakage; source requires resources to maintain.

As always, there's a lot more to do, but right now I'm done.

In other news, I received IP/MARS T-shirts from Vint Cerf; Cathryn now has the other one. I'd like to think that ++ungood; is still cooler.

OLPC XO or MacBook Air?

Today, after MacWorld Expo, Africa has expressed a preference.

Personally, I'm underwhelmed by the thought of the Air - the trackpad and backlit keyboard may be nice touches that may appear on other MacBooks in time, but just one USB port and a mono speaker? The OLPC has three ports and stereo speakers - but it's thicker.

3 Dec 2007 (updated 4 Dec 2007 at 13:28 UTC) »

Mac OS X woes

I gave in and bought a new Macbook, reasoning that if I waited for Apple to really get its act together, I'd wait forever.

So far, I've discovered that the SaVi package that I maintain won't work at all on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, though SaVi works just fine on 10.4 Tiger - which my new Macbook can't run. So, I can't use my own software on my own laptop - at least until Tk gets revised to work with 10.5's menubar. I hope my other programming efforts will be more successful on the Mac, though installing some variant of Linux via Boot Camp is looking increasingly attractive. Which distro will be least problematic and just work?

I bought the black Macbook, reasoning that it would wear better and discolour less over time than white - and that it would also look good with a ++ungood; laptop sticker over that glowing white Apple. (Forced branding and advertising when there's something worth looking at on your screen? Great!) If only I could find where I put my stash of ++ungood; stickers...

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