Recent blog entries for steveh

TheCorruptor: I can't remember the number of times Win9x/NT/2K installers have done retarded things to my system, from overwriting boot sectors to completely wiping a whole non-DOS partition without warning. Now I always use a seperate drive for MS operating systems and disconnect my linux drive when running the MS installer. So far is hasn't figured out how to destroy another partition that isn't physically connected to the system... not yet!

nutella: What happens to all your frozen food when you have a 2 hour blackout? In N. Ireland when there is severe weather some areas would loose power for a number of hours. Those people got refunded for all the food they had to throw out because it thawed. I hope you get reimbursed for lost serloin steaks!

So I got my new system and it's up and running, very nice it is too! I finally got to check the modified view transform code into cvs, so I'm officially back into 3dwm development :)

Just talked to Matt Westervelt (don't know if he's on Advogato) on IRC. I'd never spoken to him before, he just dropped by #3dwm because Torsten from Xybernaut was speaking to him about the SteattleWireless (www.seattlewireless.net) project. This is a very cool 'peer-to-peer' network of wireless nodes privately operated by individuals involved in the project. I recommend reading their site for more info. Anyway, it seems Xybernaut likes the idea of having wearable computers running 3dwm connected via this network, which sounds like a pretty damn good idea to me too! Just don't blame us when someone gets hit by a bus :)

Wow! The GeForce 3 is impressive. I can't wait to get my hands on one to start playing around with vertex and pixel shaders. Although somewhat of an overkill for the current incarnation of 3dwm, a bit of eye candy wouldn't do any harm.

Well, it isn't the power supply, something more serious has died. It's not all bad though, I've ordered a 1Ghz Athlon CPU and the new Asus A7V133 motherboard. Kernel compiles will never be the same again!

Bah! My machine died yesterday, and just as I got 3dwm's viewing transform working in cooperation with the model transform. I was enjoying zooming around a spinning model when it hard locked (which it had been doing about once a day for 3 days), except this time it wouldn't boot.

I'm hoping the problem is the power supply. On power-on the fans run and the HDs spin, but nothing happens, no video, no beeping. I hope the power supply is damanged and can't supply the correct regulated voltage to the motherboard, so it fails POST.

I was a cheapskate when I moved here, I brought my PC in bits as hand luggage and bought the cheapest case I could find (hey I just got here and hadn't been paid!). So the thing always ran a bit hot with the Voodoo5, SCSI controller, NIC, DVD ROM, CD-Burner and 2 HDs sucking power. With it being a 3 day weekend and listening to CDs constantly I think I finally pushed it over the edge. So at lunchtime today I bought a bigger case with fans on the front and back and a better power supply. Let's hope that's the problem and not a dead motherboard. I also hope my linux HD it still intact.

Rant about the weather

Damn it's cold here. I'm sure there are other places in the US that get colder, but 1) I'm not used to it and 2) the stupid banks here won't lend me money for a car so I have to cycle to work in the snow. Apparently, because I have an H-1B visa they think I'm going to take the money and run back to Ireland. I also haven't managed to get a credit card yet.

Boulder is usually a lovely place to cycle round, they have cycle paths away from the traffic that follow the creeks that run through the town. But when the paths are covered in snow and ice and you are worried about sliding off into the creek, it's not so enjoyable.

Still, lots of fresh air and exercise can't be bad.

Work

Getting back into 3dwm development quite nicely.

My girlfriend was unable to find work in the US (legally) so she had to go back to Ireland. I miss her, especially today with it being Valentines day.

It does mean though that I have a lot of free time which I'm using to hack on 3dwm.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of the book The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the New Economy. I've only got about a 1/4 through it but already I want to work on 3dwm (and DRI and the linux kernel) full time. It raises some very intersting questions about our lives today. We are shaped by the work we do for someone else to elevate our social standing. It wasn't always like this, will the day come again when we are free to do what we are passionate about, in the timeframe we are comfortable with and be rewarded for our efforts? This is a very interesting book, I highly recommend it.

Work on 3dwm is still slow at the moment, but I am determined to find more time to work on it.

FINALLY! I have dsl! 28.8 dialup was getting really tiresome. The hookup took longer than it should have due to either Qwest's incompetence or the fact it was the Christmas holidays. Still, I have it now and I'm impressed, the Cisco 675 modem/router is pretty cool.

So, as this is my first diary entry I'll write a bit about what I've been doing recently. Up until Aug 2000 I was working for 3dfx in Dallas, then I moved back to my home town of Belfast, N. Ireland before leaving the company in Oct. Trajically since then 3dfx had to close it's doors and sell what it could to nVidia. The engineers who worked there are extremely talented people and fortunatley a lot of them have found work either at nVidia or elsewhere. Some are still looking though, so drop me a line if you are recruiting and I'll put you in touch with them. Although I have respect for nVidia and they deserve every success I'm sorry to see 3dfx go.

In Nov I moved to Boulder, CO. Getting settled in has occupied all my spare time meaning I haven't been able to do any 3dwm development since I left Belfast, however this is about to change. Now I have decent internet access I'll be setting up my development machine and get back to hacking. nickelm and I have agreed to move the texture loading/decoding from the server to the client to make the interface cleaner. Now the server will only accept textures in one (TBD) format, and it is the client's responsibility to handle the various image formats with the help of libNobel++. This sounds like a good place to pick up development again after such a long break.

On an unrelated note I was interested to learn from gman that Sun's GNOME development team is in Ireland... cool :)