Now that I have finished school and can relax for a little bit, I have started playing with my family’s new toy, the mountain board, soon to be paired with the existing kite surfing kite. The mountain board is pretty fun once you get a hang of it but should be more interesting with the kite and some strong wind. I have also been playing with my new Droid Incredible which I am loving (and actually typing this post from quite quickly). I still have quite a bit more to learn but hopefully this summer I’ll get a chance to play some more.

Peace and chow,
Ranok

Posted via email from Ranok’s Ramblings

For a solution to the peg board problem, I found this site that documents the author’s process and a code listing. If you’re interested in the game as much (or more) than that the programmatic solution, there are also a number of statistics for possible solutions on the site.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

int foo(int a, int b) {
return a + b;
}

int main() {
return foo(3, 4);
}

Still has many layers underneath the obvious, the one I want to mention briefly today is the calling conventions. I was curious what happens when you call a function, and looking on wikipedia, I found an article that very nicely shows how many possible things could happen.

Normally in with gcc, when you call a function, the generated code pushes the arguments to the function onto the stack in reverse order, that is, last argument first, and then pushes the address of the next instruction to execute and jumps to the function. That function then can access the arguments and put it’s return value in EAX and jump back to the pushed instruction address. The caller must then clear the stack and use the EAX return value.

However, a way to optimize your code with gcc is the -mregparm=N command, which will put the N < 4 first arguments in registers EAX, EDX, and ECX respectively and push the rest onto the stack. This is much quicker since it requires less memory access. However, you must make sure to compile all your code this way, otherwise you’ll have some strange interactions when the conventions are mixed.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

In the new git setup, I have two branches (aside from master, which follows the SVN repository): otp and no-otp. The no-otp version is currently the stable code that runs just fine, but doesn’t take advantage of Erlang’s OTP framework. The otp branch is the more cutting edge OTP aware version, which I hope to fully migrate to soon. With full support for OTP, I should be able to use an already existing distribution platform, and more battle tested redundancy.

This evening, I fixed a long standing bug in the example HTTPd where the server would crash when opening large files due to a shortcut I took with first implementing the server. Originally, the server would read the entire file into a string and then send that to the client, as you can probably see, there is a problem when the server tries to read in a 3.9 GB file (my test file). Now, my servlet takes a much more sane approach, read in the file 1 kilobyte at time, sending that to the client before reading more. This new approach works perfectly, though I had to add some messiness for handling CGI/PHP files and different MIME types. I also added support for the HTTP HEAD command.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

Enjoy!

Ranok

Windows: This is the dominant OS, it may not follow industry standards, but regardless is the norm. It has a horrid reputation for security as it is still trying to support legacy applications. It is also buggy, and a pain to develop on, however, the .NET framework is a step in the right direction. Windows made a rise when it was able to make computing both affordable, and simple, it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for its users.

Mac: Apple started out lost, using the shotgun approach to selling computers, many different models with very slight differences. However, once Steve Jobs trimmed down the breadth of choices and OS X came out, they had finally hit the sweet spot, selling powerful, easy to use software on high quality hardware. They are in the best position to take the lead, if they can lower their price points, as they will never be able to compete with a $200 computer from Dell. I’d suggest they release some very low end netbooks and cheap desktops to gain market share in both the education sector and as a computer for the ‘basic user’, those who only checks their email and surfs the web.

Linux: An oddball to say the least, it has been mostly community developed since its inception. Very popular with servers and more computer literate users, it still has very little market share. While there may be evidence to support it being the ‘best’ operating system, best is inherently subjective, Linux is made by technically savvy users for themselves, it is just now being looked at from a average user standpoint. While I prefer Linux, I also would consider myself a pretty technically skilled user, therefore enjoy the challenges of getting my system running perfectly, and the customizations it exposes. Linux has a long way to go before it will be considered viable for the average user, as most of the development is to make it better for the current userbase, not the one that doesn’t use it.

Well, now that I’m sure I’ve angered a number of people (please comment, I do like reading responses), I will end this post having put in my two cents, but very eager to see how the next few years change the playing field.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

Peace and chow,

Ranok

• Remove the scroll-bars
• Remove the menu bar
• Remove the address bar and all the buttons

Which left just the button status bar (which is easy to remove from the view menu) and the tab bar which auto hides unless you mouse over it. To remove these unneeded UI elements, I followed the following steps:

1. To remove the scroll-bars, open %FIREFOXHOME%/chrome/classic.jar and navigate to /skin/classic/global/, then edit the file scrollbars.css, replacing:
   scrollbar {
-moz-appearance: scrollbartrack-horizontal;
-moz-binding: url("chrome://global/content/bindings/scrollbar.xml#scrollbar");
cursor: default;
background: url("chrome://global/skin/scrollbar/slider.gif") scrollbar;
}
scrollbar[orient="vertical"]
{
-moz-appearance: scrollbartrack-vertical;
}
   with:
scrollbar {
display: none;
-moz-appearance: none;
}
Then save those changes and re-jar the file.
2. To remove the bars at the top, simply right click on the blank space on the menu bar and uncheck all the options.
3. To remove the menu bar, you’ll need to install this extension which will make the menu bar hide (which you can toggle with the alt key)

Now you should have a minimalist Firefox setup for maximum viewing pleasure. Some important keyboard shortcuts are listed below:

• <CTRL>-T – Open a new tab
• <CTRL>-L – Navigate to a URL
• <CTRL>-<TAB> – Switch between tabs
• <CTRL>-W – Close a tab
• <CTRL>-<SHIFT>-T – Open a recently closed tab
• <ALT>-<HOME> – Go home
• <ALT>-<RIGHTARROW> – Go forward
• <ALT>-<LEFTARROW> – Go back
• <ESC> – Stop a page from reloading
• F5 or <CTRL>-R – Reload a page

Hope you find this useful, if you have comments or other setups you like, feel free to comment below.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

Over break, I’m hoping to add enough other features to warrant a 0.2 release, which I’d like to have support for soft-processes (ala Erlang), multi-node support and transactional shared memory (using Mnesia). I would also like to add permissions and process jailing for the soft-processes to allow for running untrusted code in a sandbox of sorts.

I’ve started a very simple (and ugly) site to put my progress and releases. You can check it out here and please comment with suggestions or other features you’d think would be a valuable addition. Good luck on everyone’s finals and projects! Have a wonderful break!

Peace and chow,

Ranok

1. Forever – Kindervater & Nadja
2. I’d Rather Be A Man – Alan Parsons Project
3. Crashing Around You – Machine Head
4. 50,000 Watts of Power – 12 Inch Thumpers
5. One Summer – Alex K & Dee
6. Regression (Act I – Scene One) – Dream Theather
7. Bass Beats and Melody – Brooklyn Bounce
8. Another Brick in The Wall (Part III) – Pink Floyd
9. Welcome Home (Sanitarium) – Apocalyptica
10. Californication – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Peace and chow,

Ranok