The collected works of squeen - Page 5

I posted a news item ( http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/weblog/archives/2003_12.html ) that explained how to integrate the rss with xscreensaver. The Nekoware versions of both these are the ones I run.

Very exciting news. Go dex, go!

Outstand! This is really first class work and a huge job. Thanks!

nekonoko wrote:

hamei wrote:

chervarium wrote: The newly introduced host and dig commands (from the BIND distribution)

Is there a standalone < dig > around here or should I look in neko_BIND ? (I searched, really.) Kinda hate to further decimate the bandwidth for a small utility - looks like everyone is testing out squeen's new script right now

No kidding ... use the mirrors people!

My bad. Sorry!
Who wants to volenteer their mirror site to be the FTP default for tardist2inst?
Should I randomize it? If so, which sites should be on that list?

Dex,

Again I just wanted to thank you for the awesome work here. I really enjoyed *finally* seeing glmatrix running on an MGRAS Octane this past weekend.

My octave usage is limited since that is not the only error I've bumped into.
I tried a few weeks ago another port to nekoware, but it was not a determined effort and I gave up for now (may errors).

Basically, last year I got sick and tired of Mathworks dropping IRIX and Octave's C++ spagetti code so started writing a MATLAB compatable replacement in C using lex and yacc. It's native IRIX with threading. shared-memory, Motif GUI, a real-time/parallel processing Simulink replacement and an OpenGL Performer multi-pipe visualization back-end that kicks STK's (Satellite Tool Kit) ass. Unfortunately, since it is work realated (a front-end to our simulator) I cannot release the code unless I can get permission to GLP it. So far it's working out really nice. It's surprising how simple the whole parser is, certainly not worth $50K/yr for maintainace (what we pay for all of our licenses).

Also, I really find it absurd that Octave is such a non-portable pain-in-the-ass since it's a command line program---but that seems to be standard fare for C++ apps (e.g. Celestia, OpenOffice, AbiWord, etc.). Oh well...

That said, I'm gonna try for neko_octave again at some point, just 'cause nekoware wouldn't be complete without it.

Where can I get big.xml, I'd like to run it on the Onyx350?

Dex,

Are you saying the problem was suppoesed to be fixed in 7.4.x but was not? Or is it some sort of unintentional linking particular to the YafRay make? Just curious. And thanks for the hard work.

BTW, I really would like to run YafRay on the Onxy, but I need to learn it's basic commands. And (as usually) I'm behind on my projects. I'm porting some C++ code over to C for another little IRIX based effort (a user space driver for a National Instruments multifunction DAQ board). What a convoluted, intentionally obscured language! It's not just unframilarity on my part, I really can't stand the C++ design philosophy---my engineering mottos are more in line with

Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote: A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

C++ seems to have the opposite goal (intellectual masturbation and "black-box" product!). My C code version is much shorter and "at-a-glance" understandable as to what is really taking place. Here one last quote

Paul Graham wrote: Historically, languages designed for other people to use have been bad: Cobol, PL/I, Pascal, Ada, C++. The good languages have been those that were designed for their own creators: C, Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp.

Sorry, didn't mean to rant. As you can guess, this has been on my mind a bit. Good gravy, I'm a dinosaur.

skywriter wrote: welcome to the club

Here's one more:

Grocho Marx wrote: I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

Here are my times - sorry about the mixed format

I love C. C++ gives me nightmares. The K&R book is not only definative it is also simple, practical and well written. It's all you will ever need in C (+ man pages!).

For Unix C programming (Unix and C are tightly coupled), I like Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by W. Richard Stevens and also The UNIX Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike.

The Windows System: Programming and Applications with Xt by Douglas Young is a great GUI programming manual.

OpenGL Programming for the X Windows System by Mark Kilgard will get you going on graphics.

SGI put Motif 2.2.2 on the Prism -- for the life of me I can figure out why.

I have to disagree. There are choices in computer manufacturers and operating systems. If folks are unwilling to exercise that choice it's not the leading companies fault---they are doing their half of the equation by trying to grab as much busine$$ as possible. I am sick to M$ products. I don't use them any more, but I still fight daily with folks at work about using non-windows operating systems to get the job done. They agrue sticking with the majority is cheaper and easier (i.e. better supported). I counter-argue that performance is critical, they say "better is the enemy of good enough", with windoze being good enough (for them). The truth is there is no perfect solution. Every viable platform/language/OS is a compromise---it's up to us to make it work anyways.

Do a man pciba.
The PCI Bus Adpater makes getting those addresses very easy.

The hwgraph entry is due to the pciba. Same method.

I compiled the nekoware bash, although I'm not a full-time bash user, it has worked alright for me. I can try to recompile with the option specified abive.

When Alias dropped IRIX like a hot potato, they lost all my sympathy. Instant karma.

I went from Word to Framemaker (IRIX v5.5) about five years ago and it was like a breath of fresh air. However, it still lacked a few features and Adobe's support was lacking. I was without a real word processing "home" until I learned LaTeX, now I'll never go back!

OO is a neccessity however, since I'm constantly sent M$ Office documents by co-workers (ack PowerPoint!). Getting a better (i.e. better importing) version on IRIX is a priority with me, although I doubt I'll every author anything in it.

Quicktime 7 on IRIX. Really!

A bit off topic but I enjoyed this from "How To Be A Hacker"

4. Help keep the infrastructure working

The hacker culture (and the engineering development of the Internet, for that matter) is run by volunteers. There's a lot of necessary but unglamorous work that needs done to keep it going — administering mailing lists, moderating newsgroups, maintaining large software archive sites, developing RFCs and other technical standards.

People who do this sort of thing well get a lot of respect, because everybody knows these jobs are huge time sinks and not as much fun as playing with code. Doing them shows dedication.

5. Serve the hacker culture itself

Finally, you can serve and propagate the culture itself (by, for example, writing an accurate primer on how to become a hacker ). This is not something you'll be positioned to do until you've been around for while and become well-known for one of the first four things.

The hacker culture doesn't have leaders, exactly, but it does have culture heroes and tribal elders and historians and spokespeople. When you've been in the trenches long enough, you may grow into one of these. Beware: hackers distrust blatant ego in their tribal elders, so visibly reaching for this kind of fame is dangerous. Rather than striving for it, you have to sort of position yourself so it drops in your lap, and then be modest and gracious about your status.

gr_osview is going to hurt performance if running simultaneously.

Also interested in the CPU load info code!:)

Like an autopsy, I think there are lessons that can be learned from poking around in the corpse. It's not really about blame at this point, just wisdom. This rise-excess-fall cycle is ubiquitous in human endeavors. For this crowd (relatively young and moving into or towards lead roles in society), it may help avert future dissaster.

When I was a pre-teen, my favorite comic book was the X-men. It was right after issue 100 that it caught my eye and was about to begin its sustained surge of popularity. The lesson that it impressed upon me it, in the simple terms for that day "The worst thing that can happen to anything is for it to become popular." Strange when you think about it, but almost always true---sucks the quality right out of it. Now almost 25 years later, I'm still trying to figure out exactly why that is. The closest I've come to an answer is that it attracts the wrong kind of people.

The other (related) eternal puzzle is catagorized in my mind as "Why did the Beatles break up?".

So I now add: "Where did SGI go wrong?"

and on a more positive note: "How did Apple turn it around?"

GeneratriX wrote: ...And anyone noticed also that:

1) When Apple uses Intel processors, we say "-wishes do come true!"
2) When Apple uses ATI graphic pipelines we say: "-Oh!!! ...That means it’s screaming fast. Up to 256MB GDDR3 graphics memory!!!"
3) When Apple uses to have on their site the yin-yan logo, with the legend: "UIniversal Binary: Software just works", we said: "-oh geez!; it is a miracle... they managed to run Mac apps inside the intel-OSX!!! Geniouses!!!"
4) When Apple uses SATA drives we say: "-bloody hell!!! ...they will provide an amazing 250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive!!! Cool!!!"

I didn't really mean to compare Apples to oranages , but since I'm talking to SGI shortly about my concerns with the Prism, I'd like to address the points Diego brought up (and get some responses).

Brombear is excatly right.

1) SGI brought in faster processor (great!) but dumped a better (i.e. more robust, more parallel/scabale friendly) OS (IRIX). So we downgraded to Linux. We're hoping now that some of the functionality can be restored (e.g. real-time). Also, very little effort made to help the developer port over IRIX apps--RapidTransit=no thanks, wrong "broken" Motif version (2.2), no SGI widgets, header conflicts in shared memory arenas/semaphores, extension functions missing from OpenGL libs. No RGB image lib. The list gets longer the more we try.
2) ATI graphics cards are faster vertex processor than InfiniteReality, but in all other areas inferior (e.g. color depth, multisample, pixel read, image processing, memory size, overlays, etc...). They do however support a few more modern OpenGL extension like Shaders. Unfortunately, as I recently discovered, the drivers are wicked broke and barely work. What's more, the interface to OpenGL (i.e. SGI's openGL libs and headers) have adopted the PC cluster fuck API (extension wrangler my ass!) Shameful for a system with *known* graphics configurations!! Again, feels like a downgrade.
3) who cares? --- Taosim rules --- whatever...
4) The research I've done on SATA drives shows thay have slower seek times, less bandwidth and are less reliable than SCSI. The only thing they have going for them is that there are cheap vs. size. But if you are paying $200,000 for a supercomputer, do you really care is SGI saved $300 when they resell you drives? Hell no! ANOTHER downgrade. Whos is architecting these systems for SGI---Linux geeks fresh out of school?

Apple is a consumer product. iLife-style and all that. For hitting their mark I applaud Apple. The products are real works of art---quality in interface design, mid-level performance at an everyman cost. but SGI is trying to sell HPC. The big $$'s means you had better put something *extra* in those machines that the average high-schooler can't get off ebay. Cutting edge technology---because for real science and engineering ALL computers are way, way, WAY too damn slow. NUMA link is good, but the real-time and RASC are only marginal, and the graphics suck.

What's been eating me lately...a growing fear if you will, is an attitude that SGI has been giving me in regard to the Prism. I'm sure it due to limited resources, but I keep bumping into the attitude of either

1) It's SuSe Linux....there's nothing we can do about it.
-or-
2) It's ATI graphics...there's nothing we can do about it.

To which I find myself being forced (and I really do mean forced) into replying: "Then I'll have to find some other vendor that will provided an integrated system that performs." My only problem is figuring out where to go next for HPC---I just don't have the time to gin something together myself. That should really be SGI's targeted niche---folks with more money than time (or computer smarts ). And the systems they deliver should seem like magic---not a jumbo-size version of last year's PC trash.

One last comment: Could you see Apple saying "It's BSD unix...there's nothing we can do about it?"

\rant

I finally found a sliver of time to do something I've been itchin' to try. I wrote a very small app that uses libXft and freetype2 to draw anti-aliased text in a X window. It is pure X and doesn't require Xt or any toolkit like Motif, GTK+ or Qt. Basically, Keith Packard has replaced the core X font calls with equivalents. Here's the little app, which I post here because there doesn't seem to be anything like it on the web. The closest is here: http://www.keithp.com/~keithp/render/Xft.tutorial

xfthello.c


and the (GNU) Makefile that will built it.



Note: you have to uncomment one line if you want to build it on the Mac. Also, it builds two versions. The old X11 style fonts (xhello) and the new Xft anti-alised fonts (xfthello). Have a peek at the results.



What am I going to do with this newly acquired knowledge?....Only time will let!

Cheers!

Wonderful new. Congradulations!
Don't let all the effort that lies ahead daunt you--it pays big dividends!

heh heh. Nekoware fork!

I was thinking of getting one of these D-Link access points in order for my Octane at home to talk with the Mac Powerbook Airport.

http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=326

Can anyone recommend a better product? I don't have a Windoze machine - so I'm hoping the claim of web-based set-up is valid.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the feedback sum][one. Much appreciated.

lewis wrote: ...mad custom code...

UNIX/IRIX = freedom! Gonna miss ya' old girl.

If you are behind a secure firewall you can use rlogin to remotely log into the other system from a shell. Once the login is completed your $DISPLAY environment variable will be set correctly so that the remote apps will pop up on you local display. OpenGL graphics apps will be noticably slower, bet regular X/GUI stuff wiill run fine. You can run the remote toolchest/whatever then if you choose from that shell window.

There is also neko_tightvnc is you want the whiole desktop remotely.

BTW, you signature quote is mispelled ( off not of ).