Category Archives: Computers

Future Tech: Digital Audio and Video

Posted by santosj on May 22, 2007 1 comments

I updated my Television and Audio Receiver recently and was happily surprised at how tiny the connectors have become. It reminds me of the advanced of Serial ATA over Parallel ATA, which shouldn’t need explanation. The former has a longer length and smaller connector than the latter. It also doesn’t need as many paths on the motherboard. Depending on the back-side Bus length you can fit more SATA connectors on a board than you can PATA. I’ve found a board with 10 SATA connectors! Try founding a consumer PATA board with 5 PATA connectors. Not going to happen.

I thought the same occurrence will eventually happen for TVs and Audio Receivers and Entertainment Systems. The old RCA connectors take a lot of space, because most of the time you need two for audio to get decent sound (sending left in one and right in the other). Same with video, to get better quality, you need three RCA wires. With Digital, you only need one for either both audio and video or one for audio and one for video. I’m certain you can fit more HDMI inputs on a TV than you can component and I’m sure you can instead have at least twice as many digital coaxial and fiber inputs for a receiver.

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Idea for an Linux Router

Posted by santosj on May 13, 2007 3 comments

Step 1: Linux Core

You don’t need much for a router and usually Linux distributions come with a lot of packages you won’t need to install. My idea and if I was more of programmer would be to strip out all of the extra components in the kernel that isn’t needed for running, mounting, or configuring hardware. Would need to keep some packages over for the next step.

I would want to allow for the kernel and everything to be kept in the memory with no page file enabled.

Step 2: Install Programming Language Package

Could be Python, PHP, Ruby, Java, C, C++, or whatever your favorite is. You’ll have to make sure you left enough of the kernel intact to install the package. I would probably use Python, and find a JIT compiler for it.

Step 3: Implement Router Specs

…And spend the next five years doing so.

Developing a router in Python, in my opinion, would be quicker to develop and debug the speculations of various router protocols than C or C++. I would much rather have the kernel and various packages in C and C++, but given the complex specs of the various protocols, I would rather implement them in another language.

How nice would it be to implement a firewall, packet filter, and intrusion detection system without using C! If implemented right, the backend could lend to three frontends: a cli for telnet, a gui for configuration using a monitor, and web based for HTTP configuration.

Development

I would like for the first version to use more of the C or C++ packages with little to no modification to the kernel. Just a prototype to see how much would have to be installed to start building the Python Router.

The hard parts would be hooking the C/C++ APIs to allow for python to completely take over the rest of the packages. My guess would that PHP would really shine in this department, but Python also allows for hooks.

In about five years or so, a few of the protocols would be implemented and many of hours would have been wasted to no avail. Then the dist would die, and no one would care. It would of been fun though.

Why?

I’m looking to create a router or firewall and again, I’m looking towards Linux. I think Gentoo would be cool. I don’t need anything too special and I believe I can still use the above to expand it to include some of the features that I’d miss in hardware routers. The Linksys RVS4000 would be good, but it doesn’t work correctly. Something about the WAN port not seeing any cable modems, because of the signal not being boosted enough. Whatever. The only good thing on it is the Level 2 Managed Switch, so I’m thinking about building a gateway and then hooking into the router using a PC NIC.

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Will Wait For Radeon HD

Posted by santosj on April 17, 2007 Comments Off

I’ve been debating for a few months now on which TV Tuner I should buy. My requirements are fairly high, so I’m having a difficult time finding one that isn’t terribly expensive. Well, I’m not worried about the price because I’ll most likely spend a large sum anyway, if it gives me what I need.

I’ve been looking at the early (rumor and speculation) details of the Radeon HD and I think it will have what I’m looking for. I like that it will allow up to two HDMI connectors, or one HDMI for the High Definition TV and the other (DVI) for the PC Monitor. That is all I’ll need because most of the other devices would be plugged into the TV.

My requirements also includes that there be a dual-tuner that only needs one input, which means I only need one coaxial cable, not two[Unconfirmed]. There is a $99 USB Tuner which has this feature, but since it is USB won’t include the HDMI output. If the Radeon HD also includes the Dual Tuner, which it may be only on the high end models, and also includes the requirement, then I will absolutely buy it.

Don’t really care about the GPU and playing games. The GPU would be useful in HD decoding for the TV and HD DVD formats it supports. One of the problems I had with the old All-in-Wonder is that it used the CPU for MPEG encoding. I think it would be useful if the GPU did the encoding instead. That may not be an option, but that is okay. Another of my requirements is that it does encoding of HD format, either Divx[confirmed] or H.264[unconfirmed], instead of MPEG 1 or 2[confirmed, newer AIW support MPEG 1, 2, and 4!]. Another TV Tuner meets this requirement, but doesn’t match my other requirements.

Hopefully, the Radeon HD has all of this, but if it has everything but the HD encoding, then I’ll be okay. There should be a free tool that I can use to convert to the format of my choice and can also be setup to do so automatically to save space.

I look forward to the pricing model and the final specifications.

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Windows Vista Business

Posted by santosj on April 12, 2007 Comments Off

Sweet! Should receive Windows Vista in two weeks.

I’m going to enjoy the fact that I can install Windows XP on one machine and then install Windows Vista Business on the other. I’m not going to keep it at business for very long however. I like the Media Center and well, the Business version doesn’t include it. I am going to use the upgrade path to get Ultimate, which does have it, whenever I get the Tuner and finally buy the rest of the 2GB to have 4GB total.

Something I hate doing is having to bring my system up to where it is now. I already have everything set up the way I like it. Reinstall software, Web Server, Subversion and I’m going to wasting considerable amount of time. I suspect I’ll lose about two or three days trying to get back where I am currently.

It should be interesting to mess with Windows Vista, when I finally receive the package. I’m interested in building a couple of Sidebar Widgets and other things. My brother-in-law doesn’t really care for all of those neat features, since he is an end user. I am extremely fascinated at what I can do with Visual Studio 2005 and the Widgets.

For example, it might be possible to say, set it up to see if anyone attacked you or alert you when someone does attack you. Then have a sort of applet that allows for you to attack back. Well, the applet might be a little bit much, but autologin for that user might be possible to get the player online and in the game quicker. It would be neat to have some sort of RSS feed, which requires authentication, that allows status updates of the player’s character. I didn’t buy a massive Wide Screen monitor for nothing and did so for the Sidebar.

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Recent Purchases

Posted by santosj on April 6, 2007 5 comments

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

Well, I just had to have this game, even if my system can’t completely run it at this point of time, it is still nice to play it at some basic level. Although, basically, I can’t play the damn game at this point, since well, the game hates me.

Yes, I said the game hates me. Keeps giving me a damn “Disc not inserted.” error, which is annoying as hell, since it is inserted, but retrying doesn’t fix the problem and nothing online fixes the problem either. Well, I did find some resources and troubleshooting for those who downloaded the Warez version (bitches). I think it is sad and pathetic that those people are getting better help than someone who bought the game. Well, to be fair, I did contact EA support and should be getting some word back in a few days. Unlike the warez people, I can at least contact the company for support and hopefully a patch to fix the problem shortly.

I’m a sucker for DVD documentary’s, so I bought the Kane Edition. Can’t wait to be able to watch that. Hopefully sometime next week.

Media Center

I bought a SATA DVD Burner, which should be fascinating once I get it, and it is pretty quick also. I hope it also fixes my C&C problem, if it is the 8x DVD speed problem, else I’m screwed. Should be fun, since it has the LightScribe feature, which should save me some effort from damaging discs with permanent markers.

I also bought a 1GB RAM stick, which will knock my total to 2GB. While not all that much at this point, I’ll hopefully be able to buy 2GB more come May. I’ve been using more and more of a page file and I hope that the extra stick will hopefully allow me to use less. The goal is 4GB and it should be interesting to completely remove the need for having a page file at all.

Next Month

Come May, I should be getting another bonus check, so I’ll hopefully be able to buy some new hard drives. I think I should recycle my old drives once I do. I’ll have little need for a bunch of 80GB and 100GB, and a couple of 200GB drives. Less now that I can get a 400GB drive for about 100 USD and 500GB drives are failing monthly. By the time I start building the File Server, I should be able to get 500GB drives for around 100 USD also.

In May, I also plan on buying an exercise bike or some other equipment. I figure that since I’m too lazy to motivate myself to go to the gym then I should bring the gym to myself. I seriously need to lose weight for health reasons. When I go to the doctor for a checkup, I really don’t want to hear, “Hey, did you know you’re a fat ass?” Yes, in fact I do realize that. That is another thing that I plan on doing sometime before I go visit family in a sort of family reunion. Should be interesting to see everyone and take pictures (and perhaps video) of everyone.

It would also be fairly nice to show up with at least 40 pounds less (around 170-180 pounds), but hopefully, I’ll be down to 160 pounds before the New Year’s. My goal is to get down to around 130 to 140 pounds and stabilize that weight for around two or three years. If I can do that and continue working out while I have downtime then I should be motivated enough to visit the gym to gain weight in muscle, which will ultimately be the goal. I figure I have at least 70 pounds of extra fat to work off, before I can work on gaining muscle mass.

Actually, I’ve been working on losing weight since last year, by trying to eat the right foods. Before it would be rare to pick up a salad or fruit, but I’m eating that more. If I can afford it, I’ll eat more salad and fruit, but it’s quite expensive at times. I am staying far away from McDs and other fast foods, except Subway, which I’m loving their new personal pizzas.

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Yeah! for Bonus Check Part 2

Posted by santosj on March 1, 2007 Comments Off

I finalized the list of items that I plan on buying the check. The list is arranged in such a way that I am going to buy the top and if I still have the money, go down the list.

  1. LCD Monitor
    • Price: $369.99
    • Size: 22 inches
  2. Gigabit Security Router

    • Price: $115
    • Model: RVS4000
    • Manufacture: Linksys
  3. IDE/SATA Adapter (x2)

    • Price: $13.99 ($13.59 (x2) + $3.47 (x2))
    • Total: $34.12
  4. CD/DVD Burner (x2)

    • Price: $46.99
    • Connector: SATA
  5. Windows XP

    • Price: $20

Total: $633.09

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Yeah! for Bonus Check

Posted by santosj on February 25, 2007 8 comments

I’ll be receiving some extra money in about a month. Well, I’m kind of at a lose at what I should do with it. It really does depend on how much I’ll actually be receiving. If it is around $200-$300, then I think I’ll buy a new 22″ LCD monitor. If it is around 1000 USD, then I think I should save at least half of the amount, buy the LCD monitor that I’ve had my eyes for while now. I also think I’ll buy two 500GB hard drives and mirror them. However, I should perhaps buy Windows Vista, but I’ll think I’ll wait on that. I need to have some money in my savings. However, I also want to buy some more RAM to have at least 4GB.

What I might end up doing however is a mix, buy a 1GB RAM stick to up my max to 2GB and buy one 500 GB hard drive. This doesn’t quite bring into any planning that I have for hard drives. I’m thinking a cheaper hard drive for Windows or the OS is better in any case one of them fails and I need to replace the drive quickly. It is easier to go out and buy a 300GB drive for 100 or should be cheaper by the time I have to buy a new one, hopefully.

One of the nice features of my new motherboard is its ability to show Windows SATA hard drives, my old motherboard needed RAID drivers to be installed before Windows would see it. This allows me to install on the SATA drives when I first install Windows freeing me from having a primary master IDE drive. It is nice, but I can do this later. I have a large amount of files that need to be moved from their current storage containers. Some of the drives are ready to fail.

So, in conclusion, in about 4 weeks, I’ll have to decide whether to buy two 500GB, two 1GB RAM sticks, two 300GB, or some combination of the above.

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Byte-Code vs Op-code

Posted by santosj on February 24, 2007 Comments Off

Bytecode on the other hand uses binary representation and usually useful for JIT virtual machines. The PHP compiler usually compiles into Assembler style Opcodes. Calling PHP opcodes bytecode is incorrect as byte-code is binary. The confusing part is within the short form of opcode, the longer form, which is just operation code can be used to describe any instruction. Bytecode uses opcode representation, but the reverse is not correct.

Opcode – PHP
Byte-code – Java

Thank you.

PS: Hopefully this wasn’t completely half-baked. I’m sure someone will tell me otherwise.

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500GB Hard Drives

Posted by santosj on January 28, 2007 Comments Off

I found it quite surprising to find 500GB drives for under $150. I do like this myself, since I’ll be planning on purchasing the hard drives for a RAID 0+1 configuration.

Usually, I only like to spend $100 dollars, because it is easier to justify the cost and it is easier to spend $200 for two than 300 US dollars. It is also easier if the hard drive fails and a quick purchase needs to be made. Failing hard drives really a bigger concern of mine, because my hard drives have been known to fail after a short time of usually eight months to a year.

I do plan on building two and having them mirrored at this point. The main point is to have mirroring so that I don’t keep losing data, so even if a drive fails, I still have the data. That to me is worth the price and at 500 GB, it should be a long time before I’ll need another 500GB.

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Phase 2 complete

Posted by santosj on January 26, 2007 Comments Off

Well, I finally received my CPU, Motherboard, and RAM, so that I can finally switch over to my new PC. It is usually a lot of time putting the components in to get it working. At least with this phase completed, I can test out the system and get Windows installed and either stop working on my current slow machine or run both until I get my second machine built.

This only leaves me with 3 GBs of RAM left, 900 GB of hard drive space left. A better and newer DVD Burner.

The second machine will probably be built during the Summer or Fall, depending on how long it takes to make the upgrades to the current machine.

Cash Back

I will be getting three checks (at least 2), one for the IRS (Damn State owes me big time), Work, and School of various amounts. With that money, I’m going to buy, a 22″ LCD monitor, a 3-in-1 printer, and probably start the new machine with the other. It really just depends on the amount of each check.

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