Well that's good. Fantastic. That gives us 20 minutes to save the world and I've got a post office. And it's shut!
Wednesday, March 27
Slow Release
The
current XKCD amounts to the world's slowest animated GIF.* It's a seaside scene that's been playing out for more than a day.
Now the sandcastle has a little bridge.
Update: There's a new XKCD up now, but the previous one is still going at the link above.
Update: Still going! That is one fancy sand castle!
* It's actually handled server-side, and with a 256-bit hash for the filename so you can't look ahead, but...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
01:34 AM
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1
How often are the images changing?
When I first saw it, it was just two people sitting. The roll-over text said "wait for it" and I assumed after a while that he was trying to be funny with that, since the title was "time".
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, March 27 2013 03:16 AM (+rSRq)
2
Seems to be changing every 30 minutes.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, March 27 2013 12:37 PM (PiXy!)
3
The thread about it on forums.xkcd.com has a couple instances of people collecting the images as they appear, and making non-world's-slowest animated gifs, or other website widgets, from them.
It has outlasted the main page's update ("Time" was the Monday comic, the Wednesday comic is up now, and "Time" is still updating), so no idea how many more half-hours it will last...
Posted by: Mikeski at Wednesday, March 27 2013 03:38 PM (DU6Ja)
4
When I saw it late Sunday night, it was just a guy sitting on a piece of ground. I should have expected that he'd do something more than that... now here it is late Thursday, and I'm only now discovering that it changes.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, March 29 2013 04:11 PM (prhS5)
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Wednesday, March 20
Nexi
I have my Nexus 4 and 10 now, which gives me the full suite of current Nexi.
Quick impressions (and in the case of the Nexus 7, slow impressions):
Nexus 4: Fine size for a phone, but too small to do anything interesting with Android. Good clear screen. Haven't tried the camera yet.
Nexus 7: Possibly the perfect size for a tablet for reading, games, and many utilities, though too small for comics, text books, or comfortable web browsing. Needs a faster CPU and a higher resolution screen, and a lot more storage. I'd like to try an 8" tablet if one can be made with the extra size but no extra weight.
Nexus 10: Superb screen. Just wonderful. And the speed improvement over the Nexus 7 is very noticeable - everything is faster and more fluid. Unfortunately, its size makes it heavy enough that it's annoying to hold one-handed for prolonged use. You either need to use both hands (which makes it awkward to navigate the touch screen), or rest it on something. Android's scaling works very well for the most part, though the vertical layout of the icon grid in the launcher is a bit off.
The Nexus 4 has a 4.7" screen; I think I want a 5.5"-6" device for my phone, and 8" for my main tablet; I'll know better after using these widgies for a few months, by which time the thing I want might actually exist.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:24 AM
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Speaking of holding a tablet in one hand, you do not happen to know of a tablet that has a narrow bezel on 3 sides and a wide area on 1 side (on the "bottom") so that a person can hold it comfortably? I have a Kindle Fire HD in 7" format and its bezel is relatively wide all around. In the same time it's not wide enough and my thumb creates false touch on the front.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thursday, March 21 2013 08:54 AM (RqRa5)
2
Sorry, don't know of one like that. Bezel placement is certainly something that needs improvement.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 21 2013 12:29 PM (PiXy!)
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Friday, March 08
Top Ten TV Shows That Should Be Turned Into Kairosoft Games
Actually, I haven't come up with 10 yet, so suggestions are welcome.
- Barney Miller
- Life on Mars / Ashes to Ashes
- Buffy
- Torchwood
- Stargate SG1
- House
- WKRP in Cincinnati (thanks Wonderduck!)
- Get Smart
- Thunderbirds
- Murphy Brown
Wonderduck's suggestion brings to mind Lou Grant and Murphy Brown as possibilities as well.
If you haven't encountered Kairosoft, they're the creators of a line of little management sims on Android and iOS that are just insanely addictive. They actually started out back in 1996 writing games for PC and DoCoMo phones - at a time when a 320x200 phone display was pretty much state of the art. They've had something of a rebirth since porting their first game,
Game Dev Story, to Android and iOS in 2010, where it became a bestseller.
Since then they've released 18 more games (plus two or three more that are on Android or iOS but still Japanese only), and have a catalog of 36 titles across all platforms.
And yes, I have every game they've released on Android; they're no more than $5, and good for at least 10-15 hours of play each. Some of them more; I did two full play-throughs of Grand Prix Story to unlock everything, which probably totalled 20 hours over a couple of weeks.
The general pattern set with Game Dev Story is that you run a small company, organisation, or group of some sort, and you have to hire and train staff and research technology to make better and better... Something.
Game Dev Story is almost entirely menu-driven; you can watch your people working in the office, but while this display reflects the actual progress of your game projects, it's not interactive.
Later games like Mega Mall Story, Dungeon Village, Epic Astro Story, and the recent Pocket Stables have an interactive map (or for Mega Mall Story, a cross-section view of your building).
Pocket Stables, Grand Prix Story, and Pocket Leage Story also have non-interactive contests - races and football (soccer) games; you train your players/drivers/horses as applicable and set a strategy, but once the contest starts you can't directly influence the outcome.
The games aren't hugely complex, but they are brilliantly crafted little artworks. The pixel art is just perfect, retro-stylish, adorable, and full of amazing details. I had dozens of screenshots to show this off, but I lost them all when my Nexus 7 bricked itself. Here's one, showing two of my horses leading the pack as they round the first corner:*
Anyway, back to the meme: It would need to be some sort of ensemble cast, albeit with a clear leader, working toward a common goal. And the less sense it would make as a management sim, the better, given Kairosoft's already quirky take on the genre.
* Why, yes, that horse is wearing sunglasses.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:49 AM
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Game Dev Story is quite entertaining - good airplane game for me. More or less plays itself, I just punch a button every so often and tell it "yes, this quarter we're making a Samurai Racing game. No, figure it out!"
The girlfriend has quite a few of them and enjoyed every one she's tried.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Friday, March 08 2013 01:54 PM (pWQz4)
2
WKRP In Cincinnati: The Videogame. Bonus points if they get Operation Turkey Drop involved.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, March 09 2013 01:16 PM (1BL+a)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, March 09 2013 10:10 PM (PiXy!)
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Phone Home?
My cheapie featurephone (a Huawei G6600D) that I've been using for years has developed a teensy problem: It turns itself off if it gets jolted, say, for example, if you pick it up to answer a call. I'm thinking it's finally time to get myself an Android phone.
I've never actually used an Android phone - or any smart phone - but I use my Nexus 7 tablet constantly, so I'm familiar with Android and mostly like it. I'm open to suggestions, particularly from anyone who's used any of the phones on my shortlist.
- Nexus 4? Goes nicely with my Nexus 7 and the Nexus 10 I ordered yesterday, 720p, 3G, only 16GB and no SD card, but on the other hand, half the price of any of the others on the list.
- Galaxy Note 2? Big screen, easy on my ageing eyes, stylus.
- Grey-market HTC Butterfly a.ka. Droid DNA? Looks like a very nice phone, 1080p, but not officially sold in Australia and probably won't do 4G on our networks.
- Sony Xperia Z? Announced here in Oz, 1080p, but not shipping here yet.
- Wait for Galaxy S4? Due to launch in about a week, expected to be 1080p, but no telling how long it will take for it to ship.
- Other?
Update: Decided to go with the Nexus 4. It's almost half the price of the other phones, while still giving me everything I want except for expandable storage. And it's currently in stock, where the Xperia Z isn't shipping yet and the S4 isn't even announced yet. Plus, I know I won't be waiting 6-12 months for an update when Android 5.0 is released.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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I've got the Droid DNA. The big thing about it that bothers me is that if it loses coverage, it never gets it back spontaneously. The only way to get back online is to reboot the phone, which I have to do 10-20 times a week.
For that reason, I cannot recommend it. In all other ways I'm very happy with it. The display is gorgeous, it sounds fine when I'm using it, it has plenty of memory (for me, anyway) and the battery life is perfectly satisfactory. I am in the habit of charging it on Sunday and Wednesday, but on that schedule it never goes below %60.
But its inability to stay in coverage combined with its total failure to reconnect is a deal breaker.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, March 08 2013 10:49 AM (+rSRq)
2
It's odd that you have to reboot. My phone sometimes loses network connectivity, and usually toggling airplane mode fixes it.
Posted by: RickC at Friday, March 08 2013 10:56 AM (WQ6Vb)
3
You shouldn't have to do anything at all; it's supposed to keep searching and reconnect automatically. (It's a Qualcomm chipset inside and I used to work on that firmware.)
I think I tried toggling airplane mode one time and it didn't work, but I'll try it again.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, March 08 2013 11:43 AM (+rSRq)
4
I've used the S2 and S3, both are very nice phones. If cash isn't an issue, I'd wait for the S4. If it's good, then great. If it isn't, it'll at least make the S3 and S2 cheaper, making them a bargain.
The screen of the Note 2 I feel is a little too big. The S3 hits my sweetspot. This of course is a matter of opinion, but if you already have a tablet the Note could be redundant.
Posted by: JuanG at Friday, March 08 2013 10:56 PM (1riL7)
5
Steven, I agree that it SHOULD automatically reconnect, but in my experience (which is basically with AT&T,) if the phone loses signal, it can't generally reconnect. (My current phone is an HTC Inspire 4G, which has a Qualcomm CPU. I don't know if the radio is by them as well. If I remember correctly, your Droid DNA is an HTC as well, FWIW; perhaps HTC's doing something wrong.)
Toggling airplane mode, for me, usually works, and it's a bit faster than a reboot, so that's what I do. I have a lot of experience with this, because the position of my desk in my office building has really poor signal. (-111 dBm/1 asu right now! I moved it two feet and it went to -97 dBm and 8 asu.)
Posted by: RickC at Saturday, March 09 2013 09:00 AM (A9FNw)
6
I've been trying that, and toggling airplane mode does indeed reconnect. But it takes a long time. I think the reason I gave up on it before was that I wasn't patient.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, March 10 2013 01:13 AM (+rSRq)
7
Hmmm. I wonder if the phone could be defective.
Posted by: RickC at Sunday, March 10 2013 06:04 AM (WQ6Vb)
8
Based on my knowledge of how the hardware works, I don't see how this could be a hardware problem. There isn't any difference at all between a search carried out when the phone is first turned on, and one carried out after losing a carrier.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, March 10 2013 01:33 PM (+rSRq)
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Wednesday, March 06
SimCity Launch A Natural Disaster
SimCity 5 - or as Electronic Arts likes to call it, "SimCity" is out. In that you can buy it; it's far less certain that
you'll be able to play it, or even that
you'll want to.
All of which was predicted by everyone, and was entirely avoidable. And happened anyway, because people are dumb.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
01:32 PM
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By the way,
good job! I haven't seen a single spam since you made your fix!
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, March 07 2013 04:45 AM (+rSRq)
2
Also, the limits mentioned in your second comment sound
HORRIBLE, and like it's not even worth looking for a warezed version, which I wasn't going to do anyway.
Posted by: RickC at Thursday, March 07 2013 09:49 AM (WQ6Vb)
3
I enjoyed the heck out of earlier games, but eh, I have no desire to try this one.
EA made a lot of money from The Sims, probably more than anyone ever made on SimCity proper. So instead of making SimCity, they made SimsCity, thinking that people really wanted the latter instead of the former. They are being... disabused (hopefully - after all, "severs are so busy that people can't play" can also be spun internally as "sales exceeding all expectations", and it's not like it's easy to get a bloody refund.)
Seriously, it doesn't pay to get games on release these days.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Thursday, March 07 2013 12:27 PM (pWQz4)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, March 07 2013 01:03 PM (+rSRq)
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Monday, March 04
Spam?
I said earlier that I thought there was a bug in the spam filter, such that it was identifying spam but then failing to block it.
I was right. Think it's fixed now. We should see a marked decrease in spam going forward - about the only thing that is likely to still get through is those lunatics who manually sign up and post comments like real human beings.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
01:07 AM
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 04 2013 01:34 AM (PiXy!)
2
Okay, real human beings can still get through, which is good.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 04 2013 01:35 AM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 04 2013 01:35 AM (PiXy!)
4
I'm a real human. I'm not so sure about Brickmuppet and Wonderduck, though.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, March 04 2013 01:37 AM (+rSRq)
5
Anyone want to buy some herbal Viagra?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, March 04 2013 01:37 AM (+rSRq)
6
Should still work for ducks, but we'll need to verify.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 04 2013 01:45 AM (PiXy!)
7
Am I supposed to be seeing an "edit" button? (which doesn't do anything?)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, March 04 2013 01:55 AM (+rSRq)
8
Yeah, ignore it for now. One day soon it will actually let you edit.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 04 2013 01:59 AM (PiXy!)
9
OK. Just a point: it shouldn't last forever. At Metafilter they implemented something like that, but only for the first five minutes after you post.
An "infinite edit" function is potentially a means of serious abuse.
(Also, will the edited comment get passed through the spam filter again?)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, March 04 2013 02:24 AM (+rSRq)
10
Yeah, I'm thinking half an hour by default, adjustable in the blog settings.
And good point on the spam filter - yes, it probably has to go through the filter every time, otherwise it's just a matter of time before some sneaky bugger works it out and abuses it.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 04 2013 02:49 AM (PiXy!)
11
Hey! Listen! I'm testin' here.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Monday, March 04 2013 03:37 AM (8xjaN)
12
And no spam at all today. It's like noticing that a headache is gone!
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, March 04 2013 12:15 PM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 04 2013 12:46 PM (PiXy!)
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Sunday, March 03
Slowly They Catch On
About 18 months ago I wrote
a piece about AMD's Fusion range, Llano and particularly Bobcat, and how in my opinion they were some of the most significant chips in the entire history of chipping.
It took them a while, but Sony have just announced the PlayStation 4 - and it's based on AMD's latest low-power Fusion architecture, the
Jaguar core. Jaguar features both minor improvements - a longer pipeline to allow higher clock speeds, a larger, shared level 2 cache, and instruction improvements for higher IPC - and major ones - four cores, up from two, and a 128-bit floating point unit to replace the 64-bit unit in Bobcat, for at least twice the integer performance and four times the floating point performance. Jaguar (in the form of the Kabini family of chips) is built at 28nm, a full node advance on the 40nm process used for the Bobcat-based Brazos chips, so it does all that while using less power than its predecessor.
Microsoft haven't officially announced their Nextbox yet, but the information that's leaked out says that they're basing their next system on the Jaguar too. Meaning that of the three big game consoles in this generation, AMD are supplying CPUs for two and graphics for all three.*
And here it gets interesting. AMD's fastest existing Fusion processors have 4 CPU cores and 384 graphics shaders. Jaguar too is designed as a module with 4 CPU cores. But the PlayStation 4 will have 8 cores - two quad-core modules - probably running at around 2GHz, and 1152 shaders - three times the current largest Fusion chip - at 800MHz. Plus it will ship with 8GB of 5.5GHz GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, avoiding the major pitfall of integrated graphics, lack of memory bandwidth. It should run faster than a Radeon 7850.
The Xbox 720 (if that's what it's to be called) has a slightly different configuration: Again 8 CPU cores, 768 shaders (so two thirds of the PS4), and 8GB of standard DDR3 memory, but with 32MB of embedded memory for the graphics frame buffer. That's similar to the Xbox 360 which has 10MB of embedded RAM and the PlayStation 2, which had 2MB.
Both approaches are entirely workable. The PS4 has faster access to general memory; the 720 will probably have faster access to the frame buffer, while keeping costs down for main memory. For a general-purpose system the 720 chip would allow 32GB (or maybe more) of cheap RAM coupled with integrated graphics at least twice as fast as anything available today.
Where it gets interesting is comparing the development process for this generation of consoles to the previous generation. Sony, with Toshiba and IBM, spent about $2 billion developing the Cell chip that powers the PlayStation 3. For the PlayStation 4, they just called up AMD and asked for an a-la-carte chip based entirely on existing designs.
And AMD has said they're open to providing the same service to other customers. While there's still huge barriers to entry for new consoles - first and foremost, getting attention from developers - 95% of the NRE (non-recoverable engineering) expenses have just evaporated, and the market is wide open for innovation.
* The previous generation was all PowerPC; now two out of three will be x86, or rather, x64.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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