What Happened To Down Time?
So PSN is down for maintenance today between, get this, 8am and 10pm. For those with a time telling deficiency thats slightly more than half a day through the middle of the day time and in to the evening.
Now I’ve been doing IT work for approx 14 years and never have I heard any one make the statement that it’s “ok” to take a network down during business hours or during peak times. NEVER. In this case I wager during the middle of the day probably isn’t peak but I’d guess 5pm-11pm when every one is off work and home from school is probably peak. I guess I give them credit for doing it closer to the middle of the week but wouldn’t 3am-5pm have been a better time?
Yet lately both in this instance, and where I work, it seems to be increasingly more acceptable to take something down when ever you darn well feel like it. Did I miss something? Are we becoming so reliant on our network 24×7 that it no longer matters when it becomes unavailable because it has to happen some time eventually any way? Or is it that we’re increasingly bowing to what management wants? The symptom is obvious but what do you think the cause is?
Tutorial How-to – Shadowgun On Non-Tegra Devices
Friends! I bring to you Shadowgun! Probably one of the most bad ass Android games to date. It’s Tegra only so if you have a tegra device you are good to go. Nab the game, install, download, done. If you don’t have a tegra device you aren’t left out in the cold. Here’s how you get this epicness working.
- Grab Chainfire3D https://market.android.com/details?id=eu.chainfire.cf3d The free version should work just fine.
- Grab the Chainfire plugins which include the tegra plugin. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4P9LEW7P
- Finally grab the Shadowgun 1.0.2 APK file. I do not condone piracy. You do this at your own risk. Buy the game it’s that good! http://brockh.at/tiOUcP (google search)
- Install chain fire.
- Install Shadowgun.
- Unrar the plugins(should have 3 zip files).
- Copy the zip files to your SD card.
- Open Chainfire install the chainfire driver(requires phone reboot).
- Open Chainfire again. Choose Install plugins/shaders.
- Install the Nvidia plugin.
- Go to “Per-app OpenGL settings”
- Tap Shadowgun
- Uncheck “Use default settings”
- Check “Reduce texture size” and “Disable MapBuffer emu”.
You can now run the game. If you want it even more buttery smooth and don’t mind giving up a little visual quality you can also check “reduce texture quality”. It’s also worth noting this little tweak could be applied to any tegra game you want to run and can also be used to increase performance for demanding non-tegra games especially if you are on an older device.
Happy hunting!
PSP a GO GO. Or, how to GOify your standard PSP.
Whats a PSP love’n gamer to do these days? The Vita looks fantastic but is still several months out. The PSP GO is just kind of awkward but the standard PSP isn’t quite cloud ready. The cost of Memory Stick is kind of cost prohibitive and carting those UMDs around is a pain. If you are a Playstation Plus member you also have access to a pretty decent collection of free Mini’s that run on your PSP and quite a few discounted price full PSP games in digital form. So how do you throw out the UMDs and bolster your storage capacity with out breaking the bank? (more…)
Apple Store Is The New Walmart
Just some photographic evidence. Apple Store 3.0 is going to let me buy Ipad 3 and pick up toilet paper at the same time.
ARM Is The Future
I said it before here that ARM is in the process of mounting a coup of sorts. While poking around looking for something completely unrelated I ran across this little nugget of information about Dell being interested in ARM.
“We have been all over this. About a year and a half ago, we put a LAMP [Linux, Apache, MySQL and Python] stack on an ARM A8 core in one test,” said Paul Prince, chief technology officer for Dell’s enterprise products group…
They are looking at multi core ARM with a current Linux base. You can be sure that Microsoft, who had working prototypes of Windows running on ARM won’t be resting on their laurels when it comes to putting the software in these server environments. I’ll be keeping an eye out as this grows. You should too it’s probably in your future for more than just your phone.
The Coming ARMs Race
The numbers are staggering. Most folks probably can’t imagine how prevalent the ARM processor is when all the marketing and attention is on the Intel’s and AMD’s of the world. Let me show you some information from the Wikipedia article.
In 2005, about 98% of the more than one billion mobile phones sold each year used at least one ARM processor.[3] As of 2009, ARM processors account for approximately 90% of all embedded 32-bit RISC processors[4]. ARM processors are used extensively in consumer electronics, including PDAs, mobile phones, digital media and music players, hand-held game consoles, calculators and computer peripherals such as hard drives and routers.
While the first number, 98% of one billion plus phones were ARM it becomes even more staggering to think about that second number. 90% of ALL embedded 32-bit RISC processors. Thats cell phones, TVs, mp3 players, calculators, car components, watches, cash registers, networking equipment and the list goes on. We’re surrounded by ARM and most of us don’t even know it.
PC manufacturers have been plugging away hard at bigger, better, faster for a few decades now. Parallel to that progression have been the software developers in particular Microsoft who keep adding features and thus bulk. While this was happening some interesting cultural things took place as well. The growth of smart phones has made mobile computing easier and more powerful thanks in part to ARM. In addition a focus on “green” computing, power saving, and doing more with less. The result was a shift towards ARM’s signature traits of reasonably powerful computing with a low power usage. Software built for ARM takes this in to account and runs fast on minimal hardware.
Of course the old guard of Microsoft, Apple and the Linux community sat up and took notice and are now taking steps to get with the program. Microsoft’s first attempt at rectifying the situation was to streamline Windows on non-ARM processors and the successful result was Windows 7. While that was a good first step Microsoft realized staying on x86 with Intel and AMD alone would not be prudent. The end result is Windows 8 supporting ARM. You can read about it straight from the horses mouth here or you can watch a demonstration here.
While Apple has, not surprisingly, been more progressive than Microsoft in turning to ARM they’ve still kept their traditional desktop computer systems running Intel x86 based chips and software until recently when a leak came to light that Apple plans to go ARM even on the desktop. You can get a little more insight from this ZDNet article.
The biggest question seems to be can these chips muster the performance similar to chips like Intel’s and AMD’s. I think what gets missed by those who ask this question is the fact that development on ARM has this focus of speed, performance and power saving. Finding ways to make the software that runs on ARM more efficient. A sort of desire to not succumb to the bloat that the systems surrounding the x86 architecture had succumbed to. We can see this in many of the games currently available on cell phones like Dungeon Defenders which achieves a PC or console like 3D gaming experience on chips that don’t include a specific graphics processor. So the question concerning performance is less one of “can the chips do it?” but are people going to be ok with “good enough”? The answer seems to be yes, thus far, especially in light of the convenience provided by the mobility and power advantages of the lower power chips.
It will be interesting to see which company brings the ARM desktop/laptop to market first and most successful. To borrow a meme. I for one welcome our new ARM over lords.
Google Android Needs a Style Guide
I’ve suggested this for discussion on a few Android related blogs and yet to see this get any talk time. Android needs a style guide. In kind of a bad way. While it’s seeing a lot of up take and it’s gaining ground on market share it’s headed for a bad spot if Google doesn’t take some steps to clean some things up. I’m not saying everything needs to look and act the same every where but having a mostly common UI for things I think would help the uptake of the platform immensely. For example if they simply released some suggested guidelines for how far away from the edge of the screen is good/best for button elements to be or standardize common locations for common buttons e.g. File, Edit, View in the Windows world.
I’m not saying Google has to crack down on it or anything but may be put a system in place similar to the way they maintain the OS and offer a ‘Google’ stamp if programs meet the minimum style standards or something. That way I always know how to find the settings for a program and I get to feel at home even with a new media player. Comfort and familiarity play in to usability as much as originality and style.
RANT: Windows Phone 7
May be because I didn’t go to the Microsoft launch event for Windows Phone 7 and wasn’t threatened by a large man ready to break my knee caps if I don’t stick to Microsoft’s ridiculous naming convention but why does the media keep calling it that!? It’s sooo ridiculous and we all know that if the crowd demands it companies give it up. So lets us, as in all of us, quit calling it that! Lets either call it Windows Phone, because series 8 doesn’t exist so we’re not going to get it confused. Or, call it what we’ve been calling it till Microsoft mandated this stupid name and call it Windows Phone 7. From this point on I refuse to type that entire kermudgeon of a name and you should too!
