deskthority

we're on structure #3 in the search of the perfect box fort. switched wall-boxes, using smaller ones with shorter ceilings. longer server boxes get used for hallways to keep things wide enough for our still-slender IT shoulders. i can't wait to have something i can take pictures of and post. i think i should be able to get about 10-15 sq meters of floor space with this setup including some tricky hallways.

this box fort is my true calling

new blog post: poking holes

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... bly-found/

pretty crazy! i'd love to see the eruption sites in person.

they're like earth zits!!!

new blog post: banjos and dissonance

new blog post: perspectives

this is a series of photographs of my monitor that i took while trying to watch anchorman. as you can see i came up with a much more compelling way of interacting with the movie than just watching it.

WHERE ARE YOUR BOX-CASTLE-PICTURES?! DID YOU POST THEM YET?

ok dang here are some i want to try to make a walkthrough video tomorrow if i can find a flashlight

the entrance and most of the amax/supermicro 1u 'shallow' server box section w just-under-2m ceilings (not shown, bigger/rougher/tougher server box section, roughly 3m tall ceilings)

shut the front door

one of the many chambers. note the qualities!

DO NOT POINT CAMERA AT TELEVISION.
INCREASED RISK OF MOOG.

I did that back in 1990 - but my effects were much better. I got some feedback effects that looked like the vortex in Doctor Who (early 70's). Pity my old camera power supply is long dead, so no way to upload it.

Well, the original Doctor Who titles from 1963 were done by a camera/monitor feedback loop.

I did some of this too, last century, with objects attached to the screen and movable lighting. You could get some intense distortion of still recognisable items. Well, Star Wars toys…

The tape was uploaded (via ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder if I recall) to computer back in the day. I'll ask my old friend about it, he's a packrat and has other stuff of the era. In fact I think there's a glimpse of it in his old graphics reel:
Ah crap, I was wrong. Still, a well dated reel!

new blog post: whatsits

anybody here use/used/tried crux? might throw it on my laptop. i was thinking about going with freebsd or netbsd but linux does have slightly better laptop support.

Looks nice! From what wikipedia says it is similar to BSD, so why not giving it a try?

7bit wrote: Looks nice! From what wikipedia says it is similar to BSD, so why not giving it a try?

yes that was sort of the idea arch was originally based on crux but they've definitely gone different places.
i sorta wish the crux-arm port was still active. could be a fun base for a raspberry machine.

you guys! i finally figured out how to adjust the lumbar support on my workstation chair. holy cow now i can save my back muscles for doing cool things like smoking cigarettes and driving in a fast car instead of holding me up while i'm sitting at my desk!!!

new blog post: yo, semite!

no this blog post is not about israel or judaism! i just installed the yosemite preview. helvetica EVERYWHERE

i love my mac but you know... once this air kicks the bucket i'm just going to run OS X in a VM for a couple of tasks and switch to linux full time. hell, i'm thinking about doing that NOW on my macbook air just for fun.

Yosemite looks that bad without Retina, eh? I've been running it since DP1. Been my primary OS for quite a while now. Gorgeous beast at 1800p.

Apple's happy so long as you're buying their hardware, of course. Although quite how Windows etc. handles a Retina MacBook Pro, I can't be arsed to check.

looks that bad without ?

Muirium wrote: Yosemite looks that bad without Retina, eh? I've been running it since DP1. Been my primary OS for quite a while now. Gorgeous beast at 1800p.

Apple's happy so long as you're buying their hardware, of course. Although quite how Windows etc. handles a Retina MacBook Pro, I can't be arsed to check.

no... to be honest, OS X just doesn't really do much for me anymore. it doesn't look BAD; I just don't like Helvetica as an 'everywhere' font. That and I was finally pretty much used to the 10.6 > 10.7 UI changes. I'm sorta ready to just switch to linux so I can deal with the same environment at home and at work. i basically continue using it for familiarity and because it works really well with my iPhone, in addition to a few non-nix applications that have been dealbreakers for a long time. However, my Air is an i7 with a good amount of RAM so virtualizing OS X when I need it is totally an option.

i wanted the air and i gambled (and won) on the chance that they wouldn't update the air to retina a few months after buying mine. something about requiring more power for graphics, lowering the battery life and adding too much heat for the design.

I think the Airs are still low res because of price reasons, for the most part. Apple's been making a killing with them the last few years, with Mac growth in double digits within a shrinking PC market. Much of that comes from the Air, which is the entry level lineup for 75% of Mac sales (laptops).

My Pro is the one without separate GPU (by choice) and it's the coolest laptop I've ever used, physically speaking. (A graphite iBook G3 I borrowed for a while was the coolest, metaphorically speaking!) The graphics overhead for 4x as many pixels seems no issue for its Intel Iris Pro. My brother has the top of the line model and it runs way hotter when he's using Virtualbox etc. unless he constantly fiddles to disable his nVidia GPU. I'm glad we're leaving those power sinks behind now, like hard drives and optical discs before them.

I think OS X will be passing its peak. We (well, not me personally) have got through the corrugated plastic years, got through the why-is-the-Finder-metal years, and got through the skewermorphic years, and just as Apple was nearly done honing their interface, they've undone all that hard work and made it look completely pants. It's like you've climbed almost all the way to the peak, slipped, and fallen all the way back down the mountain, and now you're dazed and hallucinating and can't see in 3D any more.

I suppose we should be thankful that it doesn't literally look like Crayon Physics Deluxe. I don't get the trend of making everything look washed out, empty, indistinct and flat. Apple proved that you could have an interface with light and shade that looked elegant instead of retarded (cf Windows XP). Microsoft tried with Vista with their absurd attempts at simulating glass with its incongruent mixture of cartoon reflections, complex blurs, and weird "edge of a pane of glass" pseudo-refractions.

Now Apple are also catering to some sort of imaginary ADHD desire to see the all windows behind instead of the actual window you're trying to use. It's not actually useful as you can't see anything, just a mess that maybe comforts some people that the other windows do still exist, and that they're not unloved, unwanted and abandoned by those programs.

Microsoft on the other hand think that it's really funny to delete the borders from text boxes so that you can't actually see where they are. I did that on my website's About page as as joke, but I did provide mouse-over background colour as a small hint. I didn't seriously expect anyone to create a UI with invisible controls. What's this, LOL_OS? OH HAI, I R UR NEW OS! I mean, Windows puts up a sad face when it crashes now …

Linux users meanwhile largely still have no idea how to antialias fonts, so they're sat in Spindly Font Land.

I agree with everything, except:

Daniel Beardsmore wrote:Linux users meanwhile largely still have no idea how to antialias fonts, so they're sat in Spindly Font Land.

Please what?

It's that "blurry" thing all the closedtards do to their beautiful 9 point pixel fonts. Don't be afraid! You're okay without it…

@Daniel: I'm quite pleased in general by the continuing work that Apple, MS and others (Canonical?) are putting into desktop OS design. They still think there's a future there, worth the effort. I wouldn't bet there is, not for the majority of users, apps, or hours in use. But I'll be there, and you and most everyone with an interest in keyboards!

Muirium wrote: It's that "blurry" thing all the closedtards do to their beautiful 9 point pixel fonts. Don't be afraid! You're okay without it…

Linux font rendering is pretty damn good if you ask me.

derp

BlueBär wrote:

Muirium wrote: It's that "blurry" thing all the closedtards do to their beautiful 9 point pixel fonts. Don't be afraid! You're okay without it…

Linux font rendering is pretty damn good if you ask me.

Linux has the best font rendering in the world available in a production system, so long as your distro actually uses it, or you want to mess about making it work. Maybe recently all the distros have finally started shipping with the good system (Freetype?) instead of the stupid spindly look that, while anti-aliased, just looks horrible, like Mac OS 9's ugly text.

(OS X's algorithm always comes across as gritty.)

BlueBär wrote:

Muirium wrote: It's that "blurry" thing all the closedtards do to their beautiful 9 point pixel fonts. Don't be afraid! You're okay without it…

Linux font rendering is pretty damn good if you ask me.

As with most things Linux, it is subject to endless tweaking and whatnot. But only if you turn it on!

BlueBär wrote:

Muirium wrote: It's that "blurry" thing all the closedtards do to their beautiful 9 point pixel fonts. Don't be afraid! You're okay without it…

Linux font rendering is pretty damn good if you ask me.

Agreed!

Anti-aliasing is just an artifact of low-res displays which will go away if you wait long enough. Then, finally, Linux will take over the desktop!

Indeed!

Cameras like the FujiX100S and Nikon D810 got rid of that already, so why not higher resolution monitors?

When mainstream useres went completely away from desktop machines, Linux will rule the world desktop!

SL89 wrote: As with most things Linux, it is subject to endless tweaking and whatnot. But only if you turn it on!

I tried a few Linux distros, and most of them seem to come with good settings out of the box now. My Arch installation is struggling with some fonts (the headers on Wikipedia are terrible) but everything else looks perfect, and I don't think I changed anything in that regard.