travisowens

I once told a child something couldn't be done

I once told a child that something couldn't be done and she asked me, "If I can see it, if I can have it in front of me, then why not?". I thought about it for a minute and I realized that actually she was right.

Your chair is killing you(r back)

Despite lumbar support and ergonomic positiong; office chairs aren't very good for your body, you're very prone to slouching and hunching over. For a couple days I tried standing up while working, which works out fairly well, except my legs couldn't handle it for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time. And in order to sit down, I had to take apart my setup of keyboard, mouse, and monitors off of the boxes I had them on. So today I tried something different, I purchase an exercise ball at Target for $15 and have been sitting on it at work. After a mere 1hr I can tell it's substanially more comfortable than sitting in a chair. About 3 hours into sitting on the ball I can tell it's giving my abs a good workout (I'm prone to fidget a lot, which is giving me more of a workout). At first I can tell I can't do a full 8hrs on the ball and I'll have to use my chair as backup, but I'm estatic about using the ball at work and I'm glad my coworkers are open minded enough about the idea.

The most important thing to know about the ball you buy is the size, as your height makes it VERY important you buy a specific size ball. Generally there are three different sizes to choose from (55cm, 65cm, 75cm) and if you look at the chart and are in between two sizes, always buy the larger one as you can always under-inflate the ball if it's too big, because a smaller ball that's over inflated simply isn't comfortable.

The reasons I switched are: better for my back, improves circulation in the legs (very important as I'm prone to getting blood clots in my legs), burning calories while sitting, and toning up my abs.

[1] http://www.gearfire.net/10-reasons-to-use-an-exercise-ball-as-your-chair/
[2] http://walking.about.com/cs/fitnesswalking/a/ballchair.htm

PS: the ball I purchased at Target was 25" (63cm) and after figuring out exactly the right amount of inflating (took 3 tries) it fits me perfectly, and I'm 5'-6" (167cm). For those willing to try it, I'd say it's worth the risk of buying the better $30 balls because if you're open minded enough to try it out, you'll be sold within the first 5 mins. I'll keep this blog updated on my progress of finding the best way to work but I'm pretty sure in a couple days I'll be returning this ball and buying a higher end model.

Day 2:
My first full day of using the exercise ball and by lunch time my lower back needed a break and I went back to my chair until about 3pm, and I felt good enough to do the ball for the rest of the day.

Day 3:
Sitting on the ball you don't really realize it requires a fine amount of exercise, especially since I fidget so much on it. After about 30 mins I had to sit in my chair for the entire day to make up for the past 2 days. I haven't given up at all, my body just needs a break. Obviously I need to slowly work my way up to using the ball for extended periods of time. Hopefully I can do a full 8hrs everyday as soon as the 6th day (second week).

Day 4:
Still had to take rest, only used the ball for about an hour.

Day 5:
I'm back on the ball (pun!) but I can feel this is working out my lower back a lot. I have a busy weekend so I was weary of staying on it all day because I couldn't afford a sore back but it wasn't too bad and I stuck with it. You truly don't realize how much of a work out this is until you've put 8hrs on it. I did about 5hrs today.

PS3 faster than a Core 2 Duo?

Folding@Home released a 2 day benchmark of processing power.

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats

Keep in mind we have no idea what the “average” PC is, but it’s surely not a Dual Core machine. I’m sure there are a ton of junkers sitting in a closet with a network connection. Despite, there were over 150k PCs and 31k PS3, and the PS3s out computed the PCs. Now I'd love to see a true comparison of a single PS3 computing 1 block vs a Core 2 Duo computing 1 block.

1TB Hard Drives are here

Well it had to happen eventually… Hitachi is shipping their 1TB HDs to Dell, whom are selling them for a $500 upgrade fee (default HD is 250GB which is worth about $90) with a new PC. It has a 32Meg buffer (that’s bigger than my first PC’s HD). Hitachi isn’t selling the drive separately yet, but it will probably be $600 when they do.

url: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=8737

PS: it took a long time to go from 1,000 MB to 1,000 GB when the Fireball 1GB came out, and at $1 per meg, it seemed like a steal too. I won’t be holding my breath for the first 1PT (petabyte) drive. But since I’ve started to use FLAC instead of MP3, is it doesn’t degrade my music, songs now take up about 25MB each, so a 1TB drive is tempting for my next PC I’m going to build this year.

A $175 Core 2 Duo VS a $1k AMD CPU

My favorite compression utility (7-Zip) recently released a multitheaded benchmark in the current beta version, so I took everybody's results and put them into a table for your viewing pleasure. Keep in mind this isn't an absolute comparison of CPUs, but it's some serious number crunching in a multithreaded enviroment and the results are usefull.

I took all the CPUs listed above and sorted them in a list from fastest (using all hardware threads) to slowest. Too bad we didn't have any Intel Core 2 Extremes for comparison...

PS: higher is better

               Threads             1    2
Core 2 Duo 2.8ghz           - Avg: 2018 3966
AMD Opteron 2.6ghz          - Avg: 1958 3849
AMD Athlon64 4400+          - Avg: 1712 3303
Core Duo T2300E             - Avg: 938 1797
AMD Athlon64 3000+ (2ghz)   - Avg: 1473
AMD Sempron 3100+ (2ghz)    - Avg: 1548
AMD Athlon64 3500+ (2.2ghz) - Avg: 1540
Pentium 4 3.40Ghz           - Avg: 1327 1319
Pentium 4 3.0ghz            - Avg: 1232 1240
Pentium 4 2.6ghz            - Avg: 860 1261
AMD Barton XP3200+ (2.2ghz) - Avg: 1030
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2ghz) - Avg: 771
Pentium 3 1.4ghz            - Avg: 643
AMD K6-2 500mhz             - Avg: 187

The original forum I got these from is at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1714232&forum_id=45797

Using your job's VLK is about to get messy

MS has deployed a new version of WGA (Windows Genuine Activation). I've been reading ( http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=93555&st=0 ) this new version is more aggressive as it collects VLK (Volume License Keys) and IP addresses. MS is obviously trying to crack down on leaked VLKs that are legit so they can contact the VLK owner and get them a new VLK and invalidate leaked VLKs. The question is, how far are they going to go with this. Somehow I hardly doubt they'll crack down on setups where they are just a handfull (a dozen or less) VLKs that aren't local to the original vendor. It's simply too much hassle to have a shop re-key all their PCs (although a network based app to do this could be very easy to deploy).

Despite, be warned MS is serious about non legit setups, and borrowing your job's VLK for home use is included.

What will kill programming

PS: this is going to be the worst post I've ever written becuase I didn't have the time to make a decent article out of it, sorry. I'd like to promise I'll rewrite this, but my track record of rewrites is 0. But I might get re-interested in this subject and blog about it again in the future.

I'm a bit late on this one guys, in fact I'm late by about 12yrs as the originator of this subject released a paper back in 1995. What am I referring to, why it's "Intentional Programming", and it's not some big fancy theory, its a budding reality and the guy pushing it has over a million dollars to fund it , is a coder himself, and admits it's arrival will be measured in decades. I don't see these as bad things, I see them as realistic goals.

Now the originator of IP was working at Microsoft as their Chief Architect for 20yrs before leaving in 2002, probably becuase Microsoft choose .Net over a IP mindset, although the massive popularity of .Net has shown it was a good business decesion, but ultimately IP will creep it's way into .Net. I'd even say that functional programming is a tiny step in that direction with .Net 3.0's support for LINQ and Lambda expressions.

I'd also say DSL (domain specific languages) tools are also an offshoot of IP.

Vista is actually pretty light on ram usage according to math

Honestly, Vista's requirements aren't very high at all when you do the math. The biggest "bloat" Windows ever faced was Windows 2000, where "usable" ram requirements went from 32mb to 192mb in order to run a usable box, that's 6x more in less than 2yrs!!! Where as a usable Vista setup is 768, which is only 3x that of XP's 256mb ram and the jump took 5yrs!!!

Minimum requirements are garbage... XP CANNOT run efficiently at 128mb of ram. Heck a default boot is around 110mb or so, you need to heavily customize XP to get the bootup smaller, which is something that 99% of users don't know how to do.

For an end user you need 256mb in order just to run your everyday apps at the same time; IE, Office, anti virus and a music player. When you get into a family setup with multiple logins running (aka user switching) you're needs skyrocket to 768mb or more. And if you are a developer (SQL server, Visual Studio) you better be rocking 2gb or more.

Finally, I also believe we won't see the larger benefits of the Vista improvements until Windows 2009 (yes it's slated for a 2yr release date) where there will be a reworked UI and more improvements. Heck we might even see some benefits in Vista R2 that's suppose to come out in about a year. So obviously I'm not on the "Vista is the best thing ever" train, but I do realize it lays a lot of groundwork for vast improvements. Even one of Vista Aero's project managers said (I lost the url) that Vista's UI is like invention of fire. In itself it's kind of cool but it will take awhile before the truly amazing stuff to come out, the example he list was the combustion engine.

Finally we need software in order to push hardware. I'm a firm believer that RAM isn't any cheaper today that it was in 2001 because software requirements have halted since XP came out (ok Office XP and then 2007 did want more ram). You need demand in order to push production. We're on the wave of a bunch of great technology innovations; Intel's Core 2 Duo gives massive amounts of speed with a small watt/heat footprint. NVIDIA is coming out with $70, $100, $130 DirectX10 based cards and even Intel has an onboard chipset that can do DX10 too. Finally memory companies are ramping up to 80nm and 65nm based memory, which will bring prices down, especially in the area of 2GB ram chips, which are still very overpriced. Finally 64bit computing puts us past the 4GB ram limits we've been having and Vista supports this very well and Intel & AMD have been pushing for awhile.

Yes, right now as we stand Vista may seem a bit needy, but in only 3-6 months from now we'll see some huge improvements in memory and video, especially when you look at prices.

PS: Stop whining, Vista is not an OS to stick on your current Win2000/XP box, it's a new OS for new boxes. Just like how Win2000/XP cannot run on the same box as your98/ME setup, the requirements have simply changed. Upgrade and grow up, or keep using XP. Nothing is new here, MS has always been on a 2 step OS plan. A first OS comes out (95, 2000, Vista) and it usually requires a new box to run efficiently because of massive improvements. Then a 2nd stage OS comes (98, XP, Win2009) out fairly quickly that will work on your same hardware.

Google Toolbar 3.0 for FireFox

In case you were running the 3.x beta of the toolbar, I should point out Google released a final version of 3.x about a week or two ago, but you'll need to manually install it as it seems Firefox's build in update check won't find the final version if you have the beta installed. The FireFox specific url is: http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/ and you might need to uninstall the 3.x beta first, I did just to be safe.

Vista, eh, I can wait

I'm not downing Vista, but let's face it, when you want to run a new OS you want to be able to use it properly. My 6yr old machine isn't really up to par, which happens to be an AMD XP1700+ /w 768mb of ram & 200 IDE drive.

Oh what's that, the required ram is 512mb? Yea well don't forget the required ram for XP is 128mb but you won't see anybody with half a brain running a machine that way.

I'm looking to rebuild a new machine late this year, I'm either going to purchase the new 45nm Core 2 Duos I mentioned in a previous post, or I'll ride the price reduction on the 65nm Core 2 Duos. I'll also shoot for 2 gigs of ram plus a new SATA hard drive. In my opinion, if you don't have at least 1gb of ram, forget about Vista, and dual core is a very strong recommendation from me as well, you don't want some side service or UI event firing off and causing what you're working on to hickup.

Vista and XP don't waste as much ram as you think

A concept I've been preaching for years is that XP does not use more ram than Win 2000. Yes, if you view task manager you'll see that XP is using more ram than Win 2000, but that's because of pre-caching technologies. The truth is, if you take say a 128mb RAM computer and install 2000 and XP on it, XP will be faster. And if you tweak XP to disable services you don't need then it will be even faster. Honestly, after you tweak, XP will use less ram than 2000 if you take optionally cached ram out of the mix.

Well it's happening all over again in Vista but on a larger scale. I just read a good article that explains Vista's SuperFetch technology and if you're interested in understanding that Vista large ram footprint isn't bloat, it's system speed up.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/31/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed/

Near the end of the article they publish benchmarks, and show that apps that take 10secs to launch take only 2-3secs after SuperFetch learns how to pre-cache your apps. Saving 7 secs on app launch is a huge speedup in my book. Plus this article only continues to prove you want at least 1gb RAM for Vista, actually they recommend 2gb to get full speed benefits.

WTF happened to Google Blog Search?

I don't use it very often, but I find Google Blog Search to be a groat resource as it allows me to search for bleeding edge subjects. For example I saw that Target ad where they used a cover song of the Beatle's "Hello Goodbye" and being that the commercial was 3 days or less old, you're unlikely to find this in a standard Google search, and it's obviously not something Google News would cover (which is the only other instant search engine results you can get).

So a week ago I went to Google Blog Search and noticed my top 10 results were all misc google results, not blog results, I tried a few other searches and the same thing. Today I tried yet another search and it's still happening, it seems like Google Blog Search is flooded with non blogs. Google, wtf did you go?!

http://blogsearch.google.com

Knowing how effective vitamins & herbal items are

I've been studying nutrition and prevenitive medicine for years, but outside of reading the study itself, it's hard to find out how effective something is. Somehow I've never seen the lookup info in the Mayo Clinic's website. Keep in mind the A-F scale doesn't imply it's effectiveness, but the amount or reliability of the studies that have proven a certain problem. Things that are unknown but not disproven are rated C, which you'll find is about 80% of ailments. I'd assume C is pretty good, because there is evidence that proves it can be effective for many people and it hasn't been disproven. If you come across B, it's pretty darn effective and if you see an A, well consider it a miracle cure (well almost).

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/coenzyme-q10/NS_patient-coenzymeq10

Intel's Core 3 Duo

Ok I'm exaggerating, there is no Core 3 Duo, but the new line of Core 2 Duos are so much better, they should have been called Core 3.

Here's the summary:
- 20% more speed at the same mhz
- 30% less watts usage
- 1/5th the watt waste

If you haven't made the jump to a dual core, the time is coming soon. Intel's test runs of these new chips are working, and expect to see them, hopefully by August 2007.

Full Article: http://www.dvhardware.net/article.php?sid=16695

Never Trust a Default - Part II

In the past I made a short explanation on why you shouldn't trust a default, call me paranoid, but you know what they when you assume.

Anyways, I made an unplanned trip to New York City as I won tickets to a private (as in press & company only) concert. After about 1hr of driving I notice my engine temp was excessively high, and kept bobbing back and forth from high to near critical. When I pulled over at a rest stop to grab a bite to eat I checked my coolant and notice it was bone dry (thank goodness for cold NY weather).

What does this have to do with defaults? Well only the night before I had got my oil changed which includes a "fluids check" where they should have added coolant, but they didn't, ahh corner cutting. Now while I could get mad at them, and in a way I was, the real point was I shouldn't assume anything and keep my own eye on these things.