ksymeon

The moment I laid my hands on HTML 5 and the canvas element , I knew exactly what I would attempt next. These Christmas days I managed to getaway to a small village in Northamptonshire with the family (now we are three...) and had some time to convert that tiny 3D engine that I had written back in March 1996 in Turbo Pascal 7. That was 14 years ago! Here's the file header :-) LOL: { Obj3d v1.0 written by K.Symeonidis } { (c)1996 by CyLog Software } { } { March.1996 } { } { This is my first attempt for a fast } { 3D Graphics engine } With Obj3D I wrote a couple of demos in TP7, then converted it (v1.50) to Delphi and with it I wrote a few more demos for windows this time. In 1997 we wrote with Ioannis Tsoukalidis the "3D Dissolve" screen saver which proved to be quite popular on the baby-internet. Dissolve managed to get a couple of updates since the...

This serves as my personal quick guide to setting up perforce on Linux. Create a new directory (e.g. /u01/p4root), download p4d from http://www.perforce.com/ and copy it to the above folder. Set execute permissions and chown it to the Linux perforce user that will be running the server process. Start the Perforce server with: p4d Create a user: p4 user Set the email and save the user. Check the users: p4 users Set the security level to strong passwords: p4 counter -f security 2 Set the user's passwd: p4 passwd Restart your server and then login: p4 login Type your password, this will ensure your server is secure. Create a client workspace p4 client Give it a name, set the "revertunchanged", "share" for line ends, "rmdir" options. Depots List the depots: p4 depots Delete the default depot: p4 depot -d depot Create some depots: p4 depot ...name... List the depots again: p4 depots Map the depots to your client by using p4 client. Type Maps Set the typema...

I am making my first baby steps into Cocoa/iPhone development for the Mac and I can now see how much ahead of its time was Delphi when it was developed. Having seen almost every other Java GUI development tool and framework I can almost reluctantly declare it: "After so many years and Delphi still has the RAD edge" Makes me feel sad really, such a good IDE, language and compiler (still the fastest there is??) and yet the product has been sold and resold and still can't generate enough revenue... If only we had Delphi's GUI and compiler, IntelliJ Idea's editor and refactoring abilities, Java's language and VM and Apple's beautiful UI in one simple product... Is it too much I am asking for?

I remember watching Michael's last race and thinking how historic that moment was. I am going be glued to my sofa for Michael Schumacher's unexpected return to F1. This is unmissable. And then... this thought crossed my mind... "Can he? Can he really be world champion this year?" I couldn't remember exactly the points situation, so I had to check. And here's the funny bit: Jenson Button has 70 points and with 7 races remaining, oh yes, it can be done. It's still a mathematical possibility. If Michael wins all 7 remaining races he gets 70 points and with 7 wins vs 6 Button wins we would be on top. Of course Button needs to score zero points and some other talented individuals be totally eclipsed by the... not-so-talented ones. It did however put a smile on my face, it's funny that there is still 1 possibility. Out of how many billion I do not know. I would certainly not bet on it, but then again I'm not a betting man ;-)

I have no respect for people who write code like this example below: if(this.hasActionMessages()){ return false; }else{ return true; }

It was only this morning that I started looking into the HTML 5 canvas tag and this evening (after the Apprentice ) I sat down to play a little bit with it. As it happens... I decided to write a little Mandelbrot set just to test the graphics, thinking that obviously such a demanding algorithm would push the browsers to the limit and prove to be a good benchmark. It's after midnight now and I'm writing this in a hurry, so here's the link for my implementation: http://www.atopon.org/mandel/ And here's the results: Google Chrome 2.0.172.28 : 1425 ms Safari 4 Public Beta (528.17) : 2399 ms Safari 3.2.3 : 4223 ms (on my MacBook Pro) Opera 9.50 Build 10063 : 5578 ms Firefox 3.0.10 : 6309 ms All of that on my desktop PC running Windows XP, relatively powerful but nothing extraordinary. More to come, I'm eagerly awaiting FF 3.5 and I should really update Opera and Chrome. For the moment Google wins! Again! Oh, and btw HTML 5 roc...

I had to try this. It's been a while my Eee PC was not very well. The 4GB SSD boot disk with Xandros was full, updates were not working, the whole experience was bad. Xandros in all its simplicity and goodness, got it really wrong, how did that partition get full so easily? (it was not my files btw). I had a USB stick with Ubuntu 9.04 in my bag for a couple of weeks now, when I downloaded it and installed it on VMWare I decided to create the live USB stick and try it on a few laptops, so today I thought "Why not?" and went for it. The installation was a dream. I chose manual partitioning, mounted '/' to the 4GB disk and '/usr' to the (slower but massive) 16GB one. After the install I've got 3GB available on the first disk and 10GB on the other. Brilliant! Ubuntu deserves all credit here. The OS works like a treat on the little 1024x600 display, the wired and wireless networking just works and so far it's been a tremendously good experience. So good...

To add swap space for Linux, you'll need to add either a swap partition or create a new (big) file and use it for swap: To add a new 1GB file I do this: root@debian> mkdir /swap dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap/swapfile_1gb bs=1024 count=1048576 mkswap /swap/swapfile_1gb swapon /swap/swapfile_1gb To enable the swap file for the next boot, edit /etc/fstab and add this: /swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0 To check that the swap file is used, type: swapon -s free That's it! bs: blocksize count: number of blocks 1 million blocks x 1K = 1G

This post is written for Debian but will work for other Debian based linux distros like Ubuntu. Debian is my personal favourite as it is stable, clean, fast and easy-to-use/configure. There is a wealth of information about Debian on the net, and the debian.org web-site is quite comprehensive and helpful. So you have installed a Debian 5 (Lenny) distro on a virtual machine in VMWare and cygwin on your windows desktop. This is a quick guide (doubles as a reference/reminder for myself) on how to install stuff and get you going. As stated above I assume this is where you are: You've downloaded an ISO image from your favourite distro web-site ( Ubuntu / Debian ). You have installed the distro on a VMWare instance and you gave it a name (e.g. 'debian5') You have a 'root' account and your own named account (e.g. 'username'), advisable to use the same username you use for Windows (helps when accessing your computer from cygwin) You have cygwin installed on your P...

Thanks to my friend psarog , for pointing this out... Here's the latest in social game-working: http://ksymeon.mybrute.com Beat me up, Scottie...

Finally, I succumbed to the pressure and bought it. After months of procrastination and countless visits to the Apple shop, I managed to make the decision and splash out for a 17" MacBookPro with a non-glossy (antiglare) display. My first impressions are very positive. The Mac is an amazingly beautiful piece of hardware and the OS is just a joy to work with. the antiglare display Having seen both displays in the shop I am absolutely certain I  made the right choice. I've also used it in bright sunshine and put simply it's the best screen I've ever used outdoors without a problem. the keyboard The backlit keyboard it's just beautiful. Although my friend vpapanik  has opted for a completely blank keyboard, I must say that when the lights go off the glow from below is quite pretty and useful. the performance This machine (I bought the 2.66GHz not the 2.93 one) is actually fast! Running my CPU-demanding  Maze  to produce a really large maze, was 15% faster on a virtual...

One of my biggest projects to date is live and I'm starting to get back on my feet. I should start updating my website a bit. First things first, I have to do a mail server migration this weekend. :-[

Was just looking for a quick way of formatting an external hard drive to use with my PS3. PS3 recognises only FAT32 drives, but if you are using Windows XP and try to format a drive larger than 32GB in FAT32 you will find it almost impossible. The only options you get are "NTFS"and that's about it. There is however an alternative formatter (C source code available) that can be found here . Works a treat! Just open a command-shell and type: fat32format <drive letter>: ... and you are done!