NP-hard problems are hard.
Dev journal, day 7
Posted by Trixter on May 7, 2014
And before anyone asks: This is not a bug, but an intentionally-designed profiling display.
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Dev journal, Day 1
Posted by Trixter on May 1, 2014
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The strangest kind of problem
Posted by Trixter on April 18, 2014
For @party coming up in June of this year, I thought it would be fun to revisit 8088 Corruption with a spiritual sequel. I designed two new ways to improve the tech and visual quality. I came up with a new disk I/O strategy to deal with the new tech. I built a new model of handling color for it. I’ve previewed the results for both monochrome and color test material, and I liked what I saw.
One problem: I haven’t written a single line of code yet. It’s all in my head.
At night, as I fall asleep, I “pull it out” and run it through with different test material and “watch” the results.
And with the puzzle solved, I’m “done”, and I no longer have the desire to actually write the code.
Posted in Demoscene | Tagged: spiritual sequel | Leave a Comment »
Happy 30th Birthday, Peanut
Posted by Trixter on March 23, 2014
While the announcement for the IBM PCjr was made in November 1983, it didn’t actually show up on store shelves until March of 1984. So, I consider this week the official-unofficial 30th birthday of the IBM PCjr.
The Register agrees, and posted a very nice stripdown of the system, with sarcastic and humorous comments. The comments section for that article also has some nice observations for those who would like a trip down memory lane.
Later this year I will record the full version of my PCjr talk that I was never able to fully give last year (floods, shortened timeslots, etc.) and I’ll break it up into parts and put it on youtube. I’ll announce when that series is up.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: IBM, PCjr, vintage computing | Leave a Comment »
Mixed Feelings
Posted by Trixter on March 22, 2014
If the airlines gods shine on me next week, I will be at NVScene 2014 in San Jose Tuesday through Thursday. Co-located within the GPU Technology Conference, the entire event is looking to be the most concentrated collection of Very Intelligent People in regards to realtime computer graphics hardware and techniques.
I have mixed feelings about attending events like these, because I am so completely out of my league among these people. I understand no more than 10% of everything they present or create. I am looking forward to visiting and staying with friends, but my knowledge and accomplishments are dwarfed in orders of magnitude by every single other attendee. It’s very intimidating.
That’s all. No pithy observations or self-help advice in this post, sorry. My level of anxiety is high enough that, if I weren’t seeing some old friends there, I definitely wouldn’t be going. I have no business being there.
Posted in Demoscene | Tagged: GPU Technology Conference, realtime computer graphics hardware | 2 Comments »
Oldskooler Ramblings 