bbot's blog

Lo', it was Said that I have had A Humorous Computer Experence and that it should be Wrote Up. And it was Done. Various things delayed the posting of this, so I back-dated it.

I am an Idiot
or
Why you should always always always make regular backups.

So I'm at my localCompUSA, and I buy a three position fan speed controller, because the fan on my heatsink is rather loud.

I get home and connect the controller, setting it to its lowest setting. The computer gets through POST and crashes while starting windows. I swear, crank it back up to its highest setting again and boot into the bios to slow down the processor. I wind the cpu down to 600mhz from 1100mhz, and attempt to boot into windows. Everything goes okay, I login, start all the programs, and the computer reboots itself in the middle of everything.

The computer post's, windows starts, and chkdsk does its thing, without finding any problems. I login, start all the programs, again and Opera and Gnucleus crash. Opera crashing is not too unusal in the earlier releases, but even then it crashed only when I visited sites that used non-standard tags. What is really strange is gnuclious crashing. It never does that. I go and schedule chkdsk for the next reboot. After finishing that, a system window hangs and I kill its task. Explorer dies, the taskbar vanishes, and explorer respawns. I notice that the tooltips that pop up over icons no longer match the icons themselves.

In the grand windows way, I hope a reboot makes everything work again. After POST, chkdsk starts, takes forever (almost a hour) and finds no problem. Computer reboots, POST's and attempts to boot into windows. Windows hangs, then reboots.

Computer POST's, emergency chkdsk starts, takes forever, and finds two errors. Computer reboots, starts into windows, and crashes, reboots.

After starting again, the system menu pops up, asking me if I want safe mode, last good configuration, or normal windows. I try normal windows. Windows crashes, reboots.

I try safe mode. Windows starts, scrolls through a huge list of errors, and crashes, reboots.

At this point I remember I have made no backups for the month, nor have I made an Emergency Repair Disk. The only backup I have made recently is a disc of mp3's for a road trip. The last system backup was almost three months ago. I reflect on the wisdom of making regular backups.

Ah ha!, I think. A repair install would be the perfect solution! I hunt up the windows install disk(hunt, literally. Took me five days, 7,232 rounds of ammounition, and three good men to capture it. And you wouldn't belive the fight it put up going into the drive! Anyhoo...) and attempt a repair install. Windows Setup loads all of the drivers and pulls a blue STOP screen. I reboot. Windows setup does the same thing. I reboot a third time. Windows setup hangs before even starting the drivers.

I hunt up a Knoppix disc and pop it in. It boots and runs perfectly, yet slowly. I call it a night. It is not a hardware problem, this I now know. At this time is sounds like some files that windows needs to run were corrupted when the computer crashed while booting. At some point during this the dvd drive I had ordered over googlegear arrived.

The next morning I wake, and install the dvd drive in the computer. It is now the master on ide channel 1, with the sony cd-rw as slave. The computer boots, and I place the knoppix cd in the dvd drive.

Nothing happens. The monitor shows "No signal." I reboot the computer. No signal. I power cycle the monitor several times. No signal. I disconnect the dvd drive's power cable and reboot. The monitor gets No Signal a few times, and then starts working again. I swear. I power cycle the monitor again. No Signal.

I reconnect the dvd drive again. No signal.

The next day I turn on the monitor before starting up the computer. The monitor gets a signal. There is much joy. I boot into knoppix and attempt to root through my ntfs drive containing all my files. Quite surprisingly, knoppix can read ntfs. I attempt to play one of the mp3's I have. It plays. I attempt to play a video file. It plays. I reflect of the neccesity of making windows work again. I reflect on the fact that it takes knoppix 45 seconds to open xmms. I log out of knoppix and move the cd from the dvd drive to the cd-rw, because I want to try and play a dvd, and I can't do that when the operating system is running off the dvd drive.

Knoppix boots. I open videoLAN and set the dvd drive to /mnt/cdrom1 from /dev/dvd. I attempt to play the disc that is in the drive. Nothing happens. I swich to xine. It starts reading the disc and crashes. I try again. Same thing. The Matrix crashes it. I try The Transporter. Xine gets through all the "do not copy under penality of law. No, seriously" and crashes. I give up on dvd playback, and see about fixing my computer. I attempt to delete /windows/system32. Linux helpfully informs me that /dev/hda1 is mounted as a read-only filesystem.

I boot into the command line knoppix. Now I can't even find the hard drive to delete the folder. Linux informs me that /dev/hda1 does not exist and that /mnt/hda1 has nothing in it. I call it a night.

Several Days Later: I begin hardware troubleshooting. I swap out the GeForce2 MX with an old TNT2. No change. I swap out the processor, and it manages to get into windows setup. There is much rejoicing.

A little backstory here: A little over a year ago, I went through my usual heatsink cleaning routine, only this time the computer wouldn't boot. Some informal hardware testing revealed that the processor was dead. Much sadness. So I went out and bought a new processor for the machine. I swapped the old Pentium 3 866mhz Coppermine(133mhzFSB version) For the new Pentium 3 Celeron2 (100mhzFSB). It Just Worked, and I was happy.

Swapping in the old coppermine revealed that the processor still worked, although it wouldn't even try to boot at its old, stock, non overclocked speed of 866mhz. Given that the heatsink I now use is vastly beefier and better cooled than the stock heatsink, it is obvious that the clock chip must be fried. Or something.

After two days of blissful problem-free computing, windows informs me that the file C:\$MFT is corrupt. Everything is working perfectly, and yet this file is corrupt. I check C:\ in Explorer and I can't see it. A search can't find it. I can see all the other system files, but not this one. Whatever.

At that point, I didn't actually know what $MFT is, or what it does. I google it, and discover that it is the Master File Table. The index file for the entire drive. The file that is so important, it is flagged so nothing can write over it, or even near it, lest it be deleted, or fragmented in any way. The one file that so important, not even the Administrator can see it, or try to edit it.

Not something you want to be corrupt.

So I schedule chkdsk for the next reboot. Chkdsk runs after said reboot and fixes the one error it finds. Yay.

I've added one or two things to test_garage in the last week or two. For one, stairs between levels! (as usual, click to enlarge)

I put doors on them, since levels 1 and 4 are open to the rest of the shop, which would funnel noise right into levels 2-3. I also modeled the outside world, which entailed cutting a hole in the side of the map, adding a skybox, and exterior brushes, which was a mild pain in the ass.

Of course, there were some brush misalignments. It looks just fine from this angle...

But move to the side a hair and...

Whoops, guess I didn't line those two up. Incidentally, this meant that the map wasn't "sealed", or completely closed off from the void, which causes vvis and vrad to error out. If vvis can't run, then the engine can't tell which parts of the map the player can see at any one place, and so renders the entire thing. Catastrophic on a big map, not so bad for something as simple as test_garage.

If vrad can't run, then radiosity isn't calculated, and the lighting isn't as nice. That's not as bad, but still ideologically impure. That isn't why the lighting in the screenshots look so bad, though; it's because I misconfigured light_environment, and ended up with the sun shining straight up at the bottom of the map.

I also forgot to add "_hdr" to the end of "ep2_outland_12a". (The skybox from EP2 I used for test_garage)

Consequently, the skybox doesn't render properly. Easy fix.

Much better.

With the skybox fixed and the sun lined up properly, the next item was to get the sun shining through the garage door, casting a nice beam, and contrasting against the cool blue garage lighting.

Criminally unimpressive! Another easy fix, crank up the power! I went from 150 to 600. (Unitless variable)

Nice. With that fixed, time to start moving to production textures. First up, grass. I also changed the exterior terrain from brushes to displacements, which render faster, and spawn texture appropriate detail props, in this case, small plants and tufts of grass.

Unfortunately, displacements are two dimensional heightmaps, which means that converting the face of a brush to a displacement converts that face, and that face only, to a displacement. Exposed to the void yet again!

Mildly complicated fix this time, I have to build some brushes to conceal the gap, and seal the void once more. Fortunately, I was planning on doing this, and didn't (notationally) waste any time patching.

Unfortunately, vbsp was still complaining about light leaks. Following the pointfile just slammed full length into the terrain displacement, which was obviously sealing the void. I mean, displacements seal the void, right?

Nope. What kind of moron doesn't know that displacements don't seal, hurf durf? Simple, but ugly, fix; I sealed off the bottom of the map with a great big nodraw textured brush butted up against the sides of the skybox. On to production texturing the interior!


Lovely.

Source file, (11 KiB rar'd .vmf) compiled executable. (443 KiB rar'd bsp) I compiled cubemaps this time, though I, for some reason, can't tell the difference. Oh well.

"The Gaucho" (1927) (movie) at the Paramount, June 23rd.

0, that's right, zero, nada, I hate this movie so god damn much, may it suck cocks in hell, forever out of five stars.

The movie is a pile of shit. Its crimes are legion, but topping the list is its rampant racism and hilariously prevalent misogyny. The characters are about as three-dimensional as a piece of paper, spend half their time praying, and in the ending scenes, crowd into a shrine to bow before YHWH and pledge to set up a theocracy based on the ten commandments. I am, of course, not kidding.

But hey, it's a crappy movie. It was the 20's, this is what they did, in between killing Germans and dying of the Spanish Flu.

But what's worse than the movie is the people who crowd into a theater to see the movie. Apparently, the only thing middle aged white women love more than watching dead people make bad movies is not shutting up for one fucking second for 117 god damn minutes. Painfully obvious plot twist? Cheer at the screen! Awkward, poorly choreographed stunt performed by an incompetent stunt man, and filmed by a blind, palsy-stricken moron! Cheer at the screen! Douglas Fairbanks looked at the camera? Wet your fucking panties, then cheer at the screen!

The whole thing was sponsored by Trader Joe's, of course, middle aged white woman's supermarket of choice. Because if you've got to choose between five different corporate multinationals, then you better go for the one with the stupidly crowded isles and the 200% markup.

The only thing dumber than all of this shit is the moron who gets suckered into watching a fucking silent movie by the promise of free tickets. There's a reason silent movies aren't made anymore! It's because they suck!

Fuck you all!

< ThomasBags> h
< ThomasBags> h
< ThomasBags> h
< ThomasBags> h
< ThomasBags> h
<~king_of_hearts> enough.
< ThomasBags> h
< ThomasBags> h
<~king_of_hearts> .mute ThomasBags
-!- mode/#cake [+b ~q:*!ThomasBags@*.tampabay.res.rr.com] by FBI
<~king_of_hearts> .unmute ThomasBags
-!- mode/#cake [-b ~q:*!ThomasBags@*.tampabay.res.rr.com] by FBI
< ThomasBags> h
< ThomasBags> h
<~king_of_hearts> .mute ThomasBags
-!- mode/#cake [+b ~q:*!ThomasBags@*.tampabay.res.rr.com] by FBI
-!- ThomasBags [ThomasBags@anon-EAD8A139.tampabay.res.rr.com] has quit [Quit: Leaving]
<@bbot> why you always gotta be unmuting t-bags
-!- mode/#cake [-b ~q:*!ThomasBags@*.tampabay.res.rr.com] by king_of_hearts
<~king_of_hearts> because its mean not too
<@bbot> a foolish decision that will bring you only pain
<@bbot> so sayeth I
-!- ThomasBags [ThomasBags@anon-EAD8A139.tampabay.res.rr.com] has joined #cake
< ThomasBags> 8P
<@bbot> behold, vindication of the prophecy
< ThomasBags> wut

So I was browsing the tvtropes wiki, when I came upon a line in Misapplied Phlebotinum.

Sure, for a macro-scale device like that, but something as complex, intricate, and dense (in complexity/volume terms) as a human brain? That's pushing it.

Whoa-ho! I can't let a statement like that stand. Thus:

Let's improve this discussion with some math. Assuming that a human brain has 10^11 neurons (100,000,000,000), then just giving them all 39 digit serial numbers would take, of course, 10^11*2^39 = 54 zettabits or 6.871 zettabytes. Assume we use some of the address space for special characters (we could just use ASCII for the first 128 bits, making this a superset of Unicode, humorously enough.) then 39 bits of address space allows us to address a 5.49*10^11 neuron brain, or a brain with 549,755,813,888 neurons, about five and a half times more complex than a human's.

Now, assuming that the structure of our file is the serial number of a neuron followed by the numbers of the neurons it's addressing, a line feed, the next block, etc; and assuming that each neuron addresses ten others, then we get a final total of 68.71 zettabytes. The brain might be more complicated than this, and each neuron might interconnect more, but handwave handwave, let's keep moving.

Using Stross memory diamond, which has a density of 6.022*10^23 bits per 25 grams, we end up with a final encoded mass of 22.8 grams, which is 6.48 cubic centimeters of diamond.

23 grams, six and a half cubic centimeters. Roughly two orders of magnatude smaller than its organic equivilent. The brain is complicated, but it isn't magical.

I came across an absolutely wonderful quote by one of STALKER's developers. (via RPS)

It seems that to appeal to North America you need really flashy, bright games, and you can see that every eastern European game is very dark. In the end, I guess this just comes down to our culture and history - we're just different people, and that's that.

Yes, like the flashy and bright Half Life, where you spend the first couple chapters watching your co-workers being slaughtered by alien abominations in (literal) mute horror.

Or the flashy and bright Prey, where you have to murder your girlfriend, before the machine she's wired into kills you first.

Or the flashy and bright Half-Life 2, which takes place in an eastern-european country, and is mostly about oppression.

The flaws preventing blockbuster sales of Stalker were showstopping; (or rather, should have been showstopping.) but herp derping about how Americans are dumb and can't handle Serious Things isn't going to help keep Stalker 2 from making the exact same mistakes, now matter how devilishly pretty it is.

Also: In the comments of the RPS thread.

You know, I'm really skeptical that they had the AI as active as they claim. The final game seems to rely very heavily on set-path and set-location respawns in order to keep the world feel like things are going on. Surely they could have left just a few "ALifers" on to purposefully wander around and stir things up. Right now, after memorizing what the layouts of the zones are, I can easily avoid all conflict because no NPCs will ever stray from their paths.

AI, like audio, has stagnated for the last ten years. But unlike audio, which stagnated not because it achieved parity with reality, but because it is both very very hard to do and because you can't see good AI in a screenshot, or in a demo. A dumb scripted sequence can look as brilliant as however many dev-hours you want to burn on it, (viz. any CGI film ever made) and you have be an insider to tell the difference. Every game have to bullshit about how great their AI is (viz. oblivion, half life 2) because talk is cheap, and nobody's going to follow up on the marketing.

I found a drinks cooler, which should suit my purposes well, since it's already got a spout, and a little valve to control the spout. This means less stuff I have to design (and then debug) which is good. Unfortunately, it's "well used", so I'm going to have to figure out how to take a valve apart and clean it; plus, it's not that wide. If I align the intercooler coaxially, then there's not going to be a lot of room for dry ice, or rather, there won't be a lot of room for large chunks of dry ice. Smaller chunks will sublimate faster, and disappear quickly.

A workaround might be to form "D" shaped coils, and butt the curved side up against the interior of the cooler. This will leave a large contiguous space for dry ice, and simplify the coolant flow path; (Essentially a loop, rather than the torus of the previous design) but limit the size of the coolant pump impeller, which isn't a big deal anyway, since I shouldn't need high coolant flow rates.

As of today, I am employed at Union Square as a Lighting Maintenance Technician.

It's interesting working at union square again. I'm seeing all the people who I saw going home at the start of my shift last time, but all the time. It's weird! And easy to put into words, as you can tell by that masterful sentence there.

Another item of note, this is my first full time job that actually takes place during normal waking hours. Pro: Daylight; other, somewhat more normal, people. Con: Traffic! Now I know why everyone constantly complains about Seattle traffic. I don't actually have to drive in it, but the buses are absolutely packed.

So I made the extraodinarily poor decision to buy the Wood Magazine Workshop Edition magazine. Like the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, only instead of women, workshops.

This, naturally, got me to thinking about what kind of workshop I'd build, if I had a few million dollars lying around. Since I'm a nerd, I doodled in vmf format.




Basically, it's a 68' by 96' by 34' concrete box. 64' by 68' is usable shop space, the rest is taken up with a four story office block. The office block contains infrastructure (dust removal, HVAC, shop air and vacuum, backup power generation are all on the fourth floor) computers (third floor), equipment that doesn't require overhead space (first and second floor), and connections to the rest of the complex (first and second floor.) The personnel entrance is on the second floor because the workshop is built a floor into the ground, then covered with fill, making it wonderfully secure, as well as one upping any green roof, anywhere.

As you might have noticed by the dev textures, this is a work in progress. To do:

1. Add production textures
2. Add placeholder equipment
3. Add vehicle access, human access, map the outside world.
4. Take over the world.

Source file, (146 KiB .vmf) compiled executable. (1.59 MiB .bsp) Cubemaps aren't compiled, so reflections might be wonky, maybe, perhaps.

I've been playing a lot of Dyson, (forum thread) which is an interesting little indie game where you play as a strain of Dyson Tree competing with several other (AI controlled) strains. Each tree on a asteroid (up to six) produce seeds, which act both as combat and colonization units. It's interesting!

Borders between territories are so fluid as to be a entirely irrelevant concept, since there's no cost for moving a fleet of seeds through enemy territory; and it's impossible to tell where an enemy force is attacking. In fact, it's fairly common for a fleet to just be passing through to attack someone else, so it's a manifest waste of effort to scramble defenders.

For example, Green's moving about two hundred seeds around the interior arc as we speak. (Double metaphorically, since I paused it to type this.) They're obviously going to attack me, since there's nobody else in that sector, but where, exactly? I won't know until they hit. And guessing carries a strong penalty, since you can't belay a fleet in flight; so if you guess wrong you'll probably lose an asteroid.

Above and beyond this is asteroid composition which affects the speed and toughness of seeds made by the trees inhabiting that particular rock.

The asteroid composition mechanic is interesting, and I don't think anything quite like it has been done; but as it stands there are quite a few flaws. First of all, you can't tell what kind of a rock it is without first clicking on it, and you can't even do that without first exploring it, which effectively means sending a fleet to it.

The result is that there's no way to tell at a glance how desirable a rock is. And since there's no tooltips, there no way to tell how valuable a rock is period, unless you happened to have memorized the relevant part of the tutorial.

This fades into insignifigance when you realize that this mechanic really doesn't matter at all. In the startgame, you have no choice as to which rock to capture, so different strains of seed, which would be damn useful at this point, never come into play. And by the endgame, you're marshaling thundering hordes of seeds, drawn from dozens of different rocks, and so is your opponent. No matter how unique each strain is, they average out once you've got three hundred seeds.

But the basic gameplay is compelling, and it'll be interesting to see what Dyson evolves into.

So, apparently, Defcon has a "Beverage cooling contest", where you compete with a bunch of other people to cool down the contents of a beverage can as quickly.

To recap, it's a competition at a hacker convention to chill a can of beer as quickly as possible with some kind of machine.

This contest, it was made for me!

Looking over the previous winners, you see a lot of passive machines, relying on conduction and natural convection. No powered coolant loops at all! This is reasonable, in that a bunch of software hackers are probably optimizing on the side of mechanical simplicity, but still. The intercooler is about as mature as technology can get, but we're still poking around with natural convection?

The plan is to run a coil of half inch ductile copper tubing through a alcohol/dry ice bath, with an impeller in the bath to force chilled alcohol across the coil. Half inch tubing is needed, since previous contestants have apparently had problems with beer freezing in the coil, and blocking the flow. To this end, there should be a large pre-cooler reservoir, and a metering valve on the intake line; as well as a rheostat controlling the coolant pump. Bonus points for controlling coolant flow through product flow. (low product flow = low coolant flow, high product flow = high coolant flow) Extra bonus points for using a thermocouple and an ardiuno to control the output temperature.

Fortunately, they post the results, so I can compare the performance of whatever I cobble together to the grand champions.

And then, of course, laugh maniacally at the fools who dare thought that they could oppose I, shatterer of Worlds and scourge of Eternity.

/projects/water.html updated with a typo fix (thanks Dravas) and the old animation, which is interesting for historical purposes. The new video is much better.