12/3/2010 4:32:43 PM - Mid to Long Term Technology Predictions - News update
I wanted to share some technology predictions that I have made. For me, it will be fun to see how right or wrong I am after a few years have passed. If I get even one of these right I'll consider myself pretty lucky and insightful, because these are specific predictions.
Date Made Subject Description/Prediction
2010-10-10 Flash devices - 25nm will be 2nd to last process node for flash devices
I settled on this because of the exponential increase in bit errors and write cycles as the process node gets smaller. I think there will be one more node after 25nm and that the wear leveling algorithms for the controllers will reach a threshold which they are already fast approaching.
2010-10-19 Magnetic disks - 5TB drives largest magnetic storage available without laser beams
I believe we are reaching the fundamental limit of magnetic storage without using heat to reduce the superparamagnetic effect. Perpendicular recording afforded us a decent density boost, but that will be the last innovation in magnetic storage before laser heating, in my opinion.
2010-10-20 Blu-ray - There will be no optical media format after Blu-ray to be used for movie purchases by consumers of movies who purchase them
As Netflix has now released a streaming-only plan, I think the time of videos being distributed on optical discs is coming to a swift end. I want to go so far as to say that Blu-ray will be considered a failed format because it was too busy fighting with HDDVD and was about 3 years too late to market, but I won't go that far. I'm simply suggesting here that there will be no optical format for video distribution to replace Blu-ray.
2010-11-10 SATA v. SSDs - There will never be a SATA standard that an existing SSD product will not be able to fully saturate with sequential reads within 2 months of its introduction. Internal drive interfaces will eventually be replaced by Light Peak or a similar standard.
Standards take a long time to create and refine. The SATA standard has been woefully slow in adapting to the new flash storage market. This prediction won't be able to be proven true, but if the rule holds up for 5 more years or until the decline of SATA for internal storage then I'll consider the prediction true.
2010-11-16 RT Superconductors - A material will be lab demonstrated superconductive at 70 American degrees by 15-12-9.
This one is quite a stretch. No one knows how quickly materials will be refined to increase the critical temperature at which superconductivity can occur. Over the past year or so there have been some very nice jumps.
2010-12-03 Ray Tracing - Mainstream PC games will favor ray tracing over pixel shaders for shading around H2 2016. The predixion is that by H2 2016, half of "realistic" fps titles will use ray tracing in leiu of pixel shaders.
People have been making this prediction for several years, and I have fallen into the trap of making one as well. Some think ray tracing will never replace rasterization, but I believe it's inevitable. I give it until mid-2016.
Below are a few topics on which I'd like to make future predictions. I will post when some of these are done.
- 8th gen consoles
- pc memory channel count
- cpu core count
- apu vs discrete gpu sales
- gpgpu
- html5 and flash
- wireless v wired broadband
- bluetooth v wifi direct
- market capture of intel smartphones
- silicon photonics cpu crossover process node
- ubiquity of speech to text tools
- holodeck display enclosures
- OLED monitor crossover date
- OLED television crossover date
- memristor adoption
- monitor refresh rates
5/7/2010 1:31:56 PM - New PSU - News update
My websites have been down for the past several days thanks to the death of my PSU in my primary machine. I decided to replace the 4 year old OCZ GameXtreme 700W with a Corsair 650W. Corsair is pretty highly-regarded on Newegg at the time of this writing, and the PSU seems solid, quiet, and dependable.
In other news, the DOW dropped just shy of 1,000 points in intraday trading yesterday; possibly due to the Yen currency moves. This may be the tip of the iceburg where the European sovereign debt crisis begins and the Euro as a currency ends. Only time will tell.
3/31/2010 12:04:03 PM - J-E-N-O-V-A Piano Video - Music update
Here's a video I recorded for Youtube. Some fun facts about the video:
I recorded roughly 28 takes. The one you're watching here is take #12.
It took me 12 days to learn the song and commit it to memory, and a little over a month to practice it up to performance level.
I recorded the audio and video separately and combined them in software afterwards. I also used my laptop's speakers to monitor the sound while I was recording - it was sitting on the floor just outside the camera's view.
I used a velocity envelope on the video track at the end to create a slow motion effect after I struck the last note while the video faded out.
10/6/2009 6:57:45 PM - Yet another Windows 7 post - News update
I may be the only person in the world who insists on doing this the hard way, but I've found the need to manually delete files with the worst file permissions possible in Windows - that is, files that have no owner. A select few system files may be configured this way, and there's really no good way to script out a solution that I've found. The problem with using any command line or powershell script in this scenario is that nothing will allow you to modify ACL settings for files with no owner. If I'm wrong, please e-mail me and let me know how.
This leaves us with using the Windows UI to make the necessary changes. Since I have to do this on about fifty individual files, I thought I would write out a sequence of keyboard inputs that would fix the ownership and permissions the way I want it, which I have included for you below. If you have a way to manipulate keypresses without needing focus, you might simply enter these commands as a keypress script which will allow you to just press a button and walk away.
Note that you will probably need to slightly modify these depending on the configuration of your system. I have UAC disabled and run my account as an administrator.
This one is for adding my user account as the file owner, where context is the key many keyboards have that brings up the right-click context menu on the currently selected item: context, r, tab x4, right, tab, space, tab x3, right x2, tab x2, space, down, enter x2, esc x2.
And here is the one for removing existing permissions and adding my user account with full control permissions: context, r, tab x4, right, tab x2, space, tab x2, space x3, ctrl+v, enter, tab x2, space, shift+tab x7, space, esc. In this example, make sure to have your properly-formatted username in your paste buffer.
9/25/2009 12:52:14 PM - Windows is so helpful! - News update
Are you having difficulty choosing which music to listen to or which program to install? Perhaps you need a little help:
Windows can think for you!
The link actually opens a help file that discusses CD and DVD burning types and options which makes sense, but the initial dialog is just funny. I have found the language used in Windows 7 has so far been extremely well-written and easy to understand save this one humorous line.
9/23/2009 8:15:54 PM - Lovin' my SSD - News update
And Windows 7, for that matter. I've been using an almost nine-year-old operating system for so long, I've forgotten what sort of advancements have occurred in user interface design. At the very least, I've forgotten that eventually, some OS problems *are* addressed.
Sorry for the temporary site outage. I was performing open-heart surgery on my main machine and my server to swap processors. No casualties on the operating table, I'm happy to report.
Anyway, the SSD: what can't it do? Firefox installed in 3 seconds. Thunderbird installed in 3 seconds. iTunes even installed in under a minute, and if you've ever sat through a Windows iTunes install, you'll know that's quite fast. I had one issue with the install, and it turned out to be a problem with my old nVidia 7900GT graphics card. The nVidia ForceWare drivers have had this problem for so long, I found forum posts dating back before 2007 with this same, unresolved issue. Fortunately, the only known solution, short of buying a new card, is to use an overclocking utility to change the core and memory clocks. I used nTune, because it integrates directly with the nVidia control panel and because you can save custom profiles which can get applied on OS startup. I played around with the clocks on my card, and found that my primary screen was garbled and unusable until I hit 760MHz on the memory clocks. Core clock didn't seem to have an effect, but sure enough - 759MHz memory clock was still garbled, and 760MHz memory clock was perfectly normal. I'll be upgrading my video card pretty soon, but I'm glad to have found this stop-gap solution for now so that I can enjoy Windows 7 the way it was meant to be enjoyed.
I have discovered an undocumented bug in Microsoft's Internet Information Services 5.0 web server. I'm posting it here in hopes that Google will return at least one hit about this when someone else searches on it.
When you specify a custom redirect on a directory in IIS5, you start with *; followed by pairs of redirections separated by semicolons. You may need to use one of the special redirect variables provided by IIS like $Q or $V. These typically come at the end of a URL string that you're building. However, IIS5 refuses to interpret these variables when they are followed by a semicolon. This means that if you need to use these redirection variables in IIS5, you must put them as the last pair in the list. An example follows:
Will not work: *;/default.asp;/redirects/processor.aspx$Q;/help.asp;/help.aspx Will work: *;/help.asp;/help.aspx;/default.asp;/redirects/processor.aspx$Q
I hope this can help you deal with those legacy Win2000 IIS boxes that still plague so many datacenters today. If you need to redirect more than one pair of files and include querystring parameters for both, then you need to come up with a solution like the above. Use a single processing page to re-redirect from multiple sources so you only need to use one set of these special IIS variables. This problem does not exist in IIS6 and later.
Here are some keyword tags for the Google searchers:
IIS5, redirect variables, $Q, $S, $V, custom redirects, semicolon delimited, a redirection to a URL
8/28/2009 2:05:44 PM - Guitar Hero promotion - Game update
It seems as if Activision realizes its hit series of rhythm games is waning in popularity. I have just pre-ordered Guitar Hero 5. If I hadn't learned of a special promotion, I never would have bought the game. I don't think it will be particularly good because I don't care for most of the included music tracks.
Thankfully, I am a Van Halen fan. Any purchases of Guitar Hero 5 before the end of September will include a promotional code good for one free copy of Guitar Hero: Van Halen, which will be shipped within 4-6 weeks of the game's release - currently December 22, 2009. Guitar Hero 5 retails for $60, even on the Wii, but if you check Google Product search, you'll see that BestSKU has the title for $47 which includes shipping.
Let's see what we get here. 83 songs from GH5 + 44 songs from GH:VH, and that means I get licenses for 127 songs at $0.37 per song. Thanks Activision; you've just made an acceptable offer to me, the consumer.
8/28/2009 1:56:16 PM - The site redesign - Site update
Is progressing much more slowly than I had hoped. I have put my upload tool as the highest priority, but creating it just the way I want it has been rather difficult. I have learned so much about web application design and optimization over the past few years, and so I'm excited to move forward.
I don't expect to have anything outwardly visible finished this year, however I hope that the fall season will put me into gear for this sizable project.
8/28/2009 1:50:52 PM - New computer - who needs it? - News update
I have been known to make the most out of every dollar in computer-related spending. Thanks to the slowdown in innovation in the industry from a desktop PC standpoint, I have decided to purchase upgrades to my main machine and forgo the expense of a computer build for another 2+ years.
How can you do this to maximize benefit? Just determine which components in your build have had their price performance ratios jump significantly faster than the rest of the machine. In my case, I chose the video card, hard drive, and ram.
The video card industry has become significantly more competitive in the mid-range thanks to AMD, and thanks also to the economic depression, the prices for cards have dropped across the board. This is arguably the fastest-progressing hardware component inside any computer case.
Solid state drives have revolutionized speedy access, and again, competition and manufacturing costs have helped push SSDs into the mainstream. Since my primary purpose of extending the usable life of my computer is making it faster, this upgrade is a no-brainer.
RAM was chosen simply because prices are so cheap, and there's no reason that a computer should not have "enough." To know how much is enough, you have to know how your OS and processes use memory. My machine could use a doubling of RAM from its current amount.
I guarantee that once my three-year-old machine has these upgrades and is tuned for performance, it will outclass 99% of desktop PCs you'll find today.
8/10/2009 10:52:40 AM - I got Wii Sports Resort - Game update
Wii sports resort is a fun collection of minigames. I bet you guys are surprised that I have updated the site to tell you this, since my last update was probably before the Wii was even released.
My new server is up and running and all websites are back online.
9/12/2006 2:14:52 PM - Fall comes again - News update
I have been putting together a new workout schedule for the fall/winter season to compliment the already effective spring/summer workout. The fall/winter workout will focus on muscle growth and bulking. It should give the added benefit of staying inside from the cold, as well as heating up the apartment from within. I have devised a nutrition chart to compliment the new workout which is high in protein and calories, and lower in sugar and carbs.
I have been practicing piano quite a lot recently, and I hope to be able to record a couple more pieces. I'm also working on my composition skills, and am admittedly having trouble since it's quite difficult for me. The piano playing is increasing my palette, which should help me get away from the typical harmonies I'm used to composing with. I have come to realize that all of my previous works, except 5_12, were under-composed. If I really want to be able to showcase my talent as a progressive musician, I can no longer just take a lick and run with it. I'll try to put up some sample clips on the Two Guitarists site if I create anything good.
6/23/2006 11:47:00 PM - Custom Application Pro FastFind v1.0.0.1 Released! - Site update
I have created a new desktop application to help users navigate directories quickly and easily with less clicks. It's easy to install, easy to configure and use, and I promise it will save you time in your day to day computer use! Choose a download version below, and e-mail me with suggestions or comments.
The MSI version will be the easiest if you're a Windows XP user.
4/4/2006 3:49:19 PM - Running season 4 has begun - News update
Daylight savings time and my running season started last weekend, which is a sure sign spring will be coming around soon (it takes a lot longer to arrive here in Wisconsin than it does most other places). I got some new running shoes, and so far they feel great. I'm trying to be extra careful to avoid injury this season so that I can keep exercising the way I like.
Along with getting myself in shape again, spring has gotten me in the mood to get my plants in shape. I bought some pots and have been replanting and fertilizing. Jon and I have been doing some good recording lately also. I will eventually get my act together and get clips up on the site.
There have been several goings-ons recently, but no real excuse not to update. I've been working more on the layout of the new Two Guitarists website among other little projects. I'll be putting up clips from many, many different songs we have compiled over the years. This will probably be accompanied by a small voting mechanism to provide us with feedback on which ones people like the best. I've also written utility programs which will help automate Jon and my project transfers and keep everything synched and up to date.
I got a new Taylor 614CE guitar in early February. It's fantastic. Every time I play it I feel that I'm holding the instrument back from its full potential instead of the other way around. It's almost as if it says to me, "What are you waiting for? We're capable of so much more!" Spooky.
I've been doing a lot of travel lately to Virginia (grandparents' funerals). It has actually been nice to see the whole family more frequently. I don't have any upcoming travel plans until May when I hope to go down again and spend time with friends. The winter here in Milwaukee has been quite disappointing. January was the second warmest on record, and snowfall totals have been terribly low. Even today 8 inches were forecast but it was too warm to stick much. Perhaps next year things will be better.
Tomorrow I'm going to a long-awaited Dream Theater concert in Minneapolis. I'm sure it will be a blast although at the moment I'm just worried about getting there on time.
My dad gave me a digital camera recently and I've been working on my picture taking skills. So hopefully this means I'll be completely updating the pictures section of the site soon. At work I'm venturing into new territory that may help my web development abilities. Not much else to report; I think I've covered it all pretty well. Have a happy March and I'll be sure to update at least once in April (that's when running season starts!).
11/7/2005 9:29:45 AM - Fall update - News update
Well, things have been going along pretty well this past month or so. Along with the piano recordings, I've also been preparing my little studio for multiple instrument recording sessions in case Jon and I have a good composition/recording streak when he comes up in January.
My football team had their first loss to Miami last Saturday, which was a big bummer. The good news is that my Saturdays from here on out can be filled with other things. I have been working on ProFactor and ProChat a little bit at a time, but I'd like to get back to those soon. I'm going down to DC for work this week and then to Charlottesville for the weekend.
10/26/2005 9:28:35 PM - On a roll; why stop now? - Music update
Enemy Attack from Final Fantasy X (7.96 MB) is finished. I'm told that this one varies radically from the game's version, but that is probably a good thing. This song's jazzy feel and synchopated rhythms were really fun to learn.
10/24/2005 10:44:02 AM - Next piece ready - FFVII Battle Theme - Music update
The FFVII Battle Theme (7.51 MB), lovingly referred to as "Fighting," is available for download. I was inspired to get this one recorded because I learned it will be featured in the Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children movie (not my recording of course, but the original one). This song is the one that originally inspired me to play piano again (about a year and a half ago), and it took a lot of practice to get this piece to a playable state. I hope you enjoy it!
10/10/2005 10:32:59 PM - First of nine finished and released! - Music update
Clannad (4.56 MB) is a somber piece from Zun's Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil PC game. There are two other songs I'll be recording from Zun's piano scores. This one is probably the easiest. I enjoyed learning it because it had a nice soft mood as well as the distinction of a constant background rhythm against the simple melody.
