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Introduction
This site is a collection of notes, projects and links to things that Stephen Vermeulen has written or wishes to remember. It's not really a blog, rather it's more like a mind-map.Contact Information
stephen@vermeulen.caHere's a blast from the past, a little game called Mine Maze I wrote for the Commodore PET 2001, it was fun enough to get published in Compute! magazine. What was interesting in this game was the asymmetry, the two players had quite different roles.
Recent Changes
2010-Mar-11: The ASUS Cine5 is a compact five-channel speaker for smaller rooms. [9011] [1]
2010-Mar-11: Using an Arduino to interface to an iPod. [9010] [1]
2010-Mar-11: PiCloud is a cloud-computing solution for Python, a brief introduction to it can be found here. [9009] [1]
2010-Mar-11: Some thoughts on why hiring good programmers can be difficult - perhaps it is because most applications you will have to sort through really cannot program. I think the suggested approach of looking for evidence that they program out side of the office is a good short cut. [9008] [1]
2010-Mar-11: Will 2010 be the year of the tablet? At CeBIT low end tablets are appearing aimed at a price point of about $100. Apparently more than 50 ARM-based tablets are currently in preparation, so the later parts of 2010 could see a lot of activity in this market sector. I'm guessing that manufacturers are looking at this "new" segment and thinking they had better not miss it like the early days of the netbook segment which allowed ASUS to run away with that market. It looks like Toshiba is thinking along the same lines and is getting back into this market segment. [8994] [1]
2010-Mar-11: The MD500 Android tablet from Hott might make it to market in the $100-130 range. If it does then it is sure to have a big impact. [9007] [1]
2010-Mar-11: Storage of excess wind power by compressing air and storing it in underground formations may become a big part of the wind power system. Discussed here on Slashdot. [9006] [1]
2010-Mar-10: A lab in the US called Regenerative Sciences is offering stem cell treatments. Discussed here on Slashdot. [9005] [1]
2010-Mar-10: Lenovo is entering the netbook market with their IdeaPad S10 which will have a 10-inch screen and are talking about a $399 starting price. CNet Taiwan gets their hands on one, just views of the exterior since the device would not boot. A 45 minute long hands-on session left this reviewer happy with the S10. There will also be a smaller version called the S9, priced around $370 (in Dec'08 this became available in the US for about $350). The S10 gets reviewed here. Another review of it is here. Another version of this is the IdeaPad S10-3t that converts into a tablet. [6627] [1]
2010-Mar-09: Addonics makes an internal USB adapter which you can plug into a standard motherboard 10-pin header to convert it into two type-A female sockets, you can then attach standard thumb drives to these to add internally-attached USB flash storage. Still it would make sense for motherboards to include a couple of these type-A sockets for this sort of thing. StarTech makes a similar adapter, in this one the two drives are mounted vertically. [8997] [1]
2010-Mar-09: Apparently HIV can hide in a victim's bone marrow waiting to re-emerge once the patient stops taking his drugs. One more interesting twist for the virus, one that's sure to make the drug companies dance for joy. [9004] [1]
2010-Mar-09: Popular Science has placed their entire 137-year archive of back issues online for free browsing, neato! [9003] [1]
2010-Mar-09: Phoronix.com has a lot of Linux CPU and GPU related benchmarking information. [9002] [1]
2010-Mar-09: Slashdot discusses the difficulty of selecting CPUs and GPUs due to the strange naming and numbering systems that are used these days. For comparison purposes the site: CPUBenchmark.net has a number of good performance charts that span a wide range of CPUs, as well the companion site VideoCardBenchmark.net compares GPUs. [9001] [1]
2010-Mar-08: Finding Installed Software using Python (on Windows of course). [9000] [1]
2010-Mar-08: The Hitchhiker's Guide to Packaging - all it needs is a Don't Panic icon. [8999] [1]
2010-Mar-08: How to find the commit charge values in Windows from Python. [8998] [1]
2010-Mar-08: The CipherChain series of products allows one to add full disk encryption in hardware to any PC using standard SATA disks. [8996] [1]
2010-Mar-08: Gas and electric utilities are starting to get worried about the amount of wind power that is coming on line in the USA. [8995] [1]
2010-Mar-05: I wonder why Apple never put an infrared receiver and transmitter in the iPhone/iTouch, as with it they would make very nice universal remote controls. You can "fix" this problem with the RedEye base which the iPhone talks to via WiFi and the base then sends the appropriate infrared controls to your home theater system. But still, its not a portable system and it costs nearly $200, to provide functionality that was standard in earlier PDAs like the Palm and probably costs about $0.25 to manufacture. An IR dongle type attachment (along with a universal remote application) has been announced, of course this probably makes more sense for use with the iTouch. The L5 iPhone IR dongle was shown at CES 2010. Logitech has released an app for the iPhone that turns an iPhone into a wireless trackpad or keyboard - this might make the iTouch a rather nice HTPC remote controller. The New Potato's FLPR IR dongle is another IR controller for about $80. The RedEye mini will bring the IR remote dongle down to about $49. [8816] [1]
2010-Mar-05: Artificial photosynthesis from Sun Catalytix is looking at a better way of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using a cobalt-based catalyst. [8993] [1]
2010-Mar-05: The Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard combines both a small keyboard and a touch pad for mouse control in a small format that makes sense for the home theatre PC. It is about the size of a larger remote control. [8992] [1]
2010-Mar-05: QuoteTracker is a charting package that is available in free and subscription versions (it has access to real-time data feeds). FreeStockCharts.com also is a charting package that runs in a web browser (requires SilverLight), this also has some real time quote feeds. [8991] [1]