Today NASA announced the crew for the last scheduled space shuttle mission. The mission will take place in September of 2010 and will bring an end to a 29 year historic age of space aviation. The replacement for the shuttle is scheduled to go active in 2015. In note of this event I thought it would be worthy to post a few videos of the space shuttle launches.
Shuttle landing from the cockpit view
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Friday, September 18, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
C#: OutOfMemory and Multithreading
So you just wrote this awesome application and made it multi-threaded for performance reasons. However, now when you run it after a while you get an out of memory exception. You go and check your system ram and the application isn't even using up half of it yet. What gives?
The problem resides with the heap that garbage collection uses and the way that garbage collection works. I won't go into details here about that however I will offer some possible solutions. There are 2 types of garbage collection, workstation and server. Workstation gives you one process and one heap to manage for the entire application regardless of the number of threads. Server will setup a new Garbage Collection thread and heap for each thread launched. Thus this should allow you to avoid that pesky out of memory issue.
Be carefull however, if you are launching hundreds of threads or maybe even more it may be possible for you to run out of ram. To avoid this do a poll of the current state of your ram before launching a new thread as well as try setting a max number of threads you will launch based off of the ammount of ram on the machine.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
The problem resides with the heap that garbage collection uses and the way that garbage collection works. I won't go into details here about that however I will offer some possible solutions. There are 2 types of garbage collection, workstation and server. Workstation gives you one process and one heap to manage for the entire application regardless of the number of threads. Server will setup a new Garbage Collection thread and heap for each thread launched. Thus this should allow you to avoid that pesky out of memory issue.
Be carefull however, if you are launching hundreds of threads or maybe even more it may be possible for you to run out of ram. To avoid this do a poll of the current state of your ram before launching a new thread as well as try setting a max number of threads you will launch based off of the ammount of ram on the machine.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Setting up defrag
As mentioned in "What is fragmentation?" defrag will run automatically for your drives in Win7 and Vista. The problem is that the default run time is at 1am on Wednesday. So unless your machine is on all night in the middle of the week this might not ever get run.
However do not fret. Changing this setting is incredibly easy. Open up the run window from either the start menu or by pressing the window key + R. Once this launches type dfrgui.exe. You will notice the button on the right that says modify schedule. Just click it and the rest is pretty easy to figure out.
I recommend changing this to some time when you know the computer will be on and you will not be using it. Your lunch break may be a perfect time to do this. Also the more frequently defrag runs the less time it will take to run when it does run. Once a week is probably fine but if you download and delete files frequently you may consider doing it more frequently.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
However do not fret. Changing this setting is incredibly easy. Open up the run window from either the start menu or by pressing the window key + R. Once this launches type dfrgui.exe. You will notice the button on the right that says modify schedule. Just click it and the rest is pretty easy to figure out.
I recommend changing this to some time when you know the computer will be on and you will not be using it. Your lunch break may be a perfect time to do this. Also the more frequently defrag runs the less time it will take to run when it does run. Once a week is probably fine but if you download and delete files frequently you may consider doing it more frequently.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Yeah 100 unique visits
The blog hasn't been up even a week yet and already it has had 100 visitors. Thanks for all of your support. I am still working on experimenting with the look and feel of this blog as well as making sure to add unique and interesting content on a regular basis. Again thanks for all the support and lets see how fast this traffic builds.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
ThinkGeek :: Mimo Mini USB Monitor
ThinkGeek :: Mimo Mini USB Monitor
Posted using ShareThis
Just saw this cool little gadget over on think geek and thought I would share. I am always looking for more ways to expand my desktop space. I just wish the price tag was a little bit better.
Posted using ShareThis
Just saw this cool little gadget over on think geek and thought I would share. I am always looking for more ways to expand my desktop space. I just wish the price tag was a little bit better.
Monday, September 14, 2009
RIP Patrick Swayze
I know it is a little off topic but this is still note worthy.
Source
It is a sad day today. A great actor has died. We will however always have the great movies he brought to us. Just watched Dirty Dancing the other night too.
RIP.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Source
It is a sad day today. A great actor has died. We will however always have the great movies he brought to us. Just watched Dirty Dancing the other night too.
RIP.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
The Budget Computer Vol 5
The light gaming/multimedia build
This is continuation of the Budget Computer Series. Check the rest of them out at:
Budget Computer Vol 1
Budget Computer Vol 2
Budget Computer Vol 3
Budget Computer Vol 4
So you want to do a little light gaming and maybe edit a few videos or pictures. In the previous scenario it was unlikely that you were going to be loading lots of things from the disk and instead a lot of what you were going to be working with was going to be in memory. Because of this the speed of the memory becomes a key point. With multimedia though chances are you are going to be loading up a bunch of files from the hard disk to manipulate. So here is how I would go about building the system.
Monitor: 21"-24" you still don't need to be worried about the refresh rate too much here and are more concerned with the ammount of desktop space available to display the things you want to manipulate.
Hard Disks: Try to get a motherboard that supports onboard raid. If you manage that make sure you get 2 hard disks and set them up in a Raid 0. This will allow you to decrease the read time from the drive substantially. Also you will want to make sure you get 7200 rpm drives or faster and preferably ones with at least an 8mb cache. Target 500gigs or more for the pair of drives.
Processor: Focus on a faster clock speed over quad cores. Preferably something 2.8ghz or more. Also try and find something with lots of cache. This will allow for less transfers between the RAM and the CPU Cache.
Ram: 3gb worth to start. Need to have plenty of room to manipulate those files once they are loaded. After you have 3gb get more speed in the ram over more ram. If you never use up all that ram having more won't give you any benefit after all.
Video Card: Most 256mb video cards will suite your purpose here. You shouldn't need to spend over 125 for the card. Remember this system is not intended to run the latest and greatest games.
As with the other build I would look for MotherBoard and CPU combos or even a barbone system to start with that meets most of these needs. It can save you a bit of money especailly when you consider barebones systems come with the case and power supply.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
This is continuation of the Budget Computer Series. Check the rest of them out at:
Budget Computer Vol 1
Budget Computer Vol 2
Budget Computer Vol 3
Budget Computer Vol 4
So you want to do a little light gaming and maybe edit a few videos or pictures. In the previous scenario it was unlikely that you were going to be loading lots of things from the disk and instead a lot of what you were going to be working with was going to be in memory. Because of this the speed of the memory becomes a key point. With multimedia though chances are you are going to be loading up a bunch of files from the hard disk to manipulate. So here is how I would go about building the system.
Monitor: 21"-24" you still don't need to be worried about the refresh rate too much here and are more concerned with the ammount of desktop space available to display the things you want to manipulate.
Hard Disks: Try to get a motherboard that supports onboard raid. If you manage that make sure you get 2 hard disks and set them up in a Raid 0. This will allow you to decrease the read time from the drive substantially. Also you will want to make sure you get 7200 rpm drives or faster and preferably ones with at least an 8mb cache. Target 500gigs or more for the pair of drives.
Processor: Focus on a faster clock speed over quad cores. Preferably something 2.8ghz or more. Also try and find something with lots of cache. This will allow for less transfers between the RAM and the CPU Cache.
Ram: 3gb worth to start. Need to have plenty of room to manipulate those files once they are loaded. After you have 3gb get more speed in the ram over more ram. If you never use up all that ram having more won't give you any benefit after all.
Video Card: Most 256mb video cards will suite your purpose here. You shouldn't need to spend over 125 for the card. Remember this system is not intended to run the latest and greatest games.
As with the other build I would look for MotherBoard and CPU combos or even a barbone system to start with that meets most of these needs. It can save you a bit of money especailly when you consider barebones systems come with the case and power supply.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Mac T-Shirts
Hmm so I have nothing against Mac users really. That first shirt however could have been done much better. Maybe even split up into 2 or 3 different styles of shirts.
To start the list it would have been much nerdier and cooler to just do !PC. Maybe even spin off from the PC commercials a bit and do I'm !PC. Finally he could have simply done the not symbol with the windows logo in it. The fact that he had to spell everything out is almost like telling someone a joke and then explaining the joke to them.
I will re-iterate I have nothing against the Mac.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
To start the list it would have been much nerdier and cooler to just do !PC. Maybe even spin off from the PC commercials a bit and do I'm !PC. Finally he could have simply done the not symbol with the windows logo in it. The fact that he had to spell everything out is almost like telling someone a joke and then explaining the joke to them.
I will re-iterate I have nothing against the Mac.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Based on a suggestion from a friend on facebook I have setup a twitter account. I then hooked up the RSS feed of this blog to twitter. Hopefully the short clips found on the twitter site will redirect tweets to the actual blog!
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
What to do with that old computer?
So you just built yourself a brand new computer and you don't know what to do with the old one? You could give it away or send it to PC recycle. Maybe you could even sell it on craigslist. I have a better idea though. Why not put it to work in some other fashion.
As I talked about in Dual vs Quad core, the benefits of using multiple cores is load distribution. This does not have to be handled entirely at the OS level.
Here is what you need. An additional monitor, a router or hub, and the desktop space to hook up a second monitor and computer. If you have these then go to http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ and download synergy. Synergy is a piece of KM software. I say KM because it doesn't do anything with video output.
With this piece of software and a second monitor you can now use 2 computers as if they are one. This will allow you to distribute your workload across multiple machines. If you are playing music in the background while playing your favorite game why not load the music up on the second machine and save processor time on your primary machine for the game.
If you have the hardware laying around this can greatly reduce your need to go quad core and can increase the life of your computers.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
As I talked about in Dual vs Quad core, the benefits of using multiple cores is load distribution. This does not have to be handled entirely at the OS level.
Here is what you need. An additional monitor, a router or hub, and the desktop space to hook up a second monitor and computer. If you have these then go to http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ and download synergy. Synergy is a piece of KM software. I say KM because it doesn't do anything with video output.
With this piece of software and a second monitor you can now use 2 computers as if they are one. This will allow you to distribute your workload across multiple machines. If you are playing music in the background while playing your favorite game why not load the music up on the second machine and save processor time on your primary machine for the game.
If you have the hardware laying around this can greatly reduce your need to go quad core and can increase the life of your computers.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Pass it around
I am trying to build traffic to the site. So if you like what you have read please refer me on to your friends. It will greatly help me to build traffic. So far I am averaging a little over 1 unique visit an hour. My goal is to make that 1 unique visits per minute! So lets see how long it takes to get there.
Thanks for all your help!
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Thanks for all your help!
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
MIT Robot with expressions
This thing kind of creeps me out. It is however an awesome step in technology. Over time I am sure that this will evolve into something more consumable for the masses. At least I hope that is the way it goes. Of course if you believe in the way that a lot of sci-fi stories go, eventually the robots will try and take over everything. Just look at the Matrix, Terminator, or I, Robot. Still the risks may be with the potential rewards.
Imagine a society without capitalism. One where the human conditions of lazyness and greed are counter acted by the fact that robots can produce anything a person wants. A society where people don't have to work unless they want to. One where each person is free to explore what makes them happy as opposed to what they need to do to survive. It is an interesting prospect... However not one we can easily reach without a lot of pain and strife.
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Toyotas Robot
This robot is pretty cool. I didn't realize toyota had produced such an advanced model. Although the playing of pomp and cirumstance came across very unemotional and more technical. It reminds me of the star trek episode where data learns to play the violin and is going to give a concert. The crews general response is that while it was technically perfect it left out a lot of the emotion. While I am sure robots will be great for some tasks I definately wouldn't want one to be my nurse. The bed side manors would probably come off cold and calculated.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Dual Core vs Quad Core
What is right for you?
In modern computers processors there is this concept of "cores". A core is simply a processor on the chip. So a Dual core is 2 processors on a single chip while a quad core would be 4.
More cores is better right? This may not be true. Most applications are not optimized to take advantage of multiple cores. Instead they tend to run on a single processor and handle all the work there.
So why would I even want a dual core? Just because a single application does not optimize for multiple cores does not mean that the OS will not. At any given time there are likely dozens of applications running on a persons machine. There is code essential to the running of the OS, Virus Scanners, Firewalls, Messenger Clients, and whatever else you need. The OS will distribute these applications across the cores to balance the load.
So why isn't quad core the best way to go? Well the other major factor you have to consider is clock speed. The faster the clock speed the faster each single processor is at doing what it needs to do. So if an application is taking up 100% of a single processors power currently adding more cores will not speed up how that application runs. Instead you will need more clock speed.
My general rule of thumb is Dual cores with higher clock speeds are better for people running fewer applications at the same time, especially applications that are likely to peg out a processor. Quad core is great for those among us who are running a bunch of applications at once that have a tendancy to peg out a processor.
This is not to say that you will never see perf gains with a slower core quad over a faster dual core but the perf gains will come from being able to balance the load of the system across more procs. Also you probably fall more into the lots of applications category then you thought.
In modern computers processors there is this concept of "cores". A core is simply a processor on the chip. So a Dual core is 2 processors on a single chip while a quad core would be 4.
More cores is better right? This may not be true. Most applications are not optimized to take advantage of multiple cores. Instead they tend to run on a single processor and handle all the work there.
So why would I even want a dual core? Just because a single application does not optimize for multiple cores does not mean that the OS will not. At any given time there are likely dozens of applications running on a persons machine. There is code essential to the running of the OS, Virus Scanners, Firewalls, Messenger Clients, and whatever else you need. The OS will distribute these applications across the cores to balance the load.
So why isn't quad core the best way to go? Well the other major factor you have to consider is clock speed. The faster the clock speed the faster each single processor is at doing what it needs to do. So if an application is taking up 100% of a single processors power currently adding more cores will not speed up how that application runs. Instead you will need more clock speed.
My general rule of thumb is Dual cores with higher clock speeds are better for people running fewer applications at the same time, especially applications that are likely to peg out a processor. Quad core is great for those among us who are running a bunch of applications at once that have a tendancy to peg out a processor.
This is not to say that you will never see perf gains with a slower core quad over a faster dual core but the perf gains will come from being able to balance the load of the system across more procs. Also you probably fall more into the lots of applications category then you thought.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Mac vs PC + OEMs
While I generally don't like the spin that the Mac vs Pc comercials have this one rings true enough. Although how much of a performance hit you may get is debatable all of the shortcuts certainly can clutter up your desktop and they take time to remove.
I wonder what can be done to get OEMs to remove these offers. I thought I heard something about them not putting any ads on your system for a fee at one point in time. But I haven't had any real experience with an OEM system in a while as I prefer to build my own system. Check out my blogs on computer building for more.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
I wonder what can be done to get OEMs to remove these offers. I thought I heard something about them not putting any ads on your system for a fee at one point in time. But I haven't had any real experience with an OEM system in a while as I prefer to build my own system. Check out my blogs on computer building for more.
Please check out more articles at http://techtify.blogspot.com
Adsense
Woot, my Adsense account has been approved and adds are now displaying on my blog. Lets see how well this works. It definately gives me some interesting statistics.
Now to work on driving good traffic to this blog. If you have any suggestions feel free to contact me.
Now to work on driving good traffic to this blog. If you have any suggestions feel free to contact me.
What is Fragmentation?
This may be a term you have heard of but really do not understand what it means. Or more to the point you may not truely understand how it effects you. Fragmentation can greatly effect the speed at which your computer runs. If you had a fast computer when you first bought it and now it is running incredibly slow fragmentation may be one of the root causes. So how can you fix it?
Well before we get to fixing it lets try and understand what fragmentation is. Fragmentation happens over time as files are written and deleted from the hard disk. When the hard disk is partitioned it is divided up into writeable chunks. Files will fill up these writeable chunks in a contiguous stream. If there is not enough contiguous space then the end of the current stream will be left a marker to where the stream continues. This is fragmentation. Each time the system has to find a new location on the hard disk for the file the seek time to load that file increases.
How does this happen? Well lets say you start off with a bunch of small files written to the disk. These files will be written in a constant stream. Where one file ends the next one starts. Then you then eliminate a small batch of these files from the disk thus freeing up space on the disk. This also now creates a pocket where data is going to be written to. Lets say the next file you write is significantly larger then one of the files you deleted. It will attempt to write to the disk and fill up the space of the smaller file first. When it runs into the next file on the disk it will skip to the next available space on the drive and so forth until the file is written out. Multiply this effect over time and you can get a severly fragmented drive.
Not to worry though it is incredibly easy to fix. Just open up My Computer, right click on the drive, and go to the tools tab. You will see a button that says defragment my drive. Click it and go through the prompts and it will clear up this fragmentation. It will basically go through the drive and move files around to attempt to make them contiguous streams thus saving you read time.
Later I will post an article on how to automate defragmentation of the drive so that you never have to worry about it again.
Well before we get to fixing it lets try and understand what fragmentation is. Fragmentation happens over time as files are written and deleted from the hard disk. When the hard disk is partitioned it is divided up into writeable chunks. Files will fill up these writeable chunks in a contiguous stream. If there is not enough contiguous space then the end of the current stream will be left a marker to where the stream continues. This is fragmentation. Each time the system has to find a new location on the hard disk for the file the seek time to load that file increases.
How does this happen? Well lets say you start off with a bunch of small files written to the disk. These files will be written in a constant stream. Where one file ends the next one starts. Then you then eliminate a small batch of these files from the disk thus freeing up space on the disk. This also now creates a pocket where data is going to be written to. Lets say the next file you write is significantly larger then one of the files you deleted. It will attempt to write to the disk and fill up the space of the smaller file first. When it runs into the next file on the disk it will skip to the next available space on the drive and so forth until the file is written out. Multiply this effect over time and you can get a severly fragmented drive.
Not to worry though it is incredibly easy to fix. Just open up My Computer, right click on the drive, and go to the tools tab. You will see a button that says defragment my drive. Click it and go through the prompts and it will clear up this fragmentation. It will basically go through the drive and move files around to attempt to make them contiguous streams thus saving you read time.
Later I will post an article on how to automate defragmentation of the drive so that you never have to worry about it again.
Another cool robot
This one comes from a friend of mine. He uses the XNA framework to connect the 360 controller to the robotic fingers. The parts cost under 200 bucks but this setup can be quite usefull for automation.
Pretty sweet if you ask me!!!
Pretty sweet if you ask me!!!
Cool computer build
Found this cool computer build on YouTube and thought other people might like see it.
It demonstrates some great cable management as well as the cool effects that you can do with lighting. I especially like the front display that allows you to controll the speed of the fans and get read outs for the temp in different areas of the case. Although I am definately more of a fan of the Antec cases the CoolMaster case used in this build is definately very nice.
It demonstrates some great cable management as well as the cool effects that you can do with lighting. I especially like the front display that allows you to controll the speed of the fans and get read outs for the temp in different areas of the case. Although I am definately more of a fan of the Antec cases the CoolMaster case used in this build is definately very nice.
Crysis on an iPhone?
I just got done reading this article off of http://arstechnica.com and let me tell you the concept is pretty cool.
But what could the consequences be. The casual gamer is arguably one of the largest audiences for hardware vendors. These are the people who buy last years latest and greatest video card once the price has dropped to an affordable level. They don't upgrade their hardware every 3-4 months but instead tend to be running on systems that are 3-5 years old.
If suddenly there was a large server farm in the internet cloud that I could connect any PC up to and get an experience that is on par with a 4 month old computer would a person ever upgrade their hardware? My guess is that they wouldn't. They will happily pay a monthly fee and not have to worry about the technical details about the hardware they are running on. The trick will be to charge enough money so that not everyone just jumps on board this system.
If something like this was free or so cheap that it might as well be free then hardware manufactures will see vastly plummeting sales. A server farm which will be able to optemize load across many machines will likely not lead to as many sales as it did in the past.
However the benefits for game companies could be dramatic. Suddenly an entirely new market of people gets opened up for the top of the line games. I can now create a game that pushes the limits of computing and not have to worry if my hardware requirements make it too restrictive to play. The possibilities are large...
But what could the consequences be. The casual gamer is arguably one of the largest audiences for hardware vendors. These are the people who buy last years latest and greatest video card once the price has dropped to an affordable level. They don't upgrade their hardware every 3-4 months but instead tend to be running on systems that are 3-5 years old.
If suddenly there was a large server farm in the internet cloud that I could connect any PC up to and get an experience that is on par with a 4 month old computer would a person ever upgrade their hardware? My guess is that they wouldn't. They will happily pay a monthly fee and not have to worry about the technical details about the hardware they are running on. The trick will be to charge enough money so that not everyone just jumps on board this system.
If something like this was free or so cheap that it might as well be free then hardware manufactures will see vastly plummeting sales. A server farm which will be able to optemize load across many machines will likely not lead to as many sales as it did in the past.
However the benefits for game companies could be dramatic. Suddenly an entirely new market of people gets opened up for the top of the line games. I can now create a game that pushes the limits of computing and not have to worry if my hardware requirements make it too restrictive to play. The possibilities are large...
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