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September 25, 2007
September 23, 2007
links for 2007-09-24
September 22, 2007
links for 2007-09-23
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SuperDuper makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically.
September 21, 2007
links for 2007-09-22
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Great icons for your desktop. My kids will love them.
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Another 3D rendering program...
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Free mind-mapping software
Darth Vader confronts Luke with the Blues
So freaking funny:
Via YesButNoButYes
September 20, 2007
links for 2007-09-21
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Intel Threading Building Blocks
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"This is one of those really great cases of the universe providing some really neat built in tools, like Easter Eggs hidden among the stars."
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Great tips on the run
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A great roundup of some of the greatest manga out there. I've always wanted to get into Manga, and this is the link I'll use when I start...
Spinning Silhouette Illusion
When you first look at this, the woman seems to be spinning clockwise then when you stare at it for a bit, you realize she’s actually spinning the other way!
Stare at it even longer and you realize how cold she must be.
Speed Painting: Einstein
At first, you’re like, this looks stupid, and then a sense of awe slowly comes over you as you realize this artist knows what they’re doing!
Shadow Puppet Mastery
Amazing shadow puppets by Raymond Crowe:
It’s not just about the shapes he makes, but the movements and how he mimics the creatures’ motions. Just stunning.
A string of humorous World of Warcraft themed Videos
Code Monkey
300
Dancing
Beer Song!
September 18, 2007
Still Life
“Martin Klimas destroys a lot of clay to make his art. Combining the silence of Eadweard Muybridge’s horse pictures with the association-rich composition of a still life, Klimas breaks recognizable objects so they become something else, and stops us just at the moment of transformation.”
via themorningnews - Thanks John!
September 17, 2007
Sliding Doberman
Exercise for your dog.
Via YesButNoButYes
links for 2007-09-18
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The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere. Works on Mac and Windows. Sounds cool!
September 16, 2007
links for 2007-09-17
September 12, 2007
links for 2007-09-13
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I know the kids would love to see themselves morphed into giraffes. Cool Mac software for photo morphing.
September 10, 2007
Paintball Headshot
This is the result of hanging out with my son’s friends on Friday night. Check out this entertaining clip of a kid walking into the line of fire.
September 9, 2007
links for 2007-09-10
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A great way to look at facebook photos... on a Mac, anyway.
Raising Stonehenge
This was a very interesting little documentary about some dude in Michigan who demonstrated that a single man (or woman) could have been responsible in raising Stonehenge. Enjoy the video.
September 7, 2007
links for 2007-09-08
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Be more productive with gmail, learn the keyboard shortcuts.
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del.icio.us frontend for Mac OS X
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Whoa, accelerated H.264 encoding via a USB stick for $99 Cool!
Don't pee on an electric fence
Whoa.
September 6, 2007
Klingon Programmers
Catching up on old del.icio.us links tagged as toblog…
Top 12 Things a Klingon Programmer Would Say
- Specifications are for the weak and timid!
- This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual Pentium processors if Iam to do battle with this code!
- You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you’ve read it in the original Klingon.
- Indentation?! — I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
- What is this talk of ‘release’? Klingons do not make software’ releases’. Our software ‘escapes’ leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.
- Klingon function calls do not have ‘parameters’ - they have ‘arguments’ - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
- Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
- I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again.
- A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
- By filing this SPR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!
- You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
- Our users will know fear and cower before our software. Ship it! Ship it, and let them flee like the dogs they are!
via the buck
Priorities
September 5, 2007
Mac Pro Performance
A few weeks ago, I ran some performance tests to see how fast various machine and OS configurations would convert a standard video clip from one format to another. This is a task I do a lot and a task that I knew would determine if I bought a convenient MacBook Pro or a Mac Pro powerhouse.
What you see below are the results of the few simple tests with some analysis on why I think I saw the performance I saw.
The 8-core Mac Pro that I’m using for these tests has some limitations. It’s not fast at all things. First, it has a single 7200rpm SATA drive. This drive is not nearly as fast as, say, a set of 2 15000rpm SAS drives configured in a RAID0. The Mac also has 2GB of memory which seems like a lot at first, but really isn’t that much when you’re dealing with 20k photos, a lot of video, and heavy apps like Photoshop and Illustrator. As memory gets low, the slow disk comes into play as the OS pages stuff that’s not used onto disk so it can execute stuff it does need in memory. When this happens a lot we call this thrashing. This happens to me sometimes. One day, I’ll upgrade to 4 or 8GB of memory and get rid of this problem.
That said, when memory usage is low and the CPU cores are full of instructions, the machine yields pretty decent performance.
A friend sent over a link which looks at the performance gain you can expect by going from a dual-core system (e.g. Intel Woodcrest) to a Quad-core system (ala Intel Clovertown). The author correctly states, IMHO, that the only tasks that will really benefit from the additional cores are rendering and encoding tasks.
Like the author, I notice that my 8-cores are essentially idle when playing a game like World of Warcraft. CPU utilization looks something like this:
The reason for that is probably because most of the work is happening on the video card and the CPU is just loading 3D objects onto the card, dealing with user input and sending and receiving udp datagrams.
AVHCD Encoding to AppleTV Format
The main test that I performed (on a decent number of machines) was to convert a 74MB AVHCD file at 720p resolution to the AppleTV H.264 format. Here are the results:
All times are in seconds. As you can see, the 3.0Ghz Clovertown Mac Pro beats everyone. I should note that the author in the previous link was not using the special 3.0GHz Clovertown that’s found in my Mac. In general, Clovertown systems have clock speeds slower than the 3.0GHZ common speed found on most dual-core Woodcrest machines.
During the 58-second rendering process, my cores looked like this:
Oooh, that’s a sweet sight to see!
Plus, the machine was completely usable. I was even in iPhoto publishing lots of photo events to .Mac and I felt like the machine was essentially idle. I have found that this kind of multitasking seems better implemented on the Mac than it does on the PC. Though, I must admit that I’m a bit subjective in my opinion.
DVD Encoding to Apple iPod Format
My second test involved the great dvd ripper, Handbrake. I had a 23-minute clip on one of my DVD’s and I decided to pit my humble MacBook (Core Duo) against my Octocore Mac monster. The results were not surprising. The Mac Pro beat the MacBook by a factor of 5.6x:
There are some gotchas with Handbrake that I had to play around with to get the results I wanted. If you play around with Handbrake, you see that it has de-interlacing capabilities. The settings are None, Fast, Slow, Slower, and Slowest. If you use one of the “slow” settings, the rendering process becomes serial in nature and Handbrake is essentially only able to use a single core for its work. This drastically slows down the rendering process.
Since I could not really tell the difference between the Fast and Slow modes, I decided to use the fast mode since I was able to burn a huge number of DVD’s in a single day.
Some Analysis
The better performance of the Mac Pro system when compared to he MacBook and some of the other systems tested is a combination of multiple factors:
- Clock speed of CPU
- Presence of accelerated encoders**
- Clock speed of memory
- Clock speed of front-side bus
- Size of L2 cache
- etc.
** I saw some interesting results in the Handbrake log file: [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX MMXEXT SSE SSE2.
On the MacBook, I saw the same message (meaning the MacBook supports the same Intel multimedia extensions as the MacPro), but I also saw this:
“No accelerated IMDCT found”
An IMDCT is an “Inverse Modified Discrete Cosine Transform”. This is a computer algorithm that fits changes in color found in a photo or video to a sine curve set under various scaling parameters. You achieve a lot of compression doing this because it’s cheaper to say that the color changes found in a snaking path through an 8x8 block of pixels is similar to a cosine curve squeezed by 10% than it is to store each and every one of those 64 pixels. An IMDCT is a very CPU-intensive operation and if there is hardware on the video card or elsewhere that can accelerate this calculation, then this is yet another factor contributing to the speed differences between the Mac Pro and the MacBook.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to spend a premium on an Octocore mac, I would not bother unless you’re going to do these kinds of long renders. 4-cores on the Woodcrest model are more than enough for most applications, including World of Warcraft.
PS: Oh, and the DVD’s I ripped to my iPod were not copy protected. I would never…
September 4, 2007
links for 2007-09-05
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Cool mathematical methods for producing marbling effects on a computer.
Simpsonize Me
I was pretty impressed with this simpsonize me tool. You upload a photo of yourself, answer a few questions, and viola, you are ready to appear on the Simpsons.
Here is mine:
I’m obviously wondering what they do with the image that you upload. I suppose I could play with it a bit, say add some glasses, but I think they mainly get your hair color and not much else. Anything more and I’d be pretty impressed. That said, they seem to be using something called Betaface, which could be the heart behind their face detection technology.
Oh, and there are tons of options to customize your image if you don’t feel like they hit the mark. This is a truly impressive web app. Here is me at 80-years old:
and with some tweaks:
Try it out!
The Art of Marbling
I never heard of this “art” before, but I’m blown away by the forethought and creativity this medium must demand. Check out this awesome video, accompanied by a great new age tune…
oh, and this:
Thanks, haha.nu
September 3, 2007
links for 2007-09-04
September 2, 2007
links for 2007-09-03
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Cool program to simulate gravity on large bodies...
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The quintessential text editor for the Mac
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The leading wireless discovery tool for Mac OS X, providing plug-ins for finding AirPort networks, Bluetooth devices, and Bonjour services with your Mac.
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An awesome utility for Windows, allowing you to read Mac OS volumes
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Software to play windows media on your Mac/QuickTime
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An awesome video-creation utility that takes photos and makes brilliant "Ken Burns Effect"-styled slideshows you can add to your productions.
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How to automatically save and backup gigabytes of data on Amazon S3's website for pennies a month. Well, maybe a few dollars... but not a lot of them.
Submitting to all things Mac
I’m a recent switcher to the Mac. My first computer was a TI 994a, then I moved onto a custom-built IBM XT (clone) running PC-DOS, then MS DOS, then onto IBM AT and IBM 386 computers running Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1 (3.11, hah!), and eventually I was a very early adopter of Windows NT, then to Windows NT 4 (SP3!), Windows 2000, Windows XP and most recently Windows Vista x64 at work.
I’ve made a living on the Windows platform but I eventually saw that there was no need for this at home. As I see my kids growing more comfortable with computer technology, I wanted them to grow into a platform that made things easy and allowed them to be successful at anything they wanted to accomplish. In the end, Windows and Dell computers simply did not fit he bill.
Consider my kids’ iMacs. There is one cable running from the machine to the wall, a power cable. If you are a PC user, recall the mess behind your desk and consider if it’s all really necessary. On the iMac, the display is built-in and the mouse and keyboard are wireless. The iMac even comes with a remote, making it a comfortable DVD and music player they can manipulate via FrontRow as they recline on their chairs.
But I digress.
Over the past 14 months, I’ve replaced each and every machine in my home with a Mac. Why did I do this? It’s hard to say. Lots of reasons. Let me try to explain.
Over the past few years, my appreciation for Apple and the way the engineer their products has been steadily increasing. It was an iPod at first, then iTunes, then the experience of being in the Apple store. Apple’s marketing team blitzed my mind brilliantly. They knew me, a PC user, and slowly worked their way into my world by bringing key products to Windows.
As I saw the way they put software together and how well they engineered their physical hardware, I thought to myself there must be a better way than Dell, Windows, anti-virus, anti-spam, spyware, apps that barely work together and a tangled mess of wires behind my desk.
Then, Apple switched processors from the PowerPC to Intel. All the while, virtualization software was growing exponentially in popularity and performance was becoming almost native. Then Apple released Boot Camp, allowing Windows XP and Vista to run natively on any Intel-based Mac. It was all just becoming obvious. I could have my cake and eat it on flaming-fast, beautiful, hardware.
I started with a laptop, a MacBook, and gently eased myself into the Mac world. I listened to Mac Podcasts, tried out Mac software, and tried to simulate my regular workflows using Mac software.
There were some gems on the PC that I would miss very badly if I switched. Visual Studio, C++, and .NET are where all of my experience lay. Without those, I’m somewhat powerless to make the computer do more than what I can purchase or download. Google’s Picasa is a brilliant program and one that I still miss. But that’s where virtualization kicks in. Using Parallels or VMWare Fusion, I can run all of this side-by-side with my Mac software. Ultimately, though, if the Mac was going to be a successful replacement for my PC, I had to have certain apps run natively.
On the PC, I spent most of my time in these apps :
- Visual Studio for programming
- Ulead’s VideoStudio for simple video editing
- TextPad for text editing
- Google’s Picasa for photo management
- Sony’s SR2 Raw converter
- NEAT Image for noise-reduction of photos
- Adobe Photoshop for photo enhancement and gaming (map-making, for instance)
- Adobe Illustrator for all kinds of creative experiments (and for map-making, of course)
- Microsoft Word for word processing
I spend my time making maps for D&D (some here), managing my home photos (I have, like 22,000 digital photos), doing simple video editing (again, like 100+ hours of DV and HDV video), programming, and of course web browsing and blogging.
I chugged along on my MacBook… experimenting, downloading, and trying out. I did this for months and months. I was only “playing” with iPhoto, though, which I felt was never nearly as good as Picasa. I used the MacBook on the train for browsing the web (thanks to my phone’s bluetooth Internet sharing) and reading PDF’s. I subscribed to Apple Downloads and found some awesome gems:
- TextMate - An awesome text editor. I use it for blogging… like right now
- Parallels and later VMWare Fusion
- iStumbler
- MacDrive - Which helps me manage the transition from PC to Mac by allowing my PC to see my Mac-formatted external drive
- Flip4Mac - Which allows me to play Windows Media video on the Mac within QuickTime
- QuickTime - I think that a lot of people don’t realize how amazing QuickTime Pro is. At $29, it’s a serious must-have application if you do anything with Video
- Photo2Movie - An excellent program that turns photos into digital video slideshows… with some amazing Ken Burns effects
- Jungle Disk - How to automatically save and backup gigabytes of data on Amazon S3’s website for pennies a month. Well, maybe a few dollars… but not a lot of them.
- Hardware Monitor - Similar programs for the PC are just crap and they have to deal with gazillions of motherboard manufacturers. This program monitors everything in a clean and convenient interface
- Adium - For all your IM needs in a single window
- Quicksilver - The only program launcher you’ll ever need… for keyboard junkies
- TeamSpeex - A TeamSpeak client for the Mac
- ChronoSync - A wondrous file synchronization program
- Quadrium - Kind of like a fractal, image-processing, Yahoo! Pipes extravaganza.
For the latest mac software links, at least the ones that I find interesting, check out my del.icio.us links:
http://del.icio.us/NickCody/software%2BMac or subscribe
And, of course, the Mac has some built-in wonders:
- Grapher - An amazing graphing and plotting package which can animate charts and formula at the touch of a button
- Disk Utility - Norton Ghost? Who needs it. The Mac has this functionality built right in.
Now, yes, Windows has tons of software. Tons more than the Mac. I have found, though, that Mac Software works better together. Whether it’s support for Automator, or for special locations like iTunes and iPhoto stores, applications tend to make easy tasks easy and hard things possible. I borrowed the analogy from my friend the .NET Addict, who describes developing Cocoa applications that way.
For instance, when I want to insert an audio clip as background music for a slideshow, iPhoto shows me my iTunes library within the insert-audio dialog box and supplies a convenient instant-search box so I can quickly locate the tune that I’m looking for, right within iPhoto. 3rd party apps are amazingly consistent in this way, more so than I have experienced with Windows apps.
Then, it was time to take things up a notch and, for Christmas, I splurged and got my kids a pair of iMacs. I blogged about that experience back in December of last year.
I have never regretted that purchase. My kids were able to do more with the Mac with the same computer skills they had 5 minutes earlier, as they shared a Dell PC. The kids just ‘got’ the software and were able to do magic with it.
I even found an awesome typing-tutor program for the Mac, called TypingTrainer4Mac. My kids record their speed every day and have been steadily becoming expert touch-typists.
Then, about a month ago I decided to take the final plunge. After nearly a year of research, I had decided that the Mac was my platform.
I went and purchased a Mac Pro to finish the job I had started last summer. In addition to the Mac Pro, I went and replaced by old version of Adobe Creative Suite 1 with a brand-new version of Creative Suite 3 Design Premium for the Mac. This suite was perhaps my most important software purchase to date and was the final nail on the coffin.
But Apple didn’t stop there. Just a few weeks ago they released iLife ‘08, an amazing update to an already amazing built-in package. iLife ‘08 finally made me forget about Picasa (well, almost… Picasa is tons faster even with my 8-core Mac Pro). With the introduction of the ‘Event’ concept and tighter integration with their .mac service, I was sold on the Mac photo management workflow. iMovie ‘08 also leveraged the ‘Event’ concept and for the first time, I find myself actually with a viable platform to bring in my 100 hours of DV and HDV video so it’s all available for editing and DVD authoring.
But Apple didn’t stop there. They came out with an update to iWork which included a Spreadsheet package and some amazing usability enhancements for Pages, their word processor. Pages can now handle all editing tasks from simple word-processing to more advanced page layout (via two fully-separate modes of operation). Pages can even open the brand-new Office 2007 file format and has naive support for drop-shadows, reflections, and many of the native layout capabilities that I love about Office 2007 (I use it at work and Office 2007 rocks pretty hard).
The beauty of the “Apple Way” is that they don’t ever seem to stop. I know I sound like a drooling fanboy here, but really that’s what this post is about so I’m going with it since I’m sure to be complaining about this and that in the coming months as I go through withdrawal. This post is mainly about recognizing a successful software company who is simply hitting all the marks that I needed someone to hit in order to win me over. Unlike Microsoft, Apple updates their OS regularly and each revision is a major leap forward. Vista is nice, but it was too-huge an update and we waited way too long for it. It will take years for ISV’s to adapt their software to work the way Microsoft would have Vista apps work, if ever.
I have also noticed the obvious advantage that Apple has in designing the hardware along with the Software. Functionality like sleeping a notebook are so much smoother on the Mac than they are on the PC. You just can’t compare the experience. There are some amazing synergies that you get when you control both the hardware and the software. I’m sure an Apple TV is in my future as well since it works so naturally with my entire Photo, Video, and Music collection. The iPod itself epitomizes this integration and is perhaps the most popular example of how true and beautiful integration can be a reality.
All in all, I’m happy and excited about the possibilities in this new era for me.