Jul 01
adminCode Monkey year dean was
Up til last year bob was up to no good. This year nothing better has happened. However Dean has been up to mischief. Several unimportant things transpired and then there was only one. But overall final year eng dean was worse than any other vintage. Final year dean was loose. He enjoyed himself too much and got no more than he thought he would. But that was dean and he played golf. Does that explain it? But then one night dean was subjected to a red card. He drunk some crate and then whipped out his clubs. He showed his clubs to jono and jono was loving it. Jono was all like these clubs are off the hizzle. But then timaru got mentioned which inevitable lead on to me and jono talking about dejavoodoo next month. Then an r8 was mentioned and shit just got real. Now for the future. Nothing deans blog is up to f-all.
Jun 13
adminCode Monkey
Here is my two dollars worth why people should never use a switch statement. To make this worse I am using Python that does not even support a switch/case statement just to make my point more apparant.
Lets take a general case, where
Summary
In high level software languages, using switch statements can lead to errorenous results because the require a compare. Using maps (or any other abstract data type) can improve performance of a look up table by hasing the keys giving an ideal O(1) response. Also using a lookup table means that a class can defines its own implementation and interface which requires outside objects to conform to its own standard. Therefore ….
May 19
adminRandom Randal
At 1:30 am after Randy had enough of Randy Bat cave penguin hunter trial grooving ozfest of a report. He thought its Randy time. So he headed home where he got all randy over the power switch on his over the top mega deluxe chessburger McMac double cow no lamb pattie. It was fair to say Randy was randy. After minutes searching the internet like a cheeta on speed, he hit the jack pot (or should I say rand spot) with his randporn dot randoff random number generated sent from the future to prove to everyone that time lies on a secondary plane of wok woks and pizza bases. This amazing discovery gave Randy the courage to ask his friend Bob if he could borrow his pencil. Bob replied “I am a pencil”. Randy was in tears because a pencil was talking to him but what was about to happen next shock him forever……
…. “I a bomb funk dinosaur from Randy world sent to touch your every … … … horny love tube zigbee phasor machine. Which just for your knowledge is white.” The …. … … was excluded for public viewing and Randy will never forget it.
Simon the cat watcher.
Signing off
For Randy + Bob
May 05
adminRandom Randal
Functional programming languages I ask you this; why do we have to put lambda’s everywhere? Just because Lambda calculus is fun doesn’t mean we need to over do it. For example look at this piece of Scheme code.
(define find-last-zero
(lambda (ls)
(- (- (length ls) 1) (find-first-zero (reverse ls)))))
(define makemove
(lambda (board player col)
(let ((row (find-last-zero (list-ref board col))))
(if (< row 0)
#f ; no room left!
(setsquare board row col player)))))
(define getmove-random
(lambda (board player)
(let* ((cols (length board))
(c (random cols))
(newboard (makemove board player c)))
(if newboard
c
(getmove-random board player)))))
(define getmove-human
(lambda (board player)
(let ((cols (length board)) (move 0) (newboard #f))
(displays "\nEnter column [0-" (- cols 1) "]: " )
(set! move (read))
(set! newboard (makemove board player move))
(if newboard
move
(begin
(displays "INVALID MOVE - TRY AGAIN!\n")
(getmove-human board player))))))
Someone needs to sort that syntax out.
SORRY, i may be a tad angry at Scheme because my text editor does not highlight any of the syntax and coding with just black text and white background is hard on the eyes. How did they do it in the 70’s.
May 05
adminProjects
i. Preface
This page will present C++ code for stereo vision using OpenCV.
Information will arrive in a few weeks.
May 05
adminProjects
i. Pre-Face
This page (will) describes a multipurpose wireless unit developed by Roving Networks that is being controlled by a Cortex M3 (LM3S608) microprocessor.
The information for this project will be presented here in two months. So check back soon.
Apr 22
adminRandom Randal
While i was looping for an else I found an if. This if told me that my else found a goto that went to my loop. So I asked myself when does if equal else???? …. AND more importantly what will happen when it does.
Apr 22
adminCode Monkey
It is now 2010 and computing is about to enter into a new dawn. (Referring to computing as instruction being execute on some hardware being produced by a chip manufacturing). Now let me explain what this dawn is by first addressing the past.
The Past
Through out the 90’s and early 2000’s chip manufactures such as Intel and AMD were driven by Moore’s law and their marketing strategy reflected this. That is, each new chip architecture, while it had various new features, also had more transistors and better clock speed. This was achieved through reducing the channel width of MOS devices (making them smaller). Call me old (and a bit cheap) but I still have a P4 in my PC. It runs fine, maybe seven or so years old, but yes it still does the job. I mention this because the P4 was the pinnacle of Moore’s law. Heaps of small transistors (for that time) and a fast clock speed (for that time).
The P4 series was the demise of single threaded computing. Chip manufactures and the larger semiconductor industry realized that the current fabrication processes for transistors were hitting their limits, well at least for staying in line with Moore’s law. Thus, the industry moved towards parallel computing. Chip sets with multiple cores and multiple threads within each core.
The Current Computer Trend
Computing at the moment is stagnant with no real since of direction. I say this because if you sit back and think about what technologies are being pushed by the big players in the industry it is easy to observed that they are all waiting to see where the new mass consumer market will go. Just to clear this up, here are some technologies I am referring to:
- Smart phone (iPhone, Google’s Phone etc)
- IPad
- Netbook computing
- Supercomputing with GPUs
Now notice that in this short list that:
- I have not mentioned directly a chip manufacturers name and
- There is a clear divide between the applications.
What I am trying to get out is that companies such as Google, and Apple are pushing new technologies that they think add value to the customer. These technologies do not require massive computing power, especially the net-book. If Google get their way, move over Windows, the net-book just needs a browser. But it does not stop there. Lets say the net-book takes off and your digital life is completely stored remotely, what happens to Western Digital. Hard drives, where do they go. What happens to operating systems? what happens to linux? Haha, I almost shead a tear.
To make my point clear, these new applications are forcing hardware manufactures to rethink their marketing strategies. This relates back to the point I alluded to earlier, the computing market is stagnant. To back this up, my work computer has an i7 in it, and to be honest I am not that impressed. I get home and my P4 still does the job. Okay it may do it a little slower for every day use and a lot slower if I am running a MATLAB simulation. So why am I not impressed. Well to be honest I feel that Intel do not believe in their own product. Now this leads me to my last explaination of this rant.
The scientific community has always looked for more processing power. Why? the need to run simulations, that’s why. Driven by the gaming market GPUs have far out performed CPUs for a while (when you compare a small subset of hardware characteristics). Nvidia and ATI have both opened up their hardware graphic pipeline for more general computing. This has lead to much recent research into areas such as computer clusters with GPUs.
The Future
The question is, what technology will the mass consumer market follow? and where does this leave the chip manufacturers? Here is my opinion. Chip manufactures such as Intel will have to make a division in their headline processors; One division for powerful processing and the other for low power, long life processing for net-books etc. To re-inforce this point, there is no reason why the future net-books could not run of a RISC based system. They new ARM 9 MCU’s from T.I are extremly powerful and will only get more powerful in the future. Are Intel willing to lose market share to T.I in a new market that will see embedded systems take on general computing. Who knows? only time will tell. One thing is for sure, the marketing stradagies will have to change. Interesting times ahead….
Apr 22
adminUncategorized
After many years on inactivity, Exception 55 is now using wordpress to communicate with the world. More content will come.
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