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A House, A Community

So, I thought about this a while ago. You always hear about those houses stuffed full of computers, but I have my doubts on their usefulness. Even though that's the case, here's some ideas for one:

A little, distributed, dynamic computer thing

So, theres a few different versions, and whilst I was working over summer (why I wasnt here) I shared a link with a colleague about a distributed, dynamicly linking processor thing, and we started discussing how we could make one of our own (being that we worked in an electronics lab). The main problems we faced were about the communication connnections and the necessary symmetry needed. We were thinking squares and we threw a number of ideas around, none of which weren’t that great tbh.

I started thinking about it again yesterday, and jotted a few things down. I decided to go for a triangle shape due to the fact that it would be symmetric for the coms.

The image at the top shows the footprint for the coms, where the two outsticking ‘pins’ fit into the other two ‘holes’, giving full-duplex coms and 2 power lines, these are mounted on the same side as all the basic internal structure of the board. So if you plug a few together you have a self updating network. Each has its own unique ID and every message/packet is addressed to one specific board. When a packet is received, the destination address is read (and a hash of the whole package is stored in a time-expiring set) and then offered to all its neighbours. If the packet has already been sent through this board recently (its still in the set) it is ignored. If the package is addressed to this board, it isnt transmitted but is used instead.

A board can be specialised with some kind of IO ports and things, for example a RJ45 connector could be affixed to the opposite side of the board and this board could then be use to push things onto an external network. Or two could be joined together and dedicated to a serial port (two because of its size). Etc, etc…

The idea being that you could build the equivalent of a standard PC and just beable to add IO and storage etc. on the fly.

On Google Waves

So, Google Waves and its associated protocol were announced at the Google IO conference (video on waves homepage homepage). They mentioned that it was a collaboration platform. I thought ‘hmmmm, what about….’:

• Would it be possible to create a tool that let you upload a directory of text files…
  • For example a set of source code for a java package net.fbstj.example would be in ./net/fbstj/example/*.java
• …so that they still appeared as files (maybe as inline-reply-like things) and were editable in the standard sense, and maybe the traceback would be taggable.
• And then, would it be possible to download that set of files, as they are in that wave, just like you do for the pictures thing.
• What about subdirectories, I hear you ask. Well they could either be separate waves;
  • so wave named net/fbstj/example links to wave titled net/fbstj/example/Class.java
• or each directory is a ‘level’ of inline-reply-likeness;
  • so wave net/fbstj/example has an ‘inline reply’ at line with the words Class.java wihch holds the contents of the class file.
• or they could all be at the same ‘sub’ level but be ‘named’ by their appropriate level;
  • so wave named net/fbstj has ‘inline reply’ at line example/Class.java and another at line utils/AnotherClass.java
• I guess it depends on how much code you have, and how many sub packages you have too.

Another question I have is, is it possible to make a wave read-only?

A third I ask: is it possible to see the ‘source’ of a wave? as I like editing it directly. Also what about semantics, like RDFa and things like that.

What about transclusion? there is no point in having a hard copy of a document. And something using mozilla bespin would be tasty/sweet :D

Thougths on OpenSity

I thought I might see if we can make OpenSity peer to peer and I also realised that the best way of locating points on the surface would be to use polar coordinates. I think we should make the graphics later, much later, but it would be nice if it eventualy got to the stage of 3D emersive graphics and stuff.

@p2p: maybe having the oringional creator of that world being the “server” and it dedicates tasks out to all the other nodes. and while the “server” node is offline, they dont compute for that particular world.

and maybe to keep building file sizes down, they should be super-modular-ized aka each window or door or w/e is an object, and a building is made up of many different bits and pieces, (maybe the overall bulding volume is a frame, and the skins are texture filled or something) but yeah, this is all for later on when theres an actuall gui… Also the “lots” would be dynamicly generated, the building would be plonked onto the plot of land and then paths from doors and garrages would be made to the nearest pavement/road and stuff like that.

I was thinking the gui mode (if it gets that far) wouldnt be real time to start off with. and also, the AI would have to be pretty good to deal with any tasks that the player doesnt want to do at that particular time. The simulator may want to be run in the background for processing help :)

mikeee

gahhhh, my Asus eeePC doesnt like microphones. I have ArchLinux installed on both my eee’s (a black 2G surf and a white 701) and my pc. All I wanted (on top of what is allready satisfied by my current set up) is a skype conversation with my friends. But OHHH NO!!! ALSA seems to not like microphone inputs. I edited /etc/asound.state to set the things all on yet it still didnt use that and just muted them constantly.

Oh wait, I found out that for somereson its bypassing /etc/asound.state and just not doing much. so I added the commands “amixer set i-Mic on” and “amixer set e-Mic on” to .bashrc (bit annoying bit it works)

Yet skype STILL doesnt pick anything up… :( I can hear myself fine from the eversosligtly amped input-output loop, but meh, i give up.

Also after the quick eee-kernel update provided by toofishes you no longer need the madwifi dependency, which confused me a while, untill i found the guys blog and read it hehehe