Archive for February, 2007

One of those silly little games you spend too much time with:

RubyTooth mouse 1.0

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Some time ago, most people would not even think about creating a web site. Today, it became so easy to do (see another post coming soon) that the only question is not how, but why. Consequently, I decided to give you a few of the common ideas that led most web site designers and bloggers (even amateur ones):

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• Initially, because you have something to tell. Of course, you should start only if people usually ask you about something and consider that you have something interesting to say about it. If it is not the case, you may be led by the will to become this kind of expert or reference person on an issue you like.
• Because you can. We do a lot of things just because we can, not for very complex reasons
• Because being recognized expert on a field may attract some interesting job that you could not consider in any other way. I remember that Tom’s Hardware was started by a medical student who had some understanding of technology and hitech gadgets. He moved from Medecine to Technology.
• Because -if you do it well- you may earn a neat income. Most blogs do not bring any money. However, some are quite a neat source of money. A few thousands of visits per day (easily reachable if you are persistent enough to produce at least 100 posts per year) will be easily monetized to a few hundred dollars per year with the help of Google AdSense or other polite/discreet advertising.

Of course, you need to spend some time to it. But, this is not a lot. For many people browsing the Internet is already a daily activity. Spending a few minutes to keep a log of your activities or researches would be easy. Spending a few hours a week to write about your hobby is usually a neat way to ensure that your knowledge is understandable and that you can share it with others. In some cases, you will even notice that some of your friends will go to your web site before asking you for details that will make the matter for further posts (I often re-use some of my emails into posts).

Will 2007 be the year of your web site?

While AMD-ATI are readying their R600 to take back the graphics performance crown from the nVidia G80/8800 cards, we cannot expect this to be the last move of this competition.

The word is out that nVidia will be bringing a successor to the 8800-series of cards (between 400€ and 550€): G86 should be bringing DirectX 10 to the masses.

The date? March 2007, probably just before CEBIT.

R600: This is the code name of the next graphics cards (or rather the graphics chipset) from AMD-ATI. It is the (long-awaited) answer from the Canadian manufacturer bought by AMD in 2006 to the nVidia G80 chipset (that led to the nForce 8800 series (GTS or GTX)).

The target: High-end graphics cards, DirectX 10-compatible (DX10 is the new standard exclusively on Windows Vista) and aiming to transform the PC video gaming world (this last statement could be copied from any new technology, though).

The news: AMD-ATI presented its R600 solution to its partners and they seemed to be strongly impressed. If, today, nVidia has the advantage of being alone in the high-end market with its 8800/G80 cards, AMD-ATI is supposed to be coming back very firmly. They are ready to take the performance crown back.

The date? March 2007, probably just before the CEBIT.

You want your own blog? After all, it’s so easy. There are many solutions for this including:

• Create your own web site (preferably after reading my previous articles)
• Start a WordPress-based site in a matter of minutes on the WordPress.com server

As a matter of fact, with the second solution, you will find all tools already installed and you can start writing posts immediately.

After a previous post about the reasons there are not to use the HTML tables (and to prefer CSS tables), I want to come back to this issue with my own experience.

When I went to the fifth version of this web site interface (the one you see at the time of posting this article), I tried to build the site theme using as much CSS as possible in order to ease future migrations and to lighten the result by separating content and styles. However, it soon appeared clear that the 3-column organization (with footer) i sone of the most difficult contruction for CSS tables and it always creates problems of rendering on different browsers.

This is why I decided to choose the best of both worlds. Let’s clarify this position. HTML tables are very simple to build and are correctly implemented in the vast majority of Internet browsers (their definition is so old now…). I decided to build the basic squeleton out of HTML tables. But I limited myself to the structure only. All the styling and formatting is done in CSS tags.

This is a very powerful solution. Use one technique for what it’s best. HTML tables allow easy definition of columns, clear grouping, etc. CSS tags allow splitting content and structure, defining clearly sizes, margins, paddings, borders, cell backgrounds, colours, etc. This gives a theme that is very tolerant (e.g. HTML tables behave well when an image is sized erroneously big -a quite common error- and forces the column dimensions). But the styling is very flexible in CSS.

If you are interested, I invite you to check the sources of this page and the associated CSS file.

I have always be willing to test-run RAID technology for the storage of the files on my personal LAN. This technology has the advantage of being far more secure than the usual hard disc storage. By using more than one disc drive, RAID allows to gain additional security. In short, if a disc drive fails (it happens!), the RAID array (that’s its name) will keep working with no data loss [more about it on the wikipedia encyclopedia].

However, using such a technology was not for everybody up to now. You had to be a computer guy to know about it, you had to be a real computer guru to use it. It all changed with two things:

• Some RAID appliances start appearing on the market. You buy them and you get it.
• GNU/Linux now includes the needed tools to allow building of a RAID array if you are willing to connect enough drives to your GNU/Linux box.

I wanted to test the later. So here is a summary of my experiences with RAID technologies just using a couple of hard drives (two drives in RAID-1 redundant mode) and OpenSUSE 10 that I had recently installed on this machine.

(more…)

Information tidbit coming (indirectly) from Microsoft. It is possible to install a Vista upgrade even without having a previously installed Windows (it is quite interesting because of the tremendous price difference between full Vista and upgrade Vista). Apparently, according to Paul Thurrott, you only have to follow the steps:

1. Boot on the upgrade Vista DVD
2. Click on “Install now”
3. Refuse to give the license number when asked for it
4. Tell the Vista kind you bought (when requested by the install software)
5. Finish install normally
6. Restart the install program from the Vista upgrade DVD, as soon as the first install is finished
7. Do a normal in-place upgrade
8. Give your license number when requested

The Microsoft license does not agree with this (you are supposed to already have a Windows license to use an upgrade Vista DVD), but it is documented internally at Microsoft, seemingly.