RedBrain @ Blog :~$

Embeded Devices!

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 | Tutorials, Update! | No Comments

Hey just been doing ALOT of googling there for like 2 hours but found some really good sites for embeded devices for really small computers ideally this is what i want:

http://www.gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=202

But it seems pretty expensive and i doubt they deliver to uk

So yeah i found these 3 websites:

http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/index.php?osCsid=1f408b693cd29d41e9a7d146485f6327

http://soekris.eu/shop/index.php

http://www.skpang.co.uk/

They all seem to be pretty good but i aim to make my own ipod pretty much i am a little sick of having my ipod not play .ogg. And i mean Linux is already ported to arm and via platforms so i am pretty sorted then all i really need is mplayer and a little bit of disk space to put some music on!

So once i or… IF i get something working i will put up a tutorial on what i done then i will aim to put my Operating system project to be aimed for an opensource media player type thing

And i am working on a pdf for you guys “Modern approach to i386 OS Development”

Because everything you see now is all old school using boot disks ever 10 min when you fix a bug in your assembly but really now you dont need this all you need is qemu/bochs and all the info is dated 1998 but really alot of stuff has changed since then and really its makes you learn alot!!! Of how your hardware does stuff for you.

I think Softwear developers forget the amount of stuff your hardware actually does for you now adays like when you think of it if you are a java developer esp you are sooo hidden from what your computer actually does to do everything you are getting java to do. But yeah its a great learning experience

Xen anyone?!

Monday, November 10th, 2008 | Tutorials | No Comments

This is a good ubuntu host documentation for a xen setup… shudder xen :S kvm is awesome and anyhoo its just to test it but this is good documentation to get an overview on how to set it up!

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Xen

OS system Devel?!

Saturday, November 8th, 2008 | Tutorials | No Comments

So anyways i have always been intereasted into OS system design like how does it work, as in what if you have nothing but hardware you have no compiler but hardware and you want an OS these links are really helping me understand it all now:

I am working my way through how the boot process of an OS works its actualy much more simple than you would think, you think there would be much more to it. Plus these papers are really good in that they are practical usualy papers are just a bunch of idiots talking about what other people have made and they usualy suck in the end but thses are good:

http://williamstallings.com/OS/OS5e.html

http://www.nondot.org/sabre/os/articles/TheBootProcess/

Update

Friday, November 7th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I put up my experiences with Linux development recently and a tutorial on how to get up and running with the git tree and qemu for testing. I’ll not put up and emacs tutorial i will be here all night!!!

Anyways emacs is worth learning by far!!! It will save you alot of headaches trying to code on a remote server without X etc via ssh and to quite debugging etc its very powerfull

Intereasting?!

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 | Update! | No Comments

So just been doing alot of googleing waiting on benchmarks!

Memory hot plug is out of experimental in the newest linux kernel 2.6.27, and cpu hot plug is in experimental this is going to be get quite intereasting willl kvm or Xen implement these to make virtual machines aware of spare host resources that auto updates all the time this means you could dyncialy use a slider to add more memory or cpus to a virtual machine which would be nice for cloud computing:

http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/cpu-hotplug.txt

jViewer

Monday, October 27th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Just uploaded a new version:

1-Much improved UI

2-Proper Logger

3-Better Design

4-Creation of a similar winscp fileview

Couldn’t resist …

Monday, October 27th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Hey just posting a nice pic, thinking of getting a cat recently because i would prefer a Dog but its not fair having a dog in a city because i would prefer to walk it properly and keep him healthy but cats can just sleep and relax all day

Update!

Sunday, October 19th, 2008 | Update! | No Comments

So yeah i have been quiet for a while mostly due to me being sick while i also had no internet. But i am going to upload a newer better faster nicer version of jViewer tommorrow it works ALOT more like winscp and much much much better programming.

I have a really nice Utils Package i always put with my java apps now has Strung utils and Logging utils make your program really nice to debug etc. But yeah its mostly inspired from my contribution to aTunes last year they had a really nice logger so i took their config and layout because it rules!

Anyways i’ll try to upload this tommorow after i go for a run after work. Ah yeah thats right group of us at work are training to run in the Belfast maratoon next year as a relay team and do like 5 miles each. Dam running is really awesome but dam hard i have like a circuit i have started running its 3.5 miles but i just want to master it and be able to do it really fast then move onto a longer circuit etc. Just building it up and taking my time etc. I would like to go back swimming training but meh i am too tired when i get home to rush to the pool cause it only stays open to 9pm which sucks balls!

Oh yeah Check out MOTU Its a nice set of tutorials on how to get started on Packaging for ubuntu i aim to start helping with it alot! But instead i have now joined the Rhythmbox mailing list and i am starting some SIMPLE bug fixing. Its taking a few hours to get the grips with how things where done in rhythmbox its pretty complex but dam amazing they have this really gool logger inside it and the gstreamer extensions make it awesome to easily extend to a freedom hating media player playing mp3 -mp4 bla bla its just very very well made but some bugs frustrate me it never ‘watches’ my media library very well and it would be nice to have better last.fm extensions to showyour profile and artists profiles etc and wiki info much more integrated like banshee or amarok, though amarok’s interface sucks tbh. It does have a really nice feature rich interface to the user!

I am also on the KVM mailing list, GTK pod, Linux kernel.I am really starting to get serious about my work now i have to say. Its dam hard work, but reading the linux kernel mailing list is pretty dam cool. Upstream patches seem pretty difficult as Linus wants to have a perfect stable branch at all times but others think otherwise lol! Anyways KVM mailing list is pretty nice too. But i have to update my kvm tutorials as i never went into any detail about networking and better explanations on things, but i’ll try to update this more and test it on the servers at work, i can put kvm on my desktop computer, cause i barely use it atm except to play eve-online and quake 3. But my desktop has a good cpu but only 2 cores :’( and only 2gb ram. My server at work has …. 16cores and 68GB ram! So you can see the difference!

But yeah i feel a little all over the place i have wayyyy too many projects on my mind and need to focus a little but i want to really start contributing back to ubuntu more than anything. I am meant to be doing libjpod but i just dont have to time atm been kind of all over the place just messing about those guys but i’ll get back to it. But i would like to get some patches upstream to rhythmbox and maby a little packaging to the MOTU team of ubuntu and have my packages signed and into ubuntu universe.

Then come back to 3D and put it all open source etc. I might change my License to the GPL now because i think it would suit what i do better because its basicaly the same i basicaly have the GPL atm as i have it non-comerical but yeah anyways.  My work is kind of lame atm but i’ll update it and i need to fix up my Scumm 2d package its dam buggy and i am thinking of rewritting it in C to make sure i have a better feeling for C programming. C++ I am finding its messy atm, i get frustrating in know what should i define in a header file or not. But meh, its not really that its more it gets hard to keep track of and i need to start coding it properly and get serious

Anyways i am off to bed work in the morning :’(.

Peace <3 Linux

From lolcats !

Erk!?

Monday, October 6th, 2008 | About Me, Update! | No Comments

Hmm… well i have a little problem at the moment, to say the least, well just BT being a pain in the arse again No internet at home, will aim to bring stuff to work with me like bring my laptop and update things that way but its still annoying. For some reason my direct debit thing isn’t in their system all of a sudden i was wondering why nothing was being taken out for the last 2 months but i didn’t really care. 

So yeah suffice to say i was pretty detached it seemed, though was kind of nice i got alot of reading into a new book which is pretty nice its a Warhammer 40K book its Ultramarines Something can’t remember the name, rofl its like a collection of alot of books which makes it a pretty thick book which is pretty abitious for me. I usualy jsut read reference books and Mathematics books on classical Mechanics and such. Or stuff on programming API’s. 

Dam i must sound pretty boring but yeah i might put a little review of it sometime if/when i finish the book :P. Oh and i have a book must get at the min i got a Blender book Blender Essential I have to say its definetly one of the best buys i have ever got! It makes blender for non-artistic people like me much more do-able. Blender really is something anyone can do, i personaly feel computer art is more with people using photoshop/GIMP+Inkscape etc.. Thats the hard part creating an elaborate mesh is actualy pretty simple when you get the hang of the tools available its when uv-maping and creating textures i think its the real art/hard bit!

Anyawys time to go see how much spam i have in my gmail! Oh yeah feel free to email to me its on the About me page

herron dot philip at googlemail dot com

Anyawys

-Peace <3 LinuX

Hat’s off to them!

Thursday, September 25th, 2008 | Random | 1 Comment

I just have just listened to the lug radio live 2008 episode and you have to check it out its really awesome goes to show how good lug radio has been to the community using community tools bring the community togeher in the words of the Bacon that is jono… anyways check it out:

http://lugradio.org/

Anyways i just want to say how good Linux outlaws is getting at the moment, for a while i was getting a little bored when Fabsh was away without internet and i forgot how good linux outlaws was and is getting, its really touching on all the points and issues i really want to hear and i personally find intereasting. Sometimes it would be nice for someone to do what lugradio did an argue over big issues in the FOSS world. But it wouldnt be the same if a podcast tried to redo this. 

Lugradio was probably one of the biggest reasons i go intereasted with linux and open source, but linux outlaws was the one thing that always made me feel good and happy in what i was doign was right and generally made me stick with hacking at my c/c++ code and finally understanding whats going on. I have been using linux for like i don’t know since i was in high school but only as my main and only os for the last 3 years and i think alot of this had to be attributed to Lugradio and Linux outlaws. 

But the one thing i want to say is how amazing Dan and fab are doing at filling the shoes of Jono and Aq from lugradio. I have to say Dan’s blog on open source is really intereasting: 

http://adventuresinopensource.blogspot.com/

And Fabs job and the web site and setting up the micro blogging site on linux outlaws is a big win, it feels like your going onto a website with intereast. Rather than the http://tllts.org/ 

The linux link tech show its an ok podcast but i really find it hard to listen to but i think the main thing is their website just looks awful, i dont mean to crap all over everything they have done for FOSS since they are on of the longest running podcasts in the Linux world, but i just find it hard to see why they have such a bad website!

Anyways, the other podcast i really enjoy is the Linux void, and they are really starting to get goog they really need to keep going at their Pacakge and tips of the week becasuse the ario and mpd one was really nice.

Anyways yeah i hope dan and fab read this! And realise they are doing an amazing job for open source and keeping us g33k’s up to date with all the happenings in the open souce world and posting usefull tutorials and links to nice programs to check out!

Hats off to you guys you deserve it!