3D gaming in Firefox and Safari

May 31, 2006 by Oliver · 1 Comment
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Games, Google, Javascript, Programming, Technology, Web Programming 

Using the canvas element with some clever JavaScript, someone has written a basic ray-traced 3D graphics engine that runs in Safari and Firefox.

Okay so “3D gaming” if overstating it slightly, but it’s clever.

What’s double clever is that you can get a pure JavaScript implementation of canvas for Internet Explorer from Google Code. Which means technically you can now do 3D graphics using JavaScript and a browser…

canvas, IE

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PCs are the new UFOs

May 31, 2006 by Oliver · Comments Off
Filed under: Computers, Macs, Technology 

What does UFO mean? In theory it’s “unidentified flying object”. Of course it doesn’t really mean that; at least when people say it they tend not to mean that. People say UFO and mean “alien ship”. This really annoys me. There are shows with quotes from people along the lines of, “Oh I definitely believe in UFOs”. You believe in UFOs? UFOs by the very nature of the definition exist. What they really mean is they believe in alien spaceships.

This sort of thing happens a lot: a general definition becomes implicitly more specific just from being used just to mean one thing. For example PC. Originally PC meant “personal computer”. This referred to many devices like BBC Micros, Amstrad CPCs, even Commodore 64s to some extent. But then one architecture took off and PC slowly got more specific. There was a transitional time when the phrase “IBM compatible PC” was popular but eventually they were all IBM compatible. So now PC means something based on x86. The most common use for PC now therefore (as opposed to computer) is just to differentiate an x86 machine from a Mac.

Which is a problem for one and a half reasons. Mac OS can now run on x86 computers and “PC software” can now run on x64 computers (only half a reason since x64 is designed to be compatible with x86). So what does PC mean now, a computer running Windows? Generally it does I suppose but you can a PC with Linux on it. Would you say you had a PC with Mac OS on it? No, you’d say you have a Mac. So apparently a PC is a desktop* computer that isn’t a Mac.

* Or maybe laptop. But probably not a server. So at least the “personal” part of “personal computer” still makes sense

Apple, Microsoft, IBM, PCs, x86, x64

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Manhattan is messed up

May 30, 2006 by Oliver · Comments Off
Filed under: Computers, Google, Technology 

The satellite view in Google Maps is obviously made up of many different images. Not all of these images were taken at the same time and not all from the same position. Sometimes this leads to slight inconsistencies. These inconsistencies are most apparent with tall buildings – which is why Manhattan looks so funky :P

Google Maps, Manhattan, New York

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WinTV TV tuner despatched

May 29, 2006 by Oliver · 2 Comments
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Technology 

I’ll be able to extend my short Media Center review into something a little longer and more useful when my TV tuner arrives :)

I ordered the Hauppuage WinTV HVR 1300 MCE Kit from Overclockers (the place I got the second video card from).

HVR stands for “Hybrid Video Recorder” – it has an analogue and a digital tuner (although it can only use at once I’m assuming). This means I can watch Freeview until I get Sky plugged into it.

A few notes about buying TV tuners for MCE. First, get one that is MCE compatible – a lot aren’t. Second, decide whether you want a “kit” or not. The kit versions come with a remote, an IR receiver and an IR transmitter (to allow the computer to control a set-top box). To get the full benefit from MCE you should really get the kit versions. Finally do you want internal or external. The internal (PCI) ones tend to have more connections than the external (USB) ones. But if you just want to plug an aerial in (or you using them in a laptop), the external ones are fine (and obviously don’t require fitting).

Windows, Media Center, PVR, DVR

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Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 review

May 29, 2006 by Oliver · 4 Comments
Filed under: Computers, Technology 

Well since I tend to use Firefox here at work I figured I could install IE7 without too much risk. And I must say it’s actually quite good.

Initial impressions

The most obvious feature is thye really minimalist chrome. The back and forward buttons are a little smaller and now to the left of the address bar; refresh and stop are to the right and then underneath that are tabs. By default there is no application menu (File, Edit, View etc). which strikes me as odd. But to the right of the tabs are other buttons to do common things that you’d normally use the menu for. Speaking of opening new tabs, there is a special thin blank tab to the right of the others that you click to open a new one.

Conditional tags

IE has a special feature called conditional tags that let you specif markup just for IE that other browsers ignore. This doesn’t seem to work in IE7. Unfortuantely this means a 1px rendering error is present on my blog. The irony being I’m assuming it’s been taken out because they think they don’t need it anymore…

Zoomin

The zoom feature is snazzy and most of all, actually works. It scales everything properly and still renders text as vectors. Even better is that the tab preview (thumbnails of all the tabs) just use zoomed out versions of the page. This means the thumbnails are completely live. Well almost. It seems you get snapshots of plugins (although they work fine when viewing a normal zoomed page, not the overview thingy).

It also works with the dev bar add on I installed.

Tabbed browsing

New to IE and probably the most requested feature (beyond standards compliance :P). And it works. There are some subtle differences between it and Firefox which will take a little geting used to. For example IE puts the cross to close a tab on the tab itself instead of on the right. And newly opened tab appears immediately to the right of the currently opened one instead of at the end of the list.

Acid2

The acid test was invented to test a web browsers CSS standards compliance. Acid2 is it’s sequel. Well IE7 fails the Acid2 test miserably. I mean it’s truly awful. In Firefox and Opera you can at lest tell what you’re supposed to be looking at.

Opera, browsers, Microsoft

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