Tag: software

Orbicule Theft Prevention

lol

If law enforcement fails to recover the stolen Mac, Undercover switches to plan B. In this mode, Undercover will simulate a hardware failure, making parts of the screen unusable. This erratic behavior will be accompanied by a Mac OS X system message stating that a hardware failure has been detected. At this point, we think the thief has 2 options: to send the computer to a reseller for repair, or to get rid of it by selling it on the Net. In either case, Undercover will show a full-screen message alerting the reseller or someone who bought the Mac from the thief that the Mac has been stolen, that it has become unusable and that it needs to be returned as soon as possible. Our contact information and a promise for a finder’s fee (which will be covered by us) will be displayed as well. This message can be fully customized by the user and when dismissed, this message will instantly reappear. Additionally, your Mac will start shouting at the highest volume level, using its built-in text-to-speech capabilities.

2021-07-16: Originally I thought this was an elaborate joke, but the service was real, but recently shut down:

After 14 years of Undercover recovery successes, we need to inform you that we’ll no longer be developing or supporting Undercover. All Undercover support will stop on Jan. 1st 2020.

Working on a biochemistry problem

Rosetta@Home screen saver

It’s good to know my computer is actually just doing that, with near 100% efficiency, instead of being mostly idle. Plus, looking at the protein folds and wishing to be able to nudge the search algorithm closer to the lowest-energy state is quite mesmerizing. You also gotta admit that they do have a cool line for their advertising.
2023-08-09: A coda for BOINC

BOINC had some success. It enabled lots of science, and it got lots of people all over the world interested in science. Thanks to NSF, it paid my bills for 15 years, and it gave me freedom to do what I wanted, to travel, and to work with lots of great people. As a piece of software, BOINC is (mostly) beautiful, and I enjoyed designing and writing it.

But BOINC never fully achieved any aspect the vision I outlined earlier. There were moments when it seemed like it might: for example, the HTC and Suzuki projects, the Open Science Grid collaboration, the Anbince thing, and a dozen others. Each of these seemed, initially, like it might put BOINC “over the top”. But all the initiatives petered out, for reasons outside my control. The cycle of hope followed by disappointment, over and over, has worn me down.

trac rocks

spurred on by dani, i gave trac a try for a project i am working on.

Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management. Our mission; to help developers write great software while staying out of the way. Trac should impose as little as possible on a team’s established development process and policies.
It provides an interface to Subversion, an integrated Wiki and convenient report facilities.
Trac allows wiki markup in issue descriptions and commit messages, creating links and seamless references between bugs, tasks, changesets, files and wiki pages. A timeline shows all project events in order, making getting an overview of the project and tracking progress very easy.

i’m in love. trac beats the crap out of bugzilla (no UI to speak of), RT (UI?), jira (likes to crash your servlet engine, not free), collabnet (slooow, not free), sourceforge (very poor integration, 1997-era UI), basecamp (useless for projects with both suits and coders) and a couple others i have tested (and forgotten about over the years). while some of the competition is stronger in certain areas, none are as well-rounded and tightly integrated between bug tracking, wiki and scm, or have such a pleasant UI. trac is the kind of application that makes me want to pick up python for real to play around with it (sorry, but plone never had the same effect for me). trac will go far.

Reproducible Setups

this is the second time in less than 6 months that i have to migrate my work environment from one laptop to another. i bought a new T42, probably one of the best deals out there. the 7200 RPM and the 1400 x 1000 screen make all the difference. just for comparison, this packs the same screen real estate you get with the 17 inch powerbook into 15 inch, you get 7200 RPM instead of 5400 RPM, and it sets you back $1800 instead of $2700. no wonder apple is changing their hardware platform 😉

as always, moving is a huge pain. this time, i have to deal with my 3GB, 250K file eclipse workspace, with countless settings across applications, logins etc. fortunately, there is freesshd for windows, which makes scp an option and allows me to sidestep all the SMB nonsense.

Tool mavens

ever since i started using eclipse, i moved from language to tool maven. with every new eclipse build, i learn new tricks, and eclipse performance improves. one thing i did wrong for nearly 2 years until now was to get the SDK when i really want the platform plus JDT. the difference is nearly 50MB, 50MB that do have to be paged in and out of RAM. in the same vein, i just discovered the handy regexp tester plugin. good thing jonathan edwards is looking out for me 😉