-
OTR architect joins the ECE department!
I should really pay closer attention to who joins our department. Nikita Borisov apparently just started here this semester and is currently doing work on anonymous peer-to-peer networks. Nick introduced him to Jeff and I today with the intention of giving him some of our spare computers to get his group started. Afterwards I took a look at his past work and realized he was one of the primary architects for Off-the-Record Messaging that I use in Gaim (Linux/Windows) and AdiumX (OSX).
Read More…
-
Sanjay in CPU Mag
Sanjay’s in this month’s issue of CPU Magazine talking about life at AGEIA. Pretty neat! For those not in the know, Sanjay’s a professor in the ECE department here at UIUC and has been working as chief architect at AGEIA for a while now. AGEIA has been developing a custom physics processor to improve gaming performance/experience by pushing all such calculations onto a dedicated chip thus freeing up the cpu and the gpu to do what they do best (ie handle the ai and such and push pixels).
Read More…
-
You eeediot!
What’s the deal with stupid people getting union secretary gigs in Universities? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met some great and helpful secretaries in my time. But so many of them are just so useless! I’ve been dealing a bit with one in the business office for our department trying to place orders for my students in senior design. Here are my two experiences so far: Took a couple of days to get my first order placed.
Read More…
-
ARGH!
Fairly recently, the company that made our group fileserver was bought up by Sun. So we’re not really sure whether we’ll be able to renew our service contract (which runs out October 20th), or if we’ll be forced to buy a new Sun fileserver at a discount. The cynic in all of us should know what’s coming next… On Friday, our group fileserver sorta flaked. Took the admins an hour or more to get it back up and running, and when it did our current group mount (ie the one with all the stuff I really care about right now) did not come up with it.
Read More…
-
WHEW!
What a relief! Just got news the RAID card has come in, was installed, and with a fair bit of manual tinkering the admins managed to restore access to our unbacked-up mount. They’re in the process of migrating the data elsewhere and we should have a temporary workaround up and running in short order. Looks like we haven’t lost anything since some files have access times from last Friday. Will have to do some testing to see if anything was corrupted, but I’m feeling a whole lot better about it than I was earlier today.
Read More…
-
Zelda delayed :(
How lame! I’ve talked about this game a little previously, and it’s looking pretty oustanding. They’ve gone back to more of a realistic look from the cel-shaded cartoony stuff of Wind Waker. Not that Wind Waker wasn’t cool. But it sounds like it’s getting pushed back from November to some time after next March or so (according to IGN). Man, this was announced back in August. Where was I? I’m really looking forward to this game too.
Read More…
-
#define meme
Pronunciation: ‘mEm Function: noun Etymology: alteration of mimeme, from _mim- _(as in mimesis) + -eme 1: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture [Source]
-
What the... Nintendo's new controller?
Nintendo’s finally announced the controller for their next-gen console (the Revolution). Does anyone besides me find it bizarre? Sounds like it’s somewhere between a one-handed tv remote and an old power glove? There are apparently a couple of sensors placed near the tv plus a sensor in the remote that detect position and orientation. They plan on supporting other “more traditional” controller types (conventional controller shells, dance mats, bongos, etc) by slipping the remote inside these other add-ons.
Read More…
-
Malkier back up...
Finally got the site back up. Turns out there was some sort of security breach this past weekend that slipped evil javascript into all of my php/html pages on the site. Looked like it was intended to be some sort of browser buffer overflow attack or something along those lines (the support folk at ipowerweb said it would download a virus?). Anyway, things should be cleared up and safe again for now.
Read More…
-
mobiBLU DAH-1500i
So I broke down and bought a new mp3 player to take with me when I go jogging… well jogging/walking… well really more walking than jogging, but I’m still building up toward that. Anyway, looks like it should be a pretty cute little unit. Key features: It’s about a 1" cube has a little OLED display comes in 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB versions (I got the 512) has an FM radio (can even record it at up to 160kbps) 8-10 hours of battery life when playing mp3s USB2.
Read More…