Not much new to tell. Have been reading a few chapter thus far in Kernighan & Pike, The Practice of Programming, which is a very good introduction to, well, programming. Very basic concepts, most of which I already knew, but very well laid out and good to sharpen my skills. I’m anxious to spend some time doing their exercises, but without a computer at home that will have to wait, I suppose.
Their somewhat silly example of a random text generator made me think about how to implement some code that reads the news and then runs some kind of factor analysis to group articles. So that might well be my next coding project - something different from online games (just read an extensive blog which convincingly argues how dangerous those games can be) and even kind of related to my studies.
Also discovered that Neoware is going to sell a thin client laptop. This means a laptop without harddisk, so that the prime use is through networking, including remote desktops and SSH. Cool idea, were it not that it does not actually lead to a cheaper laptop - they still charge $800.
October 19th, 2006
Thinking about possible ways of getting a computer at home to at least be able to program and surf the web, my mind this week gradually moved from software to hardware. I know a cool Asus laptop that I would love to have, but it’s pretty expensive. Cheap Dell notebooks are available, but they’re pretty ugly. I don’t actually need that much capacity, though, just would like to be relatively light and easy to move around.
The One Laptop Per Child project got me intruiged and wondering why if African children are supposed to be happy and be able to use Linux on a laptop of less than 100 dollars, why shouldn’t I? I started looking at links on their site and learned about their hardware specification. I had never before heard of the LinuxBIOS project, which is a pretty cool idea, nor about the existence of some of the other hardware and software they use. I ended up surfing about how to build your own laptop and found this cool article in XYZ Computing on putting together a small, quiet computer in the living room. They’re using a very small motherboard and it results in a tiny computer, without any drives, but with specifications sufficient to run Linux and use wireless internet. Pretty much all I need, really. SilverStone provides some pretty cool looking cases and VIA some nice processors. A just slightly less feature-rich micro computer can be bought for just 150$, including shipping, from NorhTec - but if I remember correctly, it actually misses exactly crucial elements.
I’m quite happy to have learned about SlickDeals, a site with loads of nice deals. I immediately signed up for their RSS feed. I already saw a USB-stick/MP3-player for under 20$, which I would have bought immediately if my credit card was not currently at its limit. And a harddisk of 400 Gb for just 100$ - amazing! So building a really powerful computer can actually be done fairly cheaply. The only thing that is all the time very expensive is the monitor, though, although you can get a flatscreen for around 150$ too. But then again, I don’t really want a desktop in the first place.
Nice idea, albeit slightly pointless, would be to have one of those tiny micro computers in my bedroom, connected to the wireless internet, without monitor etc., which I can set up at work using their devices, and then a laptop in the house to access that computer as a wireless server. That way I can use any laptop, and mess around with the little computer without doing much damage to the laptop. It sounds like so much fun - I wish I had a reason!
Have been reading a bit in Stefan Goedecker and Adolfy Hoisie, Performance Optimization of Numerically Intensive Codes, which in the beginning of the book was very interestingly describing the basics of how cache memory works etc., but now it’s getting more boring and detailed about issues I’ll probably never use. Things matter in programming that you’d never think about, though! I really should finish it reading it.
October 14th, 2006