AMD Mantle

Having announced all their new value/bang for buck Volcanic Island cards - with one being reviewed by Phoronix here - AMD/ATI have now announced their new Graphics API Mantle.

It pretty much replaces OpenGL and DirectX, giving developers a closer, lower level access to the graphics card chips and such. This being similar to NVAPI and Glide from 3dfx. Firstly heard it from Star Citizen, which will be supporting it, characteristic of it supporting all cool advancement in PC technologies like the Oculus Rift. What this means is considerable improvement in GPU utilisation, and hopefully a Linux client via Mantle. There could also be a PS4 version if Sony lets CIG do their stuff on it, how they like. Here's some more info:


However, John Carmack (now at Oculus VR) says OpenGL can reach that (9x faster draw calls) performance, when utilising extensions from nVidia. Speaking of Oculus, a post about that should come somewhat later. =)

There should be a lot more info released during the AMD Conference on the 11th-13th this month.

EVs and Coding upstream/downstream

Prime example of using data/paper references to deliberately misconstrue understanding:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/10/why-electric-vehicles-have-stalled.html
Sure petrol releases half as much CO2 than the electric grid, (direct energy - e.g. burning petrol or coal) not including the LCA stuff for mining, obtaining and transporting the fuels or energy (transmission grids).
But petrol engines are around 20% efficient but with electric transmission and electric motors like Tesla's car, they have an efficiency of about 90% - that's around 4* as much, meaning even with coal-burning electricity generation, you're only releasing half as much CO2 per energy to the wheels with electricity than petrol. And with green power or nuclear, you can drastically reduce CO2 output, so transferring the fuel into energy is best done en-masse, instead of inside everyone's individual car 'generators' =P

Also nice link about dependencies, which relates to last post's project release: Ubuntu chapter 8 on dependences! =)
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/how-code-flows-about-upstream-and-downstream/

Ubunchu ch.08 and PSA: Sudo powers

Here's a double release of art projects geared towards new(ish?) users/discoverers of Linux and the Ubuntu distribution.

Ubunchu chapter 8 typeset by me took a year (lol, I had no schedule and it was very on-off, next time I'll schedule it properly so I don't forget what I was doing). It's my first official type-setting/translation manga release, hope you like it. =) I was going to try and perfect it but because the project dragged on so long I thought I should just try and quickly push it out and release/ship it.
Ubunchu is about a school club in a Japanese high school which is tinkering with Ubuntu.
Read the whole series (and a better synopsis) here: ubunchu.net
My latest release (ch8): on google drive - zip of PNGs (click File -> Download),

        Shared folder here - DL in PDF (recommend you DL the zip of PNGs instead and use MComix to read get MComix1.00), 

        and on the ubunchu website (when it gets uploaded there someday).

Getting to work on an open sourced manga/project like this one is pretty nice. Especially without having to clean 'scans' using levelling, and other more sophisticated techniques. xP All of it was done in GIMP which is open source and is also available on windows due to GTK magic (but it feels nicer on my Kubuntu). I've never used photoshop properly (to a certain extent) but I can say GIMP is competitively advanced and has nice plugins too. Mostly used Blambot's fonts - free for non-commercial use.

Also would be nice to get a Wacom tablet/ergonomic mouse/SteamController (check out this demo vid!), I get RSI with at least my index finger when using conventional mice. Currently use a trackball for everyday use, but gets annoying since it doesn't have a scroll wheel. Steam controller definitely looks promising since my HKD20 PS-like controller definitely has bad resolution, and I don't imagine my PS controllers or the XBox ones will be much better. Although having fond memories of my Saitek joystick (which is so old it used a serial or parallel connection), I might use that for Star Citizen, although I'll have to test the Steam Controller first, like how I tested the OR. Which reminds me, Oculus Rift post coming soon =)

[Linux is complete with gaming rant]
With Valve's SteamOS, Steam on Linux and Source, Unity, Unreal game Engines being native on Linux as well as CryEngine soon, games seem to be moving en-masse to the Linux OS. This is welcome news, since gaming, and atm, only one particular game (Star Citizen, which has gained 4mil in crowdfunding since I last blogged about last month - 1.5mil of which was from the last 4 days) is the only thing holding me back from never booting Windows on my laptop. It's on CryEngine 3, so can't wait for that to build natively for Linux.
We've got Dota 2, KSP, Guns of Icarus Online, L4D2, TF2, X-series and an increasing amount of games, indie and big-publisher alike natively on Linux already or coming. I find if I'm looking at a game purchase/Humble Bundle, availability is a deciding factor. These next few years will be very interesting for Linux =)

[/rant]

Here's the PSA (it's related to Ubunchu ch.8), sad to say I learnt this the hard way one too many times:




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Came across an interesting blenderguru post about why and how Blender's UI is broken and the principles of making good UI, how Blender can be fixed. The folks who made Unity should have a look =P [Sincerely, KDE/XFCE user]

UPDATE: Blenderguru made a video with suggestions, here it is!


=)

Inclusive Hackathon - attracting larger audiences for STEM, hacker/maker/geek events

Here's an interesting post about attracting larger audience for a hackathon

So I didn't know I wasn't using Kubuntu's repositories for 1.5 years

That moment you realise for your entire 12.04 LTS usage life of 1.5 years, you've never pinged the Kubuntu repositories because you thought Canonical and Canonical Partners included them.

And I only found out when I saw the process "kio_file" take up massive CPU time when my Dolphin had preview on. So I googled it, and sure enough, it's in the KDE bugtracker, and they say the issue is resolved - after 4.9.3.
I check and I've got KDE 4.8.x. So I finally add ppa:kubuntu-backports and update, dist-upgrade, and bam, 4.11.

Well not really, because when KDM was configuring, I had to go through this wizard. I accidentally checked 'shutdown kdm' then clicked next, and sure enough, my X session died. After a reboot, I needed to
sudo apt-get -f install or sudo apt-get -f dist-upgrade
and dpkg -i --force-overwrite
and sudo dpkg --force-depends -r kde-workspace-data
giving me:

    dpkg: kde-workspace-data: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested:

At least now everything is over thanks to APT, apt-get and dpkg. That said, I should be releasing something from one of my projects relating to APT soon. But don't anticipate a tech project, haha.

Interestingly enough I tried out i3 while fixing my KDE desktop environment and it was pretty nice to use.
Also, I'm still getting that error sometimes when my KDE session starts, and then restarts after like 10-30 seconds after splash image and you can see the actual desktop. It might have to do with Akondi crashing. [Edit: It was actually Skype using XFS.]
I've also lost the window decoration I normally use in 4.8, I forgot its name but it was a nice blue bar at the top with white text and minimal/compact buttons. I can't find it in the default window decorations where it was. At least the 4.11 oxygen looks pretty nice and is compact =)

Australian Space Agency - why

Came across a good article here about why Australia needs a space agency, and how we can create our own solutions instead of piggybacking off others and be able to build a new industry which benefits us.


The ACSER seems pretty cool.
I wonder if the GPS module could be used for other Australian spacecraft ...

Also, if you read my Mt Stromlo (AIAA tour) post back in early August when AIAA Sydney Section toured Canberra, here are some projects that the AITC are looking at at the moment. Hope I get to participate soon =)

Falcon 9 v1.1 Maiden Launch!

Wanted to watch this live to get booster info but was someplace with no reception. 
Vid here:

Also this article is pretty cool. Here's the bit about the attempt at recovering the first stage:

Once it was back in the atmosphere, it lit its central engine to slow itself further. That's where things went wrong, though, as the booster started spinning. According to Musk, this "centrifuged the propellant"—spun it to the tank's walls and kept it from feeding into the engine. As a result, it hit the water hard, leaving the company's employees with pieces to recover. (This rocket didn't have landing gear anyway, and Musk said that the added hardware would act like fins to stabilize the spin.)
With the information they gained from this flight, however, Musk said that SpaceX has "all the pieces to do full recovery of the boost phase," which he expects to be attempted early next year. In the intervening time, the company plans to gather data on re-entry during two more flights.
Recovery won't be cheap. In response to a question, Musk estimated that saving the fuel to perform a controlled landing on water requires sacrificing 15 percent of the potential payload; returning to land will take a 30 percent cut. But Musk said the boost stage is about three-quarters of the total cost of the rocket, so being able to reuse it would provide a substantial net gain.
Beyond these findings, not everything was rosy about today's launch. SpaceX also tried to restart its second stage engine (which is necessary on some flight trajectories but not for today's launch). The engine "encountered a condition it didn't like during repressurization," though, and the process was shut down. Musk said that the company has a good idea of what went wrong, and will address it before the next flight.

Valve and AMD reveals

So Valve has revealed their SteamOS a couple of days ago which is based on Linux, so it's pretty much a Linux distro. It will be a living room entertainment OS, so think console+xbmc combined. It is also free and open source!
Today, they also revealed SteamBox, and are offering 300 beta units for testers to be randomly selected, as long as you earn the Steam Hardware badge level 2.Unfortunately, actual specs are not disclosed, although they are saying the system is open, and you can upgrade individual components (like a PC!), as well as being free to install any OS on it or turn it into a robot! Gotta love Valve and their open/hacker/community culture. First open console since the PC =P. They are also claiming to have different boxes available in 2014 from different vendors, so PC and linux gaming seems to be ever on fire and advancing, thanks in no small part to Valve! [S2] (companion cube). It's great to see games like Dota 2, L4D2, Kerbal Space Program, X3: Albion Prelude and Guns of Icarus Online (and hopefully the Crytek 3 Engine soon) on Linux!
In a couple of days, Valve will reveal something else. Using symbols 'O' as the SteamOS reveal, and '[O ]' as the SteamBox reveal, they are revealing something along the lines of 'O+O'. They've already suggested streaming video from your gaming PC to the steambox via LAN, and family sharing for games, but it could be something different. Check the reveal here below in 33 hours:



AMD has revealed their newest line of GPUs at every price point, and personally I'm rooting for them as they are actually supporting open source linux driver development. Unlike a certain competitor which only releases binary blobs, although they run alright. In the livestream other game devs were also featured as were a lot of audio technology.
Check out Star Citizen's Chris Roberts at 1hr 44minutes of the livestream and some new hangar module features! (And an Aurora take off sequence in the new trailer demo!). It's also set to break 20 million in crowdfunding within 24 hours. See you in the 'verse!

Watch live streaming video from amdlivestream at livestream.com

KSP update 0.22

Kerbal Space Program is one of the funnest games ever, superseding The Sims and will probably take 2nd place in my all-time favourite game list, after Tribes 1. That is, until Star Citizen comes out and dominates the list. I love the open and mod-able, community driven aspects of this game. =)

This most recent update finally gives the option of inserting sub-assemblies to new designs, so you can finally import 2 assemblies/designs from different saved designs without having to build from scratch! Kind of like importing parts into a CAD assembly. I have no more excuse to not play this game (it's on Linux! via Unity =D) ... although uni study beckons Dx



Also, an abridged list of stupid things that I have done (a full list would be way too long). These are rookie mistakes which experience, if not proper systems engineering would (hopefully) have mitigated.

• Not realising you forgot to put parachutes on your spaceship until you've re-entered the atmosphere
• Using all your fuel to achieve a high orbit and realising your Kerbonauts are now stranded ... hope they're not hungry
• Forgetting to activate solar panels once in orbit so your spacecraft (a planned addition to a collection of spaceships docked together forming a "space station") runs out of electrical charge. It's also unmanned so can no longer be controlled. Recovery mission is being planned (yes, one is also being planned for my stranded Kerbonauts, though admittedly with much lower priority xD)

And there we have our top 3 "oh crap, I'm so stupid" moments so far =)
The game has also prompted learning of orbital mechanics and stuff and is a great companion to: The Basics of Spaceflight - brought to you by JPL, "we do everything cool".

NASA News - September 2013

OK, I'm a bit on the slow side but I blame my travels to Melbourne and having so much fun at a wedding and fellowshipping =)

NASA has finally announced that Voyager 1 has left the solar system!
This, after scientists weren't quite sure how to interpret the data which seemed to indicate that it sometimes was still in the solar system and sometimes not. But now NASA thinks that Voyager 1 has passed the heliopause and is currently travelling through interstellar medium!

I guess we could add one more to the tally at http://xkcd.com/1189/ and hope we don't have to add any more =P

Also NASA news, they have 3 candidate asteroids for potential exploration by bringing it to moon orbit or something like L1/L4 and sending astronauts to do some science on it!

And if you haven't seen this photo bomb yet, something more light-hearted =P
http://www.universetoday.com/104679/absolutely-incredible-photo-frog-launches-with-ladee/