Latency simulation over long fat network
One of our clients asked us how we handle latency, and not just a few ms across racks but 2 and even 3 digit ms latency that indicates geographically separate locations across continents, not just a country. Not only that, the “pipes” involved are 10Gbps and we had to fill them. We have the theories and made models of how it would work. We perhaps might not be able to fill a 10Gbps fully with one stream, we could fill it with multiple streams but we had to validate this conclusion.
The question now becomes, how do we test this. We’ve done our research and there are only a few commercial solutions available like the Netropy 10G2 which is a 4 port, 2 lane hardware latency simulator for $30,000 new. Not only is that outside my budget, it is still limited to simulating 2 10Gbps pipes while we need at least 3 lanes (6 ports) and possibility to expand to more as necessary. We decided it was cheaper in terms of total cost to put the research into creating our own Latency Simulator.
Written by Bret CurtisIntroducing worldsynth for your world generation and building needs
After many years of development in my spare time, I’ve decided to release Worldsynth as a Free and Open Source Software. As a world generator, it fills the roll and can also be rapidly extended to support additional features. The source might not be of top quality, but the main purpose of creating it has been fulfilled and I want to share it. I only hope that others will find it useful and want to build upon it.
There is still much more functionality that I would like add and additional polishing to the user interface. Midway through I switched from pygame to pyside or Qt4 for the GUI. I consider it ready for “Alpha” at this point, meaning there might be bugs and few experimental features that may break but otherwise usable.
Written by Bret CurtisWireless BCM4312 with the 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8 kernel
As a follow up to , I’ve also tested the Broadcom hybrid driver with the 3.6, 3.7 and the soon to be released 3.8 kernels with success. There have been no major changes that should effect the operation of this driver.
To verify that everything is working as expected on the software side, when modprobe or insmod wl, you should get a similar dmesg output:
Written by Bret Curtis[ 307.560347] lib80211: common routines for IEEE802.11 drivers
[ 307.560353] lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm ‘NULL’
[ 307.564524] wl: module license ‘unspecified’ taints kernel.
[ 307.564529] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
Properly ripping DVDs and adding subtitles in Ubuntu
There are occasions where you legitimately need tools to help that would otherwise be considered the domain of “pirates” and “ne’er-do-wells”. In this particular scenario, my grandparents send a DVD from the United States (Region1) to us in Belgium (Region2). Not only will the DVD not play back on a region locked DVD player, there are also no Dutch subtitles.
There are however technological solutions to this type of problem, including such programs as dvd::rip, vobsub2srt and a few websites dedicted to crowdsourced subtitles.
Written by Bret CurtisUpgrade Samsung Galaxy Gio to CyanogenMod 7.2
Going from 2.3.x (Gingerbread) to CyanogenMod 7.2 (Gingerbread) is surprisingly simple unlike upgrading from Froyo. I’ll go into more detail below, but there are two necessary bits: an updated recovery rom and a custom (non-official) CyanogenMod rom. This version of CyanogenMod is specific to the Samsung Gio.
Before upgrading your Samsung Gio, you must first be running at least 2.3.x (Gingerbread) before continuing because of the use of ext4 instead of rfs. Please follow my upgrade guide “Upgrade Samsung Galaxy Gio from 2.2.x Froyo to 2.3.x Gingerbread” first.
Warning: Caveat emptor – While I used to this process to update my phone, I take no responsibility if you brick your phone. Be sure to back up anything you wish to save, this procedure works best when your Gio is fully wiped of data.
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