ub[3]rgeek.net

Why the computer should think for you.

I am tired of thinking for the computer. So instead of having to learn the gritty irritating useless internal details about every single piece of software I need to use I think it makes more sense to have a set of sensible defaults that work for as much of the user base as possible and then if need be allow customization away from the defaults to encompass the rest of your potential users.

A few (4?) years ago I wrote a RSS feed reader because I wanted to think for the computer and didn’t like any of the readers out there at the time. Similarly I have found myself writing things instead of using software that is out there for trivial tasks because the software that was out there was too infuriating, or complex, or just broken by design.

Working, as I do now, in an environment that needs to scale beyond that of the typical open source geek I find the short-sighted-ness of much of the community depressing. So much otherwise good software is written to ‘scratch an itch’ and is only engineered to work in the author’s basement. Scaling to a million users and many tens to hundreds of megabits/sec of traffic in a lot of cases is a huge headache where we have to work around shortcoming after shortcoming.

As such I’ve started to look for services that do most if not all of the work for me that I can just tap into and think less. The front page of www.ub3rgeek.net is a perfect example. That is 30 or 40 lines of python using the FriendFeed API to aggregate all the various stuff I do on the internet down into one easily manageable stream of data. I don’t have to think about sorting the RSS feeds, or tracking down the links, I just parse some standardized markup from FriendFeed and I am done.

More software needs to be written with the understanding that the user doesn’t want to have to think, that’s why we use the computer.

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue spec II

Everyone is probably talking about the latest installation of the Gran Turismo franchise, as it is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated, flagship titles for the PlayStation 3 platform. Sony and Polyphony have been jumping up and down talking about the improvements to graphics and playability over the previous versions, going even so far as to say the headlights in one of the cars has as many polygons as an entire CAR in Gran Turismo HD Concept, which was based on the Gran Turismo 4 engine.

Let me start off by saying that I believe it. This game is easily the most gorgeous game I have ever played, both the scenery and vehicles are amazingly detailed and smooth. If this is what the PlayStation 3 is truly capable of, then Sony might get 10 years out of the hardware.

So that said, first the disappointments.

1. Interface – This is standard Gran Turismo fare. Not as irritating as GT4, but for pete’s sake guys, this is a DRIVING game, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make it EASY for me to DRIVE. I want to go into a race class (there are A B and C), start a series (Sunday Cup for example), pick a car and DRIVE. Going back to the main menu SUCKS. I just want to DRIVE.
2. SFX – Guys, What the hell? I paid 40$ for this, $50 for GT4, $50 for GT3, and $50 for GT2 and the tire squeal (and most of the engine) samples ARE THE SAME. Seriously, Sony, Polyphony, You guys have some of the BEST minds in Japan, some of the most ENTHUSIASTIC fans, developers, managers, and marketers ANYWHERE. You have HANDS DOWN the BEST engine, platform, and franchise. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FIX THIS. If I could bring myself to use a blink tag, I would. This is UN ACCEPTABLE. My receiver is in Dolby Digital playing this back and it sounds THE SAME as Gran Turismo 2. Weak.

Ok, now the good.

1. This is a TRUE Gran Turismo – The physics of the cars, the attention to detail of the tracks, it is all there.
2. Control – I am using the Logitech Driving Force Pro wheel from GT4 and it is sharp, responsive, and the force feedback works just as well if not better from the previous game. I played through all of C class just now and am sweating and achy. It is a phenomenal sensory experience.
3. 1080p, 1080p, 1080p – This is a reference title for the system. Just go into the game and leave it on loop. The scenery and automotive history shots it shows you while it idles are striking. The game engine renders all 1920 x 1080 of your multi-thousand dollar High Def investment and fills it with joy. It even plays random replays from the internet during the attract demo. You can’t really argue with that.
4. Sound – The menu music is less cheesy and repetative, but it is still electronic lounge. The in-race music I have turned off lest it distract me, so I cannot complain.
5. Cars – A good selection of factory (and a few tuned) cars to play with. I am an RX-7 fanboy and was overjoyed to see it make an appearance. S2000 and NSX fans will be similarly overjoyed. Of course Ferrari makes their Gran Turismo debut here as well. You can’t say anything bad about the interior or exterior modeling of the cars, they are without a doubt flawless. If only they had spent as much time on the SFX.
6. Tracks – Stunning. Just stunning. The High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting on some of the tracks (like the High Speed ring coming out of the tunnel) really show off the PS3′s nVidia RSX chip. The people are still a little wooden, but at least they’re not 2d sprites anymore. The background scenery is absolutely picturesque. Makes me want to go to Germany and Japan VERY BADLY.

So, in short — if you are a fan of the Gran Turismo series this isn’t a bad buy. It is the first time the US has gotten a ‘Prologue’ but it was really worth the wait. I was originally calling this a $40.00 demo, but it could really almost stand on its own (for $40..) as a really REALLY good PSN title. But do yourself the favor and go out and buy the disc unless you really really can’t be bothered. It is the same price, but you get the movies (not included in the download) and something tangible to hold. The box art is kind of nice, and I bet the install and patch are going to be faster than the download.

Speaking of, the last thought I’ll leave you with is this: I am glad I didn’t get this on release day. The 400MB patch that came out with the game was atrocious to download yesterday (a friend got it last night), it was pretty bearable today. Sony should probably spend some time making sure their PlayStation Network infrastructure has a little more bandwidth and server capacity, the Thursday slowdowns when updates hit are getting a little old, and with all this new content and patches I am sure some users are going to get irritated.

If I were a game reviewer (and I’m not), I’d probably give this a 89/100 keeping in mind that it is essentially a glorified tech demo that we paid for. If this weren’t the preview, I’d probably score it much closer to 50.

PlayStation 3 with MediaTomb on Linux and OpenBSD

I have posted a few journal entries on this subject, but this page is here to be sort of a more general overview. There is some detailed information in these posts if you are interested.

Nat Type 3
I run an OpenBSD router, and some port forwarding needs to be done to make sure that the PlayStation 3 can properly communicate with the internet. I have verified the following works for WarHawk, including voice chat, as well as the PlayStation Store, and the voice chat built into the XMB.

Allow Outbound (only necessary in some cases with extremely restrictive firewall rulesets)
TCP: 80, 443, 5223 and UDP: 3478, 3479.

Port Forward inbound
TCP: 9293 and UDP: 3658
TCP/9293 is the port for Remote Play, and 3658 is for other users to connect to you. If you do not forward 3658 you will get the dreaded NAT Type 3.

Media sharing with MediaTomb
Since MediaTomb is the only Linux UPnP media server that I have found that can do transcoding I have been using it for some time now. It is highly configurable and fairly stable. I tend to track the SVN version fairly closely, but now that 0.11.0 is out the transcoding features are available to anyone. Most of the new transcoding features are really well documented on the MediaTomb site, so I won’t reproduce my entire config here, but my transcoding stuff looks like:

  <transcoding enabled="yes">
     <mimetype-profile-mappings>
        <transcode mimetype="video/quicktime" using="vlc-sh"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/x-matroska" using="vlc-sh"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/mp2p" using="ffmpeg-sh"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/ogg" using="ffmpeg-sh"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/mp4" using="ffmpeg-sh"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/avi" using="ffmpeg-avi"/>
    </mimetype-profile-mappings>
    <profiles>
        <profile name="ffmpeg-sh" enabled="yes" type="external">
            <mimetype>video/mpeg</mimetype>
            <accept-url>no</accept>
            <first-resource>yes</first>
            <agent command="/staff/mernisse/bin/ffmpeg-tr" arguments="%in %out"/>
            <buffer size="6144000" chunk-size="131072" fill-size="2048000"/>
        </agent></profile>
        <profile name="ffmpeg-avi" enabled="yes" type="external">
            <mimetype>video/mpeg</mimetype>
            <accept -url>no</accept>
            <first-resource>yes</first>
            <agent command="/staff/mernisse/bin/ffmpeg-tr" arguments="%in %out"/>
            <buffer size="6144000" chunk-size="131072" fill-size="2048000"/>
            <avi-fourcc-list mode="ignore">
                <fourcc>XVID</fourcc>
                <fourcc>DIVX</fourcc>
                <fourcc>DX50</fourcc>
                <fourcc>WVC1</fourcc>
            </avi>
        </agent></profile>
        <profile name="vlc-sh" enabled="yes" type="external">
            <mimetype>video/mpeg</mimetype>
            <accept-url>yes</accept>
            <first-resource>yes</first>
            <agent command="/staff/mernisse/bin/vlc-tr" arguments="%in %out"/>
            <buffer size="6144000" chunk-size="131072" fill-size="2048000"/>
        </profile>
    </profiles>
  </transcoding>

Some notes about that config:

• I transcode MP4 – You may not have to if your MP4 files are all playable on the PS3, I would try it out without first and then transcode if necessary. I have more files that don’t work than files that do.
• Audio transcoding doesn’t work right now on the PS3 – A number of weird things that the PS3 does is keeping this from working, hopefully the MediaTomb guys will nail it and make it work, it sounds like the on the horizon ‘built in transcoding’ might fix this issue, but that is still a bit off.

The MacBook bites it

So last week I get to work and the MacBook’s LCD backlight doesn’t turn on. An trek to the Apple Store confirms that it is in fact broken and not something loose that they could fix in the store. So they tell me to go home, back it up and call AppleCare so I can get a prepaid shipping container and label to send the thing back in. The good news — Ubuntu 7.10 appears to have hfsplus support built in so I just booted the MacBook in Firewire Target mode (hold t down while you power the thing on) and was able to copy all my crap off.

I called AppleCare and amazingly was spared most of the usual tech support pain. They looked me up in their system and saw that I had in fact seen a “Genius” and opened me up a case so I could return the unit for service. All told I was without the laptop for a week.
Monday – Go to Apple Store, call Apple Care.
Tuesday – Receive prepaid shipping carton, pack MacBook.
Wednesday – Schedule pickup with DHL, carton ships.
Thursday – Apple gets, repairs and ships my MacBook
Friday – Receive Doortag — This kind of sucks, I hate door tags, I really wish people would stop assuming that no one works and is home all the time.

Monday – Receive MacBook.

All in all a good experience, Kinda wish the Retail Store was a little less useless but I can understand that they may not be stocked for such things.