AMD on the inside

Infoworld’s latest issue features the microprocessor underdog AMD in a Special Report entitled, AMD: From follower to leader.

AMD played copycat to Intel’s successful x86 chip designs for a good part of twenty years, until Intel pulled their licensing agreement with them. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise; when Intel took its ball and went home, AMD was forced to move up the value chain and innovate on its own.

Its debut original product, the Athlon, was the first to break the 1GHz speed barrier. My first AMD product was the Athlon XP, a chip that outran the Pentium 4 at two-thirds the cost. Since then, they’ve developed several unique technologies, including HyperTransport, DDR RAM, and the x86-64 bit instruction set.

It’s the last one that powers their Opteron and Athlon64 chips and winning approval in the server market. By being able to efficiently crunch both today’s 32-bit and the future’s 64-bit applications, it leaves Intel’s 64-bit only Itanium chip in the dust.

The interesting thing is how AMD managed to sneak into Intel’s “old boys club” of motherboard and OEM manufacturers:

In 1999, while AMD was suffering through one of the darkest periods in its history, the financially strapped semiconductor maker needed to get the word out about its new Pentium II-compatible processor, Athlon. So it did what any serious company would do: It enlisted the aid of PC gamers, overclockers, and build-it-yourself enthusiasts.

It reached out to selected small and startup sites that were snubbed by other hardware vendors. For many of these sites, it was AMD

Redefining a new generation

On the bookshelf: William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, his latest book and his first foray into a story based on the modern age. That’s right, this time he has no cybernetic femme fatales or sentient holograms to rely on; he only has his stylized prose going for him.

The story is still very technocentric, with the jetsetting main protagonist Cayce (pronounced “Case”…hmm remember him?) trying to uncover the author of a series of CG videoclips posted anonymously on the Internet. A Macintosh G4 Cube, an iBook, and a corporate credit card are the main props. Still, Gibson manages to squeeze in his obligatory visit to Tokyo and a brush with organized crime. His use of metaphor makes everything sound special.

However, in the end, you realize you read a whole freakin’ book on email and forums and Internet video.

In the D drive: Doom 3. No interactive environment. Very few physics or ragdoll effects. Requires a top-of-the-line PC just to run properly. The one thing that defined Doom – large, arena-like rooms with the screaming hordes of hell barrelling toward you – is noticeably absent. Instead, you traipse through identical narrow grey corridors in pitch dark while dispatching monsters in twos and threes as they try to ambush you from behind, which stopped being scary after the 263rd time they did it. You can’t actually be “knee deep in the dead” because dead critters just disappear in a puff of red smoke.

Still, great graphics. I especially like the PDA (a touch of System Shock), the crisp, clickable graphical displays, and of course Super Turkey Puncher 3.

TSS Demo: quantaMod

tss_demo_quantamod11.jpg
A fun little game you should definitely try out is TSS Demo, as seen at the foremost computer wizardry convention known as Assembly04. Only 10MB, it emulates a Grand Theft Auto-type immersive world of fast cars and vast landscapes for havoc.

I’ve had so much fun with it, I made a few modifications to the configuration files and soundtrack. Therefore, I am proud to present TSS Demo: quantaMod 1.1.

Since there doesn’t seem to be a way to contact the original authors, this is my attempt to work with the initialization scripts and sounds to enhance the gameplay. However, I can only tweak what Aukiogames has already implemented in the binary code; I cannot add any new features. I hope Aukiogames releases an update version of TSS for the public to enjoy!

All models, animations and game engine are the creations and property of Aukiogames.

New Features

* Day/Night Cycles (but not as fast as NullZilla’s)
* More cars, all drivable!
** Big Coupe, Small Coupe, Semi Truck, Rolls Royce, Police LandRover
* Names of cars appear when you enter a car
* Player Model (Guy with afro) is also a pedestrian
* New camera views:
** Chase view
** Slot view (high chase view for tall vehicles)
** First person view (doesn’t work in semi well)
** Wheelcam view
** Goodyear blimp view
* New Radio Music
** The original 4 tracks, 4 new tracks by NullZilla, and 7 new tracks by quanta!
* New crash sfx
* Easier to get inside houses (by NullZilla)

Installation

# Download and unzip TSS demo.
# Download and unzip quantaMod into the same folder, overwriting files as needed.
# Run Config.exe to set up video options.
# Click Game.exe and play!

Improve your outlook

If you want to improve your overall outlook on life, you may want to dissect a Magic 8-Ball. For the rest of us who just want to get through the day with the email-and-kitchen-sink app known as Microsoft Outlook, here’s a couple free add-ons you might be interested in.

# Lookout is a search engine that can search all your Outlook folders at once and display results in a matter of seconds. It was recently bought by Microsoft but still sports its open source license. So maybe you should download it ASAP before it’s all gone.
# DateLens is a spiffed up Calendar written by the University of Maryland and Microsoft Research. It allows you to zoom in and out of appointments, allowing you to rapidly switch from a birds-eye view of your month to a microscopic perusal of your day. It’s hard to describe; take a look at their demonstration video.

Both apps require at least Outlook 2000 and .Net Framwork 1.1. But they’re worth it.

Pillow type

godfatherhorsehead1.jpg I love hugging Silverlotus’s pillow. It’s warm and cuddly, and seldomly asks for jewellery. And lo, it is not I who enjoys a good pillow now and then:

1. Cool heads will always prevail with the Chillow, a gel-and-water based pillow that wicks heat away from your head, giving a pleasantly cool surface to sleep on all through the night. Just add lukewarm water to it once and off to the sheep counting races you go.

2. The Godfather buffs can enjoy a cute plush pillow shaped like a horse’s head. Hopefully it’ll be the closest you’ll get to sleeping with the fishes.

3. I suppose turnabout is fair play: the Japanese are replacing men everywhere with perfect snuggable facsimiles of our arms and torsos. And if the Boyfriend Arm Pillow doesn’t depress you, get this – it even has a vibrating alarm.

Schlock locks

In Thief: Deadly Shadows, one of the Keepers’ proverbs is, “You may have found the lock, but do not assume yours is the only key.”

So it’s kind of amusing in a shaudenfreudeish way to discover that most Kryptonite bike locks, the Cadillacs of U-shaped bike locks, can be opened with the end of a Bic ballpoint pen. The circumference of the Bic matches that of the circular keyhole.

I sorta wish I learned this five years ago; I wouldn’t have to resort to cutting my rusted-out bike lock with a dremel.

We’ve also learned that Kensington computer locks can be picked open with a paper clip.

Of course, no lock is perfect, and it seems that Kryptonite is now investigating the issue. Until then, fellow bikers, perhaps our Kryptonites are best used to club would-be bike thieves in the head.

Lemme consult my frog

“I have declared Sunday ‘Family Day’,” my sister proclaimed when she flew into Toronto for the weekend.

It wasn’t so bad. Mom even complimented me _twice_ on my driving skills, we had a surprisingly decent authentic Shanghainese lunch at the bizarre landmark known as Chinese Hut (fish in wine sauce), I got to upgrade my mom’s PC to AOL 9.0 (Totally different from AOL 8.0! Now with a slightly lighter blue colour scheme!), and rescue my stamp collection from my parent’s home. We also went to grandfather’s grave to pay our respects.

My mom is growing spaghetti squash and kapoca in the backyard, turning most of the ground to a canopy of snaking vines.

My sister also picked up a gift from Thailand for me. She always fusses that I am impossible to get a gift for, but to my credit, her last gift was a plastic replica of the Statue of Liberty. Much like the real Statue these days, the replica is locked up somewhere and no one gets to see it.

This time, she a wooden toad with a wooden stick in its mouth. You’re supposed to use the stick to stroke the frog’s ridged back, creating a relaxing croaking-like ambience. It certainly proved its worth when I was installing AOL.

Words speak louder than facts

The gamers were in abuzz last night over some comments from Take-Two executives during a shareholder call. Take2 CEO Rich Roedel erroneously mentioned that the perennially delayed Duke Nukem Forever was using the DOOM3 engine, and before you can say “pepperpots at an ice cream social”, most of the Internet gaming sites posted the news as factual.

Changing 3D rendering engines midway is a titanic pain in the programmers’ collective ass. If this fact was true, would mean even more costly delays for this game.

George Broussard of 3DRealms, the developer of Duke Nukem, mentioned that only one gaming news source, GameSpot, bothered to even double check this decidely improbable piece of news with him or his team. Not that they were any more scrupulous, as Broussard remarked to Shacknews:

“When they ran the story about the engine change, they ended it with “Attempts to contact 3D Realms for comment were unsuccessful as of press time.” The news story was posted 35 minutes after I received an e-mail from them requesting confirmation.

Gamespot, I apologize. Your e-mail came in at 10:04pm and I was working elsewhere in the building. I will try to be more accessible to you in the future.”

Makes you wonder how many other news stories you read every day are completely false, just for the sake of rushing the newsflash out the door.

The duck that stretched its neck to become a swan

We spent the last night watching The Joy Luck Club for the first time, over a roasted red pepper loaf and some St. Andre brie. One thing I must admire is how faithful the film is to Amy Tan’s book – the voiceovers are virtually taken ad verbatim.

The Joy Luck Club always brings an emotional response from me, because I see myself and my own mother inside the characters. We suffer from not only a generational gap but a cultural one; my parents were immigrants to Canada, trading a life of rags to one of riches. Or, with the case of my mom, a life of riches to rags to riches, which explains her chronic thriftiness.

We have an amical relationship, but hardly an close one. As kids, my sister and I were pushed, even berated, to only tolerate the very best from ourselves and our lives. Sometimes I felt more like an acolyte than a next of kin.

And so I can relate to the sinking sensation the main protoganist Jing-Mei feels: that nothing I do can ever be “best quality”, can never be good enough. There is a lot about my mother’s past I don’t know and she refuses to talk about. I don’t understand them, and they don’t understand me.

She worries about me, I know this. She can only show it by giving me giant melons from her garden. And I, not knowing what to do with it, end up mostly throwing it away.