LeeNukes

I’ve witnessed my first DEFINITE cheat on Mario Kart Wii. The cheat I saw was they could basically choose any powerup they wanted, at any time they wanted.

So, the race went like this:

1, 2, 3, START. Blue shells flies past me and blows up first place. Odd, I thought, we’re not even at the boxes yet. Clearly someone was cheating, then another blue shell, until 4TH ALEX got to 1st. Then they stopped. A little later down the track, 4TH ALEX was sat there with green shells firing one, after another. About 30 of them. There was also another guy who appeared to be cheating, his player name is pictured, I couldn’t get my camera out in time photograph the other guy.

Clearly these people are so poor at playing Mario Kart that they would rather cheat at it. Losers!

So, I’m back onto looking at an alternative to my old P3 based server.

I wanted to know the hardware specs of the Sheeva CPU though as even though its 1.2GHz I don’t think its going to be as fast, so I thought I’d check.

I found a page online:
(http://computingplugs.com/index.php/SheevaPlug_Performance)

I had some problems compiling nbench on my desktop, so I had a look around and found one result which helped, it was in Danish, but essentially I had to change this line in the Makefile:

# generic options for gcc
CFLAGS = -s -static -Wall -O3

to this:

# generic options for gcc
CFLAGS = -s -Wall -O3

then ran make and it was fine.

Here are the results from nbench on my server:

BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)

TEST                : Iterations/sec.  : Old Index   : New Index
                    :                  : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT        :          381.96  :       9.80  :       3.22
STRING SORT         :          35.155  :      15.71  :       2.43
BITFIELD            :      1.3172e+08  :      22.59  :       4.72
FP EMULATION        :          46.504  :      22.31  :       5.15
FOURIER             :          7791.5  :       8.86  :       4.98
ASSIGNMENT          :          7.2354  :      27.53  :       7.14
IDEA                :          1442.2  :      22.06  :       6.55
HUFFMAN             :          483.19  :      13.40  :       4.28
NEURAL NET          :          9.0077  :      14.47  :       6.09
LU DECOMPOSITION    :          364.16  :      18.87  :      13.62
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX       : 18.079
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 13.424
Baseline (MSDOS*)   : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU                 : GenuineIntel Pentium III (Coppermine) 797MHz
L2 Cache            : 256 KB
OS                  : Linux 2.6.18-164.11.1.el5
C compiler          : gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-46)
libc                : libc-2.5.so
MEMORY INDEX        : 4.343
INTEGER INDEX       : 4.642
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 7.445
Baseline (LINUX)    : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.

Here are the reults from nbench on my desktop:

BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)

TEST                : Iterations/sec.  : Old Index   : New Index
                    :                  : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT        :          1270.6  :      32.59  :      10.70
STRING SORT         :             276  :     123.32  :      19.09
BITFIELD            :      5.0967e+08  :      87.43  :      18.26
FP EMULATION        :             276  :     132.44  :      30.56
FOURIER             :           26984  :      30.69  :      17.24
ASSIGNMENT          :          35.888  :     136.56  :      35.42
IDEA                :          7378.1  :     112.85  :      33.50
HUFFMAN             :          2718.9  :      75.40  :      24.08
NEURAL NET          :           56.11  :      90.14  :      37.91
LU DECOMPOSITION    :            1779  :      92.16  :      66.55
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX       : 91.588
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 63.406
Baseline (MSDOS*)   : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU                 : Dual GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E6750  @ 2.66GHz 2667MHz
L2 Cache            : 4096 KB
OS                  : Linux 2.6.31.9-174.fc12.x86_64
C compiler          : gcc version 4.4.2 20091222 (Red Hat 4.4.2-20) (GCC)
libc                :
MEMORY INDEX        : 23.113
INTEGER INDEX       : 22.663
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 35.167
Baseline (LINUX)    : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.

Here are the results from nbench on the Sheeva Plug:

BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)

TEST                : Iterations/sec.  : Old Index   : New Index
                    :                  : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT        :          309.72  :       7.94  :       2.61
STRING SORT         :          36.102  :      16.13  :       2.50
BITFIELD            :      9.8289e+07  :      16.86  :       3.52
FP EMULATION        :          71.075  :      34.10  :       7.87
FOURIER             :          356.63  :       0.41  :       0.23
ASSIGNMENT          :           4.207  :      16.01  :       4.15
IDEA                :          1146.3  :      17.53  :       5.21
HUFFMAN             :          452.41  :      12.55  :       4.01
NEURAL NET          :         0.49636  :       0.80  :       0.34
LU DECOMPOSITION    :          16.116  :       0.83  :       0.60
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX       : 15.922
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 0.646
Baseline (MSDOS*)   : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU                 :
L2 Cache            :
OS                  : Linux 2.6.30-rc1-00002-g1758996
C compiler          : gcc version 4.3.3 (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4)
libc                : libc-2.9.so
MEMORY INDEX        : 3.317
INTEGER INDEX       : 4.549
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 0.358
Baseline (LINUX)    : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.

I’m now not so sure if it’s worth upgrading. I’ll have to look into other factors. On the site above which benchmarked the SheevaPlug they state:

“From nbench’s website, the Sheeva Plug falls somewhere around a P3 800Mhz range.”

which is exactly what I’m running in my current Compaq DeskPro Server.

Ubuntu have decided that after 6 years, its time to freshen up their image and try to shake off that Brown slur that has followed them for the past several years.

Here is a link to the page going through it: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand

Overall, it appears to be a good move, however, why move the buttons!? They were perfectly fine in the location they were. Just one step too far Ubuntu. Doh!

I was just reading the latest news on the Google Nexus One and came across the Telegraph’s article regarding an April launch to be likely.

Whilst reading something didn’t seem right:

“The Nexus One is unusual because it is available online only direct from Google, and so relies heavily on word of moth marketing. Although sales had initially been reported as slow in comparison to the iPhone, the Nexus One has not benefited from the significant promotion that Apple has bought for its flagship product.”

Word of Moth? Really? I didn’t think Moths could speak, oh well, it really is a ground breaking phone.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7326554/Exclusive-Google-Nexus-One-to-launch-in-April.html

This is probably been corrected by now, so I took a screenshot too, it made ME smile anyway :)

Well, I’m not sure when it happened but it looks like the rebranding of the Sun Microsystems Page has finally happened.

It’s gone all red essentially, and there is an obvious Oracle presence around. Not sure if its a better design or not. Changing of the guard it seems.

I’ve just discovered Sweet Home 3D. So far, I have to say its one of the best applications I’ve used on Linux.

It’s Java powered and you just download the tar.gz file and unpack it. Once unpacked, run the SweetHome3D file and that’s it. You’re presented with a pretty straight forward interface if you’re used to 3D modelling.

Its logical though as opposed to some 3D modelling apps, right click, choose your tool then left click.

To add one of the many models available, simply drag and drop.

To change the properties of an item, double click on it and modify its properties.

Once you’ve happy you’ve put things where you want them, you can render a photo of the image:

You can download it from here: http://www.sweethome3d.eu/index.jsp

It’s cross platform too as it’s Java. Try it out.

You may have heard of the campaign to get Rage Against the Machine to Number 1 in time for Christmas.

There are many reasons people want to do this but my two reasons are that its a great song, and that if we actually DO manage to get Rage Against the Machine to Number 1 then it proves that as an online community we did this, we made it happen.

It cost me 65p to buy the track, I already owned it but I bought it again for this effort.

Do us all a favour, buy a copy today and lets be proud we made something happen this Christmas that wasn’t the inevitable X-Factor Finalists track getting to number 1.

I have nothing against Jo, but this is our time, and we will vote with our feet.

Come on Britain, do it for the laugh :)

I’ve just found that Glade can make application layouts easy for me. I was learning TKInter but got a bit bored with it. Glade allows me to put a layout together and then hook it into my python code.

Following some basic tutorials at the moment.

Just had evolution save me from an “Egg on face” moment. The one I’m sure everyone has done before, intend to attach something in an email, type the email then forget to actually attach it item.

I did just that, and was prompted with this:

I heard of this type of feature with GMail, not being a user of GMail I never really got accustomed to it, this was a first for me in Evolution, don’t often attach things in emails.

I have to say, I’m not willing to buy a PS3 until they release Home for it.

There have been several reports recently which suggest that the long in development Playstation Home isn’t exactly being hurried along.

One of the things that got me interested in the Playstation 3 was their Home application. Which is still not released several years after it was released. Well, until they actually pull their fingers out and get it finished I won’t be a customer of theirs. Unless someone just gives me a PS3 of course :D