I’m busy, again. A ton of things just bunched up towards the end of the month, and I’m on-site with a customer in Cambridge some of next week, so I’m keeping my head down a little right now. Here’s a news-blast though.
I love Ubuntu server
I’ve been setting up my new server. I’ve probably said this before, but for servers, Linux rocks. I’m ambivalent about Linux on the desktop, where I believe consistency and usability are more important (the Mac floats my boat the most there, and Windows if only because of MSVC++), but for a server Linux really brings great things to the table. Rock solid server apps, ridiculously good performance for the hardware (a mere Intel Atom 330, goes like a greased whippet), easy and most importantly infrequent maintenance. When it comes to distros, I loved Debian for its sensible defaults and great package management, but Ubuntu server takes that and makes it even better. The added bonus of a LTS version that I know will be supported with security updates until at least 2013 is welcome too, because I like to set these things up and mostly forget about them.
I’m glad Ubuntu’s default mail/IMAP servers are Postfix and Dovecot respectively - they’re just ridiculously easy to set up. I’d been using Exim4 on my Debian box, which was the default at the time, and learned to dislike it because of the over-complex configuration (I’d been used to Postfix when I ran a Gentoo server before that). I’m also planning on trying out Bacula as a replacement for my manual backup scripts this time around.
PSUs hate me
One of my jobs this week was building a machine around some customer hardware which I was testing an abberation on. Having built it, I realised I didn’t have a spare PSU rated highly enough, so I ‘borrowed’ one out of another GPU test machine I had. It ran all day, then decided to die - this just 2 weeks since my server’s PSU died and needed to be replaced. It’s just bad luck - my decent APC UPS should be providing ample power regulation. So, I’ve ordered 2 new PSUs to make sure I have enough stocked in future!
**Excitement is infectious
**
I was happy to show off some shots of my new & improved core terrain system for Ogre, which isn’t entirely done yet but was usable enough to get some nice shots out of. I knew I had to move on to some other work for a while but I was still pleased to be able to show off some initial eye candy (which BTW, is still very early - I haven’t finished yet by any means). I was glad to get some positive & constructive feedback, but of course now people are rushing off an including it in their projects, since all the code is public in svn. Despite my slapping a big red warning sticker on it saying ‘handle with care - volatile material’ and that they shouldn’t assume it works properly yet, people are hacking on it already, with some nice results I have to say (such as Ogitor integration) - but of course with many questions and issues. Such is the nature of open source - it’s a blessing that you get instant, voluminous feedback, and it’s a curse that you get instant, voluminous feedback 😉 I hope to get more time to deal with the fallout from that if not next week (because of my travels), then the week after.
The OGRE Patch Mountain
Our community is always active, and it’s great to get patches. I do have a quite high validation standard for the core though, and processing patches can often take a fair bit of time. I try to spend a few hours per week doing this, but mostly that’s only just enough to keep the level static, rather than reducing the backlog, and it still spikes up sometimes (as it has this week) - that’s because even if I get an afternoon on it, to review and test things properly can eat that up very fast.
If there are any experienced members of the Ogre community who would like to assist me with keeping the patch mountain down to a small hillock in future, and are willing to adhere to our high standards of review, please contact me at sinbad AT ogre3d DOT org.
iPhone 3G / 3GS port coming soon
We’ve had a fledgeling GLES rendersystem around for a while, and obviously the iPhone / iPod touch are the highest-profile targets of that. I’d been intending to have a go at it later in the summer, but masterfalcon on the forums has beaten me to it and already has it running (with a few small issues remaining to be ironed out) on the 3G and 3GS. There should be a public release of that in the relatively near future.
3D Web Browsing With OGRE
I love this video. Nice work princeofcode (aka ajs15822)
That’ll do for now I think.