After my home computer died last week I have been looking at on-line storage options. I signed-up for a Dropbox account. Dropbox offers 2GB of storage space for free, 50 GB for $10 a month, 100GB for $20 a month. Dropbox allows multiple computers to share the same folder and “sync” the files across each computer. It also offers web browser access to your files. It is hard to beat 2GB for free and you can “earn” additional free space by inviting your friends. (Shameless request) Feel free to help me out out by signing-up through this link https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTUxNjUwOTM5
My Home Computer History
My Home Computer History
- 1983 – Radio Shack Color Computer II, .89 MHz CPU, 16 K memory, no floppy, no hard disk, used cassette tapes to store data, Color Computer BASIC
- 1989 – NCR PC, 8 MHz 286 CPU, 640 K memory, 720K floppy, no hard disk, DOS 3.2
- 1996 – Gateway PC, 166 MHz Pentium CPU, 32 MB memory, 1.44 MB floppy, 1.5 GB hard disk, Windows 95
- 2003 – Home-built PC, 1.7 GHz Pentium IV Celeron CPU, 512 MB memory, 1.44 MB floppy, 16 GB hard disk, Windows XP
- 2010 – Gateway PC, 2.93 GHz i3 CPU, 6 GB memory, no floppy, 1TB hard disk, Windows 7
- 2017 – ?
Color Computer II Emulator (Mocha)
Color Computer II Emulator (Mocha) … check-out early 1980’s computing
The first computer our family owned was a Color Computer II by Radio Shack. It used the TV for a monitor, had 16K of memory, and could save and load programs from cassette tape. It also had cartridge games. We had Popcorn and Stellar Lifeline. I spent many hours typing programs from Rainbow magazine. The computer only used UPPER CASE letters. Programs were written in BASIC using line numbers. You had to type “RUN” to execute a program. You typed “LIST” to see your programming statements.
There is a great on-line emulator called Mocha. It even includes many of the games that were available.
Create your own Wii Mii
There are sites out on the net that allow you to create your own “Wii Self” and then export the image as a .jpg or .png file see http://www.myavatareditor.
parallel processing with CUDA #1
This summer I am working on a small research project on parallel processing using nvidia CUDA. I purchased a nvidia CUDA enabled GTS 250 graphics card. While I anticipated the need for a larger 600 watt power supply, I did not expect the card to hit against my CPU heat sink. I have ordered a new motherboard which should eliminate the problem, but it is on back-order from Tigerdirect. Paul has suggested that I use a Dremel tool to solve the problem … I think I will wait.
In the mean time I have spent the past few days listening to lectures from a spring 2009 University of Illinois course exe496 Programming Massively Parallel Processors. Audio of the lectures as well as slides are posted.
I have also run several sample programs using the emulator under Visual Studio 2008.
As always I find myself learning more than I first intended including a quick review of matrix multiplication and the bitonic sort.
Stream music to your desktop with Pandora
One of my favorite new sites (Thanks Paul!) for 2008 was Pandora (see www.pandora.com). Pandora will stream customized music to your computer (or iPhone). Enter the name of your favorite music artist or song and it will create a music station that matches this style of music using data from the Music Genome Project. You can add multiple artists or songs to “fine tune” your station(s).
More on-line storage options
A student reported this week that his “back-up” drive had died causing significant data loss. My first thought was that it was not a “back-up”, rather a “main drive”. Either way it is unfortunate, but something we will all have to deal with at some point. It may be time to consider backing up your data on-line. I still use Box.net which offers 1 GB of free on-line storage (see earlier post).
Jungle Disk http://www.jungledisk.com/ from Amazon. Current prices are .15 per GB per month, .10 per GB to upload, .17 per GB to download. A one time fee of$20 applies for the software. All data is encrypted which should address some security concerns.
Oosah http://www.oosah.com/ promises 1TB (yes 1TB) of free online storage.
I have not tried either service.
-Prof. Lehman
Java Memory Size
This summer I was running Java programs that were running out of memory. By default the maximum heap size for Java programs is 64MB. You can specify the maximum heap size when running your programs from the command line. The following runs the class file “classfile” with a maxium of 1024 MB.
java -Xmx1024m classfile
You can also specify the starting heap size.
java -Xms512MB -Xmx1024m classfile
Virtual Desktops for Vista (or XP)
Virtual desktops provide multiple screens for working with applications. Rather than minimizing and maximizing applications you can keep applications open on separate “virtual” desktops. This approach may eliminate the need to reposition windows.
An icon is provided in the task bar to allow users to see which virtual desktop they are using and to switch desktops. Users can also switch desktops using keyboard commands such as <windows key> & <up arrow>.
Most Linux systems provide virtual desktops. Virtuawin is an opensource tool that provides this functionality for Windows Vista (or XP). See http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
On-Line File Storage
If you have access to the Internet on-line file storage may be an easier solution than carrying an USB drive. Companies like http://www.box.net offer 1GB of free on-line storage space for files. You can pay a monthly fee for more storage. You can make your files available to other users. On the positive side you have access to your files wherever you have an Internet connection. On the down side there are always security/privacy risks when you store your files on-line.