Nick Snyder

New computer!

nickdsnyder — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 07:02:41 +0000

I just got done building a new computer for myself and I LOVE IT! Being able to pick out exactly what parts I want and then assembling them like a Lego set is incredibly satisfying. But enough jibber-jabber, here are the specs.

Intel Core i7 2600K (Sandy Bridge)

What a beast! 4 cores + hyperthreading = 8 threads running at 3.4 GHz (3.8 GHz with Turbo Boost). At the moment I have my Turbo Boost overclocked to 4.1 GHz on stock cooling but my temps are a little high, so I am considering an after market heatsink/fan.

8 GB DDR3 1600

RAM is dirt cheap and 8 GB should be plenty for at least the next 5 years. The exact model number of my RAM wasn’t on my motherboard’s compatibility list, so I was a little bit worried when the memory error light turned on the first time I booted. Luckily, reseating the RAM modules solved the problem, so I must not have pushed one of the sticks in all the way the first time.

Asus P8P67-M PRO

Everything I need in a nice mATX package. Supports SLI/Crossfire, USB 3.0, SATA 3, EFI BIOS (cool!), and easy overclocking. The fact that it doesn’t have any legacy PCI slots or other cruft also makes me happy.

MSI Radeon 6970

The graphics card in my old computer was a NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT, but I decided to give ~~ATI~~ AMD the nod this time around. I initially planned on getting the slightly more cost efficient 6950 2GB (the 1GB didn’t exist yet when I ordered), but when it came to checkout time I figured I might as well spend the extra $50 (at the time) to get a top-of-the-line GPU. I have the option to do Crossfire in the future, but I perceive dual GPU setups to be slightly more quirky than single GPU setups, so I prefer to avoid them.

Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB

I actually bought this a few months ago because the hard drive on my old computer was getting full. I never imagine needing 2 TB, but at the time it was one of the fastest mechanical hard drives available. If I had purchased a harddrive at the same time as I purchased everything else, I might have upgraded myself to a SSD, but for now it is nice to have one drive that is both fast and large.

Seasonic X750

Power supplies aren’t usually noteworthy but this one came in a suede bag–sexy! More importantly the cables are modular so there is no wasted space in my mATX case, and the fan doesn’t turn on unless it PSU actually needs it. It should also give me enough wattage if I decide to buy a second GPU in the future.

ViewSonic VG2236 LED

I don’t actually have this monitor yet because I just ordered it from Amazon. I had originally ordered a similar Samsung monitor from Newegg, but when it arrived the screen position was different than what was depicted and the stand was not adjustable, so I RMA’d it. Newegg customer service was great (after I called): they did not charge me a restocking fee and gave me a credit for the return shipping which expires after 90 days but is better than nothing. I filed the RMA online, but if I would have called them to begin with they would have sent me a prepaid shipping label. Lesson? Always call for customer service; don’t fill out forms online.

In any case, the ViewSonic monitor that I ordered is a 21.5 inch 1080p LED screen with an adjustable stand. 21.5 inches is the smallest LED screen you can get with a resolution of 1080p and coincidentally the screen height of a 21.5 widescreen is about the same as my current 17 inch SXGA (1280 x 1024) LCD ViewSonic, so they should look nice next to each other. The LED backlight makes it thin, lightweight, and energy efficient.

Lian Li PC-A04

A case that is as practical as it is beautiful. The HDD bays are configurable so you can support up to 7 hard drives or 2 extra long GPUs and 3 hard drives. There is also a dedicated slot to put a 2.5 inch SSD drive if you have one. Two 140mm intake fans, and one 120mm on top (all with airfilters) provide clean and quiet cooling for the whole case. The power supply is mounted on the bottom of the case, so it gets its own intake fan and it can easily be removed without disturbing the rest of your components by sliding it out the back in case it ever needs to be replaced. The front ports which include USB 3.0, eSATA, and audio are conveniently located on top next to the power and reset buttons. Oddly enough, Newegg currently lists the black one as deactivated even th0ugh the case was released less than a month ago, but you can still get the silver version.

Misc

My optical drive is a basic DVD burner; I saw no need to get a Blu-ray drive since the future is all about streaming. My current router is only 802.11g, but I got a dual band 802.11N wireless USB dongle in case I ever get a dual band router in the future.

Cost

There you have it; my personal dream machine for roughly $1750, not including the state tax that Newegg had to charge me because California is one of three states they operate in. I still spent less this time around than the first time a built a computer, and I can certainly afford more now than I could then. I could have trimmed costs down with a smaller hard drive, slightly slower processor, and/or lower end graphics card, but this is something I only get to do every 5 years, so go big or go home!

In memoriam 2005 computer

nickdsnyder — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 04:41:41 +0000

It was mid 2005 when I built my first desktop computer with parts from newegg.com. My computer has served me well over the past 5.5 years and I would be remiss not to reminisce.

I thought for sure that I would overclock and eventually buy a second graphics card to put in SLI, but my computer was good enough to run what I wanted (Civ 4, Call of Duty, Eve Online, and yes, vanilla World of Warcraft) so I didn’t bother.

Soon after I assembled my computer, the chipset fan started making a horrible screeching sound. After installing a replacement fan that ASUS shipped me, my computer wouldn’t POST so I RMA’d the whole motherboard because I thought that I had fried my chipset. ASUS kindly replaced my mobo even though they said that there was nothing wrong with the original one. After the new motherboard failed to POST, I eventually realized that I had forgotten to plug in power to my CD drive after installing the new fan (doh!). I still don’t know why an unpowered device would prevent a motherboard from POSTing but that is one lesson I will never forget.

The failure of my 5 volt rail was more subtle than the screeching fan and took me much longer to diagnose. For over a year my USB mouse would intermittently pretend like it had been unplugged for a few seconds, frequently in the middle of games like Starcraft 2. Sometimes it would plug itself back in, and sometimes I would have to physically unplug it and plug it back in to get Windows to recognize it again.

There were other times when I couldn’t wake my computer from sleep, including one time when I had to unplug my computer to turn it off because all else failed. It turns out that the 5 volt rail is responsible for standby power and USB devices (thank you Google) so all was well after I replaced my power supply.

The sad truth is that even if the parts don’t break, a computer doesn’t last forever. I knew my computer was on its last leg when Starcraft 2 warned me that my computer was below minimum specifications, and so began my quest to build the next dream machine…(to be continued)

Goodbye AT&T; Hello T-Mobile!

nickdsnyder — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 05:01:58 +0000

After having an iPhone 3G (and subsequently an iPhone 3GS) on AT&T for 2.5 years I have switched to T-Mobile to get service for my new Nexus S.

Hardware: Nexus S vs. iPhone 3GS

The Nexus S has a bigger/better screen, camera, flash, and is noticeably lighter to hold (which I like but some people think it makes the phone feel flimsy). I also like the standard mini USB connector over the proprietary Apple connector on the iPhone.

I think I prefer the iPhone’s positioning of the power/lock button and the headphone jack. The power/lock button on the Nexus S is exactly where I put my index finger when naturally gripping the phone so I can’t grip my phone too hard or I will unintentionally lock it. I also would prefer the headphone jack on the top.

Software: Android Gingerbread vs. iOS 4

The best part about Android on the Nexus S is the fact that it is not controlled (i.e. gimped) by a carrier. Free tethering? Check. Native SIP support for VOIP calls? Check. Android also provides more customization and good integration with my Google account.

There are two things that I think iOS does better than Android: user interaction, and music.

iOS devices rely on the touch screen for all navigation within an application and which leads to a better mental model of the application because every action has a visual cue. On Android devices there are 4 hardware buttons that behave differently depending on the context. Hitting the back button might take you to the previous screen in the application, or it might exit the application if there is nowhere to go back to. The context menu and the search buttons may or may not be used by a given application and there is no visual clue if they are or not; you just need to hit them to find out. Same problem with the long touch paradigm; there is no visual clue to indicate that a UI element can be long touched for more options. As a result the user has to memorize what buttons/touches are useful for each application.

When it comes to music Apple is king. iTunes provides effortless purchasing, syncing, and backup of music and podcasts; Android does not. iOS also lets you control playing music (play/pause/fast-forward/rewind/volume) without unlocking your phone; Android does not.

Carrrier: AT&T vs. T-Mobile

I had dual service for about 3 weeks so that I could compare AT&T and T-Mobile at the places I visit the most (my apartment, my workplace, my parents’ house). Fortunately for me, T-Mobile appears to have better coverage of my apartment and their 3G data network is at least as fast, and often faster than AT&T’s.

T-Mobile provides the best value of all the carriers and it is the only carrier that offers a no contract plan.

T-Mobile Even More Plus Plans

$30/month for 500 minutes
$10/month for unlimited texting
$10/month for 200MB data*
$25/month for unlimited data*
$60/month for 500 minutes, unlimited text, unlimited data* ($5 discount for buying unlimited text and data)
No contract but phones are unsubsidized

*Free tethering with Gingerbread

AT&T Individual Plans

$40/month for 450 minutes
$5/month for 200 text messages
$15/month for 1500 text messages
$20/month for unlimited text messages
$15/month for 200MB (NO tethering)
$25/month for 2GB (NO tethering)
$45/month for 2GB and tethering
2 year contract but phones are subsidized

Doesn’t really matter how you slice it, with T-Mobile you get more for less; and that is why I switched.

New TSA security policy

nickdsnyder — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 07:07:20 +0000

ARLINGTON, VA — For months, the Transportation Security Administration has been deploying backscatter x-ray technology to major airports in the United States in an effort to provide better security for the millions of passengers that fly every day. Recently, the TSA has come under fire from health and privacy advocacy groups who claim that the backscatter x-ray machines cause unjustifiable levels of radiation exposure and that passengers who do not submit to the backscatter x-ray are subject to invasive pat downs from a TSA security officials.

Today, the TSA announced a new security policy in an attempt to pre-empt the National Opt-Out Day protest planned for November 24, 2010. Effective immediately, passengers will no longer be required to submit to backscatter x-rays; instead, each passenger will be issued a TSA branded taser that will be confiscated when the passenger deplanes at their destination. “In the event of a hijacking, the tasers will allow the legitimate passengers to overwhelm the hijackers with 1500 volts of pure justice” explained TSA Administrator John Pistole.

When asked if he was worried about passengers accidentally discharging their taser and hurting other passengers, Mr Pisole said “I think people will quickly learn the consequences of accidentally tasering someone who also has their own taser. Overall, this is a big win for passenger safety and security lines.” Mr. Pisole went on to say that airlines will be required to update the safety presentation given by flight attendants to include a part that demonstrates proper use of the taser.

Mr. Pisole did not comment on what would happend to the unused backscatter x-ray machines, but it is rumored that the TSA has already made arrangements to sell these excess machines to a few interested companies in the adult entertainment industry.

Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB

nickdsnyder — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:11:14 +0000

5 years ago when I built my computer I put in a top of the line Western Digital VelociRaptor 74GB 10,000 RPM hard drive for $184. Although the VelociRaptor has never failed me, it is a far cry from the obscenity it represented 5 years ago. Over the past year I have had to micromanage the dwindling space on my hard drive by vigilantly deleting old downloads and programs, but no more!

For $173 I got my hands on Western Digital’s Caviar Black 2TB 7,200 RPM hard drive. Only 7,200 RPM won’t that be slower? Nay, the higher data density more than compensates for the slower RPM. Here are the benchmarks using HD Tune Pro (free trial).

Western Digital VelociRaptor 74GB

Transfer Rate Minimum : 9.5 MB/s
Transfer Rate Maximum: 68.6 MB/s
Transfer Rate Average: 58.4 MB/s
Access Time: 8.0 ms
Burst Rate: 114.0 MB/s

Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB

Transfer Rate Minimum: 68.0 MB/s
Transfer Rate Maximum: 139.5 MB/s
Transfer Rate Average: 108.1 MB/s
Access Time: 12.0 ms
Burst Rate: 206.6 MB/s

A few interesting things to note:

You can tell that my old hard drive has a few bad sectors by downward spikes (my S.M.A.R.T. log says that I have 9 reallocated sectors)
On a large disk, the performance difference between the inner tracks and the outer tracks is significant
The worse case read speed of the new hard drive is still better than the best case of my old hard drive

Whenever I get around to building my next dream machine, this hard drive will definitely get moved there. It is a great capacity hard drive with performance that is only exceeded by solid state hard drives.

What is broadcast TV?

nickdsnyder — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:01:45 +0000

I wish I had recorded my most recent phone call with Comcast but a paraphrased transcript will have to do. Luckily I had the call on speaker so I do have a witness.

The iPhone Premium

nickdsnyder — Sun, 23 May 2010 19:42:27 +0000

My two year contract with AT&T will be over in July and I can only hope that AT&T will lose its deathgrip on the iPhone before 2012. Until then, I wanted to calculate the premium that I am paying for the privilege of owning an iPhone on AT&T as compared to an Android phone on T-Mobile.

AT&T Individual Plan ($40/month)

450 minutes (with rollover)
5000 night/weekend minutes
Unlimited mobile to mobile
2 year contract to start new service
iPhone requires unlimited data plan for an additional $30/month

T-Mobile Individual Plan ($30/month)

500 minutes
Unlimited night/weekend minutes
Unlimited mobile to mobile
No contract required
Android phones require an unlimited data plan for an additional $25/month

T-Mobile’s basic plan gives you more for less and on top of that, their required data plan is cheaper. This means the minimum phone bill for an AT&T iPhone plan is $70/month while the minimum phone bill for a T-Mobile Android plan is $55/month (not including taxes or below the line fees). That is a difference of $15/month (or to put it in terms that wireless carriers can understand, $360 over the course of a 2-year contract).

It doesn’t stop there either; what about text messages? T-Mobile will let you bundle talk, unlimited text, and unlimited web for $60/month which means that you can effectively add unlimited text messages for $5/month (60-55=5). AT&T will only give you 200 text messages for $5/month, so if you spend more than $5/month on text messages (I don’t) then you can add that amount to your iPhone premium.

So to summarize, here is how much MORE you are paying to have an iPhone on AT&T as compared to an Android phone on T-Mobile depending on how many text messages you send in a month

$15 for up to 200 text messages per month
$25 for up to 1500 text messages per month
$30 for unlimited text messages per month

Above all else I think not having to sign a contract with T-Mobile to start service is PRICELESS. It is a statement by T-Mobile that says to me “We keep customers by competing and having the best product, not by locking people into long contracts.” If their service sucks then I have the option to leave (in doing so I would have to enslave myself to another carrier for 2 years but that is another blog post…).

In case you hadn’t noticed, I am salivating at the thought at leaving AT&T. I love my iPhone but I am not sure it is worth $15/month more than an Android phone and I won’t be holding my breath for a 3G capable iPhone on T-Mobile.

Lost Predictions

nickdsnyder — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 06:00:45 +0000

I am impressed that the writers of Lost have been able to keep it as unpredictable as ever despite the fact that there are only a few episodes left, bravo. Before all is revealed I decided that I should jot down some thoughts and predictions.

Thoughts

There appear to be two distinct timelines. Timeline 1 is the one we know the best where Oceanic Flight 815 crashes on the island. Timeline 2 is the one where Oceanic Flight 815 does not crash. These timelines are distinct because there are other irreconcilable differences such as Jin and Sun not being married in Timeline 2. Timeline 2 is NOT timeline 1 sans the plane crash.
The island appears to be a place between timelines.
The island appears to be a place between life and death.
Most (if not all) of the characters on the island find love at some point.
What happened, happened. You can’t change the past.
Every choice matters. You can change the future.
The main characters in timeline 2 appear to have absorbed some memories from the timeline 1 characters.

Predictions

The souls trapped on the island (i.e. Christian Shephard, Isabella Alpert, Michael Dawson, Anthony Cooper) are trapped there because a living person has not “let go” of them (i.e. Jack Shephard, Richard Alpert, Walt Dawson, John Locke). For example, Richard seems to have released his lover when they talked to each other via Hugo.
When all is said and done, the Oceanic Flight 815 characters in timeline 1 will end up fused with the characters in timeline 2. The rest of timeline 1 presumably continues without these characters but this is irrelevant to the main characters of Lost.
None of these predictions are correct, I give up.

Ok, so probably not good predictions but whatever. Those writers always seem to be two steps ahead of me…

Starcraft 2 Beta Replays

nickdsnyder — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 06:51:53 +0000

After I installed the cracked Starcraft 2 Beta and got bored playing the AI (I suspect that I have the AI files are not working correctly), I went trolling around on YouTube to find some good replays of real people playing each other. Below are some of my favorites.

Zerg vs Protoss on Lost Temple

Protoss vs Terran on Blistering Sands

Zerg/Terran vs Zerg/Terran on Kulas Ravine

Zerg vs Terran vs Terran on Kulas Ravine

Zerg vs Terran stalemate

Terran vs Terran on Blistering Sands

Zerg vs Terran on Lost Temple

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXUICP4yc-A

Terran vs Protoss

Zerg vs Protoss

The power of a roach

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVkAm-smRK0

Hilarious planetary fortress rush

If you liked these replays then check out more on the StarCraft Legacy channel on YouTube.

Go Go Gadget Go

nickdsnyder — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:53:48 +0000

One of the more interesting features of the Go programming language is goroutines. Goroutines are supposed to make parallel programming easy, so I was interested to find out how how much speedup I could observe on my dual-core MacBook Pro by doing 1 billion additions (mu-ha-ha-ha)!

Here are the results of doing 1 billion additions in a few languages.

0.40 seconds in C++
0.43 seconds in Go
1.73 seconds in Java
75 seconds in PHP
193 seconds in Python

These results are anecdotal, but it is still impressive that Go’s performance is on par with C++. So how do goroutines perform when multiple processors are available? As I found out, the answer depends on how smart your implementation is.

Channels

Before I could use goroutines, I first needed to learn about channels. A channel represents a one way stream (or queue) of objects. Goroutines can use channels to send and receive information to and from other goroutines.

Think of channels like an airline ticket counter that has a first class queue and an economy queue where each queue is analogous to a Go channel. One goroutine might be the agent who sorts people into the correct line (i.e. the producer of the two queues), and the other goroutine could be the ticket agent handing out boarding passes (i.e. the consumer of the two queues).

If there is room in the queue then the producer can insert people into the queue without being blocked by the consumer, otherwise the producer will have to wait (block) until there is room in the queue again. Likewise, the consumer can keep working as long as there is someone in the queue, otherwise the consumer will be blocked until someone enters the queue.

The addition problem that I set up does not map to a useful producer/consumer problem so instead my strategy was to assign half of the work to a goroutine.

Goroutines

sum2.go was my first attempt at goroutines and it successfully utilized both processors, but had the nasty side effect of increasing real execution time to 3.6 seconds and CPU execution time to 7.0 seconds…oops. I soon discovered that the overhead was caused by write contention to the shared sum variable.

In sum3.go I used two sum variables to avoid write contention and a channel to signal when the goroutine was finished. This improved performance to 1.3 seconds of real time and 2.4 seconds of CPU time, but this is still worse then the single threaded Go program. I speculated that the goroutine was incurring overhead from reading variables owned by the main thread (sum1, sum2, n).

In sum4.go I eliminated the read overhead by encapsulating the goroutine in its own method and passing the necessary information via parameters. This improved performance to an impressive 0.23 seconds of real time and 0.40 seconds of CPU time! This is a speedup of 1.74 and obviously faster then the single threaded C++ program.

Verdict

Go has surprised me in many ways. I am now a big fan of goroutines and channels because they provide a useful and easy to understand abstraction for performing parallel computations that is baked right into the language. Even better, Go appears to perform on par with C++!

Here are 5 reasons why I think Go will be an interesting language to watch develop

Go makes multi-threading easy at the cost of some run time overhead (although this overhead was not visible in my results). Developers might take advantage of multi-core processors in Go when they might not have bothered to do so in another language.
Compiler and run time optimizations will improve over time and reduce overhead of goroutines.
The Go runtime overhead will become insignificant as larger multi-core processors become mainstream. Giving programmers the ability to easily utilize all available cores will be more important then worrying about other overheads (e.g. a 12 thread C++ program wouldn’t be significantly faster than 12 goroutines when run on a 12 core processor, but the Go program would probably be less complex since there is no thread management).
I/O bound applications will perform just as well in Go as they would in C++ since run time overhead won’t be a significant factor.
Google made it, ’nuff said