I had a sort-of friendly argument with some co-workers today about what is and isn’t considered a “real-time” operation. An example of what my co-workers consider a real-time operation is viewing data that has been double-buffered from a data acquisition device. That is, some device acquires data at high speed, stores it in a buffer, and as it fills up that buffer it removes older data and places it in a second buffer for viewing.

Now, if you’re looking at data in that second buffer, would you consider it “real-time” data. I contended that no, that’s not considered real-time data. That’s data collected in real-time (of course) but not displayed or sent for display in real-time relative to what’s currently being sampled by that device. My co-workers argued othewise.

My lack of background in data acquisition devices played against me and I walked away feeling like I must have missed something in all of those classes I took that talked about real-time OSes and such. In retrospect, I still think I’m correct. At the very least, Wikipedia has provided a few comforting articles on the subject matter.

At the very least, the double-buffering story is an example of “soft real-time” and not the “hard real-time” I’m used to thinking about. Are there any readers of this site left (a good question on its own) with any experience one way or the other?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about anime! Yes, I do still watch and enjoy anime, but my viewing habits have changed pretty drastically since leaving college. I just don’t seem to have the time to keep up with as many shows as I used to. That said, here’s what I’m watching these days:

Just Completed

• 紅 (Kurenai): A story about a high school kid who moonlights as a kind of arbitrator/bodyguard when he’s not in school. He’s tasked with protecting a peculiar little girl named Murasaki (with purple hair, if you get the pun) which leads into some pretty compelling drama and action. Although fundamentally a slice of life show, it’s not quite as whimsical as most are in that genre/style.

• Gundam 00 Season 2: This (and last) year’s Gundam series. It think I like this one better than the SEED franchise. There’s only 3 episodes left, and I here that’s all the Gundam we’ll get for 2009 (which makes me sad).
• 精霊の守り人 (Seirei no Moribito, Guardian of the Sacred Spirit): I just started this one about a prince who seems possessed by some sort of spirit/demon and his bodyguard, a bad ass spear woman named Balsa. So far the plot is pretty solid, the character designs are pretty cool (well, Balsa at least), and the fight choreography is top notch.

Yes, I’m a Lost fanatic. For those of you up to date on season 5, here’s a new catch phrase:

“Take the donkey wheel to Tunisia.”

I’ll try to work this one into a conversation sometime soon.

I’ve been dreading having to update the BIOS on my Dell laptop. In the past, this involved taking the Win32 executable from the manufacturer, making a DOS boot disk with the executable on it, and then booting with the disk and completing the process. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s a bit of a nuisance.

Well, Dell fixed that for us “N series” owners (and all other Linux users with Dells, really). Today I updated my BIOS purely in Linux. If you’re curious, see here. Sometimes it’s the little things.

If you aren’t reading it already, I highly recommend checking out the new blog at the White House web site. It’s refreshing to see the current administration being so open about what’s going on and really convenient to get updates on important issues via RSS (of course!).

I’m really glad Lost is back, but I have one gripe about the first couple of episodes. Who puts knives in their dishwasher like that!?

I really like the new design Pepsi has adopted for their cans. There’s just something really cool about the simplicity of it. Have a look.

New Pepsi design

A couple of months ago I received word from a faithful reader that my RSS feed wasn’t up to snuff for use in some readers like Firefox’s “live bookmarks” feature. As a result, I looked into improving the feed and did so a little while back. I didn’t really post an update about it because, well, I just plain forgot.

After fixing the blog’s feed, I took another look at this “fancy shmansy” RSS stuff and inadvertently got hooked. Just like when I discovered tabbed browsing a while back, I don’t know how I read web sites before using RSS.

At first I thought about describing in detail why I’m so hooked, but instead I’m going to keep this short and just say this: if you aren’t already using RSS, try it. Instead of re-typing the same URLs again and again every day for your favorite sites, subscribe to some feeds and use RSS to its maximum effectiveness. I’m hooked!

A few weeks ago I took a business trip to Japan. The trip itself was grueling and incredibly tiring but the food was good. What really burned me up though, was the air travel. This was mostly on account of my fellow travelers more than anything else. If I hadn’t been sick immediately after the trip, first with food poisoning (which I blame on the airline) and then with some form of the flu, I would have posted about this sooner. Here are some rant-filled bullet points:

• Roll-aboard suit cases are exactly that. Do not assume, ladies and gentlemen, that they are also roll-while-on-board as well. It really sucks when you persist in rolling your suitcase around inside the plane. If you are physically unable to carry your “carry-on” suitcase all the way to your seat, then maybe you should rethink your choice to bring it. Next time pick it up or check it in! Argh!
• I get the feeling that some people still think airplanes are some sort of “experience”. By that I mean some passengers seem to really like to kick back, take off their shoes, and put all of their belongings in the overhead compartment. News flash “Bryce”, we can’t put all of our crap up there or there won’t be space for everyone else. This isn’t a damn bed and breakfast, it’s a metal tube full of people who want to get to their destination. Since you decided to put your suitcase, jacket, toiletry bag (separate for some reason), headphone case, and latest issue of Men’s Health up there, I have to put my one suitcase all the way in row 99. Thanks a lot, douchebag!
• Hey man, don’t think that just because you’re “really tired” I have so much sympathy for you that I’ll forgive the fact that you decided to take a whole bench in the terminal to lie down. Listen here “Bill” with the ‘Bama sweater and nylon pants, I don’t care. I’m tired too, but I’m trying to be considerate of the other 500 passengers waiting to get on the plane by taking up only one seat on the bench instead of 5 (and part of the aisle, since your “full figure” protrudes a little bit).

  When you wake up 5 minutes before boarding, I’m sure you’ll wheel your roll-aboard suitcase right to your seat, place it and your 3 other belongings in the overhead compartment, kick back, and have a relaxing trip. Until then, learn to sleep sitting up or take a walk around the terminal to stay awake!

Oh and yes, my pockets were full of Yen since all the change I got on the trip came in 10 Yen coins which can’t be exchanged anywhere. I’ve got to use more vending machines when I’m over there next time.

I had a hell of a weekend a few weeks back. 14 members of Fort Awesome (the alias friends from college go by, for those not in the know) visited Austin, and the Austin City Limits festival was in full swing as well. I had so much fun that weekend that my body took it out on me the following week. My plans for a post about ACL kind of derailed as a result, but here is where I set things straight. Without further ado, my ACL playlist:

• What Made Milwaukee Famous - only got a brief listen of these guys, but I did come to the realization that their sound is a lot more varied than I thought.
• Vampire Weekend - they basically played their entire album, and were a lot fun.
• Delta Spirit - my ACL buddies and I kind of wandered by the stage but we were pretty impressed with these guys. I definitely plan on taking another listen sometime.
• Gogol Bordello - I only managed to hold out for 15 minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore. These guys are just not for me.
• Hot Chip - they look like a pretty nerdy group of guys (we were joking half the time at how one guy looked like John Hodgman and another like Peter Jackson), but they rocked.
• N.E.R.D. - awesome show. These guys were every bit as great as all the hype. I won’t discuss the whole teenage girls on the stage thing (it was a bit creepy).
• Silversun Pickups - also awesome, although I think they turned up the noise factor more than usual. They also basically played their entire album (they’re only one, I think).
• Okkervil River - just caught a brief listen, but I did like what I heard. I also have to check out more stuff from these guys.
• The Raconteurs - I heard Gnarls Barkley rocked, but I was too busy having a blast listening to the Raconteurs.
• Foo Fighters - these guys did not disappoint. The perfect cap on a great weekend of music.

Overall, I managed to listen to quite a bit despite the busy weekend. I missed all of the second day of ACL, but to be honest nothing really grabbed me on that day anyway. This was my first time at the festival, but I don’t think it’ll be my last.