When I built a new PC some 3 years ago I decided to just stick with Linux and after much experimentation my distribution of choice was Ubuntu. Once in a while however, I found that I needed access to a Windows machine for something that couldn’t be accomplished in Linux or through Wine. So I downloaded VirtualBox and installed Windows within the VM and used it whenever needed. This surely was way faster than dual-booting since I was most often in the OS my choice and was loathed enough to deal with Windows that having it operate at a sub-optimal rate through the VM was fine by me.

After a small detour with a Mac Mini for about a year and the release of the new 27″ 2009 iMac I decided to fully convert over to the Mac environment. If anyone knows me they know that I seldom settle for the base minimum, so I went all out and got the quad-core i7 version of the iMac running at 2.8 Ghz with the base 4GB of RAM. Apart from the processing power, the screen size with a resolution of 2560×1440 has been an absolute boon in productivity. I can now have relatively large application windows and not having to constantly switch between them.

At work, I use Linux as my main development platform and I wanted to have it available at home as well and having used VirtualBox in the past decided to go that route again on the Mac. After everything was installed, I found that the Linux operating with the VM was perfectly happy, but the host Mac was sluggish though nearly 98% of the CPU was idle. I then ended up resorting to suspend the VM when I wanted to go use the Mac and resuming when I returned to Linux.

Needless to say this isn’t really an ideal working environment and when Parallels 5 for Mac became available through a MacUpdate bundle, I decided to jump and buy it to see how well itwould perform. Within VirtualBox the installation of Linux is very similar to a native PC, however with Parallels, I pointed it at the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx ISO and it not only detected that it was a Linux image, it asked me for the hostname, username and password. I was curious as to why this information was being asked so imagine my total and utter surprise when the VM started and not long after the Linux installation was started for me with my provided information passed along.

Before long, the installation completed and I had a fully installed Ubuntu Linux in a VM. The most important part is that now running Linux in the VM has absolutely no adverse effect on the host Mac and the CPU is still largely idle during normal operations. For the price, bundle or not, Parallels is surely a very impressive software.

Cheers

]]> http://ashwinbihari.com/2010/05/08/mac-virtualization/feed 6 http://ashwinbihari.com/2009/07/30/accessible-celebrity http://ashwinbihari.com/2009/07/30/accessible-celebrity#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:40:02 +0000 Ashwin http://ashwinbihari.com/?p=267 Microblogging sites like Twitter have really taken off in the past couple of years. There are other similar sites, but Twitter seems to be king. This post, however, has less to do with Twitter and it’s use and more to do with the people that are on there.

When I first heard about Twitter, people were using it to keep friends up to date about their daily ventures both interesting and mundane. As appealing as this was initially, that model had little use for me as many of my friends weren’t on Twitter and weren’t using it for that purpose.

In the ensuing time since I’ve fully gotten into the acting of Twittering (or should that be Tweeting?) the population and use have both changed to make this medium a lot more relevant to me. Of greatest interest to me is the number of celebrities that have made their way onto Twitter and are active in keeping everyone appraised of their daily activities.

For me, Twitter has taken the role of the Shorts or Asides part of the blog that I used to contain small stories or links that didn’t warrant a full entry. This has allowed me to write longer, and hopefully more meaningful entries while using Twitter as a way of firing off quite entries. I did try to use Tumblr for that purpose but found that it was more work than to quickly fire off something to Twitter with my iPhone.

But, returning to the topic at hand and the celebrities. The first that I came across was Stephen Fry, a British actor and comedian (are they two separate things?). I was first made aware of Mr. Fry through an episode of Bones that piqued my interest. When I found Mr. Fry’s twitter feed, I quickly became a follower and was taken along for a ride that involved a trans-Atlantic trip to Los Angeles to shoot an episode of Bones followed by a Asian tour all the while being indulged on his fancies and luxuries. The pictures of the seat on the airplane had me quite envious.

Though having no personal connection to Mr. Fry, just eavesdropping on his thoughts as he traveled the world and around London gives quite a interesting view into the goings on in his personal life while his appearance on TV provides the professional aspects. The most intriguing part is the direct connection to those that are only visible on the television or big screen and being able to converse with them just as you might your friends.

This level of access, both for the celebrity and the public, is quite unprecedented.

So be sure to follow Mr. Fry and let me know of other interesting people in return. Oh, and you can follow me too if you wish.

Cheers

OnLive

The gaming arena is in constant flux with innovations on all fronts to produce games that are visually captivating and reach a large base of gamers. Having been a gamer for nearly two decades now, I remember the days of games arriving on 360K floppy disks to the more rigid 1.44MB 3.5″ floppy disks. Apart from the storage media, the graphics and sound capabilities evolved from CGA, EGA, to VGA and from the Adlib music only adapters to full speech with Sound Blaster.

With the arrival of CD-ROM to the gaming world, the games not only included some high quality graphics but also fully spoken dialogue that engrossed the gamer. The adventure genre really benefited by these advancements and performed exceptionally well.

One downside of the constant evolution of games are that for the average user, the latest and greatest games are the single piece of software that will attempt to utilize the full power and potential of their PC. This usually means that to play the latest game at a high rate would usually require newer hardware to go along with it. This need to constantly upgrade the PC to fully enjoy all of the advancements in the games is what converted me to a console gamer.

With consoles, gamers can once again return to not having to worry about the specification of the hardware but rather focus on the game content and what it has to offer. The Microsoft XBOX 360 and Sony Playstation 3 employ online networks that allow game developers to release demos of their games to entice customers to purchase the full game. I can’t speak much about the Nintendo Wii having not played with it.

However, not very game is accompanied with a demo to allow gamers to preview it before sinking the significant amount of money into a game that they might not like. Review sites do their job in guiding the buyer, but there’s nothing like playing the game for yourself to see how you like it. Game rentals fill this market need ideally and vendors such as Gamefly allow gamers to rent games to avoid spending money on games that they might not end up liking. Even for purchasing gamers, renting sometimes makes more sense since it allows the gamer to play the game through and then return the game in exchange for others in the queue. Unless a game has a large re-playability value, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to pay the premium price for a single play-through.

With the introduction of OnLive the gaming industry is ready for it’s next paradigm shift in the way gamers play games and most importantly interact with other gamers. OnLive brings the ever present concept of social networking to the gaming world is such a cohesive way that it aids rather than hinders in the whole gaming experience.

To qualify as a paradigm shift in the way gamers consume games, OnLive had to deliver something truly unique and ground breaking and their server-based game delivery to the PC browser and to your TV through the MicroConsole does just that. The games are housed entirely within OnLive’s servers and all processing is done there with hardware capable of scaling to meet the games need. The only requirement on the user’s side is a broadband Internet connection that will stream the game.

By off-loading the games hardware requirements to OnLive’s servers, the users PC or Mac doesn’t necessarily have the most expensive hardware available today and with the MicroConsole, the console gaming experience is preserved. Additionally by housing all of the gaming content on the servers, OnLive allows a variety of social networking functionality unforeseen before like the ability of users to be spectators on other ongoing games on the server. Additionally, gamers can now quickly join in ongoing games with multiplayer capabilities.

To truly appreciate OnLive’s offering, it is necessary to view the demo shown at GDC ‘09 below. Once seen, you will also agree that OnLive is poised to take gaming to a whole new level and spread it to an even larger mass.

OnLive Developer Walkthrough Part 1

OnLive Developer Walkthrough Part 2

OnLive Developer Walkthrough Part 3

OnLive Developer Walkthrough Part 4

Cheers

The success of the iPhone and iPod Touch is unprecedented and nothing exemplifies that like a counter of the number of applications downloaded to these two devices. Apple, recently announced that nearly 25,000 applications were hosted on the App Store, and now with nearly one billion of those apps have been downloaded.

To commemorate this amazing feat, Apple is hosting  a simple contest with some killer giveaways, simply download an app to your iPhone or iPod Touch or fill out a form and you’re all set. Enter often and daily and good luck to us all.

UPDATE: Looks like we’ve reached a billion downloads since I took the capture some 13 days ago. The expectation was that one billion downloads would be reached by Friday the 24th, but turns out it was reached a day sooner. Now the wait to see who the lucky winner of the cool prizes is.

Cheers

I grabbed the 2.4GB ISO and managed to download it in about 25 minutes. As I run Ubuntu at home, I wasn’t about to bother burning the DVD and doing an actual installation. I did, however, create a virtual machine within Virtualbox to see what Windows 7 has to offer.

I’ve been playing with Windows from the old 3.0 days and having installed every version of Windows except Vista I’m quite familiar with the installation process. The first thing that struck me with Windows 7 is the utter lack of options. I was shown the hard drive and given the option to create a partition with the size of my choosing. My only next option was to install Windows, which I chose and after a automatic restart I was begining my customization.

Once past the customization, I was looking at the new desktop with quite an impressive background image. The first thing that greeted me here was a Action Center message that I had no anti-virus software and was vulnerable to attack.  No big surprise there I guess, but it was interesting to see that I could grab a preview version of Kaspersky (Norton and AVG are also available) that works for a couple of months while I evaluate Windows 7.

With the latest Windows updates installed and Kaspersky protecting me from the evils on the Internet, I was asked to reboot and came back to a familiar Vista login page. Once I successfully logged back in the first thing that struck me was the change in the familiar Windows taskbar. The Start menu is very similar to the one in Vista from what I could tell with my limited playing around.

The gadgets you see on the right of the desktop are a straight carry-over from Vista. My experience with Vista was limited to a laptop that I had access to for some 2 months and so I don’t claim to be an expert with that OS, but Windows 7 to the untrained eye surely looks a lot like Vista. In general, it looks like Windows 7 hides a lot of the complexity associated with settings that were readily available in XP. Not sure if this is a good thing or not.

My Virtualbox virtual machine is configured to provide 768MB of RAM to Windows 7 and I found that it works quite well with the resources provided. More exploration is needed to see what goodies this OS provides, but so far I’ve found the new games.

Cheers

My iPhone 3G is finally here and I’m having a blast using it. I was able to move the SIM card from my previous Nokia phone into the iPhone and get going immediately.

Cheers

Android has slowly been taking shape to be a viable competitor to the iPhone in all aspects. The release of the recent SDK and announcements of the upcoming HTC Dream shows the progress that has been made. The SDK includes an emulator that allows developers to get a head start in creating all sorts of applications and test them out well before any phone is released.

Until now there was no clear indication of how these applications developed with the Android SDK would be made available to the early adopters of the HTC Dream. We got that answer today in the form the Android Market. An App Store equivalent with virtually no restrictions on approval of applications. I imagine that the by the time the Android Market takes shape there might be some restrictions in place to prevent people from putting up malicious applications that cause harm to the devices. The initial implementation will only allow for free application with promises of paid application support in the subsequent updates.

I took the opportunity to download the SDK and play with the emulator and created some applications and had quite a bit of fun. The chosen language for Android is Java which makes the SDK available for Linux and Windows. The Apple SDK is only available for Mac’s and even if I were to get an iPhone I would still need a Mac to develop any applications and that’s just an investment I’m unwilling to make.

If the HTC Dream and Android truly take shape by the end of the year, I might actually consider heading in that direction as opposed to the iPhone when my current AT&T contract expires.

Cheers

This teaser for their next movie UP continues that fine tradition in an approx. 45 second video. Enjoy

Cheers

Cuil - A new search engine to rival Google

I searched for the string “linux usb hardy” in relation to an issue I was having with VirtuaBox on my Hardy based Linux machine and got back 2 completely useless results in Cuil while a plethora of useful results were hurled at me by Google.

I think Cuil has a way to go before declaring themselves “the world’s biggest search engine”.

Cheers

All the recent buzz and a article on eWeek seem to declare the demise of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray the chosen format. I wonder what this means to the XBOX 360.

I guess in this case early adopters of HD-DVD are the ones that will pay dearly to not only abandon their current HD-DVD players but potentially pick up a Blu-Ray player or PS3?

Updated 02/23/08
Turns out that Toshiba decided to waive the white flag on HD DVD officially. All early Blu-Ray adopters now get to walk around with their nose held high and tongue sticking out at anyone who’d question their Next-gen HD choice. I guess Sony’s choice to bundle the Playstation 3 with Blu-Ray players was a smart idea after all.

Cheers