Returning to Personal Blogging
What a stereotype for a blog post- the "I'm back to blogging" after a long time post.
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Thoughts on technology, software development, and life
Implications of Gigabit Internet to the Home
I recently got gigabit Internet at home (the CenturyLink variant was the only choice in my neighborhood). Overall its going well so far although I can easily peg my router (ASUS RT-AC66U) to the point...
Read more →The Verge On Creating Mixed Reality Videos
The Verge posted a nice video about how to create mixed reality videos with the HTC Vive/SteamVR.\\r\\n\\r\\n\\r\\n\\r\\nThe one big that is sort of missing is more explanation about how you align the...
Read more →PC Build Update
Last week I built a new PC! My old home workstation was using a Core i7-2700k and it just wasn't cutting it for some of the VR titles. On the one hand the old CPU was 4.5 years old and that should hav...
Read more →Bill Gates interviews Neal Stephenson in 360 video
Bill Gates just posted a [review of Neal Stephenson's book Seveneves](\"https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Seveneves\"). He also includes a 360 degree view interview of Neal- I'm pretty sure he is tryin...
Read more →Mixed Reality Video
One of the really fun projects I got to work on over the past few months was creating a mixed reality video to show off [SteamVR](\"http://www.steamvr.com/\") and the [HTC Vive](\"http://www.htcvive.....
Read more →HTC Vive Launches Tomorrow
Once again one of those \\"I haven't posted on my blog in a long time\\" posts. I guess I've been busy. Tomorrow is a really big day- the HTC Vive launches! SteamVR (our bit of it) has already been in...
Read more →VR Impact on Development
Another interesting aspect of VR is how it impacts the development process and how you structure your workplace when building VR experiences. Valve's normal \\"cabal\\" structure is pretty well docume...
Read more →VR Performance and CPUs- Cores vs Frequency
I feel like I'll probably write a bunch about performance and VR as we go along since its such a complex topic and there is so much stuff we still need to learn. PC and gaming performance has always b...
Read more →VR API support in Games
Various recent discussions have been somewhat confusing about what it takes to add VR support to a game, and specifically what it takes to support multiple VR devices. As usual there are several layer...
Read more →Cloudhead on Locomotion in VR
Cloudhead Games has some great ideas about [locomotion in VR in this video](\"https://youtu.be/DwZt2jRE8PY\" "\\"Locomotion").\\r\\n\\r\\nThis video brings up a couple of interesting topics worth disc...
Read more →Quick thoughts on GPUs for VR
I see lots of speculation around about what graphics card you need for good VR experiences. At this point we are at least a few months away from availability of commercial VR systems for PCs. As such ...
Read more →VR Growing Pains
One of the things we are very passionate about at Valve is helping the industry create a whole new set of VR experiences that people love. We want to make sure that the exposure that the world gets to...
Read more →Macs and VR
The funny thing is that Macs should be great for VR. On average they tend to have slightly better graphics than the typical PC because Apple controls the ecosystem and has always needed good baseline ...
Read more →VR- Getting Sick
The topic of getting sick in VR (often called \\"simulator sickness\\") is a complex one. The simplified core of the issue is that when your visual perception doesn't match what your body (and especia...
Read more →VR Topics and Performance
The really exciting thing about working on VR at the moment is just how little we actually know. It really feels like the good old days of first working with a mouse and trying to figure out this bran...
Read more →What I'm up to lately
Its been awhile since I've done anything on this blog. I'm not entirely certain that people read blogs anymore here in mid 2015. But I've been doing some cool stuff lately and I thought I'd push mysel...
Read more →Sous Vide Buffalo Wings
Last Sunday I wanted to make some great wings for a marathon football day. I've been a big fan of wings for a long time but its one of those foods that can be done so poorly the result is horrifying. ...
Read more →Remote Light Sensor with XBee
Ironically my first project hasn't used a Netduino yet. I’ve started playing with using XBee units to transmit a remote value of a light sensor, and it turns out the XBee units are based on their own ...
Read more →Posts about Netduino
I bought a [Netduino](\"http://www.netduino.com/\") a couple of weeks ago and am planning on posting about my experimentation with it (& other related stuff). I've played with electronics since I was ...
Read more →Wine in a Blender
I received a copy of [Modernist Cuisine](\"http://www.modernistcuisine.com\") for Christmas. First of all let me just say these books are incredible. The span of topics covered is amazing, although th...
Read more →Hardware Misc- NewEgg SSD Deal and Anand's Guide
NewEgg has the OCZ Agility 3 240gb SSD drive on sale today for $239. This is the same one I just used in my new workstation and its been working great for me so far. This is a great price and together...
Read more →Upgrades- 16gb of RAM and Radeon 6950 Hacks
Two quick updates on [the new desktop PC](\"http://www.alexhopmann.com/2011/11/29/details-of-the-new-desktop-pc-for-2011/\") before I get around to writing up more about the build process. First of al...
Read more →Details of the New Desktop PC for 2011
I’ve now completed building out the new desktop PC and thought I’d detail the hardware component choices I made. As I said last post, one of the key advantages of building your own PC is that you can ...
Read more →New Desktop and Media PC Builds November 2011
Here I go again. I'm starting to feel like a bit of a masochist building my own PCs rather than just buying something nice off the shelf. A colleague asked me the other day why I build my own and some...
Read more →Kindle Fire Day 1 Impressions
As with many others, I received my Kindle Fire yesterday and thought I'd write up my initial impressions. My main frame of reference is comparing it to older Kindles and my gen-1 iPad which probably s...
Read more →LED Lightbulbs in the Home
I've tried twice before to get LED lightbulbs for the house. This has seemed like a very exciting thing for quite some time- the idea of fairly low power, efficient, almost never burning out light sou...
Read more →Free Windows Server Memory for Hyper-V
So Windows (like most OSes) maintains a number of caches where it keeps in RAM frequently accessed disk contents (as well as a few other things). Normally these are not adjustable- it just uses extra ...
Read more →Tough Mudder- NorCal
Last weekend we headed down to Northern California to do [Tough Mudder](\"http://toughmudder.com/events/northern-california/\"). Six months ago when we signed up for this it sounded like a great idea....
Read more →Brunch at The Corson Building
On our way back from a long bike ride (we are kicking off training for the STP this year), Kat and I were looking for a good place to grab some brunch. Seattle Magazine had just done a round-up of bes...
Read more →Media Center Missing Drive Space
I've been having a problem lately with the Windows Media Center I use for my main TV. I'm still running Media Center on Vista and I have a 750GB drive in the box that only has about 200GB of real cont...
Read more →787 Dreamliner First Flight
\[caption id=\\"attachment\_579\\" align=\\"alignnone\\" width=\\"561\\" caption=\\"Photo of the first take-off of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, right after rotation\\"\]![\"Photo](\"http://www.alexhopma...
Read more →Winter PC Cleaning
As I typically do this time of year its is time for \\"Winter PC Cleaning\\". This is the time of year when I often end up looking at which machines around the house I need to upgrade, which to replac...
Read more →2.5\" SATA
One interesting twist- when I was doing my table I was mostly thinking of SATA in terms of the high capacity 3.5\\" drives, where you can get a 1TB drive for ~$90 and a 1.5TB drive for $120. So that i...
Read more →SATA vs. SAS vs. SSD
I was doing some analysis recently and I put together a simple comparison chart between commodity SATA drives, enterprise SAS drives and enterprise SSD. Often SSD is positioned as \\"fast but very exp...
Read more →Airlines Don't Have To Suck
Sometimes when I get on [my usual rant about why certain airlines suck](\"http://www.alexhopmann.com/2008/04/03/american-airlines-still-sucks/\"), my friends getting sick of it seem to take the attitu...
Read more →Handwriting, TabletPC and Win7
For someone with such crappy handwriting its surprising that I've always been so interested in using it as an interface to computers. Most of the time I don't care at all about voice user interfaces- ...
Read more →Lots of Flying
With my airplane back and the weather being great I've been thrilled to get a bunch of flying in lately. In the last few weeks I've been out to Orcas Island a few times, Portland, Hood River, McCall I...
Read more →iPhone Apps, Updates and Bait & Switch
It will be interesting to see how things work out with the new in-app purchases and all. I think there is a certain amount of fear that the whole app market is going to turn into a bunch of semi-scams...
Read more →iPhone 3GS Activation
I got a new iPhone 3GS today (actually Kat got it, but is letting me have the new one while she gets my old one that isn't eligable for an upgrade yet). They were warning that the activation is taking...
Read more →Software- Design
KC Lemson writes a nice little bit about how hard it can be to design a feature and get it right. She writes about the type-ahead feature in the Outlook Web Access listview- this was the most visi...
Read more →Home Computing- Media Center PCs
I saw this cool MCE PC from Niveus. Incredibly expensive (starts at $4800) but with 3 TV tuners including HDTV (but only for over-the-air HDTV), a design that looks more like consumer electronic...
Read more →Travel- Portland
Happy summer! As is typical here in Seattle the weather sucks for the beginning of summer. Should get nice right about July 5th...
Read more →Home Networking- Routers & Microsoft- Reviews
I did some experiments this morning with some of the router stability issues I'd been having and reported about the Belkin router below. I replaced the Belkin with a Linksys WRT54G and what do you...
Read more →Home Networking- Routers
Since I've been working at Pure Networks I'd had the opportunity to play with lots of routers so I figured it would make sense to write up some comments about specific models I've been playing w...
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