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Poised to Overclock
Right. Unfortunately I just haven’t had the time to write any posts about building Boost today… The computer’s been out of action all day so far as I’ve been replacing my broken motherboard and installing my after market heatsink and fan, which I I mentioned a few days back. So instead, I’ll just share a few words about that and Boost can wait until tomorrow.
I can certainly say that the fan is really, really quiet, and temperatures appear to be lower than with the stock cooler (I say stock – it certainly looks like Intel’s socket 775 stock cooler, but the fan has an Akasa sticker…). I haven’t had a chance to do any temperature readings under stress yet, so we’ll see how things go. When I have a chance I’ll be trying a little light overclocking too so I’ll let you know how that goes… I’m hoping to get my 2.83Ghz CPU up to a stable 3.4, but I haven’t overclocked before so I don’t know if that’s realistic with my relatively cheap cooler.
At present, I am just reinstalling all my Windows software. I’m hoping to have a minute to play around with ASUS Express Gate, since it appears not to be working out of the box… And then? Well it’s coming up to midnight local time and yet I’m still hoping to not only reinstall Linux Mint, but also successfully install Gentoo (which involves compiling my own kernel 
). Still, I’ll see how things go, and I’ll try to sleep a little bit before my early start tomorrow…
Raspberry Pi!
Chances are you’ve all heard about this great new project already. If not, it’s basically a (very basic) computer system, all on a single circuit board about the size of a credit card. It runs on an ARM CPU at 700MHz, but it also has a respectable video chip which can apparently cope with 1080p video. Video output is by HDMI or composite video. It has 256Mb RAM. As yet, only the “development version” is available. It comes case free: you just get a board with all the components sitting exposed on it. But hey, all the better for modding, right?
Oh, and did I mention - it’s selling for around £21/$35! That’s excluding sales tax, but still.
There’s no permanent storage on the PI. However, the version currently shipping sports 2 USB ports, an ethernet connection and an SD card slot. Booting is necessarily via the SD card: right now you need to image your own; when the “educational” version of the Pi comes out later this year, you’ll be able to get cards preinstalled with Debian and some other tools.
Otherwise, the Wiki is there to help, with growing instructions including the way to cross compile various Linux Distros on your main PC to run on the Pi’s ARM processor. When it comes to choosing an SD card, I’ve read that class 4/6 is the best choice (they are better than class 10 for lots of small files, and class 10 has issues with the Linux kernel). I’m planning on either an Integral or Transcend 8GB class 6.
Right now, it’s still difficult to get hold of the things. You just have to register your interest with one of the suppliers – Farnell Element 14 or RS Components. Then you’ll hear from them at the first possible opportunity. And due to the overwhelming popularity of the Pi (I heard Farnell sold out their initial stock within 3 minutes of availability), you should sign up for emails from both of them as soon as possible!
You may still be wondering if it’s worth the effort, low price tag or not. Well tomorrow, I’ll post again, and mention a few of the things you can (or can’t) do with it. And if you want to read more about it, head over the official website (or, of course, Wikipedia).
And in case you’re wondering. Yes. I have already pre-ordered mine 
Sign up now for new SFML Binaries!
Later on today, I’ll be sending out some updated SFML binaries for Windows. Not only that, there’s going to be a brand new script for installing SFML on Unix (in particular, Ubuntu/Linux Mint, but I’m sure a little modification will have it running elsewhere). If you want to be the first to get hold of all this, remember to subscribe by email if you haven’t yet. Otherwise, they’ll be added to the downloads page in a few days.
Renewed SFML 2.0 Builds
Remember all that time ago when I promised regular SFML 2.0 builds to blog subscribers, plus occasional builds for everyone else, as well? I sent out an initial build, but that was it. Anyway, I’m going to try and get that underway again. So, all current email subscribers will be emailed it – drop me an email if you want to opt out. And if you’re not yet subscribed by email, but would like to get the new builds as soon as possible, then please do subscribe now. But don’t worry if you really don’t want to give your email; I’ll provide a link to the build on the downloads page shortly as well.
Initially, the binaries will just be for VC++ 2008, VC++ 2010 and MinGW as before. I do want to provide Unix binaries as well, but it’s a little tricky with dependencies and stuff so I’ve go to decide how best to go about it. Ultimately I think I’ll try and create a Debian package for users of Debian, Ubuntu and Mint; otherwise it’ll probably have to be binaries without dependencies provided (you’d have to go to your package manager and find them yourself). As for MacOS, I’d like to provide binaries there too, just for the sake of completeness, but it’s not an OS I have – or ever into to have – access to, so I’d have to look into cross compiling it from Linux or Windows.
So anyway, you can look forward to updated Windows binaries this afternoon, and I’ll let you know when I can get some build for other platforms. Just remember than while I will keep you up to date with posts and the downloads page, the quickest and easiest way to hear about updates (and new posts) is to subscribe. So go ahead and do it! You’ll get your binaries soon 
PS: I’m providing these files for convenience (and to make the site more popular ), but it’s still a great learning experience to build them yourself at least once. So check out my building SFML tutorials, for Windows/MinGW, Windows/VC or Linux/GCC. Oh, and just so you know, they’ll be updated with some new information soon too!
Plans
Hi everyone! It’s been a while… again So it’s the Christmas break and I’ll have a little more time on my hands, in just a matter of days. I’m going to start by tidying things up a little. I’m going to try and design a logo. I’m also going to rerecord and reupload some of my videos, with new information, new methods and new titles.
So videos are going to be the focus for a bit, though I might go back through my old posts on here. Bring out any half written drafts. Apply corrections to articles, and repost them where necessary. So yeah. The upshot is SFMLCoder is having a bit of an overhall. You probably won’t notice huge differences, but they’ll be there. And hopefully then things will be in order for the new tutorials to start trickling out again.
In other news, I’m currently getting ready to install Gentoo Linux. Details will come later, but basically I have two hard drives: 750Gb and 2000Gb. The 2Tb is going to be my /home directory, for two Linux installs – Gentoo and Mint. As for the 750, just under half is going to Windows and the rest split between Gentoo and Mint installs – and maybe FreeBSD if there’s some space at the end of the disk. I’ll let you know how I get on! Oh, and don’t worry about Gentoo based tutorials that are no use to any of you regular Ubuntu users and such! I’ll be recording videos from Linux Mint so that Ubuntu, Debian and Mint users can benefit. I’ll also still provide Windows videos where I think it’s necessary.
Until next time,
Xander
Linux Distros
Image via Wikipedia, attribution: Larry Ewing
Hi again! Firstly, sorry for the lack of posts recently. I’m at school. I’m doing my masters early. In short, I’m rather busy. I promise I’ll start doing tutorials again when I have the chance. Hopefully by then a stable SFML 2 release will be out, just as the icing on the cake!
Anyway, in the mean time – indulge me! I just upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 and it completely broke my Ubuntu install. Having quickly learnt how to log in and manually mount an NTFS partition on the recovery terminal, I managed to recover my encrypted home directory and its contents. However, I am now in the position of having to set up my Linux install on the weekend.
Now, I could just revert to Ubuntu 11.04 and wait for 11.10 to become a little more stable. OR! I could try another distribution for a change. I’m thinking about Fedora, Linux Mint, Mandriva Linux and Arch Linux.So, let me know which you think I should try – or indeed whether I should stay with Ubuntu or try yet another distribution. Vote on the poll. Feel free to add extra OS choices (all free Unix ones though please!). And, while we’re on the subject of operating systems, you can also vote to tell me which one(s) you use! Most importantly of course, comment to let me know why you think what you think about OS choice and Linux distros. Have fun!
Oh, and before I leave you to vote and comment, one other thing. Although the blog’s been quiet – and may well remain quiet for a while – please do still subscribe by RSS, email, WordPress or whatever you prefer! That way you’ll be among the first to hear when I’m back. Until then,
Xander
Related articles
- Introduction to the “Best Linux Distro 2011″ Series (pcandpenguin.wordpress.com)
- Get multiply Linux Distros from NetBootCD (beast4romtheeast.wordpress.com)
- Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Is Out Now With New Default Programs [Linux] (makeuseof.com)
- Linux Distro: Tails – You Can Never Be Too Paranoid (btconsultare.wordpress.com)
- How to Choose a Linux Distro (zerinsakech.wordpress.com)
A New Horizon for Videos
Image via Wikipedia: Ubuntu!
Good news everyone! At least it should be. I’m now going to be operating largely from Ubuntu. This means that I’ve changed the software I use for screen recording. Previously I used the free Microsoft Expression Encoder. Now, don’t get me wrong – it was great software – but it was a free version only, with recording times limited to 10 minutes. Now I’m using Desktop Recorder under Ubuntu so I no longer have this limit.
Serendipitously, at around the same time, YouTube have allowed me to upload videos longer than 15 minutes. These two factors combined mean that now I shall be perfectly able to upload videos as long as I like to YouTube – within reason.
The upshot? My videos can now be more complete, and hopefully split into fewer parts where applicable. If you’ve got a short attention span, perhaps you won’t be too pleased, but frankly I think this is a great way for me to improve my content!
You should be able to enjoy some long new videos soon.
Xander
Related articles
- Thoughts on Ubuntu in 2011 (techrights.org)
- Linux Q&A ; Why I Play for Both Teams (omgubuntu.co.uk)
- First Look: Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” (writingconfederation.wordpress.com)
- Have you seen the new ‘Celebrate Ubuntu’ YouTube channel yet? (omgubuntu.co.uk)
- Drag n’ Drop YouTube Video Uploader for Unity (omgubuntu.co.uk)
