Balint's Blog » Links http://blog.spench.net balint at spench fullstop-decimalpoint-dot net Sun, 20 Jul 2025 18:53:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Pd (Pure Data) and friends http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/pd-pure-data-and-friends/ http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/pd-pure-data-and-friends/#comments Fri, 27 Jul 2007 06:31:20 +0000 balint http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/pd-pure-data-and-friends/ I recently downloaded and started playing with Pd (written by Miller S. Puckette, the same chap who started Max/MSP).

For reference, these are some good sites to learn about Pd and download loads of goodies to extend its functionality:

I am in the process of creating a Visual Studio 2005 VC project/solution to supersede the antiquated command-line based Makefile compilation process. I hope this will draw more people to extending Pd and creating new/contributing to existing externals in a friendlier development environment!

]]> http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/pd-pure-data-and-friends/feed/ 0 The Internet Communications Engine http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/the-internet-communications-engine/ http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/the-internet-communications-engine/#comments Fri, 27 Jul 2007 06:10:58 +0000 balint http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/the-internet-communications-engine/ Ice, as it’s known, appears to be a relatively new competitor in the middleware communications layer. They compare its performance to TAO and come out better in many respects. It’s always easy to come out better than DCOM since that only runs on Windows! Although they boast a nice package list, it nevertheless appears very reminiscent of the other two in terms of interface definition through some form of IDL and conversion into stub code (they support a wide variety of languages!).

I have said in the past:

“Since [the interface and therefore stub code] can change often in an experimental setting, re-generating/losing changes/etc can become a major pain.
Personally I’ve favoured lower level data handling since it’s more flexible. But then again, ICE, etc, throw in a hell of a lot of stuff (pre-built classes, servers, connection establishment routines, …) that can make creating a larger distributed system less of a frustrating task. I suppose if you can really nail down the interfaces and be sure that integrating their system [ICE] into one’s own, in the midst of other entities (eg: a 3D engine, …), will be at the very least possible (and hopefully a happy affair), it’s all good. Then again, there might be problems where such a ’server’ requires that it run/be called/cycled in such a way that is incompatible with something else’s structure/run loop, unless you hack up ICE, which may in the end require more effort.”

And is there really no way to avoid using Object Adapters?!

]]> http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/the-internet-communications-engine/feed/ 0 Cross-computer bookmark synchronisation http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/cross-computer-bookmark-synchronisation/ http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/cross-computer-bookmark-synchronisation/#comments Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:55:09 +0000 balint http://blog.spench.net/2007/07/27/cross-computer-bookmark-synchronisation/ The following are three major extensions for bookmark synchronisation if you have Firefox installed across multiple computers:

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer (via their servers)

Bookmarks Synchronizer (FTP) (via your own FTP server)

Google Browser Sync (using the Google toolbar, does more than bookmarks, via your Google account)

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