Engine Designs

The New iPad and Me

Peter — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:30:00 GMT

When Apple released the first iPad in 2010, I wished I had one but didn't want to jump into it, knowing that the next version will be much better. Indeed, the iPad 2 was more like it with the advanced chipset and increased RAM in a prettier body. For various reasons had to wait with the purchase, then tech rumors made it clear that the 3rd generation model will be much better for my needs with its high resolution display, as mostly I wanted to use it for reading... Still, I spent the past 6 months whining to Leslie about how much I want an iPad whenever we saw one in the store. Now the waiting is over, I ordered one shortly after it was released. It took a while for Apple to ship it here directly from China (while, as it turned out, I could have walked into Best Buy to grab one, unlike last year) but never mind.

iPad 3rd Generation

I guess I got the ideal setup with a white 64GB Wi-Fi model, housed in a white CaseCrown faux leather case in the style I always imagined for my iPad. It's very pleasant for the touch and even if the device was too warm during average usage (it isn't), I don't feel it at all. I don't need a 4G model, mostly I use it around the house, or if I really have to, I can utilize my phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. The 64GB storage feels like a bit of a waste right now, but it will come handy in the long run when I travel to Europe and carry movies and TV shows on it, while leaving my laptop home. Also, I don't plan to replace it for several years, unless something happens to it, so it should be somewhat future proof.

I work from my home, so my main goal was increasing productivity by moving all the usual distractions, such as news and blog reading, Twitter etc to this separated device which I don't bring into my office. Normally I leave it in the bedroom or in the living room, so when I sit down in front of the PC, that's dedicated work time. It feels like a good solution so far.

I love reading on the iPad, the screen is amazing, but as I can't really compare it to the previous generations, I just like it on its own. I was afraid that my monitor will look worse afterwards, but it's still lovely, no need to run to buy a new one. :) I use FlipBoard for RSS feeds, the only downside is that I had to set up Google Reader for it, but every desirable feed reader app seems to use that anyway. I bought only a few apps so far, like Garage Band and Solar Walk above the usually free necessities. I'm certainly not going crazy with checking out games and other stuff, meh... Somehow I just don't care much about them right now, but I bought some new Kindle books that I hope to read soon. I might be skeptical but I don't believe in iBook apart from being a nice PDF reader; I won't buy books from Apple. It's not their main profile and primary source of revenue (compared to Amazon) so they can say anytime that this experiment didn't work out, closing shop, nothing to see here... I believe in the future of the Kindle and Amazon can always bring out a better reader app for iOS. Not to mention that Leslie has a Kindle eBook reader and we share books, so it's kind of a no brainer anyway.

Perhaps the only problem I can find with the iPad is that it's bugging me constantly to redesign my website and support high resolution images, so it's definitely on my to-do list. :)

TemperNTC Class Library - Update

Peter — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Just to let you know, I updated the TemperNTC Class Library article and the class library with a fix to the issue with the external sensor's sometimes unreliable initialization. Now it works splendid everytime you access the device.

Download file: TemperNTC Class Library

Source code and tester application in C# for .Net Framework 2.0

CRC32 Checksum Calculator

Peter — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:45:00 GMT

I'm working on the new version of my backup software where I need to calculate checksums on sizable files. It's going to be optional but obviously it should run as fast as possible, so I decided to implement CRC32 for it. Must be simpler, therefore much faster than MD5 hash computing, right? Nope...

File size	CRC32	MD5
4 MB	0.059 s	0.015 s
182 MB	2.756 s	0.873 s
1.8 GB	26.320 s	6.642 s

I got these results on my Intel E6750 (C2D 2.66 GHz) and I surely optimized the heck out of my calculator which was based on Jeff Atwood's ASP code and uses a lookup table. I don't know what kind of magic the guys in Redmond have done, but the MD5 function in the .Net Framework 4.0 is insanely fast. On the other hand, BufferedStream is significantly slower than doing the stream reading on your own; on the largest 1.8 GB file it increased the runtime to 33 seconds.

My conclusion is, unless you work only with smaller files (under 50 MB) or you must keep the checksum value short, you're better off using the MD5 function and deal with the bigger hash size. In any other case feel free to grab my class and use it, it's great for shorter, real world content.

Download file: CRC32 Checksum Calculator Class

Source code in C# for .Net Framework 2.0

Xbox 360 - Take 2

Peter — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:45:00 GMT

I really missed my Xbox 360 that I had to leave behind in Hungary. Alas not only its power supply wouldn't work on 110V, even the DVD drive and the game discs were region coded, so it was not worth carrying it over here. Not that I had enough space for it in my suitcase… I brought 3 games that I couldn't even use yet, as I bought them in the USA before I knew about the regions, so all I had was my achievements on my Windows Live account. But now the wait is over – I bought a new unit and it was a really sweet deal: a new revision of the Xbox hardware with Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 3 theme, 320GB hard disk (instead of 250GB or none), two themed controllers (instead of one) and the MW3 game ($60 value) altogether for $350. Compared to the old one, the DVD easily could be described as silent, the cooling is hardly audible and the hard disk space is just incomparable to my old 20GB disk where the usable space was about 13GB. I need it only to install game discs on it for faster (and silent) reading and to store game content, so I guess I won't run out of space anytime soon. I ordered some games too that I wanted, so my current library is like this… CoD MW3, Forza Motorsport 4, NFS Hot Pursuit, Assassin's Creed, Tropico 4, GTA 4, Mirror's Edge. I've got some other games in the pipeline but first I'd like to get bored with the ones I have.

My other gaming platforms are the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DSi, where I mostly play with platformers, currently I'm trying to beat Rayman Origins which is friggin' amazing!

Doesn't it bother you that Wii U is almost here and a new Xbox is to be expected in 2013? Nope. I don't think I would buy the Wii U anytime soon, there are (and perhaps will be) plenty of games for the old device that I'd like to play with. As for the Xbox, it's like 2 years from now, initially it will be much more expensive than later and for quite some time it will lack games that could really make the hardware sweat. I've got so many games I want to play with, and much more will be released before it reaches the end of its life cycle… So, nope, don't care about depreciation that much. It would be too mean to bring up Android here so I won't do so. :-)

News on Hungarian Dictionary

Peter — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Hungarian Dictionary (also known as Magyar szótár), my first app for the Windows Phone platform has been released 5 months ago, it's time to take a look at the numbers. Today the download counter is at 2200, that may be considered low, but the target audience is extremely limited. Windows Phone has a marginal market share in Hungary – still, 70% of downloads were originated from Hungary, the rest were from various countries. I've got 94 really positive reviews so far, mostly 5 stars, which puts it to the top 5% (and top 50) of the Hungarian Marketplace, making it one of the most popular free apps. There are new downloads every day, people seem to like it and use it frequently; this makes all the hard work worthwhile. After two updates the current version is 1.2 and now it includes the Bing translator that can handle 36 languages.

Usage is shared between the following device types, follow the legend clockwise...

Share of Windows Phone 7 device types using the Hungarian Dictionary app

I consider the application done, which is a great feeling because in my career it's really rare that I can say such thing to software I wrote, most of them always need constant updating, new feature requests come, redesign, refactoring, you know the drill. I must note that I'm still satisfied with Windows Phone, I thought that once Leslie gets her iPhone 4S, I'm going to feel jealous and get one as well. The truth is, in everyday use the two platforms are equally good, so for now I stand by my choice. And for the first time, I have mobile internet connection so I can use it for really useful things, like Foursquare check-ins... :-)

Update: During the past few weeks since I wrote this, apparently there has been a big boom in Hungary. Mobile providers must have started selling the Nokia Lumia 800 and 710, because since then the download counter went over 2700 and most of the new users own these devices. It feels good to be useful.

Breaking The Silence

Peter — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:00:00 GMT

I haven't posted anything for a while, mainly because I still feel a bit uncomfortable writing about personal, non-technical stuff. Silly me! Anyway, for those handful of people who might care, during the past few months I moved to the USA after quite some legal and logistical trouble. Once I was here with all my possessions I could take on the plane, we finally tied the knot with Leslie; the US government was pushing us with strict deadlines so we went for a rather minimal wedding in short 3 weeks. It was still too big for us (due to family intervention it has gotten out of hands quickly); I know people always claim that it was their most amazing day ever, but for us the word traumatic describes the event more accurately. It was on a Friday (11/11/11, just to make it easy to remember), then we made it a long weekend and went to our usual vacation spot – Washington DC. It was nice, but I must say you better avoid the International Spy Museum, it was awful, expensive, boring (during the initial elevator ride and profile room you'd think it will be great fun) and I guess it tells all that the most entertaining moment was when in a really busy room I accidentally kicked up a toddler. Right then I felt awful but now it's a fond memory of ours. On the other hand, go and check out Mount Vernon, George Washington's remote mansion and farm, chances are you'll find it a really pretty place, even if you're not a history buff.

We must have caught the flu in DC because we got sick by the time we arrived home and it took a while to get through that. We bought lots of IKEA furniture and reorganized the house, I built a new workstation from components I brought from Hungary and ordered the rest from Amazon even before I arrived here. Got a new telly (47" LCD, yay), lots of video games, enjoyed Christmas with our first actual tree (we just took it down last weekend) and I've been quite busy with work. All this didn't leave too much space for hobby projects, but before moving I wrote an FTP server that's been running ever since without major hiccups, so I might release it sometime.

Enjoy the winter!

I Do

Peter — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Goodbye Steve

Peter — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:30:00 GMT

Goodbye Steve, thanks for everything!

WP7 Marketplace Submission Procedure

Peter — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:00:00 GMT

If you're an active Windows Phone developer, or you're thinking about joining, you may have thought about what's happening to your application once you submit it to the Marketplace. This is the scenario of my latest app update, your mileage may vary but this is what you can expect in general.

1. You upload your application to the App Hub. Their system processes your XAP file and looks for obvious problems. If there is an issue, you will be notified about it and you have to upload a new XAP file that has been fixed to continue the submission.

2. Once the XAP is verified, they repackage it and you can enter various metadata on each of the supported languages of your app, such as short and long descriptions, keywords, images in various sizes and up to 8 screenshots. It's best to have these all prepared before you start submitting your app. If you actually use special features like network connectivity, device information or phone user identity request, access GPS data etc, these will be detected in your application's code and displayed on the profile page of your application on the Marketplace. For some of these there will be an extra confirmation page displayed to the customer.

3. When you filled the metadata and selected the price and the countries where your app will be available, you're done, the app is "signed and encrypted". Now you just have to wait, a lot, to have it certified.

4. Unless you submitted it really early, the app will be tested the next day by manual labor in Microsoft's User Interface Lab in Norristown, Pennsylvania. They test it with a variety of devices (like the HTC T7575 (7 Pro) and Samsung SGH-i917 (Focus)) plugged onto a PC, running various OS versions, today these are 7.0.7392 (NoDo) and 7.10.7720 (Mango).

5. About two days later, if everything was okay during their tests, they run another test by installing the app over wifi directly from the marketplace storage, then the application will get certified and you will receive an email with a title like this: Congratulations! AppName has successfully passed certification for Windows Phone Marketplace. Now you can publish the app, unless you selected automatic publishing on getting certified.

6. The marketplace content gets refreshed once a day, at 2am in US Eastern Time. If you got your congratulations email (and published the app) before that, it will appear in the marketplace soon. Otherwise you will have to wait yet another day to get it published.

You won't see download and crash statistics showing up on the App Hub for quite some days, but don't worry, it doesn't mean that nobody cares about your app. This information gets processed with a delay of 6 days, refreshed at 8pm in US Eastern Time. User ratings appear quicker, in about an hour or so. On the App Hub you can view these only by selecting single countries to see if there is anything to see there, it's awful. You may use AppTracker instead to follow your applications and see all the user ratings and reactions.

Like A Boss

Peter — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:45:00 GMT

20 years ago Michael Schumacher made his Formula 1 debut at the Spa circuit, when Eddie Jordan gave him a seat for one race to replace a driver who got in trouble before the race weekend. It was a start of a quite successful career resulting in winning the world championship seven times. Today he had to start from the last place, due to a tiny technical difficulty he had during the qualification: one of his tires simply fell off on his first lap. Well, such things won't stop him, he finished at 5th. My hero... :-)

Happy anniversary Michael!

Update: I may have trust issues, but I was right. This video was originally on Youtube but after a couple of days it got removed by the Formula One Management. I had a gut feeling it's going to happen, so even before writing this little post I saved the video, so I won't run into that I have to delete this article as it makes no much sense without the action footage. Yet another reason why I don't trust the cloud... Anyway, here it is using the QuickTime plugin, get it if you don't have it, and if you're part of the anti-QuickTime movement, you can download the video and watch it however you want.

QuickTime video: Michael Schumacher's start from 24th place in Spa Francorchamps, Belgium 2011