[geeks] Sun to adopt newest Intel Xeon chips for upcoming servers (link)

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Joshua Boyd wrote:

> There are a lot of strong points for PC gaming.  I just found that for
> me it wasn't worth the hassle of keeping a windows computer, or even a
> reasonably current computer around for that purpose.

Oh, I don't keep the computer updated for gaming.

Games are secondary issues.

The main thing is I have limited space, so I want one machine to do as 
much as possible.  I'm the same way with servers and utility boxes.  The 
more they can do, the less machines I have to take care of.

>> Do you use OpenGL for that, or are you doing Windows programming?
> 
> OpenGL on Linux.

None of my OpenGL references cover shaders.  Any online documentation 
for that?

I should get newer books, but I want to first learn enough to justify it.

I probably should forget it until I get the basics mastered, but its 
hard to not at least take a peek.

> Well, that is a fair approach, but if you were to switch to SDL, then
> you would probably be more cross platform compatible.  However, if you
> do switch to SDL, I don't know how one would handle properly supporting
> Xinput devices.

That's a good point.

> I have something like that.  I have a python script and some shell
> scripts that generate scaled preview images and web pages, but the basic
> file layout is like the above.

I use make, shell, and Perl.  I need to rewrite the stuff so it isn't so 
kludgy though, and add in some indexing and other features.

I've been playing with the KDE program Digikam, and it is nice, but not 
very polished.  Most open source stuff is like that.  However, it has a 
lot of potential because it lets you tag images and once you've gone 
through the trouble of that, finding things is fairly easy.

However, I'm a bit of a purist. I like GUIs just fine, but I hate losing 
access to metadata when I'm on the command line.

Also, Digikam doesn't automatically add tags for metadata like camera, 
camera settings, etc.  That would be convienient.  I suppose I could add 
it myself, but that's a lot of work and I'd then have to track Digikam 
sources to stay compatible.

I want to be able to manipulate my image collection with any kind of 
interface, so I guess what I'd like to see is a set of data standards 
such that you can use the command line, a GUI, or a web app to manage or 
otherwise access your images.

When I'm done, I'll let you know... :)

> However, for files from a digital camera, I keep the camera generate
> filename, since the folder already indicates the date.

I thought a long, long time about that, and in the end I didn't like the 
camera's format completely.  Plus, its original filename is stored in 
the metadata, so I could go back if I really wanted to.

You could think about this forever if you let yourself do it, and never 
come up with anything.

>  - I can't find the picture unless I remember the date, or I go through
>    everything in the date range.

You need a program to let you add tags and comments.

Of course, as I said above it is hard/impossible right now to find a way 
to get this information from your user interface of choice.  Almost all 
solutions so far are tied to a single program.

>  - Deb is interested in what has been printed already.

You could use tags for that, if you are disciplined enough.

>  - It would be handy to have a quick means to take only a subset of
>    pictures into a new location for generating web albums.

Digikam does that, and of course most Windows and Mac programs will do that.

Beware though: several Windows programs are brain dead stupid about not 
leaving your originals alone.

I found out the hard way that several of them refuse to leave your 
original archive alone, insisting on re-arranging it and changing 
things, and even allowing edits of files you've marked read-only, and 
doing so without a warning.

>  - It would be handy to store comments with the pictures, for instance
>    to know what the event is, or who the people are.  Of course, if I
>    did that, then it probably wouldn't be too hard to have a search
>    functionality to take care of the first problem.

Digikam, oddly, has tags but not comments.

Geneva, an image viewer for KDE, has comments but not tags.

Aiieeeeeeee!

>  - If I want generic pictures of hills, trees, clouds, whatever, I can't
>    find them.

Tags will do that.

It's really a bitch to tag things the first time, but very nice once you 
have them.

No, I've not done all of mine.  I keep running out of patience.

I did have mine tagged in a Windows program 2 years ago, but decided 
against using the program because I wanted my photos stored on my Linux 
box instead, so I lost all of that hard work.

> Someday I will probably whip out a web-app to take comments, captions,
> and keywords for the pictures, while also allowing assorted pictures to
> be grouped into sub albums.

Yeah, me too... and it will have a GUI and a command line interface, 
automatic tagging, print tracking, online ordering... like I said, I'll 
let you know when I'm done.

Seriously though, every photo program I try, I find it just doesn't do 
what I want.  Some come very close, but then have one annoying problem I 
can't work around.

I have ideas, but I know a project like this would take a lot of time, 
so I never even bother to start.

Even simple projects I've started quickly ballooned out of control and I 
had to give up.