Archive for December, 2006
Envy Code R work continues
Envy Code R has been updated since this post.
I’ve been back less than 36 hours but have managed to spend a little more time working on Envy Code R.
I made the decision to keep it as close as Envy Code B as possible for the initial release except where compromises were made in Code B.
Changes include “hnruc” getting stronger curve, “0MN#!~,;:.” being brought in line with Code B, the “%” symbol redrawn. Most of the foreign accented characters for the Windows Latin 1252 code-page are done. Here’s how that Visual Studio sample now looks (again with ClearType)
The font is also looking very similar with standard (non-ClearType) font smoothing switched on. CRT users rejoice ;-)
There are still some problems – it appears that ClearType likes to squash characters up rather than let two touch each other hence the messed-up @ symbol and spacing issues with { and } right now. Also while the font is usable at other sizes it’s not as pretty and if you like your fonts large Inconsolata or Consolas will look much better.
I’m hoping to get an initial version out before Christmas which won’t include bold or any characters/symbols outside the standard 1252 character set. Bold is technically a whole second font and there are enough characters in Unicode to spend a lifetime drawing…
[)amien
Update from Japan
Will only be a short one as I’m pretty tired from all the walking and travelling around.
Got into Fukuoka and spent a few days exploring and a few evenings being entertained by Jo who also gave me some pointers on Japanese culture etc. I also subjected his friend Hitori ? to my incredibly poor attempts at Karaoke although my rendition of Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Home almost veered onto the side of not quite making ears bleed.
We ate the fabled delicacy Ramen – noodles in a meat soup – and visited a cool local bar as well as trying out a DVD of some Japanese comedy set in a hotel that was rather good – plenty of set-up and bringing the various elements together for the final wrap up.
After a few days I took a train down to Nagasaki which was hit by the second atomic bomb during World War II just a few days after Hiroshima. Went to the monuments and peace garden there – it’s a stark reminder of too much power too little responsibility.
Then decided to head all the way up to Tokyo on the Shrinkansen bullet train and have spent a few days in a haze of neon.
I’ve visited shrines, temples, gardens, parks, stores, markets but far too many subway stations and their rather long connection walks (about 0.5km much of the time).
I feel like I’ve walked to the ends of the earth between that and all the walking around parks, shops, streets etc.
I also visited a geek paradise known as GoraGora – you get a small cubicle with a sliding closing door, padded floor, bean-bag, pillow, PC with net access and games pre-installed, TV, lamp and somewhere to put your shoes. Nearby is the free soda machine, showers and comic library (Japanese only – doh!). You can also have food delivered to your cubicle – all for the price of 980 JPY for 3 hours (about £5 GBP or $9 USD).
Hit the Sony Building which Jo’s generally-good TimeOut guide to Tokyo claims has a whole floor of PlayStation gear and games. It no longer has any such thing and indeed I couldn’t find a single PlayStation 3 in the building although I did see a Wii and the associated bits in a store but it should be out in the UK by now.
Tomorrow I’ll be taking another fast train down to Kyoto for a couple of days to get some more Japanese gardens and wild-life done. I think I’ve reached my shopping and bright lights limit – apparently Tokyo is one of the two biggest cities in the world depending on how you measure it (tied with Mexico City).
Everybody I’ve met is incredibly nice and polite – I’ve had Japanese people running out of their stores/hotels to help me when I spend more than a few minutes outside staring at my map and a kind lady in Nagasaki held her umbrella above my head for me. Which reminds me – I’ve left my newly purchased umbrella in the last hotel.
[)amien
Parallels Desktop 3036 beta build out
Parallels have released a beta build of their excellent virtual machine for the Mac and it’s loaded with cool new features. Once out of beta it will be a free upgrade to existing owners.
The feature list runs something like this:
- Drag & drop files between Finder & Explorer for copying
- Boot from the Boot Camp partition (will require another activation and you loose suspend VM)
- Read/Write to the Boot Camp partition (NTFS or FAT)
- Use Mac clipboard cut/copy/paste short cuts in Windows (opt XCV)
- Graphics performance increases of up to 50%
- Windows auto resizes to Mac window size (about time)
- Coherence mode puts Windows application on the Mac desktop & DockBar instead of in the VM window
- Transporter lets you convert VMware and VirtualPC images to Parallels Desktop
- UI has been revised & polished throughout to be more Mac-like
It’s not all perfect though – some people have been reporting problems with Mac Pro systems and video driver support so waiting for a few days might be a good idea but it’s great progress.
Microsoft have a number of VirtualPC images available including the Visual Studio Orcas preview and the Internet Explorer 6 test platform. With Transporter you should just be able to convert them and get going although I would imagine the copy of XP will baulk and require re-activation :(
Now we just need virtualised multi-processors, 64-bit support and hardware accelerated 3D ;-)
Parallels has gained support for hardware accelerated 3D and VMware support for multiple cores/processors since this post was published.
[)amien