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I'm working on a USB video driver. The way it works is quite complex so I ported from Linux rather than writing from scratch:

#define spin_lock_t IOSimpleLock *

Some things didn't have such simple ports, so I guarded them with #ifdefs. Then my coworker removed all the Linux-specific code as well as the ifdefs. Sucks to be him when it's maintenance time.

I get a big check when it goes to beta. I'm going to donate a good chunk of money to homeless shelters, soup kitchens and rescue missions.

And I'm going to buy a car.

The car won't help much with getting to work - because of the all-day rush our here in Portland, I'll stick to the light rail. But it might be worthwhile to drive instead of taking two busses to get from home to the North Portland light rail station. I expect that will cut my commute from two hours to ninety minutes.

More important to me in the short term is that I can go places where the busses don't go. Like the beach, the desert and the mountains.

I like to camp in the desert.

Say that ---^ in Reno and you get a 10-day involuntary hold for being a danger to yourself. That's because "camping in the desert" is a local euphemism for "committing suicide".

"But I'm not from Reno! I really _do_ like to camp in the desert." My pleas fell on deaf ears.

A good chunk of Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon and Northeast California is a desert.

I get another big check when we ship. There will be quite a lot of work between beta and shipping; I have to support multiple dongles, as well as harmony with the competitor's dongle, as well as some other featureful things.

I'm going to get my stuff out of storage in Canada. I don't know yet how much that will cost but I'm guessing three grand.

I'll get my piano back. I mean like a real piano, with wires and wood.

It was way out of tune when I recorded this. I later had it tuned, but I wanted to record its memory in case tuning it broke some of the strings. While they could be replaced, the new wires would spoil the distinctive voice of the piano that I had lived with since I was a toddler.

In my experience, if you enjoy my recordings, you're not right in the head. One of my two biggest fans has Borderline Personality Disorder - I met her by playing a piano in a nuthouse - and Schizotypal Personality Disorder.

I also have a Fatar controller in storage. It doesn't make sound, I have to use a MIDI Sound Module for that. But it has a hammer-action mechanism that makes it feel like a real concert grand.

I also - presently - have an M-Audio ProKeys 88sx Lightweight Stage Piano. I bought it for playing open mics.

The Hell am I going to do with three pianos? My apartment is tiny! But I cannot bear to part with any of them.

Lately I've been writing down my favorite artists when they're played on Radio Paradise. Then ever couple of weeks I go to a real good record store and buy a half-dozen CDs. I've got over a hundred artists in my list, I'm going to be enjoying lots of new music, with the approval of the MAFIAA.

Ah! The privileged life: a couple weeks ago I bought parmesan cheese for my spaghetti.

Boy Scouts 'Exploring' Co-Ed Programming Provokes Girl Scout Ire

Girl Scouts Accuse Boy Scouts of Recruiting Girls, Souring Century-Old Friendship

Editorial: On their honor, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts should settle their boundary issues

Parents, Don’t Let Your Girls Join the Boy Scouts

Lots Of Girls Want To Join The Boy Scouts. What's The Problem With That?

I can sense film scripts being written about this.

Redefining 'Drug Bust': German Police Seize 5,000 Pills In Shape Of Trump's Head

'Donald Trump-shaped' ecstasy pills seized by German police

German Police Seize Thousands of 'Trump' Ecstasy Tablets

Germany’s orange ecstasy pills have Trump’s name — and face — all over them

Molly!

Interesting fact that nobody bothers to mention about solar eclipses. It feels about twenty degrees cooler during totality than it does half an hour before or after. This is a good thing during a Tennessee summer.

Joss Whedon fan site shuts down after ex-wife's critical essay

Joss Whedon's Ex-Wife Warns He's A Hypocrite 'Preaching Feminist Ideals'

Joss Whedon Is a 'Hypocrite Preaching Feminist Ideals,' Ex-Wife Kai Cole Says (Guest Blog)

Five times Joss Whedon, self-proclaimed 'woke bae', blew his feminist credentials

So farewell then.

Warp Life is a particularly fast implementation of Conway's Game of Life. Golly may be faster but it doesn't run on the smaller devices, just the iPad.

If you're willing to help, I'll need the UDIDs of each device you want to test with. Follow these instructions to obtain your device's UDID.

Mail your UDID(s) to mdcrawford@gmail.com.

You could really help a brother out if you would forward the URL to my beta test page to anyone you genuinely feel would be interested in or would benefit from it:

http://www.warplife.com/beta-testing

So, I know you all have read the moderator guidelines and remember the very important "Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting." bit, yes? Well, I went looking for who the worst offenders were against that out of curiousity. I'm not sure it's really proper to shame them here though. You lot can leave your opinions on that here and us staff types will discuss it later.

What I absolutely can and will post are the badasses who have most excellent ratios of upmods to downmods. Without further ado, here's everyone with over a thousand upmods to their credit and a downmod percentage of less than 10%.

+--------------+-----------------+
| percent_down | nickname        |
+--------------+-----------------+
|       0.0865 | VLM             |
|       0.1188 | anubi           |
|       0.1209 | AnonTechie      |
|       0.2067 | tonyPick        |
|       0.4737 | redneckmother   |
|       0.5438 | Reziac          |
|       0.6222 | CoolHand        |
|       0.6494 | Bobs            |
|       0.7171 | WillAdams       |
|       0.8937 | McGruber        |
|       1.1099 | GlennC          |
|       1.1341 | fritsd          |
|       1.2910 | maxwell demon   |
|       1.3060 | pinchy          |
|       1.3723 | HiThere         |
|       1.4609 | monster         |
|       1.8067 | DannyB          |
|       1.8447 | J053            |
|       1.8601 | quacking duck   |
|       2.2772 | deimtee         |
|       2.4750 | mhajicek        |
|       2.5053 | Unixnut         |
|       2.6012 | dak664          |
|       2.6693 | zocalo          |
|       2.8353 | Yog-Yogguth     |
|       2.8932 | rts008          |
|       3.1125 | khchung         |
|       3.2325 | The Archon V2.0 |
|       3.5069 | GungnirSniper   |
|       3.5307 | canopic jug     |
|       3.7419 | Freeman         |
|       3.7582 | jelizondo       |
|       4.3070 | turgid          |
|       4.3096 | hubie           |
|       4.5095 | bradley13       |
|       4.8469 | Scruffy Beard 2 |
|       4.9924 | Nerdfest        |
|       5.1967 | Kymation        |
|       6.1929 | Bloopie         |
|       6.2708 | linkdude64      |
|       7.2055 | SpockLogic      |
|       7.2575 | acid andy       |
|       7.3139 | NotSanguine     |
|       7.4517 | Ethanol-fueled  |
|       8.5932 | KiloByte        |
|       9.5238 | Hawkwind        |
|       9.6141 | bart9h          |
+--------------+-----------------+

Congrats to VLM. He is currently Da Man.

I'm working on a macOS - it's not Mac OS X anymore - USB Video driver. This is by far the most complex driver that I've ever developed.

It works now, but only for a hardwired resolution and pixel depths. There are lots of other problems, the worst one being that it doesn't play nice with power management. There are vast quantities of "// TODO:" comments.

When I get it to beta - hopefully Real Soon Now - I'll be getting a huge paycheck. When it's completely finished, I'll get another one.

My client is a fabless semiconductor firm. They sell chips to manufacturers who sell finished products to end-users. Hopefully my whizzy new driver will enable them to sell lots more chips.

We're big in China.

I told my client about my mental illness. They were totally cool with it. But I haven't mentioned my experience with homelessness.

In other news, I have a mad crush on a barista, but as yet she doesn't seem to return my interest.

So, yesterday I moved my car into The Roomie's parking space, moved my boat out of the yard and into mine, and mowed the yard. All was good and celebratory beer was drank.

Enter today. I go outside for a smoke and while enjoying it I think to myself, "Self, TR's going to be back from his customer service road trip today. You should jockey things back around before he gets home." This sounded like a fine and courteous idea, so I got up and proceeded towards said goal.

Unfortunately when I went to lift up the tongue of my boat trailer (Well balanced. Boat and trailer together weigh maybe 500lbs. Load on my arms maybe 50lbs.) that I'd moved easily the day before and wag it back over into the grass beside TR's boat. For some unknown reason, my back takes that specific moment to remind me that I started having birthdays beyond my 40th within the past few years; or, to put it more succinctly, it just shit right out on me.

Damned traitorous body parts. If it weren't for all the skills and wisdom you tend to pick up along the way, I'd say getting older sucked.

This has put me entirely not in the mood to bandy words with my peers and adversaries. My apologies to those who will likely never know how utterly wrong some comment of theirs is. To those in need of mocking, leave a note here and I'll get to you as soon as the pain's lessened enough to think through. See you lot in a week or so, I expect.

An external SSD has become Samsung's first drive to hit the market with 64-layer V-NAND. It includes a 10 Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C connection and capacities ranging from 250GB to 2TB:

Moving on to the pricing aspect, it must be remembered that the Portable SSD T5 is a pilot vehicle for Samsung's 64-layer V-NAND as its production ramps up. Samsung naturally expects this to be a low-volume, high-margin part. Therefore, despite the higher density, consumers should not expect much difference in the cost per GB compared to other external SSDs in the market. The 2TB variant will have a MSRP of $800 and the 500GB will retail at $200. At 40 cents/GB, it is priced close to other such products currently in the market.

Also at Samsung, PCWorld, The Verge, PCMag, and YouTube.

Not a submission because: Intel First to Market With 64-Layer 3D NAND SSDs