There are many diverse technical issues to discuss, none large enough for their own separate article, but each important enough to talk about. So, let us take them on at a time:

Valve Embraces Linux

Over the past few years Valve has begun producing some of their games for the Linux market. But, the big news is they are producing their own Linux operating system called “Steam OS”! This system is now available in BETA and is fairly limited. The hardware restrictions, reported in their FAC is:

• Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor
• 4GB or more memory
• 250GB or larger disk
• NVIDIA, Intel, or AMD graphics card
• USB port or DVD drive for installation

So, if you can meet these hardware requirements, and have the technical savvy to install the OS, you should be ready to try out this BETA software. I must wait for some hardware upgrades before I can try this out, but I’m already drooling and I haven’t even seen it yet.

Is the Universe a Simulation?

Some scientists are beginning to investigate the hypothosis that we exist within a simulation. Unlike “The Matrix” where human bodies existed in the physical world, but human existance was played out in a simulator; if the universe is simluated, even our bodies are a simulation. A recent New Youk Times article points to a paper by several physicists that suggests that if the universe we exist within is a simulation, then there should be some asymmetries detectable by studying cosmic rad distributions more closely. No conclusions can be drawn at this time, but a different physics problem that I have been working on would have an easy solution if the universe were a simulation. Discontinuous Time! In a simulation all the spacial measurements can be made to any degree of accuracy, making space appear continuous. The mathematical equations of physics certainly imply continuous space. However, in a simulation time must be discontinuous. Some infinitesimal, but non-zero value is assigned to the simulator’s clock. Positions are all known at time 0. The clock is advanced to time 1 and new positions are calculated for each particle in the simulation. The clock ticks again, and these positions are re-calculated. In this fashion the simulation progresses through time with a record of the positions of all the particles at each step in time. As a simulation programmer, I need to make the steps in time small enough to show all the fine detail of the particle behavior, but not so small that they simulation takes forever to run. If our universe is a simulation, quantum physics may all be driven by the size of the simulator’s clock tick. That is, Quantum Mechanics is an artifact of the simulation, not actually an underlying set of simulator rules. There is much more tothis topic that first appears.

New Adam from Notion Ink

After quite a bit of waiting, Notion Ink recently started selling their new Adam II in India and Europe. I’m told that they will soon be selling in the US, but not at this time. The design looks really interesting, and I can’t wait to get my hands on one. The original Adam had a fairly unique hardware design, but software development hurdles kept the machine for ever being competitive. The new Adam II hopefully is free of those issues, but I will not know until I see one.

Program an Arduiono from a Tablet!

Yes! Now there is an app for that! Anton Smirnov has written an app called ArduinoDroid that provides a programming interface to your Arduino from your tablet! While he has also written other Arduino apps, this one closely resembles the Arduino IDE used on your desktop to program the Arduino. This is another good example of how the tablet is being used for more than watching movies. One advantage of this tool on a tablet is that you can go into remote power free situations and still make modification so software on an Arduino that is in actual service at that remote location without needing to haul around a bunch of computer equipment.