brian will . net

I’ve finally put together and posted the video of part 1 of my introduction to programming. This first part presents a simple programming language to users in about 70 minutes.

UPDATE: I’ve also now added the second part, which covers representing numbers as bits.

The remaining eight or so parts will have to wait until I devise a better process for turning my slides and narration into video.

For the Mozilla Labs Design Challenge Summer 2009, I’ve updated the mockup of my design for tabbing in the browser (works only in Firefox). I call the new version “AwesomeTabs” because it integrates tabs into the AwesomeBar. I discuss the virtues and issues of this new design in a video.

Some points I made about my thinking for the original design are still relevant.

BTW, please don’t infer anything about my coding skills from the mockup source. It’s a hack built on top of a hack built on top of a hack.

In chronological order:

• ATI WinMach64
• ATI Rage II
• Voodoo 1
• Voodoo 3 3000
• Voodoo 5 (yeah, that was a mistake)
• Savage 3D (another mistake; think I returned this one)
• Riva TNT 1
• Matrox G400
• Geforce 2
• Geforce 3
• Geforce 4
• Radeon 9800 Pro
• Radeon X800 XT
• GeForce 6700
• GeForce 6800 (a warranty replacement for the cooked-itself-to-death 6700)
• GeForce 7800
• GeForce 8800
• Radeon 4850

That’s 18 cards in about 15 years. I justified this shameful consumption by usually pawning my current card off on a family member as an excuse to get an upgrade.

The cards that made me the most happy were the Voodoo 1, the TNT, the GeForce 2, the 9800 Pro, and my current 4850. The 4850 actually seems to have cooked away its thermal paste or something and now runs really hot under load—often over 100 degrees Celsius! Shockingly, I haven’t seen any stability or artifact issues despite this, so I’m going to hold off on replacing it until I really have to.