Soup of the Day

Polaris Digital has moved

Polaris Digital has successfully moved all of our internet servers from our old HostGator hosts to our new Dell PowerEdge 1885 dedicated server. All customer and client accounts are now all up and running as before and hopefully no-body noticed the short downtime.

All Polaris Digital email accounts have also migrated to the new servers. A note to users just to say that your passwords for access to Polaris Digital might be different. New passwords have been sent to users by text message. You can now change your password by pressing here and log on using your email address and password.
If you are experiencing any more issues, please contact us through the Polaris Digital main web site.

29.May.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)

In loving memory

Bob Clark
25th June 1952 to 26th May 2004Today marks the second anniversary of my fathers death. Bob, died from a heart attack due to an aneurysm on 26th May 2004 during the early hours of the morning. At the time I had just completed my degree at Teesside and had just got home from University four days earlier. Needless to say it was a very unwelcome shock.

My father was working as a BT contractor at the Adastral Park research labratories outside of Ipswich in Suffolk, amongst other things. At BT, he worked on a project called Network Fault Management / Trouble Handling, a system that is responsible for ensuring BT’s backbone network keeps running through good and bad. At the end of his life Bob was getting into Tcl/Tk and within a year of his death I even managed to convert him to the Macintosh platform - a feat I thought impossible for many years.

For a relatively unasuming guy, Bob achieved a lot in his life, although I feel to this day he had much more to offer. A real advocate of computers since he discovered his first one at The Unversity of Essex in the 70’s. Bob went to Essex to study Physics, but quickly changed to Electronic Engineering so that he could use these new wonderful machines. Unfortunately two groups of people across the pond (Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak; Bill Gates, Paul Allen) were miles ahead of Bob in writing software for computers, but then Bob wasn’t so interested in Operating Systems. During the late seventies and early eighties Bob joined forces with a few of his friends to create SoftMachinery (named after the electro-psychadellic group Soft Machine). SoftMachinery would go onto create many first’s while Bob was involved, the Software Modem being one of their triumps (Mell Pullen and Terry Horridge). Bob was particularly interested in the Gnome At Home which ran on the Prestel Platform (also invented at Adastral Park, then called the Post Office, then BT Labs). During the SoftMachinery years Bob claimed that they were responsible for putting ‘red’ function keys on the Acorn BBC Micro. Bob was a regular on the first multiuser online game called ‘MUD‘ (Multi-user dungeon), a precursor to SecondLife. Remember this was the early 80’s, HTTP hadn’t even been invented and yet there Bob was playing games online with people all over the world. Sadly Bob’s own game, ‘Farmer Giles and the Seagulls‘ goes to the grave with him.

I feel that Bob in many ways was born too early, or rather lived too short a life. Some of the technological advances we are now seeing he would have loved. He certainly knew the direction the web was going in. Although computers interested him, a lot of other technological advances didn’t really appeal to Bob. Multi-channel television he considered a waste of time, far better to spend the time shooting other Battle Tanks or reading a good book. But new uses of Web technology would have really interested him. Google Earth is a good example of what I know he would have loved to use.

In the year leading up to his death, Bob joined forces with a local pressure group to get broadband into the little village of Higham. At the time BT weren’t interested in upgrading the exchange and so Bob was investigating starting a company called, GnomeGnet (appropriately) to supply local villages with broadband wirelessly across 802.11x networks. He died before this could ever get off the drawing board, but Sue continued to pressure local authorities long after Bob’s death and in October 2005, BT finally provided a 2MBit service to Higham. Needless to say I miss him more than words could possibly express. He never got to meet my partner Siân, which is a shame as I think he would have found her as adorable as I do. He never knew that both my sister and I graduated Univeristy with a first class and second class upper degree honours respectively, although I think he did know we would both do well.So, to honour my father on this day, I am dedicating PDnH Server to him. He was an advocate of Open Source software and I think he would be proud that I am working on a piece of free software for the world to use.

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Anyone is welcome to add their thoughts, wishes, comments or anything else to this post.

26.May.06 Uncategorized Comments (3)

Polaris Digital is moving

Just a note to say that polaris-digital.com is going to be moving to brand new dedicated servers over the next week. Although TowerHost/HostGator have served us very well, it is time to run our own servers now as our needs increase. This blog, the main Polaris Digital web site and all other areas hosted at polaris-digital.com may go up and down sparadically over the next few weeks, but we hope to have got everything settled down by mid-June.

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25.May.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)

Handy tip : PowerBook crashing a lot?

My good old trusty Titanium PowerBook G4 was beginning to become unstable and crash every few minutes. It is an old machine now, about four years old in fact, and I was quite quick to presume that it was just a case of the machine aging. This also may be due in part to the fact that I wanted a new MacBook Pro as well.

But then I remembered how my old PC’s were when they hadn’t been spring cleaned in a while. So I flipped the keyboard to get access to the logic board and removed all of the memory SO DIMS. I then hoovered (very carefully) the inside the PowerBook, paying particular attention to the memory enclosure and contacts, cleaned the memory contacts (very carefully again) and put everything back in its correct place.

Since I cleaned the inside from all dust particles, my PowerBook has been running smoothly without any sparadic kernal panics. If your computer (Mac or PC) is crashing constantly, before binning it, try cleaning it and all of its components.

22.May.06 Uncategorized Comments (6)

FilmFour for free

From July 2006, Channel 4’s dedicated film channel, FilmFour, will launch on Freeview channel 31, currently used by More4+1 and Big Brother series 7.

FilmFour Weekly will close on NTL, Telewest and Sky, but FilmFour + 1 will remain on cable and sky. Freeview viewers will have to do without the time-shifted version of FilmFour for the time being.

One thing all audiences will notice is that FilmFour will loose its current program format. Presently FilmFour does not show any adverts during the presentation of a feature film. However, from it’s launch on Freeview in July, adverts will interrupt the feature presentations, returning Sky to the only movie channel provider not to show advertisments during the main feature. Although this will undoubtly annoy current FilmFour viewers, for Channel 4 it is the only way they can effectly afford to run FilmFour without subscription.

More4+1 and FilmFour+1 may return to Freeview in the future if Channel 4 can win additional channels in the DTV (Digital Television) spectrum; as there are currently over 30 free slots, it doesn’t seem as though this should present a huge problem if Channel 4 are interested in pursuing that option.

It is expected that FilmFour will offer a new FilmFour HD channel in the near future for HD (High Definition) viewers on SkyHD and Telewest Broadband HD services, although as yet no announcement has been made. Obviously this will probably spread to free-to-air HD broadcasts once the service is up and running publically.

http://www.filmfour.com - FilmFour’s web site

21.May.06 Uncategorized Comment (1)

Search Wars : Episode 3

Google has had a good reign as the leading search engine on the Internet, used as the default search tool by millions, no billions of people every day. Since it’s inception in 1998 it has grown exponentially killing off the likes of AltaVista and putting Lycos and Yahoo! firmly in their place. Microsoft’s MSN search was forgotten until they relaunched it last year. In a strange way, Google Search has become a monopoly of the people because it is only through billions of users deciding to use Google every day, rather than another engine, that Google enjoys this status.

Sensibly Google now is spreading its wings, launching new and innovative products that they hope will keep people coming back to Google for more. A lot of the new products have been fun but ultimately not very useful. One that is pure genius is Google Maps (Google Local), which leads straight onto Google Earth. Google Earth is the ultimate globe every kid wanted, because you can see the world as a whole or zoom right down to street level and see your own garden. But the real power of Google Local/Earth is the ability to tie search into it, so if you search for a electricians while hoving a few miles above your house, the nearest electricians will appear on the map, providing their full contact details and a link to their site, if one exists.

But Google Search is what I’m writing about. Google Search has become a victim of its own success now. The things that made Google so great in the beginning are starting to be blurred, partly by the size of the Google Search database and partly because Google is now a NASDAQ trading company and it’s all about profit - although anyone you ask on the Google campus would deny that. Google recently set up a regional sales office just two minutes walk from us on Oxford Road, Manchester. This is the only one in the UK outside of London, although I am sure they’ll be more. But the office, which is very large, is purely for sales and marketing.

With respect the the Google database and crawl (the process of crawling across the internet recording urls and content), it is starting to become slow and irrelevant. A lot of web architects, myself included, have noticed how long Google takes to respond to new content - six months of more. Even using Google’s new XML Sitemap API, the system is just slow. But the problem is, web designers are only a fraction of the users who use Google and to the rest of the world, Google will appear to be fine.

The other problem with Google is that they are American. Not that being American is a problem, but it does mean that Google provides a very American orientated service - my address on Google Local is competely the wrong way around and Google aren’t interested in changing it any time soon. Google also have recently launched in China, albeit screened by the Chinese government - so much for freedom of information.

When we look at the situation this way, it becomes obvious that there is a huge gap in the market. People are starting to want a search that goes deeper and wider into the ether to get results that really are relevant to us, especially if we’re not paying for Google advertising. One such solution that I have discovered is Exalead, a European search solution. I have only recently started using Exalead, but I have been very impressed. Not only is it up to date and relevant, it has not only crawled my site fully, but my blog site as well - something Google hasn’t even touched yet.

Exalead Search is currently being fine tuned before a new offshoot is launched later this year. The new system is powered by Exalead, but will be further refined using Web 2.0 technologies throughout and will be - Exalead hope - a European Google killer. One of the many advantages of Exalead is that from the ground up, languages are supported. This has probably something to do with the owners being mostly French, however the advantages are immediately obvious. Do a search for ‘Lemons’ for example and the search will find you all the pages about ‘Lemons’, plus ‘Citrons’ and whatever Lemon is in German, Italian, Dutch, and so on. I haven’t tried it yet, but I am sure a search for ‘framboises’ will return a lot of French pages about tartes and other lovely dishes, plus English pages about raspberries - just tried it and it does.

I am sure that Exalead probably won’t be the Google killer they hope it will, but I think if anything it will make Google relook at their search technology and give it a much needed rethink. Exalead entering the market can only be a good thing for all, whether you like it or not.

19.May.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)

PDnH Server progress

As you may be aware, PDnH Server (v. 0.2.0) was released to the community last month, with v. 0.2.1 released within minutes to patch a small personal security problem. Work is currently on the way for the next, v.0.2.2 release which should come soon, although no exact date has been set yet.

The main problem with the development of this project is that as I do more and more, I learn more and more exponentially proportional to the amount I do. What started in version 0.1.0 as a very procedual application has now become fully object-orientated.

Now I am in the process of making the system fully accessible and applying graceful degration through the active parts of the site. There is now quite a lot of JavaScript supporting the client-side interactivity and when it was first written, it wasn’t done very well (see post below). Now all of the JavaScript is being re-hashed so that if the user has JavaScript switched off, the site will still function 100% as intended.

Additionally, I am currently working on the extensible areas of PDnH Server. In version 0.2.1, only one plug-in framework had been implemented for client-centric use. A new framework, imaginatively titled ‘PDnH Extensions’, provides services to the system. After all this is a ‘Server’, so we should have some services. These extensions are geared towards the standard services we expect these days, like RPCXML, RSS, Podcasting and Google Sitemaps. All of these have been in PDnH Server from the start, but now they are included as class libraries. Developers are welcome to join the party soon - once I’ve documented it all.

Speaking of documentation, you can now see the beginnings of the documentation forming at http://pdnh.polaris-digital.com/wiki . Be aware this is only just taking shape and as this goes to press, not much is there. But from now on, when I finish a new class, it will be added - I’ll get round to doing the older ones when I have time.

17.May.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)

DOM Scripting, the book

For those of you who are web developers and do not have this book, GET IT!!! I cannot recommend this book enough.

DOM Scripting is actually referring to JavaScript and the Document Object Model. Like many technologies before, JavaScript has been abused from the start by advertisers, WYSIWYG editors and worst of all - lazy developers. Jeremy Keith has set about to repair the damage done to JavaScript by these lazy developers, a category I included myself in before reading this book. Written in a very user friendly manner, this book takes you through the concepts of JavaScript gently, ensuring the major points are not rushed.

One of the most fundemental concepts I learnt from this book is how to write JavaScript code that degrades gracefully - i.e. if the user has JavaScript switched off, the page will still load correctly. This has been so valuable and opened my eyes to the whole concept of graceful degradation, which in turn has prompted me to rewrite large portions of my PDnH Column and PDnH Tab classes.

The main reason I brought this book was to learn about JavaScript and DOM so I could use AJAX as the underlying technology at the backend of PDnH Server. I have learnt enough to start developing some interesting AJAX interfaces, but the books value is purely in good web practices IMHO. Of course Jeremy is mainly talking about JavaScript in this book, but the principles can be applied to any web technology.

For more information, visit Jeremy’s site here.

- OR -

Buy the book here. (UK only)

17.May.06 Uncategorized Comments (2)

SGI, the end of an era?

1981 - 2006

SGI, or Silicon Graphics Inc., was once the holy grail of all 3D artists worldwide. One of the reasons I went to my University was to get to use the suite of SGI O2 machines they had. Silicon Graphics have been one of the companies at the forefront of computer generated imagery during its slow rise in the 1980’s and then explosion in the 1990’s.

SGI made their name creating systems and processor farms for generating computer imagery, supplying systems to almost every one of the major effects companies during the start of the 1990’s. Unlike the common desktops of the day, SGI created their own MIPS processors for their early machines, and built their own version of UNIX, called IRIX, to run on it.

In 1995, SGI purchases Alias Research (creator or Power Animator) and Wavefront Technologies to create a new company, Alias|Wavefront. Alias|Wavefront took most of the engine and tools from Power Animator combined with tools from Wavefront Technologies to create the widely used 3D application, Maya. Maya has become arguably the most widely used 3D application for visual effects for both film and television. SoftImage, Lightwave and 3DS Max have gained some ground, but without a doubt Maya is by far the most used. SGI sold Alias (as it was then known) to an external investment firm in 2004. Alias has since been brought by AutoDesk, the makers of 3DS Max.

AutoDesk relied on SGI for a number of their products during this period. Flame, Inferno, Smoke, Flint, and Fire were all turnkey compositing and editing solutions that required SGI hardware one way or another. Flame and Inferno, AutoDesk’s flagship compositing products have since migrated away from SGI, both now running much faster on x686 architecture using the Linux operating system.

This is the problem that SGI began facing during the end of the 1990’s and into the 21st century, desktop PC computing power had caught up with SGI. SGI were one of the founders of OpenGL (a realtime 3D rendering engine), which was a key part of IRIX and every SGI machine had a custom built graphics card that enabled 3D objects to be manipulated and viewed in real time. In 1990 this was amazing. In 2000, every PC out there had a graphics card that could render OpenGL.

SGI also had a large foothold, alongside Sun Microsystems, in the cluster market. The Onyx systems (there is an Onyx3000 cluster of 16 towers, each with 128 procssors, about 20 metres from where I am sitting) were powerhouses for scientific computational departments. Huge monolithic boxes would crush gigantic scientific problems. However, IBM and Sun where early competitors and recently clusters of PC’s/Mac’s running Mac OS X or Linux can produce the same power for a fraction of the price.

So maybe it is no surprise that last week SGI filed Chapter 11 for bankcruptsy in the US. Or is it? Well, Sun who in many ways had a similar business model to SGI are still alive an kicking. Unfortunately I feel that this is purely a symptom of SGI’s complacent attitude to the market. When the markets started to shift away from high-end machines to desktop machines, SGI should have adapted, rather than assuming that their brand was enough to save them. Unfortunately this is never the case and I would be surprised if we see a resurgance of SGI.

However, SGI has given the community a lot over the years and it shouldn’t be forgotten that Inferno, Flame, Flint, Smoke, Maya and many more 3D applications would not exist if it wasn’t for SGI.

RIP Silicon Graphics Inc, 1981 - 2006

16.May.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)

Big thank you

Firstly, Siân and I would like to say a BIG thank you to all those that came to our flat warming last Saturday. We both had an excellent night and enjoyed catching up with all those that came. That will be it for big parties up here for a while, time to get down to some serious work and start earning some serious money. Photo’s from the party will be posted soon - watch this space

On Monday (after the party) we found out that Polaris Digital has just won a major contract that will keep us very busy until January 2007, so it looks like my last points (above) have already been fulfilled - yay!

Finally, more PD news; we are now fully VAT registered, so the government can enjoy even more money from us every three months - although at least we’ll be getting some back too!

10.May.06 Uncategorized Comments (0)