Holidays, or lack thereof

Today is the last day of the 2-week mid-semester holidays. Of which I have spent the ENTIRE time working on my final year project. Some holiday. I’m tired, wired, sick, and I have two solid weeks still to go before I have even a little respite. Namely:

• Report due Monday.
• Exhibition Friday.
• Graphics assignment following Monday.
• Graphics test following Wednesday.
• Formal methods test following Thursday.

Screw you, uni! I think I’ll be getting a beer tomorrow night after handing in the report.

Sunday, September 14th, 2008 | Posted in Life | No Comments »

Google Chrome

I’m writing this post from the Beta version of Google’s stab at a web browser – Google Chrome. So far it seems pretty nice. Key points for/against:

• Chrome uses a unique model for its tabs. Each tab runs in an entirely new process (where in other browsers they may run in a new thread). This has many interesting ramifications, such as:
  • Less memory leaks – when you close a tab, any dead memory is wiped with it.
  • Greater stability – if one tab “crashes”, just close it – the rest of the browser soldiers on without problems, similar to closing a process within Windows.
  • Greater security – the individual tab processes can be run at a tighter security level than the overall browser process, to help keep malware at bay.
• Chrome has introduced a new JavaScript engine called V8 – developed from scratch to be more conducive to large-scale JS applications. This thing is fast. Seriously. I ran Chrome and Firefox 2 through the Sunspider benchmark, and Chrome came out on top, almost 10 times faster. Full details here: chrome-js
• On the downside, a new browser is always going to be distinctly lacking in extensions. I’m already missing the AdBlock Plus I’ve grown accustomed to on Firefox. However the browser is open-source so we’re likely to see these sorts of things appear in no time.

Get it here! Definitely worth a look, seems to have a lot of potential.

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Intarwebs | No Comments »