Haste

Each and every country has something special about it. I've travelled a lot and can tell you that this is very true. As a tourist it can be difficult to judge, but when you move in you notice the differences. This post is about haste in two different regards, something we are lacking in South Africa.

I still remember when our McDonald's opened up in Tygervalley about 12 or so years ago. Since then a number of them have opened up and you can't get away from that honking yellow M. The problem we have though is that our fast food stores are, well, not fast! We took the concept from America and completely screwed it up. What it is that caused this I have no idea, but we just cannot seem to get it right. Even when the place is empty, they take their time. When it's busy you can easily wait 30 minutes or more.

Here in the US, however, they stick to the phrase! As much as I have come to hate McDonald's, I convinced myself to give them a try here. First of all let me say their food is just as plasticy here as they are back home. However, they are fast! In SA the cashier takes your order, you pay her and she gets your meal. Here, they have a separate person fetching the meal. This way people can order much, much faster. Some places even have a separate "queue" to pick up your meal. I put it in quotes cause it's so short it's not really a queue. I haven't timed it, but it seems like you're out of there in under three minutes. As I said earlier, McDonald's here is terrible, but Burger King for a little more serve much better burgers -- it actually tastes close to real meat.


The second thing I'd like to touch on is high-speed Internet. I've already made some people want to kill me each time I mention it, but I thought I'd mention it again. For those readers outside of South Africa, we are one one of the worst countries as Internet connectivity goes.

We're far away from America, Europe and Asia -- all the major hubs. So immediately we get crappy latencies and there's little that can be done to rectify that. By crappy I mean easily 500+ ms latencies to Europe. But it gets worse. Our telecommunications sector is a monopoly -- a single company that calls itself Telkom that is hated by 99% of the people I know that have used their "services". Just have a look here to see how bad the situation is -- in summary, about $100 for 2GB a month at 384kbps.

So you can imagine how wonderful it is for me to come over here in the US and make use of their first world services. At NVIDIA they have a 10gbps line. Compare that to our 19mbps line at UCT for five times as many people. I also got cable from Comcast at my apartment on Friday morning. Advertised at 6mbps, but I tell you that is just the guaranteed minimum as I get about 20-25 on a speed test. Compare that to SA where the advertised speed is a theoretical maximum. Also, the service is excellent. I ordered on Wednesday, Thursday was a holiday and they came on Friday morning. Compare that to SA where it can take a month for them to install it.


These are just two signs of haste in this country. There are many more I've noticed and I'm sure many others will pop up. Some of this has been brought on by the age of the Internet as a lot of what used to be done on paper is now done online.

San Francisco

Thursday was Thanksgiving. We don't celebrate it at all in South Africa, but over here in the US some say it is celebrated more than Christmas. The day after, yesterday, was Black Friday. It's one of the biggest shopping days in the US and marks the unofficial start of the Christmas season.

So we got both days off work. It's a little awkward having just a three day week to start with and to be frank it's actually annoying too. Three days doesn't get you anywhere and already we have a four day weekend. Almost everyone that celebrates Thanksgiving had plans to go out of town and meet up with family and those that stayed didn't do anything really (there are obviously several non-Americans working at NVIDIA). And since everything, absolutely everything, was closed (which is not the case in South Africa even on Christmas) there was little to do.

Come Friday, however, I zooted on up to San Francisco. It's about a 60-90 minute train so it's well within reach. I did a mostly unplanned trip yesterday just to get accustomed to the city as I will be returning several times. I tell you, the city is big. Big like any other major American city. There's enough stores to satisfy most shopping appetites. I walked into the first electronics store I saw, although it was a little disappointing. Then I took my time at Macys where they have separate buildings for men and women it's so large! Westfield Shopping Center, where they had a five story Bloomingdales as well as many major brand stores. After a few hours my feet starting aching so I went back.


Today I returned with a plan. I looked up info on the major shopping areas and some sights. I also went in with my camera so I have some pretty pictures. The first one is above is the Macys mens building -- yes, it is huge! And it's only the mens building, the females building is even bigger. Macys is part of Union Square (photo below), which is the main shopping square in San Francisco. Tiffany's is the not-so-huge building on the left, but it is full of amazing jewellery. Then there are all those other places -- Gucis, Armani, Levis, you name it.


It doesn't come out as well in the picture (as always), but if you look at this next one you'll see the rather steep road which is right in the middle of the city. It's a rathe runusual feature for such a major city but it is only right in the center. Go a couple avenues either way and there is no hill.


Chinatown! There are so many Chinese living in the US that they give them their own personal space. They had one of these in New York as well -- I think they're in most major cities. This one is a decent size actually. It's full of Chinese stores selling very traditional Chinese stuff. It's mostly Chinese shopping there so one looks a little out of place if you're not Chinese like me. It's interesting seeing what they sell though. Most of the stuff is really cheap -- I have a photo of a special of 5 t-shirts for $10.99!


Alcatraz is an island that at one stage served as a military prison. It has lots of history (read here) and is now an historic site and a major tourist attraction. They have ferries taking visitors to the island. I didn't actually go to the island, although I might at some point, but below is a photo of it from the coast.


I would hope that most readers will have heard of the Golden Gate Bridge. Well, I saw it today from a bit of a distance as you can see below. I will be sure to get much closer, if not on the bridge itself. It's the eighth longest bridge in the world and was the longest when it was completed in 1937. Pretty impressive!


And to finish off, a couple of night shots of part of the San Francisco skyline. I've always loved seeing cities of this size in the dark with all the lights.



I've posted all the photos I've taken so far (including the ones in this blog) over here:

http://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~mgallott/nvidia_pics/

I will be adding to that collection as time goes by so be sure to check it every so often if you're interested.

Tomorrow is the last day of this insane four day weekend. I'll stick to Santa Clara, unless anything else comes up. Try suss out the some new shopping areas here as well as get some small things done.

Back to Windows

There's a group of five other South Africans on the Direct3D team at NVIDIA. Bruce, Carl, Chris, Ashley and Nick have all interned in the team. So it was a kind of obvious choice to make when I had to decide which team to join.

The only thing that made me hesitate was a rather big factor. Direct3D is for Windows. That means development is also done on Windows. Those of you that know me well enough will understand just how anti-Windows I have become of late. I only switched to Linux for good little over two years ago, but since then I have only used Windows when absolutely forced to. For browsing the web I'm ok with it, so even though our honours labs used Windows I still used them when I had to. For anything else though, I used my own laptop.

Bruce, Carl and Chris are also Linux gurus so I took their advice when they said it was worth going Direct3D. If they managed, surely I would be ok. Well, I can't say I'm heading back to Windows as my OS of choice. No, certainly not. If anything my three days on XP have made me even less wanting to use it.

Thank goodness Firefox and Pidgin run on Windows. At least two applications I heavily use on Linux. What would I do without Cygwin? At least I have my Vim, Wget and all those other wonders. It isn't a Linux terminal, but it does knock some sense into Windows.

Some things that I've hit again that made me switch. No virtual desktops. While I've tried a few applications that provide this it simply doesn't work the same. I haven't found one that provdes a fast method of moving a window between desktops. Having so many applications open clutters the screen very easily and the lack of organisation is terrible. Luckily I have a good 1600x1200 monitor, which provides some compensation. Then there's the space bug. Ever put something in "C:\Documents and Settings\..." and had major issues? Yes, some applications can't handle the spaces in a path. Why then does such a major directory have spaces? Why? And the last one for now, XPs multitasking is hopeless. When one application hangs it takes the whole PC along with it. At least my dual core saves me there most of the time. One very last one -- those "Send error report" dialogs...I hate them with a passion!

Thankfully I have been able to stay away from Vista for now. Although speaking to Ilan yesterday it seems that might not be the case for very long. I'll manage, but I still far prefer Linux. At least I have my laptop to return to so I still get my dose of Linux.

Greenpoint Apartments

As promised, some pictures of my apartment. It seems as though nearly every intern at NVIDIA is staying here! I'm renting a two bedroom apartment for $1550, although the rate varies slighty depending on number of free apartments.

First thing you do when you arrive is to go to the leasing office. That's this small building right here:


This is the road it's on, Warburton Avenue, with the apartments to the right. It's a quiet road with not many cars driving by since there's a major avenue just one down.


They have a tennis court and a pool. The tennis court isn't used that much so it's not that difficult to get some time on it. The pool is rather useless now with winter pretty much upon us already.



This is what one of the apartment blocks look like from the outside. They're pretty much all the same design. My apartment is the one with the balcony on the second floor in this picture.


This is what the lounge/dining room area looks like. It's a fair size and some interns get a third person sleep here. None of the furniture comes with the apartment -- I got it all from Chris.


This is the kitchen. Everything but the microwave comes with the apartment. Yes, that is a dishwasher on the right -- lazy Americans!



This is my bedroom. Once again, the matress is from Chris. Although he failed to tell me that there was no linen, so I was a tad cold the first night. The other bedroom is identical -- Migael will be joining me in 10 days and will take up that room. Nick will probably be joining us some time in January and take the lounge.


And finally, the bathroom. There's one to share in this apartment.


So as you can see it's decent for the price you pay, bearing in mind that rent in the US is far more than in SA. It's 1.4 miles from NVIDIA. I've been walking there this week, which takes about 20-30 minutes. Yesterday I got Chris' bike so the time should be reduced to about 5-10 minutes.

Orientation at NVIDIA

I am officially an NVIDIAan!! Yes, first day at the new office went well. Now I know what it feels like to work on a huge campus. Although not as big as Googleplex its size is rather impressive.

Can't tell you much more unfortunately. They ask us not to blog about anything, be it good or bad. I can understand where they coming from, but it is a little dissapointing. Things went well though and I'm looking forward to the next three months with the company.

I must say I'm impressed with the number of South Africans on the Direct3D team, which is the one I'm working on. Whoever it was that acted as the magnet has done a really good job.

Now to sort out that bank account, cell phone, Internet and everything else! The not-so-nice part of moving to a new country.

Santa Clara, CA

35 hours after leaving home in Cape Town I arrived at Greenpoint Apartments in Santa Clara, the place where I will be staying for the next three months.

This was my first time flying Lufthansa. I was immediately put off by the lack of personal TVs for the on-board entertainment. We ended up having a measly two movies shown and they were both shown in the second half of both flights, when I was hoping to get in some sleep. Nevertheless, they were the first airline I've been on that hasn't been stingy with drinks. They go around several times and are easy about people asking for drinks at any time.

Thankfully I had only one stop-over, although it was at my least favourite airport. Frankfurt's airport has the worst signage of any airport I have been to and the shopping is terrible -- at least in terminal 1 which I was in. At least they had a small number of these wonderful reclined chairs (simple ones with no mechanical parts) and I was lucky to find a single free one, which helped ease the 4 hour wait for the next plane. During the second flight (both were about 11-12 hours each) I had a nice New Zealand couple sitting next to me and they were very chatty.

The immigration process went fairly quickly, which I found surprising due to the large size of San Francisco airport. This is my third time in the US -- for my first flight to New York the immigration queue was very long and we had to wait over an hour. There was a 10 minute and an hour long train I had to catch. The second one runs hourly, so I was lucky to arrive at the platform not so long before the train arrived. I ended up getting to the apartment just before 16:00.

Checking in required a fair amount of paper work -- something I have gotten unfortunately used to over the past two weeks! When I eventually got through all that I finally got to see my apartment. I'll post pictures shortly, but in brief it's reasonable and has everything I need from it. By coincidence or what I do not know, a friend Chris de Kadt who was doing a six month internship finished up just last week. So he passed on all his furniture, his bike and some other stuff.

I had to go out and buy a few things for the apartment. I only went out and bought the essentials and I'll get the rest of the stuff later when I know where the places are and have more time. I skipped supper as I wasn't all that hungry.

So, tomorrow I start my second real job. Will Nvidia meet, will it pass the coolness of Google? I'll soon find out!

nc8430 Integrated Mic on Ubuntu

I have had an HP Compaq nc8430 laptop for almost exactly a year now. There are two components I have struggled to get working. The fingerprint reader (Authentec AES2501) is rather pointless so I haven't bothered much. However, the integrated microphone can be useful at times. Since I'm heading over to the states and Skype is always useful, I gave it another bash.

Linux has always been poor with unusual hardware and a mic falls under that category. I have tried many things to get it working. There are many different solutions that people have posted. I went through many of them. Strangely enough though, there wasn't much help for this laptop.

The solution that finally worked for me was simply to build the latest version of ALSA. I am not sure what the default version is with Gutsy, but upgrading to version 1.0.15 solved my problems. It also required manually configuring the sound card model in the ALSA configuration, however, that alone did not solve the problem. For something so simple really I can't understand why this does not work by default. I hope they can solve this for Hardy.

A good HOWTO on the steps required:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto

So now I will be enjoying the use of free calls from the states with Skype. While I'm at it, let me take this moment to mention the true high-speed 6mbps Internet connection I am planning on getting up there. While it doesn't quite match the gbit lines we had in Croatia, I'll take this over our crappy 512K capped at 3GB lines any day! I love this:

And now with PowerBoost™, our fast connection gets even faster, with an extra burst of speed up to 12 Mbps when you’re downloading large files like videos and games.