Archive for May, 2009

Thibault Imbert writes at ByteArray.org about Faster JPEG Encoding in Flash Player 10:

So what did I do ?

  • I used bitwise operators as much as possible.
  • I replaced all Arrays with Vectors.
  • I used pre-incrementation rather than post-incrementation (thanks Joa for this one ;-) ).
  • I casted to int all my Vector indices access.
  • Other minor stuff you always do to optimize your code :-)

The result: a 300% speedup. Not bad.

Twitter Updates for 2009-05-21

One Friday, Without the Milk

Related, somehow, to the previous post… Here’s what happens when the consumer of information also become producer. Pure genius…

Review of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz on Amazon.com.
By Catherine Swinford

He always brought home milk on Friday.

After a long hard week full of days he would burst through the door, his fatigue hidden behind a smile. There was an icy jug of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz in his right hand. With his left hand he would grip my waist – I was always cooking dinner – and press the cold frostiness of the jug against my arm as he kissed my cheek. I would jump, mostly to gratify him after a time, and smile lovingly at him. He was a good man, a wonderful husband who always brought the milk on Friday, Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz.

Then there was that Friday, the terrible Friday that would ruin every Friday for the rest of my life. The door opened, but there was no bouyant greeting – no cold jug against the back of my arm. There was no Tuscan Whole Milk in his right hand, nor his left. There came no kiss. I watched as he sat down in a kitchen chair to remove his shoes. He wore no fatigue, but also no smile. I didn’t speak, but turned back to the beans I had been stirring. I stirred until most of their little shrivelled skins floated to the surface of the cloudy water. Something was wrong, but it was vague wrongness that no amount of hard thought could give shape to.

Over dinner that night I casually inserted,”What happened to the milk?”
“Oh,”he smiled sheepishly, glancing aside,”I guess I forgot today.”

That was when I knew. He was tired of this life with me, tired of bringing home the Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz. He was probably shoveling funds into a secret bank account, looking at apartments in town, casting furtive glances at cashiers and secretaries and waitresses. That’s when I knew it was over. Some time later he moved in with a cashier from the Food Mart down the street. And me? Well, I’ve gone soy.

Market of Information

Interesting post at baekdal.com:

These days, everyone is trying to figure out how to connect with other people. It used to be simply, you just placed some ads in whatever newspaper that was most suited to your product, but now that world is becoming ever more irrelevant. So how do you connect with other people today? And more importantly, how do you do it tomorrow?

I’m not sure if I agree with their prediction of the future, but the look back at the past is certainly thought provoking. Notice also that the first half of the graphic represent 200 years, and the second half only 20…

Twitter Updates for 2009-05-16

  • Tomorrow I’ll be 15,000 days old. Yeah wolframalpha.com! #