xperiments && xperiences _

When I read about web-servers the last time, they were different. Back then, a page in the web root (usually the '/var/www' directory) mapped to one URL. For instance a page called "abc.php" mapped to "http://www.example.com/abc.php". For more complicated URLs, you had to tweak your httpd.conf. But that was in the times of PHP. These days, things have changed!

A few days ago, I had to see if it was possible to stream photos to an AppleTV via Apple's Airplay protocol. After reading Apple's documentation, I figured that using the API available on iOS, it was possible to stream audio and video only! But no photos! (What!? Why? Apple is weird!)

It's been quite some time that I've been reading and writing software now. The one thing that I've always been obsessed with is an 'understanding' of the system. It has always been important for me to visualize the flow: the flow of actions and reactions. But be it MDN or be it Adobe, I've always found that one piece missing when browsing huge chunks of code.

My Pi has a cover now! The VideoCore GPU on the Pi is pretty powerful. It can decode 1080p HD videos @30fps. Besides, it also supports OpenGLES for 3D rendering. I decided to explore how to use OpenGLES on the Pi and was taken aback by the host of libraries listed on RPiHub .

It has been very long since we had a standard file system. Last, when things were fine, was in the times of FAT! It makes sense to evolve your own operating systems. But what's the deal with proprietary file systems!? Poor me, can't decide a filesystem for my backup drive. :( FAT has a max file size limit of 4 gigs. NTFS drives aren't writable on OSX and their drivers suck on Linux. OSX uses its own file system which none other OSs can normally interpret. Linux has another thousand options available. (I'm beginning to realize that having a lot of options isn't always good.) Looks like I'll have to sell my backup drive and buy space on Amazon! It's high time now. An 'OpenFS' or something is desperately needed!

Just got my new raspberry pi working. So, apart from the board that comes inside the box, one needs a micro usb power adapter (i use a phone charger), an sd card with the raspbian image (steps to write the raspbian image on the sd card image are well documented on  elinux.org/R-Pi_Hub ), usb keyboard & mouse and an hdmi/composite display (i used a tv). After making all the connections, as soon as it is powered up, the pi boots in a config screen. RPi being a UK device, the default keyboard layout is British. One can change that from the config screen. Another useful thing to do is to expand the filesystem to span the entire sd card. After tweaking the config, it reboots into a standard bash shell. Log in using 'pi' and 'raspberry' as the credentials, type 'startx' and voila! Hello World!