Text editors look easy - type some characters in a box. Done. But when you drill into it, implementing text editing well is highly involved. This showcases a few examples of why its hard, but honestly it barely scratches the surface. This is why we build things well, build them once, and re-use to high heaven.

Word to the wise: Github is not the golden unicorn others might think it is when comparing it to Microsoft Teams.

Sure, there are some great things about it (comparing between branches/changesets for a given pull request), but its teh sux for leaving and responding to code review comments (Did you really need to disable a comment chain when I've updated one variable in the adjacent block?). I also miss the in-editor reviewing, so its easier to test out changes locally (vs. online on github). I'm just saying. Not a golden unicorn...

So apparently Pixar created Universal Scene Description file format, which is converging on being pretty well used across a variety of 3D products these days. Its lacking in some extraneous functionality (animation - couldn't figure out a common schema; and seemingly a variety of projection approaches/camera descriptions amongst others), but is a solid foundation for converging on file formats. Something the industry has struggled with FOREVER.

Anyhoo, some relevant links:

• Overview
• Geometry - API documentation. Discussion includes supported primitives (eg. for fast collision detection/common representations), as well as mesh, nurbs, etc. and conventions adopted (eg. right hand rule, RH coordinate system for winding)
• Rendering Overview - API documentation. Discussion includes camera setup and pixel ratios

A few things to be interested in:

• Siggraph 2021 - Virtually hosted Aug 9 - 13th this year. Advance registration ends June 28th
• Visual Studio 2019 v16.10 released May 25th is C++20 feature compliant. eg. calendars, timezones, format text formatting, co-routines. Microsoft is gearing up for Visual Studio 2022, its next major release.
• Apparently Apple is doing a thing (WWDC 2021), and announcing iOS 15.
• OpenGL Mesa Drivers are being expanded for external support, eg. Vulkan interoperability.
• Vulkan website got a makeover by Khronos, including keeping resources in one place such a projects and tools used in a Vulkan ecosystem.
• W3C with help from Apple, Google, Mozilla, Microsoft and "others" are putting together WebGPU and WebGPU Shading Language (WGSL) to replace WebGL which was based on OpenGL ES.
• Google Maps is playing with WebGL.

Had a conversation earlier today about how I've got my system setup for working from home. So:

• Desktop (mine)
• Surface laptop (work's)
  • Sits on a cookie cooling rack to deter overheating
• Dell Universal Dock 6000 (work's)
  • Contains: HDMI and DisplayPort ports, USB ports, LAN; using USB or USB-C to connect to the Surface laptop
  • My three home monitors are all hooked up to the display port
  • Connected to Surface laptop via USB-C
• Wireless keyboard (with two Windows keys, thank you very much) and mouse (mine)
• KVM Switch (mine)
  • Only using the mouse and keyboard connectors
  • Connected to desktop and dell dock
  • Video uses VGA, and is therefore connected - someday I might get an HDMI-oriented KVM, however...
• Monitors - 3 Dell monitors (mine - mostly used from Kijiji)
  • Each hooked up to dell dock and desktop via HDMI and DisplayPort (yes, its a lot of video cables...)
  • Each monitor has been "programmed" so its buttons allow for easy switching of the input source via preset modes
• Webcam (mine)
  • This is manually swapped between work and and home PC. I don't use it very often for home-based things, so its not really a bother
• Headphones (work's - but bought for me?)
  • Connect via bluetooth, so when swapping, re-pair with the respective computer

For working from home:

• Laptop runs Teams, Slack, and other similar communications. All A/V goes directly through it, rather than via the remote desktop (which doesn't make sense imo).
• A subset of monitors are used for displaying remote desktop. See notes on how to do that here.
• I have a powershell script on my remote machine so when RDP invariably rearranges my windows layout, it resets to how I normally use it. Maybe I'll incorporate that here one day (uses GetWindow, SetWindow), but it sounds like some people have their own setups for this.

So, I haven't yet watched all these, but when the program came out, this is my hit-list of highlights for this year's FREE NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC), which ran Apr 12 - 16th, 2021. I may have simplified the titles a touch...Read more...

Scott Hanselman has put together a quick and easy writeup on how to use remote desktop with just a subset of available monitors here. Should the link ever go down, I wanted to document how I use this myself, borrowing from Scott's description. Read more...