Stephen's Weblog

So… I’ve decided it’s a good idea to update the blog about once a week. Perhaps writing about things more often will make my life more clear. maybe. Not really sure where this is going to go yet.

Anyway, there are a lot of things I can’t talk about yet, but some that I can… Most notably, a DS ASM optimization contest website I’m working on… I’m currently planning to have the first contest start next weekend… I’m not going to say too much about it yet, but I hope some people find it interesting…

Well, that’s it for now. Maybe I’ll find more to talk about next time.

Hello all, I’m now going to disclose some information about a relatively secret set of projects that I have planned… This was actually the final goal in mind for the apprentice project, but I think this approach will be more useful. I’m looking for several programmers to be involved with these projects, for several reasons: first, is magnitude- this collection is much larger than anything I’ve ever attempted before. Second, is steering; I have a reasonably well thought out plan for how to proceed, but being able to debate it with other people will likely increase the plan’s effectiveness. Additionally, having more people involved means that things might go faster and bugs or security exploits might be found and resolved more quickly.
Basicly the idea of this set of projects is to build up all the required parts to build a proper operating system, and ultimately tie them together. I realize this is a lofty goal, but I think it is achievable, even if not entirely reasonable. And, if it does fail, there will still be a lot of useful code modules that could be used to improve other operating systems.
I do not require perfect programmers (if such a thing exists…) for this task, in fact all of these projects will be built alongside a rather extensive set of unit tests designed to verify correctness in a great many cases, and to expose security problems long before they become a problem.
The first of these projects is….. a new TCP/IP stack, possibly to be called sgIP 1.0; though the name is still up in the air, really. If you are interested in working on this project, please contact me… I’m still working on making time for these things, so it will be a week or 2 before the project gets off the ground, but let me know regardless.

So, things aren’t exactly moving along as fast as I’d like… Here’s the status of a few things that are near the front of my queue:
* Apprentice Exam, round 2 – I’ve just been lazy putting this together… it’s about half done, I will finish the other half and post it sometime. Not sure when exactly, yet.
* Spartan-3E logic analyzer – Hardware side on this is done now (not completely tested) – Software side is started, but not usable yet. Once it gets to be usable, I’ll continue work on Wii RE’ing.

There are a handful of other things I’m doing too, but they’re not quite as interesting or important… I’ll update when more gets done.

So, the first round is basicly over… I’ve actually taken a few entries after I said it was closed, so there are 4 “finalists” now. It’s still not technically too late, though when I get the second round out, it will be too late.

Right now, I’m busy preparing the second round in what little spare time I have; When I do get it done, it’ll be a multi-page PDF file (probably 15 to 20 pages) covering a wide array of subjects. The deadline for submission will probably be about a month after I release it.  Anyone of course will be welcome to take the “exam”, and I’ll release the answers after all the finalists turn their solutions in.

I haven’t sent out the emails regarding how well people have done in the first round yet, it’s something I’ll get to before I release the second round, but I make no guarantees as to exactly when. Not that I’ve forgotten or anything :)

One more thing: I invite you to Nominate your favorite NDS/GBA homebrew for the 2006 NDS Homebrewcast homebrew awards (forum.gbadev.org), which is being put on by an aspiring podcast called (unsurprisingly) the NDS Homebrewcast (homebrewcast.com).

That’s all for today, I’ll post more updates when things happen, of course.

So, this whole apprentice thing has managed to become bigger than I expected it to; Anyway, after the first round, I am now left with 3 very good candidates on the top of the rest; I’m now in the process of building a second round exam, to get a much more specific idea of what they know and what they’re capable of. I’ll also send everyone who returned one of the first round surveys an email, indicating where they stand compared to everyone else :P
More news on this later… this second round is not going to be an easy exam, it’ll be pretty detailed, and will cover everything from the basics almost as far as the knowledge I will eventually require of an apprentice. It will take a bit of time to write, of course… I’ll post an update to this post when it gets further along.

So, well, as can be expected, I have been working on reverse engineering the Wii, to a limited extent. I don’t have huge amounts of progress, but what I do have can be seen here, at wiire.org – I haven’t been intentionally hiding this from you guys, a lot of people already know about it, but I’ll link it here just in case anyone has missed it.

…to carry on the “sgstair” way.

No, I’m not planning on leaving or anything.
Just expanding my horizons by a few orders of magnitude. I have a lot of really big things planned, the creation of many libraries that will form the base of what will eventually become a full operating system (within a few years, hopefully)
I’m looking for a suitable trainee, someone to whom I can impart a good deal of useful knowledge and wisdom I’ve accumulated through my career to date, and who can help me in the development of these libraries and other projects, which collectively require extraordinary amounts of work.
The reason that I’m stating this here, is that I’m curious if anyone in my readership might want a position like this…
If you think you might, please read the following set of simple requirements I’ve put together:
You should have interests in programming, math and, less necessarily, electronics and science.
You must be interested in learning new things. (And if you think you know it all already, you’re very likely incorrect.)
You should be pretty good at remembering things that interest you.
You should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of how programming works, Knowing C or ASM is a plus.
You should like puzzles, and figuring out things.

That’s it, only one absolute requirement even! Note that I am not a slave driver, and If I do manage to acquire an apprentice, I don’t expect a huge time commitment, or anything like that (if you have more time all the better, but I only have a limited time myself)
So, there you have it. If you’re still interested, I’d expect you can figure out how to get in contact with me.

(Side note: I really don’t expect to get many, if any responses to this, but if I do, woohoo! that’s a lot of time that may have been spent looking on my own that I don’t have to worry about any more :)

(Side note 2: Just for those of you who worry about it, the library code and various projects I have planned will be licenced almost exclusively under the MIT source code licence. It’s likely not all of the libraries that will be created will be released to the public immediately, but some will, and which ones do are very much up for debate. Also, I’ve been working on plans for a private SVN server + public SVN site (web + anonymous svn download) + a bug tracker for this collection of libraries.  So, libs will be quite accessable to the public if they are released to the public. Anyway, just thought some of you might like to know that.)

(Side note 3: For now, if people contact me about this they’ll be put on a list, I’ll get around to talking to anyone who does indicate interest within about a week.)

(Side note 4: Since some of you seem to have misinterpreted what I’m saying about time requirements, I’m not requiring any amount of time; in fact early on it will probably be limited by the amount of time I have available. Granted if you’re interested it will eat up more time than you might expect, but I’m not making any solid requirements.)

(Side note 5: I’ve sent out a survey/test email to all who have expressed interest – thanks guys :) – it’s not too late to be considered, but I will probably make a final decision within a week, or possibly 2 weeks, depending on how things go.)

(Side note 6: I’m tentatively setting a deadline of the end of the day (23:59 GMT) on December 23, for applicants to return the survey/test email. You’re still welcome to apply before this time, but once you’re sent the email, you have the same deadline as everyone else. Exceptions are possible, but I don’t see why there would need to be any.)

Hey all,
I’ve had lots of fun (read: not fun) things to deal with lately, nothing really interesting just a series of small things that have added up to eat up all my available time and then some.
So: DSWifi release 0.3b has been delayed, but I am meaning to get it out soon – I’ve decided to drop the extra features I was planning for it (As they’ll be addressed in the oncoming rewrite) and merely add the bug fixes I’ve been planning, to get it out the door soon
Also, the rewrite I’ve alluded to will wait for a while, specificly until the Wii comes out or thereabouts; as I’d like the 802.11 and new TCP/IP system to work on that system as well (the sgIP rewrite may come sooner, as I am planning to play with the gamecube in the meantime, and I’d like to port sgIP to it. – if this happens I’ll release a version 0.4 with just the sgIP TCP/IP rewrite)
As far as stuff goes, I have my plate quite full of projects at the moment, so everything is moving very slowly – I’m trying to prioritize and only work on the top 2 or 3 projects, but it’s far more difficult than advertised! wish me luck! :)
(oh, and about the downloadable DS demos – I may or may not get around to adding the latest set, not sure if I really want to at this point. There are some other people who have the latest ones though, I’ll add the link on here / the wiki if I can figure out where)

Well, something like that.
Anyway, for those of you who are madly addicted to the game, there’s something you really should try:
At the moment, a friend of mine (StoneCypher) is recruiting beta-testers for a commercial PC sudoku game he’s nearly done with. If you can’t get enough of the puzzles, it looks to be a very sweet deal, and he has enough puzzles (and types of puzzles) to make you dizzy :)
So, if you’re interested, please read his blog post about it, and sign up if you like

This has been a public service announcement, We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…

Well, it seems to be the case that a plugin that had been recommended to me (Bad Behavior) seems to have been blocking some legitimate traffic to the site. I only had it installed to cut down on spam, and now I have a new system that does a much better job of that; so… I’ve disabled it.
If any of you were having trouble with rss feeds or the like, this should be fixed now :\
Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused (not sorry to the spammers though :P)