Stephen's Weblog

So, things have been getting pretty stagnant lately – I’d really prefer to have more visible progress, I really would – reality is not always kind to me. Either way however, I will try to pick up the pace a bit and get more done on my more public projects… I reiterate that if you would like to help on any of these projects, feel free to contact me.

The project du jour is, however, the NDS test apps project. It is a prerequisite for some other fun things I’d like to do, and it’s also very useful to the community (if I do say so myself) – I’ve set up a new IRC channel for it – on irc.blitzed.org channel #nds_test_apps – feel free to join if you’re interested, have suggestions, want to code for the project, etc. I’m still not entirely sure where these projects are really going to go, but I’d like to get a few of them done if possible, and I really don’t mind the help from interested parties!

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.

The first project I’m going to use this “system” for is a set of testing apps for DS, primarily to verify emulator correctness. The project page is at http://wiki.akkit.org/Nds_test_apps. The page itself describes the project pretty well, but here’s a quick summary:
Two applications for DS will be written, one is a Graphics test, one is a CPU/Memory test. The idea behind both, is to evaluate the correctness of emulation for all graphical and CPU features, and periodically release the applications and information about how well the emulators do in the tests in order to promote improvements in emulation.
This project is nice in that it’s easy to add more users to the development without people stepping on each other’s toes, so I’m happy to add several more people to the project.

Not all of the framework is in place for this project yet. I have a Subversion server and a bugtracker that are both partly ready, I expect to have both of them running correctly soon – they’ll be responsible for making this teamwork possible.
The code for this project will be closed source during development, until a certain level of completeness is reached (this has yet to be decided) – after which point, all the code will be released under the MIT source code license (this, too, is just the current plan, if the team has other ideas, it can change)
We will release binaries periodically, to allow people to test on their own, and to allow emu authors to get a good look at what problems exist.
If you would like to be involved with this project, please email me at sgstair [at] akkit [dot] org.

So, this apprentice thing hasn’t exactly been working out the way I expected it to… The second exam, while a neat idea suffers from a few fatal flaws.
Firstly, I’ve been lazy, and when not lazy, I’ve been wrapped up in a multitude of other things. The second problem I come up with is trying to write a test like this without it just becoming more about “what I know” than about actually teaching people. Lastly, the type of people I would want to target are exactly the sort of people who could learn all this stuff on their own, without a test to verify their knowledge – just given the right direction to look for information in.

So, here’s the plan: I’m dropping the apprentice idea. If you wanted to be involved and wanted to learn something, you’re still welcome to ask me; I’m still interested in answering questions and pointing people in the right direction.
I still have a number of projects going on, and I would still like to allow members of the community to be involved with them, and I will still have high entry standards for joining such projects.

I’ll post on this blog when I have projects going on; I have one now (that I’ll post right after this post). If you want to be involved in a project, email me: sgstair [at] akkit [dot] org.
My criteria for allowing people onto projects is going to be entirely subjective, but things that I expect from people who are interested are: a good knowledge of C/C++, some understanding of the workings of the DS, and some understanding of how to write secure code. Other requirements will be present for more complex projects, of course… and some of those will be starting eventually.

Also, to all of you who participated in the first round of the apprentice exam – thanks! Sorry it didn’t go further in that form, but if you’re still interested.. that’s what this is for! I’m presently hesitating to send out the “results” of the first round, mainly due to the high subjectivity of my ratings; however if someone convinces me otherwise, I might reverse my position. I do hope to get to work with some of you in these coming projects :)

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.

I’ve put together a really quick and hacky xmassy demo for #dsdev / blitzed and the homebrew community in general :) behold! the NDS file (xmas.nds, 85k). Many thanks to nornagon (in #dsdev/blitzed) for helping me out with the fonts.  Enjoy the computer-generated snowflakes, and have a happy holiday season everyone :)
(also, a screenshot!)

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.)