Category Archives: Software development

Running anything Remedy/Futuremark/MadOnion/UL in 2020

Posted on December 25, 2020 by Scali

There has always been a tie between Futuremark and the demoscene. It all started with the benchmark Final Reality, released by Remedy Entertainment in 1997. Remedy Entertainment was a gaming company, founded by demosceners from the legendary Future Crew and … Continue reading →

Posted in Direct3D, Oldskool/retro programming, Software development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Batch, batch, batch: Respect the classics!

Posted on June 2, 2020 by Scali

Today I randomly stumbled upon some discussions about DirectX 12, Mantle and whatnot. It seems a lot of people somehow think that the whole idea of reducing draw call overhead was new for Mantle and DirectX 12. While some commenters … Continue reading →

Posted in Direct3D, Oldskool/retro programming, OpenGL, Software development, Vulkan | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Politicians vs entrepreneurs

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Scali

Recently the discussion of a newly published book caught my attention. The book investigated some of the ramifications of the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Specifically, it investigated how a bank received government support. This was done in the form of … Continue reading →

Posted in Software development | 2 Comments

Windows and ARM: not over yet

Posted on February 2, 2020 by Scali

As you may recall, I was quite fond of the idea of ARM and x86 getting closer together, where on the one hand, Windows could run on ARM devices, and on the other hand, Intel was developing smaller x86-based SOCs … Continue reading →

Posted in Direct3D, Hardware news, Software development, Software news | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Bitbucket ends support for Mercurial (Hg), a quick guide

Posted on December 26, 2019 by Scali

I have been a long-time user of Bitbucket for my personal projects, over 10 years now, I believe. My preferred source control system has always been Mercurial (Hg), especially in those early days, when I found the tools for Git … Continue reading →

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Am I a software architect?

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Scali

In the previous article, I tried to describe how I see a software architect, and how he or she would operate within a team or organization. One topic I also wanted to discuss is the type of work a software … Continue reading →

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Who is a software architect? What is software architecture?

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Scali

After the series of articles I did on software development a while ago, I figured that the term ‘Software Architect’ is worth some additional discussion. I have argued that Software Engineering may mean different things to different people, and the … Continue reading →

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Just keeping it real at Revision 2019

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Scali

I visited Revision again this year. And I took my IBM PC/XT 5160 with me. And I made a quick release. That release was a plan that I’ve had for a while, and which I mentioned in my previous blogpost: … Continue reading →

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The IBM Music Feature Card and Yamaha FB-01

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Scali

This has got to be one of the most obscure pieces of hardware I have covered so far. A sound card for the IBM PC, released in 1987. And by none other than Big Blue themselves! I am talking about … Continue reading →

Posted in Oldskool/retro programming, Software development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The DreamBlaster S2P: General MIDI from a parallel port

Posted on March 9, 2019 by Scali

In the interest of catching up, here is the second blog that is long overdue. I want to talk about the DreamBlaster S2P from Serdaco. I received mine over a year ago, and it actually was an early prototype. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Hardware news, Oldskool/retro programming, Software development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment