Simo Virokannas

Writings and ramblings

Category: Uncategorized

  • Just some pointers

    Just some pointers

    The book “Machine Code for Beginners” (by Usborne, 1983) likened computer memory to a shelf or a cabinet with lots of tiny little drawers, all of which can hold just one byte of information at a time. The pictures had robots carrying the information in and out of them, on little pieces of paper. One…

  • Numeric Value of (nothing) Is Zero

    Numeric Value of (nothing) Is Zero

    Background Part of what I do is software salvage. I’ve had the joy of working on bringing life back to abandoned codebases, extend them with new features, modernize services and translate software from obsolete programming languages, operating systems and frameworks. A frequent type of software modernization has risen with the slow tilt of the dinner…

  • Streaming basics

    As a quick crash course on video and audio streaming, here’s some nice facts and articles. The tool of the trade is RTSP, like it or not. There are methods of streaming through HTTP, but to make something that supports multiple streams or any sort of negotiation, it’ll always come back to RTSP. RFC 2326 – Real…

  • Unity version of MonoDevelop on OSX won’t run

    …that is, if you are not running your system as admin. MonoDevelop assumes that everyone who uses OSX use it as admin. The way to fix this is to give you rights to the folder it wants to install its Mono library stuff into: /Applications/Unity/MonoDevelop.app/Contents/Frameworks/Mono.framework Give your user write permissions to that folder (and anything…

  • NSOpenGLView and NSToolbar issue

    For a long time, I’d run to the same problem with projects that included a window containing a full-window NSOpenGLView and a toolbar. In the Interface Builder, the NSToolbar controls open behind the OpenGL view and are unusable. There is a simple, although kludgy, way around this: Set the NSOpenGLView hidden in the View settings…

  • HALion Symphonic Orchestra on OSX Lion

    HALion Symphonic Orchestra on OSX Lion

    This page at Steinberg’s website claims that Halion Symphonic Orchestra won’t work on OSX Lion. It says “Plug-in not detected by host. No update planned but runs as VST Sound Instrument Set based on HALion Sonic on Lion.” Not true. I just finished installing Cubase Studio 5 on Lion, with HSO working just fine, both as…