Pursuant to some archiving projects I want to conduct, I wanted to evaluate Bzip2 vs. LZMA for compression. I know that the latter is more efficient, size-wise, than the former while generally requiring more time on the compression side. But I wanted to know if the encoding time difference was very severe vs. the space saved. I also wanted to know how the relative decode speed compares.

Methodology: For a number of large files that are each around 1.35 GB, measure the compression speed and ratio and then measure…

You know what? This is the most basic type of profiling experiment to set up and I really don’t feel like describing the process, the hardware used, the variables carefully controlled, or graphing the data. Here’s what I came up with in my tests:

• Bzip2 is 2-2.3x faster to compress than LZMA.
• The Bzip2 files were 15-20% larger than the LZMA files.
• The LZMA files decompressed in nearly half the time of the Bzip2 files.

Conclusion: I’ll be going with LZMA for my long-term archival projects.

Via the MultimediaWiki, Suxen Drol made me aware of recent video codec identified only as SIF1. It seems the codec has been on the radar for a few months now. The decoder source code (Windows) is available for download, as are a bunch of samples. Is anyone interested in writing a proper description for this codec based on the source code? If so, I hope you can understand whatever (human) language the author wrote it in. Here are the core filenames:

$ wc *.cpp
    1185    2217   37009 AdaptFiltrDequant.cpp
    4375   13045  119493 BikubDetcimation.cpp
   14075   42529  533493 DeblokFiltrCompDvij.cpp
    1566    3110   57229 MotionArifmDecomp.cpp
     820    2429   23311 Rgb_viu_kon.cpp
   21588   70557  889709 SifDecompressor.cpp
     118     408    3577 SifEkspotrFunk.cpp
     394    1063   12274 SifFilter.cpp
      96     323    2764 SifFiltrUprDialog.cpp
   44217  135681 1678859 total

Okay, so maybe not all of those filenames are so bad, but I challenge you to decipher many of the identifiers in the source. Also, some of those files are a tad bulky. Large swaths of code are written only in inline MMX. I haven’t seen this since Lagarith. I have this weird feeling that this codec is going to exist in its own little universe for a long time to come even though the author seems to have invested a lot of research into making it competitive with H.264.

I acquired an MP3 all the way back in 1997 or 1998 which is a parody of Jingle Bells holiday tune that laments Microsoft-branded bloatware. Mildly humorous at the time, the song now serves as a technology time capsule. The internet seems unsure of who wrote or performed the song or when it was recorded, but the lyrics give a clue about its vintage. The singer complains that MS Word takes a whole 60 megabytes of RAM to run and occupies 900 megabytes of disc space.

Nine-tenths of a gig, biggest ever seen,
God, this program’s big: MS Word 15!
Comes on ten CDs, and requires–damn!
Word is fine, but jeez, 60 megs of RAM?!
Oh! Microsoft, Microsoft, bloatware all the way!
I’ve sat here installing Word, since breakfast yesterday!
Oh! Microsoft, Microsoft, moderation, please.
Guess you hadn’t noticed: Four-gig drives don’t grow on trees!

This clearly hearkens back to a time when 4 gigabyte drives were considered premium. I’m trying to remember when 4 GB drives were introduced and would have commanded a prohibitive price. Whenever it was, it still strikes me as ironic considering that I am typing this on my Linux-based Eee PC 701 which is equipped with 4 GB of storage which is just barely enough for Ubuntu 9.10 to tread water (ran out of space today, in fact, and I had to scramble to make room to keep working).

I purchased a Sony PlayStation 3 recently. I thoroughly read the accompanying manual on a train ride and a particular detail caught this optical media aficionado’s eye:

Wait… what? Star-shaped discs? Heart-shaped ones as well? Are those real? How would those even work? I know about 80 cm discs that fit in the smaller groove of a CD tray. I also know about the business card-shaped CD’s; I even have a few games that were published on such a form factor (for example). But a star has points. And a heart? How?

A brief bit of Googling for “star shaped disc” leads me directly to the Wikipedia article on shaped CDs, which happens to showcase a heart-shaped CD. But how would a star-shaped disc work? That (typically) has 5 points. Where would the circular track go, the one that holds data? I figure there could be sort of a fat star, a circle with 5 points. This turns out to be the correct idea as this disc manufacturing page indicates.

Check out the page and see the oddest shape– the house CD.