Blogging

I can never think about anything to blog about anymore.

VFS

My question to you today is: is there a point to developing a VFS?

I’m thinking that developing an interface to a VFS could be useful for game development. Basically I’d be creating a system that’s kind of like a zip file, but can be optimized for real-time read/write operations. By leaving room for files to grow, it would reduce the load that would have to be done. Fragmenting would also improve speed, but when the file is “optimized for read only”, it would defrag the file and compact it. Another idea is using simple XOR encryption based on a device’s serial key, like a USB key, so that the file would be rendered unusable without having the drive inserted. If done with harddrives, then the file would be linked to the computer. Compression via ZLIB would be easy too.

Since I’m taking a database course, I started thinking about maybe implementing it in such a way that you could have VFS servers, kind of like using NFS. It would go on the same idea as my three tired network file access idea (network IO, local IO, memory), where only the interface would be transparent. By creating equivilents to fwrite, fread, the data could be cached and read and wrote in realtime.

Once again, I’m over complicating things. I’m starting to get a hang of using ODBC in my C/C++ applications. I’m having a few repition issues (copy and paste, copy and paste), so I’m thinking that it’d be in my best interest to make myself a C++ interface. Nothing too elaborate, but constantly working with that many if statements is tedious.

School is going good. I have an assignment due tommorow, and a chem assignment coming tommorow, and a chem test in a couple weeks. I’m pretty busy lately, so programming is taking a bit of a back seat. I also have to work on the website for my house. On top of that, I’m going to try and snag a job soon.

Almost Go Time

First, I wish I could go to Frane like this guy. Apparently, he also loves Lego. I miss my Lego :(.

Anyways, Sunday I head back to Fredericton! Most of my classes are new (Calculus, Chem lec, and Chem lab are full year courses). I pick up Macro Economics, Information Systems Fundamentals, and Discrete Data Structures. I’m pretty excited to go back, but not excited to pay for it :(.