pcplantdb

[John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> ...This method is getting me only 7 FPS on a 1Ghz
> G4 :-(, other methods with worse layout got me up to around 21 for
> this graph.  I hear that the Mac Flash player isn't as fast as other
> systems though. I'd like to know what others get on their system (FPS
> & OS/CPU Stats).

> Check it out here: http://permaculture.info/test/richClient.php

Just ran the GBI for a minute or two.
Waaayyyy too much overhead for appropriate technology systems ("used 
computers") like mine.

Test results after letting it just sit and do its thing for a minute:

FPS: 1
OpCount: 961
Tension: 6.46 (this varied a bit when I clicked on/dragged stuff but 
seemed to re-stabilize at around 6.3-4something if I left the app alone 
for a bit)

IBM ThinkPad 570E with P3 500 MHz, 320MB RAM, running Debian GNU/linux 
r3.1 (sarge) and Mozilla 1.7.8 browser with Flash Player 7.

Slows down even typing this e-mail noticeably when the GBI is running.
After about 30 sec. of the GBI running my CPU fan kicks on (normally 
never runs on these cool tropical winter evenings), and stays on until 
about 15-20 sec. after I close the page.
It's obviously the most computation-intensive code I've probably ever 
run on this machine, aside from maybe a few GIMP image-editing 
transforms (but they only take a handful or two of seconds so hard to tell).

Initially I have no idea what this widget is supposed to be 
showing/telling/teaching me or how it relates to the plant information 
in the textual DB or anything else for that matter.
There are a bunch of words in boxes connected by lines floating around 
and I can click on a box and drag it somewhere and then everything sort 
of rearranges itself but I'm not sure why or how and everything seems to 
go back more or less where it was.
After playing with it for a minute or two (no more, can't afford to 
toast this CPU ;-) and knowing what we're hoping to do with this sort of 
thing I can make some fair guesses as to what's going on.
So I assume this is purely a dev prototype of a possible GBI platform 
and not intended to be user-friendly yet.

I suppose it might be OK on high-end machines.
Definitely not accessible technology though.

On the plus side whatever has to load over the wire loads very fast even 
via dialup.  Heck, a decent JPEG image that size would probably take 
longer to load.  Good job on that, however you did it.

cheers,
John S.

--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Whole Systems Design Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net