Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Oops, Sorry!
If you read my RSS feed via Bloglines you may have just seen a new set of entries with broken item text. Sorry. I was fixing up the RSS feed content and screwed up. Fixed now.
Zim's Crack Creme
This time of year is tough on skin. For us it's the combination of dry air and constant hand washing when dealing with kids with colds. Over time your hands get dry, cracked and bleeding. It's painful. You feel like your hands have gone arthritic as you avoid putting pressure on your finger tips. What to do? Well, how about Zim's Crack Creme? I've heard that it works quite well but I just can't get past that name. Okay, I'm being juvenile but it's hard for me to stifle a joke: Is Zim's a companion product to this minty fresh product?
Word of the Day: Hedcut
Hedcut is a style of drawing that's been used by the Wall Street Journal since 1979. The drawings are done with a stipple technique that produces pictures that resembled the engravings on stock certificates and currency. Hedcuts have a "machine made" quality to them but they're done by hand with pen and ink. Producing a finished hedcut can take up to five hours. Noli Novak is one of the WSJ illustrators who produce hedcuts. She has collection of some of her work online.
The animals on the covers of O'Reilly books are also hand drawn, made to look like wood and copperplate engravings.
I love this style of industrial art. It has a really clean look that you don't get from a photograph. The fact that these images are not generated by computer but drawn by hand also appeals to me. Not to denigrate computer artists but it's nice to know that old fashioned pen and ink skills are still useful. Maybe it's because a lot of the pen and ink drawings I did in school were of a similar style. My approach to getting through a boring class was to work on an obssessively detailed drawing made from tiny little dots and lines.
The animals on the covers of O'Reilly books are also hand drawn, made to look like wood and copperplate engravings.
I love this style of industrial art. It has a really clean look that you don't get from a photograph. The fact that these images are not generated by computer but drawn by hand also appeals to me. Not to denigrate computer artists but it's nice to know that old fashioned pen and ink skills are still useful. Maybe it's because a lot of the pen and ink drawings I did in school were of a similar style. My approach to getting through a boring class was to work on an obssessively detailed drawing made from tiny little dots and lines.
Monday, December 27, 2004
Spamalot
A terrific New Yorker article by Dave Eggers on Monty Python on the eve of the opening of Eric Idle's "Spamalot", a musical based on the film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". There's a lot of interesting Python trivia in the article including this Elvis reference:
I wonder if Elvis could do John Cleese's silly walks too? In this second article, Eggers discusses the Pythons' comedy with The New Yorker's Matt Dellinger. It's hard to imagine Python material being performed by a cast other than Cleese, Palin, Idle et al but it might just work. If so, I hope Spamalot makes it to Boston. (Via Metafilter)The Pythons were heroes to the Second City contingent, and had made their way to Graceland. Elvis Presley, a big fan, was known to quote Idle's "Nudge Nudge" skit to his friends.
J002E3
This is an old story but I hadn't heard it before. An object was sighted orbiting the Earth on Sept 3rd 2002. Scientists initially suspected that the 60-foot-long object, named JOO2E3, was a small asteroid. But further observations proved that J002E3 was man-made. Specifically it was the lost S-IVB third stage from the Saturn V rocket used to launch Apollo 12 in November 1969. After Apollo 12 jettisoned it's third stage, ground controllers ignited the S-IVB's engine, intending to send the object into a sun-centered orbit. But something went wrong. The S-IVB ended up racing Earth in a weird orbit around the sun. You can see the path it took around the Earth from September 2002 through June 2003 in this animation sequence.
iPod My Photo
I don't have any interest in "iPodifying" any photos but iPod My Photo is a clever idea. Some of the effect could be done with a PhotoShop plugin but I imagine some fine tuning would be required to make it look like an Apple ad.
I Pod, We Pod
My wife and I got iPods for Christmas. They're both the 40 GB iPod photo. The photo album stuff is nice but I was more interested in the longer battery life and nice color screen. They should have just called it the "iPod color" or the like. It would be nice if it could play videos but I would still be mostly interested in the device as a music player. I've seen different devices go through the B&W to color transition (Macintosh, NeXT, Palm and now iPod). When you're using a B&W device you don't think color will matter that much. But it does. It's not crucial yet on the iPod but it's certainly a nice visual touch.
I've only had the iPod for a few days but I really like it. There were a couple small quirks during setup and install but overall I'm impressed. As others have mentioned, the iPod packaging is beautiful. In these days when most gadget packaging is so hard to open that you nearly need to destroy the box to get at the stuff inside, it's nice to open a box like this with the simple message "Enjoy" inside.
We're using Firewire for my wife's iPod and USB 2.0 for mine. Frankly I don't see any real difference in speed when synching the iPod. The synch is very fast. I'm slowing building up my collection of music. Now I want to find a case that I like. The case that comes with the iPod is usable but not really what I want.
I've only had the iPod for a few days but I really like it. There were a couple small quirks during setup and install but overall I'm impressed. As others have mentioned, the iPod packaging is beautiful. In these days when most gadget packaging is so hard to open that you nearly need to destroy the box to get at the stuff inside, it's nice to open a box like this with the simple message "Enjoy" inside.
We're using Firewire for my wife's iPod and USB 2.0 for mine. Frankly I don't see any real difference in speed when synching the iPod. The synch is very fast. I'm slowing building up my collection of music. Now I want to find a case that I like. The case that comes with the iPod is usable but not really what I want.
Happy Holidays
I'm on vacation this week. We can't carry over vacation time year-to-year — use it or lose it — so I'm using my remaining week of vacation time in snowy Arlington. We got about 10" of fluffy powder last night. A little late for Christmas but still welcome. Normally I don't look forward to snow — primarily because of what it does to my commute. But a new coating of snow certainly makes the dreary winter look brighter. The sun came out after the storm. As it reflected off the snow, the sun had that blindingly bright quality I remember from my childhood. A nice day for spending time outside.
Friday, December 24, 2004
Comments
Squawkbox seems to be down. Not sure why. In the meantime, comments here are disabled.
Update: 12/27/04 — Looks like Squawkbox is finally back. I've got to rethink how I do comments. More posts on the way.
Update: 12/27/04 — Looks like Squawkbox is finally back. I've got to rethink how I do comments. More posts on the way.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Akimbo
Akimbo is a strange word. It's only appropriate when related to arms, or less common, legs. The word was meant to refer to having your arms in the "hands on hips" stance. It's no wonder that English has so many words when it absorbs such narrowly defined words as akimbo. The word apparently came from an Old Norse phrase meaning "bent in a curve".
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Geek History through T-Shirts
GeekT.org is a collection of Geeky t-shirts from the good old days at Apple, Microsoft, Netscape, etc. A history of products and projects good and bad told through T-shirts. I like the idea, I hope they get more content. A few that I thought were of interest:
R5 World Tour 99 — It's sad to think that a supply of these were dumped at some swap meet. This was the t-shirt we got at Iris when we shipped Domino R5. It's from the "I AM" advertising campaign that IBM ran. The "paradise" reference is because the entire team got a trip to the Bahamas for a few days shortly after R5 shipped. Those were the days.
Who was Ashton? — Not really a t-shirt, this is a tour jacket. Lotus went through a phase of giving out shiny jackets like this too. We competed against Ashton Tate on NeXT. We wrote Improv and Ashton Tate built a NeXT spreadsheet called PowerStep. It never shipped. One thing I remember from the PowerStep Beta was all of the "spud" references in the About dialog. Apparently people who worked at Ashton Tate referred to themselves as "Taters". From that, taters became potatoes which became spuds. (To answer the question of who was Ashton. They made up the name Ashton. The two founders were Lashley and Tate. They felt Ashton Tate sounded better than Lashley Tate. Eventually Ashton was also the name of a macaw owned by one of the founders).
Apple "Screw Bjarne" T-shirt — Every C++ programmer must, at one time or another, "thank" Bjarne for some twisted aspect of the language. Java's not perfect but I'm glad that I don't sling C++ code anymore. Twelve years in the Stroustrup salt mines were enough for me.
I should dig through my own T-shirt collection. I've got a lot of t-shirts from Lotus, NeXT and dead DotComs that I could contribute.
R5 World Tour 99 — It's sad to think that a supply of these were dumped at some swap meet. This was the t-shirt we got at Iris when we shipped Domino R5. It's from the "I AM" advertising campaign that IBM ran. The "paradise" reference is because the entire team got a trip to the Bahamas for a few days shortly after R5 shipped. Those were the days.
Who was Ashton? — Not really a t-shirt, this is a tour jacket. Lotus went through a phase of giving out shiny jackets like this too. We competed against Ashton Tate on NeXT. We wrote Improv and Ashton Tate built a NeXT spreadsheet called PowerStep. It never shipped. One thing I remember from the PowerStep Beta was all of the "spud" references in the About dialog. Apparently people who worked at Ashton Tate referred to themselves as "Taters". From that, taters became potatoes which became spuds. (To answer the question of who was Ashton. They made up the name Ashton. The two founders were Lashley and Tate. They felt Ashton Tate sounded better than Lashley Tate. Eventually Ashton was also the name of a macaw owned by one of the founders).
Apple "Screw Bjarne" T-shirt — Every C++ programmer must, at one time or another, "thank" Bjarne for some twisted aspect of the language. Java's not perfect but I'm glad that I don't sling C++ code anymore. Twelve years in the Stroustrup salt mines were enough for me.
I should dig through my own T-shirt collection. I've got a lot of t-shirts from Lotus, NeXT and dead DotComs that I could contribute.
Nervous stomach
When I was in elementary school I rode the bus. A boy named Freddie was on same school bus route. Freddie got car sick. Often. His mother gave him a Tupperware container in case he got sick. He sat in the front of the bus. By himself. He often ended up using that Tupperware container. He eventually outgrew his car sickness but children don't forget such things. Unfair or not, years later Freddie was still known for throwing up.
Tyrone Davies is a filmmaker and co-founder of the Free Form Film Festival, a traveling film festival. I was reminded of poor Freddie when I saw a clip of Tyrone being interviewed by a local TV station. He became so nervous during the interview that he got sick right on the reporter's desk. Don't click on this link unless you're really curious. Freddie was lucky, only those of us who rode the bus with him remember. Anyone with a net connection will know about Tyrone's mishap.
Tyrone Davies is a filmmaker and co-founder of the Free Form Film Festival, a traveling film festival. I was reminded of poor Freddie when I saw a clip of Tyrone being interviewed by a local TV station. He became so nervous during the interview that he got sick right on the reporter's desk. Don't click on this link unless you're really curious. Freddie was lucky, only those of us who rode the bus with him remember. Anyone with a net connection will know about Tyrone's mishap.
Backpacks
I picked up my older son at elementary school today. While waiting for his second-grade class I noticed an interesting backpack carried by a third-grade boy. Is the Insane Clown Posse appropriate for a nine year old? If so, I'm really out of the loop.
The hardest button to button
Sometimes I start a blog entry but leave it incomplete; the blogging equivalent to a Post-It stuck to my desk. I currently have over 100 posts stuck like that. This was one of them:
It's easy to turn a noun into a verb (e.g. you might hear someone say "I TiVoed 'The Apprentice' last night"). I'm interested in a narrow aspect of this transformation: how frequent do the noun and verb forms of a word appear in a sentence where the noun is the object to the verb's action? For example, you can button a button. But you don't iron an iron. You iron with an iron. And you don't toast toast, you toast bread since if it was already toast you wouldn't have to toast it. Is there a term for this type of noun/verb?
Now you can see why I never finished this post.
By the way, TiVo frowns on using their trademark as a verb.
It's easy to turn a noun into a verb (e.g. you might hear someone say "I TiVoed 'The Apprentice' last night"). I'm interested in a narrow aspect of this transformation: how frequent do the noun and verb forms of a word appear in a sentence where the noun is the object to the verb's action? For example, you can button a button. But you don't iron an iron. You iron with an iron. And you don't toast toast, you toast bread since if it was already toast you wouldn't have to toast it. Is there a term for this type of noun/verb?
Now you can see why I never finished this post.
By the way, TiVo frowns on using their trademark as a verb.
When Santas go bad
There are Bad Santas and Santas who go bad. A mass street brawl broke out following an annual charity Santa run. (Via Metafilter)
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Fried chicken states
Even though Kentucky Fried Chicken would rather be known as KFC they're still frying chicken. Colonel Sanders started his empire in Corbin, Kentucky ergo the Kentucky in the name. What's so special about fried chicken from Kentucky? Why not fried chicken from Tennessee, Mississippi or any other state? Here's a photo gallery of some Kentucky alternatives. Yes, even Utah Fried Chicken.
elgooG
elgooG is a Google mirror. Literally. It displays Google search results backwards. Very strange. Looking at these pages for too long made my brain hurt. (Via Chris Reckling aka gnilkceR sirhC)
Scared of Santa photo gallery
Some children are scared of Santa Claus — or at least scared by one of Santa's "helpers" who appear in shopping malls. Here's a photo gallery of kids frightened by the big guy in the red suit. I wonder if it's the beard? Are children scared by ZZ Top too?
The facial expressions of the Santas are an interesting mix. Some are happy, most look bored but it seems like Santa #11 has lost it. And Santa #7 could have appeared in Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa.
The facial expressions of the Santas are an interesting mix. Some are happy, most look bored but it seems like Santa #11 has lost it. And Santa #7 could have appeared in Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Zamboni
Zamboni is a cool word. It's much better than some generic term like "ice resurfacer machine". The Zamboni scrapes a thin layer off the ice and puts down a fresh layer of heated water that freezes to form a new layer of ice. Who knew that a Zamboni could explode?
The Lion King
My son and I saw The Lion King at the Boston Opera House on Saturday afternoon. It's a terrific show for children — although a bit long for very young children. The music, costumes and set design are terrific for adults too. The recently reopened Boston Opera House is beautiful as well.
We took the T to avoid driving into town. As we returned home via Park Street station, the Red Line closed because of a problem at Harvard Square station. Red Line passengers spilled out onto the street to transfer onto shuttle buses. It was a cold evening and there were only a few buses. Combined with a lack of any real order, people started crowding out onto the street and pushing. We ended up right in the middle of it. This is when crowding can get dangerous. Not due to malice, just the chaos of the situation. The T police arrived and the situation improved. They asked the crowd to allow the elderly and children to get onto the buses first. I felt a little guilty getting moved to the front but within the sea of adults it was getting hard to keep a grip on my son's hand. People didn't even see him standing next to them. Eventually the Red Line reopened and we got off the bus back onto the train at Kendall. The momentary chaos reminded me of how quick civil order can fall apart. Even on a relatively small scale.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Dude!
According to Scott Kiesling a linguist from the University of Pittsburgh, the word "dude" is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers. It derives its power from something he calls "cool solidarity" — in other words: "I'm your friend but not much more than your friend". I think that's pretty accurate when the word is used in a friendly way. There's also an aggressive sense that is common too (e.g. "Hey listen dude..."). Other words can fill in for dude: (e.g. "Oh man, look what you ...", "Watch where you're going buddy!" ). I supposed saying "dude" or "man" is better than using an expletive.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Wireless notebook mouse
I don't mind using trackpoints or touchpads but I prefer using a mouse. I got a new wireless mouse recently. It has a good feel; it's a little smaller than a conventional mouse but I don't really notice. I'm left handed but it feels fine in either hand and if I let someone else "drive" they can easily switch it to the other side without cord tangle. It has one clever feature that I hadn't seen before — when you're not using it you can snap the USB receiver dongle into the bottom of the mouse. When snapped in, it turns the mouse off to conserve battery life. It's too early to tell what battery life is going to be like. Our wireless mouse at home gets about 3-4 months from a single AA.
Make your own 12-sided calendar
In a couple of weeks the new year will begin. Rather then using a conventional calendar why not make your own 12-sided calendar? You can pick the starting day of the week and language and it'll produce a PDF or Postscript page to print out. The Postscript version allows you to add markers for special days. Just cut, fold and glue and you have a nice little desk calendar.
Postscript hacks like this were very popular during the heyday of Usenet news. Our sysadmin would get pretty upset if we wedged the company's Apple Laserwriter when trying out entries from comp.lang.postscript. On NeXTstep we could just render Postscript directly on screen using the Preview application. Ghostscript works nearly as well today but the days of Postscript hackery seem to have passed by. Most published content has moved to PDF.
Make Acrobat Reader 6 Load Faster
I used Acrobat 5 on my old laptop but the new one came with Acrobat 6 pre-installed. The time it takes to launch Acrobat 6 is painful, even on a fast machine. I remembered that Ned had posted about this a while ago. See Darrell Norton's article on how to make Acrobat 6 load faster. Here's what I did:
- Open the folder C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader.
- Open the plug_ins folder.
- Select all folders and files in plug_ins except for EWH32.api, printme.api, search.api.
- Move everything that you selected to the folder called Optional that's in the same directory as the plug_ins folder.
- Launch Acrobat Reader to make sure it still works. If not, make sure that you left the three plugins in the appropriate directory.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Ocean's Twelve
I saw Ocean's Twelve this evening. It's a sequel to Ocean's Eleven which was a remake of an old "rat pack" film. Steven Soderbergh is a terrific filmmaker so I'll watch just about any of his films, even a sequel. The plot here is a twisted mess but hardly matters. There's an A-list cast, beautiful European locations, stylish clothes, lots of one-liners, self-referential jokes, etc. So what's not to like? It's a decent film but I felt like the cast was having a lot more fun making the movie than I had watching it.
The trailers beforehand included Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and War of the Worlds. Nothing new; they're the same trailers available online. And now that I've seen the first one a few times, that Willy Wonka song is stuck in my head. And it'll probably stay there a lot longer than any memories of Ocean's Twelve.
Directory Assistant
Directory Assistant is an app for the Treo (and similar Palm-based phones). It's a front-end to YP.com for residential and business directory queries. Nice. (Via Miguel)
Complete CSS Guide for iPod
The Style Master CSS podGuide is an iPod ready edition of the Complete CSS Guide. Finally, a real reason to own an iPod. It's a bit of a stretch to ask your employer for an iPod to read CSS documentation but, hey, give it a shot. Oh yeah, it plays music too.
This reminds me of the rise of CD-ROMs in the early 90s. Microsoft began distributing developer releases and Betas on CDs. If you worked directly with Microsoft, as I did on one project, you could justify getting a CD-ROM drive for your PC. Oh yeah, it could be used to play music too.
This reminds me of the rise of CD-ROMs in the early 90s. Microsoft began distributing developer releases and Betas on CDs. If you worked directly with Microsoft, as I did on one project, you could justify getting a CD-ROM drive for your PC. Oh yeah, it could be used to play music too.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Lebkuchen
Lebkuchen is a type of gingerbread made in Nuremberg. They're usually round cookies with a wafer base and coated with glaze or chocolate. They're terrific. When my sister lived in Germany, she would include Lebkuchen in birthday packages. Since then we've found them locally in a few stores. For example Trader Joe's carries Lebkuchen at Christmas time.
By the way, my German never was very good but when I first heard of Lebkuchen I thought that the word translated to something like "love cake". Since the cookies can sometimes be heart-shaped, this made sense to me. But that should be "Liebekuchen". According to the Nuremberg web site the name probably stems from "libum" the Latin for a flat, round unleavened cake.
By the way, my German never was very good but when I first heard of Lebkuchen I thought that the word translated to something like "love cake". Since the cookies can sometimes be heart-shaped, this made sense to me. But that should be "Liebekuchen". According to the Nuremberg web site the name probably stems from "libum" the Latin for a flat, round unleavened cake.
Passwords, passwords everywhere
Does this sound like a familiar ritual to you?
Robert Hensing's solution is to use long pass-phrases instead of short passwords. They're easier to remember and harder to crack. The practical problem would be changing all of the authentication systems to allow long pass-phrases. And unless you work in a homogeneous environment with a single directory, you would have lots of pass-phrases rather than passwords to remember.
Biometric security such as the fingerprint sensor in the ThinkPad T42 is an interesting alternative. Nothing to memorize, nothing to change. Even if it only eliminated the need for a few of my passwords, I'd be happier.
The article in the Wall Street Journal goes on to reveal how Ms. Prior remembers all of her passwords:Before she begins work each morning, Kate Prior must enter eight computer passwords. Each must contain at least eight characters, and most require letters and numbers. Every three months, she must change them all.
If you work for a security-conscious company you probably have just as many passwords at work: passwords for hardware power-on/hard-disk, for NT Domains, for e-mail, for the corporate Intranet, for the phonemail system, for IM, for VPN, for HR benefits access, etc. And usually they need to be changed on a regular schedule. Worse yet, some passwords get cached away by software which means that when you change a password you may need to update it in more than one place. And since many authentication systems now use a "three strikes and you're locked out" policy, if you forget to update a system you can end up locked out of an account. What fun. How do we get out of this mess?They're written on a blue Post-It note affixed to her computer
Robert Hensing's solution is to use long pass-phrases instead of short passwords. They're easier to remember and harder to crack. The practical problem would be changing all of the authentication systems to allow long pass-phrases. And unless you work in a homogeneous environment with a single directory, you would have lots of pass-phrases rather than passwords to remember.
Biometric security such as the fingerprint sensor in the ThinkPad T42 is an interesting alternative. Nothing to memorize, nothing to change. Even if it only eliminated the need for a few of my passwords, I'd be happier.
Monday, December 13, 2004
War of the Worlds: They're Already Here
The new teaser trailer for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds doesn't reveal much. Tom Cruise stars but doesn't appear here. The film is scheduled to be released on June 29th, 2005.
HE'BREW Beer
HE'BREW: The Chosen Beer is produced by the Shmaltz Brewing Company of San Francisco.
With a company name like that, you just know that the bad puns and word play will continue from there.They produce three different beers:
- Genesis Ale — "Our First Creation"
- Messiah Bold — "It's the Beer You've Been Waiting For!"
- Miraculous Jewbelation — "This Chaukah, Candles Won't Be The Only Thing Getting Lit!"
Blog the caveman
In honor of "blog" being Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Year" for 2004, Joey deVilla has found what he believes is the first occurrence of the word in a comic book in 1959.
It's a Lois Lane comic where Clark Kent and Lois Lane get stranded in a "land that time forgot" inhabited by cave dwellers. In the comic, Blog is the name of a nebbish caveman. He's the balding fellow on the right.
I wonder when this notion of early man being a "caveman" came into vogue? Was it from the old Alley Oop comic strip from the 1930s or earlier?
Friday, December 10, 2004
Dude, where's my car?
DaimlerChrysler CEO Juergen Schrempp had his S600 Mercedes-Benz armored limousine stolen while it was parked on a street in Stuttgart. Schrempp's black company car was worth about 800,000 euros ($1 million). It was equipped with a broadcasting device to help retrieve the car. The car also has bullet-proof windows, "finger-thick" steel plates as part of its chassis as well as tires designed to keep it running even when flat.
The car was left unattended for a mere 20 minutes. Clearly someone wanted this specific car. Police suspect that the car was put into a trailer and driven off. (Via Bruce Schneier)
The car was left unattended for a mere 20 minutes. Clearly someone wanted this specific car. Police suspect that the car was put into a trailer and driven off. (Via Bruce Schneier)
The Oldest Currently Registered .COM Domains
In Internet time (does anyone use that term anymore?) I'm a troglodyte. I remember the Internet before the creation of the original top-level domains (com, edu, gov, mil and org). I was working for Cognition Inc. at the time which registered ci.com.
This list of the oldest currently registered .COM domains shows that Cognition owns the 52nd oldest domain. Cognition has gone through a lot of transitions and ownership changes since then but it still exists. I wonder how many of the other domains are still owned by the original registrant.
This list of the oldest currently registered .COM domains shows that Cognition owns the 52nd oldest domain. Cognition has gone through a lot of transitions and ownership changes since then but it still exists. I wonder how many of the other domains are still owned by the original registrant.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie trailer
This trailer for Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory looks promising but remakes are always a risky proposition. Will it be possible to watch this and forget about the original Gene Wilder version? Will it be more faithful to the book?
The McCulloch Effect
Here's a visual oddity called The McCulloch Effect that apparently can last for hours, even overnight.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Vaseline Vandalism
Robert F. Chamberlain pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief. He admitted to coating every object in his motel room with the contents of 14 jars of petroleum jelly. The hotel manager indicated that it took almost a month to clean the motel room and replace all of the furnishings.
That's pretty bizarre. Is it some sort of fetish or an indication of mental dysfunction? It's odd that during the sentencing the judge didn't ask Chamberlain why he coated his room with Vaseline. Wasn't he even a little curious? Or is it better just not to know? (Via Obscure Store)
That's pretty bizarre. Is it some sort of fetish or an indication of mental dysfunction? It's odd that during the sentencing the judge didn't ask Chamberlain why he coated his room with Vaseline. Wasn't he even a little curious? Or is it better just not to know? (Via Obscure Store)
IBM PC: End of an era
IBM's sale of its PC division to Lenovo has been big news for the past few days. I work for IBM and I'm also a stock holder but my main interest in blogging about this event is its significance as a milestone.
The IBM PC was released on August 12, 1981. I remember the announcement because it happened the week after I began my career as a software engineer. I was right out of graduate school. Most of my computer experience had been with VAXs and PDP-11s but we also had microcomputers in our lab at MIT. Compared to the Digital hardware, these systems were junk designed by novices. We had a few Z80-based systems that were mostly bought by hobbyists. They ran CP/M and included a Fortran compiler written by a small company called Microsoft. Compared to programming in VMS, the CP/M environment was slow and crude. IBM's entry into the microcomputer business accelerated the transition of these systems being the exclusive domain of hobbyists to become tools for business users.
My first experience programming on PCs was in 1984 at a startup. I'd been doing development on Apollo workstations for a while so the "bare bones" development environment in DOS was frustrating. We used the Lattice C compiler which was an incredibly primitive compiler. It barely had support for structs and switch statements. Fortunately for me the PC project was short-lived. I returned to the cushy world of engineering workstations for several more years. I returned to PC development in 1991 when we began working on Lotus Improv for Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1 may have been nirvana for DOS developers but it was hellish for those of us who were used to 32-bit operating systems with real memory protection. Crash reboot, crash reboot, crash reboot...
I've done work on other systems since then but my main development platform has been some sort of PC ever since. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, the OS platform became much more stable. We've had a thousand-fold increase in processor power, memory capacity, disk space, etc. But fundamentally, under the covers, it's still a derivative of that original IBM PC.
One other thing: nearly all of my laptops over the past nine years have been Thinkpads. The Thinkpad was the first portable that was powerful enough to be my main development machine. IBM has sold over 20 million of them. I don't know what the future holds for Thinkpads at Lenovo but I hope they can continue to innovate.
The IBM PC was released on August 12, 1981. I remember the announcement because it happened the week after I began my career as a software engineer. I was right out of graduate school. Most of my computer experience had been with VAXs and PDP-11s but we also had microcomputers in our lab at MIT. Compared to the Digital hardware, these systems were junk designed by novices. We had a few Z80-based systems that were mostly bought by hobbyists. They ran CP/M and included a Fortran compiler written by a small company called Microsoft. Compared to programming in VMS, the CP/M environment was slow and crude. IBM's entry into the microcomputer business accelerated the transition of these systems being the exclusive domain of hobbyists to become tools for business users.
My first experience programming on PCs was in 1984 at a startup. I'd been doing development on Apollo workstations for a while so the "bare bones" development environment in DOS was frustrating. We used the Lattice C compiler which was an incredibly primitive compiler. It barely had support for structs and switch statements. Fortunately for me the PC project was short-lived. I returned to the cushy world of engineering workstations for several more years. I returned to PC development in 1991 when we began working on Lotus Improv for Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1 may have been nirvana for DOS developers but it was hellish for those of us who were used to 32-bit operating systems with real memory protection. Crash reboot, crash reboot, crash reboot...
I've done work on other systems since then but my main development platform has been some sort of PC ever since. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, the OS platform became much more stable. We've had a thousand-fold increase in processor power, memory capacity, disk space, etc. But fundamentally, under the covers, it's still a derivative of that original IBM PC.
One other thing: nearly all of my laptops over the past nine years have been Thinkpads. The Thinkpad was the first portable that was powerful enough to be my main development machine. IBM has sold over 20 million of them. I don't know what the future holds for Thinkpads at Lenovo but I hope they can continue to innovate.
Place the states
This game tests your knowledge of the location of each state. It can be tricky to locate some of the inner states on an empty map so your final score can depend on the order of which states appear first. This alternative version is harder still since only one state is visible at a time. (Via Al Eldridge)
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Notes anniversary
Lotus Notes turns fifteen today. It was announced 15 years ago on December 7, 1989. Iris Associates, the software company that developed Notes, was founded five years earlier on the same day. Read this interview for Ray Ozzie's perspective on Notes history.
Monday, December 06, 2004
4 Million Daily Spams?
Steve Ballmer exaggerated (misspoke?) when he said that Bill Gates gets 4 million e-mail messages per day. Make that 4 million e-mail messages per year. That's still roughly 11,000 spam messages a day but doesn't sound nearly as impressive.
ArtPad
Art.com's ArtPad let's you express your inner Pablo Picasso or Jackson Pollock. Here's my handiwork inspired by a Frank Zappa song. (Via Metafilter)