Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Geeky Russian Nesting Dolls
Here's the sequence from bit, byte, ... terabyte as a set of Russian nesting dolls. But why stop at terabyte? Let's keep going: petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte, kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, tebibyte, pebibyte, exbibyte, zebibyte, yobibyte. I wonder if they ever build nesting dolls with that many levels?
A yobibyte (yotta binary byte) is 280 bytes. The average human body contains roughly 7 * 1027 atoms. If you could somehow harness each atom to represent a bit of data, that would be roughly 700 yobibytes of storage.
A yobibyte (yotta binary byte) is 280 bytes. The average human body contains roughly 7 * 1027 atoms. If you could somehow harness each atom to represent a bit of data, that would be roughly 700 yobibytes of storage.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
ACM Classic Books Series
ACM has posted PDF versions of a couple dozen books in its Classic Books Series, which are available to anyone who creates a free ACM Web Account. Among the available books are Adele Goldberg and David Robson's Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation (aka Blue Book) which has been out of print for quite a while. (Via Lambda the Ultimate)
French Swear Words
I took French in High School but never used it outside the classroom. And now I've forgotten most of what I learned. To have a conversation in a language with native speakers you need to know the basics as well as slang and... swear words. I knew what merde meant but this list of French Swear Words may come in handy someday. Probably NSFW to practice these out loud in your office.
By the way, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Quebec French has its own unique profanity.
By the way, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Quebec French has its own unique profanity.
Give One Get None (So Far)
I've been following the One Laptop Per Child initiative for quite a while. I even downloaded and played with the emulated OLPC laptop image to play with. The Sugar UI is certainly different.When the Give One, Get One program (G1G1) was announced last year, I decided to participate. It's a combination of charitable contribution to buy an XO laptop for a child in Mongolia and a second latop to own.
From what I've read, most G1G1 donors have received their laptops by now but not me. It's been frustrating. It took several emails and phone calls to confirm that they had my donation on record. Now I have a shipping confirmation number but they ran out of inventory. The latest update is that the laptop will ship in February or March. When it arrives and I get a chance to try it out, I'll post a followup.
Update: According to an email from Nicholas Negroponte sent on January 31st, additional XO laptops are being built now and will be delivered in 45 to 60 days.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Sleeping With Wires
I sleep pretty soundly but my wife noticed that sometimes while asleep I can stop breathing for several seconds at a time. I haven't noticed anything unusual but I'm sure that hearing someone take a really long pause before starting to breath again is disturbing. She thought that I might be suffering from sleep apnea.I did a sleep study a few weeks ago to check my quality of sleep. You get all wired up and then sleep while a technician monitors your brain function, heart, breathing, etc. In the photo most of the wires are in place including EEG wires in the scalp. I also got a nose clip to measure air flow. That was a bit uncomfortable. Normally I fall asleep easily but it was a little difficult to get comfortable with all of the wires. I normally don't remember my dreams but I remembered the one I had just before waking. Pretty mundane. I lost my ID badge somehow and was trying in vain to get a replacement. According to the technician, I had a period of REM sleep for about an hour at that time. Geez, couldn't it have been a more interesting topic?
The results? I have more "events" per hour than the average person but not significantly elevated. The doctor had suggestions for lifestyle changes but my levels don't warrant using a CPAP machine. I was relieved. No offense to anyone who uses one but I didn't relish the idea of getting suited up like Darth Vader before bed.
Kommissar Rex
When we visited Vienna several years ago, I got hooked on Kommissar Rex (aka Inspector Rex), an Austrian television show about a crime-solving police dog. The premise is pretty silly but it's entertaining. According to Wikipedia it's quite popular in other countries but hasn't been shown in the US. We want our Komissar Rex!
Running With The Devil Vocals Only
Ever watch a television show with the sound muted? Without the distraction of dialog you focus on facial expressions, hand movement, etc. Listening to David Lee Roth's vocal track for Running With The Devil I realized there's very little actual singing and a whole bunch of Ahhhhhhyeah!!!
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Uninstall U3 Launchpad
I bought a 3-pack of Sandisk USB drives the other day at Costco. Good price and they work great. Except that Sandisk included U3 Launchpad software that I didn't need. When you plug in the drive it's partitioned to look like you have one large writable drive and another that shows up as a CD-ROM. Weird. Reformatting the drive didn't remove U3. Grrr! Fortunately, SanDisk provides an uninstaller. Goodbye U3.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Slice: A List of Regional Pizza Styles
Great article on regional pizza styles. I remember when I moved to Boston and had my first New England Greek Style pizza. It's weird stuff. Oily and chewy,. Fortunately, there are quite a few good pizza places in Boston. I can't say the same for Seattle; thus far we haven't found good East Coast style pizza out here.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Melinda Gates Interview
Interesting interview with Melinda Gates in Fortune magazine. I didn't know that she had worked for IBM as an intern. And that an IBM recruiter recommended that she talk to Microsoft when she was looking for a full-time job. I guess she wasn't "IBM Material"
Monday, January 21, 2008
Wii Internet Channel
We installed the Internet Channel on our Wii. It's a version of the Opera browser with Wii specific controls for moving around and zooming. It works pretty well given the display constraints — the Wii can only do 480p. It supports Flash but not the latest version. Youtube works fine but some Flash games won't work.
We haven't tried this yet but you can add a USB keyboard to the Wii which would make it a lot easier to enter URLs, search strings and the like.
We haven't tried this yet but you can add a USB keyboard to the Wii which would make it a lot easier to enter URLs, search strings and the like.
IronPython Studio
IronPython is an implementation of the Python programming language running in .NET. It makes all .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers, while maintaining compatibility with the Python language.You can use IronPython Studio to edit any Python source but the real value is running the code in .NET. Note also that IronPython itself runs in Mono as well. In fact, someone has gotten the Django framework running on a Mac using IronPython and Mono.
IronPython Studio is a free IDE for the Python programming language. It's based on the Visual Studio 2008 Shell runtime and can be installed without requiring any version of Visual Studio. I've been using it side-by-side with VS2008 since December. Works great.
Update: As Ned pointed out in comments, the instructions for downloading and installing IronPython Studio are confusing — and more complicated than they ought to be. Basically you need to download the VS2008 Shell and then the IronPython IDE. This is roughly equivalent to installing Eclipse and then installing an Eclipse plug-in. Here's what you need to do:
IronPython Studio is a free IDE for the Python programming language. It's based on the Visual Studio 2008 Shell runtime and can be installed without requiring any version of Visual Studio. I've been using it side-by-side with VS2008 since December. Works great.
Update: As Ned pointed out in comments, the instructions for downloading and installing IronPython Studio are confusing — and more complicated than they ought to be. Basically you need to download the VS2008 Shell and then the IronPython IDE. This is roughly equivalent to installing Eclipse and then installing an Eclipse plug-in. Here's what you need to do:
- First, go here and click on Download. Running the downloaded exe will unpack the VS2008 shell runtime. Then you need to run the installer called vs_shell_isolated.enu.exe.
- Now go here. Click the link that says IronPythonStudioSetup. The downloaded ZIP file contains a Windows Installer Package for the latest release of IronPython Studio. Unzip the MSI file and run it.
- Launch IronPython Studio from the Start menu.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Writing Efficient Android Code?
I don't know much about Android but this guide on Writing Efficient Android Code is kinda sad. Avoid enums to make your code smaller and faster? Cache Field Lookups?
Have we set the Wayback Machine to the 1980s? I realize that handsets don't have a lot of processing power or memory but the computers used to build code to run on them do. As far as I'm aware, Android's JVM doesn't have a JIT so improving the size and quality of the generated bytecodes would seem to be important. Is there a good reason why the Java compiler can't do a better job generating code for these devices? (Via Reddit)
Have we set the Wayback Machine to the 1980s? I realize that handsets don't have a lot of processing power or memory but the computers used to build code to run on them do. As far as I'm aware, Android's JVM doesn't have a JIT so improving the size and quality of the generated bytecodes would seem to be important. Is there a good reason why the Java compiler can't do a better job generating code for these devices? (Via Reddit)
Soulja Boy Crank Dat MIT Style
Soulja Boy's "Crank Dat" has inspired lots of remixes and videos including this one from a bunch of MIT students. Notice the guy in the red shirt holding the laptop? It's Richard Stallman.
Connect360
One of the cool features of the XBox 360 is the ability to play media from computers running Windows via Media Sharing. We just found NullRiver's Connect360 which lets you play digita media from Macs. It'll share iTunes content, iPhoto albums and movies stored on a Mac. Setup and configuration was easy and it works quite well.
Wii Like To Play
Although I thought some of the Nintendo commercials for the Wii were a little creepy, I knew my family would enjoy playing with the Wii. So we got one for Christmas. This past Summer Wiis were still pretty hard to find so I bought one well in advance of Christmas — in October. It wasn't easy but I resisted the temptation to open the box for three months! The graphics aren't as sophisticated as the XBox 360 or PS3 but it's the first game console that we all enjoy. And the sophistication of the Wii is subtle; it's not about amazing graphics, it's all about the game play with the Wii Remote. Lots of fun.
We only have a few Wii games so far. Our most recent purchase is a truly weird Japanese game called Cooking Mama: Cook Off. In this game you prepare a dish in steps using the Wii Remote to perform various cooking movements such as rolling, slicing, chopping, etc. The weird part is the Cooking Mama character. When you do things properly, she'll complement you in heavily accented English "You Cook Better Than Momma!" But if you mess up, she'll scold you with her eyes literally on fire.
We only have a few Wii games so far. Our most recent purchase is a truly weird Japanese game called Cooking Mama: Cook Off. In this game you prepare a dish in steps using the Wii Remote to perform various cooking movements such as rolling, slicing, chopping, etc. The weird part is the Cooking Mama character. When you do things properly, she'll complement you in heavily accented English "You Cook Better Than Momma!" But if you mess up, she'll scold you with her eyes literally on fire.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
David Lynch on iPhone
Apparently David Lynch isn't too happy with watching movies on a phone. I'll agree to a point; watching a really good film on a 3.5" screen? Get real! But I'm somewhat of a purist on this point anyway. Although a nice HD screen and sound system comes close, the best way to enjoy a really good film is in a really good movie theater.
Monday, January 14, 2008
They say it's your birthday
Today is my birthday. In blog postings from previous years I listed some folks who were born on the same day as me. I just found two more: Dave Grohl and Jason Bateman.
Happy Birthday to everyone else who was born on this date. Our radial slice of the Earth's rotation around the Sun rules!
Happy Birthday to everyone else who was born on this date. Our radial slice of the Earth's rotation around the Sun rules!
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
2008 List of Banished Words
Topping the 2008 List of Banished Words is Perfect Storm. The press has been overusing this one since Sebastian Junger's book came out ten years ago.
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