Whipsaw

I was surprised to see a nice plug for Whipsaw on Daring Fireball this morning. Congratulations guys.

Dan Harden’s bio blurb claims “the Carbon is the second-best-selling midsized player, behind only the iPod Mini”; assuming this is true, it’s not surprising, given that he’s the only person they talked to who emphasized quality and simplicity rather than counting features.

Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out

Op Ed, Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out by Neil Stephenson is so right. But I don't think it goes far enough. Its not just about "Geeks", but about anyone who knows how to do most anything.

Stephenson is second only to Malcolm Gladwell in my personal pantheon of modern writers :) I laughed out loud about the translation to, "lets take this offline". Because of course, he's absolutely correct. Its not, lets take this offline so we can talk about this more deeply, its really shut the hell up geek boy.

Counting Cards

I attended a talk today entitled Data Stream Algorithms given by
Ravi Kumar. Apparently data stream computation was big back in the 60s and 70s when computer memory was expensive and data didn't fit. It fell out of favor over the last couple decades as the cost of RAM dropped and the data sizes stayed relatively the same. But lately data stream algorithms have come back in vogue as a way to deal with massive data sets.

I don't know much about the field, but as he was describing a few algorithms it struck me: these are all in a sense, like counting cards. The idea is to make a pass through the data without trying to hold the whole thing in memory, just keep a few cleverly chosen indicators. In just the same way card counters don't try to memorize all the cards seen, but instead keep a running set of indicators on how "hot" the deck is.

Coincidentally Ed Thorp came up with card counting in the sixties, and wrote a book on it.

Just for fun, pull out a deck of cards. Make a pass through and keep track of how many aces you've seen. As you get to the last few cards, I'm sure you'll have no problem saying how many aces remain. Shuffle and make another pass through and try and keep track of how many aces as one count and how many tens and face cards as another count and try to predict the number remaining in the last few. Now go for more. The best I seem to be able to do is three sets of numbers. And even then I start to noticeably slow down.

Summer's Quiet Roads

This morning as I rode in to work, the roads were quiet and relatively deserted. I even glanced at my watch to check what time it was, thinking maybe I had left earlier than I thought. Nope, usual time. It wasn't until I passed the deserted local elementary school that it finally dawned on me what was going on. School's out for the summer. Yesterday I was riding on the road with a bunch of mini-vans and station wagons late for school, late for work and today it was blissfully quiet.

After I dropped my bike off at my locker, I walked through the company parking garage. It too was emptier than normal. People were enjoying the change in routine I guess. So nice.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

A copy of Steve Jobs' commencement speech. Given June 12th, Stanford University.

Latest Adventure

My youngest has latched onto her latest adventure, which she retells again and again with slight variations. Its an homage to Spirited Away and Star Wars. And it always starts with ...

Mommy and Daddy are pigs, and I save you with pink light saber ...

There you go, I'm a pig. I've been waiting for her to launch into this story at the wrong place and the wrong time! But if you haven't seen Spirited Away, in an homage to Homer, the parents of the young protagonist Chihiro turn into pigs by eating spirit food and must be rescued. I've now seen it, more than a few times. I'll assume I don't need to explain the Star Wars light saber reference!

Safeway Backpacks

We're at Safeway in the checkout line. Our cashier gets a look from his manager, he sighs and with puts on a small backpack. Apparently Safeway is doing a promotion of some sort and the backpacks are part of it. I'm not sure why, and I wasn't going to ask. He looks at me and says, "Eight years in the military carrying around the rucksack, weapon, the whole thing. I never wanted to wear another one as long as I lived."

IM Generation

The next generation lives on IM. This is the generation that went to college where networked personal computers were common, and it shows.

I got a good laugh from the next generation when I told them about "computer labs". To some, this may seem strange, but back in the day, no one had PCs, we all went down to the computer lap to do assignments. The problem was, of course, you couldn't leave without having to wait again for a terminal to open up. So no one left. You sat there for 48 hours at a stretch pounding on the keyboard until the assignment was done, or you were. We all stank. Trash was strewn about, mostly pizza boxes and empty soda cans. One particularly gifted student had his girlfriend come and "service" him right there in the lab one night. I've never been as happy about getting a new PC as I was with my first one. It saved me from that damn lab and back to back all-nighters each week. No amount of speed-bumping, new feature this that comes even close to that.

Come to think of it, my poor kids will grow up on IM but with that comes Mom and Dad just a few key clicks away. Now there's a scary thought.

Apple on Intel

My mailbox and RSS news aggregator are still groaning under the strain of first speculation, and now reaction to Apple's move to Intel processors. I can't wait for this to blow over. Soon.

I've been spoiled. For the last few years my family's iBooks have been getting faster with each Apple release. My only hope is that the trend continues even after the move to Intel processors.