Have Fun at the Home and Garden Show

Peonies and orchids

At first, I was reluctant to go to the home and garden show with Chinchih since I didn't do any gardening, but it was actually quite fun. I forgot to bring my camera so all the photos were shot with my cell phone.

Lovely garden decorations

Two Interesting Videos from Jeff Bezos

One more personal, one more business-like, equally interesting. Note, start the first one from the 6th min and you can skip the introduction.

Simone Dinnerstein on Bach and her new album

What caught my attention in this video is her fingering. Notice how she uses a lot of fourth finger and pinkie moves. These two fingers are usually weaker and harder to control. I wonder if it also gives her playing some special sound quality.

Most Interesting Book I Read Lately

After Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov and Watson beat Ken Jennings, the next big question is, when will computers pass the  Turing test? (Alan Turing's own estimation was year 2000, he was a bit too optimistic. My own estimation is before the end of this decade.) But what does it really mean to be human? This book provides many fascinating insights, a perfect book to read after visiting computer history museum.

How To Make Your Home Repair A Science Project

My friend Chinchih bought her house "as is". Because of that, ever since she moved in, her home repair became the constant topic of our conversations. After the owners beefed up the insulation, replaced the water heater, installed solar panels (and numerous other fixes I lost count), the only repair left was the water leaking. The plumber they hired (another story there) relied on his experience to diagnose the cause. He first suggested replacing some old piping, which the owners followed. No use. Then he suspected the water was from the bath tub. They wrapped the bath tub, still the leaking happened. Then he thought the wall in the bathroom was not properly sealed and suggested the owners to use this chance to do some home remodeling.

Frustrated, the owners decided to take things into their own hands and solve this mystery scientifically (after all, my friend Chinchih was not getting her Biophysics PhD for nothing). The solution? They decided to use fruit dye as tracer and try it on different water sources to see where the leak was really from. So last week I accompanied my friend to Smart&Final and bought a bottle of fruit dye. (We settled on the beautiful blue color used in making cup cakes.) After a few trials, lo and behold, they found the source. It was from the toilet! (They just put the fruit dye into the water tank and after a few flushes, viola, there was blue water leaking out.) They could finally confidently tell the plumber where to fix. (The plumber then used an endoscope like device to look and confirmed it.) After that, as far as I know, no water (especially blue water) is leaking as of now.

 P.S. lesson learned, instead of thinking of your old house as a money pit, treat it like a science project.

 

Revolution - 2000 years of computing (Part Two, the Age of PC and beyond)

Xerox Parc 1, Predecessor of PC and Apple Macintosh, notice it has a mouse

Another invention from Xerox PARC, bean bag.

Apple vs PC, round 1

Can you recognize the young Steve Jobs in the photo?

You heard of Steve Jobs, but you probably never heard of Dan Estridge, whose team created PC.

An early "portable" computer, weighted only 23.5 pounds. Want one?

This mock-up eBook was created in the 60s. It looks just like my Kindle DX! Some design takes decades to be realized.

A mock-up prototype of Palm Pilot and its stylus. During the creation of Palm Pilot, engineers created different prototypes to help them testing their design. 

Google's home made servers, used to power their famous search engine. All the unnecessary things were stripped out. It mostly contains CPUs and network devices.

Details of the Google servers. Note its resemblance to the logic unit of CRAY-1.

Self Portrait

Revolution - 2000 years of computing (Part One)

Taking advantage of my 3-week between-job break, I visited the newly renovated computer history museum (used to be the SGI head quarter). It now hosts a wonderful exhibition called "Revolution, the first 2000 years of computing". You can see the Differential Machine designed by Babbage, the Enigma encryption device, various early computers, and a lot of cool stuff. I spent a wonderful afternoon there. If you have a chance to visit SF Bay Area, this is a must see.

Newly renovated computer history museum

Entrance to the wonderful exhibition

An early digital calculator, remember it? 

ENIAC, one of the earliest computers. At that time, there was no "memory" in computers, the machine had to be "physically" rewired to perform different functions. Really convenient. Finally, when John von Neumann proposed the idea of storing computer data and operations in something called "memory", modern computer architecture was born.

Vacuum tubes in ENIAC, mesmerizingly beautiful.

The earliest computer memory.

The famous Enigma encryption device. Looks just like a typewriter. Who would think the fate of World War II is so closed tied to this simple looking device!

Maintenance console of RAND corporation's JOHNNIAC, another early system. Those old computer systems all had the size of a modern data center. Like ARPANET, they are also built for defense purpose.

SAGE, another system built for defense purpose. At this time, vacuum tube is still used.

Computing unit of a missile guidance system. Notice transistors had replaced vacuum tubes here.

The famous IBM System-360, a general purpose computer. The true revolution of this system was not in the hardware, but in the software. It is the first system that established the Operating System concept. Instead of creating a new OS for every new system, the same OS was used for IBM's later systems. The computer languages supported on this system becomes the precursors of many modern computer languages. The practices used to development this system (the water fall model) becomes the foundation of software engineering field in the following 40 years.

Fred Brooks, who wrote the software engineering classic "the mystical man month" based on his experience as the project manager of IBM System 360. More than 1000 programmers were involved in creating IBM System 360.

CRAY-1, the first super computer. It has a very unconventional design. Below are the power supplies. Above are the computing/logic units, cooled by Freon. How to cool the computer systems had always been a challenge even in the old days.

The logic unit of the Cray-1. The blue wires are the interconnect of the logic units. It took a worker half an year to connect them, another half year to check, so it took at least one year to build a Cray-1.

The interconnect of Cray-1. How to maintain it is totally beyond me.

Computer language family trees

Something dear and near to my heart

Photos of Chinchih's New Home

I was having dinner at Chinchih's place and managed to snap a few shots before it was too dark.

front yard

back yard view

on the deck

looking at back yard from the deck, now the poison oaks are gone

looking down the creek

another view of the creek

it's like living in a forest

the owners' CD collection

and their two pianos

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

I have a copy of Lisa See's novel and in the first page it shows the real "women writing" characters (seems on a water stained paper). It's really fascinating. Those small, neatly written, familiar but totally strange characters tell me more than any novel (or movie) can say. Below is a photo I took from the book. I wish I knew what it said.

P.S. finally watched the movie. I have to say even with my already low expectation, the movie goes under. The story line is incoherent, the two lead ladies have no chemistry (it doesn't help that one of them cannot even speak Mandarin). It's one of the worst movies I have seen in years.

Poems by Elizabeth Bishop

As most of my friends know, Elizabeth Bishop is my favorite poet. The publishing of the updated version of her poem collection (which includes some complete, but never published poems) is a great literary event to me. (Bishop was born on Feb 8th, 1911, so it is also to commemorate her 100th birthday.) Though I already had all her poems covered in various different forms, I bought one extra copy so I can give them away.

I first knew Bishop's work not through her poems, but through her letters. Her letter collection, One Art, contains the most witty, observant, and well-written letters I have ever laid my eyes on. (The introduction by Robert Giroux, Bishop's lifetime friend and publisher, is also the best intro on the poet's life and work.) I recommend any one who's interested in her poems also reads her letters. You will see how a poem is forged, sometimes poignantly, through life experience.   

   

I know I will not stop talking for 3 days if I continue on this topic, so I have to force myself to stop now.

P.S. You can read Bishop's poem "One Art" on poets.org.

The Thing You Are Waiting for May Not Even Be Yours

A few days ago I got a notice from a package delivery company for a failed delivery (signature required). The next day, the second delivery attempt also failed. Thinking it may be something important, I called the delivery company and made sure everything would be ok for the final attempt. Somehow the driver was sick yesterday so the final attempt was on hold for a day. During this time, I got more and more anxious about this package. Finally, when I went home today, I saw the package. I immediately opened it, and, to my surprise, found it was not for me. It was delivered to the wrong address!

Somehow this episode taught me an important object lesson. The thing you had been eagerly waiting for may not even be yours.

P.S. I guess I bought too many things from Amazon.com so even when the address on the package was not my address the driver thought it was for me.

P.P.S. I also received Kate Royal's new album from Amazon today so I guess I shan't complain.