Friday, September 30, 2005

Happy 40th Moore's Law

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 4:38 PM

The Computer History Museum put on, what they called the only west coast celebration of the 40th anniversary of Moore's Law. They celebrated with a "conversation" between Gordon Moore and Carver Mead. It was Mead who coined the phrase "Moore's Law".

There seems to be some confusion about what exactly Moore's law is saying. I was wrong for example. And as it turned out, the law itself has been updated once already. Initially it was simply that the number of transistors that could be fabricated on a chip would double every year. Starting in 1959 with a single transistor. The increasing number of transistors were driven by three primary factors: simply fabricating smaller and smaller devices, reducing defect density and by squeezing out wasted space. But by 1979, while working on some devilishly complex CCD memory chips (I had no idea that CCD devices started out as memory) they had removed virtually all the wasted space. It was then that Moore updated his law to doubling the number of transistors to every two years.

Doubling the number of transistors every two years in effect means that the performance of your computer doubles every 18 months. By some measure of performance. They didn't say how these relate exactly, but it was the 18 month performance number that early Intel marketing pushed. And hence added to the confusion. Doubling first one year, now two years and through marketing, a confusing 18 months.

Carver Mead waxed the more philosophical of the two. He saw Moore's law as one of the few tangible views into the future that we've had. And without that view into the future the semiconductor industry could not have sustained the growth that it has enjoyed.

It was a real pleasure see these two in person. They talked about much more than just Moore's Law. From how Gordon Moore got into chemistry, he's a physical chemist by training: by creating explosives. To why he left Shockley to form Fairchild as part of the original founding eight: Shockley's management style left much to be desired. To an interesting glimpse at a pre-PC Intel casting around for applications that required complex chips in high volume. It was a great evening.

Links:
  1. The 40th Anniversary of Moore's Law with Gordon Moore, Co-founder and Chairman Emeritus, Intel, in conversation with Carver Mead, Chairman and Founder, Foveon.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Google's Three Times Bigger!

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 10:22 AM

CNet reports that Google has removed the index size from their homepage. The really interesting part, they will supply a specialized query for verifying index size. Sounds like we'll be able to go beyond the 1000 result cap at some point? That's really good news. But this test CNet did cracked me up:
In a random test, using the search terms "Joe Schmoe" and "pickles," Google returned 451 results, Yahoo returned 62 results, MSN returned 60 results and Ask Jeeves returned 54 results.
When I did the search, Google returns 182 non-duplicate results, Yahoo! 49. Just a quick spot check ... the last result Google returns doesn't contain either "Joe Schmoe" or the word "pickles", it's a "Supplemental Result". Clicking on the cached version of the page, you understand what that means exactly:
These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: joe schmoe pickles.
The earliest the terms appear are in result 161, and large numbers of "Supplemental Results" appear before that as well. I guess you could call this a nice feature ... for users, but not for estimating index size. Even when I go into Google's advanced search options and specifically set the occurrences to "anywhere in the page" I still get supplemental results. All of which is to say, the waters are muddier than they appear.
  1. CNet article.
  2. John Battelle's Searchblog, takes a crack at this.
  3. How Big Is Your Index, a little thing I wrote last time.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Where Are You?

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 10:04 PM

I was chatting with my sister on the phone when she mentioned that she was calling from her mobile phone. She lives in New York and was in a park looking at the river. My nephew was asleep in the stroller. Curious, I asked which park? And at the same time fired up Goggle Maps and started scrolling North along the West Side Highway. My brother-in-law was setting up for a party for some artist and their floating island art and my sister and their baby came along. He does catering gigs in between singing gigs. We chat some more, she's just south of West 11th, where she used to live. They're out on a pier. And there it was. Neat. I ask what's happening on the larger pier just south of them. Some kids are playing in the sprinklers.

We talk some more. The wheels spin for a bit, and then I get it. It would be kind of neat if we were more easily able to communicate place. It does change the conversation, slightly. But in a good way.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Text Ads Dogfood

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 10:01 PM

For those precious few who actually come to my blog, you'll notice I've added a few text ads on the lower right. Why you may ask? It's certainly not for the money. I have no idea how much they will generate, but given the amount of traffic I get, I'll be lucky to fund a regular coffee from Pete's after a month or two. Honestly, I was curious how this text ad thing worked, and I felt like I should be eating a bit more of my own Yahoo! dogfood. So I signed up as a beta site for the Yahoo! Publisher Network. I ask that you bear with my curiosity, and do what you normally do. Ignore them. Click on them. Whatever.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Deleted Doctopus

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 4:15 PM

Doctopus looked like a very clever program for adding tiny informational "badges" to your doc icons (on OS X 10.4). A neat, visualization technique building out on the existing badge metaphor. Like Mail.app's new mail badge. I'm game, count me in. But wait ...

I shouldn't pick on Doctopus. I readily admit I didn't read the system requirements carefully enough, and failed to notice the 10.4 only requirement. So of course, after I had installed it (with a package installer no less) and after I had signed up for the 30 trial I get the following ...



Startly Tech couldn't tell me this during the install? Before signing up for the demo? Or even earlier on the website with a little smart JavaScript? Show me some luv! I'm ok with the "Yo idiot, this isn't going to work on your 10.3 box". Just do me the favor of telling me up front before I jump through all the hoops and waste my time. After I can upgrade the laptop to Tiger, I'm sure not going to go through this again. Come to think of it, my 30 day demo which I didn't use will be over by then as well. Now I need to get this off my box darn it.

Links
  1. Doctopus.
  2. Found via MacMerc via RSS.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Landfill Bound Wallet Drainer

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 1:22 AM

So I had to ask my friend, Gerson Goldberg over at the design firm Whipsaw what he thought of the Ditty. This was after reading John Gruber's very funny "Rhymes With Ditty" article. He mentioned that they designed a similarly featured player for the now defunct Rio two years ago. Innovation? Overall his thoughts summed in this one quote of his:
Ditty looks like another landfill bound wallet drainer!
[Update 9/26/2005] Just to set the record straight, Dan Harden and Sam Benavidez were the lead designers on the Rio Carbon. Gerson's role is in Engineering at Whipsaw. If you're clicking in via Computerworld, they incorrectly credit Gerson as designer.

Links
  1. Dell's DJ Ditty
  2. Rhymes With Ditty, John Gruber, Daring Fireball
  3. Related discussion, More On Whipsaw
  4. Whipsaw website.
  5. Computer World article.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Being Special

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 7:26 AM

My latest favorite line out of an interview candidate happened a couple weeks ago. Mind you, they were interviewing at Yahoo!:
I want you to know I'm interviewing with Google as well, but I don't want to be treated special in any way.
Uh, yeah. That won't be a problem. Absolutely cracked me up!

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Double Quotes, Not Single Quotes

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 10:26 AM

I can't count the number of times I've made this same, single quote vs. double quote mistake over the years. In this latest stumble I was writing a bit of PHP code, using xpath. The line in question looked like this:

... $this->xml->xpath('//experiment[id=$id]') ...

Which is trying to say, look for all the <experiment> tags which have a child <id> tag whose value matches the value in $id. The only problem, when you run this you get one strange error message.

Unexpected PHP error [xmlXPathEval: 1 object left on the stack] severity [E_WARNING] ...

So of course, I stared at it for too long. Then pulled a couple coworkers into my cube in the vain hope that they could save me from myself. Eventually the light bulb went off, I should have written this of course:

... $this->xml->xpath("//experiment[id=$id]") ...

Damn I hate that. In PHP, like Perl before it, and like shell scripts before that, single quotes are for literal strings. Double quotes are for variable substitution, and I really wanted the variable $id to be replaced with its value. I'm getting too old.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Katrina

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 2:33 PM

This doesn't paint such a rosy picture of the current administration. And this doesn't paint such a rosy picture of the US.

I thought disasters were supposed to bring out the best in people? Apparently not.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

San Francisco Grand Prix

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 10:32 PM

I wish we were able to watch the race live, but with three small kids it just wasn't going to happen. So instead we were watching the tape delayed "highlights" of the San Francisco Grand Prix this past weekend. I had to wonder if I was seeing the first effects of Lance Armstrong's retirement. In previous years, the event was televised live on KGO, but that was then with Lance riding in the field. This year there was no Lance, and so went the live coverage. Instead, more college football. Ah well.

Links
  1. San Francisco Grand Prix
  2. Results
  3. KGO

iTunes 5

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 6:11 PM

Call me crazy, but I'm really liking the new iTunes interface. My favorite new feature is the option to display the album cover of the currently playing song. Yes! I can't believe it took until version 5 to get that, but hey, it's here. That was going to be this week's Friday "bug" to file. Now if I could only get a version of the mini but not so mini iTunes interface that shows the album cover. Maybe that'll be my new Friday bug? What I didn't like was that I wound up rebooting my laptop twice yesterday, once for iTunes (why?) and once for Quicktime (this at least I can understand).

[Update:] I just noticed that the track names are no longer editable in the main interface table. Thank you, thank you. I always seem to have a few empty track names littering my music library thanks to the overly aggressive clicking of my young kids. This solves that problem nicely.

[Update: 09/13/2005] Bummer, I take it back, the track names are editable. How you get the track name into edit mode seems to have changed slightly. It's not quite as easy? There's a rhythm to it, clicking the track name with enough of a delay after selection and it becomes editable. I wish there was a way to lock the whole thing down. Like I said, my kids have this way of acting just like monkeys on my keyboard.

Links:
  1. iTunes 5 is released.
    iTunes
  2. A very astute observation about the new iTunes look and NeXT.
    iTunes 5 and UI Trends, inessential.com, Brent Simmons.
  3. A hilarious look at Brushed Metal, getting the brush off.
    Anthropomorphized, Daring Fireball, John Gruber.
  4. Just when I understood how shuffle worked.
    Itunes 5 Shuffle Got More Random, TUAW, David Chartier.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Three Parts Testosterone

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 6:15 AM

Part 1. I could hear the pickup coming up behind me. At the last second they swerved close and the passenger leaned out and howled in my ear. He had some kind of interesting tattoo on his shoulder. Flames? They were laughing. I think they were hoping to see me jump, but this same crap happens too often. They passed. I waved, like I always do. Driver and howler flipped me the bird as they receded in the distance. I returned the gesture. Joy.

Part 2. I glanced at the clock, 3:20 am. The kids are out again, their voices woke me. We've had a pretty good relationship so far. The "kids" are college students, mostly local, including the son of my neighbor. They like to hang out in front of my, and my neighbor's house. I don't mind them talking, there's not that many places for them to go. But when they start to get too rowdy I ask them to cool it. And they will. Like I said, they're good kids. This time it was a couple empty bottles hitting the street that got me moving. And for the first time the neighbor's son is looking right back at me defiantly. He tells me to stop bitching from the window. More joy. Looks like our relationship may be moving to a new level. The empties though, my guess: he's had one to many. I tell him we'll talk about it in the morning.

The next morning he's apologetic. We shake hands. The guess was right, he had been drinking. It was a good thing I didn't run out there and thump my chest. It would have escalated things. And note to self, the kids are drinking openly now. Before they take off, I need to check if anyone might try to drive home drunk.

Part 3. I was coming down the narrow bike path from Ralston St. to Canada right near Hwy 92 and 280. In that direction its a downhill screamer most of the way. There's a good hump to go over that gives you that funky zero-g feeling in your stomach. Like a roller-coaster ride. Its fun. But I slowed down a bit, you can't see if anyone is coming up the other side. Whipped over the hump, unloaded my stomach contents just as another rider comes screaming past me on the left on the edge of the pavement. In an instant he's past, and this does make me jump. I wonder what this guy is like behind the wheel?

Friday, September 02, 2005

Gio

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 7:49 AM


When it rains it pours. Giorgio, my new nephew made it into this world. 7.4 lbs, 19.25 inches long. This is my sister's first child, and she's doing great! Congratulations Jen and Paul!