Archive for June, 2006
June 24, 2006 at 2:10 am · Filed under General
I found these and the first one is a real gem.
At the same time, I moved my old quotes page from my old home page to the blog.
enjoy…
“The x86 isn’t all that complex—it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
– Mike Johnson, Leader of 80×86 Design at AMD, Microprocessor Report (1994)
“The complexity of the x86 is not an impassable barrier….The biggest weakness in
the x86 instruction set is the lack of registers coupled with an extremely painful
addressing scheme.”
– Mike Johnson, Leader of 80×86 Design at AMD, Microprocessor Report (1994)
June 24, 2006 at 1:17 am · Filed under General
Back in the day, when I had one of my first jobs, I decided to buy an Amiga. I think it was around 1988 or 1989. I had seen a demo of F/A-18 Interceptor (go read), and it blew EVERYTHING else away. No other personal computer could touch that game. The Amiga had fantastic sound and the refresh rate on the game was 30fps or higher.
I decided that afternoon that I was going to buy that computer and that game.
So I bought the computer and brought it home. It was an awesome out of the box experience. Everything was different. I didn’t buy an RGB monitor, since I already had one for my Apple ][gs that would be adequate. However, their sync signals were not compatible. I had to hook up a 7402 Quad NOR gate chip to combine the syncs to the Apple monitor. Once the circuit was ready, the video flickered to life and I was all smiles. I spent days just playing F/A-18 through my stereo at a loud volume. I also tried out all the demos that people created. The Amiga was pretty damn cool. I could even download stuff while doing other things (multitasking, what a concept).
I also remember buying another Amiga 500 later on. I was going to run UUPC (not UUCP, but a PC specific clone) on it to gather Usenet news from a server at University of Miami. I never got that going, but I do remember using it as a terminal on the floor of my room. I had it hooked up to one of my composite monitors and I was reading about this exciting discovery called ‘Cold Fusion’ by these guys named Pons and Fleischmann.
Even more memories. I took apart the computer (yes, surprise… the inside joke here is that I take apart all the stuff I get), and stared at the board. It was definitely a better system than my other computers since the chips on it were huge! 
There was some space left over, though, and the designers etched the words “Rock Lobster” on the motherboard. B-52 fans?
After a while, I ran into limitations with the computer and became more interested in the computers that didn’t have those limitations (Sun, NeXT, SGI, etc.). I couldn’t run Unix. I didn’t have a C compiler (couldn’t afford the compiler or a Hard Drive to hold it). I never had the tools that a lot of the Amiga hackers out there had. I never had the time to really go all the way into that computer. Still, the Amiga was a great computer and the best of its class during that short lived era.
I think my next 68k based computer was an ATT Safari Unix PC, but that is another story.
June 23, 2006 at 6:17 pm · Filed under General
When I was surfing around Wikipedia today and I happened on this old screenshot, I came away thinking… “Hey, that is still pretty damn clean”. Either i have really fond memories, or I’m onto something. Yeah the colors, icons, and gradients are old, but the look is still clean. The menu is simple. The apps are boxes that you can drag to the edges. Simple clean. Low frills.
June 22, 2006 at 8:28 pm · Filed under General
Last month, I gave Plaxo three weeks notice with my last day on June 2nd. I decided to leave for one major reason: I was near my four year mark and I was ready for a change. On the last day at Plaxo, there was a nice sending off party, and then my vacation began. Over the last 3 weeks or so, I’ve just been enjoying life. I’ve been hiking, reading interesting papers, playing with some new technolgy, and getting good sleep.
All vacations must come to an end, though, and that end is now. My plan was to resume my life as a consultant. So far that is going as planned. I’ve already started on one contract part time. The fact that I even have a small gig is great news. Going out on your own is always a bit scary and I wasn’t sure how much work was really out there.
Anyways, I’m still looking at opportunities. If you know of any groups that may need a hired gun, please contact me.
June 22, 2006 at 3:52 pm · Filed under General
The Autostadt - it’s real
June 22, 2006 at 2:56 pm · Filed under General
must see video
June 20, 2006 at 5:06 pm · Filed under General
This last weekend, Father’s day, Jack and I finally got the families together. We went swimming and had a great time, but that is a topic for another blog post. We had a conversation about Sci-Fi which lead to talking about Serenity and Lori mentioned that June 23rd (this Friday) was Serenity Day. I will totally be buying on Serenity day.
What is Serenity and why is this important? Well, I never got around to blogging about this, but a while back, I watched the movie Serenity and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We don’t have a TV, so I don’t get to see the rare, good show. Serenity and Firefly are that kind of rare, great show. Specificaly, Firefly was a great show and Serenity is a great movie that really ties up some of the loose ends of the show.
Highly recommended… and watch the shows before the movie, if you can.
June 19, 2006 at 11:53 pm · Filed under General
I was just catching up on blogs. I haven’t been reading them for like… a month or more.
As I read the latest Plaxo.com blog entry, I see me staring into a computer screen.
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