Give me liberty
or give me …
Month: July 2002
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Financial Independence
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Good night, Manhattan. See you in the morning.
For about one minute twice a day I have an office with a nice, although saddening view.
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How wonderful is the smell of old science fiction paperbacks!
With my morning mail I received “Emphyrio” by Jack Vance, another great but neglected sci-fi master I learned about recently. The book smells of cinnamon, coffee, summer evenings and cool wooden shelves of small bookstores and libraries. It smells like a good aged cigar.
Ok, enough sniffing things. Back to coding.
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Reading a book about Steinway history (my wife’s father works there).
Henry Steinway is writing a letter after immigrating to America :
“I cannot advise you to come here if you are able, by diligence and thrift, to make a living in Germany. People here have to work harder than abroad, and you get so used to better living that you finally think potato soup tasted better in Germany than the daily roast here.”
Hmmm, all too true. -
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I wonder, what’s in those conduits?
Crawling back home
Sad memento
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Ok, I’ve made an extravagant purchase. But I wanted it so, so much!
What was the object of my desire? It was a book of photographs called “Cray at Chippewa Falls”.It was an album by Lee Fridlander that was commissioned by Cray Research. The book was given to employees and was sold in Cray company store to visitors, but there were only about 5000 copies made.
The photographs are of unspeakable beauty. Friedlander starts with outskirts of Chippewa Falls – the waterfall, forest, fields. Then the photographs depict a typical small town – a railroad track, broken down pickup truck, suburban houses. Then the center of the town: a barber shop, Radio Shack, some fast food stores. Nothing extraordinary (except for Friedlander’s photographic talent). But then the magic begins. The book is full of photographs depicting highly concentrated men and women among chip making equipment, chassis of supercomputers with garlands of wires, computer terminals. Everybody is filled with a sense of purpose and pride – they are making the most advanced thinking machines in the world!
Seymour Cray, the Superman of Supercomputers
That’s Cray 1 in the background. Notice a nice little leather covered bench around the chassi. It was meant as a place where technicians could sit and warm themselves after spending a long time in an air conditioning room. In reality, few technicians would sit there for the fear of breaking the multimillion dollar machine.
Aaaaa! I am swallowed by a supercomputer!
That’s a lot of wires. But if they put their heads together…
Even though I paid $250 for this album (and it is worth every penny), the copyright of course does not belong to me. But I am pretty sure that showing you these photos falles under “fair use”.
From http://www.louisville.edu/~ddking01/mmgdl01.htm :
“Under these guidelines a photograph or illustration may be used in its entirety but no more than 5 images by an artist or photographer may be reproduced or otherwise incorporated as part of an educational multimedia project”
So if anybody asks – this is an educational multimedia project. -
My favorite web comics Part I
I like comics. I really do. Never mind that they’ve been labeled as lowbrow entertainment. Ok, maybe the Sturgeon’s law is more severe in regards to comics (probably 99.9 percent of all of them are crap), but still…
In print I like to read comics that are more properly called “graphic novels”. Ones like Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” and Ben Katchor’s “Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer”.
I also enjoy funny pages of newspapers and political cartoons. I don’t really read newspapers, but conveniently these are available on the net. I use a small program that puts most of the comics that I like on one page (available here). I am going to write a better program when I have the time. For political stuff I go here.
But my favorite comics fall into “web comics” category.
Dr. Fun – first (and probably the best) comic on the World Wide Web. Dave Farley’s edgy, random and somewhat obscure sense of humor is absolutely great! His drawing style is amazingly expressive. Sometimes you need to know certain things to appreciate the humor. You need to know who Don Knuth is to understand this or it helps if you read Henry Kuttner’s “Twonky” and know what a Handspring module is before looking at this(it’s funny even if you don’t). The jokes can sometimes be hilariously off-color.Certain themes recur frequently in Dr. Fun – squirrels, snacks, microorganisms, Mr Potatoe Head, bathrooms and Star Wars, the Amish and many, many other topics dear to my heart :)
Dr. Fun logos are amazing pieces of art.
Read the FAQ and then go here and read, read, read. Dr. Fun book is coming out soon, email Plan 9 publishing at question @plan9.org and tell them that you want it.
