Writing about “interesting” spam … That’s a paddlin’.
Using pictures of the family cat as userpics … That’s a paddlin’.
Using a black background / white text or a crazy background image … That’s a paddlin’.
Reposting memepool or slashdot links … That’s a paddlin’.
Writing “I never post quizzes, but I am going to make an exception for this one” … Oh, you’d better believe that’s a paddlin’.
Michael and Friends
The number of ljusers who added me to their friends list has reached 100. There are probably some more people who read me through “friends of friends” newsfeeds and non-lj aggregators (I think I saw a poll answer from
I think the number of friends would be much larger for me if I automatically added those, who added me. That is probably true in real life as well. I should know – I am down to only two close friends who keep in touch with me right now. One of them is my dentist ( a childhood friend). In fact, I am typing this on my laptop while in his waiting room. The rest don’t call me unless I call them, lost contact with me altogether or got married to people I can’t stand and became too much like them. None of my real life friends (except my wife) read my journal.
In any case, now that there are more people reading me, I am going to try to use them as information resource. I could do that on Usenet but posting to Usenet is a pain in the ass for a variety of reasons. Google answers costs money (although I think about trying that). So I in addition to wildly informative and awesome WML (What Michael Learned) type posts I am adding a mildly annoying WMW (What Michael Wants (to know)) category. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile on Planet eBay …
UNIVAC III Computer (In Storage since 1975)
They look sad, don’t they?
The Legend Of How Much Crap Michael Can Buy on Ebay
Pull this cool emergency shutoff button from an Amdahl mainframe that I’ve got on Ebay. Come on, pull it.
I think I’ll replace the power button on my computer with it.
Some time ago I purchased a book about Amdahl, called The Legend of Amdahl. Turned out that the book is one in a series of books by Jeffrey L. RodengenJeffrey L. Rodengen. It looks like the dude was given access to many a company archive, but the prose is pretty much dry and many important (mostly negative ) things are omitted. I can’t say it better than this reviewer at Amazon: “.. the author gives a lifeless, through-the-gauze-lens account that reads like a compilation of Amdahl PR releases and internal newsletters.” Indeed most pages read like press releases.
In any case, it looks like that was the only book ever written about Amdahl. And there are some pretty cool photos in the book. And some interesting moments can be found.
There is an interesting anecdote about Gene Amdahl in the book. One of the first Amdahl mainframes was delivered to some Texas university. When it was installed, the college officials were horrified. You see, the official color of Amdahl, maroon, is also the official color of that college’s bitter rival, Texas A&M. Instead of repainting Gene suggested a more cost effective solution – adding a sign that would say “Property of Texas A&M” or “Stolen From Texas A&M”. The officials instead sent the panels to a nearby car dealership to be repainted. But it looks like Mr. Amdahl has taken a part in a college prank or two in his day :)
I’ve also got “The Spirit of Amd: The Legend of Advanced Micro Devices “, “The Legend of Ingersoll-Rand ” and “The Microage Way”. I think that I will collect all the books in the series at some point. “Legend of Halliburton” and “The History of American Standard” are next.
I Am the Lowest of the Low
I am a fanboy. There are these people on the Internet whose web pages I stalk. I don’t stalk the people themselves, of course. Otherwise I would have been a raging fanboy. And I am not. And never will be. I just read most of the stuff that these people write. And learn things from them.
Here’s the list (in alphabetical order):
Philip Greenspun
site: http://philip.greenspun.com/
for : for creating an amazing company and for clarity of thinking
Tom Jennings
site: http://www.wps.com
for: his amazing art
Tema Lebedev
site: http://www.design.ru http://www.tema.ru
reason : for creating an amazing company and for clarity of thinking
Dan Maynes-Aminzade
site: http://www.monzy.com http://www.monzy.org
reason: being funny
Jesse Reclaw
site: http://www.slowwave.com
reson: for his amazing dream comics
Joel Spolsky
site: http://www.joelonsoftware.com
reason : for creating an amazing company and for clarity of thinking
Matthias Wandel
site: http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/index.html
reason : for the gadgets that he made
John C Wright, Esq
site: http://www.sff.net/people/john-c-wright/index.html
reason : for proving that there are still good science fiction authors around
Jamie Zawinski
site: http://www.jwz.org
reason: for brilliant use of hypertext
What Do You Want to Drink Today?
I was always fascinated (yeah, yeah, I am easily fascinated) with project code names. There are lots of interesting stories connected with project names.
For instance, in the olden times Apple code named Power Macintosh 7100 “Sagan” in honor of Dr. Carl Sagan. He sued them for the use of his name. Apple developers renamed the project “BHA”. Which everybody knew stood for “Butt-Head Astronomer”. [by the way, I don’t know what the whole “Millions and millions” thing is about. I’ve never seen the show.]
Anyhoo, when I have some free time I will try to make a huge database of software, hardware project and military campaign name database. Oh, and server names. Those are a barrel of fun.
I searched for, but never found a list of all Microsoft project names. Tahoe, Longhorn, Chicago. I can never keep those straight.
One Microsoft project name in particular taught me something. One of the Pocket PC OS versions was code named “Talisker”. I did not know what “Talisker” was. I looked it up on the web, and then decided to try it. That’s how I got introduced to single malt scotch. And Talisker is still one of my favorites. :)
WML: Dude, I Am Getting a Dell
Guess what? This post is going to be about microcomputers. PCs.
I never owned a computer in the Soviet times. Not even a programmable calculator. I did have access to some old Wang clones called Iskra (Spark) in an after school program, played with a programmable calculator of a neighbour, played games on a frien’d PC, played games at my father’s friend’ work computer ( also PC), paid to play games on Sinclare computers that some enterprising people set up as a pay-per-play arcade, etc. Oh, I still remember the horror in the eyes of my teacher when I found a set of programs that calculated the level of contamination from a nuclear blast given the input of wind speed, bomb yeild and some other variables. Those Iskras were donated from the Red Navy.
In the US, my father purchased a 386 for a humongous sum of $1300. It was put together in some computer shop on avenue U. That was in 1993 or 1992, I think. Since then, I’ve been upgrading my computer on the average once every three years. I think In all, I went through 3 cases, 6 motherboards and 2 monitors (not counting my wife’s computer). I never owned a brand name computer. After the second computer I’ve learned that I could be putting together myself.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, putting together my own stuff. What could be simpler? Pop in a motherboard, a videocard, a modem, some ram, some hard drives — and you’ve got a box!
I’ve become thoroughly familiar with what cuts from a ragged computer case feel like. I’ve learned how hard it is to be without the Internet when your computer is in pieces on the ground (and a driver needed to make the new hardware run is on the Internet, of course). There are very few types of flashable hardware that I did not have to flash. I accumilated a huge collection of computer screws, cables, cards and thermal processor grease.
The questions that went through my mind were:
Why are jumpers so tiny? (these days they have jumpers with little tails that can be taken out with just fingers)
Why ide cables are so hard to deal with? (there are rounded cables available now)
Why it’s so hard to find 0th pin on the hard drive connector? (newer ide cables come with a little peg that doesn’t allow it to be put in the wrong way)
Which idiot came up with PS2 plugs? (one word – USB , well, ok, three words).
And most importantly: WHY ALMOST NO PIECE OF HARDWARE, PORT OR CABLE COME WITH A LABEL THAT WOULD CARRY MANUFACTURER’S NAME AND A MODEL NUMBER????????????????????
This is all slowly changing, of course, but the much bigger problem of minor factory defects and incompatibilities between chipsets still plague individually bought components.
My last self-put together box – a dual processor PIII 1000 sucks ass. I could not get a single AGP video card to work with it. An IDE raid controller that worked ok on my previous motherboard wold cause all OS to crash. And finally, two little pegs that held the cooler on the processor broke, and I can’t keep PIIIs from overheating.
I’d like to say, that after I’ve removed the raid card and put in a PCI video card, the system ran extremely steady for a year. Now it’s time to think about the future of my computers.
So my resolution is this:
1) Throw out the crappy dual processor motherboard and the crappy coolers. Buy a nice cheap and super steady single processor PIII motherboard + a stock Intel coolers and turn that computer into a file server. Four 120 Gig 5400 RPM drives (I don’t need the speed, and those drives run much cooler) should do the trick. The case of that computer is very nice and cool looking (it’s a square. It looks like this:
Maybe I’ll even make the drives removable, but so far all removable racks that I’ve tried sucked ass.
2) Buy a nice Dell workstation. That will be used for image manipulation and coding.
3) Buy a big ass LCD monitor (or maybe one of those Sony 27″ CRT monitors) for use with the workstation.
4) Buy a tablet pc for myself and a laptop for my wife.
5) Donate or sell on eBay all the crappy hardware still sitting in my drawers.
I think all the money I saved this year on rent should easily buy me this hardware.
Speakeasy, I love Eu!
Speakeasy service is rockin’!
When the TT was closed, they asked for feedback. More than that, they’ve replied to it!
I’ve got my money back for the eBay modem and an apology.
Wooo hooo!
So the moral of the story is – use Speakeasy DSL!.
Now I can go back to writing something more interesting.
Gadgetory Matters or Wannna Wanna Wanna
Ok, what do I wanna?
A nice GPS unit. I want to do some geocaching and I want to record coordinates of places where I catch the biggest fish. Which reminds me, I also need some nice nautical maps. Any advice?
A pen scanner like the c-pen (not sure which one to get)
A custom surf rod and a custom fluking rod.
A La Marzocco coffe machine.
A tablet PC.
Yeah, I still remember about that pen computing post I promised. I still have not started it, but I will write it.
I have finally seen the Acer tablet, and I’ve got to tell you that it rocked. The feen of the pen is great, so is the sensitivity. The software enhances your writing so that text looks like something written with a quill pen (I think it automatically flares the letters). Handwriting recognitions seemed to be very decent. I only had a few minutes mano a machino, but I have a good feeling about Tablet PC.
Book Matters
You know, how come livejournal posts have a “Music:” field but no “Reading:” field? That’s just unfair.
What am I reading now? Two books. “Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft ” and “The Book on the Bookshelf” (thanks
I’ve just finished “Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure” and “Barbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside ” (thanks
“Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire” , “Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time” and “Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters: What I Learned in Ten Years As a Microsoft Programmer” are on their way. Mmmmmm.
You know what, I have not even read that much science fiction lately. And I haven’t read anything in Russian lately.
One exception though. The last book in Russian that I’ve read was «ÐšÐ«Ð¡Ð¬» by Tatyana Tolstaya. Ha, it’s translated as “The Slynx“. On preorder. Gotta get it.
Checked today what’s new in NESFA press – they republish good old science fiction. “Dimensions of Sheckley:The Short Novels of Robert Sheckley”. Still no Kuttner anthology. Too bad.