Category: Science/Tech Stuff

Reminiscences about old computers… part 1

Inspired by a thread on RASFF (I think, might have been RASFC) here are the first in a set of reminiscences about computers I’ve owned. The lengthy bit will follow breaks, so that those of you who are here for humor and/or politics can ignore them.

I got my first computer, a Commodore 64 with tape drive, on Saturday 10/22/1983. My memory for a long time was ’82, but I distinctly remember it being a Saturday – earlier on the day of my birthday party, which was always on a weekend either before or after my birthday – and I eventually found the receipt in my father’s old papers.

Continues following the break…
Continue reading “Reminiscences about old computers… part 1”

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology.”

Doctors grow organs from patients’ own cells

Seven living with bladders from new process

[…]Scientists grew new bladders from the patients’ own cells, which were then transplanted back into the patients’ bodies.

Cool. Once again, the future is now… all I want to know is when they going to be able to make some lab-grown replacement arteries? The way I’m going, I may need ’em one of these days…

Tech stuff.

Two quick notes:
1) WordPress 2.0 is out. I plan to upgrade when I get back to the states; I’m not convinced it’s really going to be an improvement, but I need to keep up to date with the security patches, so there’s not much choice. Hopefully my old style/theme will still work. If not, expect a very bland defauly style until I have more time…

2) ReiserFS sucks for news spools, even with “notail” on, at least on RAID1. I’d wondered if that was it, and it appears to be the case. My leafnode spool runs to about 1.5 million articles, and 9GB; when I put in the mirrored drives, I put it on it’s own file system and switched it from ext3 to ReiserFS. I noticed then that it took about 6 hours every day to run texpire, which seemed long – but I hadn’t been checking since it had been growing. Well, “notail” sped it up a bit but it still took several hours…. so I got fed up, and with the wireless here, migrated it back to ext3. On ext3? (with dir_index on, data=”ordered”, and commit=60) it took a whopping 12 minuts… or a 40:1 improvement.

This is only a test…

Ok, this is just a test to see how well posting works from my little PDA thingee. So far I am not terribly impressed with how this site looks on the mobile screen but logging I and bringing up the post form works OK and the miniature keyboard is not half bad – if a little slow.

Anyone know about optimizing these thing for both desktop and PDA user? Does anyone out there with a Treo or Blackberry want to comment on the way the site appears on your device?

Update looking on the PC – one bad typo “botb” and one extra line break. Not too bad. Can we say “blogging through boring meetings?” anybody?

My new toy…

I bought a new PocketPC/Phone device this weekend, and switched to Sprint:
PPC 6700 picture
PPC 6700 from Sprint

All-you-can-eat mobile IP access (email and web, mainly) is a very, very cool thing.

I still need a memory card for it (it’s got about 40mb of free storage on it’s own… *sigh* I remember when that would have seemed like a lot), and if I were *really* hardcore, I’d be posting this from it rather than my laptop. But hey, I’m getting there.

News of the weird, high-tech edition

Breast implants may soon carry MP3 players!

Breast implants may soon carry MP3 players!
Asian News International
London, October 14, 2005

Music may one day be very close to a woman’s chest, with BT futurology which manufactures computer chips that store music, creating a MP3 player that can be implanted into a woman’s breasts.

Via The Stream of Consciousness.

I don’t like Mondays…

Both true for me, and a good songto boot. (*)

Congratulations to Peter and Jane, whose wedding I was at this past weekend. I’m not sure whether it’s appropriate to post a photo or two here, but I may.

Also, for lack of a better place, here’s some interesting science news:
The key to fresh water: imitation spleen proteins

Burlingame, Calif.–The human spleen doesn’t get a lot of good press, but the Electronic Power Research Institute has come up with a spleen-inspired molecule that could expand the world’s water supply.

(* Does someone know a good spam/adware-free lyrics site? My usual approach to just finding the first on google tends to produce sites that are fine for me, but look like they’re full of crapware if you don’t have a good blocker. Also, geez, how many people have covered that song… the original WAS the Boomtown Rats one, right???)

“A keyboard, how quaint”

Air Force testing new transparent armor

by Laura Lundin
Air Force Research Laboratory Public Affairs

10/17/2005 – WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFPN) — Engineers here are testing a new kind of transparent armor — stronger and lighter than traditional materials — that could stop armor-piercing weapons from penetrating vehicle windows.

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s materials and manufacturing directorate is testing aluminum oxynitride — ALONtm — as a replacement for the traditional multi-layered glass transparencies now used in existing ground and air armored vehicles.

Remember Star Trek IV? Well, once again we’re living in the future… they’ve got transparent aluminum now. Via a post on rassf;

I am so l33t!!!

There was planned downtime this weekend. The server now has mirrored hard drives, using the software RAID1 driver. And a hopefully much faster news spool on its own partitition, but that is a separate issue most of you are unlikely to see (if you actually know me in person and don’t already have one, do feel free to ask for an account…)

The electronic nose at work…

E-nose to sniff out hospital superbugs

22 September 2005
From New Scientist Print Edition
Paul Marks

AN ELECTRONIC nose that sniffs out infections could help hospitals tackle outbreaks of the antibiotic-resistant superbug MRSA.

Culture tests routinely used to identify MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) take two or three days to complete. This hampers attempts to manage outbreaks as infected patients remain untreated and at risk of infecting others.

Sometimes, living in the future is very cool.

via the Daily Illuminator