2012

Fri, Apr 20

<20:07 EEST> In light of Linus's Millennium Prize nomination, I came across a nice interview. While I have previously noted some parallels between our ways of thinking, he really hit the spot this time with his views on small and silent computing, as well as the creative process.

Since about 1998, when I started running a web server on a 486 laptop, I have been wondering why "desktop" components should be made at all. Price is of course one factor, and not everyone can afford a Macbook Air like Linus. In fact, doing bleeding-edge work on the cheapest possible piece of crud is a matter of pride to most computer geeks. On the other hand, there are long-term issues like ergonomics and noise pollution, which will have hidden costs on your quality of life.

Another interesting point of Linus's is more likely to be shared by the geek community: the process of getting somewhere is more interesting and important than the outcome. For example, about a year ago, my interest in FPGAs was sparked by their applications in Bitcoin mining. There was arguably an element of greed involved, but mostly it seemed like a good excuse to learn something new, while playing with new kind of hardware. It also turned out to have just the right difficulty (pun intended) considering my background with programming and electronics. There are many exciting things to do in the world that are out of the practical reach, and the easy things have already been done by others. So consider yourself lucky when you find something in that sweet spot.

On a metablogical note, I did not seem to have anything hugely important to say, but I felt I had some mental energy to spare. It had been a nice day at school, while also having some kind of a flu, so there have been few choices for expending that energy. I guess I will have to watch some videos, while waiting for a cluster of brewing vats to make -j2 mehuconfig.

Mon, Apr 9

<11:36 EEST> Enjoying the last day of a holiday is always a mixed blessing. You know it is back to work tomorrow, so it is hard to relax completely. At least for me as a teacher, there is always a little mental preparation on what to do in the lessons.

Fortunately, I finished reading a novel just yesterday. I had surprisingly little work during the Easter week, so I decided to start another one unusually soon. This time it was Freeware, the third instalment in Rudy Rucker's Ware series. I did own the paperback Wetware before bookcrossing it away, and this time I trusted my N800 to give an extra cyberpunk edge ;)

It was an interesting contrast after recently seeing Source Code. Starting with the title that makes no more sense than the cyber-this or cyber-that of the 1990s, the movie was trying a little too hard to deliver yet another piece of simulated reality and/or time travel, but it was not all bad. In the end, I recalled David Deutsch's ideas where alternate timelines and time travel are basically equivalent instances of a possibly simulated multiverse. Thus finally, there was some true SF connection, in the tradition of extrapolation upon the fringes of real science.

However, such connections can get seriously intriguing when you have a math professor writing fiction. For starters, using big words like "grep", "thixotropic", or "quasicrystal" seems natural when the writer actually knows his shit. Even if they are occasionally superfluous to the story, the use as mere chrome feels acceptable in cyberpunk. In fact, there is little to comment on the story itself, it is more or less a geeky adventure not unlike those of Neal Stephenson, with deeper overtones on posthuman evolution running throughout the series.

Getting back to Source Code, one indicental problem to me was that at times it felt like a cheap remake of Deja Vu. That was one of the best films I had seen recently — a classical time-travel paradox story done right, IMHO.