Last week, the world witnessed a fascinating new discovery. The Babar Collaboration announced the first compelling evidence that the charm quark, like its siblings strange and bottom, plays a role in the mixing of matter and antimatter. What follows is a slightly edited version of a description I sent to […]
Computing
72 posts
Dear Bill, I am so excited. I popped popcorn, and broke out the noisemakers. I even found an old stash of bright yellow Spongebob Squarepants party hats. You cannot know the joy you bring to my life. Microsoft Windows Vista (WOW . . . like . . . WOW) is […]
I recently purchased an M-audio Fast Track USB box, which converts XLR input to USB. This lets me plug an SM57 microphone, good for average sound applications and generic instrumental recording, into my desktop linux box and record drums. This has given me the freedom to finally pursue my drumming […]
Vanity is my pocket PC, and since I can send mail from it I should also be able to moblog. If you’re reading this, then Vanity has one more reason to be full of itself.
It’s been a computer-ful week! Cooleysekula.net is, as I have mentioned before, hosted from a personal server assembled from second-hand parts. Tonight, I added one of the first major *new* parts to the system in years: a new hard drive. For a while, I’ve known the 7-year-old drives serving as […]
Tonight, cooleysekula.net got an upgrade. I switched from a six-year-old, 333MHz second-hand PC to a 3-year-old 1GHz second-hand PC. Every now and then, when I replace a desktop machine in the house or when a family member tosses out a computer, I harvest it for running our webserver. Of course, […]
When I obtain a new computer, the very first thing that happens is that Windows is removed and Linux is installed. However, over the years I have retained Windows on a few limited systems, for a few limited purposes. Jodi and I have desktop PCs, on which we run dual-boot […]
When I lived in Boston, I fell in love with TechTV. This coincided with the decline of TV for me and Jodi – we grew to realize that we liked, less and less, the crap you’re forced to buy on cable. In an era of “on demand” content, podcasts, and […]
This morning, while sitting on the bed reading and listening to NPR’s “Morning Edition” streaming over the internet, I heard a story about Windows Vista being hacked – intentionally – by a Polish security expert [ZDNetVista]. Microsoft handed out pre-release copies to security experts, who then took a crack at […]
Mmmm. Gigabit ethernet. GURGUGURGLE. I’m bored. With Jodi out of town and being throughly mentally lashed form this past week at SLAC, I needed a project to take my mind off spin and quarks and 38 decay modes of the B meson. I needed gigabit ethernet. With a lecture on […]
**YAWN**. This was a loooooooooong week. When I was a graduate student it was “no big deal” [1] to have four 8-hour shifts, plus normal meetings and work. Although I was expecting to sleep-in today, I was a little amazed that I slept until 1 pm. I can’t say I’ve […]
My wife has recently been given a work laptop for her research on the “CDMS”:http://cdms.berkeley.edu experiment. This laptop happens to be a gorgeous Apple PowerBook G4. It’s a great machine for work – nice and light-weight, solid processor, lots of disk space – and the first time I’ve ever seen […]