Brandon E Taylor's Weblog Cogitations, Meditations, and Ruminations

An Era Has Ended

Ken Jennings' amazing streak of Jeopardy wins has finally ended at 74.

Jennings' met his Waterloo on the following Final Jeopardy question:

Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year. Answer: H&R Block
( Nov 30 2004, 04:29:43 PM PST ) Permalink

Bandwidth Challenge Winner

The 5th annual HPC Bandwidth Challenge, held at the Supercomputing 2004 conference, was won by a team led by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), CalTech and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratories (FNAL). The team achieved a record aggregate bandwidth peak of 101.13Gbps using a setup including Sun Fire V20z servers running Solaris 10.

Read the press release here.
( Nov 30 2004, 01:47:17 PM PST ) Permalink

Open Graphics Project

Tech Source, a 'provider of electronic graphic solutions in the global market', has announced the Open Graphics Project. This project aims to enable the development of graphics cards with open specifications. A specification of the preliminary feature set can be downloaded here.
( Nov 30 2004, 01:00:36 PM PST ) Permalink

Handheld Games Site

The Handheld Games Museum site is dedicated to 'document[ing] (primarily photographically) every electronic handheld game made in the late 1970's to the mid 1980's'. I am a sucker for nostalgia and this site really brought back some memories for me.

Now if I could just find a site that includes schematics.
( Nov 29 2004, 04:32:10 PM PST ) Permalink

Trivial Tidbits

The Slinky was invented by Richard James, a naval engineer, in 1943. James' inspiration for the toy came when he accidentally dropped a tension spring and observed the way it moved when it hit the ground.

The first batch of Slinky toys was sold during the Christmas season of 1945 in Gimbel's Department Store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Each Slinky in this batch, as is the case for many Slinky toys today, was made from 80 feet of wire.

The Slinky was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2000.
( Nov 29 2004, 04:21:11 PM PST ) Permalink

Steelers: 16 Redskins: 7

The Steelers win again thanks, in large part, to the 4th consecutive 100-yard rushing game from Jerome Bettis.

This year's team is looking a lot like classic Steelers teams of yore. Going into today's game, the Steelers had the #1 total defense and the #1 rushing offense in the NFL.
( Nov 28 2004, 12:50:37 PM PST ) Permalink

Words to Live By

Mark 11:25

And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
( Nov 28 2004, 12:27:54 PM PST ) Permalink

Trivial Tidbits

The first team of many to lose to the Boston Celtics at the famed Boston Garden was the Toronto Huskies on November 16, 1946. The Huskies, who lost the game 49-53, were 22-38 that year, the team's one and only season.

The last Celtics game to be played on the Garden's parquet floor was held on December 22, 1999. The Celtics defeated the Atlanta Hawks in this game, 98-81.

The Garden Parquet, at the time of its retirement, consisted of 264 panels held together by wood planks, brass screws, and 988 bolts
( Nov 27 2004, 12:00:37 PM PST ) Permalink

Fastest Supercomputer in Eastern Europe

The fastest supercomputer in Eastern Europe, the SKIF K-1000, is based on 567 2.2 GHz AMD Opteron processors and an InfiniBand interconnect. The SKIF K-1000 is currently ranked #98 on the TOP500 List of the world's fastest supercomputers, with a peak performance of 2.5 teraFLOP/s.
( Nov 27 2004, 01:23:47 AM PST ) Permalink

Musings on the KISS Principle

KISS Principle - Keep It Simple Stupid

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The KISS Principle, much like the Pareto Principle and its many variants, is amazing in the breadth of its applicability. It is applicable across many domains and many areas within those domains. In the context of software development, for example, KISS can - and should - be applied in every phase of the SDLC (e.g. simplicity should be a driving force in requirements articulation, modeling artifact creation, user experience design, etc.).

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Simple solutions require relatively less analytical effort to understand. This makes such solutions more understandable (obviously), more flexible, more maintainable, and less likely to include subtle errors that are difficult to identify and resolve.

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Essential complexity is the complexity of a solution resulting from the inherent complexity of the problem being solved. Incidental complexity, sometimes referred to as accidental complexity, is the complexity - in addition to the essential complexity - that arises as a result of the particular solution approach. A software developer should understand the difference between these two types of complexity and focus KISS application efforts at minimizing incidental complexity.

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Determining when something is suitably 'simple' is very often a difficult task. The dearth of objective 'simplicity' metrics contributes to this difficulty. It is critical, then, for a software engineer to develop an intuition for simplicity. Experience is essential in this development. Practices like collaborative development and mentoring are important as well.

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Albert Einstein said: 'Everything should be made as simple as possible...but no simpler.' This statement should serve as a warning to those who are tempted to oversimplify using the KISS principle. We, as software developers, should apply the KISS principle aggressively. However, we must always ensure that the resulting solution is not incomplete - it must, for example, satisfy our customers' needs.

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KISS refers to the result, not the pursuit of that result. Finding a simple approach is often more difficult, and requires more iterations, than finding a complex approach.
( Nov 26 2004, 05:47:16 PM PST ) Permalink

C64 TV Plug-and-Play Game

As an unashamed Commodore 64 enthusiast, I am salivating over the "Commodore 64 30-in-1 Classic Plug & Play Video Game" offered by Tulip Computers.

Looks like I have something to add to the Christmas list.
( Nov 26 2004, 01:51:47 PM PST ) Permalink

Word of the Day

confabulate

verb - chat; to hold a discussion; confer
( Nov 26 2004, 01:04:30 PM PST ) Permalink

Happy Thanksgiving

In the fall of 1621, a small group of settlers in the Plymouth Colony celebrated a day of public thanksgiving. The previous winter had claimed the lives of almost half of their population. The remainder of their party had then struggled through the summer, with the assistance of a group of Native Americans, to reap a harvest that would meet their needs. This harvest turned out to be bountiful. The Pilgrims understood that life would continue to be difficult. Despite this, they were filled with gratitude and spent that day - three days actually - of thanksgiving in 1621 in activities intended to express their thanks to God.

Many things have changed since 1621. Few of us, for instance, are engaged in daily struggles for existence. What has not changed, however, is the importance of offering sincere thanks to our Creator for the blessings upon which He has bestowed each of us and of imploring Him to continue His favor.

I have been blessed far more than I deserve. I have a wife that loves me as much as I love her. I have a loving and supportive family and wonderful friends (co-workers among them). I live in a country where the divine origin of our most cherished rights - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - is explicitly acknowledged in our Constitution. I have found success in my career and in my leisure pursuits. And, most recently, I have received one of God's greatest blessings: a son that is due in February.

For these blessings and innumerable others, I am humbly and sincerely thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

Psalm 100:4-5
Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him, bless His name! For the LORD is good; His steadfast love endures for ever, and His faithfulness to all generations.
( Nov 25 2004, 12:16:32 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Trivial Tidbits

The first Thanksgiving celebration, according to tradition, occurred in 1621. Governor William Bradford declared a feast for the tiny colony of settlers at Plymouth, Massachusetts to give thanks to God for a bountiful harvest. However, the first Thanksgiving Day recognized as such by the settlers of Plymouth occurred in 1623.

George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789. Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving official by proclaiming, in 1863, the last Thursday in November as a national day of "Thanksgiving".

In 1941, Congress declared Thanksgiving to be a legally recognized national holiday to be observed on the 4th Thursday in November.
( Nov 24 2004, 04:59:32 PM PST ) Permalink

Dan Rather Retiring

Dan Rather announced on Tuesday that he is resigning as anchorman of the CBS Evening News. I, for one, will not miss his brand of journalism or his political bias. I suspect that he will enjoy being able to shed his mantle of supposed objectivity and devote his time as an investigative journalist.
( Nov 24 2004, 04:22:52 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [4]