8. May, 2003 - all over the map
- Real World Technologies - Coding Challenge I compares various human optimizations of some code. The upshot? A smart human who can fix the algorithm wins hands down over small tweaks like loop-unrolling. There’s nothing really earth-shattering here, and the main reason I point at it is that it’s the same kind of work ETA Systems had me doing in 1984. It’s interesting to see that people are still wrestling with the same problems we were almost twenty years ago.
- MacMerc.com: Alsoft Releases DiskWarrior 3.0 For Mac OS X. Yet another of the utilities I depend upon is now native. I'm spending over half my time in Mac OS X now, and have found that I prefer it for a few reasons, most of which boil down to the fact that on classic Mac OS, with coöperative multitasking, well-written applications still run better, but applications that aren't so well-written run better on X. And I'm stuck running some applications (such as CodeWarrior) that just aren't done that well.
- Camera, cellphone launches hit by lens shortages. See there’s plenty of cheap-ass lenses and 640×480 CMOS sensors for bad cameras, but the actual glass lenses and CCD sensors you need for more than a megapixel of resolution are now in short supply, because Japanese cell-phone makers are upgrading the resolution of the cameras in their phones. Guess maybe it’s not time for a new digital camera just yet.
- A couple quickie updates on the hockey riots: Regents to consider riot policy, financial aid and Fourth felony is issued in riots, this one to a non-student.
- Stupid Sentencing Tricks: U.S. District Court Judge James Rosenbaum is coming under fire for having publicly questioned the new sentencing
guidelines
passed by Congress with no discussion at all.
- Finally, a quick mental state update. I’ve been pretty busy, and more than a little out of sorts lately. I aimed to solve that by just taking yesterday off and not doing any real work. I caught up on email a bit, had lunch with a friend, spent most of the afternoon watching things my TiVo had grabbed for me, had a beer with another friend in the evening, and then watched the Wild keep their playoff hopes alive. Now it’s time to find out if the better mood can survive a full day of work and being a little farther behind on things. Wish me luck.
Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek.
Last updated on Thu, 08 May 2003 08:44:04.