The Apple Store

I was at the Apple Store just now getting a bad RAM chip replaced in my MacBook. All in all it was a very pleasant experience, and aside from the inconvenience of having to drive 40 minutes round-trip for a 20 minute errand, pretty painless.

I took the bad RAM chip, which I had identified and yanked from my machine a couple of weeks ago, in an anti-static bag I had in my desk drawer. My desk is full of them, along with spare parts and adapters and such, many for machines that haven't been manufactered or supported for over a decade. I'm a packrat for old computer junk, though to my credit I have tossed/recycled lots and lots of old "beige" computer parts in the last few years, especially now that the city/county has good recycling for that kind of thing.

Anyway, when I handed the bag with the bad chip in it to the young man at the Apple Store, I didn't think anything of it, but on returning the bag to me he joked that it was a vintage piece. I chuckled and replied, Well, I'm feeling kind of vintage these days.

The bag had the original label attached: 32MB Apple Quadra and Centris Series.

The chip I had replaced was a standard-issue 2GB size, roughly 1000x more memory than the bag had originally held.

You know you're getting old in this business when you can distinctly remember the thrill of a 32MB chip of RAM and how much pure computing power it held.

Netflix prize

I'm always late to the game, but the Netflix prize was awarded back in September. I wrote about it before.

Anyway, an interesting article at wired.com looking at how the winning teams' combined disparate algorithms to help them reach the goal.

perl dot org

And just on the heels of my last post! A new look for the perl.org site.

Looks very nice. Good work folks.

Sand Story from Ukraine

Via tinyrevolution.

Quiet Fear

When my friend and neighbor Chris was out watering his sculpture late at night a couple of winters ago, little did I know pictures would end up on the huffingtonpost.

Life is strange.

My son and I walked over the next day to visit the ice house and Ari was so intrigued that he snapped one of those delicate icicles off in his little hand. Chris and I quickly intervened lest any more of his hard work be undone by a curious three-year-old.

But that is the way with Chris's work: my boys -- most everyone who encounters it -- want to climb inside and animate the work. Chris's sculpture begs for it. In a good way.

That huffingtonpost article interprets the work in a way I never would. Global climate change? If anything, works like that will become harder to create as Minnesota gets warmer. Chris had to ice that house two times, as after the first time it thawed out. That's where the quiet fear is for me: winter is disappearing. I need winter just like I need summer: it resets my psychic clock.

80legs

Interesting idea for a company mentioned today.

Biochar

You and I know it as charcoal.

Jonathan Schwarz links to an interesting article on the stuff and how it could reduce the CO2 in the air.

The comments give me hope. If such a diverse crowd is reading and commenting at the Tiny Revolution these days, the Revolution is not so Tiny after all.

The Psychology of Programming

Stumbled across this blog on the psychology of programming via my regular google alert for 'perl search'. Interesting stuff.

Car tabs

You've come a long way, baby.

I just renewed my car tabs at www.mndriveinfo.org. It was the most painless checkout process I've ever had. Really. They did a nice job on that web site.

Pens

My dear friend Mike has started a little enterprise crafting beautiful handmade wooden pens and pencil sets in his spare time. They're gorgeous. They'll make you want to write. Buy one. Or three.