Something Geeky.

This is not this week's big post, but I just saw something this morning that blew my mind, so I have to share it.¹

Like many kids that grew up to be a computer jockey, I had a Commodore 64, which my father actually won on a business trip. It was awesome. Sure, I played a lot of games, but I also learned what a nested loop was in 5th grade. So, recall the C64.

Now, also recall/realize computer speed is measured in "FLOPS," or floating point operations per second. A floating point is just a number with a decimal part, such as 1.234. An example of a floating point operation would be 4.111 + 2.333 = 6.444. (If this was a long, dull article in a journal, I would put here an explanation of why this isn't a perfect measurement of performance and why measuring FLOPS is done with linear algebra packages, but it ain't, so I won't.) FLOPS are used as a measure of computer speed, with the more FLOPS, the faster the machine. The top supercomputer on earth (this month) has just cracked the petaFLOPS barrier, at 1.105 pFLOPS i.e. 1 million billion floating point operations per second.

There were 30,000,000 C64 computer built, and they ran at 320 FLOPS. If every C64 ever built was suddenly unleashed on a problem, it would take that great machine of brown plastic and frustration 32 hours to equal the computational work done every second by the current state of the art supercomputer.

Pretty cool, eh?


1. The basic idea, supercomputer time in units of every C64 ever built, comes from a /. post this morning.

Sorry it took me a few extra days to post again. The cigar was awesome, and I look both sexy and sophisticated as I smoked it. Sorry, ladies....I'm taken!


I've decided Henry can teach my physical chemistry class. (If you get the joke written on the board, you are a nerd, like Henry's Dad.)


H. Stockton and I had a long conversation this evening about solid food. While he supports it in principle, there are several practical points on which he and I have fundamental disagreements. For example, I favor what is known among eaters as "keeping food in the mouth and swallowing," while H. Stockton prefers the "slow drool method."

Henry went as a black cat for Halloween.


"So, you come here often?"

Story 1: I've found the Middle East to be very family friendly. People from small children to the elderly will walk up and wave at a baby, or hug and kiss a baby, or ask to pick him/her up. Henry, being above average cute, get a lot of this. Anyway, Friday Nicole and I went out for Lebanese at this little place, which had an open kitchen just blocked off from the dining room by a counter. The waiter came, and took our order, and asked if he could pick up Henry, mentioning his son was about Henry's age. He jostled Henry around for a minute, and then carried him over to the kitchen, where he handed Henry across the counter to a group of kitchen cooks. The cooks were all smiling young guys, in there mid-twenties. They swarmed Henry, who positively squealed in delight at all the attention. They kept him for maybe 10 minutes, during which time Henry was in what looked like a white paper shower cap (the Middle East hairnet) and the cooks took turns posing with Henry, getting cell phone pictures. I wish I had a copy of the picture, but Henry is smiling like mad in the photos and looks like the littlest Lebanese cook. Henry was brought back to us, and the waiter brought out a mashed banana for him, which we let him try. A little later, a cook came out to show us the cell phone pictures and asked to take Henry again. He came back maybe a minute later holding Henry, who was in turn holding a strawberry the same size a his fist. Henry was trying his level best to figure out how this whole eating without a spoon thing could work. We didn't let him have it.

A good time was had by all.

Story 2: There are guys over here who work in the mall who use more hair gel than I thought was possible. I'm not talking about spiked hair, either. Even guys with long hair will add enough so that they look like their hair is made of plastic. In fact, it looks like nothing so much Lego people hair. I like to think that they have a bunch of different hair styles on a great plastic block-shaped altar at home, and each night, they decide which one they will snap in place tomorrow.




Finally, a quick note: I've been watching "Sons of Anarchy" on FX. The first episode was only OK, but now that we are 11 episodes in, it is as good as anything on TV. In fact, excluding HBO (?) and Showtime (Dexter), I think it may be the best show on TV.