Mike Levin

"[…] Something has been lost when my Deep Knowing aspirations have been reduced to learning a..."

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:09:07 -0400

“[…] Something has been lost when my Deep Knowing aspirations have been reduced to learning a mere web-app framework rather than, as in the 80s, learning a whole computer.”

- http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/programming-books-part-3-programming-the-commodore-64/

Dueling a Mule

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:31:35 -0500

A Money and Mule had met for a duel.
The Monkey sat high in a tree.
The Mule said “Come down. Let’s duel on the ground.”
The Monkey just cried out with glee!

Then proceeded with cool to ventilate Mule.
And to his shock and surprise,
Mule’s final endeavor was wondering whether
Dueling a Monkey was wise.

MikeLev.in site coming together

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:33:54 -0500

I’m really starting to blog a lot over on MikeLev.in. So if you feel like being bored silly with techie stuff, go take a look. http://mikelev.in

There’s something comforting about seeing the Linux...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:28:12 -0500

There’s something comforting about seeing the Linux penguin on a reboot screen on your airplane. Oh wait—there’s not! Guess it could be worse. It could be Vista. But this is all really in fun, because it’s just the screens on the back of the airplane seat that has nothing to do with the real systems. Still funny seeing the Lunix penguin there.

"Take a look at the photos from the recent Edge annual dinner and you will find the people who are..."

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:08:52 -0500

“Take a look at the photos from the recent Edge annual dinner and you will find the people who are re-writing global culture, and also changing your business, and, your head. What do Evan Williams (Twitter), Larry Page (Google), Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web Consortium), Sergey Brin (Google), Bill Joy (Sun), Salar Kamangar (Google), Keith Coleman (Google Gmail), Marissa Mayer (Google), Lori Park (Google), W. Daniel Hillis (Applied Minds), Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures), Dave Morin (formerly Facebook), Michael Tchao (Apple iPad), Tony Fadell (Apple/iPod), Jeff Skoll (formerly eBay), Chad Hurley (YouTube), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) have in common? All are software engineers or scientists. So what’s the point? It’s a culture. Call it the algorithmic culture. To get it, you need to be part of it, you need to come out of it. Otherwise, you spend the rest of your life dancing to the tune of other people’s code.”

- Edge 313 http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge313.html

"One had to choose either efficient compilation, efficient execution, or ease of programming; all..."

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:18:28 -0500

“One had to choose either efficient compilation, efficient execution, or ease of programming; all three were not available in the same mainstream language.”

- http://golang.org/doc/go_lang_faq.html

Living Jewyorican: New York City Primate Ownership Law Loophole

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:33:54 -0500

Living Jewyorican: New York City Primate Ownership Law Loophole:

As many of you already know, It is illegal in New York CIty to own a primate. I have tried for many years to be able to procure a permit to own a primate but to no avail. Numerous calls to 311 and various city agencies were fruitless. There are no permits available for people like me; only for…

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed...."

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:03:25 -0500

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

- Arthur Schopenhauer

Sammy questions me about the new display case we just got.

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:31:59 -0500

Sammy questions me about the new display case we just got.

"The research, published by the journal Molecular Systems Biology, shows that when an ageing cell..."

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:19:29 -0500

“The research, published by the journal Molecular Systems Biology, shows that when an ageing cell detects serious damage to its DNA - caused by the wear and tear of life - it sends out specific internal signals. These distress signals trigger the cell’s mitochondria, its tiny energy-producing power packs, to make oxidising ‘free radical’ molecules, which in turn tell the cell either to destroy itself or to stop dividing. The aim is to avoid the damaged DNA that causes cancer.”

- http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/02/solved-cells-age.html

Cecil and Rachel play ice-puck hockey!

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 09:33:09 -0500

Cecil and Rachel play ice-puck hockey!

"Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects the specification to reach the W3C Candidate..."

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:49:15 -0500

“Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects the specification to reach the W3C Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012, and W3C Recommendation in the year 2022 or later.”

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5

I generally don’t like music much—especially while...

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:18:00 -0500

I generally don’t like music much—especially while working—considering it an intrusion on my thoughts. None-the-less, I find it necessary to drown out background noise to cope with my predilection to distraction. I tried white-noise and found it harsh and hiss-y and inevitably just as maddening as music.

So I looked for different types of music and sounds. First, I found brownian noise, much more acceptable than white noise. Then, I found these alleged binaural beats for tuning your conscious state. Then I read about it compared to the Mozart effect, which while unsubstantiated for long-term effects, certainly had an immediate mood-altering effect, which did result in a documented performance-boost which, which happened to be no different than… drum-roll please… music.

So with the research experts saying that music can have the exact opposite effect of the distraction I had been experiencing, I went on a Google and iTunes hunt, and came up with a series of classic works that is exactly “in-sync” with my working rhythm, and not a distraction at all—MUCH better than white noise.

And all of them by the same composer, Leroy Anderson! The Typewriter, The Syncopated Clock, Fiddle Faddle. I’m sure this playlist would drive a lot of folks insane (as my wife pointed out to me), but it really reflects that “hound on the hunt” feeling that drives me to solve difficult problems while programming—reinforcing the belief that what’s right in front of me is more interesting than anything going on around me!

If anyone knows of any other works that carry the same upbeat caffeinated rhythm laced with humor, let me know!

They say if you see anything suspicious on the subway, you...

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:26:06 -0500

They say if you see anything suspicious on the subway, you should report it. I find this very suspicious.

This is part of the massive cheese counter at Garden Gourmet.

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:33:34 -0500

This is part of the massive cheese counter at Garden Gourmet.

Apple A4 Processor - Chiming in on iPad

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:56:00 -0500

So the iPad has been announced and I have one more word to train my spell checker to know. I squinted at the cellphone video-feed trickling down UStream yesterday, and hung on Job’s every word like a good fanboy. And I’ll be getting one.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect to me is the A4 processor, which is “Apple’s own silicon”. The historical backstory on this is fabulous. Apple is taking a page from Commodore’s history and owning their own suppliers, as with MOS Technologies and the 6502 chip, which powered the C64, Apple II, and many other computers of it’s day. Now, is it really an “Apple chip?” How much claim can they stake?

Apple bought a microprocessor company called P.A. Semi last year, consisting of people from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) who worked on the StrongArm processor. DEC was one of the biggest licensees of a technology called the ARM architecture, a low-power RISC CPU-type present in 90% of all smartphones. The “A” in ARM stands (stood) for Acorn, the “Apple of the United Kingdom” in the late 80’s. Acorn used the Commodore 6502 chip for their cheap computers, like everyone else in those days. Two engineers from Acorn, dissatisfied with the graphics power of the 6502 researched alternatives, found none, and began designing their own.

They were successful, and in 1990 formed a company backed by Acorn, VLSI and Apple to license this technology out to other companies, of which DEC was amongst the largest, with StrongArm. For legal reasons, DEC sold StrongArm to Intel in 1997, ironically making Intel one of the biggest ARM licensees. Ha ha ha. Intel subsequently renamed StrongArm as XScale until they sold it in 2006 to a company called Marvell Technology Group, of which I am a huge fan, and am carrying their SheevaPlug in my pocket right now.

Now remember, during all this, ARM the holding company did not produce any chips themselves—only licensees did, of which DEC was the largest, and most active in chip redesign and improvement. These are the same folks who brought us the DEC Alpha chip, a brief contender to Motorola and Intel for powerful personal workstation chips in those days. Enter P.A. Semi, the company Apple acquired. Guess who the are? Right! A bunch of folks from DEC and Intel, including the lead designer of the StrongArm.

It all comes around again, doesn’t it?

Against this same backdrop, Apple was not only a collaborator on ARM, but also was a big proponent of another RISC processor and a whole anti-Wintel movement called the AIM alliance, between Apple, IBM and Motorola. They ended up producing the PowerPC chip, and heir apparent to the popular 68000-series of chips that powered the original Macintosh’s. The PowerPC was used in subsequent generations of the Mac, sandwiched between the 680x0 days and the recent Intel days. Apple switched from RISC (reduced instruction set computers) to CISC (complex instruction set computers).

And so, the irony of yesterday’s announcement. Now that Apple is producing their own silicon, and it’s clearly something in the direct lineage of StrongArm, Apple is sitting on both sides of an age-old processor architecture war again, with Intel CISC-architecture in the Macintosh line, and ARM-architecture RISC in the iPhone, iPod and now iPad lines. But unlike in the previous days where RISC was bringing questionable value to a full-size desktop computer invoking nothing but unfair clock-speed comparisons with Mr. PC, this time around it should get the true benefit of the R in RISC, which stands for “reduced” which means efficiency—the kind of efficiency that’s absolutely critical in a powerful, yet low-power consumption device.

And yes, even though the ARM project which kicked off this whole alternative CPU story came from Acorn, the company that made it a reality was a collaboration between Acorn, Apple and VLSI. And exactly 20 years later, Apple goes back to that well, even though they’re a licensee like everyone else, it is in fact theirs in an even truer sense than MOS was Commodore’s.

Whereas Commodore forced the buy-out of an established CPU company, Apple enabled the creation of a brand-new processor, albeit inspired by the very 6502 processor in your old Commodore 64. So the iPhone, iPod and iPad are the step-grandchildren of the C64, and the resurgence of RISC with a vengeance.

I love these technology back-stories!

24-packs of 5 Hour Energy drinks. I was at the East Harlem...

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:10:15 -0500

24-packs of 5 Hour Energy drinks. I was at the East Harlem Costco today. Nice find.

jewyorican: The many faces of @miklevin Be careful when your...

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:50:24 -0500

jewyorican:

The many faces of @miklevin

Be careful when your wife tells you to make funny faces for the camera!

In my continuing quest to drown out background noise and get...

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:31:59 -0500

In my continuing quest to drown out background noise and get into “the zone”, I found a very intriguing iPhone app called Altered States that claims to use something called binaural beats and brain entrainment to do just that. Ommmmm

I got my first new wallet style in 10 years, from The Deerskin...

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:03:02 -0500

I got my first new wallet style in 10 years, from The Deerskin Leather Shop in Kitchen Kettle Village in Intercourse, PA. Similar to my old Tumi billfold wallet with a clip down the center, but thinner with pockets on the outside as well. Great for door access cards.