Researchers and engineers talk about work and life at Google.
Via, none other than, Google Research.
Now, I must get back to homework. Grr.
A stiff moment in scientific history
•April 14, 2013 • Leave a CommentThis is a great article about a…..uhh……let’s just say it was possibly the most awkward scientific presentation ever. Kinda NSFW.
In 1983 psychiatrist Giles Brindley demonstrated the first drug treatment for erectile dysfunction in a rather unique way. He took the drug and demonstrated his stiff wicket to the audience mid-way through his talk.
Scientific journal BJU International has a pant-wettingly hilarious account of the events of that day which made both scientific and presentation history.
Professor Brindley, still in his blue track suit, was introduced as a psychiatrist with broad research interests. He began his lecture without aplomb. He had, he indicated, hypothesized that injection with vasoactive agents into the corporal bodies of the penis might induce an erection. Lacking ready access to an appropriate animal model, and cognisant of the long medical tradition of using oneself as a research subject, he began a series of experiments on self-injection of his penis with various vasoactive agents, including papaverine, phentolamine, and several others. (While this is now commonplace, at the…
View original post 463 more words
Automated Window Blinds with Arduino
•April 12, 2013 • 10 CommentsI’ve always toyed with the idea of automated window blinds – its another product of the modern world that just won’t agree with the circadian rhythm – however, I don’t have access to the headers on my blinds (think: parents) and haven’t progressed therebeyond.
Home Awesomation however, has.
We moved to a different host and this is outdated, but this article still exists! please click HERE to view the page. Thanks!
Read More…
A(n all too) Little Known Documentary on Xeon Phi
•April 8, 2013 • Leave a CommentLet’s take a moment away from the drama of high school – to foreshadow an article on the thermodynamic challenges facing current and future computer architects – a fascinating documentary on the development of Intel’s massively parallel coprocessor, the Xeon Phi.
Via: [SemiAccurate]
“To create some reasonable replica of the real world….. you quickly come to understand: it’s a massive computational problem – and inherently a parallel problem“
“A microprocessor can’t get faster and faster without… literally melting”
“I remember being in a meeting with Bill Gates, at Microsoft, and [I] showed the processor roadmap – and he said ‘Oh! You’re really serious about this multicore stuff!!’” 🙂
“Yonah made a very simple observation, that if it reduced the speed of each core by roughly ten percent, it could cut power consumption in each of those cores by roughly fifty percent“
“Larrabee for me, as a terascale project, was the most beautiful thing. Not just ambitious, but aesthetically beautiful. Difficult to do, but also incredibly promising”
Mind to blown to include a blockquote
“They did things we talked about doing, but never had the time or resources, and this is just it – when you open up to the outside community you get a force multiplier [that] we could never replicate inside the company.”
If this isn’t impressive, what is?
•April 6, 2013 • Leave a CommentIf this isn’t impressive, what is?
The asteroid is too far away? Then we’ll just bring it closer! Obviously.
#Megascaleengineering.
Another dead SSD & an update on IBM’s Almaden conference
•March 30, 2013 • Leave a CommentAbout 3 weeks ago I had just finished rebuilding my environment, and restarted re-encoding IBM’s 2006 conference. I had also finished swapping the stock fan for my heatsink (a Coolermaster Hyper 212+) with a much more powerful Delta QFR1212GHE fan. See photos of the process below.
Video encoding had been overheating my heavily overclocked i2600k, and I was excited to push the legendary 210 CFM fan to its limits. Seriously though, this fan was awesome. While booting my computer would sound like a jet taxiing to the runway. See video:
Alexander Riccio 