Greg Pfister’s “Perils of Parallel”
My good friend Greg Pfister is running an excellent blog about computer architecture called Perils of Parallel. Greg describes it as:
A blog about multicore, cloud computing, accelerators, Virtual Worlds, and likely other topics, loosely driven by the effective end of Moore’s Law.
Greg is well known as a leading authority on cluster-based architectures, but the blog has lots of interesting perspectives about all sorts of recent developments relating to computer architecture, GPUs, system structure, etc. His analysis of multicore architectures and Intel’s Larrabee is particularly recommended.
Topics: Web, Internet, Computing | No Comments »
Playing with the band
We don’t get many recordings of Rock City Band, and as the substitute bass player I only play occasionally anyway. Last month we did record of one of our club gigs, with me sitting in on a few songs. For all you fans out there, a short mp3 clip is now up on the Arcane Domain music page. In addition to me on bass, we’ve got Charlie Sweeney (drums), Colleen Desmond (guitar), Daryl Desmond (guitar), and Brenda White (lead vocals). That’s Daryl playing lead at the end. More Rock City samples and videos are linked from the band’s home page, and also on the Rock City Myspace page. If you live north of Boston, check out one of Rock City’s upcoming club dates.
Topics: Music, Non-technical | No Comments »
Sam Ruby on HTML Reunification
Sam Ruby, recently appointed as co-chair of the W3C HTML Working Group, is starting to explore directions for unifying HTML 5 and XHTML. For anyone who cares about Web technology or HTML, Sam’s posting is highly recommended. There’s also a very interesting discussion going on in the comments section.
Topics: Web, Internet, Computing | No Comments »
40 Years of Internet RFCs
Steve Crocker has a nice piece in yesterday’s New York Times reflecting on 40 years of Internet RFCs. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: History of computing, Web, Internet, Computing | 1 Comment »
Is Microsoft positioning Oslo as an XML competitor?
James Clark, one of the co-inventors of XML, has an interesting blog posting on his week spent working with the Oslo team at Microsoft. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Web, Internet, Computing | No Comments »
A great talk on World War II Codebreaking
Bletchley Park was the estate where Alan Turing and an amazing team of codebreakers cracked several key World War II German ciphers, and where they built the world’s first programmable electronic digital computers. Bletchley is falling into disrepair, and there are ongoing efforts to raise funds to save it.
While rummaging around following links about this effort, I stumbled onto a video of a terrific talk by Captain Jerry Roberts. Captain Roberts, one of the last surviving codebreakers from Bletchley, is a wonderful character and at age 88 still a very engaging speaker. In this talk at UCL, he tells for the first time the story of his work at Bletchley. By quite an amazing coincidence, Captain Roberts is introduced in the video by my good friend Susanne Kord, who chairs the German Department at UCL.
Topics: History of computing | No Comments »
Remembering Wallace Stegner
A few weeks ago the New York Times published a nice rememberance of one of my favorite American authors, Wallace Stegner. Angle of Repose is probably his most famous work, and it won the Pulitzer Prize, but many of his smaller books including Remembering Laughter and Crossing to Safety, are beautfully written too.
Topics: Books, Non-technical | No Comments »
Copyrights and comments
After this blog went live I received a few comments on the copyright policy, and in particular on the fact that copyright on any comments that you post is transferred to me. Â Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Arcane domain blog, Non-technical | 9 Comments »
Programming languages compared
I suspect it’s very well known, but I hadn’t noticed this programming language comparison before — the JavaScript example is cute.
Topics: Web, Internet, Computing | 1 Comment »
CSS Animation in the Apple Safari Browser
Apple is supporting CSS Animations in Safari for both desktop and the iPhone. Follow that link using the new Safari 4 Beta and you can try out some of the effects, including <div>s that fade out or spin around when you click them. The extension properties have names like “-webkit-transition” and so are specific to Webkit (the rendering engine used by Safari), at least for now. Some commentators think putting animation into CSS is heading in the wrong direction, but if the whole Web is not going to be Flash, then HTML and CSS will need capabilities for building richer interfaces. Doing it declaratively in CSS seems like a good way to go.
Topics: Web, Internet, Computing | 2 Comments »
If all the Web were Flash
Long ago, I got a degree in physics, and one of the things physicists do is to ask “what would happen if you took xxxxx to the extreme limiting case?” For example, what would happen if the mass of your car were infinite, or if the size of the electron was arbitrarily small? So, a thought experiment for the Internet: what would the Web be like if, instead of HTML, it had used Flash for everything?
Topics: Web, Internet, Computing | 10 Comments »
Rock City Band…rocks!
Congratulations to my friends in Rock City Band and their fantastic new vocalist Brenda White, who blew the roof off the Haluwa Restaurant in Nashua, NH last night! Thanks too for having me sit in on bass for a few songs. If you live north of Boston, check them out (schedule).
Topics: Boston area, Music, Non-technical | No Comments »
The Self-Describing Web
The Self-Describing Web was published yesterday as an official W3C TAG finding. I am the editor, which means I did almost all of the writing, and I was among the TAG members who contributed significantly to the debate about the content. After two years of work, many drafts, and lots of interesting discussion, it feels good to have it done. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Web, Internet, Computing | No Comments »
New Job at IBM
As of today, I have a new job, working in the Emerging Technologies area of IBM’s Software Group. I’ve really enjoyed my time in IBM Research, but it’s time to move on. I will be focusing especially on Web-based client technologies. More details to follow (as I figure them out).
Topics: Web, Internet, Computing | No Comments »
Chairing the TAG
On Tuesday, Tim Berners-Lee announced that he is appointing me to chair the W3C’s Technical Architecture Group (known as the TAG). It’s an honor, and it’s also going to be a challenge. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Web, Internet, Computing | No Comments »