Gathering of friends, cooking, boisterous conversations, football game. Didn't care much about the football game, but all the others are dear to my heart.

An interview with Wang Guangya, China's ambassador to the U.N.

HP-10C series

Reverse Polish Notation ftw

Avatars and external memory

A symphony of civilizations

"It is the studio of an artist in the 17th-century Netherlands. In the foreground there are a tapestry, an empty chair and a table. A seated painter is trying to catch the essence of his model, a demure young woman, Clio, the Greek muse of history. On the wall, as a backdrop, is a large map of the Seventeen Provinces printed in Amsterdam. The scene is quiet but inspiring."

UT stuff

For now we see through a glass, darkly

一盘没有下完的棋

Filled with dread, you read the words she just inscribed: "The fields of battle lie in the hearts of men..."

  
I-No

  

I-No

   I-No

The Rest of the Lenna Story

Danube steamboat captain's hat

As a most irksome matter, I fired my memory module with manual memory timing. Now I must RMA both the motherboard and the memory. Curses! Why must my attempts to build a new computer be foiled at every turn?!

Currently contemplating getting a black 13.3" Mac Book sometime in August when Merom comes out.

Went to Chicago this last weekend. Tried Taste of Chicago, which is good but expensive. Got soaked in the two public fountain columns. The faces on them reminded me of Bladerunner. The city is lovely. I wouldn't mind living here if I am working for the right company. Unlike other city archtectures of empty downtowns, Chicago has residential complexes throughout the entire city. Which translates into more public events, more social gatherings, and more culture. At night, watched the Orchestra play "Battleship Potemkin" in the open air concert stage. Later watched fireworks at Navy Pier.

Repaired to a suburb of Chicago at dawn and slept wondering when was the last time I went to bed with the windows open.

Went to Chinatown the next morning and ate at Joy Yee's, which tastes even better than the food in Houston. The picturesque buildings of the Chinatown unsettled me somehow. Especially this one building facing the new plaza... There is something about it that gives me pause. Old Chinatown reminded me of the non-existent spaces between the buildings.

The Nurse

I am watching Deadwood right now, so naturally, this interesting peice about the evolution of the Western genre caught my eye - The Legacy of Sergio Leone

So what justifies the enormous price difference? The majority of the costs result from customer support and driver development. No OpenGL workstation user is allowed to be left alone with his problems, where it's the complete opposite for the gamer. Additionally, it takes a long time before OpenGL drivers can be certified as "stable", so the manufacturers pass these increased costs on to the customer. Why does no-one complain? That's easy: workstations for engineers and designers make a considerable contribution to creating value in the production process. Procurement costs are of little importance, since the workstations are a business expense, and mostly pay for themselves within a short time.

LRB | Alain Supiot : The Condition of France

"Having made the fight against delinquency the main plank of his electoral programme, he (Nicolas Sarkozy) had referred to young people in the banlieues as ‘riff-raff’ whom he intended to ‘power-hose’ off the streets. The fact that a minister could talk like a gangster and so put a match to the powder that had long been collecting in the most deprived neighbourhoods of the Republic, is not simply a sign of incompetence. It is first and foremost a sign that an age-old achievement of our Western juridical systems – the distinction between a public office and the person who occupies it – is being called into question."