Dates

I’ve been researching date/time formats for inclusion in a software product, and wanted to share some of the thought processes involved.Use case: an engineer or scientist wants to plot something over some time period. All time periods are possible, so we must provide years down to minutes. For example, a coastal engineer surveyed said he: […]

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Notes from SC10

King Neptune, outside Mardis Gras Land A few weeks ago, I spent a week in New Orleans at Supercomputing 2010.  (Sometimes my job has perks.)   I wrote a really long summary of this for internal use, but thought I’d share some of my notes: Jack Dongarra of Oak Ridge National Labs offered his perspective

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If our company kitchen appliances had network access…

Toaster [twitter]: “Hope you enjoy standing outside in the rain while the Bellevue fire department shakes its head disapprovingly of your charred mess!” #EpicToastFail [3 seconds ago] “Dude, it’s looking medium well.” [2 minutes ago] NotMyJob: @Toaster is looking very dark now. [4 minutes ago] “Your toast is ready!” [5 minutes ago] Espresso machine [Facebook]:

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Fossil Digging

Last May, we took a long weekend to go dig fossils at the Stonerose Interpretive Center in Republic, WA. The fossils are from the Eocene epoch (about 50 million years ago), when eastern Washington was tropical. The city of Republic was part of an ancient lake. For a nominal fee ($6/person plus $4 for hammer

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Got Milk

There are a variety of milk-based products available in the store. Just sticking to cow’s milk for the moment, here’s the periodic table of viscous milk products, ordered by decreasing fat content: Butter – 81% milk fat. A stick of butter (8 tablespoons) has 97.2 grams of fat (880 calories!), which breaks down into 62%

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Bellevue Blackout

Bellevue is blacked out. Behold! The Bellevue Blackout challenge is to find all of the geocaches within the city limits. Unlike the Delorme or Thomas Guide challenges, where one finds a cache in a region defined by each page of the respective road atlas (and does a lot of driving in the process), this one

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Fort Worth

Last week was my first time visiting Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex’s better half. When I had the opportunity to be outside (80°F and sunny, in April!), I wandered around downtown, letting the numerous virtual geocaches guide my travels. (All photos, except the USPS one, are mine. Click to embiggen.) This mural (a block over), is typical

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RFID 101

I don’t watch much television , but when I do, it’s because my Tivo’s found something cool.  Like: last night’s introduction to RFIDs by Dr. Chris Diorio, chairman and CEO of Impinj[5]. His presentation is available online[1], so I will just summarize some of the things I learned. Who wants them? Business! Among the benefits:

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