A frined of mine sent this to me via e-mail and I just had to add it to my funny anecdotes :)

1. NUDITY
   I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked! As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat, 'Mom, that lady isn't wearing a seat belt!'

2. OPINIONS
   On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a note from his mother. The note read, 'The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents.'

3. KETCHUP
   A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup out of the jar. During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone. 'Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the bottle.'

4. MORE NUDITY
   A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women's locker room. When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with nude women grabbing towels and running for cover. The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, 'What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a little boy before?'

5. POLICE # 1
   While taking a routine vandalism report at an elementary school, I was interrupted by a little girl about 6 years old. Looking up and down at my uniform, she asked, 'Are you a cop?'
   'Yes' I answered and continued writing the report.
   'My mother said if I ever needed help I should ask the police. Is that right?'
   'Yes, that's right,' I told her.
   'Well, then,' she said as she extended her foot toward me, 'would you please tie my shoe?'

6. POLICE #2
   It was the end of the day when I parked my police van in front of the station. As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking, and I saw a little boy staring in at me. 'Is that a dog you got back there?' he asked.
   'It sure is,' I replied.
   Puzzled, the boy looked at me and then towards the back of the van. Finally he said, 'What'd he do?'

7. ELDERLY
   While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. She was unfailingly intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, 'The tooth fairy will never believe this!'

8. DRESS-UP
   A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, 'Daddy, you shouldn't wear that suit.'
   'And why not, darling?'
   'You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning.'

9. DEATH
   While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his 5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin. Feeling that proper burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting, then dug a hole an d made ready for the disposal of the deceased.
   The minister's son was chosen to say the appropriate prayers and with sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his father always said: 'Glory be unto the Faaather, and unto the Sonnn, and into the hole he goooes.' (I want this line used at my funeral!)

10. SCHOOL
    A little girl had just finished her first week of school. 'I'm just wasting my time,' she said to her mother. 'I can't read, I can't write, and they won't let me talk!'

11. BIBLE
    A little boy opened the big family Bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages.
    'Mama, look what I found,' the boy called out.
    'What have you got there, dear?'
    With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, 'I think it's Adam's underwear!'

Modern computers have at their heart a piece of equipment commonly referred to as the "Central Processing Unit" (CPU). This is common knowledge and regularly used as the final determinant factor in a computer's performance. The reality of a machine's performance, however, is a much more complicated equation. Like many devices, the overall performance is a measure of the sum of parts that compose the system. Similarly, a single poorly performing component can undermine, or even negate, the performance of the other components. Using blindingly fast CPU's in a system with very slow memory will result in a computer that is well below accepted standards. However, fast components are becoming very cheap and offer other advantages beyond the initial design goals of the component in question.

For instance, most people are unaware that their video card has a highly specialised processor call a "Graphics Processing Unit" (GPU). The GPU, unlike the CPU is designed for a set of very specific calculations; usually matrix transformations using arbitrarily precise floating point numbers - usually double precision floating points, but not always. The GPU typically runs at a slower clock speed than the CPU and uses a very fast, purpose-built memory subsystem of its own too. Combined, the video card's GPU and memory are capable of some truly mind-boggling calculations. Here's where things get interesting; many facets of science and "non-graphic" mathematics use exactly the same type of calculations the GPU was designed for. In fact nVidia has even released a programming framework (called CUDA) to leverage their GPU's for doing things other than playing games. Researchers in Belgium at the University of Antwerp, have now been able to build a system, capable of super-computer speeds, using commodity graphics cards totalling eight GPU's!

For quite some time now, I've considered the role of the general purpose microprocessor, aka CPU, rather limiting. As stated before, a single component doesn't in itself determine how fast a machine will be, but a single component can certainly determine how slow a machine will be. I believe the time is coming when to move beyond current performance limitations, the computer industry will need to utilise specialised processors for specialised tasks. Given the generalist role a CPU must undertake, by design it is a compromise to balance performance across a broad set of tasks, consequently it will never excel at any specific task. However, if the CPU could offload particular tasks to other, external, processing units specialised for that particular task the overall performance of the system would increase significantly. We have already seen this in limited ways with the advent of hardware-based storage controllers, dedicated graphics processors and I would argue the advent of the northbridge for direct access to various busses that link the core of the system together. Prior to the separation of the CPU and northbridge, all input and output (I/O) to any device was forced to go through the CPU. With northbridge controller the CPU could be freed up and many devices are capable of direct communication and data transfer.

In conclusion, I look forward to future of the CPU; whether it's a Intel "Core", IBM "Cell" or any other processor. However, what really interests me, is the rise of the specialist processor and how we as programmers and system engineers can find new and innovative ways to implement them to augment and enhance overall system performance in specialised ways.

Credits:

• Image of computer system above: http://fastra.ua.ac.be/images/pic_internal.jpg
  While you're there, check out all the images and screen shots etc. of this tiny super computer

The results have been what I expected. Loading photos and large files from the file server is now a LOT faster. I especially noticed the difference when browsing the file server in "thumbnail" mode; it was as fast as it would be if running locally. The Time Machine backups for my Mac Mini are now super fast to the file server too which is great as the system (the Mac Mini) bogs down a little while it does the backup. Basically, with the consumer-grade hard drives in my server, I am now limited by the speed of those drives and the CPU power in the clients far more than the network fabric. It's nice to know that as I develop this network any gains in the server speed will pay off for the clients on my LAN.

A man piloting a hot air balloon discovers he has wandered off course and is hopelessly lost. He descends to a lower altitude and locates a man down on the ground. He lowers the balloon further and shouts, "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says, "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, about 30 feet above this field."

"You must work in Information Technology," says the balloonist.

"Yes I do," replies the man. "And how did you know that?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "what you told me is technically correct, but of no use to anyone."

The man below says, "You must work in management."

"I do," replies the balloonist, "how did you know?"

"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect my immediate help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault!"

This reminds of some employers I've worked for...who shall remain nameless - you know who you are!

First of all, everyone (except maybe idiot P-platers) were doing the speed limit give or take a few km/h. That isn't surprising in itself but the effect it had on traffic flow was remarkable. Strangely, the usual bottle-necks around the Kanahooka and Kembla Grange on-ramps (north bound) were flowing smootly with now hold-up at all. Why? Simple, with everyone doing roughly the same speed, traffic was spaced evenly and the right lane was practically empty; thus people already on the freeway were able to move into the right lane and make room for the merging drivers. Surprise, surprise, "keep left unless overtaking" actually results in better, less stressful driving for everyone! Duh.

Secondly, in town people weren't running the gauntlet at round-abouts and intersections and actually seemed to be a little more courteous than normal. Amazing.

Of course, the half-dozen or so provisional license holders (aka. P-platers) were the exceptin to the rule - or so they think. Why is it, almost without exception, they spend more time talking on their phones, playing with their stereos, doing their hair or talking to passengers than they do actually driving?! Maybe that's why they are so disproportionately represented in the road toll?

Have a safe and happy Easter folks, and if you're on your provisional license, take extra care - you don't have the experience or the 5k1LLz to dick around behind the wheel :)

As you might notice, the random photo block is gone and I have installed a new Mini Slide Show. This is a Adobe Flash based player so you will need to download Flash Player if all you see is a blank box.

The photos will refresh every 5 seconds and will cost you a few kilobytes (2-3KB) for each image. If you click on an image, it will take straight to the correct location in the galleries. So watch and enjoy :)

I'm not going to bore everyone with stuff they've read elsewhere. This is purely my first impressions for the sake of posterity. So with no more intro, here it is, my top five new features in Leopard/iLife '08 I can't live without:

1. Spaces. Some people hate them, I can't live without them. Organise my work spaces into logical areas in a virtual space. Make sense? No? Tough. Get a Mac!
2. iPhoto '08. Nothing revolutionary in the product but a nice evolution from the '06 iteration I've been used to. The interface is a lot more intuitive and polished. Now to find another plugin that will allow me to upload directly into the galleries here at the Gray Matter and I'll be set.
3. Tabbed terminals. We've all (by now) seen tabbed browsers and Unix environments (KDE/Gnome/Enlightenment/et al) have had tabbed terminals for a long time. It's so good to have the same functionality in OSX. Now I can open one terminal program and run many shells without cluttering up my work space. W00t.
4. Apple Mail. The new RSS integration is superbly done and well integrated. I can now read my RSS feeds just as easily as my e-mail. This totally kicks butt.
5. Speed. It's faster than Leopard from a purely subjective point of view. Applications open faster, switching between apps is snappy without significant lag, boot up and shutdown is not painful. All round, even with all the eye-candy, the whole system feels faster.

Another noteable mention is the "stacks" feature which greatly reduces clutter in the dock. Don't know what I'm talking about? Then get a mac :P Seriously, you wont regret it.

I'm not going the end with "insert non-Mac system here" bashing, but I will say that in terms of intuitive interface, usability/features out-of-the-box, speed and overall "polish" Leopard makes the other offerings in the market today look decidedly dated. Vista looks good, don't get me wrong, but damn(!!) could BE any slower? Linux (the desktop distributions) are fantastic for out-of-the-box features and productivity tools but compatibility problems with new and/or exotic hardware can make getting going non-trivial, especially for the new Linux user.

Compatibility is really a moot point on OSX; if you don't own a Mac then you can't install it (without some serious hacking). That in a lot of ways is what so good, and at the same time bad about OSX - Apple never have to worry about obscure hardware combinations, but if you don't like their hardware, there aren't a lot of options to modify specifications greatly. If they didn't build it, you're on your own. Microsoft and Linux are in a totally different world of pain having to ensure support for all manner of different components, and then having to make sure they all play nice together, which we all know is easier said than done. I'm not convinced that Vista would be selling as well as it is if it weren't for the OEM market bundling deals that Microsoft have done - regardless of the legality or "fairness" of those deals (I'm not going into that...most people know my thoughts).

But I digress. Leopard is everything we were promised for the next iteration of OSX; Apple did not disappoint. However, initially the annoucement was OSX and iLife would be bundled and not be separate products once Leopard hit the market. This didn't happen. My only guess is that after seeing what was on offer in Vista, Steve Jobs decided there was no good business or marketing reasons to bundle the two cash-cows for Apple to remain competitive. Who knows. Even so, the purchase price for OSX+iLife is still significantly less than a comparable Vista bundle and you get arguably the best desktop operating system available, period. I'm one very happy Mac user.

After spending a fair amount of time yesterday getting my Mac Mini rebuilt as my desktop machine (it has spent the last 18 months of its life faithfully as the Gray Matter mail, web and everything-else server) I was most disappointed this morning when I couldn't get Apple Mail to stay up long enough to read a single message. After about an hour of googling I decided that none of the fixes seemed to be applicable to my situation.

So I decided that rather than try and let someone else solve the problem, I'd try and think it through. Being a new installation, less that 24 hours old, it's not too hard to go back in your mind through the step you made in building the system. So one at a time I started mentally trying to pinpoint the moment when everything went pop. Then it dawned on me. Before I put the mini to sleep last night I installed Growl. Even though their site simply advises you need OSX 10.4 or better (I have 10.5.1) there are evidently some problems with Growl 1.1.2 and OSX 10.5.1; specifically Apple Mail. In short, the mail plugin for Growl will cause Apple Mail 3.1, as shipped with OSX 10.5.1 to completely fail with a segmentation fault. After disabling the Growl mail plugin, all of a sudden all my e-mail came back to life.

Like most new software platforms, OSX 10.5, Leopard, is a steady evolution of its predecessors. However, this introduces a number of compatibility concerns for third party developers and OEM's. Given how Apple took an open source project called "Cover Flow" and integrated into their base operating system (and now made it even more pervasive in Leopard) it seems odd to me they haven't done a similar thing with Growl. It seems every Mac user I know has Growl installed if for nothing else than for mail and IM notifications. So get with it Apple, either built your own notification framework and user-space applications, or take Growl and do your Apple magic with it :)