Back when I was in college, I remember a friend who had a new Intel 486SX processor. Now the key part of that model is the “SX” which indicated that Intel’s new floating point unit (FPU) wasn’t "built-in" to it. An FPU as far as I know, helps in doing calculations of non-integer […]
Archive for May, 2005
FPU’s and Root Beer Floats
Lisp
For years I’ve heard about the lisp programming language, and have taken a few half-hearted whacks at it. It seemed the world was mostly divided into two groups over this language.
Those who thought lisp was a horribly cantankerous language with too many parentheses
Those who thought lisp […]
Celia’s New Invention
Yesterday, while Cecilia and Isabella were driving home from church in the back of their grandma’s car Cecilia came up with a novel way to imbibe in Easy Cheese. Isabella became the willing tester, until a bubble came up through the straw. It popped in her mouth, making her cheeks expand quite quickly […]
What Makes a Commodus?
In reading Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” I’ve come across one of the less savory, if not the most repugnant, emperors in Rome’s history by the name of Commodus. I hate to use such a strong word as repugnant because I realize that I have a good deal of shortcomings in […]
Bassists Gone
It has been a sad past couple of weeks as we have lost significant bassists in the jazz world:
Niels Henning Ørsted Pederson
Jimmy Woode
Percy Heath