The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software


You should be reading Dr. Dobbs anyway, but if you missed it, important analysis for you performance coders and in userland, speed junkies.

Well, Crystal's been here for a week now. She's going home on Sunday, which is too bad. It's nice to have her around all the time. It's certainly easier to sleep.

It's interesting. Because she's here for a while, I've been trying to integrate her into the normal schedule of things, as well as keep a moderate schedule of work on. We've been seeing each other over weekends and holidays these last months, so we have become somewhat used to that kind of interaction. I don't know how well I've really been doing at it, but it feels.. much realer, more grounded. Of course, it's still special, and I'm not getting near my normal amount of work done.

We're going to Santa Barbara today, if all goes well, and then later in the week a few events with local friends.

The experience is oddly nostalgic. I'm sure I'll look back and wonder at the exact mix of stress, excitements, companionship, and professional satisfaction.

For example, today, leaving for Santa Barbara, I'm certainly glad to be going, I'm sure it will be fun. At the same time I'd like to just stay home, and I'm a little worried I might miss something at work, despite the fact I'll only /actually/ be gone for 25 hours or so, compared to the usual gaps of 3 days or more when I visit Crystal in SLC.

It'd be nice if I could get full measures of everything, be a loving boyfriend, have interesting hobbies, and work full time. Some people may be good at that sort of thing, but I just feel a little less competent at each task I add. Of course, having no choice rather leaves me in a unique position. at this point I'm just aiming at getting a bit better at my activities one at a time.

The central fact of our epoch is that knowledge has grown; man's brain has not.

Geoffrey Pyke 1931

Life enigmatic with Bill Murray

This interviewer confuses her interview experience with the character of Bill Murray en total. Still, it's an interesting slice of him.

I've always liked Bill Murray, and I am interested in him personally, in a shocking change from my usual disinterested pragmatism vis a vis entertainers. He remains a comic actor with wonderful reserves as well as manic energy. project selection well below the usual 'money whore' level of many actors.

I'll pay full price to see The Life Aquatic, and we'll see. But I imagine I'll like it. Just because. Sometimes there are intangibles to movie experiences that are not easy to communicate or share. Subjectively, they are still worth a great deal to me.

For more objective quality, unfortunately, the holiday season is a little spare. The Incredibles are zippy as any Pixar movie, but their effect on viewers is more spotty than usual. As a superhero geek, I of course am required by union regulations to enjoy the movie. The action movies are quite a bit more easy to categorize. Blade Trinity is hogwash capitalizing on the good reputation of the first movie, and the energy of Guillermo's directing on the second. National Treasure is bland adventure action with Cage's usual mugging and acting points. Ocean's Twelve is as stylish as the first, with total nonsense for plot. The tricks and twists unfortunately are much less planned and not obvious at all in retrospect. They are quite tacked on, just to provide the atmosphere of twisty cleverness.

ah, Movies, they grab your time and sometimes in return give you a hint of enjoyment and inspiration. I used to watch many more of them.

EPIC 2014

Some Competently presented luddite fears. Requires Flash