Elliott’s Blog

I have decided to put future posts to a new blog at Blogspot: emccrory.blogspot.com.

I like the control and flexibility I have with my own web site, but (alas) I have been unable to do a couple of things here (like deal with the spammed comments, upgrade to a new version, and to get Ping.fm to write to this blog).

I am having problems way too often with iTunes crashing (or otherwise disabling) my Windows PC. I personally believe that Apple has done it this way to “persuade” Windows users to move to Mac. Evil!!!

Let’s be clear.

Right now, the LHC is the particle accelerator with the highest particle beam energy (1.18 TeV), surpassing the Tevatron (0.98 TeV) by a hair.

But “power” is voltage *TIMES* current, and the Tevatron had them beat by a mile in that measure (at least for now).

The powers of these beams are proportional to:

LHC : 1.18E12 volts * 5E9 particles (~5E21)
Tevatron: 0.98E12 volts * 1E14 (or so) particles (~1E26)

After having used the Java programming language for two solid years at CERN, and now having to re-work on some old C++ code, I can say with authority that C++ sucks.

Let me count the ways!

1. Header files. Why do we need header files??
2. Object files. The only way to know if everything is compiled right is to recompile everything. This is related to #1, I’m pretty sure.
3. Memory management–what a PITA!! I know, I know–doing your own memory management is much more powerful. I DON’T CARE! Garbage collection is (IMHO) much more conducive to GETTING THE PROGRAM COMPLETED!
4. No inner classes
5. What’s up with all the double colons? NOT READABLE!
6. Every method has to begin with “ClassName::”. Can you say “Redundant”?
7. The default visibility for any subroutine is GLOBAL. Global variables are EVIL!
8. You can’t test a class by simply adding a “main” method (see 7: You don’t have a concept of “ClassName::main”)

Of course, you can do everything in C++. I hate that argument: you can do everything with ANY programming language (Fortran, Basic, Ada, assembly language, even the Turing Machine).

Here is the long-awaited photosynth of the Summit at Le Reculet:

For the first time since, basically, I bought my Volkswagen Jetta diesel, the price of diesel has dropped below the price of regular unleaded gas. Yesterday, at every station I saw in our little tour of “tourist Switzerland”, diesel was 1.53 to 1.54 (Swiss Francs per liter), and regular gasoline (”petrol” for you British readers out there) was 1.55 to 1.57 CHF/liter! To translate this for the American leaders, that is $5.35/gallon for Diesel, $5.42/gal for regular gas.

I am averaging 38 miles per gallon these days; 6.1 liters/100 km (I think)

There are a couple of points to be made by an Old Guy on the top three of Martin McCrory’s TNG Top Ten.

BoBW Full credit needs to be given to the TNG writers for exhuming the end-of-season cliff-hanger! This started with the “Who Shot JR” summertime cliffhanger of 1979/80 for the TV show Dallas. Nothing will ever touch THAT, but the hupla around this TNG cliffhanger was fanned, for the first time, by the Internet! Of course, http://www.starttrek.com, or any other web page, did not exist at that time (1990). So Usenet Newsgroups carried the buzz. And what a buzz it was! The rec.arts.startrek newsgroup was a full-time job to read! I spent way too many hours that summer reading it! (Please let me know if you can find the archives of this newsgroup from 1990. The Google version only goes back to 1992.) The anticipation of the conclusion was fantastic!

Of course, now we know that the writers actually didn’t know how to end this episode when they wrote it! But some of the suggestions of the possible resolution on Usenet were awesome. Many of these suggestions showed up later in the Star Trek universe. The one I remember best was that they should beam in hundreds of photon torpedoes and simultaneously detonate them, destroying the cube. This was done in an alternate timeline episode of Voyager.

Next time you watch BoBW part One, turn off the TV and wait for 3 months before you watch it again.

Yesterday’s Enterprise. I agree completely with Marty’s assessment, particularly the part that there are no holes in this time travel episode. Superlative!

The unique aspect of this episode is that they placed the time-travel action in the present!  In every other time traveler I know of, the hero travels backward or forward in time to get into some connundrum, which s/he barely escapes, with the timeline in tact. Think, Back to the Future and the classic TOS episode The City on the Edge of Forever.   Doctor Who has been time travelling on the BBC since the early 1960’s, but he always traveled to some other time.  This is the first time-travel plot line where we, in the “present”, have hosted time travelers. Ingenious! And the perfectly natural way in which Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) returns is brilliant!

I got a nice set of photos on my way to work this morning of the snow-capped Jura mountains. I made a photosynth of it:

Location:

View Larger Map

There were three, count ‘em, THREE Bugatti Veyrons at the Geneva Auto Show.  I think the best way to depict them is through Microsoft’s Photsynth technology.  Here is the PAIR of Veyrons that were on display at the Bugatti booth in Halle 1 of the show.

Here is the third Veyon, which was on display in the Swiss Car-Pimping company, Masonry. Aparently, Photosynth cannot handle shiny things on a turntable, but here it is anyway:

For all of you who were in the University of South Carolina Concert Choir in 1976, please be sure to see the PicasaWeb album I have created:

Hungary 1976

I took at least 13 rolls of black and white film during that trip (I was 19 years old, by the way). Right now, all I have managed to put up are flat-bed scans of most of the proof sheets, one picture of the choir on stage, and one of my favorite pictures of all time (and the one featured on the album cover), the Cologne Cathedral at 10PM on July 1, 1976.

Thanks, John Simpson!

It was a life-changing event!