According to Andrew Hamilton, an astrophysicist who presented at the World Science Festival’s (WSF) “Black Holes and Holographic Worlds” event, it looks a bit like this:
Posts Tagged ‘computers’
What does it look like inside of a black hole?
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010Music by the ‘Click of Death’
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010If you’ve used a computer long enough, chances are good that you’ve heard it:
The click of death.
It happens (inevitably) when your hard drive physically fails to read some data, signaling its soon-to-arrive death.
More specifically, the drive arm swings quickly back and forth across the data plates/disks because it can’t read data, creating a clicking sound that can prompt a tech nerd to nearly experience a myocardial infarction. I’ve heard the dreadful sound twice in my days on Earth, and each time it sent me running to a computer store to buy a new hard disk.
So anyway, I’m in the market to rebuild my desktop (running out of space, my data backup plan is crummy, I like a techy challenge, etc.). While I’m brushing up on RAID configurations, the latest hard drives, backup/recovery solutions, etc. when I stumble across this: (more…)
The digital citizen
Friday, April 16th, 2010
Ready for something fun? Then crank up your credulous dial and tune in… below is what has been on my mind lately:
Imagine Bob.
Bob is an ordinary guy with an ordinary computer, an ordinary amount of time to goof around on the internet, and an ordinary appetite to socialize.
Now imagine a world in which Bob lives, is not on Facebook, and in most cases has no idea that you even exist. (more…)
Science was made to be hacked
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010Science and technology nerds, the first-ever Science Hack Day planning is in full swing — so get a move on, contribute what you can to the event site, and start planning your trip (probably to London).
“Wait a minute,” you snort. “What’s this confounded ‘Hack Day’ thing? It sounds nerdy.”
You’d be right, but let’s begin with what hack days are not: (more…)
The misbehaving computer or: Confessions of someone who thought he was awesome, and was not
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010You want to be awesome at something nerdy? Simply follow my Five-Step Program to Awesome™:
- First step: Admit that you know nothing about that nerdy something, no matter how much you think you know. Yes, you are dumb.
- Second step: Attend Google University diligently — possibly a real university if you have this rare thing called money — until you are feeling quite awesome.
- Third step: Just when you think you might be awesome, try the nerdy something and fail unexpectedly.
- Fourth step: Accept how utterly non-awesome you are. Yes, you suck.
- Fifth step: Repeat first through fourth steps. A lot.
Take, for instance, building computers:
I built this very machine on which I type from a hodgepodge of parts, starting about two years ago.* (true nerds can click here) Everything was “cool” until about October of last year, when a vexing problem presented itself:
At seemingly random times, the damn thing would freeze up, repeat a fraction of a second of audio that was playing for about a minute, and then carry on as if nothing had happened. And freeze up again a random increment of time later.
Right up until this past weekend, this was life at the Dave Mosher bachelor pad, and a crushing blow to my nerdish psyche. In my family, I am the unofficial technology guru. The super dork. The ultra geek within your bloodline that you call when you’re too broke (or thrifty) to even consider hiring a gun to fix that wickedly complex pile of doped silicon, whirring motors and glowing beeping delicate thingies. And here there I was, confounded by my own electron-infused baby.
Something awesome, however, saved the day… (your cue to keep reading) (more…)