Bell Labs Wallpaper – Part Deux

This is brilliant. Anybody had a look at the latest NY Times Sunday Review? There is a fantastic piece about the culture of innovation at Bell Labs. One of the pictures from the piece is the famous Erwitt photo of Bell Labs NJ, that I spoke in length about a few posts earlier. This picture is in color. It is a must read for anyone interested in anything tech/science related. Click on the image to go to NY Times to read the article. I love it and am currently reading it.

Innovation and the Bell Labs Miracle - NY Times

Many thanks to Don Monroe for leading me to the piece.

On a related note, just couldn’t stop mentioning the Prima Donna of Boneheadedness, that is McKinsey & Company. Can you imagine the cream of consulting business advised Bell that they don’t foresee any future for the mobile phone market?

OPERA Neutrino Flight Time Anamoly

OPERA Experiment (From uncharteredterritories.wordpress.com)

Remember the neutrino beam measurement from a few months back, when it seemed to have arrived faster than the speed of light? CERN reports that there might have been a couple of things that could have influenced the measurement of their flight times. CERN says,

The OPERA collaboration has informed its funding agencies and host laboratories that it has identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement. These both require further tests with a short pulsed beam. If confirmed, one would increase the size of the measured effect, the other would diminish it. The first possible effect concerns an oscillator used to provide the time stamps for GPS synchronizations. It could have led to an overestimate of the neutrino’s time of flight. The second concerns the optical fibre connector that brings the external GPS signal to the OPERA master clock, which may not have been functioning correctly when the measurements were taken. If this is the case, it could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos. The potential extent of these two effects is being studied by the OPERA collaboration. New measurements with short pulsed beams are scheduled for May.

So, there you go. One is the oscillator and the other has to do with a faulty optical fibre connector. Hopefully, the new measurements in May would present a clear picture.

More Music

I am planning to post some tech related content tomorrow. But before I call it a night, thought of talking about some music. As usual, this one is also from the Japanese Lounge scene. When I am programming, I am always listening to music, mostly Jazz or Lounge from Japan. What is unique about lounge music originating from Japan is the role of the piano. Most of you would be aware of the importance of piano in Japanese culture. It is one of the most popular music instruments when it comes to learning. Piano compositions in Japan have been even given an academic treatment in a few cases. For instance, J. U. Garrett from Rice University wrote a thesis about Japanese piano compositions of the last hundred years. Apart from a fascinating read, it also provides a list of 3000 compositions ever since the first one appeared in 1900.  For those who are interested in this study, just follow the link below to download the thesis from Rice University Digital Scholarship Archive.

Japanese piano compositions of the last hundred years – J. U. Garrett

The track you are about to listen is called YAWNING CAT by the artist, Dr. Echo Logic. Soothing track to relax and simply chill. It’s part of the compilation, Tokyo Lounge – Dinner Time.

Tokyo Luxury Lounge - Dinner Time

Dr. Echo-Logic (Hirofumi Asamoto) is another one of my favorites. I love his PianoxDub album. You can get to his website to know more about him by clicking his picture.

Dr. Echo-Logic - Website

Now let’s come to the track. Have a listen and see if it is your kinda music. If yes, get the Tokyo Lounge album straightaway. It’s a great compilation album.

https://skinwalker.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/11-yawning-cat-dr-echo-logic.jpg

Till tomorrow folks.

 

Dash X11 Font v2.0

It’s time to update one of my fonts, Dash. I will push it to my github tomorrow. But, for the time being, I am uploading it over at omploader. As I had mentioned earlier, the only difference between v2.0 and v1.0 is the letter “l”. It should be evident from my NetBSD screenshot from a few pages earlier and the shot in this post. Just click on the image below to download. As usual, you can push it to /usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Dir-of-your-choice/, and update your font cache. That’s just about it.

Dash X11 Font - Version 2.0: Direct Download (Thanks Omploader)

Here is another screenshot with dash in action. This is my first Linux shot after a long long time. Was testing some optimizations coupled with few other tests and new grimoires on my Sorcerer box. KDE after a long time as well. Just click on the image for full view.

KDE on Sorcerer OS

If there are any further questions, please feel free to ask by using the Comment feature. I will update my Github with Version 2.0 tomorrow.

Rant + Killer Music

Sorry about not having posted new stuff in a while folks. Tied up with a few things here and there. Currently on my way to Munich and have some time to update.

Today marks the first anniversary of me getting dumped by my ex in Starbucks. You tend to forget everything and move on but on a day like this, everything just keeps coming back, whether you like it or not! Anyway, this is gonna be the last time I am ever gonna mention about it, I promise.

Thankfully, I found some new music, thanks to my friend gutterslob (you may know him from crunchbang forums) that made me happy. He is an avid fan of the Japanese underground Jazz and lounge scene, just like I am. I was pleasantly surprised to find an email from him with a link to the album Kayabe from Bun/Fumitake Tamura.

Kayabe | Bun/Fumitake Tamura

If you are into this kind of music, Kayabe is a worthy addition. What’s even better is that the album is available absolutely free for download. Totally legal. Before posting the link, let me post a track from the album called, Searchin. Have a listen and see if it’s your kinda deal.

https://skinwalker.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/bun-fumitake-tamura-kayabe-13-searchin.jpg

Follow the link for downloading the album. I will continue to post music from the Japanese scene.

Kayabe – Fumitake Tamura

More coming up later…..