StreamJockey

Bletchley, England: Powering Hendrix and saving the free world!

Marshall Amplification plc. a.k.a. Marshal Amps and Bletchley Park National Codes Centre are located about a 0.5 mile from each other as shown on Google Maps.

History

Bletchley Park was the main site of the British decryption facilities. The Bletchley Park Wikipedia post goes into the exciting history and has many links to key people involved. Many top mathematicians and cipher analysts worked there.   

One of them was Allan Turing, the mathematician who became influential in the development of computer science.

And I learned that three Polish mathematicians and cryptologists were the first to solve the plugboard-equipped Enigma machine in 1932. That was the main cipher device used by Germany, and their work gave the British a jump start on reading the Enigma of World War II.

Pictured on the right is the Colossus computer invented by Tommy Flowers at Bletchley Park. These were the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computing devices. They used vacuum tubes to perform the calculations. And it was vacuum tubes that powered Jimi's Marshall amps about 20 years later! To this day some of the most expensive amps are vacuum tube powered. Most amps today use solid state electronics (built with solid materials as opposed to the somewhat fragile glass vacuum tubes).

Movies

Relevant movies include Sekret Enigmy, a 1979 Polish movie with English subtitles that is likely more historically accurate than most. An American made movie U-571 (2000) was enjoyable, but it was not very accurate.

And on the Hendrix side we have Jimi Hendrix - Live At Woodstock released in 2005 about 389 years after the event.

   

Jimi's first Marshall - a Super 100    Bletchley Park

Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative

A summary of the memo from the Federal CIO

The reported number of Federal data centers in 2009 is more than 1,100.In 2006, Federal servers and data centers consumed over 6 billion kWh of electricity and without a fundamental shift in how we deploy technology it could exceed 12 billion kWh by 2011.

The Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative aims to address these challenges by leveraging best practices in the public and private sector. The focus of this initiative is to:

• Promote the use of Green IT by reducing the overall energy and real estate footprint of government data centers
  
• Reduce the cost of data center hardware, software and operations
  
• Increase the overall IT security posture of the government
  
• Shift IT investments to more efficient computing platforms and technologies

The full two page PDF can be seen here: Download 27535844-Data-Center-Consolidation-Memo-02-26-10

mikeash.com: Getting Answers

I hang out in several programmer related chats and forums and I see a lot of people having trouble getting answers. They get no answers, poor answers, or absorb a lot of verbal abuse. As a person asking questions, there are some simple things you can do to help your chances of getting good answers. This guide will show you ten easy things you can do to ensure your questions are answered quickly and well.

via www.mikeash.com

Cat Demands Equal Time

Our cat Hop-a-long (or as my daughter calls her Bennie after Ben Affleck) decided I was paying too much attention to iPhone development and documents.

Blog posted here.

Big Nerd Ranch Weblog » How to Time

I was asked three times last week how I find how long an activity takes on the Mac and the iPhone.  Here is the most accurate method that I know of:

#import uint64_t start = mach_absolute_time(); 
// do stuff to be timed 
uint64_t end = mach_absolute_time(); 
uint64_t elapsed = end - start; 
mach_timebase_info_data_t info; 
if (mach_timebase_info (&info) != KERN_SUCCESS) { 
  printf ("mach_timebase_info failed\n"); }
uint64_t nanosecs = elapsed * info.numer / info.denom;
uint64_t millisecs = nanosecs / 1000000;

As you use this, remember that the elapsed time for a given function will vary with the load the system is under.

via weblog.bignerdranch.com

The "timing" couldn't be better - I was just researching this topic last week.