this is what happens when you give Computer Scientists access to piped chocolate

We had a Children in Need quiz night at work yesterday.  One round was to decorate a cake. Our team (The Flying Robots) felt that a fractal, with its infinite chocolate complexity, should be a sure winner.

Sierpinski cake

The judges, for some unfathomable reason, preferred another:

double decker artistry

Okay, maybe we weren’t taking it that seriously…

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it was 30 years ago today

that Acorn Computers launched the BBC micro.

I got a model B Beeb while I was doing my PhD, and had great fun learning to program.  (I already knew Fortran IV, but until reading Structured Programming with BBC Basic, I hacked, rather than programmed.)  I used my Beeb to do some real science (see the acknowledment section on p544), and even wrote some articles on fractals for Acorn User.  Happy days, and so long ago.

30 years ago, in fact.  That's the reason for the post.  We all know about Moore's law, commonly quoted as "computer power doubles every 18 months" (although of course the reality is more complicated, but let's go with this for now).  One doubling of power doesn't sound much, but what happens after 30 years of Moore's law?

30 years is 20 doubling times. 2^20 ~ 10^6. (Impress you friends with fast mental conversions between powers of two and powers of ten by remembering 2^10 = 1024 ~ 10^3. Caveat: any friend who would be impressed by this feat probably already knows how to do it.)  So that would mean today's PCs are one million times more powerful than the humble Beeb.  Is this true?

• Memory: 32kB RAM (yes, 32 kilobytes).  32 GB isn't common today (although it is on a reasonably high end scientific workstation): more like 4 or 8 Gigs typically, so, a quarter of a million times as much memory.
• Processor (6502A) speed: 2 MHz.  More like a thousand times faster today, with a 3GHz processor (but, of course, that's with a 32 or 64 bit processor, not the Beeb's 8 bit one, and then there's multi-core, dual processors, and what not, giving another order of magnitude).
• Screen: max resolution 640x256 (2 colours), or 160x256 (8 colours), using 20 kB of video RAM.  Today, my flat screen is 1920x1080 (4 billion, or 32 bit, colours), so that's about 8MB of video memory, or 400 times as much. 
• Disc storage: a cassette player, or an optional 100 kB 5.25 inch floppy drive once you got fed up with waiting for programs "Loading...". Today, a 500 GB hard drive is more typical: that's 5 million times as much.

Okay, not every feature is a million times more, but combined, today's PCs are easily a million times more powerful than the Beeb.  And for less money!  The BBC Model B cost £399 (which is about £1200 in today's money), but that didn't include the monitor or floppy drive. The Torch dual 800 kB floppy drive cost around £800, although you got a Z80 co-processor thrown in for that.  In March 1987 I bought a 28MB (yes, megabyte) hard drive for £745 (or about £1600 in today's money).

To get a better feel for what this doubling means, think of a slightly older computer, Deep Thought, which took seven and a half million years to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.  That was in 1978, or 33 years ago, or 22 doubling times, or 4 million times.  If that was a speed improvement, today's equivalent of Deep Though would take only 2 years to calculate the answer!  Not so impressive now.

But wait, you say.  Douglas Adams was a genius.  He would have taken that into account.  The real Deep Thought would have kept upgrading itself, but even so still took 7.5 Myr to calculate the answer.  7.5 Myr is 5 million doubling times, or 10^1,500,00 more powerful.  That would make the Deep Thought who gave the answer 42 to the philosophers' descendents umimaginably more powerful than the original (if such a machine is even possible in the current universe).

Anyway, happy birthday, Beeb!

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a marvellous toy

I've been somewhat unproductive this last week, as I've been acquainting myself with my latest toy -- a Samsung Galaxy S II. I'm not an "early adopter" -- I waited a decade before getting a microwave oven, for example. I tend to follow the maxim

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
--- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711

However, I'm so dependent on email, and getting more dependent on a mobile calendar, that I decided the time had come to bite the bullet. I polled a few colleagues at work for their favourites, and ended up with the Galaxy (much to the disgust of the Apple brotherhood).

I've been playing with learning how to use it for the last week. First I had to get it talking to the home wifi. Which required getting the home wifi to advertise its presence a little more than it was doing. Work wifi connection required a quick trip to software support on my part, and for them to press two menu items on the phone (I think my mind "must be too highly trained" for that sort of thing). Now I've got my GMail, contacts, and Google calendar accounts synched. Bliss.

It seemed to take a while for the GPS to synch, so the weather map and other things thought I was in Waterbeach for a while. But after a few tries, it got my location correct, both at home and at work.

First peripheral: a slip case to carry it around in, so it doesn't get pocket-lintified. A quick Amazon search found something perfect. A subsequent search for a travel adaptor so that I can recharge the device in foreign parts, in order to use these facilities away from home/work, has opened up a whole new can of worms. I've ordered a couple of alternatives, and will test them out next week during my trip to France.

Then it was the apps. Google Sky Map, of course -- and MoonWidget.

Another colleague recommended Rail Planner Live, for all your UK rail trip needs. The download route I took for this required scanning a QR code, so I first downloaded QR Droid. The Rail planner app required actual money -- a whole £3.49! -- but it's definitely worth it.

Next, got my Dropbox account loaded -- piece of cake.

Then, I played around with the camera a bit more (more than merely scanning a barcode, that it). It's got autofocus (which I really need) and zoom, and auto-smile detect, and video, and ... more than I'll ever use, I suspect. The main reason for wanting a camera is as use as a "printing whiteboard" -- after a meeting, just snap the board, and email it to the participants -- a great productivity enhancer. (And I don't even need to photograph the board square on -- Paint Shop Pro has a nifty feature to square it up later.)

Of course, the first thing I wanted to photograph, so that I could blog about it, was the device itself. Ah, well, nothing's perfect! I suppose I could have employed a mirror, but I chose the route of using a separate camera.

I also want an simple sketching utility -- not some mini-CAD app that neatens up things into squared-off boxes and perfect circles -- and not something for the inner-artist (which I don't have) -- just something for simple line drawings that are part of the notes I take in meetings. I couldn't find anything -- but sketching on paper, then photographing, is a good substitute.

Games, of course -- Scrambled Net is frighteningly addictive. I also downloaded a few fractal and cellular automata apps, played with them for a few seconds, and then deleted them. I'm pretty sure I'll be writing the odd complex systems app at some point...

Oh, I believe the device also includes a phone. I haven't used that. Years ago I heard an advertising jingle: "You're never alone with a mobile phone" -- and interpreted it as a warning. Email is so much more civilised.

So, I'm not an early adopter, but after a week in its company, you'll get my new marvellous toy away from me when you prise it from my cold dead hands.

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FractalLab

Okay, here's a compelling reason to upgrade my browser to one that supports WebGL:

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