The Computer History Museum’s PDP-1 Restoration web site is now open to the public. Thanks go to the CHM staff for putting together a nice site, and to the rest of the team for their tireless efforts to make the PDP-1 live again, and to keep it working.
On the page of still photos of [...]

Smooth the surface of the sour cream left in the container before you return it to the refrigerator, and it will not separate as much. (Thanks to the printed information on the seal of a tub of Daisy brand sour cream; I’d never seen this advice anywhere else.)
Taking two 3 unit courses in a [...]

I wanted two extra AC adapters for an HP Pavilion dv5210us laptop computer. HP and all the usual places wanted around $70-80. But a Google search for the part number turned up GetPartsOnline.com, which has genuine HP adapters in stock for about $32. The original adapter was a 65W, and the one [...]

Several people have observed that I am opposed to nearly all of the supposed anti-terrorism measures taken by the Bush administration, and sometimes ask me if I have a better idea as to how to fight terrorism. A few people have said that it’s OK for the government to take away our civil liberties [...]

Seen in the list of warnings in an application note for a Futaba vacuum fluorescent display module:
The module should be abolished as the factory waste.
Geez, why do they bother making it if it should be abolished?

On the first Linear Algebra exam, I lost two points for an arithmetic error on one problem, and five points for completely misreading another problem. I read the problem as involving the sum of two matrices being equal to a third matrix, while it was actually about the determinants of the matrices. The [...]

It would be nice if G.W. Bush (and the rest of the neocons) would take a lesson from President Ronald Reagan:
There is no left or right. There’s only an up or down. Up to the ultimate in individual freedom, man’s age old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society — or [...]

I just received my grades from the instructor. 97% on the final exam, and an “A” for the semester. I expected that to do well, but it’s nice to be more certain. The official release date for the grades isn’t until August 30.

Actually it is fun, though a bit tedious. My HP-49G+ calculator, or Mathematica or Maple on my laptop, can of course determine Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors automatically, but the point of today’s Linear Algebra class (and Monday’s quiz) is to learn how to do it ourselves.
Computing an matrix of cofactors (and its transpose, the adjoint) [...]

I visited my grandmother in Kansas City.  It was a year or two after my grandfather passed away (whereas in reality he outlived her by ten years).  Anyhow, I had a good visit, but started having problems when it was time to return home.  I had a lot of things to do at the last [...]