jkslade.net

I work in Intel’s Itanium microprocessor design group. Our most recently completed project was the Tukwila processor. Intel’s Itanium line has not had a lot of positive press in it’s 10+ year history, due to delays, underwhelming performance and slow market adoption. Tukwila looks much better so far.

These are enterprise-grade microprocessors, not like your standard Pentium or Core Duo chip. This baby packs 2.05 billion transistors, the little switches that control all the logic, store memory and such. For comparison:

Intel 4004 (1971): 2300
Intel 8088 (1979): 29,000
Pentium (1993): 3,100,00
Pentium 4 (2000): 42,000,000
Core 2 Quad (2006): 582,000,000
Tukwila (2008): 2,050,000,000

I’m a geek, I think that’s cool.

My job, specifically, involves writing software used to design and test the billions of tiny wires that connect all those switches together. At least, that’s one part of my contribution to Tukwila.

Each one of these projects lasts 4-5 years all together, though I’m only involved in the first half of that (design before it gets manufactured). After the first manufacturing samples — actual silicon parts we can plug in and test — my focus shifts to the next project, Poulson in this case. Poulson is my 5th major project in the 11 years I’ve been with the group.

I actually rather enjoy the work I do. I work with great people on challenging projects, doing a combination of long-term strategic development and daily problem solving. The challenges change frequently as we try to push the envelope.

Only problem is, I don’t see myself doing the same thing for another 20-30 years. So now I’m trying to figure out what’s next… Stay tuned for that!

Tk::GraphViz v1.00 is now available on CPAN. Alternately, download it here.

This perl module uses the GraphViz graph visualization engine to display directed and undirected graphs within a Tk::Canvas. It makes it easy to bind actions to nodes and edges of the graph for interactive applications.

I’ve started listening to last.fm as I work, and I’ve really enjoyed the swing tag — a nice mix of upbeat swing, not too distracting.

Here’s something I’d love to build:

It’s an RC car modified with a kit to replace the battery power cells with a compact hydrogen fuel cell system. It’s a bit expensive, unfortunately — the whole system would probably be ~$2,000. But it would be educational, right?

This is just a test of the WPVideo plugin I just enabled:

How it works: the two Tesla coils have a primary frequency around 40kHz+ — outside the audible range for humans. The signal can be turned on and off at, say, 440 times per second (440Hz = A) to produce an audible tone. So it’s like radio waves being modulated to carry a signal, but it’s actually lightning

I agree with others that it is silly to create grandiose goals to start the new year — only to forget them within a week. I’m not planning to set any new goals, really, just write down some of the things I’m actively working towards, and elicit feedback and support from others to help me achieve them. So here goes…

Get under 175 and stay there - I’m generally active a reasonably healthy, but losing a couple pounds would be great. I don’t have the time and energy to commit to really shaping my body… this goal simply means that I need to be more disciplined, mainly cutting out the junk and exercising a bit more regularly. I expect to hit 175 by the end of March.

Go to bed by midnight at least 3 days a week - This is a major issue and a discipline I need to develop. Getting more sleep, and more consistently, will have many positive ripple effects in other areas.

Never use credit cards again - Mostly we keep credit cards for emergencies, and pay the balances quickly. But really it’s a crutch to keep from having to be more disciplined and plan better. I’ve been reading and listening to stuff from Dave Ramsey, and he’s helped me realize my dependence on them and that it has to stop. I strongly encourage you to follow his advice (which certainly isn’t anything new).

Establish a 6-month emergency fund - Another of Dave’s baby steps (also not unique to him). It’s tricky to balance all the competing needs for financial resources, but this is something that has to be done first. Our landscaping and other plans will just have to wait a while longer.

Earn revenue from my genealogy business - I’ve been working on some web-based genealogy service stuff with some partners for about a year now… mostly we’ve just been learning and prototyping, and not moving very fast at all. This year I plan to move that far enough along that it generates actual revenue - anything more than zero counts! I see the potential as being much greater than that (or else why would I do it?) but, realistically, everything else that takes my time and energy is not going to go away.

Get out of the house with my wife at least twice a month - Two days until our 11th anniversary, and I certainly have a lot more to learn about dating her. It doesn’t have to be anything lavish, but it does have to be just the two of us.

Ski and golf with my boys - I’m looking forward to lots of fun activities with my boys as they get older. It will be a while before we all are able to do these things together as a family, but I’ll do what I can for now. As Kim’s grandfather Brig says, “All I hope for this year is to make more money and play more golf.”

Use technology to benefit my extended family - uh, that doesn’t count as a goal, but I’ll let it slide - I’m kind of the nerd of the family, and that’s okay. I know a lot about the internet and such that can benefit my family. This past year I got my mother blogging. This year I need to finish up on the Lofgreen Newsletter project I started a couple years ago. Then there’s teaching about things like RSS, avoiding viruses, phishing and other attacks, filtering bad content, etc. There’s no way I can keep up on all of it myself, but I’m happy to consult and help any who ask.

Looks like 2007 will be as busy as ever. Hopefully writing these down and sharing them publicly will help to yield positive results. I’m looking forward to it.

http://del.icio.us/jeremy.slade - My bookmarks

Here is an interesting article on making a career out of designing & developing computer / video games… This is something I am very interested in, but most likely just as a hobbyist. Perhaps once I get to be wealthy enough through other means that I can pursue this full time, that would be fun.

I am interested in developing games mainly for two reasons:

• It is an artistic pursuit, and ultimately it is the creative part of engineering that I enjoy most.
• There just aren’t enough games that fit what I want to do with my boys.

The type of games I’m interested in making are very much family oriented — but it seems to me that current ‘family oriented’ games are geared at ages 3-6… there’s not much there for pre-teen, even into teenage years. I want games that I can play together with all of my boys, something low-key but engaging. It needs to be easy to get into the action, and play for 1/2 to 1 hour — say in the evenings after homework and such is done. Most games I see are just to large in scope to fit that, not to mention that most ‘high action’ games are too violent for my taste.

Anyway, it’s a dream to work towards, hopefully before all my kids are grown and out of the house

What do we like to play now?

• Battlefield 1942 — fun, but not enough team focus and not enough ‘arcade’ action to be real fun for my kids now. They aren’t into completing missions yet, don’t have the reading skills for it. And it is beyond my 3-year old, and he hates being left out
• bzflag — nice freeware, relatively fun action. Killing each other over and over again gets boring, the bots are no good to play with. But the controls are simple enough that my 3-year old can play (at least be involved)… now we just need one more computer for everyone (except mom) to have a seat.
• StarCraft — I’ve got my oldest son (8) into playing this a bit, but he doesn’t quite have the patience and sense of strategy to really get into it yet. But it is a great multi-player game… I wish it were faster to get into the action, though.

I use IMAP to read mail off my debian (ubuntu) fileserver. When the SSL cert expires, I get annoying warnings, which can be fixed by renewing the SSL cert — Thanks to n8 foo for the tip:

cd /etc/ssl/certs
openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -out imapd.pem -keyout imapd.pem -days 365
Another link from n8:

http://www.knowplace.org/pages/howtos/linux_imapd_with_ssl_howto.php