BilikFamily.com

Snow - We got a few inches of snow this morning. Nothing new, eh? After all, this is New Hampshire in January. We also got an inch on New Years Day, so what's special about today? Well, unlike the powdery stuff on Sunday, the snow today was very sticky. Perfect for making snowballs and snowmen. On my drive to work the trees were gorgeous because the stickiness of the snow made it cling to the branches and made the trees look "frosted", for lack of a better term. I wished I had my camera. It looked like an Ansel Adams photograph outside. Alas, over the next several hours the temperatures warmed, the wind kicked up, and by afternoon the aesthetics were gone.

From the girls point of view, it was great because Milford schools had a two hour delay. From Michelle's point of view, it was not so great because Milford schools had a two hour delay. *sigh* Mommies know what I'm talking about.

SystemC - I had a geeky highlight over the weekend. Folks who know me know that my biggest computer strength is in the area of the computer languages that we hardware guys use to develop digital logic (as opposed to the software developers writing programs). For the past decade the top two languages have been VHDL and Verilog. Unfortunately it's hard to just tinker, experiment, and learn with them on your own free time because for the most part, a reliable VHDL or Verilog environment costs serious money... five figures. No really! The tools are usually only within financial reach of electronic design houses. Until a few years ago you also needed an expensive workstation to run the tools on. Luckily now high end personal computers suffice.

Over the past few years a new comer language has been gaining some ground: SystemC. It is completely open and free. In December it became an official IEEE standard, just like VHDL and Verilog are.

IEEE is the professional organization of electrical engineers that I've belonged to for years. Having their blessing as an official standard is key to getting momentum in my field. For example you may have heard of wireless networking referred to as "802.11" (b or g). That's the official IEEE standard identifier for the wireless protocol. Once it became an open standard, computer vendors had something that they could build to and still have interoperability with each other. So now you can sit with a laptop in a coffee shop (or McDonalds) and surf the internet. In the electronics world having an officially "blessed" IEEE standard is A Good Thing(tm). It makes something "real" and not just some toy concept or proprietary implementation.

But here's the kicker for me: the latest version of SystemC is not only a free, official, and open standard, but it builds and runs natively on Macs! No workarounds or compromises. It's the real thing. Who would have thought that a Macintosh, computers that a few years ago were thought to be foo-foo computers used only by Bohemian, artsy, "think different" types, would be a platform for the hi-tech world of digital electronic design?! I downloaded it, compiled it, ran the demos, and thought, "Mac OS X, you've come a long way baby!"

Gospels - If you ever click on the link tabs at the top, you might have noticed that the Gospel page was inactive for a couple of days. I guess the Council of US Bishops made a New Years resolution as well. They overhauled the way they do their HTML to be a little more up to date as far as design practices. Alas, their changes temporarily broke my program that grabs the current day's Gospel reading. I spent a few minutes on the program today and fixed it. Hopefully it should run every day now, as it has in the past.

Oh God, You Devil - Tonight Claire and I watched Oh God, You Devil. There's a line near the end (after the poker match for the lead character's soul) that I never noticed before.

God: You gonna stay?
Devil: For a while... I try to spend a few weeks in Vegas every year. What about you?
God: I'm on my way to New Hampshire. The leaves are changing.
Devil: Good time to go. Next year, I'm bringing back the gypsy moth.
God: Your impossible!

(screen capture from the movie)

Hey, New Hampshire doesn't get much mention in movies. We'll take what we can get! *grin*