The Eclectic Technologist

A 60 Minutes report on Wall Street’s shadow market yields some interesting links:

• Copula - a multivariate joint distribution
• Collateralized debt obligations - unregulated (in 2008) asset backed security

Apparently, the Archimedean copula was used to price mortgage backed securities responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown.

I feel like we are living the Twilight Zone. If Rod Serling were alive today and still writing, his screenplays might look more like documentaries rather than science fiction. My feeling is that there has been a rise in mediocrity and few who question “opinion leaders” or their lack of hard facts and reasoning. My conclusion is that we are in a time of weak leaders.

Apparently, I am not alone. I was channel surfing last night and I stumbled on Tim Russerts show. He was interviewing Lee Iacocca, the former chairman of Chrysler. I caught the interview in the middle when Mr. Iacocca was talking about energy sources and alternative fuels. The subject is of great interest to me, so I listened. The interview was not limited to energy and cars. Mr. Iacocca was promoting his most recent book “Where have all the leaders gone”. The book has become an immediate best seller.

Iacocca is no longer a young man, he’s 82 now. The brash industrialist with a bold vision had been replaced by a humble and deliberate statesman. Without naming names, he quietly, but convincingly lambasted our current business and political leaders on all fronts. He gave credit where it was due, but challenged all of us to expect more and do more.

He talked of some our greatest achievements, the second world war, harnessing atomic energy, and landing a man on the moon. He believed that if we could do those things, we could solve our energy problems and develop better cars. It was absolutely inspiring.

After the interview, I started surfing again. Incredibly, C-Span was about to air a book signing speech by Lee Iacocca. He read an excerpt which is available online. It was really amazing. Hopefully, the video will be available online soon. I strongly encourage you to watch it and maybe read the book.

I’ve been myopic since high school and I’ve never cared for glasses. Contacts are a little more convenient, but they have their drawbacks as well. Several friends have taken the lasik plunge, so I went for it.

I chose to schedule the procedure on a Wednesday afternoon. It’s really not a big deal, but I figured that Mondays are usually weekend recovery time. Who knows what level of binge drinking the doctor might have endured a day earlier. Fridays were also ruled out as most people want to get out early. Would you want to be the patient who held up happy hour?

I was a little lucky as there were few patients that day. Two optometrists were available to independently check my prescription. They came up with the same results, which was encouraging. I have some astigmatism in my left eye, which they wanted be sure I was OK with the correction. I guess some people might find it disorienting. I chose to have both eyes corrected. Monovision affects depth perception, which is important for pilots.

I couldn’t have asked for a better opthomolagist. He was very professional and personable. He assured me that if he felt there was any risk to my vision he would not even touch my eyes. Fortunately, I was a middle of the road case, so there were no worries. Still, just prior to the procedure, I felt compelled to ask if the doctor felt good and if he slept well the night before. Both answers were in the affirmative, so the show was on.

The procedure is really like science fiction, almost drive-thru in terms of efficiency. It takes only a few minutes and is largely painless. There is some discomfort when the doctor places the vacuum ring on your eyeball to hold it still. It’s just on the threshold of pain. The microkeratome cut is completely painless, I heard a brief buzzing and that’s it. The laser keratectomy is also painless, it takes only 30 seconds or so and smells like burning hair.

The recovery seems to vary quite a bit. Some patients feel a little discomfort, others find it almost painful. I was in the latter category. By the time I got home, my eyes were really tearing up as the topical anesthetic wore off. At the peak it felt like soap in my eyes. I should have taken the Tylenol I was given earlier. After a four hour nap, I was fine, with only minor discomfort.

Visual acuity comes and goes as the cornea heals. The variation can continue up to three months until vision stabilizes. After a few weeks, my vision was quite good, at least 20/20. Moisturizing drops really help, I even use the night time ointment.

I spoke with a customer service agent that had lasik surgery himself. Apparently, he was legally blind most of his life. His eyesight without glasses was 20/1400 and could only be corrected to about 20/240 with glasses. He couldn’t even drive in most states. After lasik, his eyesight was better than 20/20. Can you imagine going from legally blind to better than 20/20 vision in a matter of minutes? It had to have been a life changing experience. As you might expect, he was a strong proponent of lasik.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with the results. I would recommend it, if you don’t care for glasses or contacts. If you decide to do it, it’s probably a good idea to take a painkiller soon after the procedure to avoid any discomfort. Definitely use the rewetting drops often, your eyesight will be better sooner.

It looks like I have finally hit the very top of Google rankings. Just search for madhu. For years I have been #2 or #3, but it appears that at least for the time being, I’m at the top. I guess the only place I can go now is down

I always served two masters: hardware and software. In the early part of my career, I designed mostly hardware, such as control systems, computer interfaces, and data acquisition. Over time, there was greater demand for software, so that’s what I do for a living today. These days, hardware is more of a hobby than a profit center.

Recently, my interest in hardware has re-emerged. Fortunately, I’ve set up a nice bench with test equipment and soldering iron ready for action. I’ve been meaning to document some of circuits I’m working on. This article is a step in that direction.

I was cleaning out some old computer equipment from my parents house over the weekend and I found some real relics. There were numerous monitors, printers, scanners and the like. There was also Callan Unistar lurking in there (early 68k based Sys V Unix box). The processor board failed years ago. A DEC Alpha machine was there also. The real find was one of the original 128k Macs that my brother purchased in 1984. It’s actually a “fat mac”. The memory was upgraded to 512k by yours truly. It was one of our guinea pigs for a fly by night Mac upgrade business we were running in those days. I recall that it didn’t boot after soldering IC sockets (the original Mac had no sockets for memory). That was painful, but after removing all the sockets and resoldering with greater care, it worked. It’s a shame to toss out that piece of history. If you want it, let me know.
In a related note, I just purchased a new iMac and it is fantastic! It took only two days for delivery, which was really nice. If you read my previous post, it’s no surprise that I have just about had it with Windows. After talking with several colleagues, it seems that XP just doesn’t work smoothly with multiple users and I’m not about to figure out why.

The new Intel Macs are really nice. The LCD monitor is bright and crisp. The speed is excellent, maybe twice as fast as my 1.6 GHz pentium. The price is quite reasonable also. With Parallels Desktop, you can run Windows, Linux, and whatever else you like all at once. Macs are back and now it’s no longer an either-or proposition. BTW, Apple stock is up after the much anticipated announcement of the iPhone.

I returned from EclipseCon 2006 with renewed respect for the many developers all over the world that are contributing to the Eclipse platform. Sure, there’s a lot of open source software out there, but Eclipse stands alone in terms of quality and imagination.

I chatted briefly with Todd Nielson, CEO of Borland. He had some interesting comments on the direction of software and the role of open source. Todd was with Microsoft for many years and confirmed that Microsoft has only two profitable products: Office and Windows. All others lose money or break even. SQL server might make a little money, though. This curious fact explains a lot of Microsofts business strategy.

I also interviewed Ward Cunningham, which was a lot of fun. The complete podcast of the interview is available on SQLSummit.com. After the interview, we chatted for an hour or more. We talked about all kinds of things, much of which revolved around novel applications for Atmel AVR microcontrollers. The most interesting thing I learned was the idea of trying many ideas quickly. This seems to be central to Wards thinking.