A la peanut butter sandwiches! - Fun thing to build if you've gotta few million $$ lying around

A la peanut butter sandwiches!

see http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Amazing_Mumford

not really a blog, here are just some notes, quotes, links and thoughts that are as much for myself as anything. if anyone else ever reads this, please excuse the silliness. hi mom

and, "smallduck".. don't call me that. it's just an id from back in the day playing Marathon at work (guess what colour i always was). as well as going to this page, through the inevitable magic of RSS these entries also land on my facebook page - where i use my real name :-o

i recently changed the theme of this page but i still don't like it. i then customized it a bit and now i like it slightly less.

Apr 24

Fun thing to build if you've gotta few million $$ lying around

Apparently, former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold commissioned the building of a Difference Engine a few years ago, originally designed by Charles Babbage in the 1840s but too large and costly to build in its day. The Difference Engine is a massive mechanical calculator with much greater capabilities than the simpler machines of its day. It’s the second of 2 such machines ever to be built, is eleven feet long, seven feet high and weighs five tons. I wonder if he keeps it in his living room.

The first Difference Engine ever built was completed in 1991 by the London Science Museum and is currently being moved to go on display next month in San Francisco.