Snow + tree = breathtaking :)

Taken at the top of Sky Express lift in Heavenly, on Christmas Eve.

Driving to the end of the rainbow...

We - the commuters driving to work - are the pursuers of the proverbial end of the rainbow for a pot of gold. But this morning, it was literally true:

This storm's getting better :)

Well, NWS just updated the forecast, and it gets better and better:

* TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT: 10 TO 20
INCHES...WITH 18 TO 30 INCHES ABOVE 7000 FEET.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Finally, the storm I've been waiting for is coming :)

National Weather Service's special weather statement at 3:24pm today (Dec 13th) says:

* IN THE LAKE TAHOE BASIN...6 TO 12 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE AT LAKE
LEVEL...WITH 10 TO 20 INCHES ABOVE 7000 FEET.

Yeepee! That ought to cover enough coverage to open up a lot more slopes. Sounds like the real snowboard season in Lake Tahoe will start soon :)

A chance to submit your question to the upcoming Obama-Biden administration.

The transition team of the upcoming US administration set up a page using Google Moderator service (internally called Dory - if you've seen Nemo....) http://change.gov/page/content/openforquestions. You can ask any questions, and vote for the questions. I really appreciate the transition team trying to listen to the people through various channels like this. While this is really only a small sign, I already feel better about the new president-elect, and can't wait to see him into the office :)

PS. The URL has changed from my earlier post.
PS2. Now the transition team has a blog explaining why they are doing this: http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/open_for_questions

The flower that blooms in adversity is the most...

Well, the winter's finally arrived in California, but we still have these amazing flowers in our frontyard:



Taken with T-Mobile G1 :)

Heavenly started making snow - opening on Nov 21.

Yeepee! I can't wait to go up there on the Thanksgiving week - I have booked a room for the entire week :)

Bike friendly or not ?

In reply to my previous post, a friend of mine (who doesn't live in the Bay Area) asked me if my route is really bike-friendly. Well, you can find the answer to that question at:

http://www.vta.org/schedules/gmaps/index.html

And if you overlay my route  (unfortunately I don't know how to overlap my route on top of that  bike map yet), you'll notice that a lot of it is covered by bike lanes. And except for a short stretch on Camden (and the right most lane in that section on Camden is really wide so no worries), most of my routes outside bike lane are through neighborhood streets (e.g. through Campbell), which has virtually no traffic in Saturday morning. So that route is very safe and bike friendly (there are less traffic signals on those routes as well, which helps a lot). Oh, and the route is essentially flat - there are very minor incline/declines but no hills at all, with a lot of straight runs where you can go as fast as your legs can allow.

Saturday's bike trip

Yesterday, I had the longest bike trip so far - about 21 miles (33km) from my house to Cupertino High School. 

It took me about an hour and 40 minutes - the average speed of about 12.6 miles per hour.

Considering all those stop times at numerous traffic signals, this is better than I actually expected

- 30 seconds wait at 20 signals would be 10 minutes, and that would make the average speed 14 miles per hour.

Here's the map with my route:

View Larger Map

The weird loop at the end was basically to spend time before I met my wife at

Cupertino High School - I arrived there much earlier than I expected,

so the loop became much larger than I originally planned.

Now this gives me high hope that I can bike to my work within 2.5 hour or so in the bike-to-work day next year...

Silicon Valley's road names

As a computer science geek, Silicon Valley has many "interesting" things around, and among them is the names of streets. Here's a few of them that are interesting to me:

While Semiconductor Drive in San Jose sounds like a perfect place to find semiconductor companies, you'll have better luck around Component Drive, which crosses with N. 1st Street - where you can pretty much find all major and minor semiconductor companies. Not so far from  Component Drive, you can drive through Disk Drive in San Jose, and then after just one signal away and you can hit Fortran Drive and Fortran Court right next to each other.

You don't even need to ask which company is at 1 Amd Place, Sunnyvale. Of course, there are a few giants that won't be satisfied without its name on the road sign: you can't drive through Oracle Parkway in Redmond City or Cisco Way in San Jose, and you don't even need those road names to know where you're getting into if you drive through those streets.

However, not all companies are witless and boring to make their coporate address in their own name.  The famous Infinite Loop in Cupertino is a pun for every programmers out there, although the Loop isn't really a complete loop by itself- which kind of fits the "fruit" company that is located there). Both Network Circles in Santa Clara and Menlo Park are really full circles and you can keep driving on those Circles without leaving them (they are also the address of the same company who owns network.com). 

Joe Garcia for Congress....NOT

If you can vote against Joe Garcia (you can, if you live in Florida), here's one more reason to do so. He's a spammer - I live in California, and I rarely register for any political events/organizations, and I suddenly got two emails from him, asking for support.
Unless this is a deliberate attempt by his opponent to put mud on his face (which I seriously doubt), he's a bona fide spammer in my book, and although I have no idea who he is and what kind of politician he is, he's either not paying enough attention to his campaign or he's using illegal and abusive tactics (spamming IS illegal), and in either case, you should not vote for him.

Keep an eye on LHC

Are you worried about LHC (Large Hadron Collider) bringing the end of the world ? Then rejoice - now you can keep an eye on LHC at: http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Enjoy!

PS. Ian, thanks for the link :)

The first spam that made me laugh...

I found this in my inbox today:

From: "clinton tarsicius" <fuge@mail.totalcar.hu>
To: <gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org>
Subject: I got you naked gcc-patches
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:04:39 +0000

Watch.

For most of you who don't know what gcc-patches means: gcc stands for the GNU Compiler Collection, and gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org is a mailing list where the code changes to the GCC are sent and discussed. Naturally for an open source project, the list is open to everybody. So, in some sense, the spam is not only funny but also correct :)

Software Engineers vs the Universe

I subscribe to the quotes of the day feed from QuotationsPage.com. I really like today's quote:

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

The answer to Apple's use of PA Semi

The new article confirms my own speculation.

What would Apple do with PA Semi ?

Ever since Apple acquired PA Semiconductor (if you missed the original news, one of the first reports is here),
I've been pondering what Apple can/will do with PA Semi that would be interesting enough for PA Semi people to stay around. PA Semi arguably has one of the best microprocessor team in the world, but such people are not easy to keep - after all, if you're a good microprocessor designer, it isn't very hard to find another project/company to jump to. Companies are always looking for great engineers, and PA Semi had many. For Apple to have any hope of retaining those people in PA Semi, it has to have some interesting project for them (or, alternatively, large enough money can do the same job, but I doubt Apple is willing to spend much more - good processor designers are not exactly cheap already). Also, buying a microprocessor design house isn't a tactical move - it must have some deep strategic advantage to Apple.

So what new project would be interesting to PA semi folks and also benefit Apple strategically ? I think it must be a new processor for iPhone and iPod. Apple uses various chips for iPhone and iPods - at least from PortalPlayer, SigmaTel and Samsung. I forget the exact figure, but I think the current estimate of iPod and iPhone unit sales for 2008 is somewhere around 70-80M (with iPhone taking 7-8M). I don't know exact sales breakdown between different iPods, but let's say Apple sells 20M iPod Touch and iPhones (which presumably share the same processor). If the development of a processor for iPod costs $100M a year, per-unit cost would be $5. At that price, it's not a slam dunk in terms of economics, but it's within economically viable range. Apple might very well design their own SoC for iPhone specifically, and can reap the economic benefit.

However, another important point is the explosion of smart phones. The processor arms race that happened with PC is only going to happen again with smart phones. It's bound to happen - as people do more and more stuff on their cell phones, people will demand better performance which translates into new capabilities. Part of the reason Apple lost the first PC game was the performance. Apple couldn't quite develop their own processors - their volume wasn't high enough (I don't remember exact numbers, but before iMac, their sales only around 1M a year, if I remember correctly). This time around, the difference is that Apple has enough volume. With that, the economics of having a processor team in-house just might be viable, and provide all the strategic benefit that comes with it.

SCO used to be a great company, and here's a proof.

I present you a music video of SCOhemian Rhapsody:



with the lyric in its full glory:



(Many thanks to Simon!)

Disappearing doormats ? Here's the answer...

A snowboarder's review of Kirkwood Ski Resort

On April 5, I made a day trip to Kirkwood Ski Resort in Kirkwood, CA.
This was only my second trip to Kirkwood - my first trip was when I was still a budding beginner snowboarder, trying to connect some beginner turns and thus I could ride only very few slopes.
A few more seasons of snowboarding apparently made big difference, and now I was able to ride many of the runs in the resort.

The location of K-wood or simply the Wood for some people, is both its blessing and its curse. Statistically K-wood gets the most snow (average 630+ inches in a season) among the Tahoe area resorts and the base altitude is one of the highest (7800feet, or 2377 meters), which means both quality and quantity of the snow are among the best in the Lake Tahoe area. However, it's also one of the remotest resorts - it's almost 1 hour drive from the lake, or any other "town" other than the resort itself. And the rugged terrain with heavy snowfall makes the resort one of the least accessible, especially during the heavy storm - even though K-wood is one of the closest to the bay area in distance. These factors apparently make lodging more expensive than other resorts (e.g. heavenly, with entire South Lake Tahoe, and any of the other north lake resorts, with Truckee or even Reno which is only 30-45 minutes away from many of the north lake resorts).

Hence, for past four years of snowboarding in the Tahoe area, I've been to the wood only once before. This time though, they had a promotion of giving a one-day free pass for any season pass holders of other resorts - and I happened to have a pass for Heavenly. I also needed to make a day trip, which made Heavenly less desirable due to 30+ minutes more drive, while the spring weather kept the road to K-wood clear and pleasant to drive.

So I woke up at 5:30am, had my first breakfast and packed my breakfast/lunch and snacks, filled up the gas in my car and took off - it was 6 when I got on the freeway. Other than one brief stop at Starbuck's at the beginning of 88 in Stockton, I drove nonstop and it was 9:30 when I arrived in the resort parking lot. I dropped off my board for the tune-up at The Edge Repair Shop - free thanks to Snowbomb Card - and got the free lift ticket from the office (which was indoors, a lot nicer than other resorts where you have to wait outside, often shivering in the cold). While waiting for my board to be ready for ice and slush of the spring, I had my second breakfast.

By 10, I was on my first lift ride of the day, the chair #1 (see the trail map) - I wanted to try the back side, the chair #4 through the chair #2 and #3. The chair #1 is super slow, as is usually the case for a lift serving green trails - unfortunately I noticed one sideways from the top of the chair #11 that can go to the bottom of the chair #2 very late in the afternoon. Anyhow, Snowkirk looked nice and flat and not too short nor too long - just about right for beginners.

When I first looked at the trail map, I didn't pay much attention to the runs from the chair #2. However, on the #2 lift, I saw the nicely groomed Flying Carpet, which is a wide blue run with moderate pitch. Keeping in mind to try that run on the way back to the main lodge later, I went over the hill and headed to the chair #4. On Herringbone Straight, snow was a bit slushy already - considering that it was April, it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately I missed Bud's Alley split (too bad there's no sign) which meant I had to take #3 to go back up the same hill again. The chair #4 is long but fairly fast and provides excellent view of all the runs from it. Here's some pictures I took on the lift:

On the picture, you can see Elevator Shaft to the left of the lift, Hully Gully and Cold Shoulder on the right.

Off the chair, I figured I'd try the easiest runs first, since this was a warm up, and went on Happiness Is. It's a very nice blue cruiser, crossing the huge bowl. It felt a bit like Alpine Bowl in Alpine Meadows - wide open bowl and fun blue run in the middle but plenty of opportunities on the skirt for more steep start. Overall, the snow turned out to be excellent - sure, it wasn't a fresh powder, but it sure was as good as any packed powder condition on a warm winter day. Some pockets that don't get much sun was a bit icy (not on Happiness Is, but on other runs off of #4) but nothing like rock-hard ice on a really cold winter day and my freshly tuned edges had plenty of bite to chew through what little of ice up there.

Hully Gully is like a half made half-pipe that's steep. The pitch is only a tad bit more steep than most blue runs, but the huge gully makes it a lot of fun to zigzag. Right next to Hully Gully is Cold Shoulder. It is a bit more steep than Hully Gully, so about middle of the pack for a black run, and it was topped off with huge rocks at the end - giving some opportunity to try your cliff jumping and rock avoiding skills if you want. I'm not good enough for that kind of stuff, but if and when I'm ready and want to hone my skills, I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable to do my first jump off of those rocks at the end of Cold Shoulder than others, since it has much better visibility than most such places and fairly short (for what it is).

Elevator Shaft, Hully Gully and Cold Shoulder all merge into a single trail which lead to the bottom of the lift #4. It was a nice cruising course, and surprisingly there wasn't any slush - thanks to huge trees casting shadows - it looked like the entire valley/bowl is facing north and the trees blocked sun very well, keeping the snow in good condition. I tried Elevator Shaft again and then headed back to the main lodge.

Now at the top of the lift #2 and #3, I got to enjoy Flying Carpet. As the name suggests, the well-groomed wide run looked like an excellent place for practicing carving, and it sure was. You could turn as wide as you want and the slope was indeed very very consistent, making long carving turns so much more enjoyable. Indeed it was so much fun that I rode the chair many more times before going back to the lodge - being relatively short and with very few people on the slope, you can check your turn shapes you made on the slope on the lift back (if you can find your mark, that is).

One reason K-wood is especially good for snowboarders, is that there are very few flat traverses. But there's still few spots that are not snowboard friendly and that's Hay Flat. It's aptly named cause it's really really flat and combined with the slush, it was a leg killer. If I knew it was that flat, I would have speeded up coming down #2, but being a conscious rider, I followed the SLOW sign at the bottom of #2 and slowed down and got stuck in Hay Flat. Well, at least it wasn't that long, so I got out without burning my leg too much, and was back on the main lodge.

On the lift #2

After lunch, I got on the lift #5, Solitude and rode Lower Zachary and Mokelumne. Lower Zachary was probably on the steep side among blue runs, so had more potential to be quite fun, but unfortunately snow wasn't very good - especially toward the bottom, it was quite slush. Not surprising, since this side of the slope was facing slightly east. Mokelumne was even worse - it was full of slush (though not complete slush with running water). Making sliding turns on slush is painful, but it wasn't too bad to come carving down. Anyway, all those slush forced me to head back to the excellent lift #4.

After many runs on Elevator Shaft/Hully Gully/Cold Shoulder, I wanted to see The Wave more closely - from a far, the snow looked promising. Well, it wasn't so - the entire ledge was all hard-packed rock-solid ice and jumping off vertical for more than my height was certainly beyond my skills, so I rode back to Happiness Is and was indeed very happy to be back :)

On the way back to the lodge, I decided to try High Whiskey - partly to avoid the bad experience of going through Hay Flat, and partly to try out another black run. And I was richly rewarded for that - I made fresh tracks on slightly frozen wind-blown powders on High Whiskey. On April! Fresh tracks! And frozen powder (i.e. not packed nor icy)! I was simply blown away for the excellent snow quality and the perfectly nice pitch. There were some exposed rocks but no narrow chute. If only it had quick lift connections, I'd have loved to make more fresh tracks all over High Whiskey, but the relatively short run combined with the slow lift #1, and another lift #2 and the traverse through Whiskey Slide made it not worth another trip just for it, with only short time left in the afternoon. But if I'm coming back from #4/Sunrise, I'd definitely take High Whiskey anytime.

Back in the main lodge, I had another afternoon snack, and got ready for the last few hours of riding. And I decided to try the lift #11. On my first trip to K-wood two years ago, I was crazy enough to try The Wall - which is one of the signature runs of K-wood (picture below):

On the lift #11, looking at The Wall (top of the other lift).

That was on a knee-deep big powder day, so there was no way I could have hurt myself at the time, but nonetheless it was crazy - I was just about making some basic sliding turns and I was far from ready for even an easy black run. But I remember having some fun (even through tumbling down and slogging through deep powder) down at Wagon Trail at the lower half of The Wall. So I had to try.

If Hully Gully is a half-made half-pipe, Wagon Trail is a nearly-fully-made half-pipe, except nature in its infinite wisdom, made it twisting like a snake, leaving us an amazingly fun run - you could go racing down the valley, or zig-zag the half-pipes, or use small kickers here and there to make small jumps, i.e. infinite sources of fun. Short Spoke, right next to Wagon Trail, is more steep but straight run and I had a lot of fun there too - it's steep but short, so before my legs turned to jellies, I got a nice break on the lift and I was ready for it again. With Wagon Trail and Short Spoke, and with its fast operation, #11 is definitely my favorite chair in K-wood (probably until I'm ready for #10/The Wall).

Usually when I'm riding alone, I stop riding at 3pm or so, partly because I get tired and partly because there aren't many more runs to try with tired legs. K-wood, even with its spring snow (around the base was pretty much slush, though at least not watery slush you can find in many other lower resorts), had many different runs with a lot of good snows that I wanted to keep riding - I left the slope around 3:45pm or so, and only because my legs were simply too tired to have more fun, not because I ran out of more things to try.

With reasonable season pass price, excellent snow and many different fun runs, K-wood is definitely one of my favorite resorts in the Tahoe area. The downside are: less lodging options, more difficult access (if you don't have a 4WD, forget about K-wood during snow season), and no long runs (nothing like Dipper or Orion on Heavenly, or Gold Coast- Mountain Run combo on Squaw).

-On April 6th, still waiting for another opportunity to ride on K-wood (holding on to my snowbomb sugarwood lift ticket on the hands).

Costco, selling everything at warehouse price...even casket.

Now you can even buy a casket online at Costco.

Trees covered in snow in the Bay Area ?

It sure feels like it snowed in front of our office.

make says: multiple infinities are no more than one.

This got to be some kind of make-zen:

 If you give `-j' with no numeric argument, meaning to run
as many jobs as possible in parallel, this is passed down, since
multiple infinities are no more than one.

from info page section 5.6.3 of GNU Make version 3.81.

News is comic, and comic is the news

Too bad the otherwise fine article doesn't mention Daily Show or Colbert Report - especially things like Colbert Bump :)

Ouch (another old news)

Ouch ! - brought to you by Google Maps.

Namdaemun, gone.

A little belated news, but Namdaemun (literally, the great southern gate) of Seoul has burned down as you can see in the picture. The arsonist has been caught, but what difference does it make, when the nearly 600 years old gate has been burned down ? It has withstood so many invasions of various powers, yet, it was crumpled down by one crazy person...

"Yes, do as I say!" - or how to shut up apt-get

$ sudo apt-get install ...
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
....
The following NEW packages will be installed:
...
WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed.
This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
...
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 3 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 18.6kB of archives.
After unpacking 5206kB disk space will be freed.
You are about to do something potentially harmful.
To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'
?]

Now I even need to tell my computer to "do as I say"...

Ski resorts, east coast vs west coast

Ok, not exactly representative samples but nevertheless.
Compare the Google Map terrain views of Stratton Mountain Resort in Vermont vs Squaw Valley in California. It's amazing how flat Stratton mountain looks compared to Squaw.

Well, just in case you don't want to click the above links, here's the map views. You can see the trails if you choose sat view.
Stratton Mountain:


View Larger Map

Squaw Valley:

View Larger Map

The Emperor's Old Clothes

I've recently reread the C.A.R. Hoare's Turing award acceptance speech (available here among other places). And I thought one particular paragraph applies very well to C++:

Programming is complex because of the large number of conflicting objectives for each of our programming projects. If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather than part of its solution.

I guess we - the programming language designers - haven't learned the lesson even after all those wise warnings.