Note to self: Don’t use a random orbital sander for more than 30 minutes at a time or you really start getting some weird affects. When I hit about an hour’s worth of time sanding a chopping block/shelf I’m building, my hands began to tingle. After a break, I then went back and sanded for another half hour, and now I’m finding it difficult to type this.
Posted by g1powermac under Note To Self | Comments Off
As you have probably read in past posts, you know I’m a fairly strict vegan. I got started eating vegeterian over a year and a half ago before switching to vegan about six months or so ago. I did this primarily to lose all my, well, ‘sitting in front of a computer all day’ weight. Over this time, I lost about 90lb and can finally say I look thin for probably the second time of my life (first being when I was really young). And really, I quite well enjoy eating the way I do as it’s another step to making myself different from everyone else, which has been something I’ve done all my life.
So anyway, besides fitting into the ‘standard’ vegan profile of not eating any animal products, I also tend to avoid most heavily processed foods and prefer that the food is certified organic. I still eat some stuff that comes in a box, but I make sure the ingredient list is as small as possible which will tend to let you know how processed the food is. So while shopping at the local health food store, I stumbled across a really nice snack. It’s a small package of dried organic mulberries made by Kopali. I’ve never had a mulberry before, but I must say they’re quite tasty. And they’re packed full of nutrients compared to your standard raisin. They even make the list of the 15 most healthy berries. So go out there and try some dried mulberries, even if you’re a cheese pizza loving geek. It may help you later on.
Posted by g1powermac under Health Stuff | Comments Off
Over this past week, I’ve purchased 360 Atmel AT49F002-70JC (2Mb flash chip), 1000 IDT 71024S15Y (1Mb sram chip), and 140 Motorola MC68030RP25C (old m68k processor found in old Macs and other computers) in large lots on eBay. Now when you add them altogether, what do you get? Something big…a supercomputer. Well, ok, maybe not a supercomputer of today’s standard since I got ancient processors, but it will still prove a concept. And this concept will be based off the work I’ve done previously with my PComMS project and off two other things.
One is based on the way the early Mac OS was built. Originally, most of the operating system was built inside the ROM on the Mac’s motherboard. User programs would call functions based in the OS using the m68k’s trap/illegal operation ability which would basically allow you to create ‘custom’ instructions.
The other is based on an older piece of technology meant to fix the original megahertz plateau in the late 1980′s. It was called the Transputer. The Transputer processor was a fascinating system that had built in serial links to allow each processor to talk with another. Coupled with a programming language like Occam, you could easily build a distributed system in a single box.
My idea here is to create a ‘boxed’ distributed system that can be upgraded by just adding more processor cards that contain the basics: the CPU, RAM, and a bit of ROM to boot the processor. So no more replacing the RAM or the CPU in your computer to make it faster. With this, you’d just stick in another processor card. I’ll be posting more details about this project in the coming months.
Posted by g1powermac under Computers,Electronics | Comments Off