World's first 40G silicon laser modulator

Silicon Photonics Research (Intel)

A laser modulator that encodes optical data at 40 billion bits per second.

A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) could provide a cost-effective
solution for optical communication and future optical interconnects in
computing industry. PICs on silicon platforms have attracted particular
interest because of silicon’s low cost and high volume
manufacturability.

The high-speed silicon modulator could find use in various future applications. For example, a highly integrated silicon photonic circuit may provide a cost effective solution for the future optical interconnects within computers and other devices. With the demonstration of the 40 Gbps silicon modulator and the electrically pumped hybrid silicon laser, it will become possible to integrate multiple devices on a single chip that can transmit terabits of aggregate data per second in the near future – truly enabling tera-scale computing.

OpenDX

OpenDX

OpenDX is a uniquely powerful, full-featured software package for the visualization of scientific, engineering and analytical data: Its open system design is built on a standard interface environments. And its sophisticated data model provides users with great flexibility in creating visualizations.

World's Largest Linux System Image

 

SGI

Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

SGI® Altix® 4700 blade platform and a beta version of SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell, SGI demonstrated a single system image (SSI) running on a world-record 1,024 processors. Until that moment, the largest Linux SSI operated on 512 processors - another SGI record.

The record-breaking Altix 4700 system is now installed in Munich, Germany, at the Leibniz Computing Centre Munich (LRZ). LRZ houses Germany's National Supercomputer System, and the Altix 4700 installation marked the completion of LRZ's Phase I deployment, which incorporates 4,096 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors, 17TB of global shared memory, and a 330TB SGI InfiniteStorage solution.

Massive

Massive Software

Massive is the premier 3D animation system for generating crowd-related visual effects for film and television. Using Massive, an animator or TD designs characters with a set of reactions to what is going on around them.

The reactions of the characters determine what they do and how they do it. Their reactions can even simulate emotive qualities such as bravery, weariness, or joy. The agent reactions can control key-framed or motion captured animation clips called actions.

Gattaca (1997)

Gattaca IMDb

Gattaca Wikipedia

A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.

"You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back."

Richard Phillips Feynman

Richard Phillips Feynman
(1918 - 1988)

American theoretical physicist who was probably the most brilliant, influential, and iconoclastic figure in his field in the post-World War II era.

Feynman remade quantum electrodynamics--the theory of the interaction between light and matter--and thus altered the way science understands the nature of waves and particles. He was co-awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965 for this work, which tied together in an experimentally perfect package all the varied phenomena at work in light, radio, electricity, and magnetism.

R.P. Feynman Wikipedia

"To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in."
The Character of Physical Law

Autodesk Inferno 2007

   

   

Autodesk Inferno

Autodesk® Inferno® 2007 software is the ultimate visual effects system for high-speed compositing, advanced graphics, and interactive client-driven design. Accelerate your workflow with the robust creative toolset, real-time interactivity, and unmatched performance.

System Configuration:

    * Dual core dual Opteron processor workstation, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® operating system.
    * NVIDIA® FX 5500G.
    * Real-time 8/10-bit 4:4:4 ITU-R 601 standard definition, and SMPTE 292M HDTV I/O.
    * Support for 4K 10- and 12-bit film.

Voices Of A Distant Star (Hoshi No Koe - 2002)

Voices Of A Distant Star IMDb

Voices Of A Distant Star Wikipedia

Hoshi No Koe is a Japanese anime OVA by Makoto Shinkai. It chronicles a long-distance relationship between a teenage couple who communicate by sending emails via their mobile phones across interstellar space.

Hoshi no Koe was written, directed and produced entirely by Makoto on his Macintosh computer. Makoto and his fiancée provided the voice acting for the working dub. (A second Japanese dub was later created for the DVD release with professional voice actors.) Makoto's friend Tenmon, who had worked with Makoto at his video game company, provided the soundtrack. Shinkai and Tenmon had earlier worked together in the making of Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko ('She and her Cat'). The duo later also collaborated in the 2004 release of The Place Promised in Our Early Days. This half hour OVA also represents the "long distance" relationship between Makoto Shinkai and his wife, as Shinkai spent often long hours in the studio and communicated with his wife via text messaging.

Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces (1978)

Catmull Clark Wikipedia

Symbolcraft Catmull-clark

The Catmull-Clark algorithm is used in subdivision surface modeling to create smooth surfaces. It was devised by Edwin Catmull (of Pixar) and Jim Clark, and won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 2006.

When a polyhedron is subdivided with the Catmull-Clark method, new vertices (called "face points") are placed at the center of each original face, new "edge points" are similarly placed at the center of each original edge, and then new edges are added to connect the new edge points to the new adjacent face points. The positions of the vertices are calculated as follows:

* The face points are positioned as the average of the positions of the face's original vertices;
* The edge point locations are calculated as the average of the center point of the original edge and the average of the locations of the two new adjacent face points;
* The old vertices are repositioned according to the equation:

Q 2R S(n-3)
--- + ---- + --------
n n n

where:

o Q is the average of the new face points surrounding the old vertex,
o R is the average of the midpoints of the edges that share the old vertex,
o S is the old vertex point, and
o n is the number of edges that share the old vertex.

"Recursively generated B-spline surfaces on arbitrary topological surfaces" by E. Catmull and J. Clark (Computer-Aided Design 10(6):350-355, November 1978).

The Cornell Box

The Cornell Box

The Cornell Box Wikipedia

The Cornell Box is a test aimed at determining the accuracy of rendering software by comparing the rendered scene with an actual photograph of the same scene. It was created by the Cornell University Program of Computer Graphics for a paper published in 1984.

A physical model of the box is created and photographed with a CCD camera. The exact settings are then measured from the scene: emission spectrum of the light source, reflectance spectra of all the surfaces, exact position and size of all objects, walls, light source and camera.

The same scene is then reproduced in the renderer, and the output file is compared with the photography.

Solvay Conferences

Institut international de physique Solvay

The International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry, located in Brussels, were founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1912, following the historic invitation-only 1911 Conseil Solvay, the first world physics conference. The Institutes coordinate conferences, workshops, seminars, and colloquia.

Following the initial success of 1911, the Solvay Conferences (Conseils Solvay) have been devoted to outstanding preeminent open problems in both physics and chemistry. They occur every three years. The 23rd Solvay Conference took place in Brussels on Dec 1-3, 2005, on the subject: "The Quantum Structure of Space and Time".

(The photograph; Fifth conference participants, 1927. Institut International de Physique Solvay: A. Piccard, E. Henriot, P. Ehrenfest, Ed. Herzen, Th. De Donder, E. Schrödinger, J.E. Verschaffelt, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, R.H. Fowler, L. Brillouin, P. Debye, M. Knudsen, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, P.A.M. Dirac, A.H. Compton, L. de Broglie, M. Born, N. Bohr, I. Langmuir, M. Planck, Mme. Curie, H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, P. Langevin, Ch. E. Guye, C.T.R. Wilson, O.W. Richardson)

One Hundred Years of Solitude (G.G. Marquez, 1967)

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad) is a novel by Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that was first published in Spanish in 1967 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana), with an English translation by Gregory Rabassa released in 1970 (New York: Harper and Row). The book is considered García Márquez's masterpiece, metaphorically encompassing the history of Colombia or Latin America. The novel chronicles a family's struggle, and the history of their fictional town, Macondo, for one hundred years. García Márquez acknowledges in his autobiography Living to Tell the Tale that Macondo was based on the towns where he spent his childhood. Like many other novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude crosses genres, combining elements of history, magical realism, and pure fiction.

Gabriel José García Márquez, also known as Gabo (born March 6, 1927 in Aracataca, Magdalena) is a Colombian novelist, journalist, publisher, political activist, and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gabriel García Márquez has lived mostly in Mexico and Europe and currently spends much of his time in Mexico City. Widely credited with introducing the global public to magical realism, he has secured both significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success. Many people hold that García Márquez ranks alongside his co-writers of the Latin American Boom, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar as one of the world's greatest 20th-century authors.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

Ghost Recon Ubi UK

GRAW 2 Wikipedia

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW 2) is the sequel to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. It expands on the game play of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and is the eighth installment in the popular Ghost Recon tactical shooter video game series, published by Ubisoft.

The game takes place in 2014, 48 hours after the events of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, just south of the United States border, and deals with the conflict between a Mexican rebel group, Mexican loyalists, and the U.S. Army for a time span of 72 hours. A wide array of location types are included, featuring mountains, small towns, urban environments, and a large hydro-electric dam just north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

(Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was noted for its deeply immersive atmosphere, smart AI, wide variety of weapons, multiple action scenes and believable storyline. On 5 October, 2006 Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter won the BAFTA award for Game of the Year.)

Beryl

Beryl is a compositing window manager for the X Window System.



Beryl

Beryl Wikipedia

Beryl is a fork of Compiz, and is currently being merged back into Compiz.[1], under the name of Compiz Fusion.

Beryl is the project name for the Quinnstorm branch of Compiz, announced on 19 September 2006 after Quinnstorm and the development team, the leader of which was Eamonn Bell, decided that the fork had come too far from the original Compiz started by Novell (compiz-vanilla). After the Novell XGL/Compiz team (mostly David Reveman) refused the proposition to merge the Quinnstorm changes with compiz-vanilla, the decision was made to make a real differentiation. As of 20 October 2006, version 0.1.1 has been released into the original compiz-quinnstorm repositories and mirrors. On 15 March 2007, version 0.2.0 FINAL was officially released.

Kernel Based Virtual Machine (KVM)

Kernel based Virtual Machine

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. KVM also requires a modified QEMU although work is underway to get the required changes upstream.

Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc. The kernel component of KVM is included in mainline Linux, as of 2.6.20.

GuestOS Support Status

Katatonia

Katatonia

Katatonia Wikipedia

Katatonia is a Swedish metal band formed in Stockholm, in 1991 by Jonas Renkse (formerly Lord Seth) and Anders Nyström (formerly Blakkheim). The early Katatonia albums are noted for the overall melancholy of their sound, often giving them the classification of Doom Metal. Katatonia's more recent albums have progressed to a wider sound, with modern overtones, dropped guitars, symphonic synths and arrangements, alternative sounds and generally heavier riffs.

Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt performed the harsh vocals on Brave Murder Day and Sounds of Decay after regular Katatonia singer (and then drummer) Jonas Renkse became unable to scream properly. Katatonia had a mini-breakup circa 1996-1997, but reunited later. During this time, the band decided to change their sound to a more soft sound with clean vocals beginning with 1998's Discouraged Ones. This shift in instrumental tone and vocal style was accompanied by an appreciable decrease in the length of the band's songs, with latter period songs typically lasting around four minutes.

wikisky.org

wikisky.org

WIKISKY.ORG is an interactive information-management system which encompasses the entire outer space. The basic element of the system is a detailed map of the whole star sky that mirrors more than half a billion celestial objects. No additional instructions are necessary to browse the map or change its scale. The process is very easy. By using the smallest scale, the user can view the whole star sky at once. Using the largest scale, the user can view tiny areas with the most distant and weakest sky objects.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Hubble Space Telescope Wikipedia

HubbleSite

Hubble Ultra Deep Field, or HUDF, is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, composited from Hubble Space Telescope data accumulated over a period from September 3, 2003 through January 16, 2004. It is the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light, looking back in time more than 13 billion years. The HUDF contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies.

Global Illumination Compendium

Global Illumination Compendium

Philip Dutré


The Global Illumination Compendium, an effort to bring together most of the useful formulas and equations for global illumination algorithms in computer graphics.

This collection of formulas and equations is supposed to be useful for anyone who is active in the field of global illumination in computer graphics.

GRIN: Great Images In NASA

GRIN

GRIN is a collection of over a thousand images of significant historical interest scanned at high-resolution in several sizes. This collection is intended for the media, publishers, and the general public looking for high-quality photographs.

(The picture: HL-10 on Lakebed with B-52 flyby 1969)

Robert LUDLUM (The Bourne Ultimatum)

ROBERT LUDLUM (1927-2001) was the author of twenty-one novels, each one a New York Times bestseller. There are more than 210 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. He is the author of The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Chancellor Manuscript, and the Jason Bourne series--The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum--among others. Mr. Ludlum passed away in March, 2001.

Robert LUDLUM IMDb

Robert LUDLUM Wikipedia

ThrustSSC - Mach1.02

ThrustSSC

ThrustSSC Wikipedia


Thrust SSC (SuperSonic Car) is a British designed and built jet-propelled car developed by Richard Noble, Glynne Bowsher, Ron Ayers and Jeremy Bliss,[1] which holds the world land speed record, set on October 15, 1997, when it achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph) and became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier, not considering the earlier but unofficial claim of the Budweiser Rocket.

The car was driven by Wing Commander Andy Green in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada United States. It was powered by two afterburning Rolls-Royce Spey engines as used in British F-4 Phantom II jet fighters. It is 16.5 m (54 ft) long, 3.7 m (12 ft) wide and weighs 10.5 tons (10.7 t). The twin engines developed a thrust of 223 kN (50,000 lbf) and burned around 4 Imperial gallons per second (18.2 l/s or 4.8 US gallons/s). Transformed into the usual terms for car mileages based on its maximum speed, the fuel consumption was about 5,500 l/100 km or 0.04 mpg U.S.

Phoenix Spacecraft: Next Stop, Mars

Phoenix Spacecraft


A new space explorer is waiting in the wings and ready to take center stage: the Mars lander called Phoenix. Set for launch aboard a Delta II rocket, Phoenix's assignment is to dig through the Martian soil and ice in the arctic region and use its onboard scientific instruments to analyze the samples it retrieves.

Both rocket and spacecraft are undergoing final preparation at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Launch:
Date: Aug. 3
Time: 5:35 a.m. EDT

SGI Octane

SGI Octane - Wikipedia

SGI.com       SGI Octane 2

Inside SGI Octane

The SGI Octane (and the very similar SGI Octane2) are UNIX workstations marketed by SGI. Both are SMP-capable (up to 2 identical processors) workstations, originally based on the MIPS architecture R10000 processor. Newer Octanes are based on MIPS R12000 and R14000. Octane2 has four improvements compared to Octane. Octane2 has revised power supply, system-board and xbow. Octane2 also shipped with VPro graphics and supports all available VPro cards (V6, V8, V10 and V12). Later revision Octanes also included some of the improvements mentioned. The machines shared a codename "Racer" or "Speedracer" inside SGI.

The Octane was the direct successor to the SGI Indigo2, and itself was succeeded by the SGI Tezro, and its immediate sibling is the SGI O2. SGI withdrew the Octane2 from the price book on May 26 2004, and ceased Octane2 production on June 25th, 2004. Support for the Octane2 will be withdrawn in June 2009.

ReactOS

ReactOS is a free and open-sourced operating system based on the Windows architecture, providing support for existing applications and drivers, and an alternative to the current dominant consumer operating system.

However, there are a few things worth mentioning. First of all, please don’t forget this is an alpha-stage operating system, which means it is not suitable to replace your main OS (due to stability and compatibility concerns). And second, this release is aimed to be run mostly in virtualizers / emulators (like QEmu, VMWare, Parallels, etc): because of the big amount of changes, our development team was not able to test/fix all problems which arise when running ReactOS on real hardware.

Screenshots

Download ReactOS

When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

When Harry Met Sally... (IMDb - 7.6 out of 10 - 1989)


"Nora Ephron wrote the brisk screenplay for this 1989 romantic comedy, director Rob Reiner made a nicely glossy New York story (very much in a Woody Allen vein) out of it, and Billy Crystal's unstoppable charm made it something really special. Crystal and Meg Ryan play longtime platonic friends who keep dancing around their deeper feelings for one another, and Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher are their respective pals who fall in love and get married. Ryan doesn't get a lot of funny material, but her performance is typically alive and intuitive, and she more than holds her own with Crystal's comic motor mouth and sweet sentimentality. Reiner is on comfortable ground, liberated from the burden of making serious statements in the lead-footed manner of subsequent features. "-Tom Keogh

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

"Kaufman, Gondry and the pitch-perfect actors have crafted a remarkable film that can coax a smile about making the same mistakes in love and then sneak up and quietly break your heart."

"How sweetly ironic that "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" would turn out to be the perfect movie about love's inevitable imperfections."

"The idea of blanking out every last thought of a failed romance, even if it means losing pleasure to get rid of pain, has a blithe topical spookiness; it's like an Orwellian satire of a world moderated -- neutered -- by psychiatric drugs. Kaufman and Gondry, though, aren't out to score didactic points but to dramatize how even our closest relationships are, in effect, stories that unfold in the ways we tell them to ourselves. The ''flaws'' of Joel and Clementine's edgy bond create the very electricity that holds it together. Joel, embracing his memories, comes to appreciate the fragile glory of each and every moment simply for being that moment. Watching ''Eternal Sunshine,'' you don't just watch a love story -- you fall in love with what love really is."

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind Official Site

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (IMDb 8.5 out of 10, #44 in the TOP250)

Ghost In The Shell (Kôkaku kidôtai - 1995)

Production I.G Ghost In The Shell

2029 A.D. - The near future, where corporate networks cover the planet, electrons and light saturate the world, but informatization has not yet erased boundaries between nations and among ethnic groups.

It is a time when networks of information envelope the world in many layers, and computer crime and cyber terrorism takes place daily. Motoko Kusanagi of National Public Security Section 9 is sent to investigate an elusive hacker called the Puppet Master, for whom there are international arrest warrants. "Puppet Master" is a code name that comes from the particular technique used by the criminal -hacking human brains to control memory and behavior- but in fact, his identity is unknown.

After investigating a number of incidents, Kusanagi seems be getting closer to the Puppet Master than ever, but the reality is that the Puppet Master was also trying to approach her. And when, finally, the mysterious criminal comes face to face with Major Kusanagi of Section 9, truth seems to surpass any imagination...

IMDb Ghost In The Shell (7.8 out of 10)

Ghost In The Shell Official Site

VMworld 2007

VMworld 2007: Virtualization Hands-On Labs, Sessions, Solution Exchange - VMworld 2007

September 11-13
Moscone Cenvention Center
San Francisco CALIFORNIA

• Hear industry leaders speak about the latest trends and challenges in the virtualization ecosystem
• Hone your skills in more than 250 breakout sessions grouped into eight tracks and hands-on labs led by VMware technical staff
• Visit the Solutions Exchange and discover new products and technology innovations from more than 100 exhibitors
• Connect with more than 10,000 attendees at the event, including technology experts, business executives and VMware employees

Nintendo Gameboy

Gameboy Wikipedia

The Game Boy is a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo, released in 1989 at US$89.95. The Game Boy was the first successful handheld console, and was the predecessor of all other iterations of the Game Boy line.

The success of the Game Boy is exhibited in one way by its expansive and successful line of consoles. For instance, the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance have reached worldwide sales figures of 49 million (as of December 2004) and 75 million (as of June 2006), respectively. The original Game Boy sold roughly 70 million units worldwide. The Game Boy line has become the quintessential handheld gaming system, and, until the recent DS was by far the most popular one on the market.

the Gathering

the Gathering

The Gathering, often highly creative and influental band from the Netherlands, came to fame in the second half of 1990s with its unique blend of atmospheric & progressive sound and the compelling vocals of the passionate Anneke van Giersbergen.


On June 5, 2007 it was announced that Anneke is going to leave The Gathering in August 2007 to focus on a new project and her family.

Within Temptation

Within Temptation

Within Temptation have come a long way in the last ten years. From their humble beginnings, the Dutch band have now sold over 1.5 million CDs and DVDs world-wide, making them not only Holland’s biggest selling musical export but also one of the fastest growing new rock acts internationally.

Sony PSP slimmer & lighter

Embedded Video

t3.co.uk review

The PSP Slim & Lite has landed. About to chuck out your original
and rush to the shops? Whoa there, fella. Let us give you the lowdown.
We’re looking at a revamp, rather than the PSP reborn.

it’s 5mm thinner and 3mm shorter than the original, with a similar
build, but it’s still a touch too big to fit in your pocket. The
4.3-inch screen is still fantastic, but that’s because it’s the same
4.3-inch screen from the original.

...

How To Turn a $175.000 High-End SGI Challenge DM Server into a Fridge

SGI - The Silicon Graphics Refrigerator Project

How To Turn a $175.000 High-End SGI Challenge DM Server into a Fridge

Too much free time will make people do the weirdest things. I've always had a soft spot for obsolete computers, especially when they had once cost a small fortune and were the absolute top-of-the-line in their hey-day but are now hopelessly out-dated. It seems unfair that after only a short time of hard work the reward for their loyalty is to bring them to the junkyard.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

THE LIFE AND WORK OF DYLAN THOMAS

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

---

"A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him." Dylan THOMAS

Paul Auster

 










Paul Auster

Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947, Newark, New Jersey) is a Brooklyn-based author. He is probably most famous for his collection, The New York Trilogy. He is also a poet, translator, editor, screenwriter, and, more recently, film director.

" If all these books were put together in one volume, they would form the book of my life so far, a multifaceted picture of who I am."

Published Fiction Works:

    * The New York Trilogy (1987)
          o City of Glass (1985)
          o Ghosts (1986)
          o The Locked Room (1986)
    * In the Country of Last Things (1987)
    * Moon Palace (1989)
    * The Music of Chance (1990)
    * Leviathan (1992)
    * Auggie Wren's Christmas Story (1992)
    * Mr. Vertigo (1994)
    * Timbuktu (1999)
    * The Book of Illusions (2002)
    * Oracle Night (2004)
    * The Brooklyn Follies (2005)
    * Travels in the Scriptorium (UK 2006, USA 2007) (Denmark 2006)


 

BOINC - Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It's safe, secure, and easy.







GridRepublic members run a screensaver that allows their computers to work on public-interest research projects when the machines are not otherwise in use. This screensaver does not affect performance of the host computer any more than an ordinary screensaver does.

The DigiBarn Computer Museum

The DigiBarn Computer Museum


The DigiBarn Computer Museum seeks to capture personal stories and track technological evolution through a large collection of vintage computer systems, manuals, videos, interviews, and other fossil relics of the "Cambrian explosion" of personal computing that ignited in 1975.

Transformers and ILM

fxguide - Michael Bay and the Edit of Transformers

Industrial Light & Magic

Transformers uses six Meridian Avids on Unity with about 2 terabytes of storage. A Nitris is used for all screenings including their preview. There are three main edit rooms, a fourth system in a closet, the assistants have two systems, and director Michael Bay has one. There’s a Media Net hook-up used for daily transmissions between ILM and Bay.

“For 3d modeling ILM used mostly Maya, 3ds Max, Zeno and zBrush,” says Farrar. “For lighting and rendering we use Zeno with RenderMan and Mental Ray. For compositing it's all Shake along with our Sabre systems, and editing uses Avids.”

There are about 630 visual effects shots in the film. There are 430 executed at ILM, 91 at Digital Domain, 70 at the Asylum and the rest are 2D clean up and fixes done by CO3, ISolve and Ken Blackwell. Technical advancements were made in environments, lighting, and simulation of physical effects and integration of CG characters in a real environment.

Softimage XSI: In Relentless Pursuit of Perfection

SIGGRAPH 2007 and SOFTIMAGE

Softimage will be in booth #503 at the San Diego Convention Center from August 7th to 9th, showing off the latest developments from SOFTIMAGE|XSI, SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT, SOFTIMAGE|CAT, and hosting special presentations from customers in the Games, Film, and Television industries.

Softimage User Group, featuring special guest speaker Syd Mead

When: Tuesday August 7th, 7:00 PM from – 10:00 PM
Where: Spreckels Theatre, 121 Broadway, San Diego, CA 92101

SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.02 is available for download.

Cray Red Storm

  


Red StormRed Storm is a new Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) computer designed to scale from a single cabinet and relatively few processors to hundreds of cabinets and thousands of processors. The system uses high production volume commodity processors combined with a very high performance 3-D mesh interconnect to produce high parallel efficiency on a broad spectrum of scientific and engineering applications and has an excellent price/performance ratio.

Red Storm was developed jointly by Cray Inc., and the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Sandia National Laboratories. It was installed at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, in the winter of 2004.

The installation at Sandia operates in a dual network—classified (Red) and unclassified (Black)—configuration. The machine can be rapidly reconfigured to make all the compute nodes classified, all the compute nodes unclassified, or, in normal operation, three-quarters of the compute nodes available to either of the two networks and one-quarter of the machine available to the other network.

System Facts:

* 124.42 teraOPS theoretical peak performance
* 135 compute node cabinets 20 service and I/O node cabinets 20 Red/Black switch cabinets
* 12,960 compute node processors, 320 + 320 service and I/O node processors
* AMD Opteron™ 2.4 GHz dual core processors
* 40 terabytes of DDR memory * 340 terabytes of disk storage
* Linux/Catamount Operating Systems
* Approximately 3500 ft2 including disk systems
* <2.5 megawatts of power and cooling