I was pointed at this interview with maths/compsci/typesetting guru Don Knuth this morning. Apart from clearly being a wizard in the Feynman sense*, it’s wonderfully inspiring to see someone so at ease with the world and his place in it that he can say this:
Andrew: In late 2006, you were diagnosed with prostate cancer. How is your health today?
Donald: Naturally, the cancer will be a serious concern. I have superb doctors.
At the moment I feel as healthy as ever, modulo being 70 years old. Words flow freely
as I write TAOCP and as I write the literate programs that precede drafts of TAOCP.
I wake up in the morning with ideas that please me, and some of those ideas actually
please me also later in the day when I’ve entered them into my computer.
On the other hand, I willingly put myself in God’s hands with respect to how much more
I'll be able to do before cancer or heart disease or senility or whatever strikes. If
I should unexpectedly die tomorrow, I’ll have no reason to complain, because my life has
been incredibly blessed.
Wow.
[*] “There are two kinds of geniuses: the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘magicians’. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they’ve done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre.” — Mark Kac
Posted by Andy Buckley on Apr 28, 2008
Last week I finally decided to waste some money and upgrade my computer speakers from the acceptable-but-a-wee-bit-harsh-and-tinny £50 Creative Gigaworks T20 pair that I’ve been using for about 9 months to a set of Bose Companion 3’s.
The online reviews for the Creative Gigaworks speakers were just too good for me to ignore 9 months ago… and I think there’s something to the advice that computer speakers with subwoofers will be boomy and unsubtle — good for games maybe, but rubbish for music and wannabe-audiophile ears (like mine, ha!) But the moment I got them out of the box (mm, nice build quality) and plugged in (hmm, bit tinny…) I knew it wasn’t quite right. Next time I’d just pay stupid money and get the Boses.
And so it has come to pass, and blimey they’re brilliant. They are expensive, as any hi-fi nerd worth their salt will tell you, and yes I could probably have got the same sound for less by piecing together an amplifier from one manufacturer, floorstander speakers from another, and cabling from a third. But it doesn’t matter, because these are tiny, come in one box, look and feel brilliant and sound outstanding. Convenience and aesthetics are worth spending money on, sometimes, and I didn’t see anyone else selling speakers which produce sound of this quality from such tiny units.
Well, I nearly did. The Acoustic Energy Aegos were a serious contender and at a bit over half the price they certainly beat Bose on economic grounds. But life ain’t so simple: the Boses are prettier, and they come with a beautifully designed little remote unit with a soft rubber volume control, touch-sensitive on/off panel and discrete headphone/input jack sockets. The AEs force you to rummage under the desk for the subwoofer to control the volume or plug your headphones in — so I seem to have reached the point in my life where I’m prepared to pay £80 not to have to bend over. Life’s funny, isn’t it?
Anyway, my point is: if you listen to a lot of music through your computer speakers, and space and nice design are important things, then the Bose Companion speakers are fantastic little life-enhancing devices. Yes, you can do the same thing cheaper, for which the audio geek comments here may be useful, but you’ll have to shop around a lot to find anything that does it with half as much style. IMO :)
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Posted by Andy Buckley on Apr 16, 2008
My laptop died last week (conveniently during a trip to UCL when I really wanted it to work) and so I took the opportunity to upgrade it to the beta version of Ubuntu Hardy. First impressions are all good — everything becomes progressively more Mac-like and shiny — although I have some issues with the usability of the Compiz window effects, pretty though they undoubtedly are. The upgrade also made me think again about my Colemak keyboard layout, which has been necessary on my laptop since I prised all the keys off 6 months ago and put them back down in a different order.
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Posted by Andy Buckley on Apr 02, 2008
