Inspired by tweets from
the Bronx Zoo's
escaped
cobra.
To say how many people live in Lone Pine requires a definition
of "in Lone Pine".
With no city government and no city limits, the most official
definition of Lone Pine is as a
census-designated place,
for which the US Census Bureau has assigned a polygonal boundary
and an internal point. You can hope that the internal point marks
the
centroid but
you
cannot
count on it:
For many geographic entities, the internal point is at or near
the geographic center of the entity. For some irregularly shaped
entities (such as those shaped like a crescent), the calculated
geographic center may be located outside the boundaries of the entity.
In such instances, the internal point is identified as a point
inside the entity boundaries nearest to the calculated geographic
center and, if possible, within a land polygon.
Lone Pine's internal point, not guaranteed to be the centroid
but nonetheless specified to about one centimeter accuracy,
(36.5744471,‑118.0806101),
is not very far from my house. Were I living there and
blissfully unemployed as I was two years ago, I would go mark
it with a flag or a rock or something.
By the 2010 census, 2035 people live within the
the
Lone
Pine CDP, which has an area
of 49,766,108 square meters (about 19.2 square miles).
Manhattan's street grid is 200 years old.
City
commissioners
... could not but bear in mind that a city is to be composed
principally of the habitations of men, and that straight-sided and
right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient
to live in. The effect of these plain and simple reflections was decisive.
Manhattan has become synonymous with rectilinearity;
printed circuit and IC design often refers
to
Manhattan
distance between points to be connected.
Devotees of geodesic dome houses cite their low ratio of surface area to
enclosed volume--but a dome-shaped volume is hard to use, and dome houses
pose
nontrivial
construction problems.
The overwhelming preponderance of boxy buildings makes the occasional
exceptions all the more endearing. Most everyone in New York likes
the
Flatiron
Building.
As promised, more words from Seymour Cray.
From a
1982
interview in Datamation magazine:
Datamation: |
What has surprised you most in how your products are used?
What are you learning about the use of your products?
|
Cray: |
I just design these things for myself. I'm always surprised when
other people use them. I don't know what all this supercomputer talk is
about. They certainly aren't supercomputers; they are kind of simple,
dumb things.
|
Datamation: |
But they run fast and apparently that is making a big impression.
|
Cray: |
Apparently that is important.
|
Datamation: |
What has surprised you most about your competitors?
|
Cray: |
You mean there are some of those? There probably are--I just
haven't looked.
|
Datamation: |
When you take a look at the industry today ...
|
Cray: |
I never look back and I never look sideways.
|
Datamation: |
Do you ever worry or think ...
|
Cray: |
Never, never!
|
Datamation: |
What has surprised you most about your market?
|
Cray: |
I certainly have been surprised by the market. We keep selling
computers to the same old people and they are getting old at the same
rate that I am. We don't even
need introductions when we come out with a new computer because we
already know the people. It's just the same market for us over and
over again. We sell a machine a month. We've always sold a machine
a month. Pretty soon those people are going to start dying off--then
what's going to happen?
|
From yesterday's travels back to Colorado: |
|
Is it a good thing or a bad thing when the pilot starts
looking the landing gear over? |
Today's topic is computers in cylindrical packages.
I offer two examples, both of which were not only
attractively cylindrical but also performed well and
were highly coveted machines of their respective ilks.
The first example is the
Curta calculator.
I had a chance to use one around 35 years ago and can report that
it works and sounds every bit as cool as you'd expect
it would from how it looks. It's satisfying to use in the way
a fine mechanical camera is. If I hadn't lost a lot of the desire
to have things just to have them, I'd want to buy one right now.
|
The second example is the
Cray-1. Some subsequent
Cray machines were also cylindrical, but the Cray-1 is the original iconic
item. Seymour Cray said the aesthetics added about 10% to its cost but that
it paid off. (I can't say that Cray was the only one to ever recognize that
people will pay for cool-looking computers, but I think he had better
taste than Steve Jobs.)
From a Cray-1 brochure:
|
|
I'll post more words from Seymour Cray some time. He was a curious character.
Curta photo
by Larry McElhiney;
used by
permission
|