Friday, May 9, 2008

We're Appreciated!

This was teacher appreciation week. The Home & School association has been doing a fun variety of things, from cash to lunch to a celebration service in the gym, to show the staff how much they're valued.

Yesterday was a particularly stressful day for me, with networks going down, equipment failing, and more. At the end of the day, Mrs. Stewart, who teaches kindergarten, gave me a stack of colorful cards tied with ribbons, that her students had made for me. What a blessing! It really gave me a boost right when I needed it.

Here's my favorite card, written by Megan, which shows (I think!) me either fixing the student computers, or bringing the TV/DVD player to their classroom:



Inside of the card:

Friday, May 2, 2008

HP Labs discovers "Memristor"

My brother, an engineer at HP, forwarded me this article. The possibilities are fascinating!

HP Labs Proves Existence of New Basic Element for Electronic Circuits

“Memristor” discovery could lead to far more energy-efficient computing systems with memories that don’t forget, never need to be booted up

HP today announced that researchers from HP Labs, the company’s central research facility, have proven the existence of what had previously been only theorized as the fourth fundamental circuit element in electrical engineering.

This scientific advancement could make it possible to develop computer systems that have memories that do not forget, do not need to be booted up, consume far less power and associate information in a manner similar to that of the human brain.

In a paper published in today’s edition of Nature, four researchers at HP Labs’ Information and Quantum Systems Lab, led by R. Stanley Williams, presented the mathematical model and a physical example of a “memristor” – a blend of “memory resistor” – which has the unique property of retaining a history of the information it has acquired.

Read the entire article...

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Erasable paper, Macintosh clones

A few interesting technology stories I just read:

1. Xerox demonstrates erasable paper

2. Testing out Psystar's Open Computer Mac clone