Marc's Public Blog

2011/12/28 Video Games Expo at the Grand Palais, Paris

π 2011-12-28 00:00 in Public

We happened to be around when they had a Video Games expo. We only had 45mn to go through it before it closed, but it was quite cool to see so many vintage games I used to play with way back in the day. Great trip in nostalgia land :)

ok, doesn't get older than that :)

I remember playing this

Looks like Jennifer may have played this one before :)

Arkanoid, I was good at this!

Out Run, that used to be the game I thought was so cool and pretty back then

I actually finished Super Mario 64 in 1997

Good times...

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2011/12/18 Droids, they breed at night :)

π 2011-12-18 00:00 in Public

And the new children look bigger :)

2011/12/13 Steve Job's Biography at the Computer History Museum

π 2011-12-13 00:00 in Public

This was a 'sold out' event where the members took all the spots within hours of the Email announcement. Walter Isaacson gave us a summary of the biography he wrong on Steve.

I had already read a fair amount about Steve, but I was still impressed by the details of how Steve would believe in something that seemed unachievable strongly enough that he would manage to convince his engineers that it was achievable, and they would often make it happen.

I also didn't know that all Apple devices were not upgradable, or even meant to be opened, because Steve believed they were works of art that should not be disturbed since they were perfect as is :)

I never was a Steve fanboy, but I do admire the guy for some of what he did, and all in all, it was a quite interesting evening.

2011/11/30 Amazon Extreme Fail

π 2011-11-30 00:00 in Public

The Email I sent them is probably a good summary. But basically Amazon has gotten so big and corporate that you can't report fraud to them without an account and when I did they closed my account instead of the one I reported and it took hours of wasted time (and over a week of waiting) to get my account unlocked. Pathetic Amazon...

This issue started because you do not publish an Email to receive concerns or in my case a fraud report without me being logged in from my own account.
As a result, likely some underpaid overseas employee who clearly doesn't understand english closed my own account as opposed to the one I was reporting for fraud while thanking me for my report and telling me the issue was now taken care of.
A few days thereafter, I started experiencing problems with logging in, and reset my password successfully a few times, but could not log in. You guessed it: your rep had locked MY account while leaving the bad one active and worst: your login page says nothing about my account being locked.
Then after I spent >1h on the phone to explain the problem, your reps agreed it was a mistake but they told me they had no way to fix it and had to escalate to a fraud review board. Really?
They promised a reply in 48H and assured me I would get called and it'd get fixed. No one called me and no one fixed the problem.
I called again for another >1H conversation and finally your supervisor fixed it instead of throwing the hot potato to someone else. Note that I had to effectively steal the account at amazon.co.uk that used my Email adddress for him to believe me.
He was so embarrassed that he gave me a $20 certificate for my time which doesn't begin to compensate for what I went through and how you "thanked" me for my help. He promised he'd try to do better and I'd hear back for something better due to the extreme way you underperformed in this matter (at least an amazon prime membership, or more). I have yet to hear back of anything better.
Moral of the story, if someone is stealing money from you and I find security flaws in your web site (I found one of each this time), I'll make sure not to report them to you.

Oh, and you want the best part? The account I reported for fraud is still being used for fraud now and I'm still getting Emails of new purchases that are being declined. Great job Amazon!

2011/11/26 Going to High Negative Tide at Half Moon Bay

π 2011-11-26 00:00 in Public

One of my coworkers told me about the forecast for We parked a bit far since I did not forsee any close parking being available that late, and we used the pocket bikes I had just bought to get to the reef. We had a nice little ride by the sea to get there:

We however got there quite late, not much before sunset:

After sunset was quite nice, forever brief it was:

We got there way too late to see crab, the few that got stranded were picked up by the many people who came that day, but there were plenty of defenseless mussels which Jennifer made sure to pick up :)

After sunset, people left quickly with the little twilight we were going to have, but I had brought my 4000 lumen firesword and made daylight out of a moonless night for us to enjoy the tidepools a bit longer:

We got a few bonus craps with the mussels we brought:

And got a nice dinner out of it:

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2011/11/15 IBM Watson talk at the Computer History Museum and Jeopardy Game

π 2011-11-15 00:00 in Public

The Watson team came to give a talk at the computer history museum, and it was interesting to learn about how it was planned and the challenges they faced.

After the talk, they had Watson play a game, and it kicked ass. Despite severely helping the humans (see the video below), it won by a lot.
It was also interesting to see the top choices that Watson had found and its confidence level for each answer it gave:

A few pictures and video of most of the game:

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2011/08/12 Visit of the Computer History Museum 12 years later

π 2011-08-12 00:00 in Public

In May 1999, Dave Babcock, back when we were at SGI, was nice enough to give me a private tour of the computer history pieces other volunteers and he were able to gathered, and that were stored at Moffett/NASA back then. I had a crappy camera back in that day, but still got some pictures which are fun to see for posterity (in picture link at the bottom of this post).

Throughout the years, that collection moved to visible storage in the Computer History Museum, and through the help of many volunteers, eventually turned into the current Revolution exposition that has now been available for display for almost a year. I use the opportunity that my dad was visiting to take a good tour of it with him. Obviously it's an impressive improvement from where it was 12 years ago.

It's impossible to give it justice in just a few pictures, but if you're interested in the field, hopefully those few will wet your appetite until you can go yourself.