My high end Apple service department….

I’ve mentioned cobbling together iBooks a few days ago.

Adam asked me to look at an out of warranty iBook that had a dysfunctional screen, and another one with dead logic board (magic smoke run out). I had an iBook without screen and without power distribution board.

After a long day I had 2 functional and one totally dead iBook.

One might ask what a high end iBook repair facility such as mine looks like.

Well, ask no longer.


Here you see my hightech repair facility (living room’s floor) with one functional iBook and 3 dysfunctional ones. Well, 2 dysfunctional and one mostly functional.

Mostly functional iBook in process of undergoing hardware tests.

Floating Point numbers Part I

Here is an easy example to see if your mathematical software deals with floating point correctly.

You want to divide two thirds by five sixths. So you use GNU bc

stany@Gilva:~[11:13 PM]$ echo  "(2/3) / (5/6)" | bc -l
.79999999999999999999
stany@Gilva:~[11:14 PM]$ 

Matlab, which is arguably better at math then bc is, gives me this:

EDU>> (2/3) / (5/6)

ans =

    0.8000

EDU>> 

2*6 / 3*5 = 12/15 = 4/5 = 0.8 so Matlab is correct, and bc is wrong.

It’s March…

While doing a mock midterm I had a realization.

It’s March already.

That means new recurring expenses – cell phone, phone, real estate taxes, hydro, electricity, you name it. But that also means that we survived one more winter, scarred, jaded, yet alive.

Snow will start melting. Buds will start opening, and flowers will start blooming. Birds will come back.

Something ends, and something begins….

I am looking forward to the future.

P.S. And I believe that those of you who haven’t read Andrzej Sapkowski‘s novels, do miss out.