Consider Going Into A Classroom And Looking Around, And You’re The Only Man There. Even If You’re

Recently, I read a research paper by Professor Manu Prakash from Stanford who has been working on a computer that works on fluid droplets and it is extremely fascinating.

Manipulating Matter

Inspiration: The computers that we have at our home are capable of manipulating Information, but they cannot manipulate Physical matter per se! Ergo, build a device that could process both information and physical matter simultaneously.

The setup is actually relatively simple to understand but the working is a bit tricky. They use a ferrofluid as the droplet and control the way it behaves with a circular magnetic field.

Through the coupling of magnetic and hydrodynamic interaction forces between droplets, AND,OR,XOR,NOT and NAND logic gates, fanouts, full adder, a flip flop and a finite state machine is implemented.

If this is the sort of thing that you are interested in, I strongly recommend you read their paper.

The bigger goal

“We already have digital computers to process information. Our goal is not to compete with electronic computers or to operate word processors on this,”

Prakash said. “Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter. Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed but physical matter is algorithmically manipulated as well. We have just made this possible at the mesoscale.”

Have a great day!

- part of ‘Fluid Friday’ series

The thing about computer programming is that it’s a complete pain in the ass when you’re trying to figure out the problem, yet when you finally solve it, when you finally have that aha moment, the feeling of accomplishment is unlike anything you’ve felt when you’ve accomplished something. You think holy shit, I can make technology work, and that feeling is totally worth the long stretch of hours or even days when computer programming feels like a pain in the ass.

Computer Science

*screams into the public static void*

“We are assuming here that the user is competent. In reality this is always false. Users are very dumb and will do weird things.”

Intro to Computer Programming Professor (via mathprofessorquotes)

Here is thing I learned when I was 29, which I now give away for free: If you want to do a thing, do it now, or as soon as feasible. Because there might not be a later. If it is a complicated or expensive or hard thing that takes many stages or has a steep learning curve, start working on the parts you can work on while you can work on them, then move on to the next thing. Accept that there will be a lot of failures along the way, and that you can come back from nearly any mistake that doesn’t involve making a left turn in front of an oncoming semi. Concentrate on yourself and what you can do, and don’t rely on other people to fix things for you, even though you might love them or they you. (This doesn’t mean you can’t love friends or family or partners. Friends and family and partners, in the long run, are the thing other than Useful Work and Adventures that make life worthwhile. Well, all that, and a really nice coffee and tea kit in the kitchen and the skill to use it. But that last thing isn’t terribly expensive unless you make it be.) But to succeed at a thing–a job, a relationship–in the long term, the thing is: You Must Commit, even though commitment is scary. And commitment is scary because once you’re in you’re in. It’s not bobbing around close to the shore, paddling with your feet. It’s both feet and swimming as hard as you can out where the rip currents and the sharks are, where the water turns blue. You can’t hold back because you’re afraid of getting hurt: you have to accept that you are going to get hurt, and put your hand in the fire of your own free will. It’s like climbing. You can make sure you’ve got good ropes and a belayer you trust (you SHOULD make sure you have good ropes and a belayer you trust!), but there’s moves you can’t make unless you’re willing to risk falling. I’m not saying follow your bliss off a cliff, in other words: part of being prepared and committed is having the right kit, whether it’s money in the bank for the lean times when starting off as a freelancer, or a partner who supports your work, or being young enough that starving in a cold room for a few years with pneumonia is romantic (I have the T-shirt!). That’s why it’s scary. It’s scary because you are taking an actual chance. But: things don’t work out the way you want them to if you just kind of drift along seeing what will happen. Nice things might happen! …but they didn’t, for me. Basically, what I figured out was that I had to be a protagonist if I wanted anything to happen, and part of being a protagonist was accepting that I might fail. And then have to deal with that failure. And that if I didn’t do it I would more or less inevitably fail, but I could pretend to myself that it wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough and that I didn’t know why. Seeking success, in other words, meant letting go of a layer of ego defense. This realization directly led to me having the career I always wanted, and doing pretty well at it. It also led to me having the best relationship of my life. I wish I’d learned it when I was sixteen, rather than twenty-nine, but I had some things I had to work through first. 

So that thing you want to do? Assuming it’s not illegal or immediately fatal? Do it now.

Allow yourself to be a beginner. No-one starts off being excellent.

Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

Ah, old good switch-a-roo ;)

Credit: Eric Burk

The thing about programming is that it may be 3am, but you can’t help but think it won’t take all that long to add another quick feature…

Yep! And now it’s 5:40am and I’m still sitting here.

Coding is occasionally bad for your health.

(via fyeahcode)

Debugging be like