It should come as a surprise to no one who knows me that the CBS show Numb3rs is my all time favourite television series. Just like the ever-popular Star Trek series of shows, this program is a geek's delight - full of suspense, drama, and enough Mathematics and Computer Simulations to delight even the moribund of geeky viewers.

The story centers around brothers Don and Charlie Eppes and their careers as FBI Agent and Mathematics Professor. All episodes focus on solving crimes in and around the Los Angeles, California area and in using Mathematics to aid in catching the bad guys. It is a geniune pleasure to see intelligent people featured as such - too much of modern TV is centered around boorish characters who almost glory in the comedic nature of their idiocy. Joining Don and Charlie are a diverse mixture of regular characters who add spice to the stories - David, Colby, Lynn, Larry, Megan, Alan, et al. We are presently into season six of the series and some of the characters are no longer with the show, but the central characters remain, as well as the outstanding writing, direction, and production of the finest show on television.

Porting Progress: zForth -> ARM

I've made great progress in working to port my zForth system from the Intel Pentium world to that of the ARM world. The platforms that I use at present are the wonderful QEMU virtualization platform on my Linux workstation, and the T-Mobile G1 cell-phone. Eventually, my goal is to also get it working on my HP-50G calculator in time to present it to the HHC 2010 Conference.

ARM is a powerful and very "clean" processor and I love working with it. RISC machines in general have much to offer low-level systems programmers such as myself and this makes it a fun project to work on.

Porting to a new processor involves many phases which, like scafolding at a construction site, each step is built so that you can "stand on it" and work on the next phase. The first phase was (1) to complete an ARM assembler, after that, (2) to modify the metacompiler so that ARM code is produced, and then with ARM code being produced begins (3) the repeating cycle of run-test-edit on both an ARM simulation environment (QEMU and the Android Emulator) and on the actual ARM hardware (the G1). I've completed phases one and two, with both taking about 6 months of part-time work (roughly an hour a week) and am now in the run-test-edit cycle with threading working perfectly, and some I/O working, but not all. I still have many more weeks ahead of me, but I've "hit my stride" per say, and am enjoying the trip! :)

I ordered my Kindle from Amazon two days ago, received it yesterday, and I thought I would record my first impressions here. Amazon has always been a first-class company and I received a quality product. The first book I downloaded into it was (of course) "Web Geek's Guide to the Android-Enabled Phone", and am looking forward to learning how to effectively use the Kindle with the book that Jerri, Prasanna, and I wrote.

I downloaded some books on my favourite hobby - Mathematics, to see how the Kindle handles the esoteric symbols and formula that make up the language of Mathematics. (Conclusion: no problemo! :)

I've also been busy on the website using Amazon's tool for requesting books to be published for the Kindle by visiting the many book orders that I've made in the past and clicking their "Kindle Request" feature.

I firmly believe in the eminent demise of paper books as the generations that are totally devoted to paper books pass on. Everything about eBooks makes them better in my very opinionated opinion - they take up no space, they can be indexed and searched electronically, one can highlight and mark them up with notes, clip portions from and transfer them among other useful devices, and basically do anything that an ordinary book can do - ONLY BETTER! I fail to see the attachment that so many have to the old paper-based technology, but then again, I never was a Luddite - someone who resists change just to resist it. Besides, my new Kindle fits perfectly into the padded slot in my beloved Franklin Planner, so why not?

The Android Revolution is exploding! 12 Phones strong and growing in number - just like the PC revolution of the 1980's or the Linux revolution of the 1990's! This is good - very very good indeed.

Open source has always been a better choice for a number of reasons but the most important one, of course, is that it allows people - empowering individuals - to apply their own talents towards improving the system for everyone else.

Of course, mine is not an unbiased opinion, since I am a co-author of a book on the Android powered cell phone - but be that as it may, the system is growing in popularity and that is making me a very happy man. Viva 'la Android!

Fort Collins, Colorado

Here is the view from my hotel window. It's a beautiful and cool day in Fort Collins, and the HHC 2009 conference begins tomorrow at the Hewlett-Packard facilities. My mother and I made the trip okay and the only difficult part of the trip was from the Denver bus station to Fort Collins (about 53 miles) since the bus was packed with people. (Full occupancy.) The hotel (Cambria Suites) is great and the food that they served us for dinner last night and breakfast this morning was first-class indeed!

I look forward to a bit of shopping today, since I will need nicer clothes for the conference. Directly across from the hotel is a shopping mall and I should be able to find something to wear. I'm also going to eat lunch at the food court there - if they have one.

I'm in a mad rush right now to get everything that I'll need packed and ready for the trip. To borrow a Star-Trek expression, the Borg (Amtrak) are about to assimilate me and I know now that resistance is futile.

I have so much to do ... transfer my archives from the main workstation to my HP notebook computer ... make printed copies of everything to do with the trip ... pack the essentials (pills, tickets, electronics, and oh yeah - clean clothes too) ... mentally prepare to be away from my comfort zone for two weeks ... hand off any work to my partners ... and of course, try to get some sleep this evening and late night so I can be ready for the ordeal beginning at 4:00 AM tomorrow morning.

I've been working on setting up RSS/Atom feeds so that my blog can be exported to both Amazon's Author Central and Facebook. Hopefully this post will make it to both sites. It's so nice to be able to work on one site and have the content exported to others automatically. Five copies of the Web Geeks Guide to the Android-Enabled Phone were delivered to my home this morning and I was thrilled. Up until this point it was more like a vaporous entity, but as of today, it's real! :)

I'm almost finished with my packing for the trip to the HHC 2009 in Fort Collins, Colorado. The weather is so fantastic right now I almost regret leaving, but I'm sure that the trip will be worth it. I was visited by my son and daughter this morning as they were passing through. Michael was in Winfield for the weekend and Rachael was giving him a ride back to his home in South County. I am the most blessed of Fathers - I have two GREAT kids! (Who at 27 and 25 aren't quite "kids" anymore.)