We stopped at the Museum of Science as soon as we arrived. It housed an excellent “history of mathematics” exhibit sponsored by IBM and sprinkled with comic strips to keep it from getting too heavy. I became comfortably lost there for almost an hour.

I stopped by the computing exhibit next and found a replica Enigma Machine -- a piece of WWII crypto history that was central to the plot of a book I just finished -- Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. The machine itself was understandably enclosed in a plastic display case, but an authentic Enigma transmission bleated out from a little speaker at the push of a button.

Around the corner I found “Whirlwind“, an early computer built down the river at MIT under an Air Force contract. The machine included a shoebox-size stack of “core” memory -- you know, the stuff made of ferrite donuts after which most Unixes name the memory dumps created for misbehaving programs¹. The museum installed a 16-bit bank of interactive core memory nearby that you can fiddle with . Dime-sized compasses indicate the values programmed at each bit. Neat.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnvWbq6V7AU

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K89lFWV2KcI

We consulted Yelp for dinner ideas and decided on Cafe Belo, a Brazilian BBQ restaurant in Everett of the rodizio style. You pay a fixed price ($10, there) and servers stop by your table every few minutes with hot meats on skewers, asking if you’d like a slice. Brazilian Beef ribs, Jamaican chicken, sirloin, pork, and some killer garlic beef.

On Saturday I got up early and took the train to Cambridge to visit the MIT campus.

It was quiet save for a scattered handful of undergrads with MIT sweatshirts looking more energetic than any undergrads I’ve seen on a weekend morning.

Access was restricted to Rivest‘s hallway, the Program Analysis Group‘s wing², and the Computer Systems Security Group‘s wing. I did, however, have lunch in the curiously-shaped Stata center and stumble across a Lisp Machine!

That afternoon we drove to the IMAX theater in Natick to see Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. An enterprising furniture salesman convinced IMAX to build this theater in the middle of his showroom, thus guaranteeing a continuous flow of people in a receptive frame of mind. Ingenious.

On Saturday night we met Jumbo’s high school buddy, Mike, at his home a few blocks from Bunker Hill. We all went out to celebrate Mike’s birthday at the Midwest Grill. It turned out to be another Rodizio restaurant. In addition to Cafe Belo’s fare, we had bacon-wrapped chicken, sirloin tips, checken breasts, chicken hearts (!), and some of the best keilbasa I’ve ever had. The hot buffet included some amazing smooth and buttery ocra, two stews, and some mean pork rinds.

As if to prevent me from floating off into culinary heaven, our waitress denied my request for draft Sam Adams (imagine that -- out of Sam Adams in Boston) and instead brought me a bottle.

We returned around noon today after having some killer french toast at Ball Square Cafe in Everett and climbing the Bunker Hill Monument.

1. Linux 2.5+ gives you some options in this regard via its core_pattern `/proc` knob
2. Check out the deep reading list at the Program Analysis Reading Group’s site

I’m aiming for a late lunch @ Alex’s Pizza Palace in Rolla, MO.

This message is brought to you by the General Packet Radio Service.

1. Download the folding binary
2. Set up a new user for folding so your machine can fold no matter who you’re logged in as.
3. Install an init script to handle starting and stopping of the folding binary.

I joined TeamUbuntu and I’ve contributed ~10 work units in a week with 4 cores @ 2ghz (watch out Nerds for Jesus!)

I couldn’t find any good non-KDE visualization apps (i.e. “what’s this thing that I’m folding look like?”) for Folding at Home. Jmol, an open-source Java molecule viewer does a good job though and can export to a ray-tracer. Now I’ve just gotta script that export and figure out how to make some nice-looking movies…

Stay tuned for a security-minded analysis of the Linux folding client which is a closed-source app.

PS: Doritos Fiery Habanero chips are amazing. I’m considering buying Wegman’s out of their current stock ’cause I bet the heat will get toned down in the next few months. They don’t compete w/ John’s mace wings I had for the Superbowl though…

Update 4/10/07: Bill is gaining but I just broke onto the 2nd page of EOC results and I think I can stay ahead if he doesn’t bring his Grandma to the fight.

Update 4/16/07: Bill passed me snap quick with some devious tactics.