June 11-Day 3

Breakfast :
Once again, we woke up as the alarm clock suddenly rang at its horrible tune. We washed up, picked clothes and rushed down to the lobby to grab ourselves breakfast.It seemed toasts and syrup are still my favorite... Anyway, everybody got used to this kind of fast pace breakfast, with small nice talks now and then.



Autodesk lab :
It took us around one hour or so to reach Autodesk Lab, which locates at San Rafael. Frankly speaking, we were impressed by the sublime views along the way: blue sky sparkling with tiny houses and airplanes flying across our heads. Ms. Amanda Collins, Senior Marketing Manager for Autodesk presented this vital, innovative company to us. Amanda shared with us vision of the company:Technologies to create digital models and workflows that help to visualize, simulate analysis. What's more important, experience ideas before it becomes reality!


It was quite exciting to take a close look of Autodesk's proud Multi-touch wall with our own eyes. And what's more, we even had our hands on this really cool stuff for some time. Watching lava jumping back and forth, we felt our hearts were beating harder and harder. The concept of multi-touching also enlightened us on the way of designing the user interface and making life easier for everybody. It matches the four digital trends clarified by the company itself: Digital Life, Globalization, Industry Boom and Climate Change.


After 5 minutes ride, we went to the other part of Autodesk for lunch. Different from the other times, it was a traditional American meal with stuffed chicken, home-made salad and many more dishes which I couldn't tell the names. When everybody starts eating, designer Jose gave us a vivid presentation on the importance of design and how to corporate design with engineering and marketing departments in a company. As we realized how crucial communication is and he went on to explain that Autodesk Lab is actually meant to research on the new technologies for the future with a time span of more than several years. Interesting!


It matched what HP had suggested days ago, we are doing things for the generation of tomorrow. Oh, gosh, I nearly forgot to say, the lunch was really tasty with all knowledge we absorbed in one hour's time.

Computer History Museum:

Wow! It's museum again! What's new this time? Let's follow the way of our great docent Roy Mize, he tried to reveal all his stories of computers with us.

There are over 600 unique artifacts, from rare slide rules and mechanical calculators to the earliest one of kind computers, vintage PCs and exotic supercomputers. Visible Storage represents just a small portion of objects in the Computer history Museum's collection, which is the largest in the world.

On exploring a-five-decade-long history of computers, we learnt from Mr.Roy along the way of touring as well. He said:" When you step out of the campus, you haven't done your studies yet. It's just your beginning! " With an age of 74 years, he still taking courses now and then to charge himself, so what could stop us from this endless learning journey?

We took a fine group photo with Mr.Roy before we called a day, everything was just like the sunshine in California, delicate and peaceful.

Dinner:
I know that not all of us enjoy the traditional Chinese food as much as I do, but a dinner with six different dishes gave us enough energy to recover from tedious trip back from well-known San Francisco Bay. Short conversations during the dinner time was also a way make us feel close with each other.

Shopping Mall:
Shopping is all about fun! We managed to spend one hour and a half in a shoping mall near Comfort Inn, the motel we are staying. Not everyone of us bought something inside the mall, but we had a good time there, though after which we had some troubles of finding the way back home...


It's another day there waiting for us!Come on!


Regards,
Chen Kun
Ngee Ann Polytechnic

Kiwi bird

Kiwi is pleased to present you with an amusing fact:

If you repeat kiwi over and over again and say it without spaces, it sounds like this:
kiwikiwikiwi
which sounds like:
wikiwikiwiki

A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. For example, the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets and for Knowledge Management.

Kiwi today went to Autodesk! There, kiwi got to see a multi-touch wall which costs US $160,000, enough to buy millions of kiwi fruit. The wall must be quite big, because kiwi can't reach the top and must fly. It allows people to grab objects and throw them around the screen using their hands. Kiwi wanted to try, but kiwi cannot reach.



Autodesk gave us autolunch. Kiwi is sad, because his friend chicken is on the plate.


Then kiwi went to the Computer History Museum. Here, kiwi got stuck in an infinite loop. Kiwi think that kiwi think that kiwi think that kiwi think that kiwi think [bzzzzt, kiwi see insect and fly away]

Kiwi! Think!


Kiwi also saw some very old memory. This was one of the earliest implementations of RAM. Nowadays memory comes in sticks, like cigarettes. But memory used to be very big.


This is the CRAY-2, which was the fastest supercomputer around back in 1985. It could do 1 to 2 gigaflops.



Nowadays, supercomputers can do teraflops. But kiwi can still only do 1 flop.




Signing off,
Kiwi!

SMALLL WOMBATTT

THIS…IS…WOMBATTTTTTTTTTT {small}

Wombat woke up. Saw many waffle. Waffle nice. Waffle big. But waffle bigger than wombat. Wombat made friends with waffle. But waffle had to leave so soon. Wombat made friend with egg, toast and milk too. But they all had to leave so soon );

Wombat took big big bus to HP Labs. But different bus, blue bus. HP guy said, “No wombat, no photos.” So wombat hide in bag. Can hear, cannot see );

Wombat heard there was some microchip thingy. Maybe wombat can wear one of those next time. Tell people about wombat. Where wombat come from. And most importantly, WARN PEOPLE OF WOMBATTTTT.

Wombat went to Hewlett and Packard’s office rooms. Very big. Big enough for many many wombats. They have garden too. Good for wombat to run and jump around in. Packard was Secretary of Defense. Maybe he can teach our warrior wombats how to fight.

Then wombat went to Intel. Which stands for Integrated Electronics. Here, wombat took many many photos! Here is a photo of wombat!

Here is many many more wombat photo, because wombat like Intel.

Ow! Pipe small! This crunch!

Okay, wombat make post card. He send to all his friends. If you have post card, you are wombat friend. Otherwise, wombat may make friends with you, if you not leave too soon.



Wombat paws tired of typing. Tomorrow kiwi post.

¡ıı ʎɐp

Today we visited HP Labs and the Intel Museum.

In the morning we ate breakfast at the hotel after a good nights' sleep (or lack therof). Breakfast consisted of coffee, DIY waffles, more coffee, more DIY waffles and an apple each (to keep the (medical) doctor away).


Not-so-shortly (I cant write "longly") we left for HP Labs. HP labs is the division of HP that does Research & Development on technologies that reach the public only 10-15 years in the future. We saw many exciting things (and, for some reason, a stuffed animal allegedly called a wombat). From using an ordinary touchpad as a writing surface to printing extremely high resolution photos to a plate of cookies that was effectively demolished in a matter of minutes, we truly enjoyed this eye opening experience. After that, we enjoyed another bodily aperture (mouth) opening experience (Lunch).

We then moved on to Intel Museum. In there, we got to (ab)use electronic kits while learning more about electric circuits. We moved on to looking at the origin of the intel microprocessor, and the fruits of the revolution that it brought about. We even got to make our own set of e-postcards and to see yet another implementation of a motion detecting game. After "horsing around with photobooth" (to quote a certain person whom you should be able to identify) we bought various souvenirs and left for the hotel.

On the trip back to the hotel, we stopped by the great mall where we greatly enjoyed ourselves browsing through a great collection of shops and greatly eating the great food that was present in great amounts. After greatly enjoying the great food and otherwise greatly enjoying ourselves (and causing you great pain due to the great number of greats in this great paragraph), we headed back to the (great) hotel room.

We really enjoyed ourselves going out today!

BTW, What good is unicode if you cant abuse it?

Link to External Blog Post: http://mattanmusings.blogspot.com/2008/06/day-2.html

10 June - Day 2

Breakfast@Hotel:
Our bodies woke up with shock from the alarm radio suddenly playing at the preset time (0700). Grudgingly, we dragged ourselves awake to wash up and headed down to the lobby for breakfast. The breakfast was not bad; waffles (self-made), coffee, toast was what I had. There were many other choices such as bread with multi-flavored fillings, cereals such as corn flakes and drinks such as milk and orange juice.

HP Labs :
For this tour around HP Labs located in Paulo Alto, Mr. Carl Chow, Visit Manager for HP, was our guide. Unfortunately, we had to surrender any equipment capable of photography or videography to the receptionist, hence there's only a few photos outside of the building. Mr. Chow went through what HP is about ("Simplifying technology experiences around the world"), what HP has to offer to both the consumer market and the corporate markets, and the frameworks that the company works on. In regards to these frameworks, there is 2 that the company sticks by: Company Strategy & Operating Framework. He went on to explain that HP Labs is actually meant to research on technologies for the future with long term goals (5-10 years timeline). He also mentioned that HP Labs had just recently reshuffled their management and categorized all their researches into 5 main themes, in which 23 research labs across the world are also divided by this themes. In the past, only 2 to 3 researchers were attached to a past, however, with this new consolidation, there are more researchers working on the same project instead, hence moving from small projects to generating a high impact research that may change IT forever. For example, memresistor is the new fourth passive circuit element that came out of this lab. Also, he mentioned that HP helps companies to maximize the efficiency and power to cool data systems with e-generators and sensors which helps to cut down significantly power bills used for air-conditioning.
He also demonstrated a few new technologies that they had, for example Indigo is an printer ink that would bring better picture quality for press; Memory Spot, a tag that utilizes elementary RFID concepts, which can contain large amount of data in it; Cable Tracker for telecommunication companies to track unplugged or faulty cables; Free Pad, a program that came out of HP Labs India that reads strokes on the trackpad as characters hence making it like a transcriber; Polynomial Texture Mapping, a black dome with controlled lightings to show details on items that cannot be seen in normal lightings; HALO, a real-life video conferencing technology.
We were also brought around to HP founders' original offices, which was next to each other. Right outside their offices, was their first product: Model 200c Audio Oscillator.
Lunch at the cafeteria at HP Labs was fantastic! The burgers that were there was SO DELICIOUS! After lunch, we moved on to Intel Museum.

Intel Museum:
It was quite interesting at this museum as we began our tour of the museum first with practical on schematics and circuitry where we played with Lego-like pieces to build a complete circuit based on the given schematics. After which, we were guided around the museum by Regina who told us of the history behind Intel, which was derived from "Integrated Electronics", and not "Intelligence" as commonly believed. She also talked about Moore's Law, a statement made by one of the founders of Intel, that "the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years", the very first product that Intel was approached by another company to make chips for. She went on the explain that the chips are made on silicon because they are semi-conductors which mean we can control the electricity that flows through it as compared to insulators or conductors, and that they are made in very sterile environments that everyone in the labs have to wear bunny suits before going in. Also, all ground in the labs have holes in them and are color coded to ensure air flow through them.
As with all museums, there is a souvenir store that sold products ranging from notepads to USB hubs, and from mugs to clothing, almost all with Intel logo stamped on in. There was also an Artificial Intelligence Bot (AI Bot), known as Arty, at the museum that could answer questions thrown at it. From Intel, we moved on to Great Mall for a dinner.



Great Mall:
It was free & easy time! Great Mall is a large one storied shopping area which many boutique retailers selling clothes, electronic equipments and shoes. We had our dinner here which was quite alright.


Regards,
Han Yang
Ngee Ann Polytechnic



Reference:
http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/index.htm

Wombat conquers San Francisco

Hi! My name is Wombat! (the big one)


You might think being a wombat is easy. Wombats don’t need to take block test! Wombats don’t need to work. They just sit around, dig holes and chew grass all day.


But wombats don’t always have it easy. Sometimes, life sucks! I spent 15½ hours stuffed in a cramped, stuffy bag flying to San Francisco, living in abject terror of being mistaken for a bomb by Customs and blown up. In Narita, the Japanese custom officer says, “No parsonal effects” but I only know about cinematic effects, special effects, and the Leidenfrost effect. I asked my friends Small Wombat and Kiwi and they don’t know what is a parsonal effect either.


In San Francisco, we boarded a bus and travelled for a long long time. In the bus, I jumped on Wei Quan. I think Wei Quan is scared of me!



I went to The Tech museum. There we learned about earthquakes, silicon chips, genetics and space travel. My friends built a little house, but I was too big to fit in. Here are my friends in their little house! Say hi!

(Small wombat): Hi!



After the Tech museum, we went to the Golden Gate Bridge. I call it the GG bridge, because jumping off the bridge will mean that you are GGed.





Small wombat and I at the GG bridge!


We went for a walk on the bridge. Wombats can go quite fast. Did you know that a wombat can accelerate to 30 miles an hour and hold that speed for 90 seconds?


On the bridge, kiwi saw many birds in the water below.



He wanted to fly down and join them. But it seems that we are not allowed to jump off the bridge. I don’t know why either. Do you?



Then we went for dinner in Chinatown. Luckily there is lots of fresh temperate grass in San Francisco for Small Wombat and I. Kiwi had some nice tasty insects.


Today we are going to HP labs. I think maybe Small Wombat will tell you about it, because my paws are getting tired. Bye bye.

Day 1!

Day 1 was a slack one :) Traveling for a grand total of 1 hour (from 7.15 am to 8.30 am, the 9th of June), arriving in Silicon Valley on the same day that we left Singapore although the actual traveling time was about 12 to 13 hours :)

First day visit was to the Tech Museum. Lots of cool exhibits in that museum, interactive exhibits (you can make your own roller coaster ride then ride it, choose a team and then start sleighing with it). Quite suitable for young children in the primary levels, but still was a 2x Singapore Science Centre experience.

After that visit, we took a trip down to GGB, the Golden Gate Bridge, icon of San Francisco. You know the bridge that everyone has a picture of in their mind when they think of San Francisco.

Dinner at 5.30pm, then back to hotel room. Passed by the WWDC 2008 centre, saw that everyone was leaving cause it was ending. Due to the fact that it is still summer here, the sun only started setting at about 9pm US time...