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7 pages, roughly 700-1000 words. Making progress.
posted 23:49 |
Last week at the MFA I picked up a fascinating book called Art of the Natural World. It's about Chinese scholars' rocks, and looks at how those objects contain the infinity of a landscape or a cave-dimpled mountain in a very small space. Lots of cool pictures, too!
posted 13:54 |
The folks at Bell Labs have done it again, creating transistors with only a single molecule in the channel. Longer article will follow as soon as I can track down someone to comment.
posted 09:49 |
I'm trying to keep this page non-political, but just couldn't let this one slip by. The Washington Post reports that the U.S. will monitor calls to lawyers for people in federal custody, including those who have not been charged with any crime, "whenever that is deemed necessary to prevent violence or terrorism." In other words, if you fit the FBI's terrorism profile--which means you look vaguely Middle Eastern--you can forget about attorney-client privilege. This is getting pretty scary.
posted 09:07 |
Interesting question over on Alison Sinclair and Lynda Williams' Reality-Skimming blog: Where do metaphors come from? Where does any writing come from? From overheard bits of conversation, from deep in the cultural myths we all live with whether we know it or not, from a resonance that happens between the glistening drops of water on a spiderweb at dawn and the fragile web of our lives. It's magic.
posted 01:01 |
Much better. Nine pages (longhand, probably 900-1400 words), none of which have anything to do with thin film manufacturing.
posted 00:50 |
Bother. Haven't done any writing since I finished my article on Monday. So what am I doing online? Web tweaking is a great way to procrastinate, but it's time to go curl up with my notebook.
posted 23:10 |
I love fare sales. Just bought the ticket for my trip to DC next month. $132 roundtrip, or about 1/3 what it was the last time I did that. Excellent!Too bad the American Express site is down tonight. Need to transfer some Membership Rewards points around, and it looks like I'll actually have to (gasp!) talk to a human being.
posted 22:41 |
The University of Florida is doing some interesting work on magnetic semiconductors, reported in this week's Applied Physics Letters. I'm hoping to do a longer story on it if they're willing to talk to me.From the mailbag:
Developing revolutionary products on a schedule that keeps marketers and customers happy is hard. Geri Actor offers some useful suggestions for inventing on a schedule.The blog is now linked to the home page.... and away we go.
posted 12:59 |
Just finished reading an interesting paper from Phys. Rev. E, on small world patterns in electronic circuits. The idea is that the clustering of circuit elements and the connections between clusters may be amenable to some of the same kinds of analysis used to study biological, social, and other kinds of networks. Moreover, those other networks may help designers build more robust circuits. Worth a look.
posted 17:03 |
Two days after my deadline, and now two different sources get around to calling me back. Oh well. No information is wasted. If they have useful things to say I'm sure I can squeeze them in somewhere. But where were they when I was tearing my hair out?
posted 14:35 |
From the mailbag:
Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW) announced today that it has
installed a pilot furnace in its Charleston, S.C., manufacturing facility
for the production of ultra high transmission ArF grade HPFS(r) fused silica
glass.
Company claims the new glass will provide the highest transmission available at the ArF (193nm) wavelength.
posted 10:28 |
More template tweaks. Cleaned up the look of the page, added an email link for when comments are down, which seems to be often. Reduced main page to just ten most recent posts (everything else is still in the archives) and switched to only one "Top" link. Web tweaking is, as always, a phenomenal productivity drain....
posted 09:21 |
Hmmm.... today's tidbits are pretty random. Some kind of coherent theme would probably be nice for all you folks out there in Internet Land. I'm working on it, I'm working on it!
posted 23:53 |
Cheers has nothing on Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, created by Spider Robinson, where everybody knows your name and wants to help with your troubles, too.
posted 23:20 |
Stolen from S.L. Viehl's Star Lines blog:
"If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing." Kingsley Amis
Heh. Words to live by....
posted 12:17 |
Yay! My deadbeat client isn't really a deadbeat! "As a result of the merger transaction, [company] will assume payment responsibility for all outstanding amounts owed to vendors of [deadbeat]..." They haven't coughed up a check yet, but this suggests that I don't have to figure out how small claims court works after all. Yay!
posted 10:43 |
Done. Took about twice as long as I planned, but it's done and shipped. Time for bed.
posted 00:02 |
So that's what scatterometry is! So many people toss the term around, but no one ever explains it. Except for the good people at UC Berkeley.
posted 22:02 |
This is strange. The article's going really well, covering all the ground I want without too much backtracking or false starts, but it's taking a really long time. I've already been at it about four hours longer than I expected, and it still has a way to go. Strange.
posted 21:54 |
Break to change CDs. (Brandenburg Concertos.) 2nd draft (or maybe 3rd, I lose count) of article is about halfway done. On track to finish this evening.
posted 17:06 |
Site updates done. Subscriber newsletter mailed. Back to work on SEMI article.
posted 10:54 |
Comments are back. Apparently BlogBack was doing software tweaks on their server.
posted 10:22 |
Okay, who do these people think they're kidding? Electroglas announced a new software division today. You can read their press release here. And then, over at Semiconductor Business News, you can read a remarkably similar story.This isn't plagiarism. The people who write press releases absolutely LOVE it when media outlets pick them up and run them as is. But it is, in my opinion, a violation of SBN's contract with the readers. SBN's well-deserved reputation rests on independent reporting by some of the best trade journalists in the business, not on recycling of thinly edited press releases under the SBN name.
It's not just SBN, either. Read any of the trade magazines regularly and you'll start to see the same thing. Press releases are a great way for editors to fill space fast, especially on the web. I think it's a mistake, though. People read trade magazines for unbiased news about their industries. People who want the latest press releases as soon as they come out read Yahoo!'s Semiconductor page.
posted 09:29 |
BlogBack is down this morning. Bother. Once this gets established I need to think about hosting comments locally. Not today's project.
posted 09:03 |
First draft is close enough to done for me to call it a night. I'm pretty much where I expected to be with it, will finish tomorrow.Diamondbacks win Game 7, and the series. Johnson and Schilling split series MVP. Awesome game, awesome series. This is why I'm a baseball fan.
posted 00:06 |
Working on an article for SEMI about the changing role of metrology in fabs. Finished up the zeroth draft--basically an extended outline--a little while ago. Once SEMI publishes it, you'll find a link on this site's Publications page.
posted 21:31 |
More template tweaks. Can't decide if having a "Back to Top" link after each item is too annoying to tolerate, but having only one at the bottom of the page is bad, and having none at all is worse. Hmmmm....
posted 18:15 |
Hynix Creditors Agree to Provide Rescue Package ... again. That's the second one this year, and other DRAM makers are very annoyed that the company hasn't been forced into bankruptcy. It's a little known fact that the DRAM market has actually shrunk in dollar terms in the last five years, so no wonder no one's making any money in it! I'm working on an article that looks at the need for DRAM consolidation, and the reasons why it hasn't happened.
posted 16:45 |
MICRO magazine's September issue has an interesting article on integrated metrology. Good process control is becoming a way to maintain profit margins in the face of hypercompetitive markets.
posted 16:28 |
Testing minor format tweaks... Turns out that you've got to use fully qualified URLs in the template because the archives and the posts live in different directories but use the same template. Which confuses the links.
posted 14:03 |
My new posting toy, blogBuddy, lets me post straight from the Desktop. No editing and only minimal formatting, but we'll see how it goes.
posted 10:33 |
more...
Writing is an act of hubris. Blogging even more so. Think about it: I'm assuming that whatever random navel gazing I come up with in the gaps between real work will be entertaining and interesting to all the unknown strangers out there on the web. Who am I kidding?Except that other blogs I've read are interesting. Everyone presents their own unique slice of mind, and they're interesting precisely because they offer unique views of the world. Too much self-awareness kills them, though. I better try not to be too self-aware.
Diamondbacks spank the Yankees, 15-2, in Game 6 of the World Series. Series tied at three games each. Game 7 tomorrow should be one for the ages....
posted 00:26 |
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