TWID April 23, 2018

This is a post detailing some stuff I did, learned, posted and tweeted this week, I call this TWID (This week in Denis). I am doing this mostly for myself... a kind of an online journal so that I can look back on this later on. Will use the label TWID for these


This week my youngest son and I decided to read all the Lord Of the Rings books. Both of us have seen the movies many times and I have read the books back in 2001. We decided to both sit in a room and I read out loud to him. It is kind of hard to read out load... I guess last time I had to read in front of people was back in high school


Finished 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music
This was a fun book, 1965 was the year of protest, drugs and very good music. Highly recommended.
After I was done with the book, I decided to get some of this music mentioned in this book from Amazon

Got these three songs

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Remastered)
From the album The Beatles (Remastered) [Explicit]
By: The Beatles

The Sound of Silence (Overdubbed Version)
From the album The Best Of Simon & Garfunkel
By: Simon & Garfunkel


Like a Rolling Stone
From the album Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits
By: Bob Dylan


Except for Sound of Silence, I already had the other two songs somewhere but I was too lazy to go searching for it. I watched the movie Watchmen a week or so ago and that is when I heard the song Sound of Silence, now that it was mentioned in the book I had to get it. Surprisingly I don't believe I have ever heard this song before watching the movie.

Got a couple of other songs as well


Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta [Explicit]
From the album Uncut Dope [Explicit]
By: Geto Boys

You can hear this song in the movie Office Space... the best part is when someone is rapping pretending to be the president and it sounds just like Bill Clinton


Shout 2000
From the album The Sickness [Explicit]
By: Disturbed

This is a version of the Tears N' Fears song by the band Disturbed

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish
From the album Eat The Elephant [Explicit]
By: A Perfect Circle

Was on the bestseller list.. sounded interesting, so I got iy

Paid In Full (Seven Minutes Of Madness - The Coldcut Remix)
From the album Paid In Full (Deluxe Edition)
By: Eric B. & Rakim


When I was a kid in 1987 I listened to this mix with the song Im Nin'Alu by singer Ofra Haza
If you know the song Girl You Know It's True by Milli Vanilli you will recognize the drum beat. This is one of those classic rap song that you wished were still made today

This Week I Learned

Watched parts of the SQL Server 2016 New Features for Developers Pluralsight course

This Week I tweeted

GPUs Mine Astronomical Datasets for Golden Insight Nuggets 

Critical to all of this research were GPU accelerators – specifically the Tesla P100s used in the DGX-1 server from Nvidia – which enabled accelerated training of neural networks. They used the Wolfram Language neural network functionality, built a top of the open-source MXNet framework, that in turn uses the cuDNN library for accelerating the training on Nvidia GPUs. ADAM was deployed as the underlying learning algorithm. The significant horsepower of the Blue Waters system, which is also GPU accelerated, was brought to bear for their modeling data and for solving Einstein’s equations via simulation. The group are also looking into generative models GANs (generative adversarial networks) to further reduce the multi-week time taken (even for Blue Waters) for these specific steps. 

I am still waiting for the day that SQL Server will be able to use GPUs in addition to CPUs


Scientists make new plastic-eating enzyme in fight against pollution

A team of scientists in Britain and at the U.S. Department of Energy say that they have bolstered the ability of an enzyme discovered in Japan to eat the plastic found in soda bottles.

The plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) normally lasts for hundreds of years, but a release from the University of Portsmouth and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory says that a new bacteria will be able to chow down and speed up the process to deal with the huge amounts of waste humans make.

This is pretty cool, in the end technology will be used to solve the problem that technology created


Light-Powered Camera The prototype gets 15 frames/second, no external power needed

Light is used for both image sensing and solar power.

This is awesome and scary at the same time... awesome because you can have cameras that you don't need to charge, scary because you know these cameras will be deployed everywhere and will be recording everything people do.


Microsoft built its own custom Linux kernel for its new IoT service

At RSA 2018, Microsoft announced the preview of Microsoft Azure Sphere, a new solution for creating highly-secured, Internet-connected microcontroller (MCU) devices. Azure Sphere includes three components that work together to protect and power devices at the intelligent edge.

• Azure Sphere certified microcontrollers (MCUs):A new cross-over class of MCUs that combines both real-time and application processors with built-in Microsoft security technology and connectivity. Each chip includes custom silicon security technology from Microsoft, inspired by 15 years of experience and learnings from Xbox, to secure this new class of MCUs and the devices they power.


• Azure Sphere OS: This OS is purpose-built to offer unequalled security and agility. Unlike the RTOSes common to MCUs today, our defense-in-depth IoT OS offers multiple layers of security. It combines security innovations pioneered in Windows, a security monitor, and a custom Linux kernel to create a highly-secured software environment and a trustworthy platform for new IoT experiences. 


• Azure Sphere Security Service: A turnkey, cloud service that guards every Azure Sphere device; brokering trust for device-to-device and device-to-cloud communication through certificate-based authentication, detecting emerging security threats across the entire Azure Sphere ecosystem through online failure reporting, and renewing security through software updates. It brings the rigor and scale Microsoft has built over decades protecting our own devices and data in the cloud to MCU powered devices. 


These capabilities come together to enable Azure Sphere to meet all 7 properties of a highly secured device – making it a first of its kind solution.

Here is a short video that has also some information





FDA clears first contact lens with light-adaptive technology

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today cleared the first contact lens to incorporate an additive that automatically darkens the lens when exposed to bright light. The Acuvue Oasys Contact Lenses with Transitions Light Intelligent Technology are soft contact lenses indicated for daily use to correct the vision of people with non-diseased eyes who are nearsighted (myopia) or farsighted (hyperopia). They can be used by people with certain degrees of astigmatism, an abnormal curvature of the eye.

This sounds cool but if it takes 10 seconds for the lenses to go back to normal clear view you might have issues when going into a tunnel when you drive with these lenses in.

Some cool stuff you might enjoy

Glass for geeks: An in-depth tour of Nikon’s Hikari Glass factory

I've been on a lot of factory tours with various camera and lens manufacturers before, but had never had a chance to see how the optical glass was made that goes into the lenses we use every day. So I was really happy to receive an invite from Nikon to tour their Hikari Glass factory in Akita Japan, following the annual CP+ trade show in Yokohama this year.

This was a pretty special tour, as we got to see the whole process, from start to finish, hosted by three of Hikari's top executives. Our hosts were Mr. Tatsuo Ishitoya, President-Director, Mr. Akio Arai, Corporate Vice President and Production General Manager, and Mr. Toshihiko Futami, Director and Management General Manager. Mr. Masaru Kobayashi, Assistant Manager of the Administration Section also accompanied us and contributed to the information we received. Arai-san is the person directly responsible for plant operations, and it was him who personally guided us on our extensive tour. All three executives briefed us before and after the tour itself.

Wow, I never thought about how complex this stuff is. Great article