Monday, February 20, 2012
H.R.G.
A few images of the most keen shop around, the machine equipt, the hotrods lurking around, and the man who makes it all happen....Here's a peak into Hotrod Garage, Martinez, Ca.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Indian Summer.....
Indian summer is always such an important time to me. I cannot explain how or why, but just one day to myself along the coast during this time of year does so much for my mind and spirit. A total reboot, recharge, refresh of all my senses, desires, dreams, hopes, all of it. I never really plan this day each year either, it just sort of happens, as if i'm called out there by an unseen force each year. It may be all in my head, and probably is, being the superstitious surfer i am. Either way, i count on it each year, so i can move forward, and this year coming is going to be a good one if this day was any indication....here are some images of my Indian Summer on Pacific Coast Highway 1, California...enjoy.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
dashed on the rocks...
Not like Moses came, in a basket down a gentle stream...
Not for you my son, you were born into a maelstrom on a listing ship.
All the while He was there, do you see?
All the while I've clung to you, and you've clung to me.
Make no mistake my son, much like I, you've been dashed from the start...
you know not now, that a mark's on your heart.
Bottle up life not, pour it out to Him...
Keep it not inside, keep it not within.
Son, I know, for there i've already been.
All around you, men will crumble, down on the first blow...
but not you and i, oh no. Cracked from stone, on we will go.
Made for a season, through the fire our steel. He's pounded us flat,
made for the kill. Sharpened in hurt, bent for His will.
I know it seems heavy, this world evokes wrath....
but you will be strong, you must be, for this path.
Man up son, play the part. I am not worried, I know you've the heart.
The times lay ahead, when they'll need men like us...
men of nerve, men who've suffered, men with angst, when we've only sought love.
We'll get our chance, we'll have our day.
The Lord's had to harden us up, so we'd make it all the way.
For in this truth, be thankful, be glad....for one day you will be,
when the rest have been had.
Look them in the eye, and plant your feet....
knowing you can square off with anything life throws you, anyone you meet.
Fear is our enemy, in that lies defeat.
We have no cause to worry though, He has them already beat.
He goes on before us, just keep on your feet.
Keep your chin up, don't look left, don't look right.
Don't you dare stop, don't look down, and keep Him in sight.
Don't feel like you fail me, I know you'll do right.
I push you hard, I press you, I won't let up, and there's a good reason why.
I want to be sure Son, that you're stronger than I.
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Tourist
Just passing through....
I'm packing light with a heavy heart.
They're waiting for me, and I'll someday be waiting for you.
Been given what i need, and not much else.
No lofty degree, no material wealth...
just my soul, my identity, and my bill of health.
I don't speak several languages, and i don't
tango dance.
I wear worn out levis, i don't starch my pants.
I don't belong here, I belong where i'm going...
just a tourist passing through, loving, admiring.
Sure, i have a job, but it's not what I'm for...
just a means to an end, till i'm called for much more.
Not the modern man, not like those in spades...
and i'd love you like they can't if given the chance.
just where i am, and that's where i'll be.
for some reason, in some ryhme....Lord knows I don't.
roads i would travel, but i can't and i won't.
If i stay on this road, and i follow his will,
my destination will be revealed. I know it will.
I travel alone, but I'd love you to come...
just pack light, for we surely will roam.
I can offer only this heart, for that's all i have to give..
but i promise you this, we will truly live.
On a leave of sorts, till the trumpets blow...
and it's in that hour, that you'll truly know...
why i cannot go where some men do, for the time is short,
and i've a job to do.
Friday, October 14, 2011
and nothing else matters....
Letting my folks down
Letting myself down
Marching in the hot sun towards an unknown future
You weren't with us yet but you already made it all worthwile
1,700 miles from all i've known
sixteen lanes into four
I can't find a quiet place, and all night long the jets roar overhead
she screams at me, i know she wants to leave, but i don't know why
you're on your way, like a bomb dropped into a total war zone
i was blown away by you, and nothing else mattered...
my life changed forever, my life had a purpose forever
it all happened within the course of a year, and your waves will go on forever causing ripples in my pond till long after i'm gone
my parents had to shove me off the dock like a ship to sea
i fought like hell and helplessly watched you both being ripped from me
going through the motions because to keep going on is all i know,
i put one foot in front of the other
i know you didn't see, that to not see you, was killing me. I know you couldn't see, that to talk on the phone only made my heart bleed
it all fell apart again, my best laid plans....
making mockery of my wants and my will when it wasn't his...
i see now, what i didn't see then, and i praise him now for what he brought me through that i cursed him for allowing then
we three are survivors, more than that, victors....our hour is at hand, you and i
we will dream big dreams together, be free to be together, you and i...
i can walk through fire. i can take it all. I am not afraid, for i am in her good graces. She is beautiful, she is part of me, she loves me as i love her. i'll never be lonely if i have her in my life....
and nothing else matters
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Artificial Intelligence?
Came across this article online at PopSci.com....pretty interesting, take a look.....
NEW COMPUTER CHIP MODELED ON A LIVING BRAIN CAN LEARN AND REMEMBER
IBM, with help from DARPA, has built two working prototypes of a "neurosynaptic chip." Based on the neurons and synapses of the brain, these first-generation cognitive computing cores could represent a major leap in power, speed and efficiency
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 08.18.2011 at 10:30 am 23 Comments
IBM's "Neurosynaptic" chip prototype IBM Research Zurich
A pair of brain-inspired cognitive computer chips unveiled today could be a new leap forward — or at least a major fork in the road — in the world of computer architecture and artificial intelligence.
About a year ago, we told you about IBM’s project to map the neural circuitry of a macaque, the most complex brain networking project of its kind. Big Blue wasn’t doing it just for the sake of science — the goal was to reverse-engineer neural networks, helping pave the way to cognitive computer systems that can think as efficiently as the brain. Now they’ve made just such a system — two, actually — and they’re calling them neurosynaptic chips.
Built on 45 nanometer silicon/metal oxide semiconductor platform, both chips have 256 neurons. One chip has 262,144 programmable synapses and the other contains 65,536 learning synapses — which can remember and learn from their own actions. IBM researchers have used the compute cores for experiments in navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory and classification, the company says. It’s a step toward redefining computers as adaptable, holistic learning systems, rather than yes-or-no calculators.
“This new architecture represents a critical shift away form today’s traditional von Neumann computers, to extremely power-efficient architecture,” Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research, said in an interview. “It integrates memory with processors, and it is fundamentally massively parallel and distributed as well as event-driven, so it begins to rival the brain’s function, power and space.”
You can read up on Von Neumann architecture over here, but essentially it is a system with two data portals, which are shared by the input instructions and output data. This creates a bottleneck that will fundamentally limit the speed of memory transfer. IBM’s system eliminates that bottleneck by putting the circuits for data computation and storage together, allowing the system to compute information from multiple sources at the same time with greater efficiency. Also like the brain, the chips have synaptic plasticity, meaning certain regions can be reconfigured to perform tasks to which they were not initially assigned.
IBM’s long-term goal is to build a chip system with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses that consumes just one kilowatt-hour of electricity and fits inside a shoebox, Modha said.
The project is funded by DARPA’s SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) initiative, and IBM just completed phases 0 and 1. IBM’s project, which involves collaborators from Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of California-Merced and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, just received another $21 million in funding for phase 2, the company said.
Computer scientists have been working for some time on systems that can emulate the brain’s massively parallel, low-power computing prowess, and they’ve made several breakthroughs. Last year, computer engineer Steve Furber described a synaptic computer network that consists of tens of thousands of cellphone chips.
The most notable computer-brain achievements have been in the field of memristors. As their name implies, a memory resistor can “remember” the last resistance that it possessed when current was flowing through it — so after current is turned back on, the resistance of the circuit will be the same. We will not attempt to delve too deeply here, but this basically makes a system much more efficient.
A Map of the Mind: The highways and byways connecting the various regions of a Macaque monkey's brain. PNAS
Hewlett-Packard has been developing memristors since first describing them in 2008, and has also been part of the SyNAPSE project. Last spring, HP engineers described a titanium dioxide memristor that uses low power.
For a brain-based computer system, memristors can function as a computer analogue for a synapse, which also stores information about previous data transfer. IBM's chip doesn't use a memristor architecture, but it does integrate memory with computation power — and it uses computer neurons and axons to do it. The building blocks are simple, but the architecture is unique, said Rajit Manohar, associate dean for research and graduate studies in the engineering school at Cornell.
"When a neuron changes its state, the state it is modifying is its own state, not the state of something else. So you can physically co-locate the circuit to do the computation, and the circuit to store the state. They can be very close to each other, so that cooperation becomes very efficient," he said.
Modha said it is just a new way to store memory.
"A bit is a bit is a bit. You could store a bit in a memristor, or a phase-change memory, or a nano-electromechanical switch, or SRAM, or any form of memory that you please. But by itself, that does not a complete architecture make," Modha said. "It has no computational capability."
But this new chip does have that power, he said. It integrates memory with processor capability on a typical SOI-CMOS platform, using traditional transistors in a new design. Along with integrated memory to stand in for synapses, the neurosynaptic “core” uses typical transistors for input-output capability, i.e. neurons.
Chip Simulation: A simulation of the cognitive chip. IBM has fabricated two chips based on this design, which the company says recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems. IBM Research
This new architecture will not replace traditional computers, however. “Both will be with us for a long time to come, and continue to serve humanity,” Modha predicted.
The idea is that future powerful chips based on this brain-network design will be able to ingest and compute information from multiple inputs and make sense of it all — just like the brain does.
A cognitive computer monitoring the oceans could record and compute variables like temperature, wave height and acoustics, and decide whether to issue tsunami or hurricane warnings. Or a grocer stocking shelves could use a special glove that monitors scent, texture and sight to flag contaminated produce, Modha said. Modern computers can’t handle that level of detail from so many inputs, he said. But our brains do it all the time — grab a rotting peach, and your senses of touch, smell and sight work in concert instantaneously to determine that the fruit is bad.
To do this, the brain uses electrical signals between some 150 trillion synapses, all while sipping energy — our brains need about 20 watts to function. Understanding how this works is key to building brain-based computers, which is why IBM has been working with neuroscientists to study monkey and cat brains. That research is progressing, Modha said.
But it will be quite some time before computer chips can truly match the ultra-efficient computational powerhouses that nature gave us.
Creeeeeeepy……..man is planting in God’s flower box…..better watch out, for what is going on behind closed doors is going on behind closed doors for a reason. What I’m curious about is who the funding is coming from for these projects, and if it’s government connected or not….anyhow, just something to keep on your radar…make more than a mental note of this.
Here are some comments which were posted in response to this article from PopSci.com:
“we are a stage in life where we will take evolution into our own hands. thanks to our intelligence. we no longer have to evolve to survive. technology helps us each day way more than basic evolution. im thinking that we will evolve into a cyborg species soon. Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes to mind.”
“My thoughts on the above is that if you want to view this scientific achievement in the light of evolution, we are evolving into a species that will replace itself with cyberbeings that can travel the universe and learn immense knowledge and possibly become eternal beings. I'm not sure how a soul would fit into the new cyberbeing unless we created in them a moral circuitry or "code" of ethics that would be in "our image"...so to speak. Putting a human image into a cyberbeing might be the greatest human accomplishment ever. I just hope that these new beings will be able to forgive our inhumanity (when the new beings reach conscience and realize that we as a human race have major defects throughout) to each other and not do the same or we may pay dearly for our "sins" as these new beings may become our overlords someday.”
I dunno...anyways, lets hope the powers that be have good intentions.
NEW COMPUTER CHIP MODELED ON A LIVING BRAIN CAN LEARN AND REMEMBER
IBM, with help from DARPA, has built two working prototypes of a "neurosynaptic chip." Based on the neurons and synapses of the brain, these first-generation cognitive computing cores could represent a major leap in power, speed and efficiency
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 08.18.2011 at 10:30 am 23 Comments
IBM's "Neurosynaptic" chip prototype IBM Research Zurich
A pair of brain-inspired cognitive computer chips unveiled today could be a new leap forward — or at least a major fork in the road — in the world of computer architecture and artificial intelligence.
About a year ago, we told you about IBM’s project to map the neural circuitry of a macaque, the most complex brain networking project of its kind. Big Blue wasn’t doing it just for the sake of science — the goal was to reverse-engineer neural networks, helping pave the way to cognitive computer systems that can think as efficiently as the brain. Now they’ve made just such a system — two, actually — and they’re calling them neurosynaptic chips.
Built on 45 nanometer silicon/metal oxide semiconductor platform, both chips have 256 neurons. One chip has 262,144 programmable synapses and the other contains 65,536 learning synapses — which can remember and learn from their own actions. IBM researchers have used the compute cores for experiments in navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory and classification, the company says. It’s a step toward redefining computers as adaptable, holistic learning systems, rather than yes-or-no calculators.
“This new architecture represents a critical shift away form today’s traditional von Neumann computers, to extremely power-efficient architecture,” Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research, said in an interview. “It integrates memory with processors, and it is fundamentally massively parallel and distributed as well as event-driven, so it begins to rival the brain’s function, power and space.”
You can read up on Von Neumann architecture over here, but essentially it is a system with two data portals, which are shared by the input instructions and output data. This creates a bottleneck that will fundamentally limit the speed of memory transfer. IBM’s system eliminates that bottleneck by putting the circuits for data computation and storage together, allowing the system to compute information from multiple sources at the same time with greater efficiency. Also like the brain, the chips have synaptic plasticity, meaning certain regions can be reconfigured to perform tasks to which they were not initially assigned.
IBM’s long-term goal is to build a chip system with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses that consumes just one kilowatt-hour of electricity and fits inside a shoebox, Modha said.
The project is funded by DARPA’s SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) initiative, and IBM just completed phases 0 and 1. IBM’s project, which involves collaborators from Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of California-Merced and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, just received another $21 million in funding for phase 2, the company said.
Computer scientists have been working for some time on systems that can emulate the brain’s massively parallel, low-power computing prowess, and they’ve made several breakthroughs. Last year, computer engineer Steve Furber described a synaptic computer network that consists of tens of thousands of cellphone chips.
The most notable computer-brain achievements have been in the field of memristors. As their name implies, a memory resistor can “remember” the last resistance that it possessed when current was flowing through it — so after current is turned back on, the resistance of the circuit will be the same. We will not attempt to delve too deeply here, but this basically makes a system much more efficient.
A Map of the Mind: The highways and byways connecting the various regions of a Macaque monkey's brain. PNAS
Hewlett-Packard has been developing memristors since first describing them in 2008, and has also been part of the SyNAPSE project. Last spring, HP engineers described a titanium dioxide memristor that uses low power.
For a brain-based computer system, memristors can function as a computer analogue for a synapse, which also stores information about previous data transfer. IBM's chip doesn't use a memristor architecture, but it does integrate memory with computation power — and it uses computer neurons and axons to do it. The building blocks are simple, but the architecture is unique, said Rajit Manohar, associate dean for research and graduate studies in the engineering school at Cornell.
"When a neuron changes its state, the state it is modifying is its own state, not the state of something else. So you can physically co-locate the circuit to do the computation, and the circuit to store the state. They can be very close to each other, so that cooperation becomes very efficient," he said.
Modha said it is just a new way to store memory.
"A bit is a bit is a bit. You could store a bit in a memristor, or a phase-change memory, or a nano-electromechanical switch, or SRAM, or any form of memory that you please. But by itself, that does not a complete architecture make," Modha said. "It has no computational capability."
But this new chip does have that power, he said. It integrates memory with processor capability on a typical SOI-CMOS platform, using traditional transistors in a new design. Along with integrated memory to stand in for synapses, the neurosynaptic “core” uses typical transistors for input-output capability, i.e. neurons.
Chip Simulation: A simulation of the cognitive chip. IBM has fabricated two chips based on this design, which the company says recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems. IBM Research
This new architecture will not replace traditional computers, however. “Both will be with us for a long time to come, and continue to serve humanity,” Modha predicted.
The idea is that future powerful chips based on this brain-network design will be able to ingest and compute information from multiple inputs and make sense of it all — just like the brain does.
A cognitive computer monitoring the oceans could record and compute variables like temperature, wave height and acoustics, and decide whether to issue tsunami or hurricane warnings. Or a grocer stocking shelves could use a special glove that monitors scent, texture and sight to flag contaminated produce, Modha said. Modern computers can’t handle that level of detail from so many inputs, he said. But our brains do it all the time — grab a rotting peach, and your senses of touch, smell and sight work in concert instantaneously to determine that the fruit is bad.
To do this, the brain uses electrical signals between some 150 trillion synapses, all while sipping energy — our brains need about 20 watts to function. Understanding how this works is key to building brain-based computers, which is why IBM has been working with neuroscientists to study monkey and cat brains. That research is progressing, Modha said.
But it will be quite some time before computer chips can truly match the ultra-efficient computational powerhouses that nature gave us.
Creeeeeeepy……..man is planting in God’s flower box…..better watch out, for what is going on behind closed doors is going on behind closed doors for a reason. What I’m curious about is who the funding is coming from for these projects, and if it’s government connected or not….anyhow, just something to keep on your radar…make more than a mental note of this.
Here are some comments which were posted in response to this article from PopSci.com:
“we are a stage in life where we will take evolution into our own hands. thanks to our intelligence. we no longer have to evolve to survive. technology helps us each day way more than basic evolution. im thinking that we will evolve into a cyborg species soon. Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes to mind.”
“My thoughts on the above is that if you want to view this scientific achievement in the light of evolution, we are evolving into a species that will replace itself with cyberbeings that can travel the universe and learn immense knowledge and possibly become eternal beings. I'm not sure how a soul would fit into the new cyberbeing unless we created in them a moral circuitry or "code" of ethics that would be in "our image"...so to speak. Putting a human image into a cyberbeing might be the greatest human accomplishment ever. I just hope that these new beings will be able to forgive our inhumanity (when the new beings reach conscience and realize that we as a human race have major defects throughout) to each other and not do the same or we may pay dearly for our "sins" as these new beings may become our overlords someday.”
I dunno...anyways, lets hope the powers that be have good intentions.
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