Mind Blown

There is a subtle restaurant competition between the intellectuals of Cambridge and the gentrified South End. In the spirit of "if you can't beat them, join them", the restaurant The Elephant Walk added a second restaurant just around the corner.

A very odd mix of 2 cuisines. The menu is divided into 3 main sections. 1) The chefs interpretation of Cambodian food (with a French accent), 2) traditional French cuisine with a Cambodian accent, and 3) Tradition Cambodian food.

C started with an avocado and raw tuna salad, I had fried spring rolls with basically the same stuffing as her salad. For dinner C choose the traditional Cambodian menu as there were no dairy allergy issues, she had braised short ribs, with homemade asian noodles. I had French with salmon on a leek, risotto, and mushroom cake.

I know we sound like a broken record, but the food was incredible. There is a wonderful story about the genesis of this restaurant here, but basically immigrants with few options decided to open up a restaurant featuring their home cuisine. It is worth the read.

That evening we both had vivid dreams, and intense memorable thoughts. Something with the asian spices we figured that brought on mental clarity. Unfortunately the chemistry did not last long and we will have to return.

For those of us who are geography challenged. Cambodia is not near France, although the common history can be found here.

Dirty Little Secret

I'm in the industry, and I am not sure what "hack" means. The closest definition is to do something quickly in order to see results before attempting perfection.
"I'm going to hack this out so the customer can get us feedback today"

Hack has connotations to break into something as well.
"Im going to hack into the user account using the NSA backdoor, they left wide open"

A "hackathon" is when a bunch of people of like esoteric interests get together and talk, do, and share, usually around some technical issue.

Last weekend there was a hackathon over at MIT on the subject of GPUs. Don't stop reading. A GPU is nothing more than a computer that has several (1000s) of smaller computers inside.

Here is the dirty little computer secret. We can't make a single computer much faster, but we can put more and more computers in the same area as one computer. Basically every 2 years, we can double the number of computers in the same area. This is why your smart phone is called quad-core, it has actually 4 computers inside, each can work on something concurrently with the others. For people still using a flip phone, this is why every 2 years more people tease you.

The new GPUs have several applications. The most popular is gaming. Here is another little secret, the gaming world made 3D medical imaging possible. Just like porn made made the internet faster (its true), gaming made 3D medical imaging possible.

You can also use these computers to do things like guess passwords, oh and do useful work like analyze the image coming from your car's front facing camera in order to avoid a pedestrian. Or perhaps analyze the rear view image to see if the car behind you is going to hit you, so it can have your lawyer on speed dial.

I see a big future in having 100,000s of computers work on problem. Like many things in life, we are influenced by the early leaders (Alan Turing for example) but time marches on and new solutions appear that we should embrace.

The picture above is from the hackathon, and is a GPU simulating the collision of 1000 balls. Each ball gets a computer. Its the same computer that is in a Tesla car.

Big shout out to JM for being snowed in and going to the hack with me, and of course MIT for providing people/room/food.

Another Great Year

Last year we did an informal review of some of our favorite things, we will continue the tradition this year.

• Favorite Restaurant Experience
• C - T's Birthday dinner at Banyan - Treated like royalty, left starstruck. We ate at the chef's table in full view of the kitchen. We watched every dish being created. The chef spent a lot of time talking about how each dish was prepared, and gave us small sample sizes of many of them.
• T - Ditto
• Best Book
• C - Atlas Shrugged
• T - Elon Musk or Wright Brothers
• Best Article
• C - Clinical Trial Tom Foolery
• T - End of Computing
• Best Drink
• C - PAPER CRANE.@ Banyan (on tap) whiskey, aperol, foro, lemon 
• T - THE SUPREME LEADER.@ Banyan thai chili infused vodka, coconut, lime
• Best Entertainment
• C - Ted Talks
• T - Talk by Atul Gawande @ Boston book festival 
• Best Thing About Boston
• C - Photogenic-acy
• T - Its like real easy to take pretty pictures here
• Best New Store
• C - Primark
• T - Blackbird Doughnuts
• Best Quote
• C - "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." – Warren Buffett
• T - "As the area of our knowledge increases, so does the perimeter of our ignorance"
• Best Sporting Moment
• T/C Duh, the Pats winning the super bowl

Getting the line wet in the Charles

And glad there is a fish store just around the corner...

Happy New Year

190 years old and going strong