I've thought of going to PyCon before, but couldn't break free. This year looks better and I've regestered for PyCon 2007 in the Dallas metro. It should be interesting.

I caught up on some dues today. I renewed my memberships in the ACM and IIE, and made doantions to the PSF and USO.

Trying Fedora Core 6 it looks nicer than the Red Hat 9 I've been running on my old laptop. It includes recent versions of NumPy, IPython, and MatPlotLib, but not F77.

The Hypercar is a concept for an ultralight hybrid vehicle that is very fuel efficient, practical, and affordable. Autoblog Green has an interesting four part interview with Michael Brylawski of the Rocky Mountain Institute to discuss it's past, presensnt and future. Read the whole thing.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

We attended a talk on alternative fuels by Bob Noun of the NREL at the Longmont Library tonight. Fairly interesting, though not as technical as I'd have liked.

Molecular memory constructed from nanowires seperated by a then molecular layer has been developed at Cal TEch and UCLA that is 50 times as dense as current semiconductor memory.

According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, memory chips in 2006 had 1.79 gigabits per square centimeter. The new work reaches 100 gigabits per square centimeter, a density that the Roadmap forecasts chips won't reach until sometime after 2020.

The devices are only 20 kilobits, and this is still a low yielding laboratory process, but it bears watching. It could be competetive for some applications in a few years.

Not having broadcast TV, I didn't see the State of the Union address last night but Glen Reynolds has some commentary. It sounds like the President is staying the course on the war on terrorists and their sponsors. I hope his administration and congress follow through. Domestically, the goal to reduce gasoline use is good, but I'd like to see a plan.

While ultracapacitors have held promise as energy storage devices, their poor energy density has kept them from most applications. Technology Review reports on a breakthrough that could bring them to market soon. If this is as good as it sounds, we'll have electric cars with decent range and short charge times, and laptops that run all day without a external power.

After WW II, the West said "never again" to the holocaust perpetrated agains Jews by the Nazi's and their collaborators. The lame response of the UN to genocide in Darfur dampens my optimism that many feel this with any conviction. Benny Morris describes how this holocaust will be different, if Iran gets nuclear weapons, they will destroy Israel. The next holocaust will be more remote and impersonal, but just as devastating. Preventing it is one of the great moral challenges of our time.

IPython 1 is a rewrite of the IPython enhanced shell to provide an interactive parallel computing environment to make it easier to exploit the power of inexpensive clusters and multi-core processors. The IPython team hasn't released anything yet, but they have a public Subversion repository. I checked out the project today and gave it a test drive. It already seems to be quite usable.

It sounds like I may have bought my Treo too soon, as Palm may be coming out with a Linux version this year.

The Sony Playstation 3 can run Linux, making it a most attractive option as an inexpensive, multi-processor workstation. This IBM developerWorks article is a good introduction to HPC (High Performance Computing) on the PS3.

We just watched the PBS DVD of Fly Girls that I gave my wife for Christmas. A retired Air Force aviator, she has a keen interest in the history of women in the military and aviation. It's an interesting documentary of the WASP program during WW II and a good reminder of the contributions of American women to the war effort.

Kevin Bullis considers the utility of electric vehicles when the power goes out as has happened with recent storms. If your electric car is uncharged, you are of course stuck, but this is no worse than a conventional car with the fuel gauge sitting on empty. Fuel pumps at service stations are powered by electricity, so it there's no power you're unlikely to be able to find fuel with a nearly empty tank. An easy way to to be prepared for a disaster is to always keep at least half a tank of fuel, or at least a half charged battery for an electric.

I think last night's Front Range Pythoneers meeting had record attendance. About 15 of us were hosted by Churchill Naviagation for a demo of their wares and a presentation on IPython1 by Brian Granger. Curchill's navigation software is very cool, with fast panning and zooming of virtual landscapes combining topographic maps and photo imagersy. IPython1 leverages Python to make multi-processor computing easy, but not so easy that programmers shoot themselves in the foot.

HP has developed a new interconnect technology that significantly increases circuit density, allowing smaller, cheaper integrated circuits. While applicable to many chip designs, FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) will probably be effected soonest. Making FPGAs denser and cheaper should make them more competetive with custom hard wired logic.

I always thought gun control should mean that you hit what you aimed at, but it generally refers to restrictions on gun ownership. In A Rifle in Every Pot Glen Reynolds discusses community laws which take the opposite approach and encourage or mandate gun ownership as a deterrence to crime.

Martyn Amos blogs the Systems Biology, Bioinformatics and Synthetic Biology conference.

A robotic cable crawler is showing promise for inspecting cables in pipes and tunnels.

Virgin Galactic has signed an agreement to launch from a Swedish spaceport in addtion to their initial operation out of New Mexico.