Second Chances

I don't usually post about me.  Or rather, I post often about things I find interesting. 
While my vast readership would challenge my opinion on interesting - I infrequently persevere :-)

   

Today is our anniversary.
We have spent the last dozen years blissfully together.
Every day and especially on this one, I choose Holly.
Again and again...

If I could muster up the grumpiness to find anything to regret, it is that we will not have long enough lives to likely celebrate a 40, 50 or 60 year anniversary.

But I digress.



Life can be hard.  Anyone who lives it recognizes that.  Now compared to many, mine has been rather charmed.  Even so, mistakes were made, and I found myself at almost 40 without a life partner.  Without someone to share the highs and lows of life.  To have and to hold. 

In retrospect, it is clear that I met Holly just at the right time.  The life experiences I went through were the best teacher.  Showing me clearly who I am and what I desired out of life.  I am not saying that had we met another time in our lives that we would not have ended up together.  I am pretty sure that some things are just meant to be.  But it took a failed first chance to prepare me for the miracle of Holly. For those that don't know her, it is your loss.  She is an amazing woman, who quietly shines her beautiful light on her small corner of the world.  As far as second chances go, this was the granddaddy of them all. 

In the beginnings of us, we spent a couple days on Catalina Island.  One of the places I remember well was Two Harbors.  An isthmus of land separating two beautiful harbors.  I enjoy analogies, and felt as if each of us were the harbors, and finally discovering each other, bridging the narrow gap that had kept us apart. 






Discovery was short.  Like 2 puzzle pieces we fell into each other easily and snugly. 
Life may continue to be hard, but having Holly in my life ads a sweetness and joy to everything. 
I can't imagine life without her.  She is my true North.  The place I call home. 

It IS a Happy Anniversary indeed.

Moore & Rose

How many of you are familiar with Moore's Law?  Probably most if you have any geek about you :-)

For those who don't know, Moore's Law (circa 1965) is the observation that over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.   That just happens to align strongly with processing speed and memory capacity. 
So we can thank Moore's law for predicting the fancy computers we own today.
Actually - the law was originally thought to likely run its course within around 10 years.  Quite impressively, it remains true today as well!

So who is Rose?  And what is Rose's Law?  That would be Geordie Rose, who observed a very similar trend for Qubits. 
What - you ask - are qubits?  It is a made up word, a word made from the joining of "Quantum" and "bit".   Bits in the traditional digital world are binary representations, a 0 or a 1, True or False, On of Off.  Take your pick.  The key is they can take on one of two distinct values.  Nearly every modern computer works in this digital world, and quite successfully too.  Qubits can have many discrete states at the same time.  It can be a 0 and a 1 at the same time!  Part of the magic of the quantum world's weirdness.

So back to bits and qubits.  Moore used the following meager set of 5 data points to discover his law.


Rose has used the following to derive his Law:

Both represent an exponential growth in linear terms.  The difference... and this is key - it that a doubling in transistor density represents a doubling in processing power.   A doubling of Qubits represents an EXPONENTIAL growth. 
Without going very far out in the future - this could mean that in 1 or 2 years, a quantum computer will be faster than the fastest computer we have today. 
Give it another 1 or 2 years, and ONE quantum computer will be faster than all the computers on earth combined. 
Give it another 1 or 2 years, and it could conceivably be faster than the entire universe! 
Mind you, I don't even know what that last one really means.  But if it does not sound a bit scary to you, you have not watched enough science fiction!
How can it do this?  Quoting from David Deutsch, "it harnesses the refractive echoes of many trillions of parallel universes to perform a computation". 

I for one, will welcome our Robot overlords :-)


PS - neither Moore nor Rose named their laws... neither owned an ego that large.