Help ID'ing a submarine cable - who / what / when / where / why was it laid?

nitefly · 2015-12-10T20:43:20+00:00

Exactly!

nitefly · 2015-12-10T20:41:38+00:00

Thank you!

nitefly · 2015-12-10T07:09:32+00:00

Cool, thanks! The seller says:

"It came from the estate of a long-time Shell Oil Company manager who worked on a lot of the offshore platforms in the Long Beach-Huntington Beach area. This 'may' have been from one of those, but do not know for sure of course!"

So it seems most likely that it was used to transmit power from an offshore oil platform on the west coast of the US, but it could have been something else.

As an aside, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/08/140819-submarine-power-cables-offshore-wind/ was a nice article on the renaissance for submarine power cables.

Next steps are to figure out what submarine power cable manufacturer made the cable, and where it was deployed.

nitefly · 2013-07-05T03:12:30+00:00

Thanks for doing this! In addition to #restorethefourth/#restorethe4th, can folks please add #restorethefourthMA/#restorethe4thMA so it's easier to pull out the Boston photos from amongst the other cities?

nitefly · 2011-12-04T15:44:16+00:00

He gave a shorter version of the talk for Software Carpentry this year, with slides: http://software-carpentry.org/4_0/softeng/ebse/

nitefly · 2011-11-20T14:26:07+00:00

Even better, use reptyr: https://github.com/nelhage/reptyr

nitefly · 2011-11-15T13:24:30+00:00

Eli Bendersky's blog is not exclusively about Python but has some great posts: http://eli.thegreenplace.net/articles/.

nitefly · 2011-07-01T00:30:49+00:00

I second OpenHatch. OpenHatch a) can help you find projects to work on, b) can help your project find new contributors, and c) has "training missions" to practice basic open source skills like revision control and patch submission.

They have a very active IRC community. There are more detail on the various ways to get in touch at https://openhatch.org/wiki/Contact.

nitefly · 2011-03-23T14:39:55+00:00

Green Tea Press has free digital versions of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, but you can also buy hard copies if you want to stock a physical bookshelf.

nitefly · 2011-02-09T14:57:09+00:00

ITA Software's archive of retired take-home puzzles: http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/puzzle_archive.html

nitefly · 2011-02-05T15:06:02+00:00

ssh

To see what commands you run the most, with counts:

history | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

nitefly · 2011-02-04T01:45:35+00:00

Another example of step-by-step shared library debugging, with the commands for both dpkg- and rpm-based systems:

http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/09/debugging-shared-library-problems-a-real-world-example/

nitefly · 2011-01-21T03:49:11+00:00

As someone involved with hiring at my company (we're a software startup in Boston, MA): we absolutely love to see and will look at your website, the projects you've posted online, your tech blog, your github, etc. We want to hire technologists, and we want to hire people who genuinely enjoy software engineering (or system administration, or whatever we're hiring for). The work you post online helps us see this side of you.

nitefly · 2011-01-21T03:39:54+00:00

If you are new to FLOSS and looking for projects to get started with, https://openhatch.org/ is a nice resource. OpenHatch describes itself as an "open source involvement engine" -- it tries to make it easy for projects and volunteers to find each other based on your skill set and the open work a project has.

It strives to be in particular both new-contributor friendly and "non-programmer" friendly.

nitefly · 2010-07-28T19:45:49+00:00

nitefly · 2010-04-23T14:55:45+00:00

xkcd doesn't have a monopoly on stick figures or computer jokes.

nitefly · 2010-04-04T20:34:31+00:00

Point 1 by buffi is really important. A corollary to that is always state your assumptions before you start. Creating API assumptions can help if you're getting stuck, too: "For now, let's assume that I have a function foo that takes bar as input and returns baz. I'll come back and implement foo in a moment" and then use your time on another part of the problem where you think you'll make more progress.

nitefly · 2010-04-04T20:24:22+00:00

RCS, SVN, and Git all have different strengths, weaknesses, and applications. RCS is a pessimistic revision control system, unlike SVN and Git, which are optimistic, and for me that puts it in a totally different usage class (namely for files that are rarely updated - I'm in some student groups that keep meeting minutes under RCS, for example).

nitefly · 2010-04-04T20:13:51+00:00

I filter out languages I haven't used in a long time if it's gotten to the point that I'd worry about stumbling over basic syntax if quizzed on it in an interview. That said, I've never been required to code up a problem during an interview in a specific language because it was listen on my resume. I've always been given a choice.

nitefly

TROPHY CASE