I have a fun job. So fun, in fact, that I've been tooling away on a small work-related programming project in my spare time. I enjoy programming, and this is an opportunity to create something useful and learn something along the way.
I call it Ruse (from "resource use"), and you use it to measure the time and memory a program will actually use as it runs. Specifically, it's made for jobs on compute clusters, rather than desktop software. Compute jobs can run for days or weeks, and use hundreds of GB of memory in the process.
Ruse measures memory in the same way that Slurm (the job scheduler we use at work) does, so you can directly use the results to estimate the amount of memory and time your jobs will need.
The initial version is done, and I've just released version 1.0. You'll find a tar package there that should be easy to build on any Linux machine. Just remember that this really is for profiling apps that run for hours at a time; you're not going to get very sensible results for any short-lived program.
If you do try it out, let me know. Any feedback will help make it better.
Monday, August 21, 2017
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Old Faithful
This, here, is my beard trimmer:
It's a Philips trimmer specifically for facial hair, and it's broken. I bought it in the mid-1990's; this thing lasted me for 21 years.
The battery gave up ten years ago, so I've used it plugged in since then. The motor did start to make some odd noises over the past year, and finally, a few weeks ago, the mechanism that moves the comb snapped, making it impossible to adjust the trim length.
21 years is an eternity for consumer devices like this. 21 years ago, the web was only starting to become popular. CRT televisions and monitors were still common. The smartphone didn't even exist. I could lose half my fingers in a bizarre knife-juggling accident and still count the number of electrical devices that lasted this long on a single hand.
My wife, ever the practical one, pointed out that a new trimmer costs only a few thousand yen. And repairing and maintaining old devices may be a worthwhile hobby, but it's only a matter of time until this one will get stuck in my beard or set it on fire. Neither of which would be conducive to a professional appearance at work the next day.
So I finally gave it up. The trimmer went to the Electrical Goods Store In The Sky, and I got myself a new trimmer. There's several makers and lots of models out there, but, really - 21 years of good service? No price for guessing what brand I bought this time around. And yes, I'm happy with the new trimmer so far.
 |
A Philips "philishave" beard trimmer. |
It's a Philips trimmer specifically for facial hair, and it's broken. I bought it in the mid-1990's; this thing lasted me for 21 years.
The battery gave up ten years ago, so I've used it plugged in since then. The motor did start to make some odd noises over the past year, and finally, a few weeks ago, the mechanism that moves the comb snapped, making it impossible to adjust the trim length.
21 years is an eternity for consumer devices like this. 21 years ago, the web was only starting to become popular. CRT televisions and monitors were still common. The smartphone didn't even exist. I could lose half my fingers in a bizarre knife-juggling accident and still count the number of electrical devices that lasted this long on a single hand.
My wife, ever the practical one, pointed out that a new trimmer costs only a few thousand yen. And repairing and maintaining old devices may be a worthwhile hobby, but it's only a matter of time until this one will get stuck in my beard or set it on fire. Neither of which would be conducive to a professional appearance at work the next day.
So I finally gave it up. The trimmer went to the Electrical Goods Store In The Sky, and I got myself a new trimmer. There's several makers and lots of models out there, but, really - 21 years of good service? No price for guessing what brand I bought this time around. And yes, I'm happy with the new trimmer so far.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)