Category Archives: News & Reviews

January 6, 2010 · 5:45 pm

Process Success Measures

In 2002, I gave a lunchtime presentation on process design to Sun’s Six Sigma Black Belt community. In that talk I proposed two measures for process success. While any individual process will have its own particular success measures, two simple metrics for overall success for any process are:

  1. The process is used long-term by a variety of people.
  2. It is updated and improved by people other than the ones who created it.

I was reminded of those key measures this week when I used two very different but successful systems for which I have had the honor to be one of the architects:

  1. Sun Labs’ Archivist, an archival and clearance system for intellectual property
  2. El Camino Real Department of Missions (DOM), a management system for small congregations, many of them working and worshiping across cultural lines

Both the Archivist and DOM systems have now been in use for many years and are successfully managed by people who were not involved in their original development. I am proud of these projects and their phase transition from development to long-term sustained use. I am also pleased to see how well their pattern matches the two success metrics I proposed in 2002. Below is more about Archivist and DOM.

Sun Labs’ Archivist

In 2000, James Gosling, Jos Marlowe, and I started a two-year project to create a new archiving and clearance system for Sun Laboratories. You can read some of the history of this system in “Sun Labs: The Second Fifty Technical Reports A Commemorative Issue” by Jeanie Treichel, Katie Chiu, Christopher Wu and Jeanne Wang (Sun Labs Report TR-2009-101, published in March 2009).

We based the process for Archivist on a system created while I was the Process Architect for the Sun Standards group. That group needed a fast way to submit contributions to an SSO (Standards Setting Organization) such as the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), while protecting Sun’s intellectual property. Part of the SSO submission system was the Technical Information Clearance Process (TICP) which was a core piece of what became Archivist. The SSO submission process project team included Carl Cargill, Catherine Mccarthy, Lisa Goldman and Philip Rosenzweig. Sadly, Phil Rosenzweig died on one of the planes in New York City on 11 September 2001, before the SSO submission project was complete.

Here is the original Executive Overview for Archivist from 2000:

    Sun Labs is faced with a dilemma: we wish to derive the benefits of quality control and process while at the same time shortening our time-to-release. In particular, we wish to protect our intellectual property and increase our patent portfolio while simultaneously speeding up the time it takes to review technical information prior to publication. This process architecture is our attempt to resolve the dilemma. The Archivist is both an archival mechanism and a clearance process.

Think of The Archivist clearance process as a state dinner: the menu is fixed and protocol is closely observed. Think of The Archivist Fasttrack as a scramble-bar cafeteria where one can select individual dishes. The advantage of a state dinner is that it is safe, repeatable, and the participants know exactly what to expect (with regard to structure). The advantage of a cafeteria is that it is flexible and very fast. We expect that as the Fasttrack cafeteria grows in its selection and quality of service, the volume of users will shift from The Archivist clearance to Fasttrack clearance: thus, cycle time will be greatly reduced.

Here is the 2000 description for use of Archivist for clearance and archiving:

Clearance is distinct from archival. Archived material may or may not go through clearance.

Examples of archived material are:

  • An email or a note describing an idea
  • Audio and video tapes
  • Objects (such as boards)
  • Letters
  • Notebooks

Examples of documents that have been cleared are:

  • White papers (either on paper or the web)
  • SML Tech reports (paper or web)
  • Third-party publications (e.g. conferences, encyclopedias)
  • External presentations

Rule of thumb: if you think your document will be leaked or by any means published outside, use the process.

Sun Labs started in 1991, so Archivist was not the first archiving system for Sun Labs but it has been by many times the longest lived. In creating Archivist, we identified two key customers: Ivan Sutherland (Sun Fellow and Vice President), and Jeanie Treichel (Sun Labs founding Program Manager and Technical Reports Editor). Ivan Sutherland is famous in Sun Labs for his saying “It’s not an idea until you write it down.” There were many other reviewers and contributors but we knew that if Ivan and Jeanie were happy with Archivist, it would be good enough for everyone else.

Archivist has gone through several major revisions since it was created in 2000. It has been used by hundreds of Sun Labs staff in the US, UK, and France to enter over ten thousand items. Archivist continues in active use today under the management of Sun Labs’ technical staff.

As of now, I have 113 of my own documents entered into Archivist. Recently, Helen Gracon and I entered into Archivist most of the key documents from the Mentoring@Sun program. More about Mentoring@Sun is available in the recent Sun Labs Technical Report “Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009” (by Katy Dickinson, Tanya Jankot, and Helen Gracon).

El Camino Real Department of Missions

From 2003-2007, I was the volunteer Convener for DIEM (the Department of Intercultural Evangelism and Mission), providing oversight, finance, and management support to thirteen mission congregations (Latino, Anglo, and Asian) of the El Camino Real Episcopal Diocese. I served as Convener under two Bishops: the (late) Right Reverend Richard Shimpfky, and the Rt. Rev. Sylvestre D. Romero.

2003-2007 was a difficult time of transition for our diocese but nonetheless the elected and appointed DIEM members developed a solid process for Mission Liaisons, as well as the “Mission and Vision” structure for the missions as a group. The “Mission Congregation Liaison Job Description” was only one page long but it represents an amiable solution to years of discussion on how best to provide mission oversight.

In 2008, I was elected to DOM (the successor to DIEM) for a three year term. At last night’s monthly DOM meeting, I was pleased to get slightly updated versions of the process documents DIEM created in 2005 while I was Convener. DOM and its nine remaining missions is now managed by our new Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mary Gray-Reeves, with the Rev. Canon Jesus Reyes acting as Convener.

28 March 2014 and 6 January 2018- links and formatting of this blog post were updated

1 Comment

Filed under Church, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 26, 2009 · 6:46 pm

New Wikipedia Entry: Katherine Johnson

My husband John and I just spent most of the afternoon creating a new  Wikipedia entry about Computer Science Pioneer Katherine Johnson (based on my 23 December 2009 blog entry). My daughter Jessica also advised on the project. Even though we started out with all of the information in HTML, we ended up reworking the text and references to fit into Wikipedia’s format and style. My initial Wikipedia discussion comment indicated that the blog entry came first, yet within seconds of publication, an automatic searchbot tagged the article
as a near-duplication of my original blog entry. I went left a second comment acknowledging the source.

This is my first original Wikipedia entry. I started thinking about what I could add to Wikipedia after reading Clay Shirky’s excellent 2008 book Here Comes Everybody earlier this year. Jessica is reading my copy of Shirky’s book now and adding her margin comments to mine.
I am curious to see what kind of comments are made on the Katherine Johnson Wikipedia entry and whether any valuable information is added.

1 Comment

Filed under News & Reviews

Tagged as ,

December 23, 2009 · 12:48 pm

Katherine Johnson, Computer and Pioneer

Creative Commons License
This work is in the Public
Domain

Welding WP668 caboose stair rail photo: 1979 U.S. Department of Energy A benefit of creating the

Famous Women in Computer Science list is learning new stories of amazing women
who have been recommended by my generous readers. Notable even in this
remarkably accomplished group is Katherine Johnson. Ms Johnson was brought to
my attention by
Kristin Yvonne Rozier, a Research Computer Scientist at

NASA Ames Research Center here in the San Francisco Bay Area. When I first
met Kristin, she worked at

NASA Langley Research Center, where Katherine Johnson had also worked.

About Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson made significant contributions to America’s aeronautics and space advances and she was a pioneer in advancing our society. Her accomplishments contributed to the success of our nation’s early space program and in the early application of digital electronic computers at NASA. Her courage and perseverance helped to lead the way for both women and African-Americans in technical fields.

Education and Early Work

Katherine Coleman was born in 1918 in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia. Her mother, Joylette, had been a teacher and her father, Joshua, was a farmer who also worked as a janitor. Since local schools only offered classes to African-Americans through the eighth grade, her father drove the children to a school 125 miles away. Katherine graduated from high school at 14, from college at 18. She taught in elementary and high schools in West Virginia and Virginia for 17 years. Then, Katherine Johnson went to work as a “computer” for the Langley Research Center, part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). NACA later became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Katherine Johnson at NASA

According to her oral history archived by the National Visionary Leadership Project:

“…in June 1953, Katherine was contracted as a research mathematician at the Langley Research Center… At first she worked in a pool of women performing math calculations. Katherine has referred to the women in the pool as virtual `computers who wore skirts.’ Their main job was to read the data from the black boxes of planes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. Katherine’s knowledge of analytic geometry helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues to the extent that,’they forgot to return me to the pool.’ While the racial and gender barriers were always there, Katherine says she ignored them. Katherine was assertive, asking to be included in editorial meetings (where no women had gone before.) She simply told people she had done the work and that she belonged.”

At NASA, Katherine Johnson started work in the all-male Flight Mechanics Branch and later moved to the Spacecraft Controls Branch. She calculated the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space, in 1959 and the launch window for his 1961 Mercury mission. She plotted backup navigational charts for astronauts in case of electronic failures. In 1962, when NASA used computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn’s orbit around Earth, officials called on her to verify the computer’s numbers. Ms. Johnson later worked directly with real computers. Her ability and reputation for accuracy helped to establish confidence in the new technology. She calculated the trajectory for the
1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. Later in her career, she worked on the Space Shuttle program, the Earth Resources Satellite, and on plans for a mission to Mars.

Katherine Johnson’s Legacy

In total, Katherine Johnson co-authored 26 scientific papers, of which only one can now be found. The practice in 1960 would have been not to list the female Computers as formal co-authors, so that she was listed as an author is significant.

Katherine Johnson’s social impact as a pioneer in space science and computing may be seen both from the honors she has received and the number of times her story is presented as a role model. Since 1979 (before she retired from NASA), Katherine Johnson’s biography has had an honored place in lists of African-Americans in Science and Technology. In an era when race and gender held back many, Katherine Johnson’s courage, perseverance, and talent helped her to succeed. The continuing need for historical success models for both women and African-Americans makes Katherine Johnson particularly important.

Katherine Johnson and Computer Science

Much of Katherine Johnson’s life predates the academic discipline now called Computer Science; however, she has two strong ties to the field. First, as a “Computer” scientist she is one of few people to carry this historical title which refers to when humans did what computers do now. It’s the same work, just less automated back then. Second, she was one of the earliest people in the area now called verification of avionics software systems. In 1962, people were still used to check the results found by NASA’s mechanical computers: to verify that the trajectories were correctly computed. When Katherine Johnson worked with the flight research team, she probably influenced the ways in which early computers were initially integrated into avionics systems by determining how they could be most useful, and that they were reliable enough. Like Katherine Johnson, many of those who work today in avionics software verification have math degrees because of the nature of the tools used. NASA now calls workers in that area Research Computer Scientists. Work at NASA is interdisciplinary, so it is hard to classify people into traditional categories; however, avionics hardware and software verification are unquestionably part of what we now call Computer Science.

Curriculum Vitae

Katherine Johnson

Experience Summary

    • 1953-1986 NASA Langley Research Center, Virginia
    • 1953-1958 Computer (mathematician), Langley Research Center with
      the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)
    • 1958-1986, Aerospace Technologist, NASA
    • 1952-1953 Substitute math teacher for Newport News, VA, public schools
    • 1936-1952 Teacher in rural Virginia and West Virginia high schools and elementary
      schools

Education

    • 1940 West Virginia University graduate program in Math
    • 1937 West Virginia State University (West Virginia State College),
      BS in Mathematics and French, summa cum laude
    • 1932 West Virginia State High School

Awards

    • 2006, Honorary Doctor of Science by the Capitol College of Laurel Maryland
    • 1999, West Virginia State College Outstanding Alumnus of the Year
    • 1988, Honorary Doctor of Laws, from SUNY Farmingdale
    • 1986, NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
    • 1985, NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
    • 1984, NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
    • 1980, NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
    • 1971, NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement award
    • 1967, Apollo Group Achievement Award – this award included one of only 300 flags flown to the moon on-board the Apollo 11
    • 1967, NASA Lunar Orbiter Spacecraft and Operations team award – for pioneering work in the field of navigation problems supporting the five spacecraft that orbited and mapped the moon in preparation for the Apollo missions

Publications

    • NASA TND-233, “The Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite over a Selected Earth Position” 1960. Authors: T.H. Skopinski, Katherine G. Johnson

      This is a formal peer-reviewed NASA report. The practice at the time would have been not to list the female Computers as formal co-authors, so the fact that she was included is significant.

Published Biographies and References

Personal

    • On August 26, 1918, Katherine Coleman was born in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia. In 1939, she married James Francis Goble and started a family. The Gobles had three daughters: Constance, Joylette, and Katherine. In 1956, James Goble died of an inoperable brain tumor. In 1959, Katherine Johnson married Lt. Colonel James A. Johnson. She sang in the choir of Carver Presbyterian Church for fifty years.
    • Katherine Johnson and her husband live in Hampton, Virginia, and enjoy spending time with six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Ms. Johnson still plays piano, bridge, and solves puzzles.

Grateful thanks to
Lesa B. Roe, Gail S. Langevin, and Jim Hodges of NASA Langley, and to Kristin Yvonne Rozier of NASA Ames for their help in collecting and developing this information. All honor to Katherine Johnson for leading the way.

1 Comment

Filed under News & Reviews

Tagged as ,

December 7, 2009 · 11:19 pm

Freezing Flowers

It has been raining and hailing and there is a freeze warning in effect now
for our area (the Santa Clara Valley Including San Jose), saying that a “very cold air
mass over the region combined with mostly clear skies and light winds will allow overnight
lows to drop into the 20s tonight. Several hours of sub-freezing temperatures
are likely. Temperatures may fall into the teens in the coldest valleys.”
John and I spent part of this afternoon putting tarps and sheets over our citrus
bushes, bougainvillea vine, and young
avocado tree. He welded standing
frames so that the wet tarps will not crush the plants.
Our front porch now has a rough curtain around it
with the birds of paradise –
Strelitzia – and potted plants inside.

The San Francisco Bay Area weather confuses plants. We still see flaming
Fall colors in the Chinese Pistache –
Pistacia chinensis –
trees, while the early Spring flowers like Narcissus
are starting to bloom, at the same time that there
is snow on
Mount Hamilton and the surrounding hills.

DSCN7574 DSCN7609 DSCN7189 DSCN7164
DSCN7167 DSCN7177 DSCN7190 DSCN7191

Images Copyright 2009 Katy Dickinson

Leave a comment

Filed under News & Reviews

November 19, 2009 · 10:17 pm

Famous Women in Computer Science

A version of this was published on: 25 January 2010. A further updated and expanded web resource based on this was published on 8 March 2012 (International Women’s Day): “Famous Women in Computer Science”.

I recently read a University of Bristol (UK) web page about women behind important advancements in Computer Science: “Famous Women in Computer Science”. I don’t know the University of Bristol’s selection criteria (other than “women” and “Computer Science”) but their list seems too short. Last week, I sent email to Sun’s Women in Engineering to ask, for curiosity’s sake, “Who would you add to this list?”

Below is the original list, the names added by the Sun women, plus some references. The list is uneven and I am sure there are many more who should be added but here is what I have so far…

Original List (alphabetized, not original order):

  • Frances E. Allen, 1st female IBM Fellow, 1st female recipient of ACM’s A. M. Turing Award 2006, WITI Hall of Fame 1997, IEEE Fellow 1991, ACM Fellow 1994
  • Anita Borg, founding director of the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT), which became the Anita Borg Institute, EFF Pioneer Award 1995, WITI Hall of Fame 1998, ACM Fellow 1996
  • Carly Fiorina, CEO Hewlett-Packard 1999-2005
  • Adele Goldstine, authored the Manual for the ENIAC in 1946
  • Shafi Goldwasser, RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and of computer science and applied mathematics at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award 1996
  • Grace Murray Hopper, developed the 1st compiler for a computer programming language, US Navy Rear Admiral, in 1973 became the 1st person from the USA and the 1st woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society, IEEE Fellow 1962 (1st woman awarded), Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award 1964
  • Augusta Ada King (Countess of Lovelace), 1843 wrote a description of Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is credited with being the 1st computer programmer.
  • Barbara H. Liskov, Ford Professor of Engineering in the MIT School of Engineering’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award 1996, IEEE John von Neumann Medal 2004, 2nd woman to win ACM’s A. M. Turing Award 2008, 1st US woman to be awarded a PhD from a computer science department in 1968, ACM Fellow 1996
  • Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jennings, and Fran Bilas, original programmers of the ENIAC starting in 1946, WITI Hall of Fame 1997
  • Jean E. Sammet, IBM computer languages FORMAC and COBOL, 1st woman ACM President 1974, ACM Fellow 1994
  • Erna Schneider, in 1971 awarded one of the 1st software patents ever issued, at Bell Labs, she became the 1st female supervisor of a technical department
  • Eva Tardos, Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Cornell University,
    ACM Fellow 1998
  • Meg Whitman, CEO eBay 1998-2008

List Additions (suggested by Sun Microsystems’ Women in Engineering)

  • Carol Bartz, President and CEO of Yahoo! (starting in 2009), previously Chairman, President, and CEO at Autodesk (1992-2009), WITI Hall of Fame 1997
  • Lenore Blum, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science,
    Carnegie Mellon University
  • Safra A. Catz, President Oracle Corporation since 2004, CFO Oracle since 2005,
    Member Oracle Board since 2001
  • Diane Greene, VMWare co-founder and CEO (1998-2008)
  • Helen Greiner, 1990-2008 Co-founder, Board Chair of iRobot, Anita Borg Institute Woman of Vision – Innovation award winner 2008, WITI Hall of Fame 2007
  • Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK, 2008 ACM President, 2009 Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), 2009 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
  • Mary Lou Jepsen, Founding Chief Technology Officer of One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Pixel Qi, WITI Hall of Fame 2008
  • Maria Klawe, 5th president of Harvey Mudd College (1st woman in that role), previously Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, 2002 ACM President, ACM Fellow 1996
  • Sandra Kurtzig, founder and CEO of ASK computers (1972-1991)
  • Susan Landau, Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer, Anita Borg Institute Woman of Vision – Social Impact award winner 2008, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Distinguished Engineer Association for Computing Machinery
  • Evi Nemeth, Associate Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Co-author of the best-selling UNIX System Administration Handbook (Prentice Hall, 1995)
  • Radia Perlman, the ‘Mother of the Internet’, 1st Sun Microsystems female Fellow, 1st Anita Borg Institute Woman of Vision – Innovation award winner 2005, IEEE Fellow 2008
  • Janie Tsao Co-Founder of Linksys (1988-2003), 1st Anita Borg Institute Woman of Vision – Leadership award winner 2005
  • Jeanette Wing, President’s Professor of Computer Science (former CS Department Head), Carnegie Mellon University, Assistant Director, Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, National Science Foundation, IEEE Fellow 2003, ACM Fellow 1998

Late Additions

1 December 2009 –
Here are more additions from people responding to the original blog entry:

  • Cynthia Breazeal, pioneer of social robotics at MIT Media Lab, US Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigators Award
  • Lynn Conway, Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI design, invention of generalised dynamic instruction handling, IEEE Fellow 1985, Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award 1990
  • Susan Dumais, leadership in bridging the fields of information retrieval and human computer interaction, ACM Fellow 2006, ACM SIGIR Salton Award 2009-lifetime achievement in IR
  • Adele Goldberg, co-developer of Smalltalk at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, ACM President 1984, ACM Fellow 1994
  • Leah Jamieson, Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award – Social Impact 2007, IEEE Fellow 1993, Purdue University Dean of Engineering, IEEE President 2007
  • Katherine Johnson, research mathematician and scientist who worked at NASA’s Langley Research Center 1953 to 1986, calculated the trajectory of the early space launches
  • Karen Spärck Jones, pioneer of the science behind information retrieval,
    ACM SIGIR Salton Award 1988, BCS Lovelace Medal 2007, the ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award 2007
  • Hedy Lamarr, co-invention of spread-spectrum broadcast communications technologies 1940, EFF Special Pioneer Award 1997
  • Rosalind W. Picard, credited with starting the entire field of Affective Computing, MIT Director of Affective Computing Research, IEEE Fellow 2005
  • Barbara Simons, 1st woman to receive the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the College of Engineering of U.C. Berkeley 2005, ACM Fellow 1993, EFF Pioneer Award 1998, ACM President 1998
  • Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox Chief Technology Officer, IEEE Fellow 2005
  • Padmasree Warrior, Cisco Chief Technology Officer, former Motorola Chief Technology Officer (Semiconductor Products), Motorola’s 1st female executive, Distinguished Alumni Award from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi 2004, WITI Hall of Fame 2007
  • Beatrice Helen Worsley, Canada’s Female Computer Pioneer, a witness to several great moments in computing history, one of the first women to earn a doctorate in Computer Science in 1951

Later Additions

24 January 2010 –
Here are still more additions from people responding to the original blog entry:

  • Irene Greif, IBM Fellow, 1st woman to earn a PhD in computer science at MIT, MIT Professor of electrical engineering and computer science, ACM Fellow, Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, WITI Hall of Fame 2000
  • Betsy Ancker-Johnson, 1st observation of microwave emission without the presence of an external field (1967), Fellow American Physical Society, Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow Society of Automotive Engineers, IEEE Fellow, Member National Academy of Engineering
  • Mary Jane Irwin, Evan Pugh Professorship Pennsylvania State University, ACM Distinguished Service Award, IEEE Fellow 1995, ACM Fellow 1996, National Academy of Engineering member 2003, 2005 ACM Distinguished Service Award, 2006 Computing Research Association Distinguished Service Award, 2007 Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award, American Academy of Arts and Sciences member 2009
  • Ellen Ochoa, Dr. Ochoa has logged over 978 hours in space, earning the US Distinguished Service Medal, Exceptional Service Medal, Outstanding Leadership Medal, and four NASA Space Flight Medals. 1st Hispanic woman in space. She designed optical systems for Sandia National Laboratory and at NASA’s Ames Research Center developed computer systems designed for aeronautical expeditions. Deputy Director of the Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX)
  • Lucy Sanders, CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, Bell Labs Fellow Award (1996), WITI Hall of Fame (2007)
  • Manuela Veloso, Portuguese Computer Scientist and Roboticist, Herbert A. Simon Professor, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, President of the International RoboCup Federation. Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, National Science Foundation CAREER award (1995), CMU Allen Newell Medal for Excellence in Research (1997)

Other References

Blog entry by Katy Dickinson

9 Comments

Filed under Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, News & Reviews

Tagged as ,

November 16, 2009 · 4:51 pm

Geek Heaven – HSC Electronic Supply

HSC Electronic Supply of Santa Clara,
California is geek heaven. The better-known
Fry’s Electronics is a pale shadow in
comparison (Fry’s
sells steam irons and manila folders as well as motherboards). According to the
New York Times in their 4 February 2009 article
“A Haven for Spare Parts Lives On in Silicon Valley”, by Ashlee Vance:

      “For close to 50 years, Halted has supplied the do-it-yourself electronics enthusiasts so common in Silicon Valley with just about anything they could imagine. Like the many electronics stores once populating the area, Halted helped turn entrepreneurs’ inklings into huge success stories. These days, however, Halted caters more to hobbyists than titans of industry because much of the fundamental computing manufacturing has moved to Asia… Apple’s co-founders, Steven P. Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, shopped at Halted, hunting down parts for their first products.”

My husband,
John Plocher and I were at HSC the other day looking for parts
for his HO-scale model train layout. If you like putting together your
own electronics, you will be happy at Halted.

DSCN6818 DSCN6819 DSCN6824
DSCN6827 DSCN6826 DSCN6820 DSCN6821

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

1 Comment

Filed under News & Reviews

November 16, 2009 · 4:02 pm

Sculptural Agave


Agave is one of my favorite plants. I am growing an agave
hedge along the side of our driveway; in a few years, it will be
taller than I am. The stiff and thorny strap-like leaves arrange themselves
like a living sculpture. Weeding around agave is painful (I use very long
tongs). Some photos of my agave just after a light rain:

DSCN7007 DSCN7004 DSCN7005

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Leave a comment

Filed under News & Reviews