Chicago Weblog

The Terminator was programmed in Assembler

Posted on 17 February 2015 by conrad reynolds

Subtitle: Conway’s Game of Life in IBM Assembler

Assembly language is what you saw from Arnold’s viewpoint in The Terminator (the first movie). I have implemented Conway’s Game of Life in IBM 390 (z/OS) assembler. (For an explanation of the game and a wonderful google easter egg, google “conway’s game of life.)

I was quite the assembler programmer back in the day, and enjoyed doing it. But this is the first IBM assembler program that I have written since 1980. It wasn’t easy if you didn’t have access to a mainframe, and they kept those accounts well locked down.

However, you don’t need a million dollar mainframe anymore to write mainframe programs; you can download the “portable 390 mainframe” for free. (It never ceases to amaze me what people will do and then give away for nothing.) I remember asking management to upgrade to the latest version of assembler back in 1979 and being told that it was thousands of dollars and that was too expensive. Now I run it on my laptop. This sort of thing almost makes my head explode.

Here’s a link to a zip file with the code. You have to swear to me that you do not work for SkyNet. CONWAY

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One day you wake up and look in the mirror

Posted on 15 January 2015 by conrad reynolds

I had the day off today, and CVH told me to go to the grocery store. I waited until about 9:30, figuring traffic and crowds would be at a minimum then.

Got to the Kroger, and holy smoke! The place was crawling with old retired people.

How did that happen?

Posted in The Modern Condition | Comments Off

Just when you think you’ve seen it all

Posted on 10 January 2015 by conrad reynolds

CVH and I went to our local Kroger today to pick up some groceries. As we went down one aisle, we passed the magazine display. They had easily over a hundred different magazines for sale. CVH is a big NBA fan, and decided to look for a basketball magazine. They didn’t have one, not even Sports Illustrated.

They did, however, have Mac and Cheese magazine. Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. CVH said that she had no response to that.

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The Amazing Ameche

Posted on 2 December 2014 by conrad reynolds

About fifty years ago, I made my first picturephone call. My grandmother took me to the Prudential building in downtown Chicago, where Bell had a demo system set up. (You can see a picture of what the Pru looked like then.) I stood in a line until I was able to speak with another kid who had stood in a similar line in New York. There was no cost for this – they could hardly charge you for the privilege of speaking to a stranger for sixty seconds – but if you wanted to, you could arrange your own private call for the astronomical price of nine dollars a minute, plus tax (equivalent to about sixty-eight dollars a minute today).

Thanksgiving morning we spoke with and saw our son in Afghanistan from the comfort of our own home using Viber. The picture broke up a few times, but hey, it was all the way to Afghanistan. It was pretty amazing, although if I had been charged two thousand dollars for the call then I would not have thought it that amazing, rather about what I would expect for $2000. The amazing thing is that I was able to make the call and it was already included in my monthly phone bill.

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Bernheim Fall Festival

Posted on 19 October 2014 by conrad reynolds

Each year, the Bernheim Forest has a Fall Festival called “ColorFest”, and CVH dragged me down there this year. Once I got there, I had a wonderful time. When you live here in the Midwest, and the cold grey spectre of Winter begins to appear on your time horizon, everybody starts running around like crazy to take advantage of the last few weekends of decent weather before we are locked up for six months. Today was no exception to this.

The trees were all turning color, so we drove around and looked at them first, and then went into the fair area. There was a big vegetable and herb garden (I was so jealous), a pumpkin-flingers (similar to what we called in college “funnelators”), food vendors (I had a fancy hot dog; CVH had the lobster bisque), an African drum band (check out Bolokada Conde on your favorite music service – this guy is the real deal!), the honeybee people, the purple martin people, antique tractors, a mud pie kitchen (quite nice, actually), salamanders, turtles, snakes, flax spinners, and a number of booths and vendors, including one with a couple of alpacas. I got one of Bolokada’s CDs and this alpaca headband:

Posted in News from Louisville, Outdoors | Comments Off

Bright Lights, Big City

Posted on 18 October 2014 by conrad reynolds

Spent the last week in Dallas, visiting and house-sitting for a friend in the hospital. Although not as big as Houston or Chicago, it certainly qualifies as a Big City, especially if it’s been a long time since you’ve been in the Big City. After several trips to the Louisville airport, the size of DFW is striking, as is the miles and miles of freeways and tollways and light rail running every which way. I went to the HEB Central Market and The Container Store and some fan-cy highfalutin’ pricey Dallas shops the kind of which we just don’t have here in Louisville. It was almost as if I’d become somebody from a Mellencamp lyric.

The house was very nice, and although the neighborhood was being built up at a rapid pace – there was an eight to ten thousand square foot mansion across the street – it was still kind of out in the woods (I could hear coyotes nearby at night). There were lots of lovely plants in the front:

And horses in the back yard:

I got to ride into downtown Dallas for the first time in years – the parts down by the river looked very familiar, but the skyscrapers have grown out like a line of giant marching ants from there. The Reunion “dandelion” still sticks out, and I recalled the time my cousin (who worked for IBM) took me there for a drink when I was a young man. I don’t know how high up in the corporate hierarchy he was; fairly high, I think. I remember that he wore a really nice suit.

And of course, it was sunnier and warmer than it is in Kentucky this time of year, so that was nice, too.

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Autumn for Cats

Posted on 25 September 2014 by conrad reynolds

It’s autumn, the windows are open, and the cats are eating it up.

Fresh air, sunbeam, altitude – according to my cat, it just doesn’t get any better.

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Jug Band Jubileee

Posted on 20 September 2014 by conrad reynolds

Today Louisville hosted the 10th Annual Jug Band Jubilee. A good time was had by all.

Jug Band music refers primarily to pre-WW II white people music, although I heard a lot of Mississippi blues this year. I caught three of the bands (all the longer that my old butt can handle sitting out on the grass these days). The first were the Cincinnati Dancing Pigs. These guys may not be the most technically proficient players, but they have excellent stage presence and put on a good show. The highlight of their set was the story of when the National Organization of Women held their conference in Cincinnati, and (according the band leader) made the mistake of arranging the Pigs to provide musical entertainment. Well, you may know that chili is a very popular dish in Cincinnati, but it is prepared with a variety of ingredients – sometimes with cheese, sometimes without; sometimes with spaghetti, sometimes without. So when you order chili in Cincinnati, you do so by number, indicating the number of ingredients in your bowl of chili. The Pigs decided to give the conference attendees a little of this local color by writing a song called “I want to have a three-way with everybody here”.

After the Pigs, the Drunken Catfish Ramblers from New Orleans took the stage. They had some real musicians, but just couldn’t seem to get their set together, and it left me unsatisfied.

The last band I saw was the Jake Leg Stompers from Tennessee. These guys had it all. They put on a great combination of traditional Jug Band as well as old time gospel. I don’t think the Stompers ever have a problem getting gigs.

Posted in History, News from Louisville, Outdoors | Comments Off

Back to the Fair!

Posted on 17 August 2014 by conrad reynolds

Yes, friends, it was time again for our annual trip to the Kentucky State Fair. Not much changes from year to year, but CVH still loves the State Fair.

We got up this morning, and I asked CVH if she was going to cook some breakfast to fortify us for our journey.

“I have to cook?” she replied. “We’re going to get corn dogs at the fair!” She was referring, of course, to the wonderful fresh hand-dipped corn dogs at the Kentucky Corn Growers booth (see every entry on our State Fair trips from 2007 to date).

“Well,” I said, “it might be a while before they start frying.” So she went ahead and cooked up a delicious omelet for us.

Then it was off to the fairgrounds under ominous skies. Sure enough, just as we arrived, the heavens opened up and it started pouring rain. Almost all of the fair is indoors, however, and we had arrived early enough that it wasn’t that far a run from our car to the building where the poultry were being shown. Man, that was a noisy display! All those screaming chickens, and even this quacking duck:

We could only handle so much of that noise before going to the nice, quiet rabbit area. Where we looked at the rabbits. “Every damn rabbit”, in fact, according to CVH. But they are so irresistably cute! Here are just a few:

And here am I with one of the “Best in Breed” (the rabbit, that is; not me):

Immediately outside of the rabbit area was the Kentucky Corn Growers stall, and CVH was ready for her corn dog, so we ran out to their tent.

OMG! No corn dogs! CVH was so disappointed. Something she looks forward to all year, and they pull the rug out from under her. We looked at the other organizations, the fish, pork, beef, and dairy people, but nothing would take away the sting for her. So we ran back into the barn and looked at more animals.

Eventually we got around to the honey exhibit, where I got my picture taken as a honeybee:

CVH admired the competition cakes:

Yummy!

OK, so it’s not Burning Man, but we do get a kick out of the fair each year.

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Don’t Worry…We Unhappy

Posted on 10 August 2014 by conrad reynolds

New research shows where the happiest and unhappiest cities in the United States are. Unsurprisingly, at the top of the unhappiest list are places like New York City, Detroit, Pittspurgh, and, God help them, Buffalo. But right there at “third most unhappy city in the country” is Louisville.

Now, I’m certainly not going to argue this result; the natives frequently seem to have a major problem with everybody they see, but what I don’t understand is why. True, the weather is not perfect, but it is nice at least six months out of the year, which beats a lot of other cities. Crime is low, and Louisville is scenic: lots of trees and hills and pretty bushes in people’s yards (at least during the summer months). There isn’t a lot of traffic, and it isn’t paved over with concrete (in spite of recent efforts by the municipal junta to do so).

It’s even more baffling when you notice that the same research shows Houston, home of green carcinogenic air, a daily sixteen hour long “rush hour”, tropical storms, oppressive humidity, flying cockroaches, and a landscape whose monotony is rivaled only by the Moon’s, comes in as the sixth happiest city in the country.

Perhaps it’s because, unlike Houston, few people in this town have every lived anywhere else, and they just don’t know how good they have it here. Or maybe some things just can’t be explained.

Posted in News from Louisville, The Modern Condition | Comments Off