Last night after getting in from work (following the episode - still ongoing - with the huge database hack), I helped W in the garden. W’s had a bad back so has relied on me for any heavy work - such as shovelling ten wheelbarrow loads of dirt across the garden…
Our pond in the back garden now looks semi-natural. The dirt moved last night was to top-up the bog garden - we’ve kind of got two-thirds pond, and one third bog-garden where we dug the pond. The pond itself is about 5 metres long, and three metres wide, and a metre deep at the deepest point.
Once the plants have grown around it, the pond will probably look “real” (in reality it’s a big hole with two liners in it, full of water from the hose pipe). We noticed last night that in the few short weeks it’s been full of water, we have all kinds of creatures living in it. We might even go and get a cheap microscope to have a look at some of the larve that seem to be prospering in it. I guess over the next few weeks (as the plants grow and provide enough oxygen to support them) we’ll put some small fish in. The big event last night was finding out we already have a frog living in the pond. I guess if we get two frogs we’ll suddenly have a hundred frogs next spring. I guess that depends on if a Heron turns up or not.
Seems strange, doesn’t it - somebody that is usually so deep in geeky IT stuff working on the garden when he gets home. It’s a good excuse to keep away from the damn computer
When I did finish on the garden last night I found out W had bought me a present - “Game Over”, a DVD all about the Kasparov / Deep Blue chess match, where IBM decided they wanted to pit a custom designed supercomputer against the best chess player the world had ever seen. I’ve read a book by one of the IBM engineers about the match before, but seeing Gary’s side of the story was really interesting.
I guess my take on the match (now having seen both sides of the story) is that Kasparov was taken for a ride by IBM. They invited him to play in the interests of computer science - but their real agenda was to gain kudos and raise share prices. Imagine you are playing an opponent who is not perhaps as talented as yourself, but knows everything you have ever done, and has a perfect memory… that was Deep Blue. Kasparov was not allowed to see any of the test games Deep Blue played, and was not allowed any information during the match either. That’s really bad. Kind of like trying to beat somebody in a running race when they ran their time in private, and maybe had a motorbike available…
Following IBM’s victory (which wasn’t technically a victory, based on what was going on behind the scenes), their share price rose 15%. They then shut the entire project down to avoid being beaten in a re-match.
Anyway - the virtual machine I was moving across the network while writing this has finished copying, so I should get on with my work now