DV Hardware was on Slashdot and Engadget this weekend with an article about a new “supercomputer” for medical research from the University of Antwerp that uses four GeForce 9800GX2 graphics cards to do its magic. What makes this system to special is that this GPGPU powerhouse enabled these researchers to create their own low-cost supercomputer, the system costs less than 4000EUR and for the application they need (tomography) it’s in some cases faster than a three-year old supercomputer with 512 AMD Opteron 250 processors.
Since the article got published on Thursday it has received almost 35 000 pageviews, about 40% came through Slashdot, roughly 17.5% via Engadget and the other 42.5% came via a plethora of other sites or was direct traffic. Once I noticed someone had submitted the article to Slashdot I expected to see the Slashdot Effect on DV Hardware but that wasn’t really the case this time. The amount of visitors spiked but there weren’t any noticeable problems.
Last week Carmen and I went to Disneyland Resort Paris for three days. Here’s a small report of our trip
Day 1 - Sunday May 25, 2008
We left early in the morning to get on a TGV in Brussels and an hour or two later we arrived in Marne-la-Vallée. This is the first time I travelled on a high-speed train, the TGV has a top speed of around 320km/h but I have to admit you can barely feel it’s going that fast. It rides a lot smoother than a regular train and you can barely feel it accelerate.
The train station is almost right next to the entrance of the park and when we arrived we waited a couple of minutes for a bus to take us to the Santa Fe hotel. A friendly lady checked us in and once our bags were in our hotel room we went to the main park, which was about a 20 minute walk. This is the third time I’ve been to Disneyland Paris and one the things you really notice in Disney compared to other theme parks is that the theming is a lot better, everything is well maintained and it’s always very clean. Besides the main park we also quickly checked out the Walt Disney Studios Park that day and when the park closed, that was around 9 PM I believe, we had a drink in the Disney Village. The weather was pretty good and we had a good time that day.
Day 2 - Monday May 26, 2008
After we finished our breakfast around 9.30 AM we went to the Walt Disney Studios to try out the new Tower of Terror. This attraction is the new star of the park, it’s based upon The Twilight Zone and looks like an old hotel from the 1930s. This attraction is described as an elevator drop and it’s very nicely build but for an attraction that cost Disney around $180 million you don’t expect anything less. After a short queue line we entered the attraction and I was a bit surprised that in the actual ride you just have to sit down with nothing more than a seatbelt. The elevator then goes wild and takes you to the fourth dimension. Overall the Tower of Terror is a good thrill ride with a nice story (and a huge 55m high building) build around it. We also went on many other attractions that day in both parks and in the afternoon we checked out the Moteurs… Action stunt show. This is a stunt show with cars and bikes, it’s pretty impressive. We had some rain that day but not too much and just like the day before we had a good time.
Day 3 - Tuesday May 27, 2008
Our final day in Disneyland Resort Paris wasn’t as splendid because it rained almost continuously. We did a lot of indoor attractions that day but the rain kinda spoiled the fun. At noon we went to the Disney Village to have dinner in the Disney Café, this is a restaurant where you can meet many of Disney’s popular characters like Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, etc. Carmen had a “Steak Pluto” and I ordered a “Pinocchio Pasta”. Both our meals were very good. Around 5.30 PM we left the park and by 9.15 PM we were back at home.
Here’s a quick list of most of the attractions we tried:
Disneyland Park:
- Indiana Jones and the temple of peril
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Pirate’s Beach
- Adventure Isle
- Les Cabanes des Robinson
- Disneyland Railroad
- Big Thunder Mountain
- Thunder Mesa Boat
- Phantom Manor
- Horse Drawn Streetcars
- Autopia
- Honey, I shrunk the Audience
- Buzz Light year Laser Blast
- Snowwhite and the seven dwarfs
- Les Voyages de Pinocchio
- Peter Pan’s Flight
- Alice Curious Labyrinth
- Les Mystères du Nautilus
- Les pays des contes de Fées
- It’s a small world
Walt Disney studios:
- The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
- Studio Tram Tour
- Armageddon Special Effects
- Moteurs…Action! Stunt Show Spectacular
- Rock’n Rollercoaster starring Aerosmith
- Stitch Live
- Crush’s coaster
I just noticed that Yahoo Finance now offers real-time stock quotes. AFAIK they are now one of the only sites that give their visitors access to free real-time stock quotes, sites like Google Finance all work with a 15-minute delay and that can sometimes be an eternity as things can move really fast.
Real-time data shown on the quote summary page above the quote summary box is Electronic Communication Networks or ECN data. ECNs are electronic marketplaces that bring buy and sell orders together and match them with each other. The ECN Data provided on the Yahoo Finance site is powered by BATS Trading. Real-time ECN data is available for pre-market and market hours.
I think this new service could help Yahoo to gain back some visitors they lost to Google Finance and other sites. Another great free service I frequently use is Arca Web Book, this application allows you to see the real-time bid and ask prices of stocks.
Carmen and I went away a couple of days to Disneyland Paris by the way, a full report of our trip will follow later this week
Two days ago Thomas (yeah he has the same name as me) and I made a trip to Oceade, a tropical waterpark in Brussels.
Pizza Hut
First we went to one of the Pizza Hut restaurants in Brussels for their Pizza Buffet. Everyday between 12 PM and 2 PM you can eat as many pizzas as you want and drink as many soft drinks as you can for around 11 euros which is a pretty good deal IMO. Usually I eat around 8-10 pieces of pizza but this time I only had 6 pieces to make sure I wouldn’t throw up when sliding off one of the many slides in Oceade .
Oceade
One of the benefits of being your own boss is that you can take a day off whenever you want. Usually when you would go to a place like Oceade there would be hundreds of people and you would have to queue 5-10 minutes to get on one of the slides but as we went in the middle of the week when everyone is at work or at school there were very few people in Oceade.
When we arrived around 1 PM there were only seven other people so we basically had the whole park for ourselves! The water in Oceade is 29°C and there are 11 slides, a wave pool, a big jacuzzi, three saunas and many other attractions.
The biggest choice of slides in Belgium : 11 !
The Cycloon, a big slide of 140 meters long, brings great fun for everyone.
The Bounty Raft, the longest slide of Belgium. It is also the first slide in Belgium with a duo tube.
The two Bala de Canon (Canonballs), unique in Belgium, are for those who dare to do a little more; you are launched from 1 meter above the water.
The two Salto Angel are for those who dare to slide from a height of 13 meters at an angle of 45°.
The Hurricane is the fastest slide in Belgium. From a height of 18 meters, it only takes 7 seconds to travel 80 meters : thrills assured!
The speed of the 4 children’s slides is especially adapted for even the smallest children.
Last week when I bought a new boardshort from DC Shoes I was pretty suprised to find a hard object in the right pocket of my short. Turns out the boardshort features an integrated wax comb bottle opener! Pretty cool.
Also, congratulations Carmen! My girlfriend finished the Start-2-run 10 kilometer training scheme on Friday
Pizza Hut
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