As you sit there on you comfy chair, catching up with your email, updating your Facebook status, reading your favorite blogs, watching your YouTube playlist and tweeting all of these; have you ever wonder what your life would be like without this machine in front of you, have you ever wondered as a matter of fact how this machine, this computer, had first come to our life?

Well, if you haven’t already known, let me introduce you to the guy who started this all.  His name is Charles Babbage.  Charles, an English bloke, who was born on 1791 (died on 1871), sometimes regarded as the ‘Father of Computing‘.  He is a Mathematician and Mechanical Engineer, whose design was thought to be the origin of the concept of the modern programmable computer.

The Difference Engine – The first calculator

Charles’s first design was called the Difference Engine.  It was, in simplicity, the first automatic computing engine, a.k.a calculator, albeit a mechanical one. In the 1800′s, mathematical tables, such as Logarithms , were used extensively.  These tables were calculated ‘manually‘ by people who were called ‘computer‘, meaning ‘one who computes‘ :) Charles, witnessing the high error-rate of this manual process, set of to work on eliminate these errors by replacing these ‘computers‘ with a ‘mechanical‘ machine that was capable of doing these calculations automatically.  Charles managed to built some parts of a prototype for this Difference Engine and although he didn’t manage to finish it, some of these parts (pictured below) still survive and can be seen at the London Science Museum.  If this first Difference Engine had had been completed, it would had been consist of around 25000 parts, weighted 15 tons and been 2.4 metres tall!

In 1985, the London Science Museum began the construction of the Difference Engine no. 2.  This version of Difference Engine was built true to Charles’ original design, using historically accurate materials and to within historically accurate tolerances.  The construction finished in 1991 – 153 year after the original design – the working machine performed its first calculation at the London Science Museum returning results to 31 digits, more than the average modern pocket calculator.
The new machine composes of 8000 parts, weighs 5 tons, and measures 2.1m high, 3.4m long and 0.5m wide.  The associated printing mechanism was also built and completed 9 years later, in 2000.
Another identical machine was also built by a technology millionaire Nathan Myhrvold, which was completed in March 2008 and is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, USA.

The Analytical Engine – The design of a general-purpose computer

During the time when Charles was working on his attempt to build the Difference Engine, he thought up of an idea of a much more general purpose computing engine, which he then called the Analytical Engine.  The design of this engine had a very similar resemblance to the design of a modern computer.  In short, it had an input, a store (memory), an arithmetical unit (CPU) and a printer (output).  All of these components were supposed to be mechanical and ran on Steam Engine to power it :)
I don’t want to go to much into the detail design here, but if you understand how modern computer works (or you want to know how it really works), check out this Wikipedia entry on Analytical Engine, and I can assure you you will be amazed to learn that Charles was basically designing the a prototype of a computer, 100 years before the birth of the Digital Computing initiated by the Turing Machine in 1937.  It’s mind-blowing!
Unfortunately, the design was never even built.  Charles was practically spending the rest of his life tinkering with the design, ever-optimising it all that time, until he died in 1871.  Although you can see a ‘trial model‘ of a part of the Analytical Engine being displayed at the Science Museum London (pictured below).

Remembering Charles Babbage

This Monday, 18th of October it’s the 139th Anniversary of Charles Babbage death.  And to commemorate this, I would encourage you to read all information about him and his works.  If you live in London, or happen to be there, I urge you to visit the London Science Museum and admire these machines with your own eyes.  Of course you can also alternatively visit the Computer History Museum in California.

Personally I have known about Computer since I was young, had studied Software Engineering, and have been working in IT for half of my adult life.  My heart is filled with gratitude towards Babbage for his amazing vision, way beyond his time, that one way or another has shaped the world we are living in today.

While working on this design on the Analytical Machine, Charles wrote that “Another age must be the judge” of his inventions.  That Age is here, and now.  It’s our Age.

Resources:
Charles Babbage at the Wikipedia
Charles Babbage at the London Science Museum
Charles Babbage at the Computer History Museum
Charles Babbage Institute
The 100 Leap Year – an article by John Graham-Cumming at jgc.org (Thanks for the inspiration John!)

This is going to be a bit out of topic post, but I’m taking part in My Community contest that is organized by Gumtree.  The idea is to write an ads that highlights things that people like about their community, where they live.

So, check out the ads I’ve created, and the forum thread about it.

It was actually an interesting experience for me when I tried to gather material for this ads. As I walked around my neighborhood, I found things that I didn’t notice before.  For the full ads that I wrote, please visit this link.  I encourage you to ‘chip in’ with comments, either in this post, or on the ads.  Tell me how my community differ to yours, and what do you like about the place where you live.

Here are some things about my community:

I live in Ealing, that’s a Borough in the West of London. You can check it here in the map.

View Larger Map

Here are some of my favorite things about Ealing:

1. Strategic! It’s very close to the main London Airport (Heathrow), and surrounded by major Motorways (that’s the Highway or Toll road for some of you) that are designed to ‘hyper’ link part of the cities.  That means I could go fairly quickly to other part of London (unless there is traffic jam of course).

2. Lots and lots of greens! Big parks, small parks, botanical gardens, etc.  Perfect place to catch the ‘rare’ England sun, or just to have a little walk and relax.

3. Diversity.  London as a whole is a multi-cultural city, and you can sample a little of this reality in Ealing.  Just walk down the main High Street and you can meet people from many nationalities, speaking many languages.  Though as a speciality, Ealing has a very strong presence of the Polish community, many of them migrated to England after the World War 2.

4. This diversity is also reflected in the myriad of local shops, and local eating places.  All of the major cuisines are represented here. From Italian to Lebanese, from Indian to Spanish Tapas.  There is something for everybody.

Some of my favorites are as follows:

La Siesta Bar de Tapas
This Spanish place has got authentic taste of Spain, I know I’ve been there :)
The waitresses are genuine from Spain, and they know what they are talking about.
Prices are reasonable, compare to other pseudo-spanish restaurant.
Very recommended!

Osteria del Portico
Blink and you will miss this small restaurant, which situated an alley, sandwiched between another Italian and a clothes shop.
Like La Siesta, Osteria has got a really authentic taste of Italy :)
Some of the waitresses are Italian, and the owner/chef often comes out of his kitchen and begins to engage a banter with his customers :)
Very cool indeed!

5. Spiritual/Interfaith Community

On the spitual side, Ealing is a very much Interfaith community.  You can find many churches from all major denominations being represented here (even the Jehovah Witness).

One community is worth to mention, it’s the Ealing Abbey. It’s one of the few centre for Benedictines in the UK.

The many denominations are very much involved in Interfaith dialogs and events throughout the year.

Ealing Abbey

6. Ealing Summer Festival

Most boroughs in London has their annual festival, Ealing has its Summer Festival.  Every year a mixture of Comedy, Jazz, Opera, Blues and other activities are held at a local Park.  This event usually culminates with the explosive London Mela to celebrate modern and traditional Asian culture.  Check out the following videos:

7. Ealing Studios

Ealing Studios is the oldest continously working film studio in the world. Established in the early 1930′s, Ealing Studios has been producing or taking part in producton of both movies and TV productions, like, among others: The Ealing Comedies, The Ladykillers, Notthing Hill, Star Wars – Episode 2, Sean of the Dead, Bridget Jones, St. Trinians, BBC’s Let’s Dance and Sport Relief.

8. Last but not least … the pubs. Ealing has enough Cafes and Pubs in every possible permutation to fill your thirst.  Though, it’s worth to notice some of the well-preserved locals, you can see in the photos.

Here is a montage of photos I took for this project:

So, that was a bit of my community where I live. What about yours? Tell me what you like most from your community?

Got this from somewhere on the Net.

I really want to ask the girls, which ones of these that REALLY REALLY you can’t do without?  Which ones are the most important, really?

It’s all about Bad Food + No Exercise + Too Much TV, Yes?

In anyway, it’s always nice to see it in a nice graphical way, like this infographic from OnlineEducation: