R.I.P. John W. Backus

John W. Backus, the man behind Fortran, has passed away at an age of 82. It's hard to assess what an impact Backus, mainly through the conception of Fortran, has had on the development of computer science in general and scientific computing in particular, but he definitely ranks among the big ones. Read the NY Times article.

Ron Fedkiw interview at fxguide

There's a really interesting interview with Prof. Fedkiw at fxguide.com. He describes in some detail what's going on under the hood of those cool new water animations we see in the movies. It's fun to see what all this &#!?%$# math hopefully is leading up to!

My Best Friend's Band

While I'm at it, my friend Fredrik's band Veil has just released their first demo. Go to http://veil.angst.nu for some angst-ridden rock! 'Toxicate' is an awesome track, the rest I leave up to you.