Advogato blog for lolo

23 Jan 2009

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:07:18 GMT

I have recently set a goal for myself to understand more about what's called "Quantum Computing". The end-goal I have in mind is to understand how such computers can be programmed, and get an idea of what we'll be able to do once we have that technology working.

What would be good to understand also is the type of problems that are currently out of reach of current computer technology will become tractable.

Being a Software Engineer what I'm really interested is not necessarily how such computers work at the lowest level (although some understanding is obviously required), but rather what programming them will "feel" like.

Also what I would like to understand is what a large scale Quantum Computer would look like. There are some examples given of small quantum computers (5 qubits), but no idea of what these computers will look like once the technology is well under control and Moore law starts to kick in for this technology.

So far I have found the following:

Introduction to Quantum Computing from IBM developerWorks
QCL A programming language for Quantum Computers, complete with a Quantum Computer simulator.

Pointers and hints to good reference materials on the topic are appreciated. Please direct these to laurentgauthier on Twitter.

21 Jan 2009

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:47:02 GMT

Long time no diary...

Trying out Twitter, still unsure how useful and/or addictive this can be. Let's say I'm a bit skeptical, but willing to experiment .

8 Mar 2007

Thu, 8 Mar 2007 15:57:48 GMT

Looks like I manage to write an entry in this diary every three years. Not bad!!! :-)

29 Apr 2004

Thu, 29 Apr 2004 19:55:18 GMT

Very long time without a diary update.

Since my last update (Jan 2001) I have moved to Montreal and worked there for three years. I really enjoyed the experience! (hub: I hope you'll like it as much as we did :-)

In just a few days I'll be moving back in France with my wife and kids. I'm going to work on the french riviera, and hopefully we'll like that.

2 Jan 2001

Tue, 2 Jan 2001 13:14:28 GMT

LTND.

Happy new year to you all!

I've been quite busy lately. My son has been growing (he is now almost one year old now, and already walking all around the house), I've changed job in July and I'll move to Montreal in the beginning of April (I finally got my permanent visa).

On the free software front I've done almost nothing, except rewriting the geometric engine of Dr. Geo in Python (50% done, the basic functionnality is in there with full undo/redo support). This is just for fun!

I've noticed that quite a few people here are working/living in Montreal. I'm currently living in France and I would be really happy to hear about specific issues that I should think of before the move there... (feedback to lolo at seul dot org).

7 Jul 2000

Fri, 7 Jul 2000 10:10:04 GMT

I've not done much lately, as I've been absorbed by real life. I even completely failed to deliver mod_virgule patches I promised to lkcl (sorry about that).

I'll be able to actually code a little in the next few weeks, and I've decided to work on implementing unlimited undo/redo for the geometric engine of Dr. Genius. And of course I'll try to finish my patches for mod_virgule.

Food for thought for all the "Advogatos": Requirements Elicitation in Open-Source Programs.

27 Apr 2000

Thu, 27 Apr 2000 08:46:50 GMT

Raph: your pictures are awesome! The baby is sooo lovely. I'm moved...

<joking>Could you translate the mensurations of your little boy to the metric system, please. It makes it hard for me to appreciate the result of your hard work</joking>.

I've been experimenting recently with a Wiki clone named pywiki, which has version control implemented with RCS. I like it, and now I think I will do something like that for mod_vigule, but using XML datastructure as the backend instead of RCS. I'm pretty confident that this can be implemented with only a limited number of lines of code.

I've been really interested by the diary of Christopher Blizzard about performance tools for Linux. <wish>I think that would be great if someone knowledgeable could write an article for Advogato on the subject.</wish> This would be of great interest for all free software developers.

26 Apr 2000

Wed, 26 Apr 2000 13:50:32 GMT

Congrats are in order for you raph and your wife. Being a young father myself (my son is three months old now) I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do :-). Have a nice day.

15 Mar 2000

Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:48:15 GMT

Andrei is probably looking for a book about or by Paul Erdos. Isn't this diary thing turning into an IRC-like forum? :-)

6 Mar 2000

Mon, 6 Mar 2000 09:08:51 GMT

During this week-end I've been thinking about what new functionnality could be interesting for Advogato, and I've come up with two ideas:

A voting system that could work in the same way Usenet votes work or as an option in the same way as Debian votes (I like the way the Debian people are resolving multiple choices).
An RFC section, where articles could be collaboratively written, and reviewed, and the resulting article could be proposed for vote to be accepted as an "official" Advogato production...

I'll make a try at writing some code for a voting system.