Taking processing speed and RAM for granted Back in the day, I remember talking about optimizing algorithms and programming and ways to put things into Mathematica and such so that you can get stuff done in a reasonable amount of time. Oh, and sending commands to DIALOG in an order such that it doesn't use too much "connect time". Now, with 2GB RAM at work and 1GB here at home on my laptop, I'm spoiled... that is, until I try a massive analysis program or try to code in Nvivo.

At work I'm doing an analysis that is basically working with 20k node matrices... wow! I guess all of those things that run in the background kind of add up. How do you tell everything and its uncle to stop updating itself. The convenience of having these things auto update is now looking like a very bad thing. On top of that, my desktop keeps trying to back itself up. (smack - sit still, you in the back!)

At home, doing some coding for qualitative research, Nvivo was grinding to a stop (I wonder if the people who coded it looked at efficiency when making choices?).

So, in other words, I'm closing down my browsers, IM, desktop search indexing, Juice... and anything else I can find, and I'll get some work done. (hopefully)

Oh and it's been pretty quiet here since I've been basically sleep-deprived and cranky -- if you can't say something nice... and all that.  ¶ 3:15 PM| |cites (technorati) |