- Much of the land around Cattle Point, located at the southeastern tip of San Juan Island, is publicly accessible. This is a great place for visitors to get a taste of what the San Juan Islands have to offer. When traveling to Cattle Point across the grassy southern flank of Mount Finlayson, be on the lookout for foxes chasing rabbits back to their burrows. Enjoy views of the Olympic Mountains as you gaze south across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Make a stop at Cattle Point lighthouse and check the skies for bald eagles soaring in search of tasty salmon. Continue down the road or beach to the Cattle Point Interpretive Area to learn more about life on this part of the island. While inspecting the glacially scoured bedrock exposed along the beaches, look for whales and porpoises playing in the currents, and seals napping on Goose Island.
- Reverse-engineering the conditional jump circuitry in the 8086 processor (righto.com)
Intel introduced the 8086 microprocessor in 1978 and it had a huge influence on computing. I’m reverse-engineering the 8086 by examining the circuitry on its silicon die and in this blog post I take a look at how conditional jumps are implemented. Conditional jumps are an important part of any instruction set, changing the flow of execution based on a condition. Although this instruction may seem simple, it involves many parts of the CPU: the 8086 uses microcode along with special-purpose condition logic.