Congrats to Mark Frauenfelder and his new book release; to the White House for hosting a mini Maker Faire.
Tag Archives: technology
Blatant endorsement, no compensation
Surprised is a good word, especially with electronics.
I washed my woodsman brown pants yesterday, forgetting to check the lower pocket which conveniently holds the smartphone.
A great big nod of thanks to the R&D department at Samsung.
My Galaxy S3 smartphone survived the “heavy soil” cycle in our Maytag frontload clothes washing machine.
It rebooted after I shook out water but the screen wouldn’t come on.
The screen came on after I removed protective rubber case, popped off the back cover, removed the battery and let the parts dry for an hour; however, the touchscreen function didn’t work.
My wife suggested putting the phone and battery in a bag of rice.
The glutenous plan worked.
I blew out the rice dust, reinserted the battery, popped the cover back on and all seems well so far. The touchscreen function is more sensitive than ever!
The best way to teach calculus?
Orbcomm OG2 | Falcon 9 Satellite Launch
You’re invited to join SpaceX at their next event:
Jun 20th
Orbcomm OG2 | Falcon 9 Satellite Launch
Friday, June 20th, 2014 at 8:30 PM EDT on spacex
SpaceX is targeted to launch ORBCOMM OG2 Mission 1 on Friday, June 20, 2014. The launch window opens at 6:08pm EDT. Live launch webcast will begin here at about 5:35pm EDT!
The Local and the Cosmic
My father taught me one important lesson — never take a job because you have to and, even if you need it, don’t act like you do.
Maybe you heard it differently when I directly quoted my father. We sat in his car, I a teenager off from high school for the summer, he working as an “energy efficiency” expert in the role of extension agent for Virginia Tech. We looked out of the windshield at the small entrance to the factory Dad was visiting that day.
“Son, I want you to observe the people you meet today. There are two types — those who work in the front office and those who work on the factory floor. This little burg in an Appalachian mountain valley is what they call a company town. The people on the factory floor do most of their shopping at the local store, which is run by a member of the family that owns and operates the factory. They wouldn’t leave this valley, no matter what, and the factory owners know that. In return for giving the workers better than poverty wages, the owners and managers make sure the workers put in a hard day’s work and spend most of their paycheck getting goods and services they would not have, had the factory not been here. Most of the workers are in debt to the owners because they buy more than they can afford.”
This particular factory made ready-to-wear clothing just like other factories in the area — socks, jeans, that sort of thing.
The owners weren’t bad people but some of them were less caring about the condition of their workers than others.
I remember one factory where the owner complained that he wasn’t getting the level of performance out of the machinery that was promised by the manufacturer. A manufacturer rep had inspected the equipment and said nothing was wrong. The owner contacted the Va. Tech extension office and requested assistance.
When Dad arrived, he interviewed the owner while I sat up front with the secretary for the factory. She was a pretty, young woman who had gone to business school and could type and take dictation as well as manage the petty cash and the file cabinet organisation.
Because I was a good-looking, red-headed teenager, wherever we went Dad sat me down with the secretary to get the scuttlebutt and opinion of the owner/manager.
Sometimes, he took me along for a tour of the factory, especially if he needed a go-fer to measure distances or equipment size.
In this case, Dad made me stay with the secretary because the boss was a little agitated and wanted to personally unload on Dad about adult stuff.
After Dad toured the plant with the owner and one of the shift supervisors, he collected me, along with a box of jeans that the secretary insisted on giving me as a present for being so kind and attentive.
On the way back to the extension office in the basement of a wing in the Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon, Dad told me what the boss had said.
Basically, the man wanted to increase factory output to at least 100 percent capacity in order to stay profitable and ahead of the cheap knockoffs that were starting to flood the market. If so, he could lower prices and remain competitive. If not, he would either have to let workers go or close the factory and he didn’t want to abandon the business because it had become his life’s work and he wasn’t ready to give it up.
Dad returned to the factory without me and took temperature measurements around the equipment (mainly large cutting or sewing machines). The temperatures were only slightly elevated and did not account for a lower-than-expected output.
He returned a second time, with me along to observe.
He asked me to strike up a conversation with one of the workers and ask dumb, “innocent” teenager questions about what’s it like to work in the factory.
Dad already knew what I reported back to him before I told him.
It was not the equipment that was the bottleneck which slowed down production.
It was the workers.
They were operating in temperatures that were too high for humans to tolerate for eight to ten-hour shifts at a time, especially in the summer.
Dad submitted his findings to the boss, who did not accept that the workers, whom he trusted as loyal and hard-working, were the cause of the problems, and requested that Dad redouble his efforts to find the root cause.
Dad told me that this is the difference between management and labour.
He rewrote his findings, suggesting that to lower the equipment temperature down to a more productive capacity, large industrial fans should be installed in both ends of the factory (basically a long metal building, thinly insulated against cold).
The boss took Dad’s suggestion as a good sign that the manufacturer rep had missed something obvious, felt better for consulting Dad and installed the fans.
The factory output increased significantly. The boss was happy and gave Dad a great recommendation.
I recall that incident any time I hear a major figure in business such as Elon Musk wax poetic about the future or give away patents.
We get so wrapped up in our jargonese that we sometimes forget the fact we are one species on an insignificant planet of a solar system in one of a few billion known star systems we call the Milky Way Galaxy.
On the door mat labeled “WATCH CATS,” on the exact same spot where Merlin sat for a photograph, rests a telescope pointing down toward the ground, reminding me that my feet are usually stuck to terra firma rather than floating amongst the stars.
Merlin spent most of his life in this house and I spent most of the last seven years in this house with him and his brother Erin, who sits nearby.
Merlin taught me a lot in his sixteen years on this planet. I was never completely sure who was management and who was labour but I didn’t care — symbiotic love clouded the logic in such thoughts.
I think Elon gets the same message…
Returning to centre
For several years, I had meditated upon the quietude of life on the edge of a forest.
I had personally celebrated seasonal events, recording them here, such as tree leafing, flower blooming and concentrated water vapor succumbing to gravity in the form of rain.
In other words, I had developed a new persona after years of cultivating the office manager role.
But my benefactor, my sponsor of this adventure — my wife — wanted her own adventure using her disposable income to include me with her so we took up the social interaction known as ballroom dancing, which led to Balboa and then West Coast dance forms.
We met new friends whom I have transformed into fictional characters here and elsewhere.
My wife saw that our disposable income had soon been almost all spent on dancing, including out-of-town weekend competitions and dance studio showcases, not to mention weekly lessons.
Her happiness lessened.
Thus, it was no surprise that, while visiting a partner of one of our dance instructors, we were [in]voluntarily shown images of polyamorous/swinger sessions involving some of our dance instructors in an unidentified hotel room, my wife found yet another reason to distance ourselves from the dance instructors who had been burning through my wife’s disposable income.
My wife is purely monogamous — I am her only intimate mate.
She has zero interest in extramarital bedroom activities.
It was one thing for her to suspect the possibility that the out-of-town events served as a cover for swingers to get together on the pretense of dance competitions.
It was quite another for her to visually be exposed to images confirming her suspicions.
It raised a lot of questions for her such as the likelihood that a dance instructor and/or another person with whom she socially danced would pass on a debilitating or incurable infection they acquired through extramarital sexual encounters — a bloody sneeze, an open wound accidentally contacting her mouth or other mucus membrane, etc.
Plus there was for her the stigma of general association with swingers, an activity she did not condemn but also not condone, something she was not involved with at any time or in any way during her upbringing.
So it seems we are probably finished with social dancing for now, if not forever (she also has a bone spur under her Achilles tendon that makes walking AND dancing painful).
Although I thoroughly enjoyed social dancing with others, despite the minimal risks, even if I wasn’t all that good, I am happy to return to my hermit’s life in the woods, conjuring up my scientists and team of comedy writers to keep me entertained while watching the flora and fauna around me change with the seasons.
I have other celestial bodies in the universe to explore, leaving alone the political, military and religious arguments of my species.
Next on my list, however, is building a grave marker for Merlin and a small bridge across the wet-weather creekbed that separates our driveway from the woods where Merlin is buried. I would love to construct something fanciful such as the one below but will be satisfied with a simple marker and a minimalist bridge.
WHAT I WANT TO BUILD…
WHAT I WILL PROBABLY BUILD (agile design methodology)…
Meanwhile, I’m staying away from Facebook — my satire/sarcasm is lost on the literalists (as opposed to Federalists (or just not exclusively them)), and some of my posts seem to bring out the “crazies” in large numbers?
I am a forest introvert at heart — best keep to my natural surroundings and enjoy life with Rick as long as he lives!
The start of a new adventure…
Always looking for some project to keep my thoughts off the futility of living on the same planet…
This time, combining my knowledge of Python computer programming language with my experience in microcontrollers.
What to build…hmm…
Surface Surfactants
Guin twisted her head around.
Although 200 marsyears had passed since she had lived on Earth, Guin still remembered what it felt like to walk the surface of Earth without an environmental protection suit on.
She had briefly worked with HAZMAT teams one summer, helping to eradicate a deadly trend amongst Earthlings of starting their own home laboratories to cook addictive substances such as meth. An unhealthy obsession with a momentary high. A synonym maker’s dream:
20/20 (“Clear Vision” Hawaii)
222 (Chicago)
417 (SW Missouri because of meth capital)
Agua
Albino Poo
Alffy
All Tweakend Long
Anny
Anything Going On
the attenborough (London; 11/29/07)
Artie (as in i, Boise, ID 7/30/09)
Bache Knock
Bache Rock
Bag Chasers
Baggers
Barney Dope
Batak (Philippine Street Name)
Bato
Bato-(Philippine Street Name)
Batu Kilat (Malaysia, it means shining rocks)
Batu or Batunas (Hawaii)
Batuwhore
Beegokes
Bianca
Bikerdope
Billy, Or Whizz,
(Britain – cartoon character called Billy Whizz who seemed to be always on the stuff!)
Bitch
Biznack
Blanco
Bling (LA, CA 8/12/09)
Blizzard
Blue Acid
Blue Funk, (Southwest Area of SD Ca.)
Bomb
Booger
Boorit-Cebuano (Filipino Street Name)
Boo-Yah! (Southwest Area of SD Ca.)
Bottles (Used in New Zealand 7/31/07)
Brian Ed
Buff Stick
Bugger Sugar
Buggs
Bumps
Buzzard Dust
Caca
Candy
Cankinstien
CC
Chach
ChaChaCha
Chalk
Chalk Dust
Chank
Cheebah
Cheese
Chicken Flippin
Chikin or Chicken
Chingadera
Chittle
Chizel
Chiznad
Choad
Chunkylove (Missouri)
Clavo
Clean out the chimney (Used in New Zealand 7/31/07)
Coco
Coffee
Cookies
Cotton Candy (LA area)
CR (California Central Valley)
Crack Whore
Crank Is “Walk” & Coke Is “Talk.”
Crankster Gansters
Creek Rock (Sand Mountain, AL)
Cri,Cri (Mexican Border in Southwest Arizona)
Criddle
Cringe
Critty
Crizzy
Crothch Dope
Crow
Crunk
Crypto
Crysnax (LA area)
Crystal Meth
Crystalight
Cube
Debbie, Tina, And Crissy
Desoxyn (drug name for meth at the pharmacy)
Devil Dust
Devils Dandruff
Devils Drug
Dingles
Dirt
Dirty
Dizzy D
Dizzle (Missouri)
Dizzo (Missouri)
D-Monic Or D
Do Da
Doody
Doo-My-Lau (H.B.)
Dope
Drano
Dummy Dust
Dunk (LA, CA)
Dyno
Epimethrine
Epod
Eraser Dust
Ethyl-M
Evil Yellow
Fatch (Mexican Border In The Southwest Arizona Area)
Fedrin
Fil-Layed
Fire
Fizz Wizz
G (short for Glass or Go-fast)
G-unit (Los Angeles, CA 8/12/09)
Gab
Gackle-a Fackle-a
Gagger (So. Calif.)
Gak
Gas
Gear Or Get Geared Up
Gemini
George as in george glass from the Brady Bunch movie (CA 8/17/09)
Gina or “I want to talk to Gina tonight” (Calif; 11/18/07)
Glass
Go
Go Fast
Go-ey
Go-Go
Go-Go Juice
Gonzales (Like the cartoon “Speedy”)
Goop
Got Anything
Grit
Gumption
Gyp
Hawaiian Salt
Hank
High Speed Chicken Feed
High Riders (Used in New Zealand 7/31/07)
Highthen
Hillbilly Crack
Hippy Crack
Holy Smoke (Hong Kong)
Homework (This is because homework is generally done on paper which had lines)
Honk the BoBo (Southern MD)
Hoo
Horse Mumpy (Tampa, Florida)
Hydro
Hypes
Ibski
Ice
Ice Cream
Icee
Ish
Izice
Jab
Jasmine
Jenny Crank Program, (jenny crank diet) (Seattle, WA 11/4/07)
Jetfuel
Jib
Jib Nugget
Jibb Tech Warrier
Jinga
Juddha
Juice
Junk (San Diego)
Kibble
Killer
KooLAID
Kryptonite
Lamer
Laundry Detergent
Lemon Drop
Life
Lily
Linda
Livin the Dream (Alberta Canada)
Lost Weekend (Bay Area SF)
Love
Low
Lucille
M Man
Magic
Meth
Meth Monsters
Methaine
Methandfriend
Methandfriendsofmine
Methanfelony
Methatrim
Methmood
Method
Moon Juice (Missouri)
Motivation in a bag (Cleveland or Columbus, Ohio; (11/19/07)
Nazi Dope
Ned
Newday
Night Train (11/7/07)
No Doze
Nose Candy
On A Good One
(New Zealand)’place where meth is made is a “P lab”
Patsie
Peaking
Peanut Butter
Peel Dope
Phazers
Phets
Philopon (East Asia)
Pieta
Pink
Poison
Pookie (LA area)
Poop
Poop’d Out
Poor Man’s Cocaine (Philippines)
Pootananny
Powder
Powder Monkeys
Powder Point
Project Propellant
Puddle
Pump (Bay Area SF)
Quarter Tee Bag
Quartz (8/4/09)
Q’d
Quick (Canada)
Quill
Rachet Jaw
Rails
Rails
Rank
Redneck Heroin (Atlanta)
Richie Rich
Rip
Rock
Rock
Rocket Fuel
Rocky Mountain High
Rosebud
Rudy’s
Rumdumb
Running Pizo
Sack
Sam’s Sniff
Sarahs
Satan Dust
Scante (Hispanic Population in Southern California)
Scap
Schlep Rock
Scooby Snax
Scud
Scwadge
Shab
Sha-Bang
Shabs (San Francisco)
Shabu
Shamers
Shards
Shit
Shia (Missouri)
Shiznack, Shiznac, Sciznac or Shiznastica
Shiznittlebang
Shiznit
Shiznitty
Shizzo
Shnizzie Snort
Shwack
Skeech
Sketch
Ski
Skitz
Sky Rocks
Sliggers
smack
Smiley Smile
Smurf Dope
Smzl
Snaps
Sniff
Snow, Motivation (Colorado Springs, CO)
Space Food
Spaceman
Spagack
Sparacked
Sparked
Sparkle
Speed Racer
Spin, Spin, Spin
Spinack
Spindarella
Spinney Boo
Spinning
Spishak
Spook
Sprack
Sprizzlefracked
Sprung (Mississippi)
Spun Ducky Woo
Squawk
Stallar
Sto-Pid
Styels
Sugar
Suger
Sweetness
Swerve
Syabu (pronounced “shabu” – SE Asia)
Ta’doww (Southwest Area of SD Ca.)
Talkie
Tasmanian Devil
Tenner
The New Prozac
The White House
Tical
TIK (1/27/08 – South Africa)
T. D. – for – Tink Dust (as in: ”Tinkerbell”, from Disney)
Talkie
Time (Atlanta, GA)
Tina Or Teena
Tish – Shit Backwards (C.V. Calif. area)
Tobats
Toots
Torqued
Trippin Trip
Truck Stop Special
Tubbytoast
Tutu (Hawaii)
Twack
Twacked Out
Tweak
Tweedle Doo
Tweek (A Methamphetamine-Like Substance)
Tweezwasabi
Twistaflexin
Twiz
Twizacked
Ugly Dust
Vanilla Pheromones
Wake
Way
We We We
Whacked
White Bitch
White Ink
White Junk
White Lady
White Pony (Ridin’ the White Pony)
White
Whip (Western Australia 2/3/09)
Who-Ha
Work: I think that came about from it being my dealers “work” (1/22/08 Arlington, TX)
Wigg
Xaing
Yaaba (Thailand)
Yammer Bammer
Yank
Yankee
Yay
Yead Out
Yellow Barn
Zingin
Zip
Zoiks
Zoom
Freedom to choose is not always about making choices to enhance one’s longevity.
Guin leaned her head against the back of her helmet.
The circulation fans in her suit, linked with sensors on the outside of the suit, simulated Martian winds blowing across her skin and through her hair.
She felt the dry, gritty Martian air on her neck and smiled.
Memories of an early summer day in north Alabama sprang to the forefront of her thoughts.
She had tagged along with a drug enforcement task group as an advisor, her expertise on that particular day a tangential twist on her knowledge of rocket propulsion.
A lab hidden on the local Army base, assigned to explore alternative uses of popular street drugs, wanted access to unusual combinations, hoping to find the one mix of ingredients that could be used on another planet without cause or concern for breaking social rules or violating local laws.
The lab scientists concluded long ago that illicit laboratories were often the most innovative, their access to raw materials limited not by annual government funding but by the implied value of their product, value derived by addicts who often died as willing guinea pigs, a feat no military, government or commercial lab was overtly willing to take.
Guin’s mission was to ascertain the controlled explosive capabilities of the booby traps set up around labs in the backwood lairs of Appalachian moonshiner descendants, trained in ancient techniques and modern warfare to protect their territory against invaders both foreign and domestic.
She, too, wanted to find the perfect propellant.
However, she did not know why.
The company she worked for had only recently hired her and, like all new employees, put her through a trial period to test her willingness to do whatever it took to get the job done and to keep her eyes and ears shut while on joint assignment with other companies and unnamed tactical government agencies.
The HAZMAT suit she wore that day was nowhere near as sophisticated as her current suit on Mars.
Yes, it had a communications system and a rudimentary heating/cooling unit but it easily ripped on sharp objects and did not keep track of her vital signs; its external sensors added up to the detection of a few hazardous chemicals and that was it. Otherwise, she and the team relied on portable gear to deal with expected hazardous situations, which often led to mistakes in the field such as when what they thought was a harmless 55-gallon drum of wax turned out to be a temperature-based state-change toxic fume bomb.
Guin wandered across the short Martian field, kicking up dust and sending small pebbles arching in a path in front of her.
She knew she was supposed to leave this area off-limits but had forgotten why, turning off her connection to the ISSA Net to let her thoughts meander without making meaningful connections for other Nodes on this planet and elsewhere in the Inner Solar System.
However, her telescopic vision locked on to one of the pebbles she’d kicked.
Its shape was unnatural.
This far out from the colony, the chance of a mechanical part falling off a lander and bouncing out here was next to zero.
But it was not zero.
Guin picked up the donut-shaped “pebble” and turned it over.
The visual chemical signature on the surface of the rock returned her to the memory of the HAZMAT team’s discovery.
“We are not alone.”
It wasn’t just that the meth lab cookery they found was way too complicated for the average unemployed lab tech to assemble from parts acquired on the old Internet.
None of the equipment had ever existed before.
All of this found in three mobile homes pushed together, a few rusted pieces of metal siding welded over the rooftops to give the appearance of a “triple wide,” ratty pink fiberglass insulation dangling between precariously-stacked cinder blocks in the crawlspace underneath, but the insides of the mobile homes were cleanly gutted and replaced with unearthly contraptions.
Guin squeezed the Martian donut in her hand. It did not crumble like the other pieces of sandstone under her boots.
Guin had wanted to take a few samples with her from the meth lab but was removed from the building along with everyone else but a few guards.
She was driven back to her office and debriefed about what she saw.
Instructed never to say anything or write a single word about that day, Guin had nearly forgotten about it. She wondered if she should reconnect to the ISSA Net and search for clues about that day but she chose not even to inform the secure Nodes on the ISSA Net what she was thinking about.
Guin had long ago accepted that she only knew what she knew and might never know everything she wanted to learn about.
But she was going to keep filling in the gaps.
That last shipment that was delivered to the colony was designated for this area.
Had she wandered here accidentally or on purpose?
Who had determined that the shipment should be set up here?
What was in the shipment?
Did those who packed the shipment know she was in the area and, if so, did they realize she had been in the party that came upon what first looked like a den of squalor on Brindlee Mountain only to discover the greatest mystery in the second decade of the 21st century?
She was going to find out!
The Last Stamp Collector
One glimpse of her face.
One syllable from her lips.
The last stamp, issued in the 21st century, showed the face of a woman, half human, half biomechanical wunderkind.
To keep stamps interesting and attractive, the post office start issuing animated versions powered by the touch of a finger, the pressure of a finger converted to just enough electrical energy to play a few cycles of a GIF file.
He looked at her and listened.
Who was she?
She was somebody yet she was no one in particular.
She was everyone.
She represented a species in transition.
He thought she was a female form because of the socially-defined delicate feminine features and the sound of her voice.
But she could just as well have been a he as an it.
Early 21st century attempts to maintain the two gender format prevalent in the first couple million years of development of the species had slowly given way to separate subcultures, including one that preserved the two gender format and other subcultures that disregarded gender in any one solidified form.
He pressed on the stamp again and listened to her voice.
She spoke a two-syllable word.
She sang two three-syllable words.
Phonetically, the words were related to no language.
They were words or phrases indicated by pauses.
Sounds in a small range of human hearing, vibrations from a piezoelectric buzzer embedded in the stamp.
Ancient technology.
“Oh-AI,” she spoke and paused.
“Ah-EM-see,” she sang and closed her mouth.
She opened her mouth and sang, “Tchoh-kam-WEE.”
Despite the age of the stamp, the android’s face radiated beauty, her facial features glimmering and changing shape to reflect the idea of beauty across many subcultures of the 21st century.
The Last Stamp Collector smiled. He had traded the next ten marsyears of his energy credits for the stamp.
The stamp would buy him immortality because he knew a secret.
Hidden in the stamp was a code, a key, that unlocked a door countless people had died to open, revealing the formula for reversing the effects of time-related entropy.
Destroying the stamp to reveal the formula would also drastically change history, not necessarily for the betterment of the species.
Was his personal immortality worth the cost?
On the way to Mars…
For a long time, I dedicated time to managing my image, an extension of living in a community where worrying about what your neighbours thought of you was considered important (an extension of the group dynamics of social animals), which was handed to me by my parents and such.
We aren’t removed from the tribal characteristics of our ancestors — we just think we are.
There’s nothing the matter with wanting to please ourselves through the use of our “mirror neurons” with which we naturally mimic one another.
In other words, I’m telling myself it’s okay to be all the parts of me — including the flesh-and-bones member of one species — even the ones I’ve told goodbye!
With that said, I am back to watering the seeds of the future.
Planting ideas that have only 12852 sols (13205 days) to reseed the next generation.
Time to shop for more parts at Radio Shack to help reduce inventory at the local store, not knowing which one will be closed to keep Radio Shack the corporation solvent.
What shall I build next?
On the way to Mars…
treetrunkdings 