Charles Bahr

Expobar Office Control

2021-03-02T12:06:00.001-05:00

Wow, times have changed!

2017-04-07T22:32:00.001-04:00

Work is cloudified, home is cloudified.

A useful blog for the physics inclined

2010-10-12T11:48:00.001-04:00

Check it out! They have a lot of useful equations. Not that you need to know the formula for escape velocity that often...
http://bluesolver.com/

The future of TV

2010-09-30T23:38:00.000-04:00

Why is 99 cents per show not a good idea? We can buy a single book, and we don't have to buy everything that publisher has to offer. Actually, the show is really worth more like 10 cents.

99pushups

2010-08-14T11:38:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday (?) I did 42 pushups. Not as much progress as I had hoped.

I did six sets of incline machine bench press, with various weights, maxing at 7-15 reps each, on Thursday, followed by 20 pushups 15 min later.

Today is Saturday, trying week 5 day 1 column two.

28, rest 60

25 (not 35) rest 60

17 (not 25) rest 60

15 (not 22) rest 60

11 (not 35) rest 60

14 rest 60

13 rest 60

7
total 130

I felt very heavy in my arms. Maybe it's because of the heavier bench presses, and I might need to recover longer. I suppose Monday will show what has happened.

I have a very old razor

2010-08-09T16:52:00.001-04:00

I am still the proud owner of a very old Schick razor.

What I like about it is that I get a very close shave and it is easy to clean.

Now that safety razors have become a retro favorite across a a sizable minority of shaving people, it is again possible to find injection blades for this razor.

This was either my mother or father's razor.

I found this image that looks very similar at http://www.safetyrazors.net/schick/schicktech.htm
and it is described as a Type E (3), 1935-1945.

Why do I care about the energy equivalence of propane vs. gasoline?

2010-08-04T18:10:00.001-04:00

This will be the first year to use the Coleman propane stove I acquired. In previous years I've used the dual fuel (Coleman fuel, which is white gas, naphtha, about 50 octane, plus gasoline). I would typically use about a little over a gallon during a week camping, which includes breakfast coffee (actually, milk steaming and espresso), breakfast pancakes, some fairly sizable dinners, and the occasional hot water for tea.

What should I expect for the propane stove? Well, now that I know the roughly 6lbs propane = 1 gal gasoline, then I should expect to go through about 7 pounds of propane during a 1-week stay at a campground while cooking for the family.

propane vs gasoline

2010-08-02T14:51:00.000-04:00

6 pounds of propane = 1 gal gasoline

Tie tying

2010-07-22T14:30:00.000-04:00

Simplest web site for most popular tie knot methods:
http://www.brooksbrothers.com/TieKnots/tieknots.tem

Gaggia MDF

2010-04-17T14:00:00.003-04:00

My dear old Gaggia MDF. I bought it from Zabars around 1996 or 1997 I guess. Maybe 1998 or 1999? Heavy, loud, a little messy, but pretty good. I left it on for a few minutes, walked out of the room, and when I came back all was silent. The coffee output hopper was jammed full of coffee. A few phone calls later (Wholelattelove.com and repairshack.com) and a bit of mess in my office and a couple hours, and I managed to have it working as before (or better, because it was clean), with a replacement fuse (2A, 5mmx20mm).

Tee Shirts

2010-03-10T12:34:00.003-05:00

Here is an interesting reference to making the vector artwork. I have a bitmap image that I want to turn into a t-shirt.

Aftermath of thermosyphon restrictor installation

2009-11-20T10:09:00.003-05:00

What a difference a little plug makes! An hour after I switched the machine on this morning, the portion of shot water that is overheated is very small, like .5 oz. Wow.

Thermosyphon restrictor installed

2009-11-20T09:50:00.006-05:00

The group head (the thing that pushes water through the coffee), is a hot little beast after the machine (Expobar Office Control) has warmed up. Too hot in my unmeasured opinion. It's so hot that if you have waited half an hour to make a new shot of coffee, the water coming out of the group head will be sizzling. If you leave the portafilter off, you can see steam, bubbles, and dancing water coming out for about 3 ounces worth. So I finally emailed Expobar Australia and paid $14 AUS for a little teflon disc.
The reason the group head is SUPPOSED to be hot, is to prevent the shot water from cooling of on its way to making a good coffee. The way the group head gets hot, is that there is a "thermosyphon" that lets water circulate from the boiler to the head and back to the boiler. What this restrictor is for, is to slow down the heating loop just a little bit.

Top picture is where the top part of the thermosyphon loop attaches to the group head port, and where I planned to install the restrictor. Lower picture is the restrictor, a little teflon disc.

BTW, credit is due to http://www.home-barista.com/espresso-machines/installing-thermosyphon-restrictor-on-expobar-office-pulser-t2789.html

clockwise is hotter

2009-11-06T08:55:00.003-05:00

Capucchino started tasting woody. shot length is too slow, but instead of fixing the shot duration I played with the temperature, because I'm always frustrated with that. I'm ordering a thermosyphon flow restrictor to lower the group head temperature. Note, I believe the boiler temperature is increased by turning the pressurestat CW as viewed from above. I send it back up to (maybe) about where it was for the factory settings, and got the steaming time down a bit. So.... I think the grind was one click too fine. I just wish I could measure what I'm doing... Until then, not bad.

Yet another Micro Repair

2009-10-26T10:01:00.002-04:00

Replaced my broken Reverse-osmosis air-gap faucet with this one (Watts) which matches the Grohe faucet better. Brushed nickel finish....

Blackberry vibrates with email arrival

2009-10-23T10:26:00.002-04:00

BB 8310. I finally discovered the menu option to change this.
Go to the profile icon, select "normal" and press the menu button, selecting "edit". Change the "in holster" notification setting to "none".

2009-10-07T14:42:00.001-04:00

The Singularity Summit

Introduction

The 4^th annual Singularity Summit was held on Oct 3 and 4, 2009 at the 92^nd street Y in Manhattan. The first day was largely devoted to artificial intelligence. The conference brought together researchers, venture capital, "thought leaders", and others to discuss topics related to the so-called singularity predicted by some (notably Ray Kurzweil). The idea is that when several thresholds are met, the future rate of human progress will accelerate dramatically and profoundly. Related thresholds are:

Inexpensive computing power enables human-equivalent artificial general intelligence (AGI)
Human life extension through nano/bio advances becomes possible or even commonplace
Significant energy requirements are met (e.g., through solar collection)

When the Singularity occurs, it is predicted that machines will effectively transform the human experience and spark a new age of innovation far more revolutionary than we can imagine.

Summary

Technological Progress

Perhaps the most important message to bring from the conference is the notion that technological progress has been exponential, but human perception is linear, with the consequence that important changes appear imperceptible until they are upon us, and then the rare becomes commonplace, seemingly overnight. Have we come to terms with the sudden appearance of smartphones that fit in our pockets, yet have the processing performance of the supercomputers of a couple decades prior?

Changes like this are permeating all aspects of technology – communications – biology – entertainment.

The essential tenet of the Singularity Summit, its speakers and attendees, is that the important technological trends are progressing exponentially. A Kurzweil estimate is that a $1000 processor will achieve human-equivalent AGI at 10¹⁶ operations per second some year between 2020 and 2030.

AGI

The most important benchmark in tracking artificial intelligence is the ability of a machine to have generalized intelligence to solve diverse tasks, such as what humans excel at. Artificial generalized intelligence (AGI) development is being approached from several different directions, all of which are progressing. Brain emulation refers to emulating the actual structure (physical, electrical, and chemical) of a human brain on an artificial substrate. To date, both the cerebellum and some of audio processing function appear significantly understood. Another approach is aimed at an information-centric method which I would term the extension to "expert systems" of the 1980s.

Summary of Presentations

Anna Salomon (researcher at the Singularity Institute)

Claimed that intelligence growth would be radical and sudden and uncontrolled growth intelligence would be dangerous. On the other hand, controlled growth would be difficult but "worth it"

Anders Sandberg

Technical roadmap for whole brain emulation: assuming that physicality is important in intelligence brain operations etc. what is the appropriate level of structure necessary for understanding brain operation? What is the state of the art in scanning tools? One of the best approaches now is KEEM (Knife Edge Microscopy), promising method for discerning brain structure at the neuron, dendrite, axon level, albeit completely destructive. Also doesn't discern chemical or electrical structure.

Randall Koene

Why do we need whole brain emulation?
We have assumed that if an artificial intelligence was developed sufficiently advanced that it would take care of us. On the other hand suppose apes were counting on humans to take care of them. Nirvana for Apes didn't happen…
One reason for whole brain emulation is to provide a future means to migrate to an artificial substrate. We need to have the opportunity to survive all possible threats and avoid extinction.
Interestingly, anti-aging has to attack many causes of death because of the phenomenon of evolutionary synchronization of senescence. All the systems of an organism tends to fail at the same time because there's no point in evolving a more efficient system in one area, because the more resilient system is evolutionarilty unnecessary. So even if anti-aging fixes one problem you'll have to fix another problem right away.
The real solution is to move the mind.
There has been progress: the first organic brain that has been structurally understood is the C- ELEGANS (worm)
Other areas of analysis include functional analysis with quantum dots for high Tesla MRI

Itamar Arel

Took a quick audience survey - 10% believe AI comparable to humans is attainable in 10 years
His group is developing artificial general intelligence structured into two areas deep learning and decision-making subsystems, based on FPGAs.
The deep learning aspect involves information gathering, world modeling, storage, space, time, physics, image, sound, information representation; and situation inference
The decision-making subsystem is reward based or uses reinforcement learning.
Completely separate way to approach AGI compared to Brain Emulation approaches

Ben Goertzel

Very entertaining - there is an open source cognition project; he develops virtual pets and humanoid robots
Goertzel.org/summit09
Integrative cognition architecture
types of memory – procedural, declarative, attentional, episodic, and sensory.
Creates a virtual environment to test hierarchical nets
examples of useful AI from "Biomind": discovering a genetic basis for chronic fatigue syndrome; developing a 100% accurate predictor for Parkinson's disease based on mitochondrial DNA analysis; effect of calorie restriction on aging; genetic aging networks from Genescient's "Methuselah flies".
See also: lepuppy.org/gates, opencog.org

Stewart Hameroff

Dendritic synchrony moving through the brain mediates consciousness?
It appears that brain waves in the region 30 to 90 Hz which are called gamma waves are associated with consciousness, or at least they disappear with anesthesia. Work suggests that dendritic-to-dendritic interactions are related to synchronicity of gamma. In other words electrical synchronicity causes consciousness. However the chemical interactions between neurons & dendrites at the synapses are more related with autopilot types of activity.
He concludes that microtubules inside neurons are specifically related to consciousness, and leads to the assertion that brain capacity is about 10²⁵ operations per second.
See also quantum consciousness.org, The Penrose Hameroff ORCH model

Nielsen

quantum computing
An interesting talk preparing the audience for the mathematical example of an n=3 qubit system to of the operators shown were the pi/8 gate and the controlled not gate.
Seems that quantum computing is not useful for very many problems only really big problems problems requiring massive parallelism

Juergen SchmidtHuber

compression
The algorithmic principle behind curiosity creativity art science music and jokes
Very entertaining presentation with the idea that Interestingness is the derivative of complexity
the reason why Columbus is a famous is not because he's the first person to discover America but because he was the last person to discover America

David Chalmers the philosopher

We assume there will be Ai, ai+, ai++
What is required for AI? Based on a substrate that is extendable (obviously the brain is not sufficiently extendable)
AGI might be obtained through learning methods but that seems too difficult. Suggests simulated evolution is the solution.
Assuming simulated evolution, the subsequent problem is quarantine of the AI so as to avoid malicious programs.
Will I be able to upload? will my upload be conscious? will it be me?

Gary Drescher

Choice machines, causality, and cooperation
He provided an alternative to the game theory argument of the prisoner's dilemma which the standard game theory shows that two prisoners will make rational choices leading to lesser rewards, with very poor analysis. Perhaps the assumption should be made that both prisoners assume completely rational behavior, leading to the correct choice.

Stephen Wolfram

Long discussion of cellular automata
Why are natural objects so complex
Computational irreducibility
Irreducible results

Ed Boyden

Synthetic neurobiology delivering information into the brain to augment neural ability?
Presentation didn't address augmenting the brain directly but one thing that looked interesting was the research involving introduction of foreign sensors using viruses. For example to replace photoreceptors; as an example he showed a blind mouse that had been given a blue rhodopsin or something like that and restored light sensing ability to the mouse's eyes; also introduction of neural silencing capabilities.

Marcus Hunter

Developing the theoretical basis for artificial intelligence
Looked at several important theoretical foundations Occam's razor, Kolmogorov complexity theory, Bayes rule or Bayesian theory, Epicurus – (keeping all theories)
combining all of these into Solomon optimal control theory sequential decision…

William Dickens

Cognitive ability, past and future enhancements and implications
He says AFQT test has the highest correlation to future school performance and income, much more than your family status.
IQ tests especially commercial measure a mix of fluid and fixed abilities
It appears that cognitive ability is very genetic somewhat malleable in the short-term but reversible. Every country has exhibited significant IQ point gains in the past 50 years. USA gains were 17 points (WISC test) and 15 points (WAIS test).
Kenya from 1984 to 1998 gained 26 points, Denmark gained 9.5 points in 40 years
Highest areas of gain were similarity: 19.5 points, vocabulary: 17 points, block design: 10 points, picture recognition: 11 points, information: 8 points, and arithmetic 3.5 points.
The biggest gains are in fluid areas like "reasoning"
Improvements are real but not clear exactly how, suggested environmental but affect highest performers better.
See more at http://www.brookings.edu/experts/dickensw.aspx
Gains are not nutrition-related because IQ gains continue even after the height gains stop in a country; also not related to lead removal for a similar reason

Kurzweil

Largely shredded the presentations of the prior presenters
Quantum computing sounds very interesting but the idea of multiple coherence in areas like the brain? Well it's a messy place to have quantum correlation
Gamma wave synchronicity? maybe the idea of loss of gamma waves going away during anesthesia is not proof that consciousness is caused by that because a lot of things go away during anesthesia and who's to say that you're not conscious during operations?
What is consciousness? I don't even know are you conscious?
Cellular automaton - very important topic. Even though things are deterministic they can be unpredictable
Disagreed that the brain does 10²⁵ operations per second, still believes in 10¹⁵ to 10¹⁶ with some confidence based on existing brain analysis. (Cerebellum reverse engineering)
The brain is a recursive probabilistic fractal (like a Mandelbrot set)
Another example of difficult unpredictable determinism is turbulence.
it's important to keep the scale appropriate. Chemists don't use the underlying physics to predict their reactions, nor do biologists use fundamentals of chemistry to project their results.
in a similar fashion Bernoulli's principal is used as a guideline but even recently there has been a paper where physicists arguing on the foundation for Bernoulli's principal

Look for my espresso machine results soon

2009-09-24T14:36:00.000-04:00

2009-06-22T03:31:00.000-04:00

December 22, 2008 Newark Star Ledger photo