Technology Perspectives

I've moved

2024-03-05T22:22:00.000-08:00

FSD 3.0 Hardware

2020-02-25T19:57:00.000-08:00

Monday, Tesla finished the upgrade of my 2.5 autopilot hardware on my Tesla Model 3. It’s still not ready for “feature complete” aspects of the Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, which is due shortly, but at least my hardware is now in place.

Right now, I can see that it “sees” stop lights, signs, traffic cones, etc. Autopilot seems a lot more responsive while I drive. The new CPU’s in this computer are clocking a lot less utilization than the Nvidia CPU’s in the previous hardware.

Last week, when I had my Model3 into Service Center for HW 3.0 update, coincidentally, another owner’s Model3 was in for the update same day as mine, and the vehicle ID numbers (VIN) were switched. It was an honest mistake by the technicians involved. The VINs were very similar to each other, ending in 420 vs. 042. So think about those odds: two techs, two similar VINs, same SC…

Anyway, afterwards, my car would not get any software over the air (OTA), it was reporting the wrong color and the wrong tire size, wrong odometer, and my phone/app would not pair to car to act as a key to the vehicle. I discovered the VIN issue with Tesla over the phone help on 2/21, but it could not be resolved via OTA. So another service visit (the next working day) was necessary for correct VIN to be put into my car.

I did not catch this myself when picking up on Friday, only after I was home and car was not getting it’s OTA updates and subsequent phone call analysis. Somewhere during this diagnosis I thought VIN did not “look right” and on the phone, the tech confirmed it by having me check the VIN under the windshield and on driver door jam.

I think now an additional step in the HW 3.0 install process will be to confirm VIN’s before finishing up and returning the car to the customer. Tesla called the other customer to have them return for service to his car. He had noticed wrong car color on his screen, but not yet taken any action yet.

Go figure…

Enhanced Summon

2019-09-29T23:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, on Sept 27, my vehicle was updated with the Version 10 software, in which is contained the updated “Summon” software, known as Enhanced Summon.

In the parking lot or garage scenario, the car will come out of it’s parked location, opening the garage door, if necessary, and travel, slowly, to the location you indicate, such as the doorway of a nearby building (in the rainy day example of “Why do I need this?”).

Indeed, my car will do this, having tested it out after getting chinese food last night. I think the lady in the SUV behind my car was a little surprised, because she didn’t realize that there was no driver in the car in front of her! And then I got in.

We live in amazing times.

updated 10/3: There are many many youtube and other mentions of people trying this out, some of them very stupid. It’s a beta feature and it should be tried with caution and attentiveness, this is still not Full Self Driving. But then there are always going to be people pushing the envelope to the crazy side, right?

Americans are not interested in electric vehicles

2019-09-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

This statement may be a shocker to you, unless you are part of the subset of Americans that fall into this category. Many of you probably know I bought a Tesla Model 3 over a year ago, and I’ve loved every minute with it, even with some very small issues. Those were fixed really quickly by the customer service center or the mobile rangers. But there is a recent Forbes article with much the same headline as above and they go into a bunch of stats and arguments about how people don’t like to change. That is why no love in the EV space.

Recent Event

Today I want to write about a recent experience with another Tesla owner, not a bad experience, but upon reflection, perhaps an indication of the human condition.

I had recently purchased a glass roof sunshade which further cuts the infrared radiation coming into the cabin on my Model 3 (search for “BougeRV Tesla Model 3 Glass Roof Sunshade” on Amazon). It was easy enough to put in, it simply works, I’ll probably take it down for the winter months (it folds up nicely), so I can look out the glass roof from time to time. Many have written about the roof in this car, a technology milestone on it’s own. The roof does an amazing job with cutting the radiation, I just wanted to have it cut some more, make it easier for the AC. The company I bought the sunshade from, BougeRV, provided me with a gift, unsolicited. A set of cup holder and center console inserts, but I had already purchased these a while ago. They are removable (for cleaning) and protect the cupholders from crumbs, condensation from glasses, and generally make clean up easier. Like I said, I already had some.

A couple of days later I saw another Telsa Model 3 in a parking lot where I used to work. Maybe you can guess what’s going to happen next. Once I saw he did not have any cup holder inserts of his own, I left a note on one of my old business cards. He called, I drove over, he saw my car, he looked at the inserts and he bought them for a whole $7.00. Wow, like, right?

Knowledge

is power, I know. But what has struck me about both the Forbes article and the reaction of this former co-worker is that people just don’t understand what they have or could have in this technology that has 4 wheels.

Yes, its a bit of a joke, I think other people like the joke, too, about Tesla’s are not cars, they are computers with wheels.

Forget the basic high value of the car itself, what my co-worker did not understand that they are a lot of options in the accessory market that can improve your experience with your Model 3 (or X or S). Many people don’t even know how to operate all of it’s features.

The people in the Forbes article that are not interested in electric cars, they don’t understand how they can get a better car, a safer car, a better experience, for less than they are going to pay whichever Japanese car maker. I’ve even had one person on a road trip that came over to look at my car, tell me they don’t like Tesla cars because they are not an American car.

It’s really hard to argue with people like this.

When I bought this car, I sought out knowledge about the car, about the technology. I also found people were 3-D printing accessory parts, for security clips, for phone chargers, lots of things. Maybe I am an outlier and the statement should really not be “Americans are not interested in electric cars” but rather “Americans are not interested in knowledge.” — Even if you are plunking down tens of thousands of dollars for an automobile.

And to that point, I don’t know what to say.

P.S. for the “for less” point above, here is some extra reading for your research “https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/22/toyota-corolla-vs-tesla-model-3-5-year-cost-comparison/”

P.P.S. there is a referral program, use this link and you can earn 2,000 miles of free Supercharging with the purchase of a new Tesla car delivered before October 1, 2019, https://ts.la/thomas44545 . I can get some miles too. The referral program changes from time to time, sometimes it goes away for a bit, so it may be different than what’s noted here. There is a referral incentive for solar on your roof as well.

A Do Over?

2019-08-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I am just about 20 weeks into my “retirement” and I have some impressions about work and life after work. First and foremost, there are no do-overs, no mulligan’s. Somewhere along the way you realize that you cannot go back and start over. Oh, I have heard, back in my college days, those people who would “take off” a year in order to travel Europe (is that even a thing?) but if you’re like me, where Mom and Dad were not rich, that simply was not an option. You start your career/work and you just keep going. A few bumps along the way. If only you knew then what you know now, that’s what we all think, but the experience, good or bad, you gain just goes into a base of knowledge, a database if you will, which helps to shape you as an individual making you better (or worse) at “stuff”.

Long Ago

Remembering back in high school, oh how important popularity was; to be part of the in-crowd, that would be the best, but now you realize that's not you, either. A phony, no, not for me. Maybe someone close to you will “get” you, if you are fortunate, or maybe not. My own son has struggled with this, but you don't like to talk ill of people, especially since the idea of bullying the bully is not really the answer either. At the end of the day, there is only you. Maybe there will be one close friend, maybe two. You should own it, this individualism; it's all right. You want it to be better than that, but especially now, there is a very large problem with fragmentation in our society. I don’t see this getting any better anytime soon. Don’t be a follower, in our day, it was keeping up with the Jones’ - bunk. Today it’s a lot of how you can be “like” some other person. As if you make yourself into that person by wearing the same clothes or at least the same brands. Rather you should be your own person.

Marketing has figured this part out. Just look at any “lifestyle” ad in print or other media. By presenting these models the way they do, they want you to envy what those models represent, all smiles, all the time. Do you believe anyone in this fanciful universe ever has a bad day? And the marketing works. You WANT to be like that person in the ad. Let me sign up for that club, that vacation, that credit card, there is a lot of psychology involved in every ad that comes out.

Opportunity

Some will say “who your parents are helps”, as if you get a choice in that, also where you were born helps. But does opportunity depend on it? Well some kinds of opportunity makes it easier, but the disadvantaged, assuming you do the work, have opportunity as well. If you have no money, education is still available, but the entitled don't want you to know this. Education is key, that’s what I tell my daughter... are you wasting time watching TV or doing whatever social media? Instead use the time to get ahead, that’s my advice. Everyone should “get” this. Seriously, you “could” be the next Instagram star, but probably not. The numbers are not there for you. Forget Facebook and Twitter. Unless you work really REALLY hard, and most everyone does not want to. The bulk of society think it’s owed to them, but to work for it, that’s what it is going to take. Sounds like a republican sort of message, but I am not one. It’s an old republican ideal anyway, today’s party has no resemblance to what they used to stand for.

Not that where you went to college doesn’t matter. But the clearest indicator of all is that it all comes down to you. At my last job, I did a few “cross” interviews, where the hiring manager wanted another interviewer’s opinion. These candidates obviously wanted to be hired, but honestly it didn’t really matter that you have a masters degree from MIT or Georgia Tech, or that you eat, sleep, live in Linux… it would help, don’t get me wrong, but what really matters is going to college and getting a degree in something. It proves you can do something from start to finish. For my company, it was these innate problem solving skills that are valuable. We might take you if you didn’t have a degree, but you’d have to prove that start to finish something in a very big way… that you could take it from beginning to the culmination of the “job” and then be able to articulate what you learned, what worked and what didn’t. The most important thing, IMHO, are these critical thinking skills. If I were to manage you, stop - why would I want to manage you? Not on your life. I have too many other things going on. I’ll give you the rules, set you on your path. Mistakes are a way of gaining even more education.

There is a story of an employee that made a terrible mistake one day. It cost the company millions of dollars. He decided he needed to offer his resignation to his boss. He prepared the letter, and sheepishly reported to the boss’ office. His boss didn’t accept the resignation, “are you kidding me? I just spent millions of dollars in education on you! You’ve learned something very valuable today, I want you to spend that capital here at this company making the right decisions.”

College

Look, college doesn’t prepare you for what comes next. You find a job, doing whatever, you've just got to pay your bills and maybe student loans. Waste five or six years figuring out that you're on the wrong path, and then you feel you can’t change, maybe it's too late. But don’t forget, college is like an entry fee. If you’re six years into the wrong career path, you still have that diploma. People just want to know you have it. So, find a school. Figure out what it takes for the diploma. With honors, even better.

And if you want to take the path without school… be prepared for hardship. Lucky? Maybe you've got parents that support you, otherwise you're gonna find out it takes money to survive.

Or Family

But, life is kind of like a survival game… You could also have started a family with children and maybe get saddled with a mortgage on a house and maybe a car, an expensive one, to “prove” you’re on your way. No one told you to go have a family and all that, but if you want to pursue YOUR dream you've got to sacrifice. But who wants to sacrifice anymore? That's someone else's story. Especially in America. Other people, immigrants for example, want to sacrifice, because their situation may be pretty bad or they don’t have anything left. You could sacrifice in a different way, hopefully, by taking on the commitment of being truthful to another and supporting a young life as they grow up and make mistakes and don’t want to listen to you. I’ve met many who have not made this commitment, but they have the family anyway, almost a disposable family, based on the divorce rates and all. They want to try it on for size and if it doesn’t fit, then try on another. I tell my daughter, there are 28 boyfriends in her future, because it takes that long to find the right one. The one that will truly commit to you. Figure that out, find that 29th boy before you tie the knot. Divorce is messy.

So, should you marry someone if you think you're gonna get divorced? To me, this is obviously just too painful. Maybe you don't start out in a marriage believing you would get divorced, maybe you think it will solve some money problems, but even perfect marriages may be done for, you see we don't know a lot of what happens behind closed doors... Truth is, marriage takes a lot of work and commitment, it’s an old fangled idea, but look it up. It means trying a 2nd, 3rd, nth time with the same partner because you both made a commitment to make it work. Let me repeat that, marriage takes a lot of work and commitment.

And it is overwhelming. Many don’t want to make that kind of commitment. Or try to save the commitment when things fall apart. The wife and I, even to this day, talk about a marriage counselor we tried to work with for months and months until our own assessment still came up with “no progress” and then even though we’ve got all these problems, at least we agreed to jettison this counselor. We consider this period in our lives a waste of our time and money. Notice: we still work on things, together.

But you don't know this stuff before you're married. Maybe you're working so hard on the “grind-stone” or trying to make the wrong career work, you can't see where the pitfalls are. Maybe the love-at-first-sight thing happens… But in the end, it comes down to the right people. Sometimes it's only one. Spend time with losers and you too are a loser. Not that everyone poor or going nowhere is a loser, being a good person counts for a lot, but a lot of the losers are misguided, they're gonna make it, they could have made it, except for this thing… but if you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. Find the room where you can learn something.

But in marriage: we are animals, and we're here to reproduce, and your children will make your life worthwhile - meaningful, assuming you pay attention to them and some freak accident doesn’t befall them. If not, then you have a disposable marriage, see above. If you don't have children, your career or some other pastime has got to work, to make this life meaningful for you.

Getting ahead

Half of getting ahead is showing up. I think there was a movie with that line in it. You'd be surprised who can't - show up, I mean. And if you're not a kiss-ass, maybe you tend to work alone, because organizations and upward mobility are all about kissing up. People like to be flattered, and it's a veritable network of relationships and unfortunately just doing your work is not enough. If you're not looking for a new job the minute you start the old one the joke is on you. I have had 3 separate cases where I was working really really hard on whatever objective had been set before me, not just a small project, but an honest to god sea-change in the company. Thinking this was THE thing that was going to make sense to anyone that bothered to look, I let my guard down and my gawd, since I didn’t check with all the real people in charge, and there was a sea-change alright, only my objective wasn’t even on the boat any more. It was now officially adrift after that newly announced reorg. Not that these people in charge always have a clue either, but they do get to call the shots.

Rich and Poor

Startups and corporations don't only make billionaires, they force people to be poor. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the poor can't pay their bills and since they have no money, politicians won't listen to them. Case in point, Uber’s recent IPO. It all comes down to money, never forget that, a project has to either save money or generate revenue, hopefully it does both. But a lot of “product” out there requires someone to buy the product. If you’re buying it and it’s not making money for you, you’ve lost money on that product because that money is no longer working for you, say as an investment. When everyone has a phone, how do you keep selling that phone product to everyone? When you have an app, is it exclusive or a me-too? Build that factory in China or start advertising? Considering the concept of replacing a mobile phone and selling a new one - that works until differentiation is so slight that it doesn’t make sense to keep upgrading. Sell an attachment to the phone, a watch? Good idea, for a while. If your app doesn’t stand out, forget it. There is too much out there, attention spans are finite and you’re trying to stand out in the hurricane of the “appstore”. Meanwhile, look at your mobile phone bill. Multiply by 12 then by 15. That’s maybe $18-20 thousand dollars your putting into communication over 15 years. It better be earning some money for you or supporting your money earning efforts. By itself this kind of money is equal to a portion of an education, right? People don’t look at it that way. Sometimes they only think I need the phone to stay connected with Facebook. But are those connections helping you or are they helping Facebook sell you to the advertiser?

The truth is your phone, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram - just as your career - they won't keep you warm at night, which is why spouse and children are good for you. But this also pushes you into the wash, rinse, repeat cycle. I know, it's a conundrum. That's the essence of life, everybody keeps telling you how to do it, you feel inadequate, and it's not until you're old and tired that you realize no one had a better idea than you, they were just faking it, or bullying.

Outside your comfort zone

Remember, you can't do anything you want, I’m 5'8" and I can't be a basketball player - stop it if you know some exceptions, trivia knowledge is for when you're on "Jeopardy." The marketing department doesn't want an employee who knows history of sales, they want one who can get their salespeople to sell the project! Of course, NASA may want someone with an astro-physics degree, some of this is obvious. So you have to get the degree, and make sure it’s what you like to do. No sense to take up nursing if you don’t like people or when people are at their worst health.

You can find your niche. You have to understand the jungle. You're on your own. No one will fine tune that niche story like you can, no one will really understand the capability you have like you yourself. But many don’t know how to take stock, how to understand what capabilities you have.

Getting old

I kept working with the idea that my life was in front of me, suddenly it’s behind. Your parents die and then maybe some friends die and then you realize maybe you’re next. Maybe the spouse becomes disabled and all the things you were going to do, the places you were going, it's too late, time's up. That’s the deal, you don't realize all this until it's too late. You're drifting along in the sea of life, and then you're hanging on to the side of the lifeboat.

Some people will tell you the truth, but you don't listen, you only realize their wisdom in hindsight. No one ever remembers that missing status report when you retire years later. Or that to-do list with it’s outstanding items after your heart attack. But that boss that tells you to just go on your vacation, have a good time, work will be here when you get back… Priceless.

A lot of the “hanging onto the lifeboat” has to do with your health, which is everything... This idea doesn’t mean much when you're 20, a whole lot more when you're over 50. I am living that post 50 ideal and really try religiously to train with my group in Karate 2x per week. I think I’m doing ok, but I have my share of aches and pains and I carry too much weight for my long term comfort. We have a lot of reliance upon health care (usually tied to a job) in this country, including some advice (take this pill) or some bad ideas via advertising (use this aging cream) and lots of politics about why health care costs too much and how much is the responsibility of the public sector to manage. Side note: ⅓ of the money raised on Go-Fund-Me goes to someone’s health care problems. Since when is Go-Fund-Me a health care concern? I’m afraid it speaks volumes to the kinds of insurance (or lack there-of) types of problems we have in this country. Myself, I expect to drop into Medicare at the end of the year, but frankly, I’m worried. Could we really fix this? Sure. But, remember, it’s the money that talks, see above. The insurance money lobby is not going to allow change to just happen because we want it, there are other people beholding to them...

At the end, you can only look at your own actions and logic, including critical thought process that will keep you well. You will be tempted by the “marketing machine” for this magic pill to erase that fat, or that new doo-dad that will make life easy without really having to do any work, or that other thing... but really only eating well and getting exercise will help, assuming you don’t have some other condition that must be treated aggressively. On the exercise front, a lot of the research I’ve heard about indicates that vigorous exercise increases blood flow to the skeletal muscles, perhaps 32x more blood than when you are at rest. This makes sense, as the muscles work, the increased oxygen demand needs to be met, it’s classic supply and demand. Blood vessels expand, the vessels become more elastic, the lining becomes slippery. All good things. And what’s being found is that for people that vigorously exercise, the death rate, from all causes, not just cardiac, improves to give you more years of life. Plus recent research is that cognitive function improves; you get to keep your mind as you grow old!

I fear, however, that until our transportation systems (think bikes in Amsterdam vs. cars in Los Angeles) and food policy (how long has the food pyramid had carbs as a good thing?) change, there really isn’t a lot of hope for meaningful change across our population.

Getting along

And since we have touched on meaningless behaviour (magic pills, glued to your phone, addicted to gaming), I’d like to think that we can rise above and “take the high road” but frankly evidence is now straight in front of us that life is meaningless, achievement is, too, it's all a game that means nothing. You can keep playing, believing you'll be respected and feel better if you get ahead or “win”, or you can follow your own desires, achieve your own goals, assuming you haven't been brainwashed by Facebook or political figures so that you don't know what is right and wrong anymore. Someone is telling you what to do all the time, do you ever get to do what you want to do? A lot of your attitude here has come from your parents, I’m afraid. It’s the only explanation I have for why things like racism or anti-women’s rights still have a foothold today. The local paper the other day had an article on why the county I live in has a really large white supremacist population. Believe me, I had no idea.

Truly you should treat someone like you would want to be treated if you were in their space. No let’s just admit that many don’t care about this “golden rule”, that is an unfortunate fact of life. But you can’t really speak for them or change their mind about this until they are ready to change. And sometimes these people “think” they are on god’s side when even they don’t really know what side they really are on, they just can’t think for themselves. Just look at the abortion debate, which contains every kind of religious argument for why you should be on the side of life. Mixed with this healthy dose of GOD. You know, I’ve read the bible, too. And this GOD certainly loved the children and thru Jesus and his teachings, “bring the little children to me” - sure I get it.

But don’t forget the time of Moses, when every first born of the Egyptians was struck down. Those were real living children, not fetus’. Which makes me think the argument isn’t really about an unborn child, rather it’s about money. And not the money to perform abortions, that’s a drop in the bucket, especially compared to the cost of raising a child. I’m speaking of rich and poor again here, because if you don’t have access to a safe abortion, then you’re likely to be poor and will become or stay poor and, oh - see “follow the money” above. The incentive, I believe, is to truly keep the poor poor because a rich woman, or her rich “man”, is always going to be able to find a safe abortion procedure for the woman. A poor woman just cannot afford to go to where a safe abortion might be available.

So go ahead, talk to me about God, if you want, but then explain, really, this first born thing. Or more importantly, why the Pro-Life contingent doesn’t provide more support for the mother or the family after the birth. A birth, after all, is a 18-20 year process of raising the child. Do they really care about the child or have they been brainwashed into this narrowly focused attitude about life after conception. Maybe they want to be seen as having concern for the child’s life, without really having that true concern. Lookup Matthew 6:5.

Your road

And nothing happens if you don't take your own action. You've got to involve yourself with what you believe in. To walk the journey, you actually have to take those steps. But where you go is always going to be “danger, danger Will Robinson”. Remember, too, there are tons of examples of successful people in the autumn of their life. Colonel (Harland) Sanders (although I hate the current commercials), Laura Ingalls Wilder, Grandma Moses, Ronald Regan. For those that successfully changed and had 2 or more careers, examples include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julia Child, John Glenn, Martha Stewart, even Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. But let’s face, it doesn't matter, because these people are not you. Do you have the same drive? Or maybe are you desperate enough?

Self-help books, I have some too, but they don’t work. You see, you’re you. These books are trying to mold you into something you’re not. Public schools are also trying to mold you, too. Stop fighting your whole life to be you.

Moments

What about the moments, laughs, good times, doing things for others… In my family, “What we do now, Mom?” and “I’m going to go meet some people.” have a very special place in my heart. Not much makes me feel better. The wife and I, when the kids were in elementary school, used to volunteer at the curbside when parents were dropping off their kids for school. We’d help the kids safely out of the car, make sure they had their backpack, and kept them from being run over, Mom could then go ahead and drive on out of the parking lot. We felt good about that, but we also felt like we needed a baseball bat to throw the hammer down on that aberrant parent that didn’t get up on time, passed everyone in the 2-3 block long line of cars and honked their way to right in front of you, yells at the kids to “get out” and lordy, where is this world going to end up, hopefully these kids will survive…

But is this feel good stuff in the media? This falls into the category of unsung heroes, so no. It doesn’t sell newspapers. And don’t get me wrong, am I looking for accolades for the good I’ve done? No, I already got my positive feedback from those kids and those parents smiles that were the “normal” part of the group. It’s just that with the internet at 100 miles/hr, you tend to see everybody getting something and maybe you're doing it wrong, but you're not. Hopefully, your parents raised you right, with the sense of right and wrong.

Your own thing

You have your own special gift, quit doing what others are doing, trying to duplicate something that’s not you. It’s hard, but respect people, find your own thing; keep your eyes open. Reincarnation, life after death, was created by people who were scared, who couldn't believe this was it. Accept it and you've got new perspective. There are rewards in being a member of the group, you can keep the sabre tooth tiger at bay, but also restrictions, the group will keep you from exploring on your own.

Keep trying to solve your own personal puzzle, this is probably the key to happiness. You’re probably more valuable than you think, for example, ask me a question about a problem in Fortran programming or statistics, got you covered. But talk about Python or Ruby and you see the dilemma, that’s all people are looking for in job advertisements…skills you may not have. Think of it this way, if you’re older, you’re likely a leader, no matter what field you are in. You’re probably good in a crisis, assuming you want to play that role. And HR people are probably going to be looking closely at people over 50, who are looking for stability in the job vs. the 2-3 years maybe they can get out of a younger person trying to “achieve” something in their career. If they care specifically about Python, then they must have a very specific niche to fill and that’s not you.

But it’s very important to accept responsibility for your actions. If you screw up - say so, pick yourself up, get help, move forward. You don’t drive a car by looking in the rear view mirror. Don’t run you life by the failures in your past. What are you going to do from here FORWARD?

I am done

But for me, I am done. I reached a point where I am needed more at home, where no matter what the resources applied to the work problem, it wasn’t going to be solved anytime soon. Sort of like American politics. At this point, I realized, not only did I need an extended “break” - maybe I just needed to retire. So, I’m working on stuff at home, helping my wife, son, and daughter - some of you know why - staying active with karate and visiting places on vacations, worrying if there is going to be enough money, because we don’t live without resources. Normal stuff.

Web Services (part 2)

2019-07-13T10:51:00.002-07:00

After my free year was up at AWS, I saw the monthly web services cost and looked around for something more economical. Eventually, I migrated this website to Digital Ocean, which I’ve found to be much more economical, especially with the simple wordpress website hosting problem. https://m.do.co/c/ed94cc37cc74 is a referral link for you to gain a $50.00 credit toward the first 30 days to check them out. I get some credit, too, so if you use this, thank you. This is all getting really simple to host a website nowdays. I can remember in the olde days :-)

Amazon Web Services

2017-08-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Websites: This week, I've been on vacation, but as a diversion, I've known my hosting subscription for my website is up for renewal and I'd wanted to move the site to AWS, Amazon's Web Services technology, anyway. So perhaps over an hour, spread among perhaps 5 separate settings, I accomplished this move.

What I needed to utilize to accomplish this was the following

A better backup mechanism: I'm using Wordpress for my site, and there are a number of backup solutions there, the one I was using was easy to create a backup image of the site content and the database, and store it in a set of files on my Dropbox presence (I wanted a separate store for it) but I had never tried to restore the website from any of these backups. After examining other tools, I finally settled on All-in-One Migration by https://servmask.com/ ; they are also in the plugins library.

Creating an EC2 instance with a marketplace app for Wordpress via Bitnami was straightforward except for the simple instructions I followed on the AWS community noted to ignore the creation of server keypairs (for SSH access). Attempted to create the keypairs later was never successful and I am not really sure why, reinstantiating the instance and reloading my website content but this time creating the keypairs during that instantiation was successful.

AWS has a free tier (for an initial one year) so if you've never done this before, you should try it. The market place has a number of apps already available for low or no software cost.

Affordable PC

2014-10-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you're like me, but I have a bunch of old PC's around the house, I just can't seem to get around to the recycling them, thinking at a minimum that I have data on that hard disk that I need to recover or at least validate that I don't need it anymore.

A little while ago, I ran across this show, revision3, and I thought - I have a few (actually 3) cases with various really old technology inside. I'm talking IDE disk drives here. I can use this idea from revision3, and taking a step in that direction, put modern technology inside an old skin. After all, I don't really care what the outside looks like, what's important is that the stupid thing runs; and runs faster than the last PC I bought (for a bit more money, by the way).

Then my son's PC died and rather than go out and buy something new, I encouraged him to go along with me on this adventure...

Here is what I bought (right from Amazon) shipped right to my door.

Intel Pentium Processor G3220 3.0 GHz LGA 1150
BX80646G3220 $58.99
ECS Elitegroup Micro ATX DDR3 1600 LGA 1150 Motherboard
H81H3-M4 (1.0A) used $34.99
Seagate Barracuda 1 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s
NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST1000DM003 $53.99
Kingston Value RAM 4GB 1600MHz PC3-12800 DDR3
Non-ECC CL11 DIMM SR x8 Desktop Memory (KVR16N11S8/4) $39.74
EVGA 430W 80PLUS Certified ATX12V/EPS12V Power Supply
100-W1-0430-KR $34.99
Total: $222.70

Yes, like the guys building the gaming PC, I could spend a bit more money and put in a high end graphics card for rendering a PC game fast enough, but I myself don't need any more than this. There is VGA and HDMI on the motherboard. I think my son will finally opt for the graphics card, because he does do games and stuff. (a PNY 750TI is $140 extra)

But for the basics, including for example, the idea of a video recorder (a PVR or DVR) - this is enough. And, what I have also discovered with my son is that this thing is really quiet! Yes, there is a fan on top of the CPU to pull heat away, but outside the case, it is very quiet.

If you have a bunch of cards to put into the PC, maybe this isn't for you. There is one slot for the graphic's card, two slots for memory (the 4gb memory I bought is on one stick). There is power for just about any SATA you would reasonably put inside, 2 hi/2 low SATA connections, 6 different USB connections (inclusive of 2 USB3). All in all, pretty sweet for this price.

You will need a DVD drive to install Windows (which he already had from the old computer) or a bootable ISO copy of the DVD on an external drive and I already had a Windows 7 license to use, otherwise you might have to spring for the Windows software (+ $100). If you're doing Linux, then you won't need that.

Hope this is something useful for you.

Vaccinations

2013-08-12T21:43:00.000-07:00

Last year, I made reference to the vaccination vs. Autism controversy, which is probably a misnomer, since controversy indicates that there is a difference of opinion. Science is not like that, scientific theory eventually becomes fact through rigorous testing and evidence based analysis.
But parents are not scientists and are swayed by qwacks and disinformation as evidenced by much of what follows the McCarthy b.s.; although with her working on The View may now be in a completely different direction.
Why not vaccinate? These out of left field approaches are very much affecting us all, not just the poor kids that have to struggle through whatever illness that could have been avoided.
Just as the Dawkins article suggests, we need to actively counter the misinformation with facts, such as the thimerosal points in his article.

Autism and vaccines

2012-04-07T17:05:00.000-07:00

Gads,

I just read something about the vaccination vs. autism crap. Please, people... will you stop with the unscientific rants about how you "think" someone is creating vaccines that will "cause" autism.

Go read for yourself, or better yet, do your own analysis. But just repeating this crap because you heard or read about it on the internet - jeez.

http://jennymccarthybodycount.com/

2011-12-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

I love slow-motion cameras.

The link, Slinky Drop shows, as Dr. Kolkowitz says, 'surprising insights on ... how studying and measuring even everyday objects can provide results that are "counterintuitive and not what you expect."'

Here at YouTube:

and the extended video

Thank you, Dr. Kiki, for alerting me to this

Facebook, what to do

2010-05-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of talk these days about quitting facebook, and while the humorous attempts, such as this video, suggest substituting obsessions

the real substitute is something of value.

I am reminded that the "The Dunning-Kruger effect" continues to demonstrate the stupidity of the human race. And those guys at Facebook stumbled upon this social behavior, that is utterly a waste of time, but generates a lot of cash for themselves. Granted, there are the marketing aspects of said social medium, or utilizing the Facebook "cattle" to generate your own money for yourselves. But seriously, this is what the human race has become?

Is this worse than the water cooler? A harmless diversion of some productivity? Perhaps, but more likely not, especially if the suggested statistics of 7 hours per day for the average Facebook user is correct. But as the DK Effect research suggests, the only way to really to change the behavior is education, where the user finally sees for themselves that what they are doing is not the best use of their time. Simply "knocking heads" isn't the answer, nor is anything legal (although I'm all for dealing with the privacy issue at Facebook, since their behavior is certainly questionable).

Time will tell, and certainly there is history to write here yet.

to URL or not to URL, that is the question

2009-06-28T19:06:00.000-07:00

Since Phil Windley did an interview with Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan of Posterous that was recorded June 8th and posted shortly thereafter, I've been playing with Posterous, linking it to my Blogger and Twitter accounts and the simplicity has really dawned on me as to how significant something like Posterous is. Simply: Just email your post to yourself and you have a blog post.

None of this write here or go to this URL "stuff". None of this Wordpress complexity, either. Now granted, for some of us engineering geeks, we like the complexity. But for Mom and Dad, not going to happen. Maybe they can make something like Blogger happen, but then again, maybe all they can handle is email.

Take Twitter for example, pretty simple interface, 140 characters, micro-blogging - call it what you want, but the bottom line - 140 characters and that's it. Some people are filling their accounts with nonsense, like what kind of coffee they are getting or what kind of weather there is where they are. I admit it, I have done some of the same.

The 140 character limit originally came from SMS, the Short Message Service, the text messaging "thing" that your kids are using on their cell phones. It's this short because in the original designs, SMS was carried in the control channel. These days, it's application will eventually head to IP, as all of the carriers figure out how to move the app into the IP world since it will be less expensive to deploy there, especially as the massive SMS apps (which the "reality" shows like Idol caused to happen) continue to have popularity with the masses.

Oh, but "some" have said Twitter can be extended, use SnipUrl and you can put a short link in your twitter feed that will redirect (using the basic HTTP redirect capabilities, that's all SnipUrl is after all is one big mesh of a database of redirect links). And low and behold that's how you are supposed to "post a picture" to or using twitter. This would work for any link you can get to on the world wide web. But this adds complexity to something already simple.

Posterous reminded me about the short URL phenom because if you link your Twitter account to your Posterous blog, then they will automatically create a twitter post with a short url linking back to your Posterous post. Pretty cool, because they are making it simple to use.

Simple is what it's all about.

I had a similar discussion in a slightly different vein with a marketing person for a project I'm working on for her, and I was telling her to be careful on the business case because you can't count on people typing into the URL bar, which she disagreed with. Well, missy, I say, I have kids, so I have a built in test group right in my house, so I tried my little theory out on these two and I found out that neither of them really know what the URL is or what that thing at the top of the browser window is for. I am pretty sure that both of them have typed something in there at some time in their short "internet" lives, but they really prefer not to do anything with it. They both get links in email or forum posts and they set them as favorites/bookmarks and then they navigate back there using that mechanism.

With the movement of mobile devices from phones to "smart" phones, I would (and to my marketing person) strongly suggest that with limited screen real estate and with the urgency of the mobile tasks, people will just naturally gravitate toward using links or bookmarks or widgets or whatever the new technology is at the time. Manually typing in a URL into an address bar is about to be a thing of the past, especially for a mobile device.

That's where I think we are going, to the continued use of bookmarks and linking and a bit less of the " W W W . YOURSITEHERE . com stuff.

Machine Intelligence

2009-05-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

Today's NYTimes article on program's designed to thwart machine's and software's ability to "pretend" to be a human reminded me of the entire A.I. field of study from college and years ago when we were trying to sell companies and the government on commercial AI applications.

The article itself is about CAPTCHA and re-Captcha as well as image recognition and how these systems are used by Yahoo, Google and others to keep the "bad guys" from signing up for bogus email accounts and whatever and then spamming us to death. An admirable goal. Even the system's themselves are going good, for example re-CAPTCHA where images that cannot be scanned and OCR'd properly are being "read" by the human populace one or two words at a time as they sign-on or sign-up and the words (actually multiple iterations of the same word from different people in order to ensure fewer errors creep in) are then substituted in the scanned books of libraries and other material and thus improving our ability to read books "at a distance" where maybe only a copy or two exists.

The point of all of these tests is to determine if it's a human behind the "keyboard" rather than a machine cranking out sign-up requests by the thousand's. I have heard that the spammer's themselves were using similar human powered examination of the images to thwart these attempts, in that they rewarded viewers at their porn sites to simply solve the same problem by revealing more and more of a naked lady as the letters of the problem were typed in.

Beyond this is all of the work that has led up to this point... The CAPTCHA acronym itself stands for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart” and is a direct reference to the British mathematician, Alan Turing. (for a fictional counterpoint to all of this, read an excellent novel by Neal Stephenson Crypotnomicon - a 1999 novel which had a side plot about the the Bletchley Park mathematicians in their attempts to crack Axis codes during WW-II.) who has contributed much to be beginning of this field.

The Hollywood machine, with another Terminator movie out, would lead us to believe that much of this is ready, available, and here already. Let's send Jay Leno out to do another "man on the street" interview to see what Americans really know. What he would find would be humorous, because this work is all hard. Even 10 years ago with the beginning of commercialization of this kind AI technology, it's still really hard with only now some specialized things coming out of MIT and other schools/research groups to support some very specific kinds of applications, like an autopilot for a truck or a robot "pack mule". The most recent, big deal AI app I'm aware of was for plane refueling during Desert Storm, where AI's constructed AI's to schedule the mid-air tanker's for all of those fighter jets. None were lost, and at the scale of the operation I'm told we would have been limited or had some flame-outs if the human schedules had continued.

Still, eventually this will all really be commonplace, and probably without the Terminator.

Politics and Technology

2008-09-22T20:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting for so long, I am totally consumed with a project at work. This week, I'm taking some vacation and I promised myself I would post.

Today I just wanted to note, at the eve of the "mother of all bailouts" in the financial industry, that somehow, we need to continue to remain focused on the fact that we don't spend enough time or energy or money working at or thinking about science or technology based projects. I amazes me that for us to have "invented" the internet, not as Al Gore has stated, but literally out of DARPA work so long ago... and the funding for major portions of the infrastructure came out of the budget for the NSF...

Today (and for many of the last 8 years) we are ignoring, as a matter of public policy, money invested in topics such as

Stem cell research (think about growing your own bone graft for your own spine, the far right has been successful in creating FUD around this topic)
Solar electricity generation (I just installed solar PV on my roof, but it could have been so much less expensive, because Moore's Law effects are not being seen in this industry in spite of the fact that the manufacturing technology is the same as in CPUs and Memory)
Solar electricity generation #2 (having read about small solar powered steam generators for the home - they generate electricity) is this worthwhile?
Algae that make bio-diesel as a byproduct of "eating" the excrement of fish farms. Did you know that this fish poop stuff is terribly bad for the environment? This would clean it up and provide a stepping stone to getting off oil from countries that politically are not aligned with sensible policy

I am truly speaking investment, because the business climate is bad enough, particularly in solar, that you won't find companies in this country making research decisions along these lines. Just as in sales compensation, you need to provide the incentive to the salesman to sell a product by compensating him to do so, in R&D, sometimes a kick in the pants is needed to get things moving, particularly if the R&D is in the private sector...

Surely, if we can modify the tax code to provide a tax credit for a light truck (or SUV's classified as such) and thus provide the incentive for the small business owner to make that investment in his business, something smarter can come from Washington; like say an investment in PV manufactoring technologies, thus assuring growth rather than stagnation.

I know, the current administration is just about done, what with it's "faith based" initiatives and all, but what are the replacements suggesting? You don't know?

Get involved.

**update**
here are links (click here and here) to get you started, from a recent post from none other than Phil Plait on the ScienceDebate2008.

It’s hard to say if this is honesty from them, or whether we should chalk it up to pre-election empty promises. Both say some good things about science policy...

Technorama Last Episode

2008-05-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

The last episode of Technorama was today, I'm sorry to hear this, having enjoyed the show for so long and participated a bit as well. My own contribution, that I found on Engadget, for the last show was this strange contraption, the Uno Electric Unicycle:

Interesting uses for the Wiimote

2008-03-17T23:06:00.000-07:00

I ran across some of the work of Johnny Lee while listening to Phil Windley's Technometria the other day. You can read (and listen to) more at the Conversations Network, a great resource of ideas and material, or you can click the link above to Johnny's website at Carnegie Mellon University.

Because the Wiimote has bluetooth built in and an infrared camera, you can interact with it via your computer, reverse it's normal gaming orientation to the TV and expose a whole new range of potentials.

Here are some direct links to some of the YouTube video's he's posted regarding potential apps for the Wiimote, yes beyond just gaming...

Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard using the Wiimote (my personal favorite)

also, see more...
Tracking fingers with the Wii Remote

Foldable Displays (tracked with the Wiimote)

Head Tracking for Desktop VR

Energy Efficiency

2008-01-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

I have been listening to these Conversations Network podcasts for a series of lectures by Amory Levins while he was a visiting professor at Stanford University.

According to Amory Lovins, the way to design energy efficient buildings involves "thinking outside the box", or simply just giving up old ways of approaching the problem.

I found this lecture series entertaining and quite informative. The link above, and here pertains to Part 1 of design elements for building or renovating energy efficiency in buildings. This is a good "listen" and I recommend it for anyone interested in helping to solve the energy issues present in our society today.

Volunteer in your community

2007-11-14T23:31:00.000-08:00

On November 13, I made a presentation of a check of $750 from the Verizon Foundation to the Woodside Elementary School PFC as a matching contribution for my volunteer hours as one of the parent volunteers in the traffic line, assisting kids to get safely to school each morning.

The Verizon Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Verizon Communications, is committed to improving literacy and K-12 education; fostering awareness and prevention of domestic violence; and promoting the use of technology in health-care delivery. In 2006, the foundation awarded more than $69 million in grants to nonprofit agencies in the United States and abroad. The foundation also matched charitable donations from Verizon employees and retirees, resulting in $29 million in combined contributions.

Under the foundation's Verizon Volunteer initiative, one of the nation's largest employee-volunteer programs, company employees and retirees have also contributed nearly 3 million hours of community service since Verizon's inception in 2000. In 2006 alone, volunteers contributed 600,000 hours. This latter Verizon Volunteer initiative is the grant program that I applied for. For more information on the foundation, visit http://www.verizon.com/foundation.

Many corporations have similar programs. Does your employer offer such a program that might “double up” the volunteer hours or contributions you may already be providing to the school, the PFC, or elsewhere in the community? Please check. If you are not already, consider volunteering for one of the many positions of the Woodside PFC or elsewhere in our community.

Update on Analog TV

2007-10-28T18:02:00.000-07:00

A little bit ago, I reported on the death of analog TV, but one should note what the industry is trying to do... Here is an excellent story on what the future holds.

(this link is to an MP3 file, which will probably play just fine on your computer... You will need speakers to listen to the story)

Analog TV Death Delayed

2007-09-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

as reported by SOSF,

This decision will require both network and cable broadcasters to continue providing an analog feed to their customers even though all of them have spent literally multi-millions of dollars gearing up and getting ready for the new digital age of television viewing.

I have analog coming into my home right now, mostly because it's cheaper than digital plus the cable company wanted to charge me a lot of money for "home-runs" to the TV's. At the time I had no digital TV's either.

Today, I don't really have digital TV yet (it's been an expense thing) -- I have a lot of component video and I do IP streaming from the video server near my router to the living room.

Until you get a larger and more recent TV in place, it's hard to justify the extra expense, both to install and recurring.

Once the incoming signal is digital, you will need these digital-to-analog converters for each analog TV you have. At the store, if you have to buy them, it's going to cost you about $20-30. Not counting whatever equipment your cable company wants to charge you (probably built into a set-top-box)

Note that some of the problems with DRM have been reported, and also all of that DRM code in Windows Vista has had various folks up in arms.

DRM strikes yet again

2007-09-03T22:28:00.000-07:00

Wil Wheaton (yes that Wil Wheaton) posted problems with his DirectTV-HDMI connectivity. All due to software which "protects the content" from people who have legally paid for the content.

DRM is totally a mess right now, and it's not going to get better until customers speak up and force the content management and delivery mechansims to change.

Wil: How many DirecTV customers are currently hosed by this DRM-related nightmare? I'm not sure, but I can tell you what the number would be if the damn studios and networks weren't so dead set on treating their customers like criminals: zero.

Breakfast Computing

2007-09-03T08:59:00.000-07:00

Heard recently on the pod-a-sphere:

"My inbox is full of SPAM and BACN.
I burn my CD's with Toast.
I get my podcasts with Juice.
Are there any other breakfast computing items out there?"

Gavin, forum/member on Buzz Out Loud.

Amazon Web Services

2007-08-08T21:48:00.000-07:00

This review of the components of Amazon Web Services is a must "listen" for anyone interested in how to quickly deploy a service without having to make a huge investment in infrastructure... Amazon has done it for you...

Jeff Barr, Senior Manager, Web Services Evangelism at Amazon.com is interviewed by Phil Windley and others for Phil's personal podcast, "Technometria". A great listen, right on the page noted in the link and with further links for more detailed reading.

We need to fund basic science research

2007-08-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

As some of you might know, I often write about technology topics in Telecommunications or Electrical Engineering. Today, however, I thought it important to pick a slightly different slant…

This weekend, I was listening to my backlog of podcasts and included in what I listened to were two different podcasts for TechNation where

Dr. Moira Gunn (the host) interviews Greg Lucier, the Chairman and CEO of Invitrogen. In the interview, the point that is put across on why society needs to fund basic science research.
Science journalist David Ewing Duncan discusses the "The Bio-Issue of the Week" with Dr. Gunn, in which drug spending (R&D) is up, but results in the from approved drugs are down and some drugs are about to come off patents, so revenues for these companies will eventually dry up.

In both cases, as I’m hearing and reading many other articles on diverse topics, it may be because our country doesn’t support the basic science research enough. For example, in the latter podcast, the point was made that there is a mountain of data out of the human genomics project that really needs detailed analysis; e.g. we know what a gene does, what we don’t know is exactly how it does it. Or considered another way, the genes that a human shares with a mouse is really a high percentage, something approaching 98%+, but what makes the difference between the human and the mouse is when and how the gene does it’s job.

Without interested people, without post-doc programs to provide research topics, … well, would you work in a field that is apparently drying up? But, it’s not really drying up, other countries, like Korea, China, and Australia have tremendous programs for this sort of thing. We are giving our best and brightest lost of reasons to leave this country.

The lack of sensible policy at the federal level, the lack of proper funding, in cross-disciplined approaches, to projects that are going to benefit us all, … well, I fear for the future (next couple of decades)…

You might say this isn’t important, but you’d be missing the point. The direct investment that DARPA, NASA, and other agencies had with science and technology research provided some glamour for the space program stuff of the 60’s, but it also lead to communications satellites and other mundane things like cellular telephone networks and devices.

Some like to say that Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise “invented” the cell phone, because of the use of the communicator on each Star Trek episode, but the fact of the matter was that the imagination of a whole generation was sparked, because of the believability of those episodes, and a market demand (for cell phone technology) was later satisfied, not only by companies trying to make money, but by a whole generation of engineering and scientific students that brought a passion to creating not only the mobile phone technologies we take for granted today, but the internet, the progress toward improvements in the cancer situation (many people can live out their lives today in remission, whereas 20 – 30 years ago, cancer was a death sentence) and countless other technologies we so easily take for granted.

We need to continue to improve upon this situation. Can you imagine a world without Diabetes? Did you know, we stand on the brink of figuring out how to accomplish this? This isn’t a would it be nice thing to do, there are huge costs in both medical support and human suffering associated with just this one disease. Make the investment – reap huge benefits; just like we did in mobile phone and internet technologies.

I’d like to ask you today, to write your congressman, tell them this is important to us, as a country, to change this situation. Invest in science. It doesn’t have to be preachy, it doesn’t have to any more than a 1-2 minute phone call or a 1 paragraph email, but do something to be part of the solution to change from an almost anti-science policy to one where, similar to the 60’s, we are on the road to great things.