Category: Electronics

The power of a single word!

Happy Birthday Dan! (And that word is ‘fortnight’!)

Back in September, 2013 I wrote a post called Closing my windows. It explained how I first met Dan Gomez; now some thirty-six years ago. Let me republish the relevant section:

Earlier on I wrote about launching Wordcraft, the word-processing software for personal computers. That was in early 1979 and later that year I was invited to present Wordcraft at an international gathering of Commodore dealers held in Boston, Mass.

During my presentation, I used the word ‘fortnight’ unaware that Americans don’t use this common English word.  Immediately, someone about 10 rows back in the audience called out, “Hey, Handover! What’s a fortnight?”

It released the presenter’s tension in me and I really hammed up my response in saying, “Don’t be so silly, everybody knows the word fortnight!” Seem to remember asking the audience at large who else didn’t know the word.  Of course, most raised their arms!

Now on a bit of a roll, I deliberately started using as many bizarre and archaic English words that came to me.  Afterwards, the owner of the voice came up to me and introduced himself.  He was Dan Gomez, a Californian based in Costa Mesa near Los Angeles and also involved in developing software for the Commodore.

Dan became my US West Coast distributor for Wordcraft and was very successful. When Dataview was sold, Dan and I continued to see each other regularly and I count him now as one of my dear friends.  Through knowing Dan I got to know Dan’s sister Suzann and her husband Don.  It was Su that invited me to spend Christmas 2007 with her and Don at their home in San Carlos, Mexico.  Jean also lived in San Carlos and was close friends with Su. Together they had spent many years rescuing feral dogs from the streets of San Carlos and finding new homes for them.

Thus it was that I met Jean.  Discovering that Jean and I were born 23 miles apart in London!

So from ‘Hey, what’s a fortnight’ to living as happily as I have ever been in the rural countryside of Oregon.  Funny old world!

The marriage of Jean and Paul wonderfully supported by Diane, maid of honour, and best man, Dan Gomez.
Dan Gomez – Best Man, and Diane Jackson – Bridesmaid when Jean and I were married;  November 20th 2010.

It is Dan’s birthday today. One of those big birthday milestones in life. (And it would be wrong for me to openly state his age today but just let me say that Dan would be seeing a sixties birthday again!)

So to my very dear and special friend …..

Happy Birthday!

Magic!

The old and the new.

Like thousands of others, Jean and I are regular viewers of the TED Talks.

So first the old. Here’s a reminder of the inspiring nature of mathematics; in this case Fibonacci numbers.

Published on Nov 8, 2013

Math is logical, functional and just … awesome. Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin explores hidden properties of that weird and wonderful set of numbers, the Fibonacci series. (And reminds you that mathematics can be inspiring, too!)

Now to the new. Innovation at its very best.

Published on Jul 11, 2013

The development of new medicine is problematic because laboratories cannot replicate the human body’s environment, making it difficult to determine how patients will respond to treatment. At TEDxBoston, Geraldine Hamilton demonstrates how scientists can implant living human cells into microchips that mimic the body’s conditions. These “organs-on-a-chip” can be used to study drug toxicity, identify potential new therapies, and could lead to safer clinical trials.

The Burrowers

Perhaps the last frontier, the one underneath our feet?

Can’t recall where I came across this BBC program but so what!  The fact is that the BBC have had a long and well-deserved reputation for making some fabulous programmes on nature and wildlife. So it was with a recent programme from the BBC Nature stable.  The one that caught my eye and the motivation for today’s LfD post was called The Burrowers: Animals Underground.

Here is the trailer.

Published on Aug 9, 2013 Discover with BBC Two the secret life of Rabbits, Badgers and Water Voles.

Offering us this:

The Burrowers: Animals Underground

608 Chris Packham continues his underground journey investigating the world of some of the UK’s most iconic burrowing animals. Filmmakers and scientists cannot investigate animal behaviour inside wild burrows without disturbing them so The Burrowers’ team found ingenious ways to film this secret world by recreating full-scale replicas. It’s now spring in the burrows and the new babies are having to grow up fast. The seven orphan badgers are learning to communicate with each other, young rabbits must take their first steps outside, and young water voles their first swim. Chris also meets the most elusive burrower of them all – an animal which almost never comes above ground – the mole. He reveals the moles’ survival techniques, its method of burrowing and the food it eats. Finally, the team unveils a science first: the excavation of a massive abandoned wild rabbit warren… Back in winter it was filled with concrete and left to set. Now a small army of volunteers and diggers have excavated it, revealing a three-dimensional model of a complex system of tunnels and chambers.

So despite it being at the other end of the scale compared to the cosmos, we still know so little about what goes on beneath our feet.

Mind you, that doesn’t stop some of us from trying to find out!

Sweeny digging in the ground after yesterday's heavy rain!
Sweeny digging in the ground after yesterday’s heavy rain!

Mathematics in action!

You will be amazed – guaranteed!

The TED Talk link was sent to me by friend, Lee Crampton.

Published on Jun 11, 2013

In a robot lab at TEDGlobal, Raffaello D’Andrea demos his flying quadcopters: robots that think like athletes, solving physical problems with algorithms that help them learn. In a series of nifty demos, D’Andrea show drones that play catch, balance and make decisions together — and watch out for an I-want-this-now demo of Kinect-controlled quads.

There’s more on Raffaello here where you can read this:

My work is focused on the creation of systems that leverage technological innovations, scientific principles, advanced mathematics, algorithms, and the art of design in unprecedented ways, with an emphasis on advanced motion control.

By their very nature, these creations require a team to realize. Many are enabled by the research I conduct with my graduate students. Many are also the fruit of collaborations with architects, entrepreneurs, and artists.

My hope is that these creations inspire us to rethink what role technology should have in shaping our future.

Raffaello D’Andrea

and where you can also find this further video – Zurich Minds – doubly fascinating.

Raffaello D’Andrea is interviewed by Rolf Dobelli

Makes me want to lie down in a darkened room! 😉

Nostalgic musings

Early days in London

In my recent post Electrosensitivity, I wrote about “spending a number of years studying for a Diploma in Electrical Engineering at Faraday House, Southampton Row, London and becoming a UK Radio Amateur at the age of 17 (G3PUK)“.

In reverse order, I shall start with becoming a UK Radio Amateur, now rather back in the mists of time!

After my father died in 1956 my mother subsequently remarried.  Her new husband was Richard Mills and he was very knowledgeable about radio matters; he was a technical author in the radio-communications industry.  It was Richard, my step-dad, who showed me how to make a crystal set and I started listening to the strange world of wireless radio.  It fascinated me and motivated me to save up my pennies and buy an ex-military radio receiver known as a R1155.

r1155

I had joined the Harrow Radio Society who, amazingly, are still active today, as their website demonstrates.

Under the fabulous tutelage of many of the older ‘hams’ I went on to sit my exams and on Valentine’s Day 1962 was awarded the Postmaster-General’s Amateur Radio Certificate.  I applied for a call-sign and was allocated G3PUK.  I was just 17 years old!

G3PUK0001

oooOOOooo

Now some memories of Faraday House.  I can do no better than refer you to an article that appeared on the Electrical Review website in the UK.  As the article was published over three years ago, I think republishing it on Learning from Dogs isn’t being too naughty.

faradayhouseplaque

Faraday House Association closes after 105 years

FRIDAY, 29 JANUARY 2010

It is with sadness we report the Faraday House Old Students Association (FHOSA) is to close after operating continuously over the last 105 years. It had been host to thousands of chartered electrical engineers. The Association membership is derived from old students of Faraday House.

In 1888 the revised Electric Lighting Act encouraged many local authorities to apply for Parliamentary Powers to establish generating stations to transmit power. Faraday House was founded to train engineers in this new practice. The college started life as the Electrical Standardising, Testing and Training Institution at Charing Cross but in June 1890 used the name Faraday House. It was located in the Charing Cross area, and fees were 100 guineas per annum. The first Faraday House Dinner was held in 1895 – it was free and some 170 attended. In 1905 the FHOSA was formed and 100 old students joined. A move was then made to Southampton Row. By now the college had 110 students.

In 1909 Dr Russell was appointed principal, and pioneered the sandwich course. This meant students had a year or so of theory and then experienced work in industry, returning again to more theory. By 1914 many old students joined up and a crash course was started to aid the war effort. By 1919 some 350 had been in the services and 34 had died. In 1920 the fees had risen to 300 guineas.

By 1928 1000 students had joined the Old Students Association and in 1929 a 40th anniversary dinner was held. In 1939 a discussion with the governors resulted in a decision to evacuate the college to Thurlestone in Devon. A new principal, Dr WRC Coode-Adams, took over from Dr Russell. Faraday House took over the Links Hotel. Staff and students who were married lived in the hotel or in houses that had been taken over by the college.

In 1942 the college returned to Southampton Row. After the war Faraday House had difficulty in recruiting, students were lured to other colleges and universities by grants. In 1957 Mr GH Randolph Martin was appointed Principal. He had been a lecturer at the college since 1948. The college closed its doors in 1967 as losses were now running at £20,000 per year.

During its lifetime Faraday House produced a succession of engineers who attained the most senior positions in industry and electrical supply in many countries, and six old students have been president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (now the IET).

The Old Students Association has a membership that is steadily growing older and shrinking as members die. The closure was inevitable without younger people coming forward to run it. The FHOSA will shut its doors finally after the Annual General Meeting in March 2010.

Here’s the front of the building.

Faraday House, London
Faraday House, London

How the years have flown by!

Change in action

There is real hope for us all!

Hopefully, you were able to watch the Amory Lovins talk in yesterday’s post?  If not, then do find time to watch how Professor Lovins sets out the powerful argument that the USA could soon, relatively speaking, be energy self-sufficient.

So on top of the Lovins presentation, I wanted to draw your attention to an item on Climate Crocks last October 5th.

One of the great stories untold in the American media is the ongoing revolution in one of the world’s most advanced economies – as Germany undertakes a bold and serious transition from powering a great engine of prosperity on fossil fuels, to plentiful and inexhaustible renewable energy.

Listening to Mitt Romney double and triple down on the bogus Fox/Fossil narrative about “clean coal” and failed renewables, it might be well to consider how one of our toughest manufacturing competitors is going all-in on the high stakes renewable energy revolution of the new century.

The article is a detailed analysis of how Germany is powering ahead, pardon the pun, in the provision of non carbon-based power, as this reference illustrates,

German use of coal to generate electricity has declined steadily from 1990 to 2011, according to readily available statistics on the German electricity system. The percentage of coal-fired electricity in German electricity generation has fallen from 56.7% in 1990 to 43.5% last year–a decrease of more than 10% despite a increase in total electricity generation during the same period of about 10%. At the same time the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix has increased from 3.6% to 19.9%, mostly due to the rapid development of wind energy and biomass.

Do go across and read the article.

Then thanks to a comment left on a recent post by Martin Lack another very positive story came to light (yet another pun – read on!),

Comment from Jules,

Here is one for you- http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml – the idea is totally leftfield, but it fulfils certain issues such as distribution, decentralisation of power and offers a recharge network for electric cars and it has received a big chunk of government funding. It is so out there that I wonder if it could possibly be the answer but you never know.

Very quickly one finds that Solar Roadways are involved in something VERY interesting, namely,

Years ago, when the phrase “Global Warming” began gaining popularity, we started batting around the idea of replacing asphalt and concrete surfaces with solar panels that could be driven upon. We thought of the “black box” on airplanes: We didn’t know what material that black box was made of, but it seemed to be able to protect sensitive electronics from the worst of airline crashes.

Suppose we made a section of road out of this material and housed solar cells to collect energy, which could pay for the cost of the panel, thereby creating a road that would pay for itself over time. What if we added LEDs to “paint” the road lines from beneath, lighting up the road for safer night time driving? What if we added a heating element in the surface (like the defrosting wire in the rear window of our cars) to prevent snow/ice accumulation in northern climates? The ideas and possibilities just continued to roll in and the Solar Roadway project was born.

Now watch this!

and then watch this, as nearly 1.5 million others have!

The Solar Roadways project is working to pave roads with solar panels that you can drive on. Co-founder Scott Brusaw has made some major steps forward since our first visit back in 2007, so we visited him again for an exclusive update on the project, including the first ever video recorded of the Solar Roadways prototype! For more information visit http://www.solarroadways.com . This Solar Roadway project is highlighted as one of many planet-friendly solutions in the feature film by YERT – Your Environmental Road Trip. To learn more about YERT, visit http://yert.com .

Flattr this video here: https://flattr.com/thing/407726/YERT-video-about-Solar-Roadways-The-Prototype

And you can become a fan of YERT on Facebook here:http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/YERT-Your-Environmental-Road-Trip/12…

So nothing ever stays the same!

Understanding Europe!

A delightful tale sent to me by Richard Maugham.

Richard and I go back too many years!  He has been a dear friend despite the obvious hurdle that when we first met, he declared that he was a typewriter salesman for Olivetti in the UK with me admitting that I was a typewriter salesman for IBM UK!  Here’s the story.

oooOOOooo

WHAT WENT WRONG IN EUROPE – SIMPLY EXPLAINED!

Not Helga’s Bar!!

Helga is the proprietor of a bar. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Helga keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers’ loans).

Word gets around about Helga’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Helga’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in town.

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Helga gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer – the most consumed beverages.

Consequently, Helga’s gross sales volumes and paper profits increase massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognises that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Helga’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

He is rewarded with a six figure bonus.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS. These “securities” are then bundled and traded on international securities markets.

Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as “AA Secured Bonds” are really debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continue to climb and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.

The traders all receive six figure bonuses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Helga’s bar. He so informs Helga. Helga then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons but, being unemployed alcoholics, they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Helga cannot fulfil her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Helga’s 11 employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Helga’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations; her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the government.

They all receive a six figure bonus.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who’ve never been in Helga’s bar……………………….!

oooOOOooo

I can add not a single word to this!

A new NEON light beckons.

A wonderful investment in studying America’s ecology is just starting.

I am indebted to The Economist for including in their issue of the 25th August a story about NEON, something I had previously not heard about.

It was then an easy step to locate the main website for the National Ecological Observatory Network, or NEON.  (Just an aside that I can’t resist – NEON is such a fabulous acronym that one wonders how much push and shove there was to come up with the full name that also fitted the word ‘NEON’!  Sorry, it’s just me!)

Anyway, back to the plot.  The following video gives a very good idea of the projects aims.  When I watched it, I found it inspiring because it seemed a solid example of how the nation, that is the USA, is starting to recognise that evolving to a new, sustainable way of life has to be  built on good science.  NEON strikes me as excellent science.  You watch the video and see if you come to the same conclusion.

There’s also a comprehensive introduction to the project from which I will republish this,

In an era of dramatic changes in land use and other human activities, we must understand how the biosphere – the living part of earth – is changing in response to human activities. Humans depend on a diverse set of biosphere services and products, including air, water, food, fiber, and fuel. Enhancements or disruptions of these services could alter the quality of human life in many parts of the world.

To help us understand how we can maintain our quality of life on this planet, we must develop a more holistic understanding of how biosphere services and products are interlinked with human impacts. This cannot be investigated using disconnected studies on individual sites or over short periods of observation. Further, existing monitoring programs that collect data to meet natural resource management objectives are not designed to address climate change and other new, complex environmental challenges.

NEON, the first continental-scale ecological observatory, will provide comprehensive data that will allow scientists to address these issues.

Later on there’s more detail, as follows,

NEON has partitioned the U. S. into 20 eco-climatic domains, each of which represents different regions of vegetation, landforms, climate, and ecosystem performance. In those domains, NEON will collect site-based data about climate and atmosphere, soils and streams and ponds, and a variety of organisms. Additionally, NEON will provide a wealth of regional and national-scale data from airborne observationsand geographical data collected by Federal agencies and processed by NEON to be accessible and useful to the ecological research community. NEON will also manage a long-term multi-site stream experiment and provide a platform for future observations and experiments proposed by the scientific community.

The data collected and generated across NEON’s network – all day, every day, over a period of 30 years — will be synthesized into information products that can be used to describe changes in the nation’s ecosystem through space and time. It will be readily available in many formats to scientists, educators, students, decision makers and the general public.

For some reason I couldn’t find on the NEON website the informative map that was included in The Economist so I grabbed that one, and offer it below:

These eco-climatic domains are fully described here on the NEON website.

The benefits of this fabulous project are described thus, “The data NEON collects and provides will focus on how land use change, climate change and invasive species affect the structure and function of our ecosystems. Obtaining this kind of data over a long-term period is crucial to improving ecological forecast models. The Observatory will enable a virtual network of researchers and environmental managers to collaborate, coordinate research, and address ecological challenges at regional, national and continental scales by providing comparable information across sites and regions.”

As they say in business, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it!  So reading in the above the sentence, ‘Obtaining this kind of data over a long-term period is crucial to improving ecological forecast models.‘ is cheering to the soul.

The United States quite rightly gets a huge bashing over it CO2 emissions but to condemn the USA for that and not to applaud this sort of wonderful research is utterly unjustified.  As I have hinted before, America has, more than any other country in the world, the energy to make things better over the coming years.

As Professor Sir Robert Watson highlighted here recently said, ‘… deep cuts in CO2 emissions are possible using innovative technologies without harming economic recovery.’

Amen to that!

The Curiosity Mission.

Just a personal muse!

This has very little to do with anything other than my lifelong fascination in exploring space, which is why just over 21 hours ago I published the taster for this Post.  That ‘Earthrise’ photograph and the one below changed forever how we feel about the home we all live on.

The famous “Blue Marble” shot.

First Full-View Photo of Earth
Photograph courtesy NASA Johnson Space Center

This famous “Blue Marble” shot represents the first photograph in which Earth is in full view. The picture was taken on December 7, 1972, as the Apollo 17 crew left Earth’s orbit for the moon. With the sun at their backs, the crew had a perfectly lit view of the blue planet.

December 7th, 1972.  Coming up to 40 years ago. I was in my late-20s.  This photograph touched me in ways that I still don’t understand.  This is such a beautiful planet.

Thus Curiosity: NASA’s latest Mars rover is due to touch down at 05:31 UTC Monday 6th August.  I decided to publish this at 04:31 UTC on the 6th one hour before the crucial and novel landing, or in terms of local time here in Payson, Arizona, 9.31 pm on the 5th August.

Wishing the Mission and all the hard-working people who have spent so many years working towards this critical point in time in space history the very best of luck!  It will be wonderful wherever one is on this Planet to wake up on the 6th and hear that Curiosity has landed safely! And if you want to follow the Mission then NASA have a website devoted to the latest news.

Let me close by offering you a couple of videos from the fabulous BBC Horizon science series, full hour-long programme about NASA’s latest Mission to Mars.

NASA Engineer Adam Stelzner describes how he hopes the Curiosity rover will land.

Chief Project Scientist John Grotzinger talks about Curiosity’s scientific instruments.