The keyboard gene
March 24, 2008
Where does chronic keyboard addiction (CKA) come from in the Ayers clan? I don’t know whether genes can properly be said to come from anywhere or anyone, but several of the family seem to suffer varying degrees of this pernicious CKA malady.
So here is the data. Make of it what you will.
Since dear Marilyn has a pathological hatred of any keyboard, (I think maybe a Royal portable typewriter fell on her head some time in her past), I shall start by assuming that I am the prime propagator of the KB gene in our family. We have four children, and one of those decided to skip a generation, but the other three have shown signs of suffering from CKA. The most seriously afflicted is our firstborn, Larry, followed closely by his sister, Linda, and arguably her matronly younger sister, Leslie. Only equally matronly Laura seems immune.
As an aside, I remember when my brothers and I accompanied mom and dad on a motor trip from Mt. Lebanon, PA, to Niagara Falls in 1947. It was billed as sort of a second honeymoon for the folks, and it got off to a rough start. Somewhere before Buffalo, NY, Dad ribbed Mom a bit about being a matron, now that she had turned forty. Three pairs of big ears in the back seat picked up on it and started calling her “matron mom.” Big mistake. I thought for a while that dad would throw us out of the car and make us walk the rest of the way. And then there was the incident in the hotel room at the Falls when they left us alone while they went out and held hands or something. But I digress.
Larry’s oldest, Tyler, seems to have received a dollop of the KG, and it’s a little too early to tell about great-granddaughter Franziska. And I’m not sure about Tyler’s sis Adrian, although we do get e-mails from her, mis-punctuation and all.
The next logical step in this scientific inquiry is to look back in my past to see where I might have picked up the KG. I think first of mom’s brother, Uncle Bus. I remember his wonderfully descriptive letters written from Okinawa, but he didn’t type. The only other possibility that I know of on mom’s side was her sister, Auntie Lois. She was a Navy Wave in the big war, and she typed a blue streak.
As far as I can remember, and that isn’t very far, no one on dad’s side of the family used a keyboard at all. There apparently were no bloggers then to get them started. I have to smile when I try to picture grandpa Ayers typing away from his combine, or grandma Ayers turning from her laptop to wring the head off a chicken for dinner.
This is getting ridiculous. I’m sorry. (Sort of.)
Dave, clicking away with abandon.
Equinox day
March 20, 2008
Sometime today the equinox occurs. The Astronomy Picture of the Day site provides a spectacular view of the event, courtesy of the Expedition 15 crew. Earth dwellers will experience nearly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Recorded last June from the International Space Station, the Sun’s limb still peeks above the distant horizon as seen from Earth orbit. Clouds appear in silhouette as the sunlight is reddened by dust in the dense lower atmosphere. Molecules in the more tenuous upper atmosphere are preferentially scattering blue light.
Dave, quite content with a vicarious viewing.
Hale-Bopp revisited
March 7, 2008
Credit & Copyright: A. Dimai, (Col Druscie Obs.), AAC
The Great Comet of 1997 was photographed from the Dolomite mountains near Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy., The image was chosen as the AstronomyPicture of the Day on March 2, 2008. (Click image to enlarge)
On Sunday night, April 6, 1997, I was over the North Atlantic, flying to Brussels on the way to Israel and a 12 day study tour of the Holy Land. All through that short night, Hale-Bobb hung over the left wing tip as I gazed out of my window and thought about God’s cosmos. My puny earth-bound mind struggled to conceive of God as creator of not only Earth, but of ‘heavens’ of which man still knows only a smidgen, orbiting telescopes notwithstanding.
Such scientific knowledge of God’s cosmos is not essential to my salvation, but it sure is an important lesson in humility.
Part of my morning on-line routine is studying a bit of Scripture and gazing at the Astronomy Picture of the Day. The NETBible and APOD have permanent tabs on my Firefox browser for my daily lesson in humility.
Dave, tiny speck.
Half century in space
February 1, 2008
Fifty years ago on January 31, 1958, Explorer 1 was launched into earth orbit by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, thus kicking off the era of space exploration for the U.S.
This was brought to my attention by the Astronomy Picture of the Day that pops up on my desktop automagically every morning.
One of the experiments performed by the thirty pound satellite was measuring the density of electrons and ions in space. The designer of this experiment was James A. Van Allen from nearby Iowa University. These measurements by Explorer 1 led to the discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belt that encircles the earth.
Time marches on. The little Explorer remained in silent orbit until 1970, and Dr. Van Allen died in 2006 at the age of 91.
In 1958 I launched my engineering/business career by signing on with Arthur Collins at Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Although I worked with earth-bound radio systems, Collins Radio was a pioneer in space communications. My memories of those Collins years are a hazy, pleasant collage of engineering laboratories that were a young engineer’s heaven, travel to exotic (for me) places, pulling on a rising pheasant in the cornfields of eastern Iowa, and catching (and eating) crappies by the dozen.
Dave, not sure how much to make of this coincidence.
— -. . — .- -. .—-. … -… .. -.. - — … .- …- . — — .-. … . -.-. — -.. . -
October 8, 2007
There aren’t many of us still around who can read the title of this article. In fact, I don’t blame you if you are bored stiff by dots and dashes. When I received my first amateur radio license in 1947 (I think), I had to pass a code test at a speed of 15 words-per-minute. From the Wall Street Journal I learn that there is one Chuck Adams who is busy translating novels into Morse code. Aren’t you impressed?
— -. . — .- -. .—-. … -… .. -.. - — … .- …- . — — .-. … . -.-. — -.. . - WSJ.com
Nostalgic for simpler days, retired astrophysicist Chuck Adams is translating classics of boys’ lit into a language he fears is going the way of kit radios and marbles: Morse code.
Holed up in his high-desert home crammed with computers, radio receivers and a very patient wife, Mr. Adams uses homemade software to download online books with expired copyrights, convert the typed words into Morse code tones and record them on compact discs he sells on the Internet.
Several years ago, as I walked along on my daily save-my-heart stroll, I wondered if there were any remnants of Morse code still lodged in my memory bank. I started dah-ditting street signs along my route. It was slow going at first, but after a while it came back to me. At first I had to stop to recall the Morse code for certain infrequently used letters, but after a while I had my translation speed up to, maybe, 5 wpm.
Many of those who still know Morse code test their skills with a German computer game called Rufz, the standard for determining world transcription-speed rankings. Players listen to coded, five-character call signs, combinations of letters, symbols and numbers that identify individual license holders. The faster and more correctly they type them, the more points they score. (Transcribing regular text is much slower.)
Last month in Belgrade, Goran Hajosevic broke 200 words per minute — an extraordinary pace. Mr. Adams is tied for eighth in the world, at more than 140 words per minute.
I ham radio’d away using CW (continuous wave, read Morse code) for several years, but I never reached real proficiency, topping out at perhaps 30 wpm.
Dave who has a tendency to lie about some things.
Smiley turns 25
September 19, 2007
Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman claims to be the first to use the infamous 
“smiley face,” at 11:44 a.m. on September 19, 1982.
He posted the emoticon (emotional icon) to an online bulletin board during a discussion about the limits of online humor. I sometimes think emoticons are mostly a crutch to avoid the necessity of writing clearly. I suppose in this age of unthinking instant communication they are necessary to avoid online mayhem, but I try to avoid writing anything that demands Mr. Smiley to bail me out.
Dave, :-p (So there!)
Holy Land by Satellite
September 16, 2007
At the back of my NET Bible, Reader’s Edition are 16 pages of incredible images of the Holy Land like the sample image that follows. The satellite imagery is courtesy of Rohr Productions Ltd., and it makes quite a story.
This is the first time that satellite imagery has been used in a study Bible to illustrate the Holy Land. These images are as detailed as photographs, yet as exact as conventional maps. They allow you to see all the geographical features in truly photo-realistic detail, and to place the biblical events in their proper geographical context.The color was derived from a single pass of the U.S. LandSat 5 satellite, which crossed the area early one crystal-clear, cloudless morning in January. The imagery, therefore, reflects the true look of the Holy Land on one particular day, despite the differences in each area
In April, 1997, I traveled to Israel on a tour sponsored by Ligonier Ministries. Our guide (who we were careful to call our “professor” to keep him out of trouble with the Israeli tour guides) was a researcher and Fuller Seminary graduate named Jim Martin who studied at Hebrew University In Jerusalem. I made copious notes as we walked the land from Dan to Elat.
But back to the images. Here are some technical details about how they were produced.
With LandSat 5 data, each picture element (pixel) covers 30 meters on the ground. This “resolution” has been increased 900% by combining it with black and white data from the French SPOT satellite, in which each pixel covers only 10 meters. This involved merging the LandSat and SPOT imagery, so that each set of nine SPOT pixels was superimposed exactly over the corresponding one LandSat pixel, over a distance of 250 miles. This merged data set was then “draped” over a 3-D relief model of the terrain, which was derived from highly accurate contour data, with exact positioning of every hilltop and river valley. Finally, special computer software was developed to process the whole database simultaneously in three dimensions. Only then was it possible to select the best viewpoints from which to illustrate every part of the Holy Land.
Aren’t you impressed? I surely am.
Dave, still re-living that memorable tour,
Presidential candidates on the web
June 29, 2007
It’s not particularly noteworthy that there are nineteen presidential hopefuls with active websites this election cycle but that the use of the social networking sites by the candidates has exploded. Go to Entertainment Guide: Election ‘08 for links to the candidates’ sites.
Dave, slowly warming to the likes of YouTubeand MyFace.
The craze for maize
May 12, 2007
An Orlop hat tip to Michael Kruse for finding this article. The local hype about the ethanol plants that seem to be rising out of every cornfield proclaims a pot at the end of the rainbow for the local economy. It’s much more likely a momentary pop for our farmer friends (some of them) and the ag industry. Doesn’t anyone understand fundamental economics? I suspect this article pretty much has the right of it.
Iowa’s ethanol economy | The craze for maize | Economist.com
Corn-based ethanol is neither cheap nor especially green: it requires a lot of energy to produce. Production has been boosted by economically-questionable help from state and federal governments, including subsidies, the promotion of mixing petrol with renewable fuels and a high tariff that keeps out foreign ethanol. The federal government offers ethanol producers a subsidy of 51 cents per gallon (13.5 cents per litre); and a growing number of states are pushing for wider use of E85, a fuel blend that is 85% ethanol and only 15% petrol. Since oil prices rose above $30 a barrel in 2004 (they are more than double that now), ethanol capacity has grown especially rapidly. And although the country is experimenting with other renewable plant-based fuels of varying feasibility, from biodiesel to (much greener) ethanol derived from trees, the biggest boom has been in corn-based ethanol.
It’s hard to be objective about agricultural matters, living where I do in the middle of corn and pig country. I just haven’t been there and done that. Nevertheless, the little I’ve learned from my time at Cow College in Kansas has embued at least some sympathy for my farm friends, and I suspect that more than a few of them fully understand what the article is saying. Like the rest of us, they just want theirs, now.
Instead of worrying about the murky future, the state’s farmers are planting as much corn as they can—and hoping that oil prices stay nice and high.
Dave, a genertion removed from the farm.
Silicon skyscrapers
May 5, 2007
To one who grew up in the age of vacuum tubes, microelectronics still seems like science fiction. But then, I’m the guy whose education finally ground to a halt in the super-abstract world of quantum physics. I guess everyone has a mental boundary beyond which one can’t travel. So articles like this fill me with a lot of wonder but little comprehension.
Microelectronics | Growing up | Economist.com
That is the thinking behind making transistors out of nanowires. The wires in question—strands of silicon—are but a few tens of nanometres thick. Though they make up for that in height (they are 2,000 nanometres tall). Their slight diameters mean that zillions of them could be crowded on to a single chip.
Nanowires forsooth! I challenge you to try to visualize nano-anything. A nano-inch is .000000001″ (or somethng like that - my math hasn’t survived the decades very well, either.) Maybe this is a religious thing. Lacking (and not missing) an electron microscope, I must take the existence of a nanowire on faith.
And there is another thing that makes these transistors radically different from others. Microelectronic components are produced by etching. A silicon chip is coated with layers of the chemicals needed to make the components in question. Those components are then carved out of these layers by chemical solvents that remove unwanted areas and leave the components as islands on the surface of the chip. Dr Riess’s nanowires, by contrast, are grown from scratch by exposing the chip to a silicon-rich gas. The desired pattern of nanowires has previously been picked out on the chip’s surface with spots of a catalyst that cause silicon from the gas to be deposited. The wires thus sprout only where the catalyst fertilises them.
I confess no comprehension at all of the foregoing. It’s a strange and marvelous world we live in.
Dave, still adding to his list of things he doesn’t understand.
