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Requiem for an iBook…

July 16th, 2007

The title is needlessly dramatic.  After 4 years, 11 months, and some 6 days, of faithful service, my iBook G3 has finally bit the big one.  Actually, it’s presently with some Apple “Genius” somewhere awaiting diagnosis for it’s problem (does not turn on).

In the mean time, I am most grateful to a research scientist in the RSSS group who lent me his old 12″ PowerBook G4, which I have spent the day outfitting to act just like my old iBook.  I was really hoping to get 5 years out of the iBook.  But, I suppose as long as I can keep the G4 going, all’s well that ends well.  The only things I still need are MATLAB and the data from my old hard drive.  Hopefully, the Geniuses don’t destroy that.

Unfortunately, the ECE Department has stopped  paying for “stand alone” MATLAB licenses.  So, I’ll have to get a “group” license and run my own license server.  At least the computer is honestly University-owned.

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Gallery update

July 3rd, 2007

Since 2001, I’ve had access to a server (palau.onu.edu) colocated at my alma mater.  However, due to lack of interest by current students, this server has become increasingly unreliable to the point of not being rebooted for almost a month after the latest crash.  I have moved the gallery to this server (as I have intended to do all along) and updated it with pictures from our recent travles.

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Posted in life, site

Sloppy writing suggests…

June 22nd, 2007

“Sloppy writing suggests to the reader that you do sloppy work.” –Farzad Kamalabadi.

I read a lot of stuff, everything from research papers published in prestigious journals to posts on web boards.  Of course, I expect the “fine” work in journals to be well-written, and I’m not usually disappointed.  But, in my e-mail and on web boards, I see some pretty atrocious spelling, grammar, and organization.

Recently, I saw a post from a guy asking for advice on dismantling a 65-foot tower.  It lacked capitalization, uniform punctuation and spacing, and spell-checking.  He was immediately chided for these things.  He responded in somewhat of a fit of rage about being judged by his writing rather than receiving an answer to his (somewhat ill-posed) questions.  The whole thing erupted into a mini flame war, which completely obliterated any hope of learning on the part of the originator.

This was instructive, I thought.  Sloppy writing does indeed suggest to the reader that you do sloppy work.  Of all activities, there is no room for slop in tower work.  I wouldn’t give him advice, either.

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Posted in communication, life

Instructables, artists, and preservation of the fundamentals

June 16th, 2007

I took the car to the shop today for its annual preventative work.  While I was waiting, I flipped through Popular Science.  Wow, that magazine has changed (for the better) over the past few years (I haven’t read it in maybe 5 years).

They have a section called “How 2.0” that has skeleton projects, some with parts lists and vendors.  Cool.  We’ve come full-circle.  It reminds me of the Instructables web site that I stumbled across a couple of years ago.  The Popular Science section is really important because it represents a mainstream publication leading to the reversal of the “Decline of the Fundamentals” described here earlier.

One of the interesting things about this is that many of the characters leading the preservation of fundamental skills are artists.  Not only are artists helping us see our world differently, they are helping us preserve valuable industrial skills.  Sounds wierd to an engineer, doesn’t it?

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Posted in education, engineering, life

“Estamos en Mexico”

June 1st, 2007

The Spring AGU conference is often in Baltimore, MD. However, from time to time, they hold a joint conference with one or more other organizations, usually in their “part of the world.” This year was one of those years…the Joint Assembly was in Acapulco. My advisor suggested that I submit an abstract, which I did. Sarah was excited about coming along, too. We have a few pictures and lots of stories to tell. But, this is one of my favorite stories from the trip.

Since Sarah had to work and most of the equatorial/midlatitude ionosphere activities were early in the meeting, she elected to fly down part way through the week. The taxi that three of us shared from the airport to the hotel on the first day was a little pricey. So, for Sarah’s arrival, I decided to have an adventure. The bell boys at the hotel told me that I could take the “Coloso” bus line to a certain bridge, then take the “Aeropuerto” line to the airport. Total cost: 9 pesos (about 80 cents).

Through my own impatience and a little bit of confusion, I ended up at the wrong place. I was accosted by taxi drivers as soon as I got off the bus. I told them I wasn’t interested; but, they were helpful and told me that an airport bus would come on the other side of the street. Once on the other side of the street some more taxi drivers told me that it would be 2 hours until that bus arrived. I don’t know if they were pulling my leg or whether it was true…but, I relented.

“Cuanto cuesta?” I asked.

“Sesenta” (60 pesos, about $5.50, probably a little high; but, not outrageous)

“Esta bien. Vayamos.” I replied. Not knowing quite what I’d gotten myself into, I jumped in. We started having a nice chat. I was somewhat flattered when he asked if I lived in Mexico since my Spanish was “so good.” Right. So, anyhow, I had no idea what time it was and the clock on the dashboard said 3:21, which would mean that I was 20 minutes late.

“Es correcto?” I asked, gesturing toward the clock. He whipped out his cell phone, which said 2:36, whew. Then, he began to set the clock in the car. “No importa tanto,” I said, “estamos en Mexico.” We laughed. No sooner had I said this, I noticed that we were rapidly approaching a yellow light as he was fiddling with the clock. “Mire, la luz (se cambia)!” I said. He looked up and punched the gas, sailing through the now red light.

“Estamos en Mexico,” he said. We rolled laughing.

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Posted in life, travel

The airplane

June 1st, 2007

My officemate Scott has a knack for winning things, either in competition or at random. Several months ago he said, “Hey, I won a radio controlled airplane last night.” I responded with enthusiasm and suggested he let me know when he was going to fly it. About a month ago, he said, “Remember that airplane I won? It doesn’t work. I think it’s somewhere in the radio. If you want to try to fix it, I’ll give it to you.” Duh. Of course, I’ll try to fix a potentially a free toy. After assuring me that he didn’t want the plane back if I got it working, I accepted it.

The plane showed up on my desk about a week and a half ago (just before our trip to Acapulco and Mexico City…which may or may not get blogtime). It’s a FlyZone Red Hawk, definitely not high-end, but free and good for a beginner such as myself. I retrieved the plane on Monday since it would be tough to carry on my bike. On Tuesday, I set about tracking down the trouble. Bingo! There were three cold solder joints on the transmitter board. I bought 8 AA batteries from ECE Stores (Eveready inudstrial alkalines for $2.64…the best deal on batteries in Champaign-Urbana) and the plane was ready to fly.

I took the plane to the fairgrounds, which are about a 5-minute walk from our duplex, hoping that the neighborhood kids wouldn’t see me. The elderly asian man who lives at the end of the street took interest in it and we chatted; but, he didn’t follow me. Whew. I set the plane on the harness track, did the preflight check, and revved the motor. The plane lifted off the track magestically and veered straight into the wooden fence, despite my best efforts to control it. That didn’t take long. Welcome to the world of the R/C pilot.

You see, this wasn’t entirely unexpected for me. When Seth (my brother) and I were just barely teenagers, we were fascinated by R/C airplanes. Seth finally managed to convince Dad to buy (I don’t know whose money was actually involved) one…a nice trainer with a 0.40 nitro engine and all of the accessories. The sage advice from experienced R/C pilots was: you will crash it…at least a few times. Dad got cold feet and sold it. We were somewhat devastated. Good move.

I collected the plane from the grass in front of the fence. Ah, nothing wrong…my lucky day. I set the plane back out on the ground and started the motor again. Ugh. Something doesn’t sound right. The motor had broken away from its mount. It was attached using the fine-pitch screws like those used to attach motherboards to PC cases. They were stripped-out. I replaced them with small sheet metal screws when I got home. This was much sturdier. It was too dark to fly again by the time I got the plane working again.

The next day (Wednesday), I took the plane out again. I tried taking off from the ground again. But, the plane kept getting stuck in the gravel. Must have gotten lucky the first day. Some neighborhood kids where skateboarding on the paved access paths in the fairgrounds. “There’s too much gravel down there. Why don’t you fly it up here on the pavement?” they called. “There are more trees, cars, and power lines, up there, I responded.” They lost interest in my feeble efforts after a few minutes. Kids are just like adults, a lot of them are all talk and no commitment. Good riddance.

It occurred to me that perhaps rather than practicing take-off and landing, which is what I wanted to do, I should actually follow the instructions, which suggested hand-launching for the first few flights. Holy cow, the instructions were right. Perhaps I should read them more often. I was rewarded with about 30 minutes or so of good flights and a few soft crash landings in the 3-ft deep grass before the battery died. I did actually kinda manage a real landing on the track, too. Rock on.

I charged the battery overnight and couldn’t wait to fly again. I managed a couple of good short flights that ended up in the tall grass. But, I really wanted to try landing on the track. While bringing the plane parallel to the track in preparation for descent, the wing brushed a tree and the plane careened to the ground. Only the landing gear appeared to be damaged. I bent them back into shape with my Leatherman Tool. I set the plane back on the track and did a preflight check. Everything appeared to be working OK. So, I decided to fly again. The plane felt a little sloppy this time. I couldn’t turn right and had trouble climbing and diving. I tried to bring it back over the track; but, it headed off to the northeast (toward a large herd of airplane-eating trees.) I cut the engine and started it into a dive, thinking that the plane was already over the trees. Fortunately, I saw it come down 50 feet in front of the trees…whew! Unfortunately, it sustained some pretty severe damage, some of which I’m still discovering.

I repaired the broken V-tail with some epoxy and packing tape, plus part of a K8GU QSL card. It appears that the servos are no longer attached to the airframe. That’s tonight’s project…although, I should probably do something with Sarah.

The moral of the story is this: R/C airplanes are not cheap, even if they’re free. Just like the saying goes, “Linux is only free if your time is worthless.” It’s a heck of a lot of fun, though. I’m afraid I might get sucked into another expensive hobby!

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The Decline of the Fundamentals

May 31st, 2007

Engineers everywhere shake their heads (or shudder) when a recent graduate new hire shows up bursting with knowledge and falls flat on their face when instructed to “do some engineering.” I oversee/mentor a few groups of seniors every semester in a Senior Design course that is intended to mitigate or avert the situation related above. So, I see a lot of painful mistakes. Many of the mistakes are things that I would consider fundamental, that is, for example, using a multimeter to measure the voltage “thru” a component rather than “across” it, or vice versa with current. (By the way, I did this once myself as a kid, before I knew Ohm’s Law and its physical meaning. I burnt-out the current measurement circuit in Dad’s meter trying to measure the voltage at a wall socket.) Short of more hands-on time in the laboratory, I began to ask myself why this was the case.

Abstraction is the concept that allows us to perform high-level tasks without understanding how the underlying process works. Technology is a fabulous example of abstraction at work. For instance, few people can really say that they understand how a computer works. I’m an EE and I have a pretty good idea of how they work; but, I wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable trying to develop a computer from scratch (at the gate or transistor level). So, this brings us back to the multimeter. At one time, the volt meter and ammeter were separate instruments; so, there was more distinction between the measurements. Is this a failure of abstraction or a failure of understanding? It does represent a fundamental failure to understand the physics: the idea that current is the flow of charge and that voltage is the potential (to do work) between charges. But, if no effort is made to stop during the education process to say, “What does this tell us about the physics?” these failures will continue. (Part of the problem is that some of the instructors have a tenuous grasp on the physics as well.) Abstraction remains an important concept, though, permitting sophistication.

The other problems are mass-production and “cheap” information. It used to be that if you wanted to get a job, you needed to know how to do something. (See The Cluetrain Manifesto for more on this sort of thing.) It is rare that one person knows and understands how an entire product is designed and constructed. This is the genius of Henry Ford and friends. It’s efficient for business, but not so good for humanity. Furthermore, we tend to let our knowledge exist in and be cataloged by Google these days. It does not occur to most of us that it might be good to own a hard copy of information that pertains to our knowledge of a product, process, or procedure. Google offers pin-point precision at the expense of “situational awareness,” understanding how the information fits into a greater context. Think of how many great discoveries may slip through the cracks of a web search!

The final culprit is assisted computation. There is a certain amount of insight gained from struggling with a mathematical expression for a physical relationship. There is even more insight in quick approximations. The art of approximation is dying. Dr Donald Milks taught my undergraduate Statics course. He was of the old school. I used to race him in solving example problems in my head using approximations. He almost always won. The few other students who were interested enough dutifully punched away on their calculators. I usually beat them, though. Dr Milks valued good hand-drawn figures, too. Indeed, the act of drawing, too, yields insight about a problem. I miss that.

Technology and abstraction allow us to solve progressively more difficult problems in science and engineering. I embrace that. However, we must take care not to lose sight of the fundamentals. For with time, the most advanced problems may prove intractable when no one understands why we want to know the answer.

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Posted in education, engineering, life

In pursuit of mediocrity?

May 13th, 2007

I had a thought the other day as I was walking to work. It’s interesting that this country (the United States) “imports” many of its highest-skilled and lowest-skilled employees. That is, many laborers are immigrants; but, by the same token, so are many doctors, scientists, and engineers. Why is this the case? Perhaps it is because our educational system is designed to be accessible (ostensibly) to anyone? That is, it is aimed at the middle (or worse yet, the bottom).

This is really a problem of national concern: why aren’t more Americans preparing for and taking these jobs? Is the economic incentive insufficient? Perhaps it is the population? Surely it is not the educational system alone. But, if it is, certainly, something must be done!

(Note: I count among my friends and co-workers many immigrants. This is in no way meant to sleight the effort and time they have expended in achieving what they have here. I’m simply curious why America is unable or unwilling to produce these employees.)

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A lesson on attitude

May 9th, 2007

Sarah (my wife) has been itching to do something with the “jungle” of a back yard we have at our duplex (rental). We decided to install some landscape timbers and put mulch in the middle so we can use our picnic table or chairs there. The periphery will be filled with various plants from the “distressed” sections of garden stores.

We went to the local “big-box” hardware store to get the timbers and related hardware. We had a terrible time finding the spikes (giant nails) that hold the timbers together. The associate who helped me was probably in his mid-60’s. He said, “Putting in landscape timbers, huh?” I replied to the affirmative. Then he said, “That’s a lot of work. Do you have a sledgehammer?” in a rather condescending tone. “Yes, I do.” I replied. What did he think? Do I look like I was born yesterday? I neglected to tell him that I also was purchasing a Speedbor bit for my drill (to make inserting the spikes easier) and that I planned on cutting the timbers with my circular saw. Furthermore, we laid-out the space using my level and surveyor’s tape.

Maybe he was having a crummy day…it was a sunny Saturday that he was stuck inside working. But, this was a lesson to me not to assume anything about the competence of anyone. Just because I didn’t know where the spikes were doesn’t mean I’m a complete idiot.  My dad gets the same treatment from the “computer experts” at the big-box electronics stores, even though he built a computer (at the board-level, a Heath H8) before most of them were born.

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Hacker Whacking

April 27th, 2007

It’s kind of funny when individuals get paranoid about hackers and fly off the handle. This post on the main page of a site I visited recently reminded me of it:

Recent attempts by hackers to break into my server have not gone unnoticed. I have blocked numerous IP address segments, mostly ones used by Asian-Pacific networks. However, I recently blocked an IP in use in the Tampa, FL area. When I do block an IP address, I usually block 255 addresses at a time. For example, if the hacker’s IP address is 66.232.110.2, I will block the range of 66.232.110.0 – 66.232.110.255. This reduces the time I must spend monitoring my network since the hacker can easily obtain another IP address in the same segment. The downside is that if you are not a hacker, but your neighbor is, your IP address might also be blocked because of your hacker neighbor. Users of blocked IP addresses will not be able to use the unique call lookup.

No hacker is reading that…and if they are, they’re laughing. Hacking, like most Internet crimes, is generally a crime of opportunity. In other words, although they are looking for something (usually control of your computer), hackers aren’t usually specifically interested in you. They want it to be easy. The best defenses against hacking for the individual are:

  1. keep your system updated
  2. don’t download little widgets (like the **** Weather Bug and the xyz toolbar)
  3. use some sort of passwords

That’ll make it hard enough to keep out of 99% hackers. If you have something they want worse than that, chances are you are already paying an expert to protect you.

It’s very likely that the paranoid guy quoted above was being pounded by computers that had already been compromised by hackers, and not directly by the hackers themselves. As they say, you’d think Windows Update was illegal in the Far East.

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Posted in life