Tuesday, October 27, 2009

eBook readers

Reading a prediction from the Futurist update September, "ONLINE TEXTBOOK LIGHTENS BACKPACKS", I use this article to forward the trend/prediction that has been made in the past regarding eBook readers. I did view the 616pg Algebra book that the Futurist article was referring to (as a note there were several other text books available as well). The books appear to be pdf files. The eBook reader has been a fad, popular with a wider audience, for about 5 years or so, being sold in limited quantities, primarily to people that enjoy reading novels. However, the ability to read native PDF formats has been difficult if not lacking. Mainly because figures and detailed grapical content in the PDF files were not able to render to smaller eBook sizes. However, with the recent market introduction of larger 9.5" readers, that can read native PDF formats, along with the introduction of these text books in PDF format, I beleive that the eBook readers time is finally come. For me that is a happy thought. Being in school, I read many PDF articles and papers and I would finaaly like to have all of these papers in one convient light weight reading device.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Zoho Planner

I would like to submit the following tool that I have found for this exercise and have begun to enjoy using. It is Zoho Planner. This tool is somewhat like a task/to do function that exists within outlook. However, I find this tool simpler than the outlook tool and this one will send email reminders which, when I receive them on my cell phone, is helpful. Another added bonus for me is that I can upload files to the site as well. This is helpful, because I use the MS Office suite for my documents, however my work computer restrictions prevent me from accessing MS Office live, which is my portable office tool of choice. The way I would prefer to use the Office Live site is when I have a quick lunch break, I may pull up a document, edit and then store online. Once I am home I can access it with my laptop and continue my work. But with the restrictions I am unable to do this, but with Zoho Planner, I can perform similar tasks and then upload the document for later at home, or elsewhere.

Empirical orthogonal functions

Empirical Orthogonal Functions realign a data set along a orthogonal directions by using the eigen vectors as the axis direction and the eigen values to determine the contribution of that eigenvector to the data set.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Speed Test your net connection

This tool is what I used to find out that the 12MB service that I pay for is really getting 0.82MB, at least for now. I used Test your Internet connection speed at Speedtest.net to test the performance. I was impressed. This is why my experience with second life has been less than impressive. I am supposed to have a service rep over tomorrow to investigate. Updates to continue.

Thoughts on a PC Purchase

Thoughts on a PC Purchase

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Ted Talks video

I viewed the video "Optical illusions show how we see" at
Quite an interesting video about how our senses can be "fooled" or tricked to show different information. It is similar to the philosophical discussions between the empiricists and the rationalist regarding how we know anything. One argument was that the senses could be fooled so how could the empiricists know truth. The rationalists would have enjoyed this video.



The video did show some very interesting illusions. Pay particular attention to the "two dessert scenes" demo.

Dennis

Monday, October 12, 2009

Intro

Dennis Musick
I have one wife, two sons, two dogs and a cat. R&D Electrical Engineer with 25 years of experience in several fields such as Radar, 6GHz test systems, Laser, Satellite sensor designs.