Horizon Report "Smart Objects"

Smart objects usefulness hit me as being very helpful. Aside from the obvious, personal data, etc. I was thinking of the smart object being embedded in the car computer. Due to the highly computerized nature of automobiles today, embedding smart object data in the car, that could "communicate" with your iPhone, and continue to report all the codes and variations of the diagnostic data, and then you would take your phone into the shop or download to Pep Boys over the net and let them discuss with you the relevancy of the data, or what repair work would be recommended. In other words the smart object would report to "you" relevant data, and you could shop this information around to find what you should do for the car, and where you should do it, etc. It would be a closer tie to you controlling or understanding the information rather than taking the car into the shop now and hoping you get "ripped off" with the salesman telling you that you need to refill your halogen fluid.

Electric Car reality?

While reviewing Technology’s Promise [Halal, W. E. (Ed.). (2008). Technology's Promise:Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and Society: Palgrave Macmillan.], I too find myself desiring to comment on the predictions of alternate fueled vehicles that Halal has commented on. First of all I would like to say that I desire to have the electric car, hover car, and teleportation technologies as soon as possible. However, regarding the automotive technology, there are still some hurdles that need to be overcome. One of the technology areas, and in my opinion, still the largest hurdle at this time, is the power density of the alternate fuel being considered.

A great article from Design News [Murray, C. J. (2008). Auto Industry Working Hard to Make an Electric Vehicle Battery. Design News.], discusses the power density of the existing battery technologies versus what is contained within gasoline.

(Image inserted from "http://www.designnews.com/article/print/10574-Auto_Industry_Working_Hard_to_Make_an_Electric_Vehicle_Battery.php")

In summary, gasoline contains approximately 80 times more energy per volume than lithium-ion electric vehicle battery, and 250 times more energy than the standard lead-acid battery in cars today. This means that in order to extract the performance that exists today with gasoline engines, there has to be an 80 times improvement in the technologies that are used to make automobiles. For example if we use Halal’s assertion that the current gasoline engine is only 14% efficient, to get an electric engine that was 100% efficient would improve efficiency approximately 7 times. We still need a 73 times improvement somewhere else within the automotive technology, such as weight savings, wind resistance, etc.

If you couple this with the acquisition costs of the fuel, (the cost of producing the gasoline vs. the cost of creating the battery), again the gasoline still has the advantage. There are still many hurdles that exist before all electric cars can compete as a total system cost with gasoline vehicles. I believe, and hope, that all electric cars become an economical reality, but I am left to believe that if they become mainstream in the near future with existing technologies, it will not be due to its economical/efficiency advantage, but will become viable due to people willing to pay the extra costs of the inefficiencies for other real or perceived payoffs.

Animoto video on Dissertation subject

Here is my animoto presentation

Remote driving

I have been interested in the ability of a vehicle to take a passenger from one destination to another without interaction from the passenger. I call this remote driving. However, after scanning the topic a bit from recent researchers in this area, the implementation appears to be further out than what I had hoped for. Basically, in my summary it is an issue that no single processor group can make all the decisions that must be made in order to drive, such as avoidance, braking, navigating, acceleration, etc. These tasks at the current level of affordable technology must be made by separate processor groups or robotics, and this becomes a large issue as to how to have these separate robotic functionality parts making the system wide decisions necessary for safe and secure transportation. It appears that due to this issue that this technology area is pursuing remote driving, such as using a remote control device, such as PDA, or others, to remotely power the vehicle. Similar to the remote control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that the military is currently investing in.

So it appears that the current direction in this area, is not what I had hoped for, travel with no user interaction, but travel with remote interaction. Just to see how far this has come feel free to view this video of Full Size RC Car. It is interesting once you wait out the advertisment delay.

Active Engineering Podcast

Gabcast! Active Engineering Podcast #1

New WEB 20 tool

I have found another web 20 tool that I like. I am part of a large close family and I have been searching for a means to keep us all closer togther other than the very public facebooks, or other social media. I ran across MyFamily.com and I found it very easy to set up our own family website, free of course (with some advertising, but $2.50/month for more stuff and no adds). It can be a public or private family site. I choose the private site and I can invite the folks I desire to have access to it. You can have family pictures, calendars, etc... All family memebers can add their comments or photos or whatever to the site. I like this one.

SDP implementation comments

This week I was asked to analyze and comment on a Structured Design Process (SDP) process example. I choose the XY234 drug development example. The author really spends much time discussing the front end work and its benefits regarding the SDP process. I believe I can agree with the claim that the front end process was of benefit to the participants and stockholders. The conclusions seem to indicate successful implementation of the SDP process, however, it appears that either the process has not been concluded yet. Early claim was that the drug process may take 12 to 15 years to get to market, so this process may not be completed yet. But this example remains an example of the front end process but not to the whole process, because there is no over all completion to say that the SDP process is better than the conventional process, at least in this example. I might also make a minor observation in that the author has chosen the Structured Design Process as the name of his democratic process. The adoption of this name implies that other or previous design processes, such as the discovery of the laws governing planets, such as gravity, or the design process of sending men to the moon, were not structured. I am sure that the author did not mean this, but it strikes me in this manner.

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.

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.

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 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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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

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.