Eagle PCB to Autodesk Inventor - how to do it

This is mostly a note to myself, but I thought I'd share it in case it helps somebody.

To get an Eagle PCB board outline & drills into Inventor, you use the DXF export utility in Eagle.

Before exporting, make sure Eagle is only displaying the following layers, assuming you're using the default layer setup:
17 - Pads
20 - Dimension
44 - Drills
45 - Holes
46 - Milling

(Note, you might want to select additional layers, but I'd start with these first, because Inventor chokes on more.)

Next, click File/Export/DXF and save your file someplace.  I stick them in a sub-folder of my Eagle project named "Export".

Now go to Inventor and open the DXF file.  An import routine will be triggered, use these values:

Selective Import, layers 20 and 44.  Look at the drawing to confirm you're getting what you want.

Check - Wires
Specify units - mm (if that's what you used in Eagle)
Check - Constrain End Points and Apply Geometric Constraints
Select "New Part - Project wires to 2D sketch"
Mapping options - Check "Map all layers ... single sketch"

Click Finish.

Tada!  There is your board as an Eagle sketch, properly sized, ready for extrusion.

Now, you might ask, "Why are you displaying those layers in Eagle for the export, but then ignoring them in Inventor?"  The answer - it looks like Eagle has a bug.  Without enabling all those layers, the drills don't come across.  At all.  Frustrating, but surmountable.

Also... if you're getting your boards made by OSHPark.com, then you can go ahead and extrude the board at 1.8mm in thickness.  This is the same value for both 2 and 4 layer boards.

Meshbot 2 chassis design released

I published "Meshbot 2" my second 3D printed robot chassis design on Thingiverse, you can check it out here.

So many grindstones, so little nose

I'm so thankful that I get to do the kind of work I do.  Writing software is a blast!

Human evolution - Selfishness vs. Altruism

Just read a great article:

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/human-nature-needs-be-back-business?google_editors_picks=true

In it, there is a nice quote from Darwin.  This side of Darwin's thinking was ignored by his robber-baron lauding "social Darwinist" contemporaries:

An advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.

This perspective was not ignored by Kropotkin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin#Cooperation_and_competition

Kropotkin was misunderstood and belittled by his western contemporaries, as Gould describes in this great article:

http://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.htm

Please make the Patriot Act go away

U.S. intel chief blasts leaks on web, phone use tracking - CBS News: "I'm angry, and I was the one that wrote the law. And I think that the Justice Department and the NSA have abused this by going to far," said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., who helped craft the Patriot Act.


I would just like to say to Rep. Sensenbrenner, what exactly did you think was going to happen?  Have you not read enough history to know where these things inevitably go?  The Patriot Act was, at best, naive.  At worst, it's an unfettered invasion of privacy reminiscent of Hitler's "Enabling Act" or the actions taken by Joseph McCarthy (Sen. R-Wisc) during the Second Red Scare.

Just for you

Alliteration alleviates all ailments, and any antipathy.

Thought for the day

A friend just sent me a great link that I thought I would share:

http://scottberkun.com/2013/quit-your-whining/

WHAT!?! Something in our ecosystem actually improved a bit?!

Antarctic ozone shows big improvement | TG Daily

Toyota recall reminds me of biodiversity issues

The article in question makes a point: "The massive size of the newly announced recall underscores the risks manufacturers like Toyota face when they share basic components on a wide range of vehicles hoping to improve manufacturing economies of scale."

This is the same issue farmers face when choosing to grow a single type of crop, and the world faces as we trample individual cultures.  It's an interesting problem, because you can't argue with the profitability of such decisions, but you need to be wary of the unintended consequences.

The article:
Toyota to hold world's biggest car recall for 16 years - Bottom Line


This also makes me think of the book I'm reading, 1491 by Charles Mann.  In it, Mann describes how the original Americans not only engineered corn from the original plant teosinte, but developed a method of farming called a "milpa" which is essentially the exact opposite approach, in agriculture, of that taken by Toyota in sharing a single part across multiple models. 

Wikipedia quotes Mann:
"A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jícama, amaranth, and mucana.... Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary. Maize lacks the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which the body needs to make proteins and niacin;.... Beans have both lysine and tryptophan.... Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins; avocados, fats. The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, "is one of the most successful human inventions ever created."

The point here is that Toyota receives the intended benefit of reduced cost and a simplified supply chain through standardizing on a particular part across models and product lines, but it receives the unintended consequence of increased exposure in the event of part failure, and also increased exposure to supply company failure if it decided to source the part from a single manufacturer.

Had Toyota selected a milpa-like approach on the part, such as sourcing multiple variants of the part, and sourcing those parts from multiple suppliers (to be fair I think Toyota spreads supplier risk already) then complexity is certainly increased, but risk is reduced, and one can imagine a host of other unintended benefits.

Intelligence effort improperly collected information about citizens, not terrorists | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

This is just wrong, and it needs to be fixed.  I'm glad to hear the program is on the chopping block.

Intelligence effort improperly collected information about citizens, not terrorists | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: One fusion center cited in the Senate investigation wrote a report about a Muslim community group's list of book recommendations. Others discussed American citizens speaking at mosques or talking to Muslim groups about parenting.

No evidence of criminal activity was contained in those reports. The government did not circulate them, but it kept them on government computers. The federal government is prohibited from storing information about First Amendment activities not related to crimes.

Three Things That Should Trouble Apple

I thought this was sensible and realistic:

kickingbear» Blog Archive » Three Things That Should Trouble Apple

Understanding people based on email address

As much as we try to avoid it, we all quickly summarize the people around us based on small bits of information.  Nobody said it was fair, but we judge people based on dialect, race, clothing, posture, and even walking gait.  Because I work in technology, I thought I would share some of my admittedly unfair biases based on email address.

These are currently in no particular order, and I expect to update this post several times as I think through this issue.

• Me.com or Apple.com
• Didn't fully use the internet until they bought an iPhone.
• Loves to hate Microsoft products.
• Brings out phone to show pictures of children, food, or recent vacation shots in an aggressive, unpleasant manner.
• Will freak out when MobileMe shuts down in June, 2012.
• Thinks the term "App" means something specifically about iPhone.
• Believes Steve Jobs was an inventor/scientist.
• AOL.com
• Old person.
• Probably does not know what a scroll bar is.
• Thinks PowerPoint users are technology geniuses.
• Externalizes internet problems.
• Believes that prior to retirement, Bill Gates knew when they opened an email.
• Frequent Facebook poster, uses "post to board" instead of "private message" causing everyone embarrassment.
• Comcast.net
• Probably a converted AOL user.
• Knows how to unplug a router to restore Comcast service, or has a younger person around who does this for them.
• Doesn't know IMAP from a hole in the ground.
• Thought the hacker scenes in "Swordfish" were believable.
• Leaves hundreds of application windows open and rarely restarts machine.
• Gmail.com
• Watched Tron 2010 in 3D the first month it came out.
• Owns an Android phone but has bought at least one Apple device.
• Has an opinion about password length.
• Owns, or has considered owning a Prius.
• Wears goofy shoes.
• Cuts off bicycles when driving, but hogs lane when riding bike.
• Yahoo.com
• Buys the magazines found at grocery store cash registers.
• Forwards spam email to friends.
• Computer(s) infected with multiple viruses
• Never backs anything up.
• Asks people simple questions that could easily be Googled from the phone they are holding.
• Possible creationist.

Samsung Supplies Apple With Touch Screen for New IPad - Businessweek

The sun never sets on the Apple/Samsung lawsuits, and yet still...

Samsung Supplies Apple With Touch Screen for New IPad - Businessweek

Technolog - Wozniak likes his Android phone a lot

Technolog - Wozniak likes his Android phone a lot

Someone messed with Texas, after being clearly told, "Don't mess with Texas."

Texas Redrawn: Voting Rights, States' Power In Court : NPR

US troops scramble to hand off last-minute security 'details' to Iraqis - CSMonitor.com

I am glad the Iraq occupation is coming to an end, and it's great that so many troops will be back for Christmas. I do however find it surprising and perhaps foolish that we are leaving behind so little equipment for the Iraqi forces to maintain security. I wonder what the rationale is on that.


US troops scramble to hand off last-minute security 'details' to Iraqis - CSMonitor.com: The performance of the Iraqi soldiers has been all the more impressive, US troops here note, given that the Iraqi security force unit with responsibility for airport perimeter security has only one pickup truck and one small Humvee.

Xmas tree lighting

At the  Daley center for the xmas tree lighting!

GAAS - Gameplay As A Service

I just read an interesting article by Michael Hugos in CIO that has really got me thinking.  If games are becoming more acceptable in the workplace, and we've got services like Amazon's Mechanical Turk, could it be possible that the two concepts converge into something like Gameplay As A Service?

In this scenario, workers would be in a game environment but would do actual work, and that work could be structured and packaged so that organizations could purchase the service in a manner similar to SaaS.  Immediately science fiction examples of this come to mind, like the book "Ender's Game" and the movie "Sleep Dealer".

The thing is, all these pieces are in place, and people seem to be aching to do the work.  I was recently given a demo of a virtual world that a friend built in a mining simulation game.  The complexity and effort that was put into what he built was absolutely stunning.  Couldn't (or perhaps even "shouldn't") that desire to create and build be put into the marketplace somehow?

Speed costs - How fast do you want to spend?

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is fantastic. As a former carpenter, who at the risk of sounding self-congratulatory thought myself a craftsman, I found his writing to open up a deep sense of kinship. This is a man who cares deeply about his work and his society. As someone who now works extensively with technology and computers, I found his mild technophobia a little misplaced but highly likeable. I see no difference between working with physical objects and working with bits and bytes, but that's my personal feeling and no reflection on the book; Crawford's yearning for quality, self direction and improvement rings true. Readers may find deeper appreciation for their own jobs after reading this.



Some reviewers complained about the language being overly complicated or "hard", and that just makes me sad for books generally and the American education system specifically. His writing is as beautiful and well crafted as it gets, and those people should stop expecting pabulum, whip out a dictionary, and grow up.





View all my reviews

CDC provides Zombie Apocalypse protocols

Talk about disaster preparedness, the CDC has Zombie outbreak recommendations, just in time for Halloween...

CDC EPR Social Media Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse - Blog

Google Wallet now live, at least in one San Francisco coffee shop - Computerworld

Hey Ted, Google NFC is going live...

Google Wallet now live, at least in one San Francisco coffee shop - Computerworld

Google Apps has made life difficult

It has taken me hours to undo the mess created by the Google Apps account migration tools.  Google plus remains hosed.  I love the free site hosting from Google apps but the cost had been high!

At least I can post from the Android Blogger app again.

More on this mess.

Eew, that phone is disgusting.

More odd cell phone pictures here.

Amazing movie: Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)

I just watched an old movie on Netflix streaming, and I was blown away by how good it was.  "Transatlantic Tunnel," filmed in 1935, was incredible, a quality science fiction movie with an impressive set of correct technological predictions.  The movie is set in the late 40's to mid 50's, and predicts:

• Skype
• Wireless Skype
• Awkward social situations caused by Skype
• Clean rooms / Central control rooms (almost a data center)
• Widespread use of broadcast television
• Widescreen television
• Vertical take off and landing of heavier than air vehicles
• Mobile Skype (VTOL aircraft to Home, Automobile to Home)
• Helipads on top of buildings
• Advanced tunnel boring technology
• The Chunnel (the Engish Channel Tunnel)
• An impending war with powers from "the east" (possibly Germany or Russia)
• Issues with supplying war material from America to Great Britain during a European theater war
• America and Great Britain coming together as allies during a European theater war
• Love quadrangles with high-stakes stock price chicanery (ala Gordon Gecko)
• The "military industrial complex".

The flick created detailed, plausible, science fiction movies sets and promptly ignored them in favor of a decent human plot, including fully realized female characters in pivotal roles, in the same vein as James Cameron in The Abyss, Alien, and of course Avatar.  Science fiction at it's best, this movie is a gem, check it out!

Energy itself is pixelated

Energy itself is pixelated, like zooming in so far on a digital image that you see it's made of colored squares, or compressing an MP3 until the sound quality degrades.
Check it out:

Planck constant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "This inherent granularity is counterintuitive in the everyday world, where it is possible to 'make things a little bit hotter' or 'move things a little bit faster', This is because the quanta of energy are very, very small in comparison to everyday human experience. Thus, on the macro scale quantum mechanics and classical physics converge. Nevertheless, it is impossible, as Planck found out, to explain some phenomena without accepting that energy is quantized; that is, it can only equal certain energy levels with space in between them."

I wonder what Schrödinger's cat thinks of that?

After Attacks, Google Vows to Fortify Android Market - PCWorld Business Center

After Attacks, Google Vows to Fortify Android Market - PCWorld Business Center

I suppose it had to happen sometime.

Mubarak's Swiss Assets Frozen - WSJ.com

See - this is what happens when you let Democracy do it's thing. It's simply awesome.

Mubarak's Swiss Assets Frozen - WSJ.com

Glen Beck makes me want to puke

I can't believe how Beck is coming down on what is happening in Egypt. I don't agree with much of what he says, but this approach is anti-democratic and deeply offensive. It appears Dark Ages Christianity is alive, well, and just as xenophobic as ever.

As a Democrat however, I think it's wonderful that he's ripping his own party to pieces with this drivel.

How Egypt crisis has divided U.S. politicians - CNN.com

In exact contradiction to Beck's loony perspective we should take a look at what is happening with the Iranian Green Party today:

Iran's Greens seek to fire up support

Mothers-to-Be Are Getting the Message - NYTimes.com

Look at this. With the extended family (the "normal" source of information for new parents) being non-existant in America, what's the next best option? Why, text messages of course. It's sad, and fascinating, and I hope it works.

Mothers-to-Be Are Getting the Message - NYTimes.com

Getting rid of “there was a problem sending the command to the program”

A fine blurb about this annoying issue:

Getting rid of “there was a problem sending the command to the program” without compromising security « Rihan Meij

Someone wishes they were an author and not a journalist.

Egypt protests are breaking new ground | Simon Tisdall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "Those hopes died, like autumn leaves, blown away by a withering sirocco of regressive measures and reimposed emergency laws".

Nice sentence Simon!

Tethered MyTouch 4G speed test

Just measured my speed while on a Chicago Metra train bound for Braeside.  Not exactly full 4G, but still, not bad.

Quote of the day

"Looks like some sort of phenomenon happened"

In Beebe, Ark., 4,000 Dead Blackbirds Drop From the Sky - NYTimes.com

When liver donations go wrong - CNN.com

Our medical industry, which to me seems like just another labor union, is a bizzare collection of old school protectionist practices and it needs a serious overhaul.

Why is it that statistics on outcomes are unavailable, and mistakes are covered up or treated as if they are impossible?

From CNN.com...

When liver donations go wrong - CNN.com: "When a donor has a complication, the hospital is expected to do its own investigation and report to the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, which oversees transplants for the federal government.
'This isn't acceptable,' says Dr. Lloyd Ratner, director of renal and pancreatic transplant surgery at Columbia University.
'Never in a million years would we say to BP, 'Oh, you had an oil spill in the Gulf, why don't you do your own investigation and just tell us about it?' ' he said. 'That would be just crazy. It's not acceptable in other industries to do that, so why is it acceptable in ours?'"

Capsule Built by SpaceX Returns Safely From Orbit - NYTimes.com

Capsule Built by SpaceX Returns Safely From Orbit - NYTimes.com

This is big news people! The first privately constructed spacecraft launched a payload into orbit!

The scanners are riskier than the terrorists

Check out the math in the article linked below, the quote coming from dosimetry expert Peter Rez.

Protests Mount Over Safety And Privacy Of Airport Scanners : Shots - Health News Blog : NPR:

"Rez agrees the individual risk is still negligible. 'It's a 1-in-20-million chance of dying from radiation for each scan,' he says. 'Your chances of being struck by lightning in the US in any year is 1 in 500,000. But the probability of being blown up in an airplane by a terrorist is around 1 in 30 million. So the risk from the scan is about the same as the thing you're trying to prevent.'"

Enable ping in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008

Working on a network with Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 is a pain when you just want to ping.  I'm sure there are swell reasons these operating systems have ping turned off, but I'm on a protected domain at work, and I'm not worried about a DOS attack or whatever MS is worried about.

Here is how you enable these operating systems to respond to a ping...

1. Open a command prompt as an administrator.  Go to Start/Accessories/Command Prompt and right-click, selecting "run as administrator".
2. At the command prompt, type (or paste) "netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8". 
3. Hit enter.
4. Read the bit scolding you about using a deprecatedcommand, then promptly ignore all that if the command returned "Ok."
5. Enjoy pinging your machine.

Music happens - another public transit performance

Shift to Wealthier Clientele Puts Life Insurers in a Bind - WSJ.com

Shift to Wealthier Clientele Puts Life Insurers in a Bind - WSJ.com

As a country that prides itself on individual accomplishment and opportunity, we need to dismantle this tax shelter. All it does is reinforce our tragic income disparity.

5 Things Linux Does Better Than Mac OS X - PCWorld Business Center

5 Things Linux Does Better Than Mac OS X - PCWorld Business Center

Everyone loves to hate the operating systems they don't use. Makes me think of "Imagine" by Lennon.

Some Android apps caught covertly sending GPS data to advertisers

Some Android apps caught covertly sending GPS data to advertisers

Privacy, what a quaint idea.

Cosmic Log - Alien planet looks 'just right' for life

Cosmic Log - Alien planet looks 'just right' for life

This is neato news, but when you read with any sort of critical eye, you have to see what a dork this astrophysicist Vogt is. He starts by saying there is a 100% chance the planet has life. That's just ridiculous. The planet has extremely unique properties that we've never examined before and a claim like that is just irresponsible.

Next, Vogt claims this planet, which does not rotate, so it has one side facing it's small sun, and one side pointing away, is "not too hot and not to cold, but just right for water to exist somewhere in liquid form." I'm no rocket scientist, but I would like to point out that any water on the hot side will automatically evaporate, and then migrate in gaseous form over to the cold side of the planet, where it will freeze hard and never be seen in liquid form again. He might want to think about the old, dinky ice cubes in his fridge, which got that way via sublimation, and how even water trapped in surface ice is going to migrate farther away from the sun and pile up high on the cold side, just like those dinky ice cubes disappear and the water migrates to the cooling element in his fridge.

Perhaps he visualizes a planet teeming with life that can live in solid ice, without the benefit of sunlight. Perhaps he detected lots of thermal vents on the ice side, ha.

Global CIO: Larry Ellison Swaps Cloud Rants For Cloud Love With Exalogic -- InformationWeek

Global CIO: Larry Ellison Swaps Cloud Rants For Cloud Love With Exalogic -- InformationWeek

I sympathize with Ellison. A web application is just not cloud computing. I think people get confused because the internet, in diagrams of yore, is depicted by a little picture of a cloud.

Cloud computing, in my mind, is building a computational task that can be distributed across multiple servers, with the precise number of servers changing in an elastic manner, as determined by the task load.

Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says - latimes.com

Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says - latimes.com

Interesting stats on religious knowledge among various faiths.

How Haystack endangered the Iranian dissidents it was supposed to protect. - By Evgeny Morozov - Slate Magazine

How Haystack endangered the Iranian dissidents it was supposed to protect. - By Evgeny Morozov - Slate Magazine

People need to remember that lots of technology out there is simply vaporware. It pays to be skeptical.

This video is so cool I can hardly believe it.

Leonardo's Notebooks

Leonardo's Notebooks: "Vitruvius, the architect, says in his work on architecture that the measurements of the human body are distributed by Nature as follows: that is that 4 fingers make 1 palm and 4 palms make 1 foot, 6 palms make 1 cubit; 4 cubits make a man's height. And 4 cubits make one pace and 24 palms make a man; and these measures he used in his building. If you open your legs so much as to decrease your height 1/14 and spread and raise your arms till your middle fingers touch the level of the top of your head you must know that the centre of the outspread limbs will be in the navel and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle."

Now that's someone who knows how to observe. Thanks for changing the direction of the western world Leonardo!

Op-Ed Columnist - Putting Our Brains on Hold - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Putting Our Brains on Hold - NYTimes.com

This guy is right, our nation is falling apart right before our eyes. Why don't we care anymore?

Consumer confidence is down, so why are Americans spending more? - By Daniel Gross - Slate Magazine

Consumer confidence is down, so why are Americans spending more? - By Daniel Gross - Slate Magazine

A fine and sensible analysis.

Review: Icon CJ3B more than the sum of its impressive parts — Autoblog

Review: Icon CJ3B more than the sum of its impressive parts — Autoblog

There is nothing like a thing built with a true passion for quality. It's great when someone cares about the details.

We All Had To Update Firefox Because Of Farmville Users

We All Had To Update Firefox Because Of Farmville Users

Is this really what the browser had become, a place where people can slack off at work with games like Farmville? I'm ashamed for us all.

Gates ask billionaires to give away wealth

Buffett, Gates ask billionaires to give away wealth Reuters

Wow, this is pretty incredible. It's pretty obvious the capitalist system has serious flaws, all you need for proof is to look at the increasing disparity between the upper and lower economic strata, but perhaps, if rich people can do things like this, the world isn't a place where all that matters is money?

10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account

10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account

Perhaps this guy is right, perhaps we should all remove ourselves from Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg does seem like a knob.

Tom Coburn Knocks Fox News, Says Nancy Pelosi is a "Nice Person" - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Tom Coburn Knocks Fox News, Says Nancy Pelosi is a "Nice Person" - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Here is someone who disagrees with the current administration but also disagrees with the nutcases at Fox News. I applaud his courage for speaking out like this, and I'm sad that such behavior is unusual.

Mozilla Stops Development of Firefox for Windows Mobile - PCWorld

Mozilla Stops Development of Firefox for Windows Mobile - PCWorld

Microsoft, I thought you were leaving this silly anti-competitive behavior behind you. All you're doing is strengthening your competition. This was truly a bad play.

This just in: Twitter still sucks

Puppy! - Joel on Software:

Thanks for all the great articles Joel, and thanks for this jem:

"Although I appreciate that many people find Twitter to be valuable, I find it a truly awful way to exchange thoughts and ideas. It creates a mentally stunted world in which the most complicated thought you can think is one sentence long. It’s a cacophony of people shouting their thoughts into the abyss without listening to what anyone else is saying. Logging on gives you a page full of little hand grenades: impossible-to-understand, context-free sentences that take five minutes of research to unravel and which then turn out to be stupid, irrelevant, or pertaining to the television series Battlestar Galactica. I would write an essay describing why Twitter gives me a headache and makes me fear for the future of humanity, but it doesn’t deserve more than 140 characters of explanation, and I’ve already spent 820."

Tea party candidates falling short - Alex Isenstadt - POLITICO.com

Tea party candidates falling short - Alex Isenstadt - POLITICO.com

Fox News, your tea party is a complete joke.

Frank Ahrens: Why it's so hard for Toyota to find out what's wrong - washingtonpost.com

Frank Ahrens: Why it's so hard for Toyota to find out what's wrong - washingtonpost.com: "'It is well-known in our community that there is no scientific, firm way of actually completely verifying and validating software.'"

A lot of people don't know or understand this. Finding bugs is a statistical game, and the definition of "bug" changes with environmental conditions.

Chicxulub Impact Effects

Chicxulub Impact Effects

This website is pretty cool, it shows the effects on our planet of the asteroid stike that killed the dinosaurs.

You'll need to have Google Earth installed, along with a plugin, in order to see the maps, which are impressive. The asteroid was 7.45 miles wide and hit at 44,460 miles per hour, far in excess of the Mexican speed limit.

Good riddance to YOU - Fortune Brainstorm Tech

Good riddance to YOU - Fortune Brainstorm Tech

Even though I blog, I have to say I appreciate this guy's perspective quite a bit. There really is a lot of garbage out there, and what I generate is probably no exception.

'Spygate' teenager demands webcam pix from Pa. school

'Spygate' teenager demands webcam pix from Pa. school

This guy, 16 year old Blake Robbins, and his supportive parents, are heroes in the battle for personal privacy.

His parents are heroes for letting him represent himself in front of the media, and he's a hero for not backing down to the over the top emotional display Lindy Matsko, his assistant vice principal, recently engaged in.

From Blake: "This case is not about Ms. Matsko or us.  It is about the decision of the Lower Marion School District to put cameras in our homes."

Video of Matsko: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local-beat/WebcamGate__Raw_Video_of_Lindy_Matsko_s_Statement_Philadelphia.html


Video of Blake's response: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local-beat/WebcamGate__Raw_Video_of_Blake_Robbins__Statement_Philadelphia.html

Neither are great public speakers, but Blake is 16!

Let me Google that for you

If you use lmgtfy.com to search for the text "Let me Google that for you," do you cause a vortex that makes the universe implode?

Let's find out! Click here*.


*Disclaimer:
JamieLaing.com and it's affiliates are not responsible for unintentional merge with universal singularity. Also not responsible if, in that singularity, you experience the rest of eternity within the scalding husk of a robot in hell, or get bored sitting in heaven, an endless hall-of-mirrors ride where you are forced to listen to Roddy McDowall forever.

Jobs Graph - Bush and Obama years

Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything

Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything:

"Nanopool" owns the patent. Should a person purchase stock in this company?

New England Journal of Medicine Study Finds Cognition in Vegetative Patients - WSJ.com

New England Journal of Medicine Study Finds Cognition in Vegetative Patients - WSJ.com:
"Study Finds Cognition in Vegetative Patients"

This is amazing and, I think, reinforces what I said about pattern matching and sentience a couple of posts ago.

It's also tragic and horrifying, being trapped in your own body all this time, aware but unable to communicate.

Reader, you have much to be thankful for.

Transparent, nanowire based touch screen

Sensitive enough to detect your breath? That's sensitive. (More)

And look, it's made in Portugal.

Pattern matching and sentience

We are pattern matching machines, like all creatures that hunt or evade. That's a big group. In fact, I can't think of a creature that doesn't engage in one of those two activities. Even a significant number of plants hunt or evade, and while those behaviors are simplistic and devoid of neural activity, they still involve pattern matching at the chemical level.

So, the activity is out there, and it's a major part of the business of being alive. We humans are exceptionally adept pattern matchers. We love the activity. When you look at stars and see the shapes of animals or Greek gods, you're engaged in pattern matching, and your appreciation of art and music are based on it as well.

As sentient creatures, we are isolated, having little or no contact with similarly gifted creatures as we poke about our planet and the surrounding area. Sure, there are gorillas that can use sign language and some other mammals may approach self awareness, but those cases are not clear cut. The isolation we therefore suffer makes it easy for us to distort our perception of ourselves until we think pattern matching is a sentient only behavior. We need to be mindful of this mistake, as it only strengthens the gulf we already feel between ourselves and the rest of nature, and reinforces our overall smug attitude as a species.

China, Freedom, and Google

When I see articles like this one about Google's potential decision to lift the censorship of search results in China, I get a feeling of real hope. It almost makes one believe all the dreams we bandied about during the goofy days when the internet was young and anything seemed possible.

What I really like is the idea that Chinese people are gathering at Google's offices in Beijing to demostrate support. That's fantastic!

Could it be that totalitarianism is actually impractical in an age of information?

John is prepared for NYE.

Morning

Happy Birthday Liba!

Sent from my HTC

Missed the plane...

But rerouted and now running less than an hour late.

Travel tip: tip the skycap like a mofo and watch him smooth talk the ticketing manager. Also it helps if he has the hots for your girfriend.

Sent from my HTC

Who is this man? It's Frank Robaina, international man of mystery. Frank, for coming over for dinner tonight, and dropping off the awesome comic books, thants.

We'll be sure to text you all the gruesome details of our journey.

We need real surveillance oversite

I just read a fantastic blog post written by Christopher Soghoian.

In it, Christopher reviews the current conditions of electronic surveillance, particularly cell phone surveillance, in our country.

If you've watched a spy thriller in the past ten years, you've been exposed to fantastic and far fetched scenarios depicting people being traced, wire or wirelessly tapped, and spatially located with great fidelity, and these actions are always performed without the authorization or notification of a judge.

It's important that we all realize this is not fiction.

A rational person will probably agree that a certain amount of this sort of capability is in the best interest of our nation and it's citizenry. The problem is, what limits should be put on this tremendous power? If the law enforcement agencies are routinely ignoring reporting and disclosure laws as Christopher convincingly argues, what's to stop those agencies from inappropriate use?

Nothing. The answer is NOTHING.

This is why we, as citizens, need to get involved. We need to ask uncomfortable questions of the people who represent us in government and the people who protect us in law enforcement, and we need to let our fellow citizens understand this situation.

It wasn't that long ago that a guy took control of a democratic nation and then decided to systematically exterminate five million Jews. Granted, Hitler used strong-arm tactics and back-room deals to win his election. Forgive me if the Nazi reference seems overly dramatic, but shouldn't we legally limit the ability of members of our society to engage in strong-arm and back-room activities, particularly when technology makes these activities so powerful?

space wrap

Sara Palin supporters speak out

Warning: the video you are about to watch is shocking.

Just kidding, I mean, do you expect Palin supporters to be articulate?

Sony, Samsung, Mitsubishi and Panasonic agree on 3D technology?

Ready or not, the latest 3D technology is coming home -- Engadget

I guess all those people who bought HDTVs early on have a good excuse to send those boxes to the landfill. I can't wait to get a 3D movie camera, what fun. Does this mean I'll also have to buy an Xbox 720?

Everyman Offers New Directions in Online Maps - NYTimes.com

Everyman Offers New Directions in Online Maps - NYTimes.com

The dream of the free internet, powered by, and uplifting to "the people" remains alive and well. Thank goodness for Google, and companies that are willing to do what others find insane: turn the whole ownership model on it's head and put data in the hands of the people. Things like this give a person hope.

Google Offers a Peek at the Chrome Operating System - NYTimes.com

Google Offers a Peek at the Chrome Operating System - NYTimes.com

Google started picking up operating system programmers a few years ago, fueling speculation that they'd come out with their own. Looks like it's happened! 7 seconds is a great boot time, but this thing sounds a little light. It'll be interesting to watch this play out.

I'm wondering when a new Linux based contender is going to come out. I'd been under the impression that Mac OS X was based on a Linux core, but prior to posting this I wanted to double-check that assumption and I discovered it's not the case. In fact, Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernal says the OS X core is a piece of crap, so I was very wrong in that impression.

64 bit Windows 7

Windows 7. I've felt guilty about how much I like the product. I've sold my soul to Microsoft over the years, but I'd always held out something like disdain for the suite of products, feeling like my becoming a prostitute for Microsoft was a merely pragmatic decision.

Sure, I've loved C# and much of the Dotnet universe, but the operating systems were just a means to an end. I looked at the Mac operating systems since the olden days, and something there felt soft and fluffy, not like a real tool built for real work, other than artsy stuff.

Then Windows 7 comes along, and I feel guilty for my giddiness. You're not supposed to love an operating system! Get back to work dammit! But the love is there, and it has grown since I started using it when the Beta came out this spring.

I'm running Win7 Ultimate 64 bit on a dual core 2.8 GHz CPU with 4 GB of RAM. Who cares right? Those numbers aren't anything special. But last night, working late, I was tearing my hair out because converting video from AVCHD format to standard SD DVD using Sony Picture Utility was taking absolutely forever on my fairly beefy home machine running XP. Desperate, I installed the software on my laptop to see how it and Win7 would fare.

What did I find? Well it still takes about 45 minutes to convert an hour of video, but the great thing about the Win7 experience was that both cores were fully lit up. It felt like magic. On my XP box, only one core took the conversion thread and only one core was maxed out. But good old 64 bit Win7 used the whole chip, and I was delighted.

Today though, I thought to myself, isn't this what Mac users have had for years?

Facebook vs "the ocean of Google applications"

I'm not a big Facebook fan, although I do have a Facebook presence. As a long-term web user, I chafed at FB when it came out because it just seemed too fluffy and dorky to be of any real value.

After using it a bit, I've been very impressed with the FB ability to connect me to people I used to know. I think that might really be the beginning and the end of the utility there though. There are some decent picture posting capabilities, but other than that the features have low value. How many times do you want to send someone a "virtual beer" anyway? It's nonsense.

In an effort to stop throwing money out the window, I started exploring alternatives to keeping a server running all the time. As a Dotnet consultant, the server was invaluable for demonstrating, developing and testing software. Now that I'm not doing consulting work, the server is just a waste, so I decided to host my site completely at Google, as I mentioned earlier.

It's been great. Moving to Google servers has increased the features I can access in my blog, and it's opened a panoply of interconnected services like Picasa image hosting, custom Gmail through Google Apps, the promise of Google Voice, and the integration of my presence across all these services- all very nice.

As I look back to Facebook though, I can see that most people aren't going to go through the work, simple though it is, to connect all these things. It seems like what Google needs is something a little more similar to a Facebook page. A little tighter integration across the offerings. I think they're getting there, and wanting to get there, but it's not "fall off a log" simple like Facebook is.

Onward, into the cloudy future

After hosting my own server for, well, years I guess it is, I've finally decided to make the switch to the cloud.  Google now hosts my website at blogger.com, and I'm running my email through Google Apps, which brings all those nifty little Google App widgets like calendaring and contact management and whatnot.

I've also taken down my name servers and pushed that to Network Solutions, which was the only part of the proces sthat was ever so mildly painful.  I also work with GoDaddy and life seems a little easier and less buggy there.

We'll see how it goes, but Outlook is working flawlessly with IMAP to my new Googley email server(s).

Whee.

Here is a nice video for Halloween...

Output Active Directory LDAP user properties to MS Word

Sometimes you want to generate Outlook signatures automatically using a users's Active Directory data. There are plenty of articles on how to do this during a user login event, but I thought I'd pass along some code in C#, because almost everything out there is in VBscript, which is fine but I'm sick of using scripts and there are certain tricks you cannot pull, like making an image, like a logo or a twitter button, into a link within the signature.  For that, you'll need the full Word Interop.

Here is a little function that will get you through the part I found trickiest.  Note that you'll need to add the following references:

• Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word
• System.DirectoryServices
• System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement...

*************************************

using Word = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word;

using System.DirectoryServices;
using System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement;

protected void PrintLdapProperties()
{

Word.Application oApplication = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application();
oApplication.Visible = true;

if (oApplication == null)
{
return;
}

string strDistinguishedName = UserPrincipal.Current.DistinguishedName;
DirectoryEntry oEntry = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://" + strDistinguishedName);
System.DirectoryServices.PropertyCollection oColl = oEntry.Properties;
Object oMissing = System.Type.Missing;
Word.Document oDocument = oApplication.Documents.Add(ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing);
Word.Selection oSelection = oApplication.Selection;

int NumRows = 2;
int NumColumns = 2;

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Table oTable = oSelection.Tables.Add(oSelection.Range, NumRows, NumColumns, ref oMissing, ref oMissing);

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Cell oCell = oTable.Cell(1, 1);

int i = 1;

foreach (string strPropertyName in oColl.PropertyNames)

{

oCell.Select();
oSelection.TypeText(strPropertyName);
oCell.Next.Select();
oSelection.TypeText(oColl[strPropertyName].Value.ToString());
oTable.Rows.Add(ref oMissing);
oCell = oTable.Cell(i + 1, 1);
i++;

}

}

World premier dance event at Ravinia this week...

Ravinia has commissioned a Lincoln themed dance event which premiers this week. The production process is being filmed by Kartemquin films for a documentary.




Performance details...
http://www.ravinia.org/ViewDate.aspx?date=9/17/2009

Early Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late: Scientific American

VINDICATED AT LAST!

I'm so tired of those early risers lording over me with that nasty worm they caught. Well I hope you enjoyed that sunrise you watched because I've got a Redbull in my fridge and I'm gonna do things to you while you're sleeping.

Early Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late: Scientific American

District 9 was great

Blomkamp, the director of District 9 references Aliens and Bladerunner as two of his favorite sci-fi movies, and they are mine also. He did a superb job of living up to the high bar set by those films, an amazing feat for any director. Blomkamp created a complete, believable environment populated with realistic characters, this movie does a great job of getting you to question our own sub-conscious “racism” against the unfamiliar.

I don't usually think of Roger Ebert as daft, but in his review, I was surprised that he totally missed the point of the ugliness of the aliens when he says “I’ll be interested to see if general audiences go for these aliens. I said they’re loathsome and disgusting, and I don’t think that’s just me.” Well duh, the movie is working to get the viewer to test empathy boundaries, and you can't do that with freakin Ewoks you knob.

I love sci-fi movies, yet most stink on almost every level. At last, another director, like Cameron, who knows how to tell a great story, keep things realistic, and avoid cliche. Please Blomkamp, make more sci-fi for us, your planet needs you!

On the lawn at Ravinia, Yo Yo Ma lawn screen night

Waiting for Liba to arrive via Metra, enjoying a Heineken...

IE8 breaks Microsoft Update

I've been running IE8 on about 12 different machines, and you want to know the really absurd bug I've found on all those installations? IE8 breaks the Microsoft Update website! Ha, you have to run the site in compatibility mode.

Isn't that sad?

Microsoft Update

Swine flew spending a waste?

"About 11,500 people are killed everyday from AIDS, malaria and TB. Swine flu has taken about 816 lives since April, according to a WHO tally."

More

Gambling, free will, and operant conditioning

B.F. Skinner is the type of psychologist a modern, science minded person can relate to. No guilt-based Freudian mumbo jumbo from this guy. Unfortunately, some of his beliefs are a bit depressing, like the one describes late in this video, where he questions the existence of free will in humans.

His observations on gambling are fantastic- variable and infrequent reward schedules create dramatic responses in animals, including humans.

Another hard day at the H1N1 disassembly area...

What we need is more designer anti-infection wear. Shouldn't this have a Hugo Boss logo on there?

"Bobby" Jindal is the new face of the Republican party? Someone over there needs to hire a media consultant or something.



Rachel Maddow provided a good response:

Nukes vs. Massive Nukes

I've been watching old 1950's SciFi of late and I've been reminded of a term that you don't really hear anymore- the "H-Bomb". This bomb was a massive "upgrade" from previous nuclear bombs, being vastly more destructive. Many military minds thought it was ridiculous from a tactical perspective. The problem with it is the explosion is so large you can't really use it on the front line of a conventional war, because you'd wipe out your own troops. This bomb is really meant for wiping out civilians far behind battle lines.

Poking around the web I found this image of the first nuclear explosion, code named "Trinity," a project managed by J. Robert Oppenheimer. I also found out that Oppenheimer was very much opposed to building the H-bomb, or super-bomb. Los Alamos has a bit about it here.

I think J. Robert had some serious misgivings about what he'd birthed, at least he seems a little reluctant in this video. We should all be thankful the H-bomb has never been deployed.

My new favorite website

I get lots of questions from people, often technical. Quite often I don't know the answer, but I always have an answer quickly. I've been sending links to Google search results as answers to questions for a long time. Now, I can send a link to a page where the question answerer can actually watch the search get typed in.

Your answer is out there, just waiting to be discovered...

My new favorite website: http://letmegooglethatforyou.com

Thanks Ted, for sending me that link!

Colin Powel on Islamophobia

"I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as 'Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well the correct answer is 'He is not a Muslim, he's a Christian, he's always been a Christian.' But the really right answer is 'What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?' The answer is 'No. That's not America.' Is there something wrong with some 7-year old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo-essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in you can see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American, he was born in New Jersey, he was 14 at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he can go serve his counrty and he gave his life."

Internet searches may improve brain function

I've been a big fan of internet searches, Google searches in particular, since the 1990s. Web searches have changed my life- by searching the web I have learned things that have launched me on a new, very fun and satisfying career.

When I compare myself to other people, it appears I am a person who has trouble storing particular types of information, specifically proper nouns; people names and street names are particularly difficult for me. Other types of information, often completely useless, I store with great ease.

While I have a hard time storing this data, which might just be a bunch of garbage anyway, I have a great love of uncovering data and getting to the bottom of how things work.

I remember thinking the card catalog at the library was a fairly cool thing, and as kid I spent many hours looking through card catalogues by subject, learning how to use them better. It was just fun. So clearly, I was a web search fanatic waiting to happen.

When web searching started, I dove right in asking questions of the search engine as if it were some sort of genie in a bottle. Of course this is a silly way to search, which trial and error quickly revealed.

The real way to search is to think about how people will write about the problem you are trying to reasearch. Somewhere, there is a set of keywords that will get you right to the answer of your question, and those words do not include things like "the" or "and" or "is", unless you are searching for a quote or song lyrics.

This is pretty straightforward stuff, and I mention it to point out the idea that as you search, you get better at searching, and you think about the problem of searching differently as time goes by.

A study has come out that point to the idea that web searches are actually good for your brain, and good for old brains. It just gives me that warm fuzzy feeling to know that my addiction is actually good for me.

Below is the article:

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7667610.stm

Article:

Internet use 'good for the brain'

Areas activated by reading a book in the brain of an experienced web user
For middle-aged and older people at least, using the internet helps boost brain power, research suggests.

A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulated centres in the brain that controlled decision-making and complex reasoning.

The researchers say this might even help to counteract the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.

The study features in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

As the brain ages, a number of changes occur, including shrinkage and reductions in cell activity, which can affect performance.

It has long been thought that activities which keep the brain active, such as crossword puzzles, may help minimise that impact - and the latest study suggests that surfing the web can be added to the list.

Lead researcher Professor Gary Small said: "The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerised technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults.

"Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function."

The latest study was based on 24 volunteers aged between 55 and 76. Half were experienced internet users, the rest were not.

Each volunteer underwent a brain scan while performing web searches and book-reading tasks.

Both types of task produced evidence of significant activity in regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities.

However, the web search task produced significant additional activity in separate areas of the brain which control decision-making and complex reasoning - but only in those who were experienced web users.

The researchers said that, compared to simple reading, the internet's wealth of choices required people to make decisions about what to click on in order to get the relevant information.

However, they suggested that newcomers to the web had not quite grasped the strategies needed to successfully carry out a web search.

Professor Smith said: "A simple, everyday task like searching the web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older."

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: "These fascinating findings add to previous research suggesting that middle-aged and older people can reduce their risk of dementia by taking part in regular mentally stimulating activities.

"Older web users - 'silver surfers' - are doing precisely this."

"Frequent social interactions, regular exercise and maintaining a balanced diet can also reduce dementia risk."

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said: "Use it or lose it may well be a positive message to keep people active but there is very little real evidence that keeping the brain exercised with puzzles, games or other activities can promote cognitive health and reduce the risk of dementia."

David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign

Italian robot

An Italian candidate for the Google X Lunar Prize:

(more)



Note: Very good moves and looks, but those little feet are going to have problems in dust, particularly the teeny little wheels. A Lamborghini might drive better on the moon.

Interesting robot motion

An Italian candidate for the Google X Lunar Prize:

Morbo on politics.

Linda: “And so with two weeks left in the campaign, the question on everyone’s mind is, who will be the president of Earth? Jack Johnson or bitter rival John Jackson. Two terrific candidates, Morbo?”
Morbo: “All humans are vermin in the eyes of Morbo!”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Morbo: “Morbo will now introduce tonights candidates. Puny human number one, puny human number two and Morbo’s good friend Richard Nixon.”
Nixon: “Hello Morbo. How’s the family?”
Morbo: “Belligerent and numerous.”
Nixon: “Good man, Nixon’s pro-war and pro-family.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Morbo: “Morbo demands an answer to the following question. If you saw a delicious candy in the hands of a small child. Would you seize and consume it?”
John Jackson: “Unthinkable.”
Jack Johnson: “I wouldn’t think of it.”
Morbo: “What about you Mr. Nixon? I remind you. You are under of a truth-o-scope.”
Nixon: “Question is vague. You don’t say what kind of candy and whether anyone is watching. In anyway I certainly wouldn’t harm the child.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Linda: “The sheer drama of this election has driven voter turnout to it’s highest level in centuries, six percent.”
Morbo: “Exit poll show evil underdog Richard Nixon trailing with estimated zero votes.”
Linda: “The time is 7:59 and the robot polls are now opening. And robot votes are now in. Nixon has won.”
Morbo: “Morbo congratulates our gargantuan cyborg president. May death come quickly to his enemies.”