http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKORsrlN-2k
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Scalable for greater power needs
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Category Archives: Technology
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Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
iPad Air 2
Yesterday I stopped by the local Apple Store and purchased an iPad Air 2, gold, with 128GB storage, and a cellular connection (Verizon). Compared to my old original iPad or even my nearly two year old iPhone 5s … wow. The two benchmarks above are from Geekbench 3 run on my new Air 2. My original iPad isn’t even listed.
I had read the reviews and watched the videos, but they do not do justice to the thinness, lightness, and performance of the iPad Air 2. I am very, very impressed.
Landing Zone 1
The post was originally titled Landing Complex 1, however SpaceX now refers to it as Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1).
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Canaveral_Air_Force_Station_Launch_Complex_13
Where have I been?
Maggie asked me where I had been in a comment to the previous post.
Hmm … yeah … well …
Work … home … hospital … doctor appointments … road trip … life.
Mrs was briefly hospitalized due to an MS flare up. Followed by endless doctor appointments.
Despite the drop in the price of oil and the associated domestic oil industry cutbacks and drilling curtailment, I still have a job. Many of my friends and associates weren’t so lucky. Still waiting for the other shoe to fall.
Took a road trip to Denver for a wedding that almost didn’t happen due to a lost pet. Long story.
Saw a big wiener …
Drove through Roswell.
Saw the place I lived in during college. My how it has changed (more on that in a later post).
Ate breakfast near the Denver Capitol.
Drove home through Waco and visited the Texas Ranger Museum then drove out to McGreggor to find the SpaceX test facility.
The guards politely told us to turn around and leave. The guard shack looked new, but they wouldn’t let me take a picture of it or the big SpaceX sign in front of it. Talk about high security. I’ll have to be satisfied with the YouTube tour.
The security was obviously much higher than when this next video was filmed in 2010.
18 companies driving the new space age
Excellent article on the future of space travel. Includes companies I’ve never heard of as well as my old favorites.
Escargot
After reading I want x2, wherein I comment on test driving the bullet-fast Tesla Model S P85D, my lifelong friend emailed me and commented:
Just be glad that you can’t afford it, because everybody will call you a snail …
… they’ll say “Look at that escargot!”
🙂
Now you know where my pun-ishing skills come from.
I want x2
I just test drove a Tesla S P85D (see next post)
At a standing stop, fully depressing the accelerator is like driving an ejection seat. (Never having been in an ejection seat)
It’s got everything one might expect and a lot one wouldn’t for a $130k driving machine.
I want
Guess which one …
Walther Weed Whacker
Cold, wet, rainy, miserable. It’s late fall / early winter on the Texas Gulf Coast. Temperature in the 50s for the foreseeable future. Add to this that the backyard of Cat Beard Manor has become quite junglefied. The Calla Lilies have encroached the walkway to the back door. I’m carrying in all of the groceries from our Christmas food shopping and getting tired of brushing against the cold wet leaves each time I go in and out the back door.
But wait, I have the Walther® Mach Tac 1 Machete given to me over the summer. Never had a use for it. My trailblazing days are but a distant memory.
It was like attacking warm butter with a searing-hot knife. So very satisfying. Like spindly-legged green zombies hacked off at the ankles. I’ll clear the carnage away later when it’s drier.
See also:
X Marks the Spot
Via email from
X Marks the Spot: Falcon 9 Attempts Ocean Platform Landing
During our next flight, SpaceX will attempt the precision landing of a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time, on a custom-built ocean platform known as the autonomous spaceport drone ship. While SpaceX has already demonstrated two successful soft water landings, executing a precision landing on an unanchored ocean platform is significantly more challenging.
The odds of success are not great—perhaps 50% at best. However this test represents the first in a series of similar tests that will ultimately deliver a fully reusable Falcon 9 first stage.
Video of previous first stage reentry test with soft water landing
Returning anything from space is a challenge, but returning a Falcon 9 first stage for a precision landing presents a number of additional hurdles. At 14 stories tall and traveling upwards of 1300 m/s (nearly 1 mi/s), stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for reentry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm.
To help stabilize the stage and to reduce its speed, SpaceX relights the engines for a series of three burns. The first burn—the boostback burn—adjusts the impact point of the vehicle and is followed by the supersonic retro propulsion burn that, along with the drag of the atmosphere, slows the vehicle’s speed from 1300 m/s to about 250 m/s. The final burn is the landing burn, during which the legs deploy and the vehicle’s speed is further reduced to around 2 m/s.
Landing legs deployed just before soft water landing in the Atlantic Ocean
To complicate matters further, the landing site is limited in size and not entirely stationary. The autonomous spaceport drone ship is 300 by 100 feet, with wings that extend its width to 170 feet. While that may sound huge at first, to a Falcon 9 first stage coming from space, it seems very small. The legspan of the Falcon 9 first stage is about 70 feet and while the ship is equipped with powerful thrusters to help it stay in place, it is not actually anchored, so finding the bullseye becomes particularly tricky. During previous attempts, we could only expect a landing accuracy of within 10km. For this attempt, we’re targeting a landing accuracy of within 10 meters.
A key upgrade to enable precision targeting of the Falcon 9 all the way to touchdown is the addition of four hypersonic grid fins placed in an X-wing configuration around the vehicle, stowed on ascent and deployed on reentry to control the stage’s lift vector. Each fin moves independently for roll, pitch and yaw, and combined with the engine gimbaling, will allow for precision landing – first on the autonomous spaceport drone ship, and eventually on land.
Similar steerable fins can also be seen in this test video:
The attempt to recover the first stage will begin after stage separation, once the Dragon spacecraft is safely on its way to orbit. The concept of landing a rocket on an ocean platform has been around for decades but it has never been attempted. Though the probability of success on this test is low, we expect to gather critical data to support future landing testing.
A fully and rapidly reusable rocket—which has never been done before—is the pivotal breakthrough needed to substantially reduce the cost of space access. While most rockets are designed to burn up on reentry, SpaceX is building rockets that not only withstand reentry, but also land safely on Earth to be refueled and fly again. Over the next year, SpaceX has at least a dozen launches planned with a number of additional testing opportunities. Given what we know today, we believe it is quite likely that with one of those flights we will not only be able to land a Falcon 9 first stage, but also re-fly.
The Race – Backstory
This is the story behind The Race …
Christmas 2003, “Number One Son” gave me the very first Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T1, that he had picked up while studying abroad in Japan. It had not yet been released in the states.
Image courtesy of Steves Digicams
The specs were impressive for the day: 5 mega-pixel, 3.6″w x 2.4″h x 0.8″d (91mm x 60mm x 21mm), 6.3 oz. / 180g. Click on the camera image for a review and detailed specs. My cell phone in 2004 was the standard flip phone. I don’t even recall if it had camera. If it did, it was worthless.
This was the first camera I could carry in my pocket. I could take it everywhere. With the USB cable I could relatively easily transfer pictures from it to my computer. I had QuickTime Pro on my computer and realized that if the pictures were numbered sequentially QuickTime could turn them into a movie. I began to experiment with stop action animation and time lapse photography. The Race is one of my best.
I had to build a holder for the camera in order to mount it to a tripod. The actors were my sons’ Warhammer figures, Russian toy cars I had collected in the 90s while working there, other toy vehicles, a cat toy, and a robotic spider.
The entire video at 6fps (frames per second) is only 30 seconds long. I filmed the actual race first on the 19th of June and then decided to film the starting line sequence the next day to extend the length. I initially used the Beatles Birthday as the soundtrack. The final 30 second cut lived on my work computer for over a decade, copied over with all of my files each time I got a newer PC.
Last week I decided to try to get it onto my iPhone. I guess I could have done a USB iTunes to iPhone transfer, but that would have meant upgrading the decades old iTunes that I never use at work. So I emailed it to myself via Gmail.
It opened fine on my iPhone, but the sound would not play. I opened it in iMovie and then managed to add Birthday to the soundtrack. Here I digress. For reasons unknown iMovie would only recognize recently purchased songs on my iPhone. Here I digress again, I just discovered that you don’t get the iCloud download icon in Music if WiFi is turned off. I can’t find the setting in 8.1.2 to make it visible. Back up one digression, so I repurchased Birthday and used it.
However, when I attempted to save it back to my camera roll I got an error. After many hours of frustration I decided to look for video format converters on the Apple App Store. I ended up buying two:
The Video Converter – Convert videos to and from file formats! by SmoothMobile, LLC https://appsto.re/us/rD2p1.i
MConverter Medias Converter by bill santiago https://appsto.re/us/59UVL.i
I am not endorsing either of these … and there are many others to choose from.
The original version of The Race was in MOV format and needed to be converted to MP4 format. Once done, I could export it to the camera roll. Then I decided that Born To Be Wild would be a better fit. So I redid the 30s clip again.
Now to upload to Vimeo.
All for 30 seconds of audio. How do others get away with uploading entire songs, albums, music videos, movies?
Alas it is what it is. So I searched iTunes for Royalty Free Music, found
Instrumentals for TV Productions, Podcasts, Movies, and Jingles by Royalty Free Music https://itun.es/us/MZVNv
and chose the first recording for the soundtrack. It was 99 cents.
I liked the song enough that I created the looped versions in order to be able to play the entire song
I don’t know anything about DRM (Digital Rights Management), but I have to assume that that 30s clip of Born To Be Wild had a DRM tag that immediately told Vimeo “NO NO NO”. I suppose it could have checked a Shazam-like audio database, but how does that explain all the other entries the are longer and more blatant. I assume there is a way to strip off the DRM tag. I need to investigate this.
There has got to be an affordable way for individuals to license mainstream audio at an affordable price for use in homemade videos posted to the web. See my rant https://contrafactual.com/2014/12/14/21st-century-i-p-2/
Anyway back to the making of The Race. It was old-school “arrange the figures, take a photo, move the figures, take a photo, repeat” … 181 times. I couldn’t walk the next day – my thighs were in agony.
Speaking of old-school, if you haven’t seen it check out the 1979 Wizard of Speed and Time by Mike Jittlov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoLhLn9hVkE
I’ll (click)
be (click)
seeing (click)
you (click)
21st Century I.P.
RANT
Hey Googstapos … To paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, “You’ve got at lot of damn gall to come after folks who include copyrighted music in their YouTube videos when you collect and store FOREVER every damn bit of personal information you can about us to be used against us to try to sell us crap we don’t need!”
OK … That about sums up the rest of this post. This is an incoherent rant. Deal with it.
Weggieboy’s comments on my JOSIV5 post hit a nerve.
Now I am not a lawyer and I don’t even play one on TV, so I have no legal insight here. But consider the following: let’s say
-
I invite you to my house to listen to my LP record of C. W. McCall’s Convoy
I invite you to my house to listen to my 8-track of C. W. McCall’s Convoy
I invite you to my…
View original post 1,050 more words
RMLV
The Race Multi-Loop Variable fps
June 19-20, 2004
181 images originally @ 6fps
Each loop is at at a different fps (frames per second) to display different levels of detail.
Occupy Mars
http://shop.spacex.com/featured/occupy-mars.html
Elon Musk wants to put a million people on Mars.
http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars/
Battle Axe Anyone?
SOG
SOG Specialty Knives and Tools
I am not a collector of knives and tools, per se, but I do appreciate well made technology. SOG is one of these companies … with a history. I discovered SOG while investigating various multi-tools. They have an excellent selection of very well built and functional multi-tools. (http://www.sogknives.com/tactical/multi-tools.html)
After much back and forth I finally decided to order the black Powerduo Multitool shown below.
http://www.sogknives.com/tactical/multi-tools/powerduo-black-oxide.html
Below are some fascinating videos on the history of SOG.
Take point
Interview w/ Spencer Frazier
Remember, try to restrain yourself. You probably don’t need to buy them all.
Orion
Overview
Launch
Splashdown
Automattic
“We are passionate about making the web a better place.”
Discovered this via the iOS app
Me > Settings > About
by touching the www.automattic.com
I did not realize just how much Automattic was into:
WordPress.com
Jetpack
Simplenote
Synchronization
Cloudup
VaultPress
Akismet
Polldaddy
Gravatar
Simperium
Code Poet
WordPress.com VIP
Longreads
WordPress.org
WP for iOS
WP for Android
P2 Theme
BuddyPress
bbPress
WordCamp SF
You are already familiar with some of these products if you blog on WordPress, but there is so much more.
Find out more at www.automattic.com
On the Moon
Merry Critmas
As in Critical mass
Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor. The construction of CP-1 was part of the Manhattan Project, and was carried out by the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. It was built under the west viewing stands of the original Stagg Field. The first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated in CP-1 on 2 December 1942, under the supervision of Enrico Fermi. Fermi described the apparatus as “a crude pile of black bricks and wooden timbers.” It was made of a large amount of graphite and uranium, with “control rods” of cadmium, indium, and silver, and unlike most subsequent reactors, it had no radiation shield or cooling system.
Reference: Wikipedia
December 2nd also just happens to be my birthday.
The Glass Age
I discovered this over at the
Cool high-speed video!
Part 1
Part 2
Astronaut
Guillaume Juin
http://vimeo.com/guillaumejuin
If you enjoyed that, be sure to check out these other ISS time lapse videos on Vimeo.
The Near Future of Space Travel
An Essay
This week saw the crash and burn of two commercial space ships; one manned, the other unmanned. Regardless of how commonplace spaceflight seems to have become it is still dangerous business. As Elon Musk quipped when a SpaceX test vehicle self-destructed (as intended) when something went haywire over the McGregor Texas test site, “Rockets are tricky“.
100th Merlin 1D Engine
In stark* contrast to both Orbital Sciences and United Launch Alliance, both of which use Russian-made main engines, 100% of SpaceX vehicles, are designed, manufactured, assembled, and tested in the U.S. at SpaceX-owned or leased facilities. SpaceX recently announced completion of it 100th Merlin 1D engine in two years.
Russian rocket engines suspected in launch blast
http://m.phys.org/news/2014-10-russian-rocket-blast.html
The AJ26 engines—modified and tested in the U.S.—originally were designed for the massive Soviet rockets meant to take cosmonauts to the moon during the late 1960s.
The massive explosion of the Russian Moon rocket dashed the Russian bid for the Moon. Faulty AJ26 engines … the same used on the Antares booster … most likely caused the Russian Moon rocket explosion. [my comment]
In 2012, SpaceX’s billionaire founder and CEO, Elon Musk, called the Antares rocket “a punchline to a joke” because of the Russian engines. SpaceX, by contrast, makes its own rocket parts.
“I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere,” Musk said in an interview with Wired magazine.
2001 Theatrical Re-Release
2001: A Space Odyssey … Returns
UK Re-release to theaters in November
New Trailer
Original Trailer
Only the big screen can do justice to this film. I hope it comes to the States.
Source: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/10/21/2001-a-space-odyssey-trailer/
See also last year’s post: 2001
Walmart, CVS, others boycott Apple Pay
Think about what they’re doing.” wrote Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on Saturday. “They’re turning off NFC payment systems — the whole thing — only because people were actually using them with Apple Pay. Apple Pay works so well that it even works with non-partner systems. These things have been installed for years and so few people used them, apparently, that these retailers would rather block everyone than allow Apple Pay to continue working.”
…
“I don’t know that CVS and Rite Aid disabling Apple Pay out of spite is going to drive customers to switch pharmacies” writes Gruber. “But I do know that CurrentC is unlikely to ever gain any traction whatsoever.”
CurrentC is the app MCX developed for use on smartphones. Josh Constine gave it a close look in Techcrunch yesterday and came to the same conclusion Gruber did: It’s a system designed not to make consumers’ lives easier, but to do an end run around the credit card companies.
Source: Fortune
Lockheed Compact Fusion Reactor
Can this be real?
The Skunk Works mind-set and “the pace that people work at here is ridiculously fast,” he says. “We would like to get to a prototype in five generations. If we can meet our plan of doing a design-build-test generation every year, that will put us at about five years, and we’ve already shown we can do that in the lab.”
The early reactors will be designed to generate around 100 MW and fit into transportable units measuring 23 X 43 ft. “That’s the size we are thinking of now. You could put it on a semi-trailer, similar to a small gas turbine, put it on a pad, hook it up and can be running in a few weeks,”
Thomas McGuire, AviationWeek interview (see link below)
Wow …
Links
http://m.aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/lockheed-martins-new-fusion-reactor-design-can-change-h-1646578094
http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-bash-lockheed-on-nuclear-fusion-2014-10
Rubicon Technology
With the demise of GT Advanced Technologies, one might ask where Apple will get its Transparent Aluminum? Perhaps more accurately, who is currently supplying Apple with sapphire, since there is some question as to whether GTAT ever got the Mesa Arizona plant up and running.
One answer might be …
To harvest the crystal, we use a very thin diamond-cutting wire.
Pay close attention to the 4:00 minute mark of the following video about Rubicon Technology’s sapphire production.
Perhaps Rubicon was and is the manufacturer of the sapphire Apple uses for the camera lens, fingerprint scanner cover, and watch crystal … with Apple planning to transition to GTAT once production was up to quality and capacity.
Elon Musk
is the next Steve Jobs.
There … I said it.
Where to begin? Have you ever watched a Steve Jobs product unveiling? Watch Elon Musk as he unveils the model D or Dragon V2. They are both on this blog.
Jobs: changed the industry with his first company; Apple.
Musk: changed the industry with his first company; PayPal.
Jobs: was simultaneously CEO of two companies; Apple and Pixar
Musk: is CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and … Solar City.
Jobs: gave us amazing technology that changed our lives
Musk: electric cars, coast to coast free charging stations, freakin’ rocket ships, man. How amazing is that!
Jobs: “the journey is the reward”
Musk: “Mars”
I could go one, but you get the idea.
Elon Musk is the next Steve Jobs.
D
Way Too Long | October 16
The Bloomberg View | GTAT
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-06/apple-sapphire-supplier-breaks
Bottom line of the above article (my words):
Apple loaned GT Advanced Technologies money to build the sapphire plant which GTAT would pay back out of the monies Apple paid for the sapphire. BUT if certain conditions were not met, Apple could demand all of its money back … NOW.
Bloomberg and other analysts interpret this as a collapse in the Apple – GTAT relationship. Very bad for GTAT.
At one dollar a share, GTAT could be a takeover target play … or it could fold its tent and disappear into the night.
Are you a gambler?
Apple Sapphire Supplier GT Advanced Technologies Files For Bankruptcy
Are you a gambler? GTAT announces Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Stock drops 90%, hovering near a dollar. Analysts ringing the death knell. What happened?
Are you a gambler?
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Bent | Consumer Reports
Patently Apple is reporting that Consumer Reports has done their own test regarding bending iPhones.
Click the image above to read the full Patently Apple article.
Much ado about nothing?
25 Years Later
April 11, 2011
Background Radiation
Screen captures from the documentary Pandora’s Promise
The sievert (Wikipedia)
1 Sv = 1 joule/kilogram – a biological effect. The sievert represents the equivalent biological effect of the deposit of a joule of radiation energy in a kilogram of human tissue.
Background radiation is measured in microsieverts per hour (one millionth of a sievert).
Pandora’s Promise
Former anti-nuclear environmentalists reevaluate their position on nuclear power in light of the Fukushima disaster.
They present the past, present, and future of nuclear power including Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Their conclusions will surprise you.
Energy Density
The energy density of fissionable uranium in megajoules/kilogram is 1.7 million times that of gasoline. This one of the reasons for why we cannot choose to ignore nuclear power in our energy mix.
The number of deaths, injured, or sickened from the combined nuclear incidents of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima is less than the annual deaths, injured, or sickened in the coal, oil, solar, or wind industries. The global push to decommission nuclear power plants in wake of Fukushima is driven by baseless fear and media hype.
Suggested blogs and podcasts
uBreakiFix “Official” Bend Test
Apple Responds
Apple Responds to Bendgate
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5883298
Only nine customers (plus one intentional YouTuber) … out of ten million … have complained.
Full statement from Apple:
Our iPhones are designed, engineered and manufactured to be both beautiful and sturdy. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus feature a precision engineered unibody enclosure constructed from machining a custom grade of 6000 series anodized aluminum, which is tempered for extra strength. They also feature stainless steel and titanium inserts to reinforce high stress locations and use the strongest glass in the smartphone industry. We chose these high-quality materials and construction very carefully for their strength and durability. We also perform rigorous tests throughout the entire development cycle including 3-point bending, pressure point cycling, sit, torsion, and user studies. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus meet or exceed all of our high quality standards to endure everyday, real life use.
With normal use a bend in iPhone is extremely rare and through our first six days of sale, a total of nine customers have contacted Apple with a bent iPhone 6 Plus. As with any Apple product, if you have questions please contact Apple.
Take that Moon landing deniers!
Alternatives to the iPhone 6 Plus
Bendgate
Op-Ed
No pictures, no links, no embedded videos.
By now surely you and everyone else in the world has heard of Bendgate. The iPhone 6 Plus can be bent. It’s thin, it’s light, it’s a large, it’s flat, it’s aluminum. The laws of physics and material strength properties apply.
For Apple to have made a phone this large and thin and light and also have it be impervious to bending, one of the following things would have to change: the material the back is made of, the shape of the back, or the thickness of the back.
Thicker aluminum would make it stronger and heavier and more expensive. Titanium would make it stronger but much more expensive. Steel would make it much stronger and much heavier. I can only assume that Apple choose the grade of aluminum that they did based on a combination of strength and price point.
A curved back would make it stronger. A corrugated back would make it much stronger. Either would make it thicker. Either could be considered less aesthetically pleasing.
Making the iPhone 6 Plus thicker or at least making the back thicker would make the phone … well, thicker … and heavier.
There’s another way to make the iPhone 6 Plus stronger and thicker and heavier. Buy a case for it. There are sure to be a variety of cases for the iPhone 6 Plus. Many people religiously buy cases for their phones anyway. Why should this be any different?
If you watch the videos you see that a fair amount of stress must be applied to bend the iPhone 6 Plus. It’s not like you laid it on the table with half of it on the table and half of it off and came back in an hour and found it bent at 90 degrees as if it were in a Salvador Dali painting. You have to try very hard to bend it. Or you have to sit on it. Or do you have to wear very tight pants.
I sport a naked iPhone 5S. It gets its own pocket … in the front. I often take it out of my pocket when I sit down. I don’t want to put it in the case, so I have to be extra careful with it. The same would be true for an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.
This is much ado about nothing. This is in the same category as people who intentionally microwave their phones. Or shoot arrows at them. Or see what it actually takes to destroy them. On YouTube, where the goal is to get as many views as possible.
Might be a good time to buy some AAPL stock, what with the price drop and all …
Bending All The Phones: iPhone 6 vs. HTC One M8 vs. Moto X
Just how “bendy” are other phones?
Bent
After watching this I looked closely at my iPhone 5s …
… sure enough … after a year it has an ever so slight bend at the lower volume switch. I carry it “naked” in my left front pocket. Hmm
Contrafactual 