- Category Archives Computers
Imagine a life with no computers……ahhhh……bliss…..
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Home sweet home.
As is my custom I take a photo of the wingtip of every plane I fly in…..
So, here is the trip up;
Since I had a bit of time, I messed about in one of the (many) photo editing apps on my Android phone.
I know its a bit warn out, but the old / faded look sort of fits.The trip was a success. All our gear went in and worked like it was supposed to.
Time will tell if we get many sales from it or not, as one of the guys back in the hospital used to say ‘you have to speculate to accumulate’.
The only ‘downer’ was the fact that the last guy in the room next to me left his alarm clock set for 1:45am. I let it run for a bit thinking that the software guy of the company that made the thing would have programmed it to turn off after 15 minutes…. No, he just left the code open…..
I really should have called the front desk rather than just put up with it, but I didn’t, so did not get a lot of sleep, but, thats not all that new for me.The trip home was pretty uneventful. I got a great seating allocation (A4), my best ever, so got a window seat up front.
It was a bit bumpy heading out, but soon settled down.
For the trip home I was lucky to get one of the new X-wing planes.
As usual, once we got home, things got humming.
We have two work experience guys from a technical high school in San Markos with us for 3 weeks.
Im getting them to work on one of the projects that has been on my to-do list for a while. It will be great for them as it should be doable for them to start it and finish in it in the three weeks. They should be able to go back to their class and show their work on the internet, and I will be much further along on that project.
In other news, I have started to try and learn Java. Another of the projects on my list centers around getting my head around Google Web Toolkit with uses Java.
Enough to say that it will help with what the work experience guys are working on, with one of our other projects and also on getting content on iphone, ipads and of course Androids.
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Robot 1, human 0
These self turning off ‘robots’ have been around for years, yeah, I have watched more than my fair share of them (thats enough outa you Amy and Terry)…..
I thought this one would be the same… and it sure started out that way….. In the end, I laughed out loud, a somewhat rare event when it comes to youtube videos. (and some would say in real life too).Anyway, here it is…..
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This ones for Dad.
Wow, how much would my Dad love this thing???
I call my Dad every Monday (our time, Tuesday his time) and we talk for around an hour. Of course there are often a bunch of emails that go back and forth a lot as well.
Most of the time (but certainly not all of the time) we talk tech. Be it wind generators, solar panels, inverters, battery chargers and all the usual sort of stuff that two blokes can get up to on opposite sides of the planet.
Often times we will be brainstorming a problem that Dad has. I know what tools he has on hand and so its always fun to try and help him use what he has to get the problem solved (or get around it).
One of the most important tools is a scope. In the old days it was called a CRO, cathode ray oscilloscope.
They really were little tv sets with a bunch of dials on them. Point is, it was (and still is) the only way you can see what the signal is doing. i.e. See electricity.
Dad does not have one. Well, he does, but it really could have done double duty as an anchor for the Titanic (its about the right age too), so it does not get a lot of use.
Also there are issues with running a scope off the same voltage as you are trying to fix. And since Dad’s place runs off batteries and inverters, most of the power is common some how.Which is a really long winded wind up to this little sucker…..
http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/07/osciums-imso-104-turns-ipad-iphone-into-mixed-signal-oscillosc/Very very very cool. Totally out of our price range. But its new and I’m sure in time the original ipad will come much further down in price and this attachment will also come down as well, but for now, its just really exciting to see such a thing become available.
To me, this is the real power of the tablet computer. Sure you can surf the web on them, but you can do that on your laptop… a laptop is not as portable or have such an amazing battery life as a tablet. So when you turn a tablet into a real useful electronics tool, I get all excited.One day Dad, one day……
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Blog Nav
My Dad asked a really good question the other day…..
He noticed that some of my blogs get a little long and push older entries off the page, he wanted to know how to get back to them… so here then is a run down on how to navigate my blog.1. Hover or click on the blue dates on the calender.
Each blue date is a day that I have blogged on, if you hover over them with your mouse, there is a little pop up that shows the title of the blog for that day. Click on the month at the bottom of the calender to move through time a little quicker.
2. Some times I link to other blog entries in my blog, the clickable links show up in blue.
3. Use the search. For example, put the word mega in the search will show up the three mega blogs I have done, which brings me to the last point……
4. If you search for mega and scroll down, you will see that it gets chopped off. This is because the blog is just embeded in my site and I have to put a limit on the window length. If you open the blog in its own window, you dont have this problem.
To open the blog in its own window, just right click on the title or banner ‘Blog of a bald geek’ and select ‘open in new window’ or ‘open in new tab’ (depending on which browser you use). If you have a center click mouse, you can just middle click on the banner as well.Thanks for the question Dad, hope that gets you what you were looking for. If not, just ask my clock.