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Every year the US celebrates my father's birthday with flags :)
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness for all
Happy 5o5 day! May the Fifth be with you.... I plan to sail mine a bit later to celebrate.
Of all the amazing photos which came back from the Artemis II mission – and there were a lot of them – this one is just ... beautiful. Here we have Earth, nicely blotting out our Sun, with Saturn, Mars, and Mercury alongside.
To infinity, and beyond!
All over my house I have stuff which is controlled remotely lights, plugs, switches, you name it. Everything has a little app, every app has an Alexa skill, and so I can use Alexa as my home automation system. Works great. (Under the covers each of these little devices is using WiFi to connect to a cloud server, and the Alexa skill links the device's cloud servers to Amazon's cloud servers...) At Christmas I add to the device count with lights on the roof, an inflatable gnome, candy canes along the drive, etc. All WiFi controlled, all connected to Alexa. At dusk everything comes on automatically, and at midnight everything turns off. Life is good. On my front doors I have a couple of nice wreaths, and they are intertwined with strings of little lights. The lights are battery powered, each driven from a pack of 3 AA batteries. There's a small switch to turn them on and off. But who wants to do that? Too easy! Of course these lights should be connected to Alexa too... Therein lies the problem, the tale, and the solution. My first attempt was to find "battery powered WiFi switches". After a bit they were indeed found. These switches are designed to be fed DC power, which enables the WiFi connection, and which is then conditionally relayed to a device. Unfortunately after a bit of experimentation it turns out 3 AA batteries don't provide enough voltage for the devices to operate. They need at least 5V (the voltage of USB) and 3 AA provide 4.5V. So close. Okay what to do? Well, let's get a battery pack with more voltage! And so this was done. These packs have 6 AA batteries for 9V, and sure enough the WiFi switches worked nicely. But ... the light string is designed for 4.5V, not 9V, and the little lights would not illuminate. So now what to do? Well, let's get a voltage regulator! And so this was done. These little circuits take any DC voltage in and deliver a lower DC voltage out, configurable via a tiny screw. Going from 9V to 4.5V worked. So now we have a 6 AA battery back (9V) connected to a WiFi switch (9V) connected to a voltage regulator (9V -> 4.5V) connected to the light string (4.5V). And sure enough, this worked! Yay. But if that was the end of the story it wouldn't be as good. So here's what happened. It turns out WiFi requires a lot of power. A WiFi radio is not only a receiver, but a transmitter, and it has to be on all the time to stay connected to a network. (Even during the day when the lights are off.) And so the 6 AA batteries only lasted a few hours. Yeah, they are rechargable, but swapping batteries all the time is much worse than flipping a small on/off switch and defeats the whole purpose. So now what to do? Well, clearly WiFi is not the answer, or at least, not the whole answer. The right remote control tech for this kind of application is a radio controlled (RF) switch. Send a signal, and the switch switches on, send it again, it switches off. The battery powered side only needs to be a receiver... much lower power, much simpler. I need RF switches. So this was done. And so now I have two DC transmitters and two DC receivers. On each wreath I connect the batteries to the receiver to the lights, and somewhere else in the house I connect the transmitter to... what? Well, I need a WiFi switch again! So I found a different WiFi switch, with two channels. This is designed to be powered from USB. And this I did; in my office I have a USB power cube (5V) connected to the WiFi switch (5V) connected to the two RF transmitters (also 5V), one on each channel. I connect the WiFi switch to the network, tell it to turn on, the transmitters send a signal to the wreaths. Everything is happy and this works! Um, no it doesn't. The lights on the wreaths come on but then go off and blink and generally act unhappy. After a bit of futzing with a voltage meter, it turns out the original 3 AA battery pack was fine for the lights alone, but the voltage drop with the RF receiver caused the lights to flicker. Actually there was a weird cycle; the "on" signal was sent, the lights would come on, the voltage would drop a bit, the receiver would disconnect, the lights would go off, the voltage would come back up, the receiver would reconnect, the lights would come back on, etc. Not good. So now what? Oh wait, I have the 6 AA battery packs! And the voltage regulators! So on each wreath I configured the 6 AA pack (9V) to the RF receiver (9V) to the voltage regulator (9V -> 4.5V) to the lights (4.5V). And yay, this works!
It works, and not only that it keeps working, because the RF receiver doesn't draw a lot of power. Merry Christmas!
Hi blog public, checking in after a long absence, just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you have a fantastic long weekend and spend it quietly and peacefully with those you love. Readers know I am a huge fan of Randall Munroe and his incomparable xkcd, he recently posted an update to an ongoing series, Fifteen Years, which I think is a perfect sentiment for Thanksgiving.
Interrupting my non-blogging to mark an important milestone: after several years of first crewing for and then driving with her Opa, today Ori sailed her own boat by herself! Watch out sailing world :)
Tera-fying
Where were you? How did you feel? And how do you feel today? 24 years ago, wow...
Merry Christmas Eve!
Hope you all have a wonderful day and eve!
{ Honestly these AI tools are amazing, right? Even a year ago I would have Googled* to find a nice image of "Santa and his family out sailing", would have paged through about 100 of them, picked one, and then maybe even Photoshopped it a bit before posting. Now I just ask Grok or ChatGPT "draw a picture of me and my family sailing with Santa Claus" and poof it does it. If I want to tweak it ("add my nine year old granddaughter") it does so. The tool is so powerful... and it costs almost nothing. Incredible. BTW no idea what that is under the tree ... our cat? A squirrel? A cat with a squirrel? ... but I like it. The sheer randomness of AI is one of its most compelling features 😊 * Google remember them? When we used to search for stuff, and we received a page full of links? }
how did I not know this?
With all the social media and everything it seems everyone knows it's my birthday - possibly you did too - I have received a lot of nice texts and emails and all sorts of other kind of messages. (Did you know some people actually use Facebook Messenger?) Most unusually, two friends even (gasp!) called me on the phone. Thank you all! Each solar orbit is a chance for a little reflection, and mine are always between Thanksgiving and New Years', so it's well placed for this. The older I get the more I appreciate my friends and family and the importance of connected-ness with other people. I haven't made any resolutions yet but appreciating and adding to my friend collection will be one of them. Just this morning I had breakfast with a group of ex-colleagues I first met 28 years ago*. None of us have changed. The world around us *has* changed and particularly the impact of technology on healthcare, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to participate. AI especially has gone from "a lot of promise" to "a lot of real-world applications" at lightning speed. I used to think it was amazing that I lived through "computers" and "PCs" and "the Internet", but then I lived through "mobile" and "the cloud" and wow! And now ... perhaps most significant of all, "AI". What will happen next? Stay tuned... Cheers! Oh, and yes, I am celebrating with a nice dinner w Shirley 😊 * I switched to hex at 40, as I turned on the high order bit
So Grok, what do I look like?
- You might have an interest in technology, innovation, and possibly entrepreneurial activities, given your interactions with figures like Elon Musk and discussions around product use cases and RSS features for podcasting. This suggests you might be someone who keeps up with the latest tech trends or works in a related field. - Your engagement with varied content from media criticism (like your comment on The Babylon Bee), to health (mentioning Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong), to politics (engaging with posts about CNN and Vivek Ramaswamy), indicates you're well-read or at least very engaged with current events and different spheres of public life. - Given this, one might imagine you as someone with a thoughtful appearance, perhaps glasses for reading or working with digital interfaces, dressed in a manner that could be described as smart-casual - comfortable yet ready for a professional or tech-related setting. You might carry a laptop or tablet, or even a smartphone with tech-focused applications. - Your positive engagement with posts around Thanksgiving and general well-wishes might suggest someone with a friendly demeanor, possibly a smile, reflecting an optimistic or at least hopeful outlook on life, technology, and society. However, this is all speculative. If you want a more accurate or personalized depiction, perhaps you could share more specific details or even ask for an image generation based on self-description. Nothing about my family, sailing, cycling, nor software development or healthcare … obviously my X-ing takes place in a limited lane 🙄
Thank you! (I am told, this is a complete sentence ) I just wanted to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! And to thank you for being my friends.
Each year Thanksgiving gives us a chance to reflect on our progress; individually and collectively. We get together with all our family and friends, each vast quantities of great food, and make time to reflect on the past and consider the future. Time always seems to fly (faster every year) and you think back and say "wow was that just a year ago" but then again, so much happens in one year! It's amazing. And continues to get more amazing; when I think about where we were a year ago and what-all has happened since, it's literally hard to believe. This past year was truly one for the books. AI, wow. The election. War. The Olympics! And on a more personal front, we lost my Mom - the last in her generation, my daughter was married, I did a lot of sailing (!) and cycling (!). And a little coding. This past year I've been fortunate to be part of several teams at different companies, each trying to make the world a better place. The work is fun and rewarding, and making new friends along the way is the best part. I've also been a part of different social groups and reconnected with some old friends. I have much for which to be thankful, you-all most of all! Cheers, I hope you have a great weekend, and spend it quietly and peacefully with those you love. "hey ChatGPT, based on what you know about me, create a picture of my family's Thanksgiving dinner" Nailed it =O
Astounding ... and fascinating ...
Fairly recent posts (well last handful, anyway):
For older posts please visit the archive.
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Hello all and Merry Christmas. I am checking in to report on a project to remote control the wreaths on my front door. The Internet doesn't know how to do this, but after a bit of trial-and-error now I do, and so I am adding to the knowledge base :)
Hi everyone, Happy Birthday! To me ... and yes, I am 42 today*!
Based on the information available and your X handle, I can give a speculative description:
Thanksgiving is my favorite Holiday. For many years now I've sent out a "Happy Thanksgiving!" email to all my friends and colleagues (possibly you have been a recipient!) I have a lot of friends, more each year, and many colleagues who have become friends. One of the many things for which I am grateful! 
