Initial smart kitchen programing

Progress Report - Smart Kitchen

I still have the old counter top on the new cabinets. The granite tops won't be here for three more weeks. Since the stove is moved 9 inches to the right, I had to cut the old top to fit.
Removing the old cabinets too about 1 day, Installing the new ones took a day and a half. Plumbing and wiring took much longer than anticipated, but, the water was off for only 1/2 a day and we were only without use of the kitchen for three days. I've completed most of the wiring and all the plumbing. Yesterday, I started on the floor.

When I'm exausted by the remodeling, I work on the program . Here are some of the tiles from my Windows 10 phone. I'll Be able to monitor the frig and freezer temperaturs, and get an alert if they are too high or the doors are left ajar. Windows 10 introduced a new feature called All-Join, that keeps track of the internet of things. So far it looks promising.

Cell phone Tech in a Screwdriver

Can technology change how we use something as mundane as a screwdriver?
Cordless, battery operated screwdrivers have been around for years. But can the hot new tech we find in cell phones revolutionize the way we use cordless screwdrivers?

A ton of wood

First, my kitchen remodeling update.

New hardwood floors for the kitchen soon expanded to the rest of the house. The flooring was delivered on a pallet. Just ahead of a thunderstorm. I had to move 60 packs of hardwood to the garage, That's 34 pounds per pack or 2,040 pounds. ONE TON! I'm feeling my age.

So, my batteries in my old DeWalt are feeling their age. They are NiCad's, and don't hold much charge. I went to get a new battery, but couldn't find the one I needed. Instead, I got a new cordless driver. This one is smaller, and lighter. I figured the lighter weight would help when installing all those kitchen cabinet hinges.

The new DeWALT looks almost toy-like.

Old and New

Four Computer Technologies
1. An LED instead of a light bulb. Yawn...

2. The LED fades slowly to dark 10 seconds after you stop using the driver, just like the lighted keys on many new laptops.  Convenient but not a game changer. It does hint that there is some sort of smart chip in there.

3. The NiCad batteries self drain, degrade and are heavy. So the new lithium battery is a logical improvement you would expect.

4. There is a gyroscope in the screwdriver. Not the spinning wheel type, but an electronic one.

A gyroscope in a screwdriver is a game changer. I thought it was just a sales gimmick., but it really is revolutionary. It takes a bit to get used to it. but after a few minutes, I wondered if I'd ever go back to the old cordless drill.

A microelectromechanical system (MEMS) is an embedded system that integrates electronic and mechanical components at a very small scale.

These chips are in all sorts of video game controllers. They are used in active suspensions systems to prevent SUV from rolling over, and anti-skid systems. If you ever played a race car game on your cell phone where you used the phone as a steering wheel, you were using the gyroscopic MEMS device in the phone.

Lefty Loosey Righty Tighty

Grab the driver and squeeze. The light turns on. but nothing happens. There is no speed control. Slowly turn the driver to the right one degree. The motor begins slowly screwing in the screw. Turn it a little more and it goes faster. You can control the speed and direction just by slowly rotating the handle a few degrees left or right. Jerk the handle quickly one direction or the other to instantly go full speed.

The gyroscope can measure the direction, the degrees of rotation and the speed you rotate the handle.

Why is the speed important? Because it eliminates the need for the torque settings. On the old screwdriver you had to set the torque so you would have enough to turn the screw, but not so much that you would booger up the screw head, strip the threads or break the head off when the screw head is driven home.  When the screw is driven home. and stops, the motor keeps running and the drill tries to rotate in the opposite direction. this kickback can not only damage the screw, it can also injure your wrist or jerk the driver out of your hand.
With the gyroscopic driver when the screw driven home and stops, the handle suddenly begins turning rapidy in the reverse direction. The gyro senses this and reverses and instantly stops the motor. It dies this so quicky the the kickback is less than a degree of rotation. It feels like a small jolt and is much easier on the hand. No buggered up screws or sprained wrists. Prefect for brass screws in kitchen cabinets.

Make a 3D image

Convert a old photo to 3D

Making a 3D image from a 2D photo is easy,

It's not automatic, but you can cut out a person and in a few mouse click get some nice results.  Visit www.3defy.com, then upload a picture and try it yourself.. There is no software to install on your PC, it's all done in your browser. On the right is one of my dad's 35mm slides, I edited it a little to add the black border to make it more interesting, but any photo will work.   This is a picture of me in Mississipp my dad took in 1947, and yes, I really did catch all those on a fifty cent toy pole from the local five and dime.       

Click Here to see the 3D image.

Saving your Family Photos for a Millennium (Part 2)

In my last post, I showed that, once your photos are converted to digital, they must be maintained so that they can be viewed on changing technology. Archivist recommend copying your family photos and related data to new media every few years. some say every 10 years, others say 5 years. In some cases once a year. They say you need to make a commitment to do that. Fine, but what about after you pass from this life? What then? You can't do it for 1,000 years.


In my last post I asked "Which image will last the longest?"
[A] A Kodachrome Slide.
[B] A digital image on a M-Disk.
[C] A sidewalk chalk drawing.

This sounds crazy, but the best answer might be [C].

A farmer had horses for sale. He made a sign on the hillside easily visible to people passing by on a popular route. The farmer spread chalk on the hillside to make a 348 foot long drawing of a horse.

It might have looked like this.

The rain washed it away. He spread more chalk. The wind blew it away. He marked it out with sticks and had his family help spread more chalk. Weeds grew up and hid his sign. He had his farm hands pull the weeds. Storms washed silt down over the sign and covered the sticks that outlined it. The farmer enlisted some villagers to help make shallow ditches to outline the sign. They filled them with chalk to reduce the growth of the weeds. The rocks removed from the ditches helped prevent silt from washing down and covering the chalk.
The farmer rewarded the villagers with a huge feast, music, dancing, storytelling and free Coors beer.
The horse image lasted a year before it started to fade out again. The farmer held another huge feast and the villagers came again to maintain the horse. It became an annual event.

So. How long did the farmers chalk sign last?

He created the horse drawing during the bronze age, roughly three thousand eight hundred years ago. The horse is still visible today.

It is called the Uffington White Horse.
If a bronze age farmer can figure out how to maintain an image for nearly four century's, why can't we? No doubt he wasn't a MIT grad.

So, maybe the answer isn't technology.

Maybe we should look at applied social anthropology instead of technology for the answer.


In my next post I'll discuss what anthropology can teach us about preserving our family photos.

Saving Family Photos for a Millennium (Part 1)

Archivist love to tell us to digitize our photos.

They tell us to write them to CD or DVD. They point out that digital photos can be reproduced exactly with no loss of quality.
But those medias begin to degrade and drop bits in just 3 to 5 years.

Technology to the rescue!

The M-DISK is here. A M-DISK recorder will let  you archive your photos on a new type of disk that will last for 1000 years.
You can play them on any DVD or Blu-Ray player.

Compare that to Kodak Kodachrome Slides. Kodachrome slides last much longer than other types of color film. They lose 20% of their color every 184 years. That is,,, If they are stored in perfect conditions, (cool, dry and dark). At that rate, they will be unusable 920 years.
 If you project one Kodacolor slide in a modern projector for a total of ONE HOUR the slide will be unusable. That is the same as projecting it for one minute, every Christmas for 60 years.



The M-DISK DVD has the Kodachrome slide beat for storage longevity.
What about longer than 1000 years? Slides and photos degrade at some constant rate. If you made a copy every 10 years, the original has degraded, so, the copy starts out already degraded. Instead of extending the life of the image, you shorten it, because the copy is not a perfect reproduction of the degraded original. You can make exact copies of the ones and zeros on the digital M-DISK. In theory, you can reproduce exact digital copies forever.


So, your media will last 1000 years, but how do you view it 1000 years from now? Do you really think you will be able to find or buy a DVD player twenty years from now? How about 100 or 1000 years from now?

Technology Lifespan.

Slide Technology Lifespan. 

You can store slides for several hundred years, and you can still see the faded image, but, can you view them 100 years from now? You can still find projectors on ebay, but the projector lamps are no longer made. The technology lifespan of the Kodachrome slides was from 1936 until July 14th, 2010 when the last roll was processed.

DVD Technology Lifespan
The physical DVD-BluRay disk sales reached a peak in 2004. By 2014, sales had decreased 30%.
Do you really think you will be able to find or buy a DVD player twenty years from now? How about 100 or 1000 years from now? Try to buy a VHS video recorder, or a PC with a Floppy disk. Each replacement technology has a shorter lifespan. Most of us now store our photos on memory sticks or USB hard drives. The USB standard will not last forever. Intel tells us that all new external devices will be wireless in the next year or two.

Which image will last the longest?
[A] A Kodachrome Slide.
[B] A digital image on a M-Disk.
[C] A sidewalk chalk drawing.

The answer in my next post.

Artificial Intelligence - Clarifai

Big Data, A new approach to AI does a surprising job of tagging photos.

Visit the site and try it. clarifai.com

Be a Martian

I earned 60,000 air miles on the NASA OR1ON Delta IV  Spacecraft.

Here is my boarding pass for the next test flight.

If all goes well, I'm going to Mars.
Join me by getting your own boarding pass here: http://go.usa.gov/vcpz

OK! Only our names etched on the Orion space capsule payload will go, not us. Still, it might be fun to have your name etched on the Martian lander sitting on mars. Or the name of  your dad, mom, son or daughter!
The next flight is December 4th, 5th or 6th, however, the last day to register is OCTOBER 31st.

You only have 10 days left to register.

After each flight the names will be recovered and placed on the next flight. Eventually the final flight will be to mars.

Why isn't Alabama in the top five?

Alabama is in 22nd place, Can you believe that!

!!! TWENTY SECOND PLACE!!!

We have NASA in Huntville. We built most of the stuff that took us to the moon.Huntsville is in charge of many current NASA programs. I can see Texas and Florida being in the top three, but why isn't Alabama? We are behind Tennessee and Wisconsin for crying out loud!

If every Adult in Tallassee signed up, Alabama would move to 5th place. Sign up your kids and relatives, and we could be in the top three. Tell everybody in Elmore Co. and if only half of them helped us could be in first place.

Why We Should Do This!

If we can move Alabama up to the top 5 in just 10 days, we would turn some heads a NASA. Heck! I bet even the BBC would do a story about Tallassee.
Huntsville built most of that stuff up there in space. We built most of the equipment that took us to the moon. Dozens of our current deep space projects are run out of Alabama, yet, the mainstream media only ever mentions Texas or Florida when they cover NASA. We have many space industries here in Alabama. We should get more NASA contracts.

Lets do this like a flash mob. 

We have ten days!

Go sign up HERE:  http://go.usa.gov/vcpz

Be sure to send out some emails. POST IT ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER, G+ or your favorite social site.

Pass the word at school, work or church.

Call your Favorite radio station!

Include your boarding pass link on every Facebook post you do between now and the end of the month.

If all these reason't aren't enough, then think about how important your kids education is. Put their names on the list and follow the space program with them. They may surprise you with what they think about having their name in space.