Excellent Video Technology Mag

This is a superb mag from my friend John Sokol

http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/

A God for Parenting

I am of the belief that being a good parent is the hardest thing a human can attempt.

a good parent is one who is aware- in the Bhudda sence. One who is not sleepwalking. One who is not un-consciously channeling his/her own parents.

People always thing they can ‘wing it’ when it comes to parenting.

Societies across time had gods for everything imaginable under the sun.

Except parenting. A god, praying to whom would make one a better parent- such doesn’t exist, even for ancient civilizations like the Indians, the Chinese, or the Jews !

I am stumped – how could societies across the eons of time ignore this fundamental human need ?

Public-Pilot-Nerd Problem

The general public and women specifically, love and ideolize aircraft pilots. The people who fly the plane.

The same public, and the women mostly hate and diss the Nerds who dreamt of the plane, designed its engine-body-electronics-controls.

Strange.

The public mistakenly attributes the beauty of the planes design to the PILOT !!
Widespread, rampant mis-assignment.

Types of Intelligence

Types of Intelligence
Its beginning to dawn upon me that Intelligence is multifaceted. I was brought up believing that maths/science was the only intelligence.
As kids, my education centric family thot that maths / science students were the only intelligent types.

Now as I see the world around me- it strikes me how intelligent politicians are. Politics is a type of intelligence. It strikes me how intelligent graphics designers are. Graphics design is a dense intelligence. One that i can never hope to master. Its just too much ‘out there’. I am sure they fee the same way about computer science- something that comes easily to me.
I am thunder struck by how intelligent musicians are. My flute teacher for example – he can weave this delicate charm of tunes, that the best quick sort implementation cannot even come close to.

I have also learnt a lot from my kiddo – Electron – a hi-energy charged particle. He has taught me much about the naural intelligence of kids bodies. for example – the way he gets up from bed after a nights sleep. Its a lovely mauver- where there is no jerk in the body at all. Kind of like rolling up from bed. Its fantastic to watch. I try and copy it in my daily routine.

Needless to say – contrary to what my parents believed- intelligence has many many dimensions. I am only dimly aware of a few of them. God help me to be more aware..

bye for now

On recording ideas, half asleep at nite

Mental activity needed for diff things is diff.

Thoughts- least. Even while sleep
Writing – medium. Can do in half sleep – ideas at nite.
Speaking- almost full wakefullness needed. As soon as a thot is verbalized, sleep disappears.
Curious.

Politics, Leadership and the Theory of Leanring

Politics, Leadership and the Theory of Learning

All thru my childhood, i was told ‘politics is a dirty game’
So i stayed away from learning how to play. It was dirty you see..
Science was a clean game. So I excelled in engineering.

Only to find out that all engineering environments are full of politics. “Politics is everywhere”

I felt as if fate had dealt an ugly hand. I don’t know abc of politics, and shied away from it all like, only to find out that it is everywhere. Damm. Should have learnt the darn thing in school college. At least the basic principles. Like Machiavelli ‘The Prince’ type stuff.

So I ventured to find the principles. Only to find that my science educated [hypnotized] family firmly believed that ‘Politics’ and the ability to be smart in politics is ‘in-born’ cannot be learnt via intentional effort. Absolutely cannot.

In Amway Australia, I had seen first hand, that leadership can be learnt. I saw completely mediocre people, reading, and learning, and growing into pretty damm fantastic leaders over the course of a few years. Leaders can be grown. Leadership can be learnt.

I am sure its the same for politics.

And then someone asked- you can learn the theory, but you cant learn the practical. Doh ! That’s so stupid.

All theory has a associated practical. All theory.
Unfortunately, ‘hard science’ have cornered ‘the practical’.
Most people i know are completely oblivious to the fact that History and Geography and ‘arts’ also have a ‘practical’.

Battle of Meerut was 1847. How ? Go and find the primary sources. Practical. Harrappan’s were in Rajasthan. How ? Go and see/check the primary sources/evidence. Practical. Ditto for all ‘learning’.

Al learning has a theory and a practical.
Alas- most people only think its a part of science education. Including my dad- who was in education all his working career !
How can society be so warped ?

Energy Harvesting-4

More energy harvesting stuff coming out of my sub-conscious.
Soil batteries – good idea for energy harvesting on a farm.

I want to build hundreds of ‘pods’ that are scattered thru a farm, measuring air//soil temperature, air/soil moisture.
How do you change all these batteries ?
If the pods are tethered, then how do u drive a tractor over them ?

Get rid of the batteries and tethers.
Use energy harvesting from soil batteries.

Attach a BEAM circuit to a micro-power PIC or a MSP430. The beam pops the uP every 10 mins or so, and the uP sends a small packet [Id, Temp, Moisture] to a central receiver.
Or a highly directional central dish/helical combo that interrogates the pods, with pan/tilt controls.

Best Antenna types ?
Helicals on the pods, Dish-helical on the central rex.
Problem: what if the pod’s helix is disturbed and pointing away ?

What is the way out- how to get a hi gain antenna that doesnt loose its direction ? whoa ?

more later

Things that ‘could-have-been’

Hero -the inventor from Alexandria, could have attached wheels to his static steam engine, bringing the dawn of steam power way-back in 1600. Could have seriously changed the world.
William Crooks of Crooks Tube fame, could have added a middle grid to his ‘Crooks Tube’ and created a Triode Amplifier in 1800s. Would have had serious ramifications for electronics and computers.
Loslov Olog of Blue-Led fame, could have attached 2 closely-spaced whiskers to his GaAs crystals instead of one, and discovered transistor amplifiers in 1890s. Could have seriously affected the world.

Could have…. but they wern’t ‘looking’ for locomotion or amplification. Oh well…

Energy Harvesting -3

Energy Harvesting refuses to leave me alone.
A huge piece fell in place just now. It clarified to me why my consciousness is deluged with all this energy harvesting stuff.

I am worried about Energy shortages hitting us soon [2-5yrs]

And the only way forward will be energy scavenging from fluxes in the environment. There are 2 main fluxes – Wind and Solar.

Problem with both of them is their Exergy – the quality of energy – is rather poor. All these energy harvesting ideas make that problem a little more bearable.

If i can build a harvester that aggregates poor quality energy, and dumps it briefly as hi-quality energy into an energy storage mechanism [battery etc], then i will have done well.

eg- a way [beam-robot ckt etc] to clump poor wind-electro energy into more usable, higher voltage, higher density form.
Or a way to clump poor solar thermal [CSP] into a more usable [higher temp] form – would be good.

This to me is the key reason – the key idea for further research- why i am being hit with this energy harvesting ideas tsunami.

More of this harvesting stuff is weighing on my chest, and wants to get out. But I cant access it right now. Its floating in my sub-conscious. Praying for it to come out and reveal itself.

Writing this post, made my heart lighter. I also realize that I am not the inventor of this stuff, just a synthesizer , a medium.

bye

More on energy Harvesting

Since I wrote the below post this morning, I am flooded with thoughts and knowledge of energy harvesting

1) Theramin’s “American Eagle” Gift to USA Embassy in Russia. This was the firts ‘RFID’ device. Used for listening in to conversations inside the Embassy.
It went undected for a long time because it had no power source !
How is that ?
Theramin built a Microwave transmitter that was nothing more than a closed Copper drum connected to a copper tube. It was an LC circuit, for microwave ! The drum had a diaphragm exposed to auditory vibrations. When sound hit the diaphragm, the ‘C’ changed, resulting in a change in the resonance frequency of the LC circuit.

How did it get power ?
The clever Russians [Theramin] focussed a RF beam towards the LC ckt. When the resonance freq changed due to audio, the reflected beam was FM modulated !
Beautiful Environmental Energy Harvesting idea – use the ambient RF. Specially from mobile phone towers. I will try this and report.

Theramin – this incredible electronics protege is little known except for his ‘theramin harmonica’. Its the same person.

2) East Germany espionage on its own citizens – I have heard that the east-Germans used environmental energy to listen in on its citizens. They had transmitters buried in concrete pillars of housing complexes. How do you power them ? From the reinforcement bars in the concrete itself. If one of the re-bar was zinc coated, and the others were not, then the moisture in the concrete would give you a battery ! Beautiful [but sinister] environmental energy harvesting.

bye