News and Views

We bought a satellite phone. We do a lot of world travel, and I do some hiking and 4-wheeling into areas with no phone service, so it should be useful, even just for emergencies and peace of mind. I was on a backpacking trip a couple of years ago in the Sierra when a passing […]

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This year in central Arizona we’ve experienced the wettest May on record and the first recorded rainfall in Phoenix ever on the date of June 5. This is all probably due at least in part to the El Niño effect. During an El Niño the surface water in the Pacific ocean off the coast of […]

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It’s pronounced “I Dig Bio”, and that’s what I’ve been working on for the past three days. I’ve been in Gainesville at the University of Florida which is sponsoring a “Hackathon” for iDigBio. iDigBio is a collaboration (funded by the National Science Foundation) between universities and museums all over the world with a focus on […]

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There’s a lot of talk about “Net Neutrality” lately. Basically, net neutrality means that those who provide and control the internet cannot adjust speeds or give preference based on content or other criteria. They have to remain “neutral” to the content. Here’s a useful analogy: Compare an electricity utility and cable (or satellite) TV. For […]

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After more than 2 years of putting electricity into my Volt, it is finally prepared to give a little electricity back. A company sells kits that allow you to wire into the Volt and use it to generate 120 volts. You can actually do this with any car, of course, with a simple inverter. But […]

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Nomorobo means “No more robo-calls”. Last year the FTC issued a challenge to develop a system that would help reduce the huge amounts of telemarketing phone calls. One of the two winners of the challenge was “Nomorobo“. I hate telemarketers! My Ooma phone system has private and community blacklists, and it helps a lot, but […]

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Eight years ago I published some data I had taken on the life of light bulbs. I recorded the lifetimes of bulbs in my kitchen ceiling. Everyone was so excited and thought it was the most interesting blog I had ever posted — NOT! Anyway, despite the lack of enthusiasm, here’s a brief update. Back […]

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Today is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, and the day when the sun reaches its apparent farthest north position (of course actually related to the tilt of the earth’s axis and its revolution around the sun). If you were at the north pole today, you would see the sun move 360 […]

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This seems like an appropriate topic for today, Friday the thirteenth, with a full moon in the sky. I was in Las Vegas a few years ago with some friends and passed a little idle time playing Keno. Keno is a game like the lottery, where you choose some numbers and hope they match the […]

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I was working at Intel back in the early 80s when Intel invented the flash drive (back then it was an EEPROM; almost the same). Of course then it was small capacity, slow and expensive, but the potential seemed huge. I remember remarking to a fellow engineer that we should shortly be able to replace […]

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