Poor Use of Technology

Last weekend I helped out with the Wasatch 100 ultra marathon. Basically about 400 people signed up to try and run 100 miles in a 36-hour time period. I help with 2 such events every year, with this being the second one. I get to hang out with my wife and a few friends all night on Friday recording when runners come through the 64-mile aid station. We then send the runner number with arrival and departure times to the race organizers who make the information available on their website. This helps friends and family know where runners are but it also helps if we need to do any search and rescue for overdue runners.

I have been helping with the Wasatch 100 for about 4 years now and taken a primary role for the past 2. We use packet radio to transmit the data and that saves a lot of time over sending the information by voice. Both can be done with ham radio and both work well for us.

Last year I was asked to set up a new ham radio technology called a mesh network. The primary radio person before me had tried for 2 years to get it working only to have it fail. I didn't have enough time to work with the organizer ham radio operators to get it set up before the run started and so we went without it. Besides, we had a perfectly reasonable solution with packet radio. Sure it is slow, but it works.

This year, the organizer ham radio operators enlisted the services of a new guy to try and set up the mesh network again. The new guy let me know his plan and I welcomed him onto the radio team. I also filled him in on previous years and the attempt to get the new technology working. We all showed up and started getting things going. The packet radio worked as well this year as it did last and the new guy never could get the mesh network completely running. When it came time to take down our equipment, the new guy had a lot of hardware to pack up and fit in his truck. We just had a tiny little radio, laptop computer, and an antenna.

The new guy summed up his experience with using a mesh network instead of packet radio by saying, "It is a complicated solution to a problem that has already been solved." My fellow ham radio operators at our aid station couldn't agree more.

Another Useful 3D Print

Several years ago, one of the local ski resorts replaced an old 2-person chair with a modern high-speed-detachable quad. They made some of the chairs from the old lift available to the general public. I remember not having much money at the time but I scraped up $250 and bought one. My wife and son brought it home.

The chair sat in my backyard for several months until I scraped together a bit more money and built a frame for it out using wood from Home Depot. Unfortunately I couldn't find a support bar that fit the chair well and so it has been a little off balance. That has not keep people from sitting on the chair and swinging in it and so I haven't spent much effort fixing it.

Last week my son decided that with the help of the 3D printer, we could print a bushing that will hold the bar straight on the support bar. He pulled out my digital calipers and measured the inner diameter of the chair attachment tube and the outer diameter of the support bar. Then he printed a sleeve to go over the support bar. It took over a day to print. Now we will install it this weekend and should have a straight chairlift swing.

After printing the new part, I talked to one of my colleagues who does a lot of 3D printing. As I have mentioned before, he is constantly keeping his 3D printer busy. I asked him his secret and he said, "I look for problems and pain points in my everyday life. Then I try to see if I can print my way out of them."

The Fun of Hackathons

Last month I got the chance to spend part of a week doing a Hackathon. For those that have never heard of a Hackathon, it is where you work to solve a computer problem over the course of a couple days. My company sponsored the event and so I got to put down my normal work and play with something completely new. We had food brought in so we could continue to work through lunch and dinner. We also had plenty of snacks so we didn't have to worry about eating at all.

I partnered up with a couple of guys I eat lunch with on a daily basis. We all work on different projects in the department and so we picked a problem that was fun to solve and spanned each of our specialties. Unfortunately I can't go into detail on what we did as it may be covered by a non-disclosure agreement I signed when I started working at the company over eight years ago. I can tell you we had a lot of fun and learned some new and useful skills.

If you find yourself wanting to expand your technical abilities, I highly suggest participation in a Hackathon. Then pick a problem to solve somewhat related to your normal work but include other tools or pieces. If you spend all your time working on software, see if you can't work with some hardware kits like Raspberry Pi or Arduino. At my Hackathon, I ended up becoming quite skilled with an electric carving knife, a hot-glue gun, and camping mattress foam. Did I mention I had a lot of fun.

My First 3D Printer

My youngest son is in the Mechanical Engineering program at the University of Utah and has been asking me to get a 3D printer. I finally broke down, gave him a budget, and let him pick one out. It arrived last week and we have been printing things with it ever since.

I have a buddy at work who is really into 3D printing and has his in the office working non-stop. Naturally I went to him and asked his opinion before I set my budget number. He told me to get an inexpensive one and spend some time playing with it. If I really got into 3D printing then I would know what features to look for in the next printer. Furthermore if I didn't really do much with the printer, I wouldn't be out a large sum of money. That is great advice and so I thought I would pass it on.

I decided that there are a number of printers in the $300 range and so that is what I gave my son as a budget. He scoured the internet for reviews and we decided on the Creality Ender 3. We purchased it from Amazon even though we could have gotten a better deal from other sites. We also picked up a few upgrades and 2 rolls of Polylactic Acid (PLA) filament. We decided on black and red printing material.

The printer arrived on a Wednesday and I didn't let my son build it as I wanted that experience. I flew home on Thursday evening and then spent a couple of hours on Friday assembling the printer. It went together very easily, especially after watching several YouTube build videos. I didn't try to set any speed records as I put the printer together because I wanted it to be well built. I also wanted to understand how it was put together should I want to modify it later.

My son came over Friday evening and helped with the final tuning. You have to take some time and level the printing bed or your prints won't turn out. Then we printed a little plastic dog that came on a memory card with the printer. You have the option of printing "gcode" files from a computer connected via a USB cable or from a micro SD card. I like being able to copy a design to the card and have the printer print from it.

The next thing we decided to print is a tiny Darth Vader. My dad is a huge Star Wars fan and has a huge Darth Vader collection. We had the STL file which is just a drawing of the piece. We then ran the STL file into Cura, which is free software that creates the "gcode" file to be printed. There are all sorts of parameters as it ultimately controls what gets output. The printer can't print into thin air and so it adds support material when necessary. Once you are done printing, you can easily pull off the support material. Considering it is our first print where we had to specify a number of custom parameters, I think we did a good job.

Next we changed the print material (PLA) from black to red and printed a "benchy". Imagine Steamboat Willy in Mickey Mouse's first movie and that is what a benchy looks like. It is called a benchy as it serves as a benchmark for the printer and shows you how good your printer is. Our benchy came out well.

Finally I wanted to print something useful. I really don't have a need for a bunch of little plastic toys and so I found something my youngest daughter might like. My wife and I recently gave her an airbrush for decorating cakes. She likes to do that in her spare time and she recently ordered a bunch of stencils. I thought I could print some for her and save her some cash. As stencils are large but not very thick, it is a good test for printing on the entire print bed. I went to Thingiverse and did a search for stencils and found a lot of very interesting ones. The first stencil is of a snowflake and it looks amazing. I have a few other stencils to print for her and she is excited.

So should you run out and get a 3D printer? That is a good question. The Creality Ender 3 is advertised as not being a kit like a number of the other printers on the market. However it took a fair amount of technical knowledge and mechanical skills to put the thing together. If you have trouble putting together your kids' toys on Christmas eve, you may want to get help or not bother getting one. At first I didn't think I would find enough projects to keep my printer busy. Now that I have it, I have a seemingly endless list of projects to print. I don't think I am unique. If you have a spare $300 lying around, I can recommend getting one.

Time for Another Game

Even though I finished Horizon Zero Dawn back in May, I wanted to do all of the side quests and downloadable content (DLC). Tonight I finished the last of the game and received my platinum trophy. There are very few games I enjoy enough to do that. Now I find myself trying to figure out what game to play next.

There are a few games I have started and can now finish. I have dabbled around with Detroit: Become Human and could play through the entire story. I have also started Far Cry 5 as I enjoyed Far Cry 4 so much, I earned another platinum trophy. Both of these games would hold my interest and entertain me for the next few months.

I also have yet to play the latest God of War game. I understand that it is a lot of fun. My son who enjoyed Horizon as much as I have, really likes God of War and suggested that I tackle it next. Others at work have a similar opinion.

Selecting the next game to play is always a fun challenge and not really a difficult problem. I have selected some horrible games in the past and rather than continue, I have stopped and start another one. So tonight I have selected Far Cry 5 to install on my PS4 and will start it tomorrow evening. If something else distracts me before then, I may play it. Otherwise I'll be spending time in a virtual Montana.

My Blog and an Important Date

Recently I updated my work laptop's operating system to High Sierra. Naturally this broke a number of applications until I could update them as well. I updated everything except for iMovie and Garage Band as I kept getting a message about how my Apple ID did not have permissions to update those applications. I didn't worry about as I don't really use those apps on my work computer. However it is starting to get annoying that my computer tries to upgrade them each week but can't because of the Apple ID. Today I had a few minutes of time and so I went to the company help desk to see if they could help me.

Ultimately we came up with a workaround that involved creating a new user on my laptop and having the new user update those two programs. Once that worked, the help desk employee suggested that my laptop is getting old and is eligible to be replaced soon. On the way back to my desk I wondered how long I have had this computer. Then I realized I wrote about it in this blog. A quick search showed that I got it around February 4, 2016. We have a policy that allows me to replace the computers every 2 to 3 years. I will probably wait a bit but it is nice to have a written record of when I got it.

Cure for a Stroke

A good friend of mine suffered a stroke in December. He is one of those really healthy guys that just has bad genetics as he has suffered through several heart attacks as well. Unfortunately the stroke left him without the ability to speak. He is also unable to to use his right hand effectively but you wouldn't know that unless you are very observant or someone pointed it out to you.

Another friend came to me a month or so ago and said we need to use technology to help our friend recover and come up with a way for him to talk. He proposed creating a Google Glass application that can pair with a smartphone and talk for him. The original idea included looking at a keyboard on the Google Glass screen and spelling out words to be spoken by the phone. It sounds like a great idea, right?

Anyone who knows a stroke victim knows that there is often more damage than first meets the eye. While our friend can still read somewhat, he can't write, type, nor can he spell very well. It is very difficult for him to communicate with the rest of the world even though he can hear us and knows what we are saying. Talking with him is like playing 20 questions all the time and it gets old quickly.

A few more friends gathered with our stroke victim several weeks ago and flushed out some solutions. We decided that instead of trying to have our friend spell out words, we would use icons and pictures to represent phrases. We are doing prototyping work on a tablet computer. By selecting icons, we can create sentences to help our friend communicate. Now the trick is deciding what phrases are the most important and should be created first.

We have our friend's speech therapist who created a book of phrases that deal with time, eating, and other seemingly important stuff. While that is all fine, it doesn't represent the important conversations in our lives. I suggested a few more important phrases that probably need to be gathered first. Things like, "Are you single?" or "I'm a good listener." My friend is divorced and could probably use a date. These phrases are important for such activities but did not show up in the therapist's book. When I proposed them, you should have seen my friend light up.

The ability to communicate is important to us all. When my friend lost his ability to speak, he lost his purpose in life. Now we are trying to help him help others who have gone through similar ailments. Wouldn't it be great to add phrases like, "I have a tiny idea of what you are going through because I also suffered a stroke and lost the ability to speak," or, "Let me help you."

This is one of those projects that will never really end but it is a worthy cause for my time. I wish I could do more. While this may not be a cure for every stroke victim, it is something that will help a number of them and is very important to my friend. If you are interested in helping with the project, don't hesitate to leave a comment or contact me. One of the easiest ways to help is simply to think about your daily conversations and give us ideas of what phrases we should include in our app.