I gave a presentation at PgWest on Wednesday this week. I wasn't going to attend the conference but one of the organizers called me and asked me to submit a paper. So I submitted the same one I gave at last year's conference. The talk went fairly well and I was able to do something I had never done before: ignore my slide set.
Before going to the conference, I told my wife that I didn't want to give the same presentation from the previous year but didn't really have time to revamp anything. I told her I wanted to poll the audience and find out why they were at my presentation. So that is what I did. Some people were there to find out more about the subject I was speaking about while others had specific questions.
Knowing what people were interested in finding out helped me tailor my presentation. It also got the audience involved and they were more eager to ask questions. About half-way through the talk, I abandoned my slide presentation and just showed examples on the computer. I think everyone appreciated something a bit different.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Paper Airline Tickets
This weekend I had to stay in the Bay Area for a mock earthquake drill. As luck would have it, there was an actual earthquake, albeit only a 3.2 magnitude rumble. As I didn't go back to Utah for the weekend, I decided to fly my wife to San Francisco and have her join me. It turned out to be a very fun weekend and we both enjoyed it a lot.
As with all airlines, my wife checked into her flight 24 hours before its scheduled departure. She then printed up her own ticket that she brought to the airport. For the return trip, we visited my office and repeated the process. The airline never had to print anything for my wife's flight. I have to ask myself how much the airline saves in paper and printing costs. I imagine it is significant.
Then there are applications for smart phones from most of the major airlines that don't require you to use any paper at all for your ticket. Simply bring up the app, show the special bar code at security, and then again before you board the plane.
20 years ago everyone was talking about how computers would reduce the amount of paper in the world. Unfortunately everyone was so accustomed to printing things that we saw a spike in the amount of paper used worldwide. Maybe now we should see that statistic drop. Unfortunately a quick search on the Internet doesn't provide any clue as to it that is happening or not. At least we know it is with regards to airline tickets.
As with all airlines, my wife checked into her flight 24 hours before its scheduled departure. She then printed up her own ticket that she brought to the airport. For the return trip, we visited my office and repeated the process. The airline never had to print anything for my wife's flight. I have to ask myself how much the airline saves in paper and printing costs. I imagine it is significant.
Then there are applications for smart phones from most of the major airlines that don't require you to use any paper at all for your ticket. Simply bring up the app, show the special bar code at security, and then again before you board the plane.
20 years ago everyone was talking about how computers would reduce the amount of paper in the world. Unfortunately everyone was so accustomed to printing things that we saw a spike in the amount of paper used worldwide. Maybe now we should see that statistic drop. Unfortunately a quick search on the Internet doesn't provide any clue as to it that is happening or not. At least we know it is with regards to airline tickets.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Keeping Time
This week has been spent rebuilding and configuring servers in our research and development private cloud at work. Some time ago, our company's IT department decided to remove a machine that the rest of us use to keep all of our computers' clocks synchronized. One of my favorite sayings is: "A man with one watch knows what time it is, a man with two isn't quite sure." This is also true for computers and so when servers in a private cloud can't decide on the time, it wreaks havoc. In our case, it brought the cloud down and all of the machines with it.
In reality, not everything in the cloud came to a halt. The servers were still out there running just fine, we just lost all network connectivity to them and so it was impossible to log into them. The only solution was to stop the servers and restart them. If they were actual machines, a power cycle (or turning them off and on) would do the trick. As they are part of a cloud system, it requires that I reconfigure them once they come back up. All of the data in the database machines was preserved and so we didn't lose anything important. Furthermore I have simple scripts or small programs to reconfigure the servers, so rebuilding everything didn't require much thought, just time.
When I found out that our private cloud had crashed because of clocks not being in sync, I was pretty upset. I wondered how a few seconds difference could have such a negative effect. I guess it underscores the importance of keeping the correct time.
In reality, not everything in the cloud came to a halt. The servers were still out there running just fine, we just lost all network connectivity to them and so it was impossible to log into them. The only solution was to stop the servers and restart them. If they were actual machines, a power cycle (or turning them off and on) would do the trick. As they are part of a cloud system, it requires that I reconfigure them once they come back up. All of the data in the database machines was preserved and so we didn't lose anything important. Furthermore I have simple scripts or small programs to reconfigure the servers, so rebuilding everything didn't require much thought, just time.
When I found out that our private cloud had crashed because of clocks not being in sync, I was pretty upset. I wondered how a few seconds difference could have such a negative effect. I guess it underscores the importance of keeping the correct time.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Downloading YouTube Videos
Last week my son asked if I could come and speak in his careers class. I wanted to include some videos and so I scoured the Internet looking for MPEGs that I could embed into a PowerPoint presentation. With the ubiquity of Flash and YouTube, there don't seem to be MPEG videos on the Internet any more. At least not the types of videos I was looking for.
Eventually I got tired of searching as I knew exactly where to get them: on YouTube. So I changed my search criteria to find out how to download them from YouTube.
Unfortunately you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. There were a lot of false starts that were just plain wrong. Eventually I was able to discover an "Add On" for Mozilla that allows you to save the Flash video file (with the .FLV extension). Once I had that downloaded, I discovered that PowerPoint doesn't understand them. I needed to convert the FLV file into an MPEG. I used the ffmpeg utility on Linux, but even that wasn't straight forward. I had to calculate bit rates and figure out the screen size. Luckily screen sizes are fairly standard and Adobe has a bit rate calculator. Once I figured that all out, I created the MPEGs from the FLVs and embedded them in my presentation.
This morning I delivered my presentation and it went very well. It took a lot longer to create my presentation than anticipated, but the kids loved the videos.
Eventually I got tired of searching as I knew exactly where to get them: on YouTube. So I changed my search criteria to find out how to download them from YouTube.
Unfortunately you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. There were a lot of false starts that were just plain wrong. Eventually I was able to discover an "Add On" for Mozilla that allows you to save the Flash video file (with the .FLV extension). Once I had that downloaded, I discovered that PowerPoint doesn't understand them. I needed to convert the FLV file into an MPEG. I used the ffmpeg utility on Linux, but even that wasn't straight forward. I had to calculate bit rates and figure out the screen size. Luckily screen sizes are fairly standard and Adobe has a bit rate calculator. Once I figured that all out, I created the MPEGs from the FLVs and embedded them in my presentation.
This morning I delivered my presentation and it went very well. It took a lot longer to create my presentation than anticipated, but the kids loved the videos.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Smart Stoplights
There are three stoplights on my way to and from work each day. Considering I mostly use a bike path and and am only on the road for less than two miles, that seems to be a bit much. All of the lights are considered "smart lights" in that they have sensors in the pavement to detect when a car is present. Only one of the three can be triggered by a bicycle and so I have to hit the pedestrian button on the other two.
For some reason, a lot of people think that smart lights are triggered by the weight of the car. That isn't true. Instead there is a metal detector built into street. When you car passes over the detector (basically a piece of wire wound around a toilet paper tube), a signal is sent to the smart light's computer. In California, the system actually works and lights change accordingly. In Utah, they have some sort of algorithm that was written by some idiot that never got full credit for homework assignments in college. There is a bit of a delay that can be as long as a minute. This is meant to keep traffic flowing in high-congestion area. Unfortunately it seems like a huge waste of my time at 11:30 at night when I am coming home from the airport.
I would like to propose a new for of smart light. Instead of using a metal detector embedded in the street, why don't we use the camera mounted on top of the stoplight? After all, we have facial recognition software that does a pretty good job. Shouldn't we also be able to create automobile and bicycle recognition software? One of the problems with the metal detector method is that you have to be right over the sensor. Using a camera, you could see the cars approaching and determine that you want to keep traffic flowing as opposed to instantly switching lights. In the case where there are no cars coming because it is 11:30 at night, light changes would be much quicker.
Hopefully someone is thinking about this. After all, most stoplights already have cameras on them to monitor traffic flow and accidents. I'll bet we can even improve everyone's gas mileage as we will spend less time idling and more time at speed. Most importantly, I won't have to get off my bike to hit the pedestrian button to cross the street.
For some reason, a lot of people think that smart lights are triggered by the weight of the car. That isn't true. Instead there is a metal detector built into street. When you car passes over the detector (basically a piece of wire wound around a toilet paper tube), a signal is sent to the smart light's computer. In California, the system actually works and lights change accordingly. In Utah, they have some sort of algorithm that was written by some idiot that never got full credit for homework assignments in college. There is a bit of a delay that can be as long as a minute. This is meant to keep traffic flowing in high-congestion area. Unfortunately it seems like a huge waste of my time at 11:30 at night when I am coming home from the airport.
I would like to propose a new for of smart light. Instead of using a metal detector embedded in the street, why don't we use the camera mounted on top of the stoplight? After all, we have facial recognition software that does a pretty good job. Shouldn't we also be able to create automobile and bicycle recognition software? One of the problems with the metal detector method is that you have to be right over the sensor. Using a camera, you could see the cars approaching and determine that you want to keep traffic flowing as opposed to instantly switching lights. In the case where there are no cars coming because it is 11:30 at night, light changes would be much quicker.
Hopefully someone is thinking about this. After all, most stoplights already have cameras on them to monitor traffic flow and accidents. I'll bet we can even improve everyone's gas mileage as we will spend less time idling and more time at speed. Most importantly, I won't have to get off my bike to hit the pedestrian button to cross the street.
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