Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good night.

FLL Brick Breakers Recognized

It has been my privilege to coach my first FLL team this year. Over the last 10 weeks, we as mentors and coaches have tried to support a group of six kids, ages 5 to 12, to learn about FIRST, science and technology, and to begin developing the soft and hard skills they can use for the rest of their lives.

On Saturday December 12th 2009, the Brick Breakers team #394 competed against 16 other teams, in their first Maryland FLL Qualifier tournament at the South County Showdown, sponsored by the Power Hawks. Being a young team (with some members even younger than the suggested guidelines) and the majority of the members new to FLL, we set realistic goals for our team. We wanted to complete at least two of the robot missions, focus on a reasonable topic as part of the Smart Move theme, and work together as a team.

I am happy to announce that the Brick Breakers were recognized by the judges with the Rookie All-Star Award. This award “Celebrates the rookie team exemplifying a young but strong partnership effort, as well as implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology.”

From tolen.net

I am proud of the team’s efforts this season. They were able to show their potential to the judges, score the fourth highest in the robotic competition, and act as a team throughout a very long day. Congratulations to the Brick Breakers, and all the teams at the competition.

Please visit www.tolen.org for more pictures and details about the team.

www.tolen.org

As some may know, we are doing FLL again this year. I have let the team use the www.tolen.org site to post their information and pictures for this year. When you get a change please go and visit.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Parrothead Security Theater

This summer I took a few days off and went to a Jimmy Buffett with some Parrotheads. My first tailgating experience was fun, and Jimmy Buffett puts on a great concert. You have to respect a talented entertainer.
The venue was not something I was impressed with. The concert was at Nissan Pavilion in VA. It was overpriced for parking, they stuck the tailgaters as far away as humanly possible, but those are not my main complaints. My complaint is the illusion of security, or Security Theater. (I would normally link the term “illusion of security” to Wikipedia for a reference, however on Wikipedia the term redirects to the “United States Department of Homeland Security”.)
Security Theater is just that: when something is done which people claim provides more security, yet it has little to no impact on any actual security. Airport security is like that in a lot of ways. I don’t need to go into great detail about airport security, read the reports and articles.
Security should be about ease of use, work factor, frequency and value. If it is too hard to use, people will not use it, no matter the security it provides. Make something harder to break into, and the less likely it is that someone will bother, they will probably move on to an easier one. Why protect against flooding when it floods once every 100 years and it hasn’t rained? Don’t protect a 100K with a five dollar lock box, and don’t buy a 100K safe to protect 5 dollars. This is an overly simplified view of security, but I am sick of everyone being told to be scared, and people not thinking, so I started ranting again…
So back at Nissan Pavilion, four of us are heading to the gates, to find a crowd of people being funneled into 6 to 10 gates, I do not have an actual count of gates, however there is no crowd control. There were no barriers, no fences to direct traffic, no signs to tell everyone that they want women on the left and men on the right to get frisked. There were also no signs to say “No Cameras” (note that on the website it stated no professional camera, but they were turning all cameras away.) It was a mass of at least 300 people trying to get into a Jimmy Buffett concert, and things then started to get ugly. People started yelling at each other, pushing, and getting mad. Why? Because every person had to be frisked, and show what’s in their pockets to the yellow shirt people at each gate. At one point we saw two separate arguments on either side of our group about people cutting in front of others when the entire front of the crowd was shoved forward by the back. The situation was beginning to escalate. Finally someone in a white staff shirt jogged down the line and stopped by each yellow shirted person doing the frisking and told them to “let’em through.” I was thankful some noticed the situation for what it was, before something serious happened and someone got hurt, but it made me mad that this was all done in the name of security.

FLL 2009 robot test 2

We are coaching a FIRST Lego League (FLL) team this year. The team has named themselves the 'Brick Breakers'. They are testing some robot bases and decided to video it. This was test two.

FLL 2009 robot test 1

We are coaching a FIRST Lego League (FLL) team this year. The team has named themselves the 'Brick Breakers'. They are testing some robot bases and decided to video it. This was test one.

A New Hobby

As a little kid I always loved finding things. I would pride myself at looking until I found what I was looking for, checking places off in my mind and thinking of new places to look for the lost items. So when I was shown a metal detector as a young kid I was more than excited about the new items it could help me find. I never had one of my own, they were always too expensive when I had money or I had no time for it when I did have some extra money.
This recently changed, thanks to a bonus program at work. I collected enough points this year and decided to give to myself. I received a Bounty Hunter IV Metal detector and I really enjoy it. It is almost as relaxing as hitting golf balls at the driving range. I will write a more indepth review later, but in short, it is everything you need to learn the basics of Metal Detecting. I have sweeped most of my yard, next stop is the beach!

Another video from the new ipod

Another video from the kids. This one is loud. Cameo of the cat.

FIRST and Google’s Project 10 to the 100th

Please Vote! Follow the link below.

Google’s Project 10 to the 100th – Vote for FIRST! We have 48 hours to get 100,000 votes in favor of Education and FIRST to be a winner of the Google $2M grant contest. Please go here to place your vote: http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/content.aspx?id=15753

Happy Anniversary!

To my wife of 15 years. I love you Lemony.

Two Dragons

Another video from our daughter. First of a series.

A funny thing happened under the sea

This is a video that our youngest daughter filmed with her new ipod nano she got this month for her 10th birthday.

"This is the most dangerous thing that happened to a Lego city diver. (Ignore the cat.)" she says.

The Enigma of a Code Breaker

Ever since watching documentaries as a kid about World War 2, I have always been fascinated about that war. It was a time of great strength, fear, waste, and invention. War is never a good thing, but as a kid I watched in fascination and awe of what people did for God, Family and Country.

As the childhood fascination of war disappeared, the inventions are what kept my interest. This was a time of great technical advances. As my career moved to computers again, I found a new fascination with WWII.

The Enigma machines captured my interest, both their use and effect in the war as well as the efforts made to break the codes by the Allies. It was an interesting machine, but my true fascination with the subject grew when I learned about Bletchley Park and Alan Turing.

From the CNN article - "Turing was best known for inventing the Bombe, a code-breaking machine that deciphered messages encoded by German Enigma machines during World War II.
The messages provided the Allies with crucial information from the British government's code-breaking headquarters in Bletchley Park where Turing worked full-time during the war.
He was considered a mathematical genius and went on to develop the Turing machine, a theory that automatic computation cannot solve all mathematical problems, which is considered the basis of modern computing."

When I first of Turing I wondered why I had not heard of him before. Then I learned he had committed suicide in 1954 at the age of 41. I thought that was the reason I had not heard of him, he had cut himself short. Then I saw a new documentary (and I wish I could remember the name of it) that made it all very clear.

At the end of the war, the code breakers of Bletchley Park destroyed everything: the documents about broken codes, one of the first computers that had been made to break the Enigma codes faster. The group disbanded to their civilian lives. Alan Turing, the mathematical genius that served his country so well, and built one of the first computers, was then prosecuted by his own government.

"Turing was subjected to chemical castration in 1952 after being found guilty of the charge of gross indecency for having a homosexual relationship, an illegal act at the time. He committed suicide two years later."

So what is the point to this rant? Well, first I hope Alan Turing gets the recognition and apology that he deserves. Second, I hope we can learn from history, and not persecute others for different lifestyles and beliefs. Third, well that is my own selfish reason and that is simply to vent.

All I need is this news, and this Rant, and that Dog....

As the fighting for the control of rights of who owns what information continues we continue to all lose. Microsoft, Yahoo and possibly Amazon.com have joined a group of opponents in a class action lawsuit against Google. In brief summary Google is digitizing book for access over the Internet, but critics say that if the service becomes a necessity they would, Google would have a monopoly.

It comes down to rights, everyone wants the rights and the ability to control the access to everything. To be able to charge for it, decide who can use it, sue over who had what idea, sang what song, and shot what movie. Welcome to the information age. I have mentioned these things before. (1) (2)

But I want to move on. I was born what can arguably be called the computer age, or the Information age. To me these two “ages” or eras are separate. IMHO, the computer age started at the end of the industrial age after WWII, and the computer age ended around the time of the Internet, in the early 1990’s. I know some people will disagree but that is how I see it. The industrial age created the power and technical knowledge to launch the Computer age. The computer made possible the collection and processing of information quick and easily. That changed when a way to universal way to connect all of these computer systems came to be. This allowed the sharing and, later the search, of data. To me these are clear differences. Wikipedia disagrees, but doing more research on the subject no one agrees on the dates or the terminology. This brings me to my next point having too much information and what is next.

In the last few weeks announcements have been made how humans are 10 years from creating a virtual brain. Is this the next age of Humans? What about energy? The main problem with having machines like electric cars and robots is the power-to-weight ratio. The catch-22 is that when you need more power, you add more batteries, that adds weight, so you need more power. No current battery can supply the amount of power we need to drive the technology we have to make it independent of external energy. Is the battery the next age of Humans? What if nanotechnology solves both these problems? The Nanotech age certainly has a good ring to it.

So what do you think? Go ahead and post you thought on Facebook or Tweet it, sometimes giving your rights away on ownership of your comment. We will read it and laugh for your 15 minutes of fan. Next we will move on to the latest and greatest of freely generated comments, videos, and pictures on the Internet, by the only people who still create original content…you.

Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned From Manga

Being a bit of a news junkie I follow several news sites and blogs. One blog I follow is TaoSecurity. He posted an interesting comparison of two books; Manga Guide to Statistics vs Statistics in a Nutshell

The part I found amusing is he came to the same conclusions I did when I purchased the series for our kids. I especially like the Database book, this book explains then well enough for a 12 year old to understand. The added bonus is the kids will actually read them.




Here is my Reading List on Amazon. It's new but I will add more latter.