Author Archive: Brian

50 Years Ago Today, Man Embarked on a Mission to Set Foot Upon the Moon

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At 8:32 a.m. on July 16th, 50 years ago, 3 American men, strapped into the seats of their Apollo command module, were propelled into space by the tallest and most powerful rocket ever created, the Saturn V. It would take them 3 days to reach their destination. The mission…to land and walk on the moon.

The computer to take them there operated at a 0.002048 GHz clock speed. It had 0.000002 gigabytes of magnetic-core RAM, and 0.000036 gigabytes of hand-woven core rope ROM. It weighed 70 pounds. Today’s computers have millions of times more memory. Yet, in 1969, it performed flawlessly to navigate the men into lunar orbit.

These videos are the best thing I’ve found to help set the scene in your mind on how big of an event this was, and still is, in all of mankind. I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I did!

Video Credits:
“Apollo 11 liftoff unseen spectators original launch footage”, Youtube, suicidecrew.
“Apollo 11 Launch HD”, Youtube, NasaHD.

No, it’s not 1987, it’s 2019… (An Apple IIgs prints a “Print Shop” sign in 2019)

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The sights and sounds of antique technology. I bought a new ribbon off of Amazon to see if that’s the only thing that was needed to bring this old ImageWriter II to life.

This is a fully operational Apple IIgs with a 5 1/4″ and 3 1/2″ floppy disk drive, color monitor, and ImageWriter II printer. The software running is “The Print Shop” by Broderbund.

DeepFakes are going to be a problem…

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For almost a year, I have been assisting as a Subject Matter Expert for the Electronics Technician Association (International)’s Audio/Video Forensics Analyst examination. One of the reasons I’ve been assisting is because it will become increasingly important to have skilled professionals analyze what is “real” and what is “not real” in regards to created video.

As computers get more and more powerful, it becomes easier to generate complete 3D models of a person’s face, and it becomes easier to create a voice model of a person’s speech with only a few minutes of recorded audio. These two combined together can produce very convincing hoaxes, termed as a “deepfake”. Do you think the average Internet user that shares “everything” on Facebook could tell the difference?

Whether they are used for extortion, election manipulation, or blackmail, “deepfakes” could be the biggest threat to modern society in the years ahead. Now, more than ever, it’s very important to use logic instead of emotion, facts instead of opinions, and multiple sources instead of a single news channel, when forming your own opinion about anything.
Be sure to check out this TechRepublic article and video below on deepfakes, and the importance of skilled experts in the future to assist with the detection of these threats.

Computerized Car Navigation in 1986

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It’s easy to take for granted modern car navigation systems. After all, the functionality is built into every modern Smartphone. However, back in 1986, before the GPS system even existed, a couple of yachtsman with an idea formed a company called Etak, which made it a goal to make a navigation system with street-level detail that could be installed in an automobile.

They succeeded. Instead of using satellites, they used “dead reckoning” which compares the car’s location to a fixed spot. A modern (at the time) IBM XT computer running at 4.77 MHz with 128 kilobytes of memory got stuffed in the vehicle’s trunk. An oscilloscope-style green CRT display with buttons was mounted up on the dash, a fluxgate compass was mounted on the back windshield to keep track of magnetic north, and a pair of hall-effect sensors were mounted to the non-driven wheels of the car to count off miles, and the difference in rotational speed between the wheels kept track of corners. Map data was loaded on cassette tapes which each held about 3 1/2 megabytes of information. Users switched tapes whenever they roamed into an area not covered by the current cassette.

The system was about $1,500 and could be installed by a company that did radio and speaker installation in cars. They sold about 5,000 of them. The Etak technology lived on to the modern Internet era, where its map data was used by companies such as MapQuest and TomTom. Etak also created the fixed-map viewpoint (you in the center, the map moves around you) which is still used in all modern navigation systems.

Here’s a video of this incredible system at work: https://youtu.be/CHCCjlSWbHE?t=863 You can also read more about this technology here: https://www.fastcompany.com/…/who-needs-gps-the…

The last of a dying breed…

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I remember Kmart. Those huge circular air vents in the ceiling. The rows of endless florescent lights. The pegboard endcaps. The ancient point-of-sale systems. We’ve made a lot of progress in stores since then! Ummm, wait a second…

Rochester is home to one of the last 3 Kmarts in the state. Its appearance is not much different than how Faribault’s Kmart looked decades ago before it closed. If you’re looking to step into a time capsule back to a time when New Kids on the Block topped Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, I urge you to do it soon. After all, you won’t have too much time left to do it.

Additional video of interest: https://youtu.be/1__Qg1toSSs

Finding a Work/Life Balance

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168 hours makes one week, and many of us struggle to find the time to fit all the things we have to do and what we’d like to do in those 168 hours.

This is a powerful article and gives some great insight on how to achieve a good work and life balance. One simple way to restructure your week can be accomplished by simply changing your words from “I don’t have time for that” to “That’s not a priority for me”. Everyone seems to accept “I don’t have time for that” because we can all relate to shortage of time. However, saying “that’s not a priority for me” allows you to feel the true impact of the decisions you make.

For example, “I didn’t play with my kids this weekend because I didn’t have time.” seems to make you feel better being the busy person you are, however, restating this to “I didn’t play with my kids this weekend because it’s not a priority for me” is particularly daunting and better states the impact of your decision.

Please, “make it a priority” to give this article a read if you believe you might have problems achieving a good work/life balance. Your relationships are worth it.https://paulcunningham.me/achieving-work-life-balance-in-168-hours?fbclid=IwAR3z5knfMGXAkjKnkv9pLR9Ze-jULOTHo8TEH0kiu7AhaOBlnuEgMYSBvNM

Faribault severe storm as it comes in

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A camera on a mast located on top of Jefferson Elementary School in Faribault, Minnesota pointing north captures the high wind event that caused damage throughout Southern Minnesota on September 20, 2018.
These were likely straight-line winds but the National Weather Service is still surveying the aftermath a week later.

A Tornado Just Hit Faribault.

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The National Weather Service did its job tonight extraordinarily well. The Rice County Emergency Management and Dispatch sounded the alert sirens quickly. Our Skywarn social media posts went out immediately. These sources gave everybody in Rice County at least 15 if not 20 minutes of warning before the tornadoes came through.

Things are a mess around here. Bethany and I are OK, and our part of town had more tree damage than anything. This is the only damage I had.. a single piece of front fascia hanging down. It is absolutely nothing compared to several families dealing with losing their homes or businesses tonight.

West of Faribault is like a scene out of “Twister”. Corrugated metal hung up high in trees. Roofs of sheds laying in unharvested fields. Halves of silos gone completely. Trees through people’s living rooms. Horse trailers laying on their roof in the ditch. Recreational Vehicles tipped over like Hot Wheels at LeMieux’s Resort.

North of Faribault, not many hangars are left without major damage at our Airport. MetCon has structural damage to their building. The freeway, closed down because of vehicles tipped over and debris littering the roadway.

I’ve never seen this kind of devastation around the Faribault area. This is going to be talked about for a long time.

I’m still a damn child, and I guess an asshole.

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I have an admission to make. I’m still a damn child. And I guess an asshole.

Bethany and I were at a parade today in LaCrescent, MN, and there was this obnoxious older lady probably in her late 60s that demanded everybody throw her candy. When a float came by with walkers that were giving out string cheese, she demanded two pieces. She demanded a Freez-e from another and got huffy when the walker exclaimed “they’re for the kids only, ma’am.” The final straw was when she stole a Blow-pop from the feet of my girlfriend before she had a chance to pick it up (yes, she was running all around for candy like a damn 7 year old). “Sorrrr-eeee” goes the old lady to Bethany after she picks it up.

That was it. I took a Strawberry Dum-Dum out of our candy collection, unwrapped it, licked that baby and made sure to moisten that thing up as much as I possibly could, and wrapped it back up. Minutes later, there was my queue. A fierce volley of Dum-Dums thrown by yet another float and I knew it was time. Without a moment’s hesitation and while keeping my vision focused directly ahead, I sidearmed my saliva coated Dum-Dum to my right side just as the Dum-Dums from the float were hopping and bouncing their way to the curb. And there it was. Sweet, sweet strawberry victory. Maybe it was just one candy in her very large bounty bag of hundreds of others, but for me, that one piece was the sweetest candy of them all…

…and, as you might imagine, Bethany was still not impressed 🙂