Category Archives: Blog

Fred Rogers melted Senator Pastore in about 6 minutes

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I very seldom share a video or a meme or something like that from another page on Facebook, because seldom do any of them get more than a few second response, be it a quick chuckle or a scroll-through. This video will stay with you throughout the weekend. I guarantee it.

In 1969, Mr. Fred Rogers gave the following emotional plea to a Senate Subcommittee. President Richard Nixon was trying to cut funding for PBS. Mr. Rogers was trying to save it. This speech is one of many fantastic memories that remind us just how fantastic a happiness hero this man really was.

Somehow using nothing but a few minutes of gentle words, Mr. Rogers was able to convince them not to pull funding from public television. The transition of the committee’s chairman from skeptical and dismissive at the beginning to having an attitude of outright admiration at the end is beautiful to behold. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when kindness and the happiness of others is your goal.

Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence and ALT Tags

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Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence, and ALT tags. #Engadget #alttags

I figured I would post something about this because I haven’t seen it discussed on any forum I am familiar with on the Internet.

Facebook reveals a little information about the information it collects from the pictures you post in the form of ALT tags. ALT tags are included in the raw HTML code of nearly every website you visit. They are primarily used to briefly describe a particular picture, image, or graphic for users that can’t view images, either because they are visually impaired, or their Web browser doesn’t support it.

By inspecting the HTML code of anyone’s Facebook profile, you can see some of what Facebook can recognize in your photos. Take for instance these examples on my own profile. In the first example on the thumbnail with my girlfriend and I in the car, Facebook believes it sees 2 people, smiling, sitting, outdoors, with sunglasses and a beard. This is amazingly accurate (it HAD been a few days since I shaved!) In the second example on the thumbnail of me jumping my four-wheeler at Jordan Supercross, Facebook believes it sees one or more people on a motorcycle outdoors. Again, not too shabby on Facebook’s part!
If you care to experiment a little, what other criteria can you find that Facebook’s AI can successfully identify? Share here!

The last T1 has been disconnected!

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Once the configuration was done, the only thing left to do was plug in the fiber! As you can see, a few Nerstrand Elementary School students happily helped out with this process. With a simple, positive “click” of the fiber-optic patch cable into the transceiver, Nerstrand completed their upgrade from the two trunked T-1 lines offering about 3Mbps of bandwidth, to the 10000Mbps of bandwidth now at their disposal. The speed is exciting, but even more exciting is the capacity this line will give the School for bringing in more devices and perhaps even having a one device per student option down the road. Thanks Amelia and Stefan!

My Humble “Thanks”

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The humble act of saying “Thanks” implies that not one of us can exist solely by themselves. Whether it’s the physical assistance we might get from someone stronger than us, the professional assistance we get from someone who is more skilled than us, the life assistance we get from someone who is wiser than us, or the spiritual assistance we might get from a being more powerful than us. Life is a combination of what we accomplish and what we have to offer others, the bonds with our loved ones, friends and family alike, and good fortune when none of us are quite strong enough.

For this, I offer my humble “Thanks”. I am grateful for my good fortune, my loved ones, my good friends, and my good health. I have everything anyone could possibly ever want. Please take some time today, instead of feeling envy about others, to reflect on the people, things, and abilities you yourself have, and to be thankful, and grateful.

Homemade Solar Tracker

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It was a bright, sunny day, so why not build a homemade solar tracker? Solar trackers help solar panels always point at the sun as the sun moves from east to west across the sky. They slightly improve efficiency of panels connected to them.

We took an old “C-band” satellite rotator and controller, and soldered some wires up to the “east” and “west” movement buttons to give us a couple of dry contacts that we could control with electronics. We chose (2) X-10 Universal Modules which momentarily close the dry contacts when a signal for it comes down the powerline (which a computer can control). One module for east, one module for west. The contacts short for about a second and a half with every ON command. Starting at the east-most side, 18 WEST ON commands make it go to the extreme west-most side.

After verifying the modules worked properly, it was then time to start writing code! After calculating the number of possible minutes of sunlight after subtracting the Sunrise time from Sunset time, we took the result and divided by 18 to find out how many minutes between ON commands. It is this interval (45 minutes right now) that the rotator will move west. At the end of the day when the rotator is at its west limit and the sun sets, the rotator will turn all the way back to the east limit to prepare for the next day.

This was a pretty fun project to conceptualize and put in to operation in a single day. The jury is still out on whether or not the extra energy produced will offset running the rotator, especially on non-sunny days.