Category Archives: Blog

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…

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

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.

High-Resolution LED Display Graphics

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Since the time these high-resolution LED displays were installed in the Nomeland Gymnasium at the High School, I’ve been spending much of my spare time designing graphics, sponsor advertising, and program workflow for the system. It has already been used successfully for several volleyball matches, 9th grade orientation, and now an all-staff District workshop. The variety of technology I get to work with is one reason I love my job and this field!

A Tour of the National Weather Service Office in Chanhassen

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As Rice County Skywarn is a Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador, we got the opportunity to tour the National Weather Service in Chanhassen today! We talked to the meteorologists that forecast our weather and do such a good job updating the public over social media, without sensationalism. At 6 p.m., we watched a weather balloon launch with a radiosonde which measures temperature, humidity, and pressure all the way up to 100,000 feet. The data is used to create the models we use each day to predict the weather. The staff was so accommodating, informative, and polite! Afterwards, we stopped by Lion’s Tap for supper. It was a great afternoon away from the office!

 

Poor Sears

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Poor Sears. They are shutting down another 100 stores as their businesses continue to fail. Sears was perfectly positioned to monopolize computer-based sales since they had a 100-year head start with their mail order business.

Before almost anyone had Internet, CBS, IBM and Sears joined forces to create an online service called “Prodigy” in 1984. This actually allowed people to purchase things from Sears on their home computer some 10 years before Amazon was founded. Unfortunately, their vision was just too early as most people had to pay long distance phone charges to connect in addition to the monthly subscription.

In the mid to late 90s when Internet became more popular, Sears was gunshy about investing more money into the same idea. Unfortunately, this would be the beginning of the end since Sears never really did innovate again.

Enjoy this commercial for the Prodigy online service from 1990.

Bitcoin

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Since the increase in Bitcoin’s worth to almost $20,000 (before Christmas), I’ve been asked by several people about Bitcoin. Here are a few reasons why getting involved with them, in my opinion, is a horrible idea.

1. Your Bitcoin wallet is kept on your computer. If you lose the key to your wallet, or your computer crashes, you lose all of your money.

2. If you put your Bitcoin on an exchange, when that exchange gets hacked, you lose all of your money. This has already happened several times since there are only a handful of exchanges that deal with US currency.

3. In order to buy something with Bitcoin, you have to pay to have that transaction processed by all the Bitcoin “miners” in the world. This on average costs over $20 a transaction, and takes 2 hours to complete. The more you pay, the higher your priority in line.

4. This one transaction, according to https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption, takes as much electricity to process as what is consumed by 10 average U.S. households in a single day. This is mainly due to inefficiencies in the Bitcoin protocol.

5. Refunds or chargebacks are impossible with Bitcoin. There is no turning back a transaction.

6. Since there is little value to using Bitcoin for everyday transactions, most of its current value (in my opinion) is only from its possible future prospective value (when will the bubble completely burst?)

Now that Bitcoin value is back down to under $15,000, some are wondering if it might be time to invest. Take a look at these graphs and ask yourself, is this the bull trap before the bottom drops out?

Like it or not, electric cars are the future.

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Anybody in their 30s or 40s now will definitely be living in a world where electric cars, charged by renewable energy such as solar or wind power, will be the majority of vehicles on the road. Major trucking companies have already put orders in for the Tesla Semi based on ROI for delivery in 2019. AND, they release an electric car that does an 8.9 second 1/4 mile with a 600 mile range at highway speeds.Gasoline and diesel engines will go the way of the steam engine in the next 30-40 years.

Digital Video Editor Certification is now Available!

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I am proud to announce that the Digital Video Editor Certification offered by Electronics Technicians Association, International (ETA) is now complete! I served as a Subject Matter Expert on this committee for the last half year, and we believe we have created a certification test that employers will value. The future job prospects for this field are expected to grow much faster than average, and median wages for a DVE were $30.18 an hour!

ETA is a US-based not-for-profit 501(c) 6 professional association which provides certifications in industries such as basic electronics, fiber optics and data cabling, renewable energy, information technology, photonics and precision optics, customer service, biomedical, avionics, wireless communications, radar, and smart home. ETA is also one of the 13 COLEMs (Commercial Operator License Examination Manager) for U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) testing. ETA works with technicians, educators, and military personnel. ETA also partners with companies such as Motorola Solutions to provide certification to their employees.