Curiosity...

Curiosity...  An excellent short documentary on my favorite robotic explorer, currently beavering away on the red planet...

Super-moon...

Super-moon...  Click to embiggen.  Via APOD, of course...

On-demand paper jamming...

On-demand paper jamming...  This cracked me up, and brought back memories of some particularly funny bugs I've run into myself.

My favorite one of these was a stepping motor driver I wrote.  I was annoyed by the noise that the head-positioning stepper in floppy drives made.  The noise was caused by the constant step-rate employed by the simple software drivers generally used.  I wrote one that accelerated and decelerated the stepper instead, and was virtually silent.  However, I had a strange “bug” in my driver.  When I first got it running, it would be quiet in the morning when I got to work – but by the afternoon, it was noisy again.  Not as bad as without my driver, but much noisier than in the morning.  How could my software behave differently in the afternoon than in the morning?

Eventually I figured out what was going on.  Our office was ten degrees or so warmer in the afternoons, and the components of the stepper drive expanded a bit.  This increased the rotational inertia in the system, which in turn reduced the acceleration the stepper could apply.  To make it work right, I had to adjust the speed of my driver non-linearly as the ambient temperature (which, fortunately, the floppy drive measured) varied... 

Humans need not apply...

Humans need not apply...  This short documentary does a good job of explaining how robots are developing.  I think it probably overstates the self-learning abilities being developed, but I stand ready to be proved wrong.  My own guess is that robots will (in the reasonably near term) eliminate a great many jobs that don't require particularly difficult skills, but not more highly skilled jobs.  I'd be very surprised, for example, if doctors were to find themselves on the unemployment lines.

The underlying premise of this little film is that jobs are being threatened, and that's bad.  I agree with the first part, but I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.  The centrality of jobs in our culture is an artifact of our culture, not necessarily a biological (or psychological) imperative.

Readers of science fiction will already be familiar with the many ideas about what happens to people who don't possess skills that robots can't do.  After reading many of these myself, I find the most plausible scenarios involve hordes of entertainment-seeking people with lesser skills, coddled and pampered by smaller hordes of robots.  Some people will find creative outlets, but many will pursue full time the same part-time leisure activities people pursue today, with TV at the head of the list.

I suspect that Mann is starting to understand something...

I suspect that Mann is starting to understand something...  When Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann decided to sue Mark Steyn, Mann was spitting on Superman's cape.  Not only is Steyn defending himself in a spectacularly aggressive way (unlike some others we won't mention) – but Steyn has also counter-sued, and looks to be bringing a world of hurt down on Mann's head.

Good.  Couldn't happen to a more deserving warmist!

Just shut it down!

Just shut it down!  NASA has far outlived its usefulness.  It's now turned into a pork machine, doling out multi-billion dollar useless projects to the home districts of powerful Congressmen.  The few useful things that it continues to fund (mainly the robotic explorers) would be better handled with competitive contracts.  Companies like SpaceX are already providing cheaper, better launch services.

Unionization is the last straw.  It's a bureaucratic weed.  Time for some bureaucratic Round-Up.

This makes me feel...

This makes me feel ... inferior...

Tide pool...

Tide pool...  In Puerto Peñasco, Mexico.  Click to embiggen.  Beautiful, no?  That's a technically challenging photo, with such a huge range of brightness...

Maggie...

Maggie...  Yesterday morning, as I was working out in my yard, I got quite a surprise: a beautiful Springer spaniel with unusual coloring showed up right in front of me.  She was a mixture of brown and black spots on a white background all over her face, and larger patches on the rest of her.  This dog – Maggie on her tag – came running straight through the thicket of roses that line the irrigation canal on the east side of our property.  She was thoroughly wet, apparently having just walked through the canal.  Lots of people in the area let their dogs and cats run loose, so I assumed this was one of my neighbors' dogs, though I hadn't seen her before.

I called to her, and she came right to me, very friendly.  Being dog-deprived up here (our dogs are still all in Jamul), I took the opportunity to enjoy some canine company.  We played together for a while, then I went back to work.  That's when I started to suspect something might be wrong, as my new friend just wouldn't leave my side.  She followed me all over the yard as I went about my work cutting down some pine seedlings that had gotten out of control in bad locations.  Something about her behavior made me think that she might be lost.  So I called her over to me again, and this time I looked at her tags.  That's when I found out her name was Maggie – and that her home address was a mile and a half away, east of the town of Paradise.  I took a closer look at her, and noticed that her pads were not very calloused – she wasn't accustomed to running around long distances – and her coat was mostly combed out and recently trimmed.  This wasn't a dog used to field and stream; she was a pampered pooch.

So I walked over to my truck, Maggie trailing closely behind.  I opened the passenger door, and Maggie jumped right in, looking happy and excited.  I got into the driver's side, and Maggie crawled over the console onto the seat beside me (rather a tight squeeze!), and wouldn't leave.  We drove off, crunched together, on a search for her house.

It took a while to find it, as the street she lived on isn't continuous.  After a bit of exploration, though, I figured out how to get onto the right piece of her street, and finally located her house: a big, beautiful home on a hilltop, in a large lot (20 acres or so), with a commanding view of all of southern Cache Valley.  The yard was beautifully landscaped in a style I associate with Arizona, with mostly plants that have low water needs.  I rang the doorbell, and the lady of the house (Jill) came out with a baby on her hip.  She gave me a funny look, probably because I was drenched with sweat (it was a hot and humid day), and wearing one of my goofy hats.  But when I told her that I had a friend in my truck, she immediately knew that one of their dogs must have gotten out of her kennel.  I opened my truck door, and a very happy Maggie hopped out to see her not-so-happy-with-her owner.  Maggie had dug under her kennel wall, as apparently some of her fellow dogs had done before.  However, Jill told me that they'd never had one wander so far away before – and certainly had never had one cross the highway before.  I'd be pretty unhappy if I knew one of my dogs had done such a thing, and that's exactly how Jill reacted.

I suspect those kennels will be be fixed soon.

Maggie made my day yesterday, both with her company and because I was able to get her safely back home, where she belongs...

Cat trees...

Cat trees...  For the cattery in our new home, we ordered a couple of cat trees from Furwood Forest, a maker in Georgia.  These cat trees are made using branches cut in local forests, with the usual elements of a cat tree worked into them.  Our two arrived yesterday, in perfect condition, packed very nicely.  One of them can be seen at right.  Furwood Forest's owner (Steve Hall) worked with Debbie to come up with designs that could be used even by some of our cats with physical challenges.  The result: attractive, functional cat trees that every one of our furry friends can use. 

The photo was taken in the room that will be our new cattery.  It's a large room (about 600 square feet) in the basement of our new home.  We've floored it with ceramic tile for easy cleaning.  The base will also be of the same tile, but we're waiting for the materials to come in for that.  We also have a cabinet being built just for the cattery, with a huge stainless steel sink, ample storage, and a pull-out cat food bin.  Despite being in the basement, the room is full of light from the seven casement windows around three sides.  Next year, we're going to build an outdoor enclosure that the cats will be able to get to, through a tunnel from the basement, through a casement window, and up to the enclosure.  This will give them outdoor access for three seasons of the year.  We should have some happy cats up here!