So today I spent all day at an EMS conference to acquire 7 hours of continuing education credit for my EMT license. I am acting as an EMT on a volunteer basis, so there is no remuneration involved at all. To maintain national EMT certification requires 48 hours of CE, Continuing Education, every two years.
So why does a PhD in math or physics or any other of the major scientific disciplines not have an imposed CE requirement? Ami (my significant other) has a PhD in EE with no CE requirements, but her license to practice law in California with her JD requires 25 hours every two years (soon to be raised to 35 hours).
I raise this question in good faith based on the nonsense I see virtually every day on the MH370 blogs.
BTW, I am not complaining. I learned a lot of very useful and highly appropriate stuff today.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Friday, April 21, 2017
GPS Shock Mount
GPS receiver mounted on a motorcycle handlebar. A Garmin shock mount is shown. The purpose of the shock mount is to mitigate severe vibration when riding off road. Without the shock mount the GPS receiver has a difficult time tracking satellites and determining user Doppler.
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
Under Constrained
What do the search for MH370, the 'big bang", AGW, and contemporary evolutionary theory have in common? They all represent an analytical and scientific trend that has become common over the last 50 years or so. I would characterize this trend as an over reliance on under constrained "solutions".
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with an under constrained system. What is wrong is to teach it as dogma in schools, and spend public money following a course of action based on such ideas.
It is very likely that the "big bang" theory is wrong. New data gathered by the Planck satellite has shaken the foundations of the "big bang". Actually the "big bang" has been hobbled by problems for over 50 years - the amount of time spent looking for and not finding any dark matter or dark energy needed for the theory to explain the observables. That has not stopped our educators from presenting the "big bang" as a proven scientific fact.
So it goes with AGW. Is the world's climate changing? A lot of observables suggest that it is. What is not known is the underlying causality. Is it related to human activity or is it the result of other physical processes? No one knows with any degree of certainty. Spending money to reduce the impact of humans on the earth is probably a good thing to do. Teaching AGW in our schools as a provably correct theory is total nonsense. The reality is we do not know if human activity is causing global warming.
Evolution happens. We can see it occurring in our world. Can it explain the diversity of plants and animals on our planet today? No. There are serious problems related to the observed rate of genetic mutation and the age of the earth. It is not a small disconnect. It is an order of magnitude disconnect. This problem gets no mention as evolution is spoon fed to our children as the correct explanation for every plant and animal on our planet.
The search for MH370 highlights over a short time period the 50 year trend mentioned in the first paragraph above. The SSWG and many analysts outside the SSWG busied themselves sticking pins in a map based on speculation. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with that process except the manner in which it was presented and preserved. Like the "big bang", AGW, and evolution you had to be part of the club of believers or you were invited to leave the discussion. Is this the new trend in scientific enquiry? Apparently so. Steinhardt and Loeb conclude their paper highlighting the problems with the "big bang" with an interesting discussion in this regard. Their paper is a very worthwhile read.
Pop Goes the Universe
Speaking about theories in general...
The work of the SSWG, IG, DSTG, and other outside analysts falls exactly into the problem area above. It excludes nothing and has zero power. An oracle would be appreciated.
Taleb makes an interesting observation relative to people "categorization" - people that know how (surgeons, Uber drivers, machinists...) and people who know what (economists, cosmologists, climatologists,...) I am done paying any attention to people in the know what category.
edit: 4/17/2017
So the ATSB put the lid on information disclosure today. I suppose I would do the same thing if I was in their shoes.
atsb-threatens-staff-with-jail-if-mh370-details-leaked
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with an under constrained system. What is wrong is to teach it as dogma in schools, and spend public money following a course of action based on such ideas.
It is very likely that the "big bang" theory is wrong. New data gathered by the Planck satellite has shaken the foundations of the "big bang". Actually the "big bang" has been hobbled by problems for over 50 years - the amount of time spent looking for and not finding any dark matter or dark energy needed for the theory to explain the observables. That has not stopped our educators from presenting the "big bang" as a proven scientific fact.
So it goes with AGW. Is the world's climate changing? A lot of observables suggest that it is. What is not known is the underlying causality. Is it related to human activity or is it the result of other physical processes? No one knows with any degree of certainty. Spending money to reduce the impact of humans on the earth is probably a good thing to do. Teaching AGW in our schools as a provably correct theory is total nonsense. The reality is we do not know if human activity is causing global warming.
Evolution happens. We can see it occurring in our world. Can it explain the diversity of plants and animals on our planet today? No. There are serious problems related to the observed rate of genetic mutation and the age of the earth. It is not a small disconnect. It is an order of magnitude disconnect. This problem gets no mention as evolution is spoon fed to our children as the correct explanation for every plant and animal on our planet.
The search for MH370 highlights over a short time period the 50 year trend mentioned in the first paragraph above. The SSWG and many analysts outside the SSWG busied themselves sticking pins in a map based on speculation. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with that process except the manner in which it was presented and preserved. Like the "big bang", AGW, and evolution you had to be part of the club of believers or you were invited to leave the discussion. Is this the new trend in scientific enquiry? Apparently so. Steinhardt and Loeb conclude their paper highlighting the problems with the "big bang" with an interesting discussion in this regard. Their paper is a very worthwhile read.
Pop Goes the Universe
Speaking about theories in general...
The theory becomes more highly tuned and arcane to fit new observations until it reaches a state where its explanatory power diminishes to the point that it is no longer pursued. The explanatory
power of a theory is measured by the set of possibilities it excludes. More immunization means less exclusion and less power. A theory like the multimess (big bang) does not exclude anything and,
hence, has zero power. Declaring an empty theory as the unquestioned standard view requires some sort of assurance outside of science. Short of a professed oracle, the only alternative
is to invoke authorities. History teaches us that this is the wrong
road to take.
The work of the SSWG, IG, DSTG, and other outside analysts falls exactly into the problem area above. It excludes nothing and has zero power. An oracle would be appreciated.
Taleb makes an interesting observation relative to people "categorization" - people that know how (surgeons, Uber drivers, machinists...) and people who know what (economists, cosmologists, climatologists,...) I am done paying any attention to people in the know what category.
edit: 4/17/2017
So the ATSB put the lid on information disclosure today. I suppose I would do the same thing if I was in their shoes.
atsb-threatens-staff-with-jail-if-mh370-details-leaked
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
XR650R - A Legend
The world is finally waking up to what I discovered several years ago. The finest single cylinder adventure bike is no longer made. That would be the Honda XR650R. Getting one plated in California is a non-trivial exercise.
XR650R
I went through the pain, and have two of them. Both very well sorted out. Pic below.
The bike on the left is a Johnny Campbell pre-runner. Campbell and team won the Baja 1000 several times with this type of bike. It has the Honda factory installed power up kit, and the forks are reworked for the Honda Baja team. What this means is that the bike is basically not rideable for a normal person. It is scary fast, and beats you to death at normal rider speeds and style. The bike on the right has the standard XR650R engine, and reworked suspension for B/C riders. It is a very pleasant scooter.
Both bikes have 6.3 gallon Acerbis tanks which give a range of 250-300 miles depending on terrain and throttle usage.
Eat your heart out people.
XR650R
I went through the pain, and have two of them. Both very well sorted out. Pic below.
The bike on the left is a Johnny Campbell pre-runner. Campbell and team won the Baja 1000 several times with this type of bike. It has the Honda factory installed power up kit, and the forks are reworked for the Honda Baja team. What this means is that the bike is basically not rideable for a normal person. It is scary fast, and beats you to death at normal rider speeds and style. The bike on the right has the standard XR650R engine, and reworked suspension for B/C riders. It is a very pleasant scooter.
Both bikes have 6.3 gallon Acerbis tanks which give a range of 250-300 miles depending on terrain and throttle usage.
Eat your heart out people.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
High Dynamic Range Photography
As usual, I am late to the game. Only became aware of this capability recently. It is actually already implemented in newer phone cameras.
The basic idea is that the dynamic range of the human eye exceeds the dynamic range of photographs produced by digital cameras. By taking a sequence of photographs at different camera exposures (EV settings) and combining them with appropriate software one can produce pictures with greatly increased dynamic range. There are many examples to be found on the WEB.
I recently downloaded several software products available for this purpose. The Photomatix software produced the best results for me. A couple of examples below.
Garage picture of XR650R motorcycle which I am currently working on:
Single frame picture taken at 0EV with Nikon D200 DSLR.
Photomatix image produced by five frames (-1.4 - 0.7 0 +0.7 +1.4) EV - Nikon D200.
Picture taken from ranch deck toward the Mendocino National Forest:
Single frame 0EV - Nikon D200.
Photomatix image produced by five frames (-1.4 - 0.7 0 +0.7 +1.4) EV - Nikon D200.
In both cases the difference is very dramatic. Still have a lot to learn.
Edit: 4/3/2017
So, another comparison. This time favoring the single frame mode IMO. The single frame seems to more closely match the image seen by my eyes. Kitchen faucet which I just replaced. Photo below HDR at the same EV spread as above. Tonal spreading of the planter box wood above the faucet is very accurate relative to human perception, but brown (sprayed to kill) vegetation below faucet is too "orange".
0EV single frame below. Wood is not as good, but sprayed vegetation is quite accurate relative to human perception.
edit 4/5/2017
So I wanted see how a little motion (the smoke in this case) impacted the image which is accumulated over five frames. Not much at all.
HDR picture of Ami burning some trimmings:
Same scene single frame 0EV. Nikon D200 in both cases. Smoke is better represented in single frame image IMO.
edit 4/6/2017
Cold and rainy today so I took a wood stove picture in the "surreal" mode. Again, five frames with Nikon D200. Exposure time on each frame with room ambient lighting was 0.7 seconds at ISO 200, so a rock solid tripod setup was essential.
Single frame below at 1.33EV
edit 4/9/17
Stonyford General Store. Stonyford is where my ranch is located. Population is around 200 people. Ranch is nestled against the Snow Mountain Wilderness area. You cannot see another structure from the ranch. Second pair of photos in the post were taken from the deck of the ranch house.
"Ansel Adams" version of Stonyford General Store
There are obviously a lot of knobs to spin on both the camera and the software when combining multiple frames. I am very pleased with the Photomatix product, and bought the license. Picture below was taken with a Nikon D100 which is limited to three frames. The frames were at (-0.7 0.0 +0.7) Processing used was in the "painterly2" mode of Photomatix. The Zen House (Point Arena, CA) experience is like stepping into a Norman Rockwell painting. The owner, Dave, is the best motorcycle mechanic I have yet to encounter.
The basic idea is that the dynamic range of the human eye exceeds the dynamic range of photographs produced by digital cameras. By taking a sequence of photographs at different camera exposures (EV settings) and combining them with appropriate software one can produce pictures with greatly increased dynamic range. There are many examples to be found on the WEB.
I recently downloaded several software products available for this purpose. The Photomatix software produced the best results for me. A couple of examples below.
Garage picture of XR650R motorcycle which I am currently working on:
Single frame picture taken at 0EV with Nikon D200 DSLR.
Photomatix image produced by five frames (-1.4 - 0.7 0 +0.7 +1.4) EV - Nikon D200.
Picture taken from ranch deck toward the Mendocino National Forest:
Single frame 0EV - Nikon D200.
In both cases the difference is very dramatic. Still have a lot to learn.
Edit: 4/3/2017
So, another comparison. This time favoring the single frame mode IMO. The single frame seems to more closely match the image seen by my eyes. Kitchen faucet which I just replaced. Photo below HDR at the same EV spread as above. Tonal spreading of the planter box wood above the faucet is very accurate relative to human perception, but brown (sprayed to kill) vegetation below faucet is too "orange".
0EV single frame below. Wood is not as good, but sprayed vegetation is quite accurate relative to human perception.
edit 4/5/2017
So I wanted see how a little motion (the smoke in this case) impacted the image which is accumulated over five frames. Not much at all.
HDR picture of Ami burning some trimmings:
Same scene single frame 0EV. Nikon D200 in both cases. Smoke is better represented in single frame image IMO.
edit 4/6/2017
Cold and rainy today so I took a wood stove picture in the "surreal" mode. Again, five frames with Nikon D200. Exposure time on each frame with room ambient lighting was 0.7 seconds at ISO 200, so a rock solid tripod setup was essential.
Single frame below at 1.33EV
edit 4/9/17
Stonyford General Store. Stonyford is where my ranch is located. Population is around 200 people. Ranch is nestled against the Snow Mountain Wilderness area. You cannot see another structure from the ranch. Second pair of photos in the post were taken from the deck of the ranch house.
"Ansel Adams" version of Stonyford General Store
There are obviously a lot of knobs to spin on both the camera and the software when combining multiple frames. I am very pleased with the Photomatix product, and bought the license. Picture below was taken with a Nikon D100 which is limited to three frames. The frames were at (-0.7 0.0 +0.7) Processing used was in the "painterly2" mode of Photomatix. The Zen House (Point Arena, CA) experience is like stepping into a Norman Rockwell painting. The owner, Dave, is the best motorcycle mechanic I have yet to encounter.
Underwater Beacon Operation (my current understanding)
Recently there has been some discussion on the Iannello blog relative to the operation of the DK100 underwater beacons (one for the CVR 'black box" one for FDR 'black box") associated with 9M-MRO. These beacons are manufactured by the Dukane Corporation.
Despite extensive searching (by me), a schematic for the DK100 has not been found. However, a "representative" schematic for a ULB is shown below.
The schematic is quite simple, and shows two timing generation functions. The bottom dashed box (28) labeled pulse generator produces timing pulses at a given duration and rate. In the case of this implementation the duration and rate are selectable by the switch settings shown in that part of the schematic. In the case of the DK100 the duration is fixed at nominally 10ms, and the rate is fixed at nominally once per second. The other timing function is contained in dashed box (24). This oscillator produces the "carrier" frequency of the radiated energy. In the case of the DK100, this frequency would be set at 37.5 kHz.
Gates (26) and (30) provide a train of 37.5 kHz pulses at the duration (envelop) and rate (pulse repetition frequency) to an impedance matching transformer which drives a piezo-ceramic crystal. The ceramic is bonded to the case of the ULB, and couples this mechanical energy to the ULB case which then imparts acoustic energy to the water. Both the piezo ceramic and the case are "tuned" to resonate near 37.5 kHz. "Tuned" in this context refers to the mechanical properties of the ceramic and case.
The case is designed to have a high 'Q' (mechanical resonance) near the frequency of the carrier at 37.5 kHz. This design is necessary to maximize the conversion of the 37.5 kHz pulses to mechanical energy radiated into the water. The 'Q' of aluminum enclosures tuned to resonate near the 37.5 kHz carrier is typically on the order of 50 which provides a "window" at 37.5 kHz +/- ~ 375 Hz.
The acoustic output looks similar to the recorded (and demodulated) signal below. The signal below was produced by Rodney Thomson while analyzing the pulses obtained in the SIO early in the search for MH370. These pulses turned out not to be sourced by 9M-MRO. Note below is copy pasted from the Thomson link.
Rodney Thomson
(NOTE: the 'pinger' is audible at about 3.4kHz however it obviously has been demodulated down from the raw signal observed on the TPL-25 to bring into the audible range)
Despite extensive searching (by me), a schematic for the DK100 has not been found. However, a "representative" schematic for a ULB is shown below.
The schematic is quite simple, and shows two timing generation functions. The bottom dashed box (28) labeled pulse generator produces timing pulses at a given duration and rate. In the case of this implementation the duration and rate are selectable by the switch settings shown in that part of the schematic. In the case of the DK100 the duration is fixed at nominally 10ms, and the rate is fixed at nominally once per second. The other timing function is contained in dashed box (24). This oscillator produces the "carrier" frequency of the radiated energy. In the case of the DK100, this frequency would be set at 37.5 kHz.
Gates (26) and (30) provide a train of 37.5 kHz pulses at the duration (envelop) and rate (pulse repetition frequency) to an impedance matching transformer which drives a piezo-ceramic crystal. The ceramic is bonded to the case of the ULB, and couples this mechanical energy to the ULB case which then imparts acoustic energy to the water. Both the piezo ceramic and the case are "tuned" to resonate near 37.5 kHz. "Tuned" in this context refers to the mechanical properties of the ceramic and case.
The case is designed to have a high 'Q' (mechanical resonance) near the frequency of the carrier at 37.5 kHz. This design is necessary to maximize the conversion of the 37.5 kHz pulses to mechanical energy radiated into the water. The 'Q' of aluminum enclosures tuned to resonate near the 37.5 kHz carrier is typically on the order of 50 which provides a "window" at 37.5 kHz +/- ~ 375 Hz.
The acoustic output looks similar to the recorded (and demodulated) signal below. The signal below was produced by Rodney Thomson while analyzing the pulses obtained in the SIO early in the search for MH370. These pulses turned out not to be sourced by 9M-MRO. Note below is copy pasted from the Thomson link.
Rodney Thomson
(NOTE: the 'pinger' is audible at about 3.4kHz however it obviously has been demodulated down from the raw signal observed on the TPL-25 to bring into the audible range)
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