May 26, 2005
New Blogger at Cutlass Site
I posted my first blog on the Cutlass site today. Check it out here.
Cutlass is a cross-platform encrypted, peer-to-peer, voice, text, and file transmission application, suitable for use by the broad public. I think Cutlass has a lot of potential to be very useful to the masses. The project page is here, if you want to download and try it out.
I'm looking forward to seeing Cutlass grow, and to being a blogger for the Cutlass site.
Posted by Kathy at 10:17 PM | Permalink
October 22, 2004
Upcoming Geeky Projects Magazine
O'Reilly publishers are planning on putting out a magazine called simply, Make. I'm looking forward to this magazine. It is scheduled to starting selling in early 2005. Oh, goody, more stuff for me to do in my copious spare time. Now I have to make sure I get my basement finished so that I have the extra workspace. Check it out. I think you'll think it's neat. Although there's no way to subscribe online yet, there will probably be soon. Consider buying your favorite geek a subscription.
Posted by Kathy at 09:59 PM | Permalink
October 21, 2004
How Interesting are Engineers?
I read an interesting article in the latest IEEE Spectrum magazine about why there are not more women in engineering. Yes, I know that this is a popular discussion topic. Over the years of being an engineer, I have seen this topic get talked about to death. However, this article is the first I've read that justifies the lack of female engineers with the simple reason of "engineering is not a cool career". This statement literally made me laugh, ROTFL-style. The writer proceeds to talk about how there are no cool TV shows about engineering. Medicine has E.R., law has L.A. Law and Ally McBeal. There are no cool shows about engineering. I do disagree with the author's statement about Dilbert being the most famous engineer. I mean, Thomas Edison was an engineer. It's just that, way long ago, people were called different titles, like 'inventor' or 'tinkerer'. If I think about it, I would say that McGuyver was an engineering show. Sort of.
Anyhow, this is not to say that engineers are not interesting people. Check out Brian Fu's website, for instance. Brian is by education an electrical engineer. He also happens to be an expert performer of light and stage shows, an artist, a musician, and is working on his first book. The book is not about engineering, by the way. It is likely going to focus on his experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. Download and watch Brian's movie which will showcase his talents. I'm betting that you'll be entertained. Forget the cool TV shows. We just need more engineers out there who are well-rounded and enjoy doing what they do. I've always thought Dilbert was kind of a loser anyway. Alice, on the other hand, could conceivably be labelled as 'cool'.
Posted by Kathy at 10:12 PM | Permalink
October 12, 2004
ToorCon, SpaceshipOne Launch, and the Long Tail Effect of Media Retail
That was a long hiatus from blogging for me. A lot of events have passed since late August. A few of us from Syn Ack Labs presented CUTLASS at
ToorCon 2004 in late September. The talk went well, although CUTLASS is still far from being finished.
After ToorCon, Todd and I headed up to the Mojave Desert area to see the first launch attempt for SpaceshipOne, which took place on September 29, 2004.
The neat thing is, we were part of history in the making, as it turned out, since the SpaceshipOne team won the coveted X-Prize. Todd made a great movie of the event.
As part of that brief trip, we also got the chance to get together with our friends Patty and Gary, who took us to Gyu-Kaku for dinner. We've never
had Yakiniku barbeque before, so I will be writing a review on that shortly. We also went to a Brazilian Churrasco restaurant, which was quite a carnivorous experience. After that, I just needed to take a break from eating meat for a few days. Whew.
So, what's up for October? There's still a lot of work to be done for CUTLASS. I guess CUTLASS is really the reason why I hadn't been working on blogs lately. There's an interesting article from Wired magazine I just finished reading about the Long Tail effect of media retail. Apparently, contrary to popular belief, consumers do not like being confined to read, listen, and watch only the top-selling books, music, and movies. This gives companies like Amazon.com and Apple (iTunes) their successes in selling less popular media. This success is due to the Long Tail effect.
Posted by Kathy at 10:24 PM | Permalink
April 21, 2004
Helping Out The Mars Society on Rockville Science Day
Last Sunday, we participated in the Rockville Science Day Event. This event is sponsored by the Rockville Science Consortium, and has participants from all sorts of science-oriented organizations set up booths to talk to kids about science. We were there with The Mars Society, along with Tom Hill. Tom had brought in a Lego Mars Rover model, and boy, was that a magnet for kids! I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised, but there were some really rude kids! This means that they would not stop trying to fold the Rover's solar panels up even when asked repeatedly. How some kids can get to be so spoiled is completely beyond my comprehension. Everyone liked the video loops we showed with the simulated Rover landings. Some of the kids were impressive when it came to how much they knew about Mars exploration. Others would just nod when asked if they knew, but we could tell that they really didn't. We had a great time at the event, though. A couple of things to consider for next year - only exhibit kid-proof stuff. I wish the booth with all the snakes and lizards had let kids handle them. That would have been a completely interesting thing to watch. Actually, that's probably precisely why the snakes and lizards were in cages the whole time.
Posted by Kathy at 12:48 PM | Permalink
February 26, 2004
Playing with GarageBand
I recently read Life of Pi and saw Whale Rider. The reviews are posted in their respective books and movies sections.
I just installed GarageBand, a utility that is packaged in Apple's iLife suite. GarageBand is awesome, to say the least. I'm looking forward to playing around with it and writing my own songs. Check it out. I'm also planning on buying the Jam Pack expansion, which allows me to record more instruments, and an adapter for my electric guitar, which will let me transmit the notes from the guitar directly into the GarageBand interface.
Posted by Kathy at 12:56 PM | Permalink
October 30, 2003
Isabel, NASA's Visible Earth, and Keychain Camera
Some massive natural disasters have happened in the last couple of months. Hurricane Isabel unleashed her power on the East coast, and the California wildfires are still going strong. I saw a website today which displays photographs with powerful messages about Mother Nature. NASA's Visible Earth, self-proclaimed as "a searchable directory of images, visualizations, and animations of the Earth". That is really cool. Some of these images would make great backgrounds.
New toy alert: a camera on a keychain. Check out this new product by Phillips. 64MB storage for 1.3 Megapixel pictures, recharge through USB, tiny device. I'm thinking about getting one of these already. Just think about all the picture opportunities you will not have to miss out on again!
Posted by Kathy at 01:37 PM | Permalink
October 27, 2003
SQUIDs and Their Medical Applications
I need a snazzier weblog, and I'm getting tired of static HTML entries. Movable Type seems to be the most appealing solution for me, since I want to host my own webserver as opposed to using someone else's servers to upload my entries to. So, I started to look at the requirements for running Movable Type. Need Apache. Check. Need MySQL. Check. Need to make sure MySQL is secured as much as possible. Working on it. Need all sorts of Perl modules. Working on it. Finally, need to move relevant files from the old webserver to the new webserver all the above packages will be located on. Double working on it. Initially, I wanted to load RedHat Linux on the new webserver. After several attempts including getting an exception handling error, which caused the entire installer to just die, I decided to just eschew RedHat Linux and use OpenBSD instead. The OpenBSD install worked like a charm. When all is said and done, I will have a much more scalable weblog engine. Priceless. Please look forward to my new weblog look soon!
At lunch with my co-workers, we were talking about Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs). I don't have much experience with these, since my focus area in my grad work was more VLSI-based devices. It sounds like a cool area, though. Especially interesting are the applications of SQUIDs. I'm thinking the medical applications for cardio devices, in particular. The elimination of electromagnetic interference is a major plus for cardio devices. I found this link from Livermore Labs that outlines research with medical applications for SQUIDs. Sometimes, I wish I had just stayed in the semiconductor/device physics field. *Sigh*
Posted by Kathy at 02:34 PM | Permalink
October 14, 2003
Mercury, Apollo, and a Monkey with a Robotic Arm
The kittens are doing much better now. Poor Apollo was sick for a little over a week. I'm glad to see that he and Mercury are romping around together again. They are now about nine weeks old, and entirely adorable. Their favorite things to do include finding us when we're in the computer room, and meowing to be picked up and placed on our laps for a nap. Very precious.
I haven't had much of a chance to get out of the house besides going to work lately, what with the kittens having been sick and all. I did see Cory Doctorow's posting on BoingBoing, though, of a really cool development with a monkey and a robotic arm. This application should people who are paralyzed, for example. I'm not sure how much experimentation has been done with fine muscle control movements. I mean, can these robotic arms eventually play the piano? That would be way cool.
Posted by Kathy at 02:38 PM | Permalink
June 16, 2003
New Camera, World's First Color Photography, and SARS Art Project
I got a great new camera recently. The Canon S400 digital camera. I know that you serious photographers out there will probably scoff at my choice, but I just wanted a small, convenient camera that I could take everywhere with me. The best thing about this camera is that I actually use it all the time. Maybe I'll include pictures on this site pretty soon.
Speaking of pictures, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii may have been the first color photographer in history. Sergei was a photographer to Tsar Nicholas II, and was able to photographically document the Russian empire pre-World War I. Although there was no color photography at the time, Sergei intended for his images to be seen in color because he captured each image in three stages, using red, green, and blue filters. The Library of Congress was able to take those composites and combine them to produce color photographs. This exhibit is absolutely fascinating. Too bad it was two years ago.
Another exhibit worth mentioning is the SARS Art Project. The title of the exhibit is self-explanatory. Some of these images are actually quite humorous.
Posted by Kathy at 04:59 PM | Permalink
March 05, 2003
ECybermission Science Contest Judge
My first stint as a science project judge begins today. I'm an online judge for the ECybermission science contest. This is a science contest for 7th and 8th graders nationwide. I spent some time reading contestents' statements of problems being solved, and was impressed with the number of environmentally-related projects. Does this tell us something about the youth of today? Another quality I noted was the eagerness in solving problems. We grown-ups like to phrase our statements as "lessen the global warming effect". These kids say "solve global warming" or "eliminate global warming". This is refreshing, and precious, because such an optimistic outlook seems to be fleeting within a person's lifetime.
Posted by Kathy at 05:36 PM | Permalink
February 06, 2003
Invisibility Cloaks and Thirsty Koalas
We are on our way to obtaining Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. Professor Susumu Tachi of Tokyo University has fabricated a coat that appears to be invisible. This is made possible by a viewfinder that puts together the image from behind the person wearing the coat. Check this link for more information. Note that the image retains its proportion even though part of the coat is wrinkled.
Are koalas vicious? They appear quite docile, but have talon-like claws. The city of Gunnedah, in Australia, has relied on the koala population to bring in tourists. Currently, with the drought conditions in Gunnedah, koalas are turning to the residents for water. Locals have noticed increasing numbers of koalas drinking from taps and containers of water. Normally, koalas get their moisture from the leaves they eat.
Posted by Kathy at 05:43 PM | Permalink
January 11, 2003
Mars Rovers Set to Launch
Exciting news: NASA engineers and scientists are about to pick a landing site for the two Mars exploration rovers that are going to probably be launched at the end of May and June. The site choices have been narrowed down to four, and if launched on schedule, the twin rovers are expected to both separately land on Martian surface sometime in January of 2004. Very cool.
This is so out-there that I just had to post it: The time travel fund. You send the fund $10, and with compound interest, your $10 becomes almost $40 billion in 500 years. The purpose of this fund is so that someone from the future can be paid to retrieve you from your present, and bring you to their present (your future). I thought it was an amusing idea. People are buying into the cryonic suspension solution. Is this idea that weird compared to cryonics? Read it and see for yourself.
Posted by Kathy at 06:04 PM | Permalink
December 29, 2002
Hardened Microwave Relay Dishes
From a simpler, but yet more scary time came interesting design problems. How to design a communications network that could survive a nuclear war? Some solutions are talked about here.
Look at those tremendous hardened microwave relay dishes.
On a lighter note, I'm back from vacation. Got some new anime to watch, so far, I've been rather impressed with Fruits Basket. Like a shoujo Ranma, but funnier, and more heartwarming.
Posted by Kathy at 08:04 PM | Permalink
December 02, 2002
Should We Colonize Mars?
Topic du jour: should we colonize Mars? I think so, but I'm a member of The Mars Society, so I am biased. There are many reasons why colonizing Mars is a good idea. If you are interested, read Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars. Zubrin is one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Mars colonization, and has actually testified in front of Congress to make the case for colonization. One of the interesting points of contention for colonization of Mars is the issue of property rights. Who gets property? Should it be on a first come, first serve basis? If that's the case, what about all the third world nations that do not have the means to send people to Mars? There have been proposals to divide up the land on Mars such that all Earthlings get a parcel of land that can then either be sold for profit or kept for later use. I can see a couple of problems with that scenario as well. For example, a person who is making $500/year income is going to be more than happy to sell their parcel for a pittance than someone whose annual income is much higher. Also, since the entire surface of Mars is not all equal, who gets which parcel of land? Maybe what will happen is that there will be a central organization that prices each parcel of land according to value and sells the parcels. Anyhow, while you're pondering this point, you can check out these inspiring pictures. There's a new picture each day.
Posted by Kathy at 08:24 PM | Permalink