from Mike C

From the earliest days of desktop computers there has been a tradition of tinkering with computers, people taking them apart, modifying them, and building their own. But cell phones seem to have not gotten the same kind of attention, even though they may be the most ubiquitous computing devices there are.

CNet has a story about home-brewed cell phone makers that show that it isn't all that difficult to get into cell phone hacking, especially now that there are tiny Linux-powered brains available.

"Patel says he has lost patience with even the slimmest Motorolas and most advanced Nokias. He has been trying to build new features for cell phones for years, and he--like a growing number of other impatient developers--has concluded that phones have to be as flexible as ordinary computers if he's going to make progress."

I don't tinker anywhere near as often as I used to, but this gives me ideas...

from Mike C.

Ever since Avatar became a success, 3D has been buzzed about almost as much as the iPad.

And like with the iPad, most of the discussion seems to be about pointless ideas, such as the need for 3D videoconferencing. I have no interest in videoconferencing at all, let alone in 3D. Yet, as a proof-of-concept, this is kind of cool.

I need to get in on this 3D thing

from Mike C.

IBM's website has photos and information about their Antique Attic exhibit, showcasing their collection of mechanical calculating devices.

"The nearly 400-year history of mechanized calculation was created by men and women with varying and diverse talents, temperaments, backgrounds and education, working in such fields as mathematics, the sciences, government, business and commerce. It is a history not just of singular inspiration and genius but also the continuing, collective discovery of new materials, skills, technologies and techniques to implement and enhance the plans and dreams of individual inventors and scientists."

Above, a Babbage Analytical Engine

I came across this unattributed story: A tale of Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Science:

"Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"

One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."

The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."

Roedy Green has a funny (and very long) guide called How To Write Unmaintainable Code [Ensure a job for life ;-)]

Misleading names

Make sure that every method does a little bit more (or less) than its name suggests. As a simple example, a method named isValid(x) should as a side effect convert x to binary and store the result in a database.

I don't own an iPhone. It seems pretty cool, but I don't think I would actually use it very often. Of course, that's what I said about email in 1991 or so.

MP3 players are now so cheap and ubiquitous that they are given away for free by banks with promotional audio files in them. It's not hard to delete the bank's files and upload my own, and I prefer using a cheap-as-free device, especially when there is a significant risk of losing it.

I appreciate miniaturization, but the iPods I've seen are just too small. If I had one, I know that I would drop it in the recycling and lose it forever.

But iPod gripes aside, the iPhone seems like something I might actually want.

One thing I like is when a product is designed to be hacked or augmented, and it seems the iPhone designers had this in mind.

This video demonstrates one particular 3rd-party application, Smule's Ocarina that uses the microphone input to sense the force of someone's breath and turns the device into a kind of flute.

2N5087
PNP TO-92
Very Low current (max. 50 mA)
Low voltage (max. 50 V).

2N3906
PNP switching transistor in a TO-92; SOT54 plastic package. NPN complement: 2N3904.
* Low current (max. 200 mA)
* Low voltage (max. 40 V).

2N3904
NPN switching transistor in a TO-92; SOT54 plastic package. PNP complement: 2N3906.
* Low current (max. 200 mA)
* Low voltage (max. 40 V).

Nitinol - Muscle Wire: The Mauling




(sort of like muscle cars, except long and very skinny)

- the plan
- the implementation
- history and information about nitinol
- links

Project: Operation Boris II

Blogma

 
Intro to Physical Computing
Fall, 2003
Jeff Feddersen

Week 2