New Florence. New Renaissance.

Guest Column: Technology and BBQ

This continues a series of guest columns on how technology is reshaping hobbies and passions  – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is Floyd Teter at Jet Propulsion Labs and author of the ORCLville blog about all things Oracle. Here he writes about all things BBQ.

“Fatherhood and BBQing traditionally go hand in hand in my family. My father was a master of the grill. Some of my best family memories are of sitting on our patio eating Dad’s steaks fresh off the grill. Dad was a natural.

So you can imagine my disappointment when, as a young father, my wife would begin to stutter and my children would start to cry whenever I fired up the grill. Unlike Dad, I was not a natural: everything I grilled came off black and blue (burnt outside, raw inside) and tasting of lighter fluid. I was a Dad, so I had to BBQ, but I was terrible at it. In the end, technology saved my bacon (and my steaks and my chicken and my burgers and…well, you get the idea).

About ten years ago, faced with pleading from my wife and outright rebellion from my kids, I decided to work on my BBQing skills. Being the geek that I am, I approached this problem by focusing on research, gear improvement, and hands-on practice.

Technology first came into play with my research: I googled up some good BBQ books and ordered those books through amazon. The standouts in the numerous books I read include Smoke and Spice by Cheryl and Bill Jamison, BBQ USA by Steven Raichlen, Backyard BBQ: The Art of Smokology by Richard McPeake, Dr. BBQ’s Big-Time BBQ Cookbook by Ray Lampe, and Elizabeth Carmel’s Taming The Flame. The reading taught me about how to prepare the fire for cooking, the flavor benefits of hardwood smoke, how to avoid the black and blue issue with indirect heat, and how best to flavor your entrees with marinades, rubs, and sauces. Turns out there is a lot more to this BBQing thing than just throwing a hunk of meat on the flame and pulling it off when the BBQ starts to burn.

Next, I upgraded my BBQ gear. Of course, Google came into play again here as I selected my equipment. I retired the K-Mart “blue light special” charcoal grill in favor of a Charbroil gas grill and added a Brinkmann Smoke King Deluxe as well. The gas grill, a result of modern technology, provides a more consistent heat source than wood or charcoal. And I can still get that smoky charcoal flavor from my gas grill by adding some wood chips as I start the cooking.

The Brinkmann is a pretty neat piece of technology all by itself. The idea is that a box holding the fire is offset from the smoking chamber. The firebox and smoking chamber are connected by a slot, which leads directly to a water pan in the bottom of the smoking chamber. The water pan serves as a heat sink to enable evenly distributed heat throughout the cooking chamber. I’ve also modified the Brinkmann by converting it to gas; I use a cast iron pan to place the hard wood over the gas burner when I’m smoking.

In addition, I added the two most important cooking utensils I own (both techie items): a Maverick Redi-Fork and an Acu-Rite Thermo-Timer-Clock. The Redi-Fork provides instant temperature readings through sensors in the fork prongs, so I know the internal temperature of whatever I’m cooking. The Acu-Rite also provides internal temperature readings with a wire-attached probe, but is designed for continuous temperature monitoring. Continuous monitoring really helps out in cooking fish without drying it out. The Acu-Rite also serves as a portable timer, which is critical for the “low and slow” BBQing I do with the Brinkmann.

Finally, I practiced. I knew I was on the right track when I could get the dogs to eat my spare ribs, but it really took several months of work and a few charred meals before I started getting consistently good results.

After a few years spent perfecting the craft, my wife and kids formally anointed me as “King of the Grill” by presenting me with a cooking apron displaying that title. My wife even gave me a six-burner Charmglow grill for Father’s Day last year, in addition to remodeling our dining room to resemble a BBQ joint. Although the kids are adults now, they consistently appear at my home whenever the word gets out that I’m BBQing. In fact, I usually have a few neighbors dropping by as well (I’m starting to think they must have a rotation schedule worked out). I’ve also graduated from just cooking meat to complimentary foods as well. Grilled fruit and veggies, smoked cheese, bread, tofu, pizza…I’m getting deeply into pastas and other Italian dishes this year. I’m still not the natural that Dad was, but technology has allowed me to continue the family tradition of fatherhood and BBQ…the wife and kids (and neighbors) seem grateful.”

Microwave Landing Systems

 Passengers flying into Heathrow in fog or poor visibility will be guided in using a new microwave-based system.

On a clear day, about 44 planes an hour land at Heathrow. However, if the visibility drops and aircraft have to use the ILS system to land on full autopilot, that figure falls to 24 aircraft an hour. This is because the radio transmitter at the end of the runway needs good line of sight to the approaching aircraft, but because it is at the far end of the runway, planes have to land and taxi clear before a full signal is restored.

The new MLS allows an extra six aircraft an hour to land, meaning that while fog will still cause disruption, its effects will be less prominent.

BBC

Guest Column: Technology and Vinyl DJs

This continues a series of guest columns on how technology is reshaping hobbies and passions  – basket weaving, rugby – whatever. Very different taste in music compared to previous sax and organ columnists!

This time it is good friend and Forrester analyst Ray Wang. Very different taste in music compared to previous sax and organ columnists in this series!

"My passion for vinyl DJ'ing started when I was invited to a friend's 16th birthday.  Unlike the other parties of my time, this wasn't at a house, restaurant, or community center.  This was truly unique...Jenny's father had bought out a local Long Island, NY night club one night and pretty much decked out the venue for all of her friends.  Most of us were into the new wave/alternative scene and pretty much anything off of the WLIR/WDRE playlist,  This meant New Wave, Synthpop, Alternative or simply put anything from The CURE to New Order to Erasure To Depeche Mode to Violent Femmes.  Most of our music came from dubbed and re-dubbed cassettes or worn 45's so we were blown away with high fidelity sound coming at us from 360 degrees.  At the club, the highs were crisp, the sound hallucinogenic, and most of all you could feel the sound pressure from the bass channeled through the floor.  It was unlike any other sensual experience any of us had had (yeah, we were 16).

As we got used to our new surroundings, we found ourselves looking up at the DJ. He amazed us!  Somehow, he took his 12" vinyl records and mixed from the middle of one song into a new song.  He flawlessly matched the beats and suddenly the tunes we knew on their own came to life as they were blended into one another.  Depeche Mode's Strange Love was mixed into Erasure's Oh L'Amour and then pushed out into When In Rome's The Promise and Nitzer Ebb's Join in the Chant was sampled in as the next song was cued up. 

Never stopping once, the music kept blending for the next 4 hours.  Even now, that memory has stuck with me and was one of the key drivers for getting me into this hobby.  In fact, we formed a group in 1990 and ended up playing at night clubs and parties from Boston to DC.  Out on the West Coast, I had the pleasure of DJ'ing in SF clubs and at some great venues including San Francisco's City Hall.

Today, I've got my original 2 turntables, a wide collection of old playback equipment, mixers, and lighting technology.  I still measure my music by physical counts (e.g. 50 crates of records and over 2000 CD's), though I also have 600GB of music.  But it's precisely this shift from analog to digital that describes how my hobby has benefited from new technologies.  Let me elaborate on mixers and playback equipment.

MIXERS GO BEYOND AUDIO

If the turntables are the instruments then the mixers are the brains.  The design of the basic mixer remains the same.  Faders lower and raise the volume of each source.  A cross fader allows music from 2 sources to be blended.  Output is represented by gauges, as in the Tandy DJ Mixer you had the old VU gauges.  Today's advancements as in the Pioneer DJM-800 incorporate digital effects, video mixing capabilities, better visualization, and integration with vinyl emulation software.

PLAYBACK EQUIPMENT GOES DIGITAL

Turntables (1972 - Present). It doesn't get as analog as a turntable.  Now most of us would say a turntable is a turntable, but to the DJ, this is the key instrument behind the art.  Why? well, to effectively beat match, you needed a turntable that starts quickly, allows you to speed up or slow down the record, hold the pitch, and keep the needle from skipping.  The Technics 1200's have been the standard for 37 years, because of the engineering and technology that delivers a magnetic based direct drive which results in little mechanical wear, provides high torque for quick start, enables variable pitch control at +/- 8% which enables you to speed up or slow down a song to match beats, and delivers tone arm mods that reduces skipping.  I still have 2 of these and treasure them.

CD Mixers (1990 to Present). Mainstream adoption of CD's in the late 80's and 90's led to various experiments to build a dual playing CD mixer that wouldn't skip, lose pitch, and cost an arm and fortune.  Well, a few CD mixers had come and gone but it wasn't really till 1992 that they got a CD mixer to work that wouldn't skip, lose pitch, and cost too much.  The Denon 1000 and 2000F's finally gave DJ's the option to mix CD's.  New features allowed DJ's to create new pitch distortion effects (pitch bend) and create cue points (instant start).   The benefit: no more lugging around 6 crates of records plus the ability to bootleg music on burned cd's!

CDJ or Jog Dial CD Decks (1997 to Present). However, many DJ's including myself could never get used to not touching the records as we mixed beats. We found the CD mixer devices cold and without the artistic flair.  So, the next innovation led to a digital CD deck with a jog wheel that simulated the vinyl like control.  One deck, Pioneer's CDJ 100S  brought in this new standard.  Newer decks such as the Denon ones offer a direct drive jog wheel with simulated vinyl platters. The benefit: a realistic feel to vinyl which allow users to scratch and mix digital music.

Vinyl Emulation Software (2003 to Present). However, many old timers such as myself prefer to use those old analog turntables.  New vinyl emulation software such as Scratch Live allows DJ's to mix and scratch MP3 and other music files from their computer using both turntables and CDJ's as the analog interface.  Turntables play a vinyl "signal" record that controls a digital music file.  In vinyl emulation mode, if you pick up the needle, the music stops. The software moves the digital music file forward and back in relationship to its position on the vinyl record.  DJ's can also visualize the sound patterns via the software. The benefit: vinyl user interface for digital music

THE BOTTOM LINE

My hobby has transformed itself with the digital evolution.  Today, all you need is a laptop and a hard drive to accomplish what we dreamt of 20 years ago.  The move to digital eases the transport of music, post production tasks, and availability of content.  While physical devices such as the turntable and mixer are no longer needed, many hobbyists such as myself still find those user interfaces to be the tactile part of the experience.  Net-net, going digital allows me to pass on this craft to my kids with ease."

On a rainy day you can see for hundreds of miles...

For my rain starved part of the world, the picture below is a beautiful sight.

It comes courtesy of the new radar at Channel 9

"This is the most powerful radar that we've ever produced," said Robert Baron Sr., the president and CEO of Baron Services, which developed and built Klystron 9. "It's 1.25 million watts of power and it is the cleanest signal that we've ever produced."

Klystron 9 combines, for the first time in history, a dual Polarimetric radar, Klystron tube, Pulse Compression technology, and a 1.25 million watt transmitter.

That combination of technology enables Klystron 9 to see storms other radars can't see and see deeper into those storms. The Klystron 9's dual-pol technology even tells meteorologists the sizes and shape of raindrops and makes the distinction between rain and ice”

Your airline wants to get to know you

"High-end hotels have long tracked customer information, right down to pillow preferences or history of complaints and bad experiences, and online retailers pitch products based on your buying history. But airlines have done very little in the field of "customer relationship management," known as CRM.

Airlines acknowledge they will never be the Ritz, but they are hoping to put such practices to use -- to the benefit of fliers. Several airlines, as well as suppliers of CRM systems, say airlines view better customer-related technology as crucial to retaining important customers in a declining economy and differentiating themselves from competitors."

Wall Street Journal

Guest Column: Technology and Organ Playing

This continues a series of guest columns on how technology is reshaping hobbies and passions  – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is Gerlinde Gniewosz who I worked with while she was at Yahoo! She could write about so many things including her globe trotting or her recent initiative – developing educational courses and tools for mobile devices. But I not at all surprised she writes about something far more challenging.

“When I was 5, my parents offered me a choice – to learn the piano or the organ. The organ with its flashier buttons won. From that day a life-long experience started – from early panic attacks at having to learn new pieces each week to daily torture sessions to a passionate hobby and now an occasional joy.

As my first instrument, my parents bought me an electronic Yamaha. It looks a bit like an upright piano, except that it had two keyboards, 1.5 octave pedal board and many colorful buttons. The presets (or ‘stops’ in pipe organ speak) had generally similar labels to what one finds on traditional pipe organs, but sounded different given the quality of audio electronics in those days. The big difference was the ability to set a beat to play along with – Rock, Bossa Nova, etc. Later in life when I performed at Eisteddfods and in concerts, I quickly learned that this beat was my biggest risk and fear – one wrong note and I was out of beat, and everyone in the audience could tell.

However, my Yamaha had one very nice technology feature that I occasionally took advantage of. It had an output and an input socket. I discovered, that with the right cables and a cassette recorder, I could record what I played. The true brilliance came when I could then reverse the process and have the cassette played back through the speakers of the organ. This meant that I could sit back and read a book whilst the organ did my daily practice for me, with my parents none the wiser!

My music teachers typically always had a top of the range electronic organ. The one I did my final Licentiate Diploma upon was a Kawai with three keyboards and 2.5 octave pedal board. The registration options were almost limitless. For complex registration changes, one could fully automate everything including the ‘when’. However, this did mean one had to play the same speed every time, otherwise the registration change would occur at the wrong moment. It can be somewhat disturbing for the audience to have the registration suddenly change to full pipe organ sound during a quiet Adagio.

Time and distance have taken me far from my trusty organ at home, but I have always found an organ to play around the world. This has allowed me to observe how technology has continued to help them evolve.

Early pipe organs required someone to manually operate the bellows to get air through the pipes. Technology played its first big role with electrically operated bellows. With a simple on-switch, the organist can play the organ without anyone else’s assistance. I still love the sound of switching a large organ on and off – hearing the bellows fill up with air with a loud swish and then deflate with a long sigh.

The next major technology-led improvement has been great for delicate fingers. Early organs – like the one I played in a small Lutheran church in the middle of Sydney - operated on a mechanical or ‘tracker’ action . One sits immediately below the pipes and the more ‘stops’ that are pulled out (ie on), the harder it is to press a key down, because it is in direct proportion to how many pipes need to receive air. These tracker organs are, in my opinion, perfect practice organs, because they are very good at strengthening the fingers. In the late 1800s electro-pneumatic action was introduced. This essentially meant that by pressing a key down an electric current would open a valve under a pipe. This has had two derivative impacts (i) fingers don’t need to be as tough and strong anymore and (2) the organ console does not have to be located directly under the pipes. This latter impact means that when sitting at an organ for the first time, not only does one have to get used to its unique layout, but also one has to get used to the time delay in the sound, due to the distance that the sound waves have to travel. I recently played on one church organ in London where, due to the console being located 20 meters away from the pipes, there was already a 1-2 second lag between pressing the key and hearing the sound.

Next came the influence of microprocessors.  Today there are electronic organs that mimic the sounds of pipe organs almost perfectly. A very good friend of mine recently took me to the Wyvern showroom, as he is in the process of purchasing one of their organs. BTW – the photo of me is in his apartment in central London where he designed and installed a real pipe organ. In this showroom, I was able to play on their Concerto organ. It is amazing to see how far technology has progressed in electronic organs from my first Yamaha practice organ. The Concerto organ looks and feels like a pipe organ, but that is not where the technology truly excels. Each note can be electronically tuned/ regulated for pitch and volume, as well as transient tones such as chiff and other extraneous pipe noises. And even more amazing  is that it can even mimic the direction from where the individual sounds are coming from, so it feels like one is sitting below real organ pipes.

It is always interesting to see how technology continues to influence organs. However, two things technology has not changed: (1) the genius of Bach’s organ music and (2) the fact that I still cannot physically carry around an organ - sorry, electronic keyboards do not count in my definition of an organ!”

May be your iPhone can help cook breakfast

"When a box is installed, appliances that have been outfitted especially for Fugoo are then able to talk to one another over a Wi-Fi network. The appliances can also retrieve information from the Internet, so your alarm clock could also tell you the weather, for example, or provide a traffic report. Once appliances are connected to the Internet, you can do all sorts of cool things: use a smartphone to remotely program the coffeemaker to have a fresh pot waiting for you when you get home from work, say."

Fortune

BTW Fugoo calls those smart appliances "neo-diginets"

Guest Column: Technology and Tennis

This continues a series of guest columns on how technology is reshaping hobbies and passions  – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is my friend Karen Beaman (formerly ADP and Workday) who now runs a HR consulting firm Jeitosa. Here she is on how technology has influenced tennis.

“You don’t generally think about how technology can help improve your tennis game, but it has indeed had profound impact on the game.  I can see really the difference between the Gen Y’s and the Boomers at my local tennis club and how they leverage technology to improve their game.  Use of technology in my tennis circle ranges from the most basic of simply using email or text messaging to schedule matches to watching online videos to improve technique and learn strategy to searching for partners and twittering your status and match results.  The Boomers prefer a live-telephone call or an email.  The Gen X’ers are good an updating their availability on tennis scheduling website.  The Gen Y’s, though, respond best via SMS.  All this technology sure does make it tough for a captain who has to communicate via multiple, multi-media in order to get all of her players to show up on time!

One of the most prevalent uses of technology in tennis is videos, in particular YouTube, but also free and subscription-based instructional videos from a number of different websites, such as TennisOne .  Video and imagery are very important to the tennis player, and the ability to visualize and review specific techniques, such as the two-handed backhand slice and the continental grip on the top-spin serve, over and over again and in slow motion is invaluable. There are also websites on strategy that walk through detailed plays shot-by-shot with specific court positioning, such as Operations Doubles, that help you learn how to gain the best angles on your opponent.

Other common uses of technology in tennis including searching for players in your area at the same level and managing schedules for local leagues and tournaments.  The USTA website keeps history of all leagues and matches with scores and rankings for league players.  They have great instructional information as well as all the rules and regulations, such has how to play the Komen tie-break, what do to if a bug flies in your mouth during the serve, or if the ball hits a post and then bounces back into the court for fair play.

One really big impact of the modern world on tennis equipment are the innovations in rackets.  Wooden racquets have been completely replaced by graphite which can last for decades without cracking, warping, drying out with age. Hence, with little motivation to replace a racket, vendors have had to come up with other reasons to get people to buy rackets.  So we now have innovations such as oversized heads, wider frames, lighter weight, extra length, head-heavy, and so on.  With the ubiquity of technology, we’re even starting to see electronic racquets! Head has a racquet that uses piezoelectric technology. “Piezoelectric materials convert vibration or motion to and from electrical energy. Head's new racquet takes the vibration resulting from impact with the ball and converts it to electrical energy, which serves to dampen that vibration. A circuit board in the racquet's handle then amplifies that electrical energy and sends it back to the piezoelectric ceramic composites in the frame, causing those materials to stiffen. 

There have also been major improvements in tennis balls with the advancement of technology.  Today’s balls now have ultra-thin walls with higher pressure that play better and are easier on the arm.  They are also now pressurized with nitrogen versus standard air because nitrogen diffuses through rubber more slowly, resulting in slower pressure loss.  Balls are also now optimized for either hard surfaces (such as asphalt) or soft courts (such as clay, grass, or indoor carpet).

Another major technology impact on traditional game of tennis are ball tracking devices and instant video replays. Hawkeye Innovations developed a telemetry system now used in most professional matches. “The system operates via a mountain of complex math and engineering to track the trajectory of the ball in play by combining the travel information via eight high resolution cameras that when views are combined, provide a three dimensional picture of the ball. The system, is reportedly accurate to within .12 inch. The days of disputes over bad line calls are long past – in professional tennis anyway. I can assure you there’s still plenty opportunity for arguments at my local club!

So what will be the next innovation with technology on tennis?  How about an electronic racket that digitally tracks the ball and automatically adjusts the player’s racket angle?  No more long or net balls!  I wonder how that would go over at Wimbledon?”

The World's Biggest Laser

“The National Ignition Facility (NIF), at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), comprises 192 lasers that fire simultaneously at precisely the same point in space: a sphere of fuel two millimeters in diameter. They are designed to deliver 1.8 megajoules of energy in a few billionths of a second. That's enough to compress the fuel to a speck 50 micrometers across and heat it up to three million degrees Celsius. The lasers, which were fired together for the first time last month, have so far produced pulses of 1.1 megajoules.

Depending on how you count it, it's between 60 and 100 times more energetic than any laser system that's ever been built,"

MIT Technology Review

This picture is an artist's rendering which shows a NIF target pellet inside a hohlraum capsule with laser beams entering through openings on either end.  The beams compress and heat the target to the necessary conditions for nuclear fusion to occur.

Source NIF

A Picture Worth a Thousand Pictures

“This impressive panorama is actually a collection of 592 distinct photos, shot with a Canon Powershot with a 360mm zoom, and the help of a nifty gadget called the GigaPan Epic. Plop your camera into the device and it will automatically take between 20 and several hundred slightly overlapping pictures of a scene. The GigaPan software stitches them together for you into one massive, ultra-detailed, thousands-of-megapixels collage.

…Because the files are so large -- the photo above is 2,326 megapixels; a 2,000-shot image will weigh in around 6 gigapixels -- they're a pain to email, so upload them to gigapan.org to share with the world. GigaPan's viewer functions like Google Maps, sending only as much information as you need, and gathering more as you zoom in closer.”

Popular Science