Jan 23, 2015

Whether Weather

The National Weather Service is about to boost its computing power by more than tenfold, which officials hope will translate to better weather forecasts.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's two supercomputers will more than triple in computational ability this month January, 2015 and more than triple again by October, 2015. Computers will go from now being able to handle 426 trillion operations per second to 5,000 trillion calculations per second later in October, 2015.

NOAA chief Kathryn Sullivan, in a press release, said the computer boost, "Will lead to more timely, accurate, and reliable forecasts." It would be nice if some of the climaticogasmic scientists would upgrade their capabilities to predict, rather than just forecast.

Free Friday Quote


Jan 16, 2015

Happy Friday

A smile is like an upside down rainbow.

It is easy to have smiles and rainbows when celebrating a Happy Friday!

Why Snow is White

Snowflakes are crystals of frozen water. Water and ice appear clear or slightly blue in large volumes. Snow is white, because of the way light interacts with snowflakes and the air molecules packed between each snowflake.

Water, ice, and an individual snowflake may appear transparent or clear, but water actually is translucent. The difference is that light can pass through a transparent material unchanged, while it is bent when passing through a translucent material. Light hits a snowflake and is bent and scattered across the spectrum by the facets and imperfections in each crystal.

Snowflakes scatter all frequencies of visible light, so the net effect is to produce white light, but deep layers of snow or compacted snow may appear blue. There is little air between crystals in compacted snow or ice, so there is less opportunity for light to be reflected. Thick layers absorb enough red light to cause this snow to appear blue. Snow also can appear blue if it has a layer of ice over it, which can reflect back the blue of the sky.

Ice is the word for the solid form of water, regardless of how or where it formed or how the water molecules are stacked together.

Snow is the word for precipitation that falls as frozen water. If the water forms crystals, you get snowflakes. Other types of snow include rime and graupel, which are ice, but not crystals. Bottom line, frost is ice, ice cubes are ice, and snow is a form of ice.

Satchmo

Louis Armstrong had many nicknames as a child, all of which referred to the size of his mouth: “Gatemouth,” “Dippermouth,” and “Satchelmouth.” During a visit to Great Britain, Louis was met by Percy Brooks, the editor of Melody Maker magazine, who greeted him by saying, “Hello, Satchmo!” (He contracted “Satchelmouth” into “Satchmo.”) Louis loved the new name and adopted it for his own. It provides the title to Louis’s second autobiography, is inscribed on at least two of his trumpets, and was on his stationery.

Retro PC

Thanks to my nephew, was browsing the December 2000 edition of Popular Science online when I came across this super fast (for the time) PC. Wow, only 14 years ago, $1,799 would pay for 128MB memory and a large 15GB hard drive.

These days memory is measured in GB and storage in Terabytes, with prices down into the low hundreds of dollars. Current watches and phones have more memory and storage than the old devices. We probably can't conceive of what will happen during the next 14 years.

Am voting for a personal wearable eye device so I can watch 100 inch, or larger, fully immersive 4D TV with at least 8k resolution and omnidirectional sound. Of course for the big game it will need to be full wall TV picture and wall speakers. Am also thinking wearable/implantable phone/PC devices with stretchable screens so we can keep our pockets empty. Wouldn't it also be nice to have a ceiling that glows with natural light instead of bulbs. Ah, the mind wanders

4K, 8K, LED, OLED, HD, UHD

There are a number of confusing TV terms being thrown around these days to catch our attention and drive us to toss out our relatively new flat screen TVs. I decided to decode a few of the terms so we can make an informed decision - and then rush out to buy something to get the 'first on the block' medal.

4K has about eight million pixels which equates to about four times more than a current 1080p TV. Think of your TV like a grid, with rows and columns. A full HD 1080p image is 1080 rows high and 1920 columns wide. A 4K image almost doubles both those numbers, so you could fit every pixel from your 1080p set onto one quarter of a 4K screen. Recent 4K TVs are the same thickness as a smart phone, less than two tenths of an inch thick.

Since 4K contains four times the information of High Definition (HD or FHD), someone came up with the name Ultra High Definition (UHD). The bad news is the Internet providers have not opened up the pipes enough, so many 4K users see a lag time (that frustrating spinning circle) when watching 4K content. Netflix and Amazon currently charge more for delivering 4K content.

Currently, 1080 resolution comes from the image height, while 4K (3840 x 2160) is derived from image width. If it was described the same way as now, 4K would be 2160p. Seems that was not enough of a difference to command the increased price so they changed the definition to make it seem better to the uninitiated.

8K (7680  x 4320) basically doubles the pixel height and width of 4K to about 32 million pixels. The 8K standard is currently for exhibitions and movie theaters. Since 4K will not become the norm for a few more years, 8K is many years away from the home market.

LED comes from Light Emitting Diode. LED TVs are really LCD TVs, but the difference is how the screen is lit. Traditional LCD TVs use florescent backlights, LED TVs use smaller, more energy-efficient LEDs. LED screens produce great color, but the brightness of the lights can also wash out blacks on the screen.

OLED or Organic Light Emitting Diodes have been around for years, but producing big screens using this technology has proven to be prohibitively expensive until lately. The OLED elements generate their own light so the technology is stunning, with vibrant colors, deep blacks, and bright whites.

3D TV continues to die a slow death, even though some manufacturers are still trying to convince us we need it. Think of 3D as Three Times Dead.

Bottom line, OLED is better than LED, 4K is amazing when you can see 4K content, both 4K and 8K are Ultra High Definition (UHD), both cost twice as much or more than HD, both require faster internet to be useful. Since there is little 4K and no 8K content, people who buy theses TVs are stuck explaining the picture deficiency and Ultra High Cost to guests. When content arrives, these TVs will be awesome and, by then, the price will be much more affordable. Last thing, when it comes to TVs, bigger is better, OLED is much better, 4K is awesome, but too expensive, for now.

New Mini Computers

The drive is on for TVs to get larger and computers to get smaller. Last year Intel introduced Edison, a computer the size of a postage stamp. This year it introduced a new model called Curie, which is so small that it could be built into a button on a shirt.

Curie is based on the Quark SE core, Key Features:
• A low-power, 32-bit Intel® Quark™ SE SoC
• 384kB Flash memory, 80kB SRAM
• A low-power integrated DSP sensor hub with a proprietary pattern matching accelerator
• Bluetooth* Low Energy
• 6-axis combo sensor with accelerometer and gyroscope
• Battery charging circuitry.
It is for both the wearable fitness market and biometric and security applications, with additional tie ins to other brands like Fossil (watches) and Oakley (glasses). Unlike TVs, when it comes to computers, smaller is better.

January Tidbits

Using a baby to signify the New Year began in ancient Greece around 600 B.C.

January is named for the Roman god Janus, who had two faces, one looking back, the other
forward.

The original New Year's Eve Ball in Times Square was a 700 pound ball of iron and wood covered with 25 watt bulbs.

The modern ball weighs 11,875 pounds, is 12 feet in diameter and is covered with 2,668 Waterford crystals.

Don’t eat lobster or chicken in January. Lobsters can move backward and chickens can scratch in reverse, so these foods could bring a reversal of fortune.

By the second week of January, twenty five percent of people have abandoned their resolutions.

Forbes magazine reports that only eight percent of people actually achieve their New Year's resolution.

January 19 is National Popcorn Day. January 20 is National Cheese Lover's Day. January 21 is National Hug Day. In my house, I celebrate them all together and have 'hug some cheese popcorn day'. It is much easier.