on weather…

Living in the Washington DC area, that only the very edges of hurricanes hit us. Blast hurricane Henri that hit the East Coast only gave us some fairly substantial wind for a day. Henri went up the coast of the US, hitting the northeast of the Boston New York area pretty hard. Lots and lots of rain from Henri. The next hurricane, Ida, was a little bit nastier to New Orleans. But it is a different weather pattern when it makes it up to DC. As I’m out walking, I noticed that the bands of the storm are appearing. What is a hurricane bank, while it’s not an up band that plays music during her case. Or abandon a cover band as it were that only plays like a hurricane. Because hurricanes are circular, like tornadoes, when the hurricane moves to a tropical depression in a tropical storm and then just a mess, the clouds actually at the beginning show that circular pattern.

The difference between a post-hurricane ring storm and a traditional Atlantic seacoast thunderstorm is that the thunderstorm has a long line of very ominous-looking clouds. But the clouds are unbroken; there are no bands. It is an interesting weather phenomenon. And of course, is whether geek when I like to notice interesting weather phenomena. I’m also tracking befalling barometric pressure near my house. As the barometric pressure goes down, the low pressure was in hand the winds and rain arrive. The rumor from those who predict the weather or call it is that we will have cooler air with the arrival of the post-hurricane rain. We will not have anywhere near the rain that New Orleans had. In some cases, they had more than 20 inches of rain.

We also will get hurricane-force winds. The winds are probably still gusting 20 to 25 miles an hour but nowhere near the 75 miles an hour that they experienced when Ida came ashore in New Orleans. On one of my trips to Singapore, a typhoon, the South Pacific name for a hurricane, hit Singapore. It was a category one storm. And I can honestly tell you, having landed two days before the typhoon arrived, that it was just a massive amount array. The city of Singapore is used to renting. It’s in the tropics, and the brain is normal in the city. But as an outsider sitting in a hotel room getting dressed to go to the office, I can honestly say it was an experience. Before the bellhop, they got me a cab was soaked bone. But he smiled and waved down a cab and held the umbrella over me. I made sure he got to speak to. That was an incredible act of kindness. Oh yeah, and the other thing we live through one, I don’t ever one live through another. I’ve had the misfortune of a tornado, an earthquake, and a hurricane. I think I’m to borrow from Garp, disaster-proof.

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sadly it is still climate change

First off, let me start by saying I truly hope that everyone around and near New Orleans is safe. One of the impacts obviously of climate change is that storms get worse. Where once while once every 3 to 4 years we whatever hurricane hitting New Orleans, now it’s happening every year. Every year, there are many more named storms because of the energy created by the hottest month of July ever recorded. Now I do understand that we’ve only been recording temperatures for about 100 and 4050 years maximum. But when you look at the 10,000-year ice cores done in Antarctica shows a very scary story when you look at it. The amount of carbon in the air of our atmosphere today is at higher levels than it has been for 4 billion years. Most climate change deniers point out the climate has significantly fluctuated in the last hundred to 200,000 years. Now when you’re talking about arguing 4 million years ago, that’s serious.

The reality is more carbon in the atmosphere changes the composition of the atmosphere, and basically, the sun’s rays don’t bounce. The earth on its axis is angled so that the northern and southern hemispheres have periods when the sun’s rays bounce back harmlessly into space. When the sun’s rays don’t bounce back into space, they release energy, which normally is in the form of heat. There is no such thing as global warming, but the globe is warming. Climate change continues to get worse. And now this can have to be some hard choices made. Once there were one or two somewhat reputable scientists who said climate change wasn’t real, now there are nine. The argument oh, but scientists aren’t sure. Sadly it is no longer true—the recent report was released in Europe because of the red flag situation.

The problem, particularly with climate deniers, is the impact of the denial. First off, I don’t know when the world became so bipartisan. If you don’t like what a journalist says, call it fake news. Or worse, arrest the journalist as they do in many countries now. More journalists have been arrested in the last four years than for many, many years before that. I’m not waxing nostalgic to the days of Walter Cronkite. But there was a time when journalism was a profession held in high esteem. Woodward and Bernstein uncovered one of the greatest plots against a credible and fair election ever perpetrated in the US. They’re the ones that expose the Watergate scandal. My regard for journalists went up with the publication of both of the Pentagon papers and then later the information about Watergate. Willing to take a risk to put the truth out is something I applaud. The truth is today; no scientists say there is in climate change. No scientists say human beings didn’t cause climate change. And now, the majority of people in the world believe that humans are causing climate change.

My review of EAs NBA 2k Mobile

I like to play various video games from time to time. For many years I have been a huge fan of Madden. It is, without a doubt, my favorite video game to play. Now, that said, I do enjoy word puzzle games from time to time. I will also admit a long-time guilty pleasure of playing angry birds. One of the games I play but will probably stop is the NBA 2k mobile game for the iPad and iPhone. The reason I am going to stop is that the AI on and in the game is broken. I grew up watching basketball and to this day love watching basketball. I can tell you, based on experience, that the NBA mobile game by EA is broken.

First, it is broken because the AI, running your opponent, hit every open 3 points shot taken (the NBA league average is not 100%). You can have players on your team or on the other team that hit ridiculous 3 point shots. The AI number is way, honestly, more than the NBA league average of the real players. If you look at the stats included below, you will see that the more than 70% average of the EA game is, well, insane. If it were two ways, I would accept that it was just a programming error. But the reality is that when you play the game, you don’t benefit from the enhanced shooting.

Players Shooting Dashboard Closest Defender +10 | Stats

https://www.nba.com › … › Closest Defender (+10 FT)

<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = “[default] http://www.w3.org/2000/svg&#8221; NS = “http://www.w3.org/2000/svg&#8221; />Player	Team	Age	GP	G	Freq	FGM	FGA	FG%	eFG%	2FG Freq	2FGM	2FGA
Stephen Curry	GSW	33	63	32	3.2%	0.3	0.7	47.7	61.4	1.3%	0.1	0.3
Bradley Beal	WAS	28	60	31	3.0%	0.3	0.7	42.9	48.8	2.3%	0.2	0.5
Isaiah Thomas	NOP	32	3	1	7.4%	0.3	0.7	50.0	50.0	7.4%	0.3	0.7

You get the stats shown in the table from the NBA. So dear EA, your game is broken. You have a great game visually. But frankly, the gameplay is broken. My review of the game NBA 2k mobile is that AI has advantages that exist in the real world. I counted the number of unguarded three-pointers in a game. Both sides had 5. The AI hit 4 of 5. I hit 0 of 5. It doesn’t matter in the real world; the number would be closer to 2 out of 5 for both sides (around 40%, with some players hitting more than 40%). But I also tracked guarded three-pointers, and the AI hit 4 of 5 with some players.

As I said, the game is broken. I give EA’s NBA 2K Mobile a 2 out of 10.

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where to live and a huge thank you

I cannot imagine the sheer willpower and bravery it takes right now to work in a hospital. It was just going every day, knowing that the number of Covid patients continues to grow. I am in awe of medical professionals who continue to help those around them, But, with Ida bearing down on Louisiana, I am even more in awe of those medical professionals in New Orleans and other areas staying with their sick patients. Heroes sometimes are just people that go to work. But those people that go to work are heroes because they save others around them. Thank you to all medical professionals working through the pandemic.

I wear masks in public, and I have gotten both of my initial doses of the vaccine. I will be in line for the booster. I am not worried about myself. I am worried about my wife, who works in Hospice. I would feel horrible if I exposed her to Covid. She works with people that are already in the last stage of life. I would feel like the scum of the earth if I was the reason they got Covid.

As a weather geek, I spend more time watching and learning about the weather than most people do. Hurricanes are one weather pattern, along with a tornado, that I have been either directly in or close to being directly inside! That does have me thinking; however, retirement isn’t far away. We don’t wish to retire in the Washington DC area. We love DC, but it isn’t a place to retire. It is a place to be from! I want to move away from the following things.

• Alligators (they creep me out)
• Earthquakes
• Hurricanes
• Tornados

Flooding would be nice to avoid also that I have personal experience with over the years. It does make me wonder about where we will end up. That list plus flooding makes it hard to find a place to live. Perhaps the moon? There is no flooding, no alligators, no hurricanes, and tornados (earthquakes are also gone, but they do have moonquakes).

Of course, always wearing a spacesuit outside would get tiring.

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On specialty cameras…

In an article talking about if you could build the perfect printer for tomorrow, what would you want it to do? I talked about the concept of a specialty printer. Today I want to talk about the concept of a specialty camera. Not specialty in the sense that it publishes automates or does anything other than the specialties I’m talking about. I’m limiting the conversation because there are many specialty cameras on the market today. }
But I want to focus on some niche plays rather than the bigger ones, even though go Pro has a 360° camera when I talk about 360 cameras. Nor my going to talk about the increasing availability of easy to install battery-operated security cameras. While those are all specialty cameras, it’s not the specialties that I will talk about.

The first specialty camera I want to talk about is the underwater ROV. Or remotely operated vehicle. The difference between the underwater and the air-based systems is that water does not allow for Wi-Fi Bluetooth or other signals to work effectively. So underwater vehicles are tethered. And a tethered vehicle is any vehicle that is connected via a wire to a base. These underwater vehicles allow you to take pictures underwater without wearing scuba gear. You can quickly go up to the distance of your tether and that. I have one with a 150-foot tether and one with a 50-foot tether. What that means is the maximum depth right now I can go to the hundred and 50 feet.

Another problem, once you get 150 feet below water, is that lights are critical. And these ROV with the longer tether has lights built into the unit as well. They are buoyancy neutral; what that means is if, for whatever reason, you operate past the maximum capacity of the battery, once the battery stops, the unit will float to the surface. It would be very expensive to replace an underwater vehicle every time you used it if you used it more than the battery can handle.

Now there are aerial drones that also act as specialty cameras. Allowing you to from above see below. But I covered drones heavily over the last few years on spending more time on aerial drones. I’m also, as I said, not to spend any time on 360° cameras. The next specialty camera wants to talk about is the new land-based smaller, remotely driven land vehicles. Quite simply, you can operate these remotely, which means you don’t have to be in your house to turn on your vehicle and make sure your house is safe. Or check on your dog; in my case, the more likely to check on my dog. There are some new iterations of these land-based vehicles that are interesting. Some are beginning to use AI program routes. But that means you can create a mobile video security system in your house. You can also operate them remotely so that you can see video from your house or your hotel room or apartment or whatever it is you are currently living in. The rise of specialty cameras is interesting. The other side of that rise that I will talk about at some point in the future is the reality that standard definition begat high definition, which now is ultra high definition cameras.

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lost skills

One of the things I often consider is skills I learned that aren’t as big a deal now. I think the easy button on that one is map reading skills. I know when I was a kid, I learned to read both roadmaps and plat maps. And I still read plat maps to this day. I haven’t looked at the roadmap in a long time. The rise of GPS made roadmaps less relevant. You hear tales of people lost in the wilderness because of their GPS, but those are rare. The GPS has made a glove box full of maps superfluous. And that’s not the only skill that has begun to disappear in the last 25 years. So let’s wander as it were skills that are declining.

One of those skills is a how-to site with an analog compass. I have a compass that I’ve had for many years now that has a line of sight or an actual site etched at the top of the compass. You line up an object that holds the compass site, and it tells you exactly what direction that object is from where you are. That almost seems like an arcane skill now. But for me, it’s important, but that’s because I am heavily into boating. As a boater, there is a really important rule. Always assume the electronic system will fail. So I still know how to read a compass. But, while that was once a skill taught to many people, it is not taught to as many people now as it was. It is a skill in the technology world of today that is beginning to decline.

Interesting side notes, by the way. Analog compasses are more accurate than the digital ones on your phone.

But I do always go back to what I was taught as a voter, and electronics will fail. Electronics require power. And if your boat is stranded in the middle of nowhere, you may not have power for the electronics. So being able to figure out where you are based on looking at the sun is critical. Having an analog compass might save your life. The concept of reading a compass and using it to orient here is fading. The ability to read a Rand McNally Streetmap is fading. Understanding the lines on a topographical map was always a rare skill, but it is also fading. I guess out of all of this; I’ll end with a simple statement. I can find my keys by clapping. But how do I know the winds blowing from the north?

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wandering my current futurist posts

Over the last few weeks, the last three weeks, I’ve wondered about a couple of topic areas that interest me. The first is the future of voice. The second is the future printers. I’ll include links to my longer articles at the bottom of this article. I often look to the future, be part of my job for the last few years. Looking to the future is fun. Well, I shouldn’t say respond; it’s a lot of work. The concept of what is possible, sometimes called the possible art, can be difficult to see clearly. If in 2006 you projected that the cell phone market would become more of a handheld computing market, I think you probably would’ve been laughed out of town. If you concluded that the cell phone was moving to a pocket computer format, it would’ve been the Microsoft Pocket PC. The iPhone was released in 2007, and the android phone is actually what caused the pocket computers to come about.

Now there are numerous devices based on the Android operating system and the Apple operating system. The two ecosystems are powerful now. But the reality is what you can do in your hand versus what you could do on a computer ten years ago is on par now. There are still things I can do on a computer that I cannot do on my cell phone easily. But now, I can do things on my cell phone that I can’t do on a laptop or desktop easily. I have, over the years, watched tourists walking around with iPads and Android tablets taking pictures. The iPad has become nearly a desktop/laptop replacement. The big thing missing currently is the ability to add more devices to the iPad. Or, for that matter, to add more devices to the android tablet. The docking station concept is what is the game changers the tablet world terrorists and there are a couple of interesting docking stations available now.

I like to end with this concept that I’ve been thinking about for a while. A desktop computer is an anchor. A laptop computer is a more portable anchor. A landline or traditional telephone line, or sometimes called pots, plain old telephone service is also an anchor. Frankly, those devices are, for the most part, tethered devices. The cell phone and the tablet are untethered devices. You have the ability the capacity to be anywhere you want to be. Frankly, as you see in my voice and my printer stories, I am looking to think about tomorrow’s impact on technology. The reason for that is that I remember in the 90s thinking, boy, I wish I could do that. And though that was huge, honestly, there were so many things you couldn’t do in the early days of the cellular smartphone revolution that are just de rigueur now. As we move through this age of digital transformation, clamoring for the information age on the other side of the rainbow. The reality is that when human communication can be effectively captured digitally without ever being in an analog form, we will have gotten there. The umpteenth time I’m in a say again, we are in the age of digital transformation. The information age lies in the future ahead of us.

https://hubpages.com/technology/Futurist-the-history-of-and-question-about-what-would-you-like-your-next-printer-to-do

]https://discover.hubpages.com/technology/The-futurist-The-future-of-Voice

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on teachable moments…

As a schoolteacher, I focused on taking complex information and making it easily understood for second graders. People would ask me what I did for a living, saying I introduced the University 15 minute goals. Of course, I was back in a time when the 15-minute hope was still possible; MTV changed that 15 minutes down to about five. Much harder to teach the universe in a five-minute attention span. One of the things I suspect I would do if I were still teaching is doing a simulcast; via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, I would simulcast every device in the room, that lesson. You walk into my classroom with a phone; I’m going to broadcast to the Bluetooth on that phone. Can you imagine how shocking it would be when somebody checks the time on their phone, and there’s my face teaching that less. Course, the sad reality is in many cases, people would probably pay attention to the person talking on the phone.

The concept of education is simple. You’re passed with helping people learn to think, and most importantly, learned to ask questions. You see people that think they are good. People that think and ask questions are powerful. Because questions open doors, the questions also cause problems. In that, there is a natural tendency in schools to have authority-based education. Authority-based education is where the teacher speaks and the students absorb. Questions don’t always fit in that model because well questions can be perceived by authority as negative. And questions aren’t necessarily ever negative. Questions are the application of human learning. How do I take the information you’re providing and consume it.

The questions can be risky in education because an authority-based system can have on answered questions. An authority-based system, by default, has to answer every question. And if the question is asked the doesn’t have a specific or simple answer, the authority-based systems will fail. The reality is that, like the business world, and education questions are often scary. There are a lot of that declarative statements in the world. Questions ask why? Once upon a time, the speed of light was considered an absolute. We now know that there are conceivable particles that go faster than light. If you read the history books, some people said a train going 35 miles an hour would kill the people inside it. There are no absolutes, and we have to ask questions. In the simple act of asking questions, you open the door to more great ideas. I’m a huge fan, not brainstorming, but of question sessions. Instead of wandering an idea, you wonder questions!

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Intelligence and wearable medical devices

The concept of using intelligence to build applications interests me. There are several applications or individual development environments, or IDE systems that utilize intelligence to produce code. I have to say to `myself that is the next step. When you can code by simply saying things in natural language, then intelligence is being applied in a great way. Not mind you that that is the only great way to apply intelligence. Simply that is well something that would be great; there are other areas beyond coding where I think intelligence would help. And I don’t mean in the sense of replacing human beings; I mean in the sense of helping human beings succeed. So I thought today I would share a couple of areas where intelligence really could help drive a better life for all.

The first Terry would be in the world of wearable medical devices. One of the recent changes in that field is the continuous glucose monitor for CGM. People with diabetes can wear that and can see where their blood sugar is at any moment’s notice. Not blood sugar normally during the day should go from summer between 80 to 100, to around 180 to 200 after meals not always 180 to 200 but that’s you know that’s the top of the range. In conjunction with the CGM, it could help people with diabetes move to the next treatment step. The intelligence system says, did you know your blood sugar goes too high every time you eat a bag of potato chips. Every time you have a bowl of ice cream, your blood sugar goes too high!

Staying in that wearable medical device world, there are people to have to monitor their blood, oxygen, and blood pressure all the time. An intelligence system designed in conjunction with blood oxygen or a blood pressure device could tell you, hey, your pressure went up, but last night you salted your corn on the cob. Or your blood pressure went down because yesterday you walked 5 miles. The intelligence system isn’t going to replace a human being. It is simply going to remember things that humans sometimes forget. If I can, make a geeky joke out of this statement, it’s like the unblinking eye of Sauron! It isn’t you get the idea. The concept being the intelligence can watch you when you’re not watching yourself. I know, for example, sometimes during the day, I focus on work things, for I focus on family things. I’m not thinking about what I’m eating or my exercise. The other thing is that intelligence monitoring blood pressure, blood oxygen, or blood sugar could also tell you the optimal time to exercise to get the best benefit for you. We all have a time that works for us in our schedule, but sometimes it is better for our bodies. The application of intelligence could have help people suffering and utilizing wearable medical devices.

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A reason to doubt….

When I first started reading find now more than well. This is important I read the works of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. Citizen of the galaxy is a book I’ve read several times, not for the science possible, rather the interactions of human beings. Isaac Asimov’s I robot and foundation books are ones that I’ve reread many times. I have to say; I did not read Arthur C Clarke in my first quest in the science fiction reading. I went to see the Stanley Kubrick movie 2001 when it came in the theaters in 1970. That was my introduction to Arthur C Clarke. I read everything Clark produced after that, yet he was quite prolific. But in particular, I want to write today about a quote from Arthur C Clarke, any civilization significantly advanced enough beyond the capabilities of the civilization you are in would appear to be magic.

Magic is an interesting word. In theory, magic cannot be explained by science. But also, magic doesn’t happen. You see, if you go back in time 2000 years 3000 years and ask a person out of the sunrise in the morning, they would probably tell you that perhaps a turtle pushed the sun above the horizon or some deity pulled the sun out above the horizon to have a day. Course if you went back 3000 years, for the most part, night terrified people. Funny thing, the night still terrifies people; we would need flashlights that can go for miles if night didn’t scare people. But the point being if you took that flashlight back 3000 years and turned it on, you would appear to be magical. I had a philosophy professor who used to use the phrase reason to doubt. His argument being did, something that appeared to be magical or a miracle pass the reason to doubt benchmark.

I often apply the reason to doubt principal the things people tell me are miracles or are magical. With the power of positive thinking, I continuously apply reasons out to that argument. Not that I doubt that a human being can fix things within their own body. I don’t believe it has anything to do without I think it has everything to do with circumstance. But the reality is yes, and I believe that human beings have cured themselves of cancer. Do I believe it is some mystical power of the universe that they’ve applied will capture? No, I would argue that it is simply moving into the 50% or so of the human brain we don’t fully understand yet. I apply reasons out to reading science fiction stories. Is it possible? Go back and find astounding tales or an amazing science fiction story from the 1960s and read about the potential of science fiction writers in the 1960s about computers. Recent doubt is a good thing. It doesn’t make you a bad person to apply it. It simply means your utilizing the doubt that all of us are endowed with. I guess the one missing piece to the preamble of the Declaration of Independence for the United States is the right to doubt!

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