Just a quick post for some predictions on where things are headed with this whole “technology” thing.

We are going to see some new applications with noise canceling technology. Most commonly used in headphones to quiet unwanted sounds such as annoying coworkers, jet engines, and your daughter’s pet gerbil that sits in his cage as he chews up an entire empty paper towel roll one square millimeter at a time with his black beady eyes staring at me thinking “one day I’ll get out of here and the tables will be turned. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but somewhere down the road I’ll escape from this metal cage and all bets are off.” But I digress.

So now car companies are getting on the action by using noise canceling technology to create cars that are quieter inside by blocking out engine noise. When I get a free day to myself (projected date: 9/21/2019), I’m going to install a noise canceling device in my forced air heating and cooling system. I don’t think I need to hear the big fan in the basement from every possible location inside my home.

The military could use this technology to help airplanes avoid radar. Currently they spend all kinds of money on planes that have unusual angular designs and special coatings to absorb radar waves. All they need to do is have a computer that listens for radar waves and then send back a wave that is exactly inverse to what the airplane is reflecting back to the radar station. Granted that these waves are moving at pretty much the speed of light, but with some clever computer programming it just might work. And it could save the Department of Defense a few dollars here and there.

New topic– cell phone technology. While everyone and their dog knows that computer processors are getting faster all the time (roughly doubling in speed every 18 months) a somewhat less exciting benefit is that processors are using less energy per operation. While cell phones are being developed that let people talk on the phone, watch Youtube videos, and create highly accurate models of nuclear reactions all at the same time, cell phone companies could find a new market niche for phones that use so little energy to run that the device could be powered by the movement of your body in the form of a Star Trek communicator (or maybe a wrist watch for the nerd impaired). Warning: this device should not be used for anyone who is extremely lethargic.

So that wraps things up around here. Check back in a few years to see if any of these predictions came true.

As the head writer for one of the most popular cutting-edge websites on the planet (or at least in my household), I have been fortunate to become one of the beta testers for the highly publicized “Google Glass” wearable computer. While the hardware is state-of-the-art, the real power of this product lays with the apps that take advantage of the abilities of Google Glass.

In my humble opinion, the best app to date is named “Get Some.” As the name implies, this app is designed to help the user establish intimate relations in their daily life. Once up and running, the app detects when the user starts up a conversation with a person not already stored in the database. It listens to the conversation and displays useful information based on keywords. This feature is great for impressing women when they ask irrational questions such as, “What is your very favorite Indigo Girls song?” While I’m not sure about all the programming aspects of this app, I suspect it networks with Watson, the Jeopardy! winning computer.

While conversation tips are great for anyone with a fear of talking to new people, the app doesn’t stop there. Once the app discovers the name of the person on the other end of the camera, it connects to various databases to actively search for more personalized information. I found that a majority of the time it could find Facebook pages, driver’s license information, and recent income tax returns. This is quite useful to determine if you want to take things to the next level.

As a single person trying to meet new people in a bar setting, having a good wing man is an essential element for success. If your wing man is not able to accompany you for reasons such as work, unexpected illness, house arrest, or scheduling conflicts with your mother’s monthly quilting class, the Get Some app lets any number of your associates view a live audio and video stream and send text messages directly to your screen. All of this is completely seamless and nobody in the room is aware the app is running.

So if things are going really well, the app can bring up directions to your place, his/her place, or the closest motel room within a preset budget. Also maps to open stores that sell your favorite contraceptive devices can easily be displayed. If too much alcohol or other mood enhancing drugs have been consumed, a taxi can be ordered with a blink of an eye. Literally.

So if things are going great, the app has done it’s job. At this point a message comes up and says, “Remember, it isn’t nice to capture video of having sex with someone without their knowledge and consent.” A few seconds later another message pops up saying, “Wink wink– our lawyers made us say that!” Common sense would dictate that you at least turn off the live streaming to your friends just in case some embarrassing situation arises such as inappropriate uncontrollable laughter, erectile dysfunction, or mistaken the gender of your partner.

While there is room for improvement, the Get Some app is clearly the direction Google Glass is heading. I highly recommend this for anyone looking to meet someone new when everyone else you know describes you as hopelessly boring, lacking any knowledge of current events, and/or obsessed with changes made to the 1997 re-release of “Star Wars: A New Hope.”

So I was watching Wall-E the other day for the Nth time (where N=N+1, which explains how many times my kiddos want to see this particular movie) and I noticed something that bothered me and now I can’t get it out of my head.  When Wall-E is hanging on to the outside of the rocket ship there is a shot of what I’m assuming is the Milky Way (or a similar shaped galaxy) which make me ask “how far away did they have to take the Axiom to escape the pollution of Earth?”  The answer, apparently, is a long, long way.  I asked Isabel for an explanation, but she started yelling “today is Wall-E’s birthday” over and over.  And if they can travel past billion of stars, why couldn’t they find a new planet on which to live?  Also, how much of the pollution on Earth was a direct result of building hundred of thousands of space ships and launching 10 billion people across the galaxy?  Think about it, but try not to let it keep you up all night.

So I was thinking about trigonometry the other day after I had been tutoring someone about to take a mathematics placement course focusing on the wide net of mathematical animals known a “pre-calculus.” Basically it covers everything from “Explain how many fingers you think you have, and don’t worry, there are no wrong answers, including leaving it blank.” to “Find a polynomial time algorithm for the traveling salesman problem and have it submitted for peer review for the past five years.”

One of my favorite mathematical topics to explain to people is geometry.  I suspect this is because I am a very visual person and I have almost no ability to draw.  Good thing I hardly ever help people with their zoology placement tests.  “OK, let me draw you two slightly different bird species and explain how different evolutionary patters in their lower beak have allowed them to both cooperate and thrive together for thousands of years.”

Right triangles are one of the most talked about objects in geometry.  This, of course, explains why trapizoids are so bitter and jealous.  Take the following triangle. (But remember I “borrowed” it from the wikipedia website, so put it back when you are finished.)

So questions often arise here such as: How do you “know” that the long side of the triangle has the length of the square root of two?  Why not make it something easier like 1 1/2?  And why does it matter anyways? When am I ever going to need a right triangle at a job interview?

Suppose you have a right triangle which has two sides of length 1 and you want to find the length of the unknown side:

My favorite way to prove this is to start by finding the area of this triangle.  (And yes, there are more ways to prove this than there are incorrect proofs about squaring the circle.)  Singe the area is 1/2bh we know the area of this triangle is 1/2.  Now imagine we have four of these triangles:

These triangles together have an area of 2.  Now suppose the triangles get rearranged as follows:

So now you have a square with an area of 2.  This means that each side of the square must have the length of the square root of two.  I like this approach because it uses the least number of tools to get the job done. Also, this is the philosophy I use to build my kinetics crafts, but with mixed results.

Then I started thinking of a different approach using a concept called limits.  Suppose we started building a staircase along the unknown length of the triangle.  As we use smaller and smaller steps it starts to look more like a straight line.  We can use limits to see what this would look like as we approach an infinite number of smaller and smaller steps.

Each time the steps get smaller, but the total length of the blue line is always two.  Now the big question is: What happens when we use a limit to see what happens as we approach an infinite number of steps?  I’m warning you– this is where some weird shit is going to go down.  If you are standing up, I suggest sitting down. If you are on public transportation, please activate the emergency stop mechanism.  If you are sitting on the toilet, I think you should be OK.

So as we approach the limit of this exercise, the length stays the same at 2, but all the points of the staircase line up exactly with the diagonal line. But at the beginning I told everyone the length was the square root of two, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.4.  So where did the extra 0.6 go?  Rounding error?  Did the dog run off with it?

Honestly, I’m not sure.  First of all, I’ve been a UPS driver for the past 10 years.  My number skills aren’t quite what they used to be. Eigthly, I hope this goes on to be one of the most discussed mathematical oddities of this generation– somewhere between the “Let’s Make a Deal” dilemma (people have literally written entire books on the subject) and understanding how Leonard is dating Penny on “The Big Bang Theory.”

My ongoing quest to get our DVD collection onto a network drive took a big step forward last night.  I found a gizmo on Amazon that lets me turn an old USB drive into a network drive.  Now I have someplace to download all of our movies that the Playstation 3 can recognize.  This means the hardware configuration section of the project is 100% complete.  The overall project is 43% finished in terms of the projected time commitments. Stay tuned for for my next post entitled “37 unnecessarily confusing steps to follow so you don’t have to search through all your DVDs when you child needs to watch Toy Story ASAP.”