Last Commented Technology Blogs (217)

America made a poor attempt to convert to metric in the 1970's and with the exception of tools and some engineered products, we switched back to the imperial system learned from England.
Last time I checked, America, Liberia and Myanmar were the only countries still measuring by feet and weighing by pounds. Thanks England for abandoning us!
It's time to set the record books straight.

Let's start with the 1967 song 98.6 by Keith.

From now it's "Hey 37C, it's good to have you back again... Oh hey 37C, her lovin' is the medicine that saved me..."

This is for young people who weren't around when there was no such thing as online anything. The personal computer wasn't even invented yet. Oh, there were computers, but you needed a forklift to move them and a college degree to be allowed near one. There was no Google or any other search engine. If you needed to research anything you looked it up in an encyclopedia, or went to the library for a book on the subject. libraries were very popular, everybody had a library card.

If you wanted to buy something from a distant company, you called them on the phone at a number you got from an ad in a magazine or newspaper or on TV. Maybe they would send the item COD or you had to mail them a check before they shipped the item.
There were no dating sites. If you wanted to meet somebody, you either went to a bar, cruised around looking for someone waiting for a bus and offering a ride or a friend introduced you to a sibling or a friend. There were also "Lonely Hearts clubs" you could join. It was a painstaking process but at least you weren't spinning your wheels on someone from a different hemisphere or getting fleeced by scammers from Nigeria or Ghana.
There was no email. If you wanted to write to someone, you either wrote or typed a letter, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and brought it to the post office to mail it. If it was going very far away you could send it Airmail for extra postage or it would be transported by train or steamship if it was going across the ocean. It could take a week or longer for a letter to go cross country by regular mail.

There were no online games. If you felt like playing a card game you got out the deck of cards and played with another person(s) or played solitaire. Same with any other kind of game. Or you could go to a bar where they may have had a console with a game called PONG which was just bouncing a ball back & forth on a TV screen with a paddle you controlled with a knob.

Today at 3:30 PM EDT (12:30 PM PDT) from Cape Canaveral in Florida, with live stream expected to kick off around 3:15 minutes prior, SpaceX is putting 60 broadband satellites into orbit as part of their Starlink service to a total of 418 satellites making them the world's largest private satellite operator.
Later this year, Starlink broadband service will be online for customers in the northern U.S. and Canada.

My desktop computer goes through phases of hanging or buffering for literally minutes on end, but not all the time. It starts, usually, about 10 minutes after I boot up, and lasts up to an hour - lately it has started doing it around 8 pm for, again, up to an hour. It is a Windows 7 so I don't think it is hidden updates.

I did find when I switched to Safe mode that it absolutely flies, all the time. Anyone else experienced anything like this, any suggestions? Safe mode is great but obviously limited - no watching online videos, for example, otherwise I'd just stay in it all the time.

The USA has most of these, as other places have concentrations of their own substances. Google these two, for their many essential uses. What a stupid blog, Vierk.

You've probably heard of 3D printing where a filament of heated plastic is extruded to build up layers creating dimensional objects. Yes? They are used to create toys, mechanical gears, tools and medical supplies such as prosthetic body parts.

Ink printers is where it all started and they have been around more than 2 generations. Paper is only 2 dimension, X and Y axis. Later came laser or router in place of an ink print head and allowed companies to do engraving with the same 2D technology.

More sophisticated technology can be found in the woodworking industry were different router heads are used on a 3 axis machine using X, Y and Z for length, width and height. I've seen lots of videos of guitar making where a single computerized router can switch tools to cut the shape a guitar, curve the edges, drill for pickups, switches and hardware all without having the remove the block of wood from the bed it's clamped to.
This is Computer Numeric Control technology, CNC for short.
That technology only cut away existing material. There weren't any devices to build something from literally nothing.

On a large scale, they are making houses with a related technology using quick setting concrete from a nozzle to build walls.

Tonight, I hit a video of a 3D pen. Hand operated, it's a simple device similar to the way a hot-melt glue gun works and uses thin filaments that you can actually draw in 2D or build more complex shapes in layers in 3D. Prices range anywhere from $30 to $150 and filaments are available in 1.75mm to 3mm thickness. Some more expensive models have different nozzles so you can change the thickness from the same tool.

Here is a demo video explaining many facets on the 3D pen...

The condo I bought had an old washer & dryer. I didn't expect them to last long and I was right. Small capacity, they actually worked well, but they were too small to handle 10 bath towels in a load or a medium weight comforter.
A few months ago, the washer started leaking with a few cupfulls of water on the floor each load. Not alarming, but important to monitor as I'm on the 2nd floor and don't want any issues with the tenant below me. The dryer would squeal at the startup and sometimes require re-balancing the load to coax it to work. last month, it died.
Timing was manageable as we were able to do laundry in the Miami house. Home Depot had sent out offers of no interest financing and they were running a few 30% off sales so it was time to shop.
We ended up with a large-capacity pair made by Samsung. Unlike the washing machines I've owned in the past that had a center agitator, this model has a impeller at the bottom to turn the clothes.
Sophisticated computer control, I used the automatic setting that senses the height and weight of the load to determine the correct amount of water. First mistake. Doing a load of jeans I found in the water setting was so low that the clothes on top remained on top and 10 minutes into the wash I could see a dry spot where one pants leg didn't get into the undertow. I stopped the sequence to override and add more water. That didn't work as it appeared to abort the load, drain the soapy water and start another wash load that I had to stop and add more soap.
User friendly wasn't an option in it's program!
Yeah, I read the book (twice) before getting started with this new machine.
After that first load I noticed the corners of the stitched pockets were beginning to fray... this is something I blogged about with a previous HE model that had the agitator.

At this point it doesn't matter that this new model comes with an impeller, as figuring a way to wash clothes with the correct amount of water and not having them wear out from friction has become an agitating issue to me!

We've grown to rely of Google for everything... well, mostly everything. I'm trying to resist as Google is invasive to the Nth degree. If I have an addiction, it's using Google Maps. For years, it's been part of my job to research addresses of my sales leads. More than finding things with my GPS, it's also a way to scout out the access to buildings for kitchen deliveries making sure there's enough room for a truck as some condos have restricted access and a top view of the landscape helps a lot.
My brother is obsessed with genealogy and the neighborhood we grew up in. I was around 6 years old when we moved away so memories were few. With Google Maps, I was able to research the house. While the address is the same, the building changed. It's on a main street and many of the houses were rezoned and converted to use as business.
The garden where my grandfather grew fruits and vegetables is now an asphalt driveway and a truck is parked in the front of the building that a single door has been converted to a storefront.

From time-to-time, I've seen the Google truck driving around taking photos and I know some maps have archives so you can go back in time to see what was there on a previous Google visit. I've done that several times when an old house was demolished, the lot was empty and new house was built at the same location. Very interesting.

There was a landmark in North Miami Beach... it's the Krispy-Kreme doughnut factory. Opened in the mid 1960's and operated 24 hours a day. Where could you get something to eat at 3am? Krispy-Kreme! Business changed and a new building (with larger drive-thru) was built 1 block away. The old building torn down and a WaWa gas station is at that location, however Google Maps street view doesn't reflect a change made more than a year ago.

Images of my Miami house were dated 2011... I expect the Google Maps truck to be passing back sometime soon.

Now that millions of people are home under lockdown, it's safe to say the internet is on bandwidth overload. Many sites cannot handle the amount of increased traffic. I heard (on local radio) some streaming services (like Netflix) will be limiting/restricting their High Definition signals during peak hours.

I usually obsess on YouTube during the weekends and noticed EVERY video I clicked had an error message that required a second try to get the video to play. High bandwidth problems is suspected.

It took several tries to logon to CS this morning as I received HTTP Error 503.2 - Service Unavailable and a few errors while navigating around the site.

A friend who is a regular at the county park where we fly model aircraft said ALL the parks are now closed. One of the local flying clubs website stated local and regional parks are closed until further notice! The field video camera confirmed no cars in the lot and the airstrip is devoid of pilots.

My plan was to catch a few helicopter flights in the schoolyard, but someone told me under city lockdown I could be jailed and/or fined. No one around me for 200 yards... I promise to wear an N95 mask.

I've seen video from China with a dozen or so tractors and earth moving equipment running around the clock and scheduled to build a hospital in 10 days. I keep thinking dog and pony show. Were the plans already made for a soon to open project? Land already cleared? Sewer and drainage already installed in the ground? Fast setting concrete doesn't cure in less than a few weeks, hope they know that.

In the 70's I worked for a company that made prefabricated panels. Their big contracts were for hospitals in Saudi Arabia attached to U-shape tracks bolted to a concrete slab retained the walls around steel columns and joists.

Plumbing, electrical, a/c venting takes time...

Airplane hangars, warehouses in 10 days. Fully equipped real hospitals... I have my doubts.