Technology Blogs (216)

Years (read: decades) ago my ex-wife and her sisters bought their favorite uncle an expensive TV only to find out he was color blind. I'm finding it hard to recall knowing someone else who was color blind back then. I've met/known blind people and deaf people, but color blind escapes me... until recent.

One of the new members of the flying club is officially color blind.

He's got special glasses that highlight certain colors that helps him see differences. It's helping differentiate some of the colors of the spectrum instead of everything being chromatic tones of grey.

I did a blog about people who are color blind and a brand of glasses that bring out colors to help those who are color blind.

Why blog about an old blog?
Yesterday, I was at the dentist getting 2 chipped teeth restored and I know they would be using ultraviolet light to cure the white composite filler. They gave me some dark lenses to wear during the procedure. While I had idle time, I was checking messages on my phone and the lenses were affecting the colors on my phone as I rotated the screen. Very colorful prismatic effects, black letters on a white screen and white letters on a black screen had some reddish and blue edges. That reminded me of the special glasses that allow color blind people to see colors.

I believe the boy in the story has partial colorblindness and the glasses gave him benefits to recognize certain colors.
Link to the story here:

I went to the Home Depot site, typed in a selection and before I could choose from the options, the drop-down menu got in the way and I had to back arrow and start again.

Local weather channel has a hair-trigger drop down menu that takes a few seconds to release to let you make a selection from the main page.

One of the helicopter retailers has a series of 'land mines' that drop down with pop-ups that force the user to wait before making selections. Crossing your mouse over a menu opens other (unwanted) menus that lock waiting for graphics to generate. Sometimes it's quicker to close the page and open a new one bypassing the delay in the system.


Today's annoyance: Drop Down Menus...

Today is the official day that Microsoft discontinues support for Internet Explorer in Windows 10. Hard to believe, but IE has been around nearly 27 years and now and it's fading away.
Microsoft Edge has been the replacement for some time now. To help with a few compatibility issues, there is an IE mode in Edge that will be supported until 2029, so if you really need IE on a site where Edge doesn't function, a working version is in the background.

Rarely did I need IE and have been using Firefox for years. Although it's buggy at times, I'm most comfortable with the interface. I tried Safari, but it lacked features. Except for a zoom magnification feature I liked, I stopped using it.
If you are using Google products, I would expect you to be married to Google Chrome, simply because it goes hand-in-hand with many of the Google add-on products, especially things used in business. It's operation is seamless, especially with cloud based applications.

In the event it removes a file (or files) I may need in the future, I don't plan to uninstall IE. I'll only delete it from my taskbar. Out of sight, out of mind.

..w/ notes...
To daze x ray... yesterday once more..
....make this go ON ..For ever .} ..snow patrol
.b...play @ your own risk .} .planet patrol..
C......pop quiz.| . guess who .?.
..2. .stwy 2 heaviness .) .landing Zone.
1...all the Above. } Maino.ft. T pain
...also ran.} .please stand by. | .the outer . limits...
.. Parkinson bumps into Color. Ordinates...pt.2
( Despite simplification, technical gain improves...
....gold. .} . Interference...[ .dan..7:1
Daniel ./ Elton John.....
C.............{ ..dan.6:2....
2... Listen, learn..read On.} .deep . purple
1...Leap of faith. } .I Q.
...daniel says it's the best place he's ever seen...he
. should know, he's been there enough....
... having convinced my self it's a live Exercise, eYe now remind you. ) .. evidence screams continuously that the Recording Industry cannot let go of bible stories..) ..and the reverse Engineering thereof...
Isis & Osiris./ Ayreon.
The statue got me high .) .they might be giants.
Secret history of the human race.) Blood Incantation
..also ran.) Standing on the shoulders of giants.) Oasis
..Liner note. see. Enoch book one.

If I could have some CS wishes, my list wouldn't be too long. Well, maybe it would. The first request would be to be able to view profiles without them knowing and not giving up the ability of knowing who view me. Kinda like having your cake and eating it too. Going stealth has it's drawbacks. Unfortunately as simple of a request could have everyone using it and soon no one would 'see' any profiles here.

Another request would be to log on and appear offline. All the hits I get are within the first 20 minutes of being online as members float to the top of the list of who's online by the order of when they log on.

Allow foreign (Asian) languages so we read what they say in their language when they don't know English.
Chinese, Japanese, Thai, also Russian.

The 1962 cartoon series The Jetsons is a look at what family life could/would be in the future where every family had their own flying vehicle. YouTube has dozens of videos of experimental one-man drones labeled eVTOL. Vertical Takeoff and Landing.
While they all make lots of claims like no-license, ultra-safe, long flight times, I haven't actually seen any production models flying around my neighborhood.

This morning another eVTOL popped up on my technical radar. It's called the Jetson ONE. At a cost of $92,000 production for 2022 is already sold out and they have taken lots of orders for 2023.

All but one or two of these concept flying vehicles have the rotor blades at knee level and my first thought is they fail miserably with regard to safety.

While they have a cool 3 minute video of the Jetson ONE, it's promoted as a fun vehicle.
The website calendar shows they booked one per month in 2022 and a list of more than 100 orders booked for 2023. Yeah, maybe lots of people have $92,000 to spare.




Official site:

This week, I've gone back to watching YouTube videos about the life of Nikola Tesla and the common thread is he gave too much of his talents away... so much that it drained him. He died at the age of 81 after being hit by a taxi. Many years Tesla had been living alone in hotels leaving behind unpaid bills.

As a young man coming to America, Tesla had worked for Thomas Edison. This was a double edged sword as Edison had cheated him of money and inventions. However, Tesla had the chance to grow and expand his experiments in the laboratory environment.
Edison's idea was to power homes by direct current (DC) generators. The problem with direct current was the limitation of traveling long distances. Thick wires and power stations every few miles were needed to conduct this type of electricity.
Tesla didn't agree with Edison and had invented motors and generators that worked with alternating current (AC) so he could run much longer distances with thinner wires.
His use of alternating current was less expensive and was gaining in popularity. He partnered with George Westinghouse to provide AC power distribution.
This was affecting Edison's business to the point where Edison started a smear campaign of fear mongering the dangers of alternating current. In retaliation, he began to use alternating current and horrified spectators when he publicly executed animals.

Anyway, I find it ironic that the most famous electric car in America named Tesla, is powered by batteries that supply (DC) direct current.

20 years ago I had a computer monitor go bad while under warrantee.
I returned it to the manufacturer's repair center and rather than wait for the repair, I was offered a refurbished unit they could ship the same day.
Not knowing what refurbished meant (exactly) the manager said all their new monitors go through a 24 hour burn-in test. Unfortunately, a small percent fail in the field. Those are repaired and returned.
The refurbished units not only get repaired, they go through extensive testing to find out what caused the problem in the first place.

Electronic components usually have a manufacturer's tolerance of 10% on resistors and diodes that are allowed to pass their standards for specifications. In the chance too many components are close to being out of tolerance (yet still acceptable) other components in the circuitry may fail due to the tolerance.

Guitarists may test out a few different amplifiers and pick one that sounds better. While they are wired with parts that pass standards, there are some that all the parts are ideally 'on the money' and exactly in tolerance.

I took that monitor he offered and used it for many years until it was time for something larger.

I've been shopping for a cellphone. My phone is maxed out on the SD memory with more than 5,000 photos and videos. I do monthly backups and purge old photos no longer needed. It's roughly 4 or 5 years old and the battery won't make it a whole day.
New models are around $1,200 and one drawback to many is you cannot add/extend memory as they don't have a slot for SD memory.
Samsung is offering 'refreshed' models that are a few years old. They have been thoroughly checked out, new batteries installed and screens, cases replaced if they have signs of wear. The operating systems are updated, unlocked and serial number with ID's are all new. One year warranty (same as a new phone) included. Priced about half of a new phone.

Some of the other models have dropped off the sales page and no longer available. Rather than risk the model I want to disappear, I made the purchase and expected it to arrive in 10 days or less.

I'll be cloning my old phone to the new phone and a few hours of updating apps and passwords should get me into another phone for a few more years.

What do y'all make of it? I think it's a scheme to try and stop more people waking up and questioning what's going on in the world. The Metaverse, in essence, is a virtual world which can be manipulated by those running it to present any set of ideas they wish. The goal seems to be to get more people invested in and plugged in to this metaverse. But why would this be? A control mechanism i think is the obvious answer (outside of obvious profit motives) - offer people a virtual 'safe space' where they don't have to worry about that big nasty (REAL) world, and where they'll be told everything they want to hear. Is it based in reality? No! Of course not! But if the reality is rife with corruption on the part of various people currently running it, wouldn't it make sense for those people to want to stop a mass awakening lest they be actually held accountable?? Yes, i think that is the point.

Tell me what YOU think

Technology moves forward. Maybe you remember when FM radio was broadcast entirely on an analog signal. Then stations added a digital band of information was simulcast along with the digital signal. The FCC changed all that and stations are fully digital sending streams of digitally encoded signals. The same thing happened with TV. If you were receiving broadcasts from an antenna on an old TV set, you had to add a digital receiver to convert the new digital signals.
The purpose for that was to send more data over the same bandwidth. Effectively adding more stations on the same channel.

Cell phone services are all switching to 5G, but the majority of customers are still using 4G. Surprising there is a small percentage of devices that can only work on a 3G signal.
If you are using an old style flip-phone, chances are it's on 3G. Lots of communication devices like tablets require 3G service.
Depending on your carrier, some of the major companies will be phasing out 3G. That change affects many old-style life-alert systems and discount carrier cellphones used only for 911. Unless they upgrade, they will be totally useless.

I'm reading the phase-out could happen as early as the first quarter 2022.