Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The cell phone camera plus computer vision plus computer speech equals apps for the blind.

I worked in computer vision during the 1980s and early 1990s. My work was mostly with having a computer transform an aerial image into a map. I didn’t foresee the technologies that would make the digital image sensor an aid for the blind, but that is where we are today.

I recently blogged about the camera as the new I/O device. The digital “camera” (charge coupled device sensor) has become capable and inexpensive. Put a little plastic “lens” in front of it, and you have a sensor in your hand that was science fiction only a generation ago.

Now put computer vision on a computer. The computer fits in your hand and, like the camera, has science fiction power from a generation ago. The magic comes in the algorithms that computer vision researchers have developed. The software can “read” road signs and dollar bills and can tell the difference between a can of gasoline and a jug of water. Note the miracle of the Google car.

Now put some speech technology as output. This one was developed a generation ago, but we didn’t foresee it as an aid to the blind.

What do we have? Apps for the blind. The cell phone has the digital sensor, computer, computer vision algorithms, and voice output. The blind person points the cell phone about and the computer informs the person of the situation.

I must confess that I didn’t pay attention to these development and didn’t connect the pieces until about nine months ago. My granddaughter was born with a problem in her eyes. Surgery at the age of one month appears to have corrected the problem. She will not live a “normal” life, but she will see. Millions are not so fortunate as my granddaughter. I like to think that some of the work I did, some of the writing and teaching that I did, has helped advance these apps for the blind.

by Dwayne Phillips

As boring as it may seem, writers should work on their typing skills.

I found a web site today that I will visit frequently for a while:

TypingClub.com

Yes, that is it. A website that let’s me work on my typing skills. And what wonderful thing does that have to do with writing? Two questions:

1. How long does it take to write a page of that novel or non-fiction business or engineering book?
2. Would it make any difference in your writing life if you could write two pages instead of one in the same amount of time?

The answer to number 1 really doesn’t matter. The answer to number 2 is, “Yes, of course.”

Hence, work on your touch typing. Double your typing speed. Improve your life.

by Dwayne Phillips

The humble journal plays an important role in The Hunger Games trilogy. It can plan an important role in anyone’s life.

I just finished reading “The Hunger Games” trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I did so to try to come closer to the young adult crowd that bought these books, made them best sellers, and are currently making the first movie a huge hit.

I won’t spoil the suspense of the story. I will make note of the role of the journal in the emotional well being of several of the major characters. There are two journals in the story:

(1) the journal containing records of plant and animal life that helped sustain the family of the main character

(2) the journal written at the end of the trilogy about all the characters large and small in the story

The first journal kept people alive physically. It noted what plants and animals could be eaten to survive. It also noted what plants could be used as medicine.

The second journal healed the story’s survivors emotionally. It helped them remember the people they knew, what these people did, and what these people meant in their lives.

The book trilogy is just a story like all stories of fiction. The journal, however, can be real. There are many benefits of a journal. Sure, the second journal in the trilogy could have been done on a computer, but the author had the characters write the journal by hand on pieces of paper.

There is something about dragging a pen across paper that is good for the heart of mankind.

by Dwayne Phillips

I have a new Scottevest jacket. It has 20 pockets, and I love it.

This is a first for this blog – a post about fashion. Well, I think it is about fashion. It is also about utility.

I now own a ScottEVest Standard Jacket. I looked at these on the Internet for months and finally took the plunge and bought one.

Notes:

1. It is not very warm. This means I can wear it in the fall and the spring. If I wear something warm under it, I can wear it in the winter.
2. I put my iPad inside the left side and my notebooks in the right side and my glasses in the glasses pocket and my pens in the pen holders and phone in the phone pocket and … you get the idea.
3. All that stuff in the pockets feels odd when I sit, but I grow accustomed to it.
4. My hands are free as everything I have is in pockets.
5. I can bring my iPad with me, and my grandson doesn’t see it because it is hidden in my jacket pocket.
6. At the airport, I take off my jacket and all my stuff is off my body.

Fashionable? I don’t care. I’m an engineer.

by Dwayne Phillips

Micro-Management has been given a bad name. What is bad is nit-picking management. Used properly, micro-management is a good practice.

Micro-management is a good management practice. There, now fight the urge to stop reading while I explain.

Here is what micro-management is about: A senior manager bores down through several levels of bureaucracy to a key element of a project. The senior manager pays close attention to the key element to help the project succeed.

Some may protest now. That is not micro-management. Yes, it is. It was invented to do that to help projects succeed.

What most of us know and have experienced is nit-picking management.

Nits are the eggs of lice. Nits are really small. The literal practice of picking nits is when someone, I guess they are using a magnifying glass and a tiny pair of tweezers, picks the eggs of lice out of your scalp. That takes a lot of time, prevents you from doing anything useful, and is generally painful for you and frustrating for the nit picker.

Now that we have covered actual nit picking, we can all imagine what nit-picking management is. We don’t want it.

Micro-management, however, can be quite helpful when practiced correctly.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some people in my life have been very discouraging. Some people in my life have been very encouraging. It is not difficult for me to choose which type of person I want to be.

I can remember it like it happened yesterday. I was a graduate student working on my PhD. My major professor looked at me as I was leaving campus and going back to work. I was going to work on my research in the evening and on weekends.

He told me, “You won’t finish. People who leave campus never finish.”

Not very encouraging.

Several years later I was back on campus for a few days to talk to my committee. They wanted me to do a lot more work before they approved my dissertation. I was dejected. I was sitting in the office of another professor.

He told me, “You will do this and then that. You will finish those things in a month and be back for final approval and then graduate. You can do that.”

Very encouraging.

I sat across from a PhD student a few weeks ago. She was struggling with writing her dissertation proposal. Several people had told her that she didn’t write well enough in English to complete her assignments in pursuit of her PhD. I wanted to kill those discouraging people.

I pointed to a page she had written. I showed her how well that one page was written.

I told her, “You wrote this page. It is excellent. You can write all these other pages just as well. You will finish this.”

by Dwayne Phillips

There are times when a customer calls for a technical solution to one of their problems. They may, however, have a management problem instead.

I work for a technology company. When our customers call, we deliver technical solutions to their problems.

Sometimes, however, the customer comes with a fuzzy problem. We investigate to learn that they don’t have a technical problem – they have a management problem. This takes the form of:

One manager dislikes another manager and manipulates the system to make the other manager look bad.

Requests for technical services sit in someone’s in box for weeks.

Programmers are bored with servicing customers, so they ignore requests the first couple of times they arrive.

Someone is ill for a long period of time, so nothing is done.

Now we, a provider of technical solutions, have to walk in and tell the customer that they don’t need us. They “just” have to straighten out their own silly problems. There is always the chance that they will hire us for management help, but that is outside our specialty and is often too politically damaging for them.

by Dwayne Phillips

Same old story – it is not what you know, but who you know that counts.

People can’t measure performance. Let me restate that one – people don’t want to measure performance. That is too much work.

Instead, people go to their feelings. They ask, “When I consider Dwayne’s performance, do I like him?” They do not ask, “What is the quality of product given me by Dwayne?”

This all goes back to,

It is not what you know, but who you know that counts.

I hate that. I truly hate that. The trouble is, that seems to be reality.

I noticed this many times in my 25+ years working in government. We had “promotion panels” or what I called “demotion panels.” Groups of people, a.k.a, a committee, would meet to discuss employees and their performance. Oooops, I wrote performance. Let’s change that to “meet to discuss employees” period.

The final answer was to the question, “Does someone in the room know and like the person under consideration?”

Hence, promotions were not determined by performance. They were determined by sponsorship. Who in the room was sponsoring the person for promotion? How well did they speak? What position of authority did they occupy?

by Dwayne Phillips

Computers still have three basic parts: (1) processor, (2) memory, and (3) input/output (I/O). The latest addition to the I/O is the camera.

This post is a little late – several years late, but better late…and so on.

In the early 1970s, I was introduced to the computer. There were and still are three basic parts to a computer:

1. the processor
2. the memory
3. the input/output or I/O

There have been many advances since that time long ago. The area with additions not just advances is the I/O. New media types (remember the Zip drive cartridge and the 8″ floppy disk?) come and go.

Something that has come is the camera. If someone once said, “I want a new computer because it has a better camera,” we would have carted them away. A better camera? Computers don’t have cameras, do they?

Yes, computers have cameras.

Just last night I was sitting at a table at an event. The speaker gave everyone a piece of paper as a handout. (Yes, he is old.) We didn’t cover all the material on the piece of paper. He told us to hang onto the paper until next week.

Do what? Hang on to a piece of paper for a week?

I took a photo of the piece of paper with my pocket computer, a.k.a., my iPhone. Next week, or whenever, when we talk about the piece of paper, I will look at the image on my pocket computer.

That is all because one of the better I/O devices for that computer is the camera.

by Dwayne Phillips

One reason for blogging is to clear ideas from the mind. Put them in the blog and they no longer rattle around up there. That makes room for the next ideas.

Why blog? There are many reasons. Here is one:

To clear the mind.

This is one thing that writing, any type of writing, does for me.

Ideas come to me. They come from many sources in many places at many times. This is something that I learned from writer and consultant Jerry Weinberg. He called it “noticing,” and that seems to be a good term. I notice things, lots of things. I have to disengage my “noticer” now and then to give myself time to clear my head.

Most of the time I record my noticed items on 3×5 cards. I carry these in my shirt pocket. Yes, I look like a nerd, but appearances have long ago disappeared as something that garners my attention.

Sometimes I blog about these notices.  Blogging clears my mind, and an empty mind is ripe for new notices. Now that this one is out of mind, on to something else.