Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips I post a piece I wrote 20 years ago on a nagging attribute many of us science and engineering types possess. It happened again the other day at work. Members of my technical group were discussing the possible movement of people within our organization. We all agreed that we did not want […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Late in life, I discover the best pencil and sharpener in the world. This isn’t high tech stuff. It is embarrassing how low tech it is and still be incredibly useful. Best pencil in the world? Palomino Blackwing 602. Best pencil sharpener in the world? The Blackwing Long Point Sharpener. What causes […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Want computer voting? Want it to be secure? Here is how to do it. Just about everyone in America today votes on some sort of computer. Now and then, someone writes a story about how someone discovered that their computerized voting machines are insecure and easily subject to election fraud. Here is […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I find an excellent resource that helps me put video on a web site in HTML. Not many people face this “problem.” The world uploads their video to Facebook with a click and drag and such. I am old and still have cases where I want to put a private video in […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Technology appears to be changing so fast that culture and jobs cannot keep pace. This leads to a large group of people whose newly acquired skills never give birth to a new job. Culture adjusts to technology. The automobile displaced everyone in the horse and buggy industry. The culture and the economy […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We try to relearn this again: people have to use technology in some “smart” way. Money goes to big data projects, but not much comes back. Where have I heard this before? Oh yes, it was with fill-in-the-blank-with-one-of-those-new-technologies-that-was-going-to-change-the-world-by-itself. People use technology. Well, sometimes we use it, and sometimes we use it in […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Tech companies use photo recognition algorithms to learn about you. They sell this information to advertisers, and the rest is history. It is with humble apologies to the professors who ushered me into research in computer vision and image processing that I present this post. Google and others are constantly improving their […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The application of augment reality glasses remains the same as it always has been. The trouble is that application isn’t fashionable or cool. Google Glass is up and down these days. I can’t follow the story, so I don’t know if it is dead or reborn or something. The application of augmented […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Can we stop the silliness surrounding drones and come back to reality? This recent story decries coming regulations that may require a pilot’s license to fly a drone. Let’s repeat a bit of reality: Today’s drones are not autonomous flying robots are remote-controlled (RC) flying vehicles For decades, hobbyists have flow RC […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Today’s smartphone bears a striking resemblance to yesterday’s transistor radio. Okay, yell at me. I will wait. Now that you’ve screamed your lungs out, let’s compare today’s smartphone to yesterdays transistor radio. In case you are young(er) and don’t know what a transistor radio is, see this page. Attributes that the smartphone […]

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