Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips The FAA continues to ban electronic devices on parts of commercial flights. Technical: they cannot test all devices for EMC. Political: they cannot withstand the fallout of a mistake. The FAA continues to ban electronic devices during the takeoff and landing portions of commercial flights. This continues to exasperate just about everyone. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Handheld computers sell in the millions, a.k.a., smartphones. The folks who produce the videos and the apps, however, need something else. We’ve all see the numbers on smartphone sales – millions. I am still astounded at how many of these things sell in the U.S. and around the world. And we’ve seen […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A tribute to the single-board computer. The engineer looks at the growing block diagram of a yet-to-be-built system and says, “Put a computer here.” What eventually goes there is a single-board computer. We don’t design computers from scratch as the would be wasteful. Instead, we buy an already built computer, write software, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I look at a $3 program that enables making video explanations using the iPad. Two days in a row, I bump into a presentation program. This time it is called Explain Everything. It costs $2.99 and runs on the iPad. In the program, you create a few “slides” which become the background […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Following the suggestion of several friends, I take a look at Prezi – a new(er) presentation-making application. Several friends hit me recently with, “prezi prezi prezi.” First, I didn’t understand what they were saying. Second, I didn’t know how to spell what they were saying. I can’t mimick their pronunciation in my […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I had been using a Unix command for Mac backups. My recent experience with a dead disk drive showed that the strategy didn’t quite work. I don’t like commercial products that make backups for disks. My worry is that the backup data are useless without the product to unpack them. Hence, for […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Self-flying airplanes are coming. They will be very good, but not perfect. Younger generations may accept that less than perfect. Aviation is repeating its history from about a hundred years ago. Instead of the Wright brothers, we now have “drones” or “UAVs.” I put these terms in quotes as they are misused […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Using the iPad (version 3), PlainText and DropBox makes writing even better. I now have the new iPad or iPad version 3 as some of us like to call it. I even have an Apple Bluetooth keyboard (I know, the keyboard is an old device, but new to slow adopters like me). I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If we change something, it will be different. We know that, but we act surprised when we see it. Recent studies indicate that large wind farms increase the temperature of the wind farm area. People are speculating if there will be other changes in the weather at wind farms. Some people are […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes the world changes and you have to alter your product in what may seem to be an evil way. Samsung recently announced that they are including WiFi in their higher-end cameras. I can see some of the engineers and scientists at Samsung wincing in pain. Excellence in cameras is about lenses and […]

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