Riding Green

We have abused our environment for so long. Since the Industrial revolution the human race has been generating tons and tons of toxics in the air due to the proliferation of the internal combustion machine alone. It is time we start to think of using alternatives to the fossil fuel. I see electric cars as the green future for transportation. Until the batteries are efficient enough there will be hybrid cars in the interim. I think my next car is going to be a hybrid.
When I was in college I liked to use my bike all the time. I did not ride my car except when I had to go shopping or travel. The nice bike roads within the campus made it easy for students to use bikes for transportation, and the exercise was great. I wish we had dedicated bike roads everywhere because they encourage people to use their bikes to work and school. Not only would we be solving the pollution problem, but we would also be solving the obesity problem which plagues many of our people at this age.
The problem with using a bike to work is sweating of course. That is why people prefer riding a car or motorcycle to work instead of a bike. Taking a shower at work is an option but you will also have to take with you clothes to change. There is also the weather consideration, for sometimes it will rain or snow. So granted you can't use a bike to go places all the time, but you should be able to use it at least some of the time, and that alone is guaranteed to improve the air quality considerably.
The solution to the pollution problem is in our hands. It takes simple measures to improve our air quality without much hassle, like riding bikes instead of cars, and it is good for our health too, so why don't we do it?

Inversion Therapy

If you ever suffered from lower back pain as I did then you should be familiar with the inconvenience that back problems cause. Fifteen years ago I tried to lift a very heavy slab of cement and a few days later I experienced severe lower back pain that lasted for over a month. I went to the doctor, took x-rays, and found out that the disk between the last two vertebrae was compressed, but nothing unusual. There was no herniated disk or anything like that, and the pain did not shoot down my leg as sciatica patients suffer from. As a cure, I had to lay on my back for extended periods of time, or walk around. Standing or sitting were bad. The pain eventually disappeared, but not completely. I continue to have recurrences of pain now and then which usually come unannounced and without any apparant reason I could notice.
I made my first visit to a chiropractor a few months later and took another set of x-rays. I started physical therapy sessions, three times a week. The chiropractor used a special table that had a shape of an inverted V with a hinge in the middle. I would lie my stomach on the table and he would tie my ankles at one end and my wrists at the other end, then he would start a machine that caused the table to open and close, thereby stretching my spine each time it closed. He pressed the lower vertebrae with his fingers while the table was opening and closing, and man that felt so good. I could feel instant relief in my lower back each time I used that table.
Of course the chiropractor expected me to continue with these sessions indefinitely, just like the regular dental checkups, but for me the cost of those sessions was prohibitive.
With time I got used to living with sporadic backache that would appear suddenly every now and then without a notice, but I kept looking for the ultimate cure. During my quest, I discovered Aspecreme which relieved the pain as it acted as localized aspirin. I also discovered that stretching helped a lot, especially touching my toes with my palms while keeping my knees straight. I learned a few other exercises that helped some. But recently I found the ultimate solution that is better than anything else I knew before: The inversion table! This table allows you to hang from your ankles upside down, relieving the pain off your back instantly, while stretching your compressed vertebrae effectively and without the need of a chiropractor - see the picture. I bought a high quality table that can lock at different angles instead of just the upside position, and it works great. I immediately felt the relief in my back. Kudos to the inventor of this table. I wonder how the chiropractors never told me about this machine. I heard chiropractors and health physicians don't really believe that the inversion therapy is effective at all, which is quite surprising to me, because I tried it myself and I know it is effective, but come to think of it, if all their patients used that machine then they would have no business at all. Now that incentive enough for them to reject it.
Well I tried it and I liked it, and I know I will continue to use it. It is easy to use, convenient and does not cost anything except for the initial investment of its price. I had to start with low inclination angles and gradually increase the angle because the first time I tried it I went quickly all the way upside down and I felt dizzy afterwards. Beware that with the upside position the pressure inside your head rises very quickly to high levels. You have to train your head to take it step by step, until eventually you get used to gravity reversal. Other than that, I think this inversion table is the best cure for backaches, and should be considered first before any other measures are taken. I know it works because I used it. So go ahead and try it and let me know what you think.

Biking Along Cedar Nature Trail

The Cedar Nature Trail is about a 55 miles long crushed-stone road that used to be a railway between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo up in north Eastern Iowa. I biked along that trail before to the end of its south side in Cedar Rapids, which is about 12 miles of hard asphalt each way (see the picture) from where I live. I also biked along the other side of the trail before (that is mostly crushed-stone), but never exceeded about 10 miles each way. Today I decided to bike towards Waterloo and reach Center Point which is about 15 miles from Cedar Rapids. I had an oatmeal breakfast sprinkled with some whey protein and mixed with molasses, then I took with me some water and I started at 9 am. The weather was hot and humid so I am glad I took water with me. I kept paddling, while listening to my iPod, and I made it all the way to Center Point, which happened to be at the 13th mile point, and I went on, to the 15th mile point, which happened to be at Urbana. At that point I decided to go back.
On the way back I stopped at Center Point where there was a museum. The museum was not open yet (it opens from 1 to 4 pm on Sunday), but it had restrooms and a water fountain which I didn't need neither. I drank some of the water I brought with me and stretched a little before I mounted my bike again and started heading back. When I reached the 10 mile point I started to feel tired and dehydrated. I realized that water alone was not going to be enough and that I needed to replenish the lost minerals from my body somehow. Unfortunately I did not bring with me any food nor Getorade, so I started looking for berry trees that I remembered seeing along the way. I found a black berry tree at the 8th mile point, so I immediately dismounted my bike and started picking the ripe delicious berries. There weren't many ripe berries on the tree so I ate also some unripe ones, a total of about 20 or so berries. I felt their reviving effect immediately on my body, and I was ready to continue paddling back home.
I stopped again at the 3rd mile point to drink the rest of the water I carried and then continued. The last 400 yards or so to my home were the most difficult because they were uphill, but I made it fine albeit I became quite tired. The whole trip took me about 4 and half hours, arriving at about 1:30 pm.
When I arrived home I drank some orange juice and then took a shower. After that I had lunch and felt much better. I slept for a couple of hours after lunch, then had to drink black coffee to get up and write these words.
I think one of these days I am going to try biking all the way to Waterloo. Granted that kind of trip will need proper supply of food and drink, and a companion or two, but I believe I can do it if I spend the night in Waterloo to come back the next day. It is good to challenge one's self every now and then to break normal routine ... what do you think?

No Urgency for HDTV

It is true that analog TV is going to go away in February 2009 as all broadcasting will be digital by then, at least in the United States. But does this mean everybody should toss away their analog TV sets and buy new High Definition TV's (HDTV)? Not at all! You will still be able to receive the digital transmission using a converter that you could get from Best Buy or Walmart for about $50 to $60, and with the government giving away coupons for $40 towards that purchase, you could get that converter for as little as $10. So you can still get mileage out of your analog TV investment at least until the unit dies beyond repair. I can see myself continue to use my good old 36" JVC TV for years to come. It has a crisp and nice colored picture which, granted, not as nice as the high definition LCD or plasma new sets, but considering that a new such set would cost north of $1000, I think it is worthwhile keeping the old set. Besides, I enjoy videotaping programs from satellite using my good old VCR set. I also have a DVD player which works well with my old TV set, on which I can watch DVD's as well as my personal camera family videos. I was told that the old VCR would work fine with the HDTV, and the new Blu Ray DVD player could upconvert regular DVD's for display on the HDTV set. However, we have already seen the high def DVD lose the war to Blu Ray, and it might take some time for these standards to become fixed, so I don't see this HDTV technology as an exigency at this time nor do I see any value added beyond the higher quality picture itself. Maybe it is nostalgia, or resistance to change, but I am really reluctant to change a system that has served me well for many years to a new system that neither solves a known problem nor adds any extra value, save for better picture quality. It is just aesthetics at this point, which for some people might be worth the new investment, but for hardcore engineers like myself, it is not a good enough reason to switch immediately. The bottom line is there is no urgency in switching to HDTV. I would take my time and waiteth, for all good things happen to those who waiteth, like prices dropping down, standards stabilizing, and new technologies emerging. What do you thnk?

Finding the T-5 Bird

I spent quite some time in the past couple of weeks trying to point my dish antenna to the Ku-band T-5 satellite, a task that should have been relatively easy but unfortunately turned out to be a little more involved than I anticipated. I used to blithely receive all the FTA (Free-to-Air) channels on that satellite before, but then strong wind moved the dish beyond the point of return and I lost the satellite for a year or so; I could not manually point it back to receive any signal no matter how hard I tried.
Recently I decided to get those channels back, so the first thing I did was to cement the pole in the ground to prevent strong Iowa gales from moving it again, which was the easy part. My weekend before last was lost trying to get a signal from the LNB to the receiver by pointing the dish to the coordinates of the T-5 satellite (that I got from the internet). To my dismay, and relief at the same time, I realized after all this effort that the LNB seal was broken and rain water actually filled the inside of the box making it a useless peace of junk (which explained why I was picking an erratic signal wherever I pointed the dish)! So I ordered a new LNB from eBay for about $12 including shipping and handling. When the LNB arrived, I thought that I would find the T-5 signal in a jeffy, but I was wrong again. Although I could get the signal level indicator bar to above 75%, the signal quality bar read 0 (nil, zilch, nothing). Finally I found out that the new LNB setting in the receiver menu had to be set to Universal 1 (not Standard, and not Universal 2), and only then I was able to get a signal quality of 50% or so. I tweaked the elevation to maximize the signal quality and also skewed the LNB to about 6 degrees clockwise and I ended up with a signal quality of about 60%. With that kind of signal quality I was able to receive all the FTA channels again.
Now as we enjoy watching all those international free channels in crystal clear quality I think to myself: this was all worth my effort. What do you think?

Everyone has a Cell Phone

I have to admit that cell phones are becoming more ubiquitous than any other thing ever invented in human history. More than the car, the laptop, and the PDA. Let's face it, the PDA now is embedded inside the phone. Very few people, like myself, still use standalone PDA's. I don't have a cell phone, because I thought I did not need one. But I need a PDA to organize my contacts, databases, programs etc. However, I am starting to think this is outdated ... the Emperor isn't wearing clothes for Heaven's sake! Why not just go and get a cell phone that has computer power like the iPhone, the Palm Centro or even a Kyocera. Any one of these new phones has enough brains in it to do the PDA fnuctions and more. Besides, who said I don't need a cell phone. Well I do. How many times I needed to make a quick phone call to find out where my wife or children were inside the mall, and could not find a pay phone. It seems that pay phones have become antiquated already.
I know what I am going to do, I will get me a cell phone, and pretty soon I will buy also a HDTV since all TV transmission is going to be digital starting February 2009 anyway. I am sad to say that I will have to abandon my current PDA pretty soon, although it and its predecessors served me so well for over five years. Rate of technology change these days is about two years average. So you have to change gadgets that fast if you want to stay current. I don't know about you, but this is too fast for me. I like to stick to my gadgets longer than that, at least five years or so. How about you?

Global Positioning and Tracking

It is amazing how the GPS receiver changed the way we use maps. Since I got my Garmin nuvi 660 GPS receiver I stopped generating paper maps whenever I travel to a new place. I just take my nuvi with me and it does the job showing me how to find the address I need, as well as nearby gas stations, restaurants, shops, airports, and anything I need. In addition, it shows me the direction I am moving in, my speed and a moving map that tracks my position at all times within 2 meters accuracy. Just amazing!
Recently I found a free Palm PDA application called cotoGPS that allows a Bluetooth enabled PDA to interface with any Bluetooth enabled GPS receiver to get the NMEA (National Marine Electronic Association) data from it and process them to provide additional information such as satellite positions, area, tracking paths, speed and direction and a whole new set of other information that is displayed nicely on the PDA small screen.
Come to think of it, with the 24 medium range satellites circumventing the earth and providing the position information to GPS receivers on earth, there must be infinite possibilities for what you can do with that kind of information. Google Earth is one of these applications. Not only can you find any place on earth with Google Earth, but now you can also track paths on real images taken from satellites simply by using a GPS receiver that interfaces with Google Earth.
I am thinking what's next? The earth has become such a small village now with the advent of the Internet and GPS. Is the earth going to continue to shrink in size indefinitely? There must be a stopping mechanism that will limit this trend, don't you think?

The Future of Palm PDA

How time flies when it comes to technology! A few years ago the Palm PDA was a big hit. Sales were soaring and work groups were thriving discussing various ways to make new exciting applications that made our life easier. It seems that all this came to a dead end suddenly as innovation stopped and the future of the famous Palm PDA became doomed. I don't see the conventional PDA device surviving side by side to the more powerful iPhone and other PDA/phone devices. The iPhone does not need a stylus, and has similar capabilities to a MAC laptop in addition to a phone function. I am afraid to say that the conventional PDA has become obsolete. It is sad because I liked this invention so much, the Palm PDA that is, but that is the pace of technology which makes any stagnant idea obsolete in a matter of a few years. Palm needed the visionary thinking of Steve Jobs, but instead they ran out of innovation, and that made the end loom so near. I will probably still use my Palm PDA for another year or two, but sooner or later I feel that I will be switching to an iPhone, or whatever new gadget Steve Jobs is going to come up with next. Change is the only constant in life, and this is becoming more and more demonstrated with the advancement of technology. We have to continue adapting and buying new gadgets on almost a yearly basis now. How far is this going to continue? Are we going to adapt to technology on a monthly basis soon? Then on a weekly basis? Then what? There must be a self-limiting mechanism that will kick in to stop this madness. I just wonder when and how. What do you think?

RAW or JPEG Photo Format?

I have been using the RAW format for all the photos that I take with my Canon DSLR camera lately, until I found out that it was a big pain to convert large number of them later on to JPEG that is necessary to share with others. The converted files are in the order of 10 MB each. If I use JPEG format at the time I shoot the pictures then each picture comes to about 2.5 MB. So what am I really gaining from shooting in RAW format? It is supposed to give me maximum flexibility in editing with software like Photoshop, and it has the highest clarity and minimum processing leading to least artifacts possible. However, after weighing the advantages versus the combersome conversion to JPEG eventually I decided that it is not worth shooting in RAW format except for special purposes. Image editing software like Photoshop or GIMP can still process JPEG photos with as much flexibility as for RAW photos, and the end result is almost identical between the two formats for the naked eye.
Recently I visited Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada, and I took this photo from my hotel room which had full view of the Falls. The original picture was shot in RAW format and was converted later to JPEG without any editing of the RAW picture. This picture was the pick of the day on the accuweather website at http://www.photo.accuweather.com.
Well, the fact that I did not need to alter or edit the original RAW photo shows that it was not necessary for me to shoot RAW in the first place. Of course this is not always the case, but as I mentioned one can still edit JPEG photos as easily and the end result is more or less the same.
So I'd say forget RAW for regular everyday shooting. Wouldn't you agree with me?

Photo Comparison

I promised to show photos showing a comparison between different camera technologies. In the following are two photos of the Grand Canyon taken by two different digital cameras: An HP 3 Mega pixel camera, and an Olympus C7000 camera with 7.1 Mega pixel resolution.


The first photo is that taken by the HP PhotoSmart camera and its original size is 446 KB. The camera settings were as follows: Focal length 5.9 mm, shutter speed 1/111.1 sec, aperture f 9.8, and exposure compensation was 0.0EV. The second photo is that from the Olympus C7000 camera and had an original size of 390 KB. The camera settings were: Focal length 7.9 mm, shutter speed 1/500 sec, aperture f 7.1, exposure compensation -0.7EV, and ISO sensitivity 100.
Obviously the two shots are not the same but they were taken under similar conditions four years apart. No adjustments were possible with the HP camera as it was a simple point and shoot camera, but the Olympus shot was taken with Shutter priority setting with the above settings. The focus in both shots was automatic, although it is possible to adjust the focus manually with the Olympus camera.
Which photo looks better? It seems to me that the first picture was sharper and had fuller colors than the second one. I don't know about you but I think that the older and simpler HP camera takes better pictures than the more advanced Olympus one. What do you think?

Digital Cameras

I remember the days when I had my old Pentax 35 mm SLR camera in the seventies. I always admired the Canon and the Nikon lenses long before digital photography emerged. I bought a Nikon camera in the mid eighties although I could not afford a good Nikon lens at the time, and I had to settle for a zoom Nikkor lens. I was able to take decent pictures with that camera although I always aspired for better quality photos, mainly more sharpness and richer colors.
Then came digital cameras that changed photography forever. No more you need to wait till you develop your film to see the results, and you can shoot as many photos as you like as long as you have enough juice in your battery. My first digital camera was an HP 3Mega pixel one that I bought in 1997. That one was a simple point and shoot camera that did not have any manual adjustments. It served me well until finally it stopped working in the summer of 2004 when it got wet from rain. Then I bought an Olympus C7000 with 7Mega pixel resolution. That latter camera had all the features that I had in my old Pentax and Nikon cameras. I could choose Automatic, Aperture priority, Speed priority or Manual settings, and I could switch the ISO from 80 all the way to 400 which is equivalent to the ASA settings of the old film cameras. It had a zoom lens that covered wide angle to x4 magnification, and software that made it possible to edit and even stitch photos to make wide angle panoramas. It was quite impressive for its price of $260 (refurbished). The picture quality from that last camera was not bad at all but still the pictures were not as sharp as I wanted them to be and the colors were not rich enough for me. I wanted a real SLR camera that I could use with different lenses, and at the same time make use of all the advantages of the digital technology, like Canon Rebel or Nikon D40 or D80 etc. These cameras are entry level professional grade that allow you to use many lenses just like the old professional film cameras. The Canon Rebel D400 (XTi) and Nikon D80 have resolution of 10.1 Mega pixel and all the features of the film SLR cameras, and most importantly they have a great selection of lenses from wide angle to telephoto and in between.
In particular I am fascinated with the Canon technology and lenses. I admire the Canon L series lenses and would love to own them if I could afford them. But until then I find the prime 50 mm f 1.8 lens, which has a price tag of less than $100, to be an excellent lens. It captures spectacular sharp images with magnificent color and detail. Even the 18-55 mm lens that comes with the Rebel XTi camera kit is good enough if you know its limitations, mainly avoid small f numbers and use at f 11 and higher for wide angle. The price tag for a good new digital SLR camera such as Canon Rebel XTi or Nikon D80 is about $750 without the lens. You could go cheaper with Olympus or other brands but if you are going to spend that kind of money then it is worth it to get the best, because it makes a big difference in the image quality that you will get.
So finally I decided to own the Canon Rebel XTi camera with the 18-55 mm lens that comes with it. I bought it refurbished for $750 which included the lens, an extra battery and a 4 GB memory card. In addition to that I bought a brand new Canon 50 mm f 1.8 lens for about $90, and a new 75-300 mm Canon lens for about $130. The latter lens is not the USM type (Ultra Sonic Motor automatic focus), but has the older DC motor drive. The optics is the same but the USM provides quieter and faster focusing. I think with this gear I am ready to take professional grade photos that I always aspired to. I haven't started yet because the camera and lenses won't be delivered to my house till next Monday, but I am quite excited to try this latest digital camera technology and optics. I intend to show some results in my next posting, so stay tuned ...

The iPod Phone

Just as I predicted before, it was inevitable that the iPod was going to be integrated with a phone in one device. The new device is relatively big, expensive, and limited to 8 Mb memory. With time, however, the size will shrink and the price will come down and the memory will reach 30 G and beyond.
I recently replaced my old T3 Palm PDA with a new Palm TX device, which has WiFi and Bluetooth. Now I can surf the internet with my new Palm, which is a big plus, but I lost some functionality as compared to the old T3 device. The Palm TX has smaller dynamic memory, which I don't understand why. Due to this limitation in dynamic memory, I can't run some of the older applications that used to run fine with the T3 PDA, such as PalmPDF reader and ABC-Morse. The PalmPDF reader fails to open big PDF documents, which makes it useless on the new PDA, while the ABC-Morse application cannot sound the Morse characters smoothly anymore, probably due to this limitation in dynamic memory. Merely adding WiFi function into the PDA made me lose other PDA functions that ran fine on the old PDA. This is exactly what I was afraid of when they integrate more functions into the old plain vanilla PDA , such as phone or WiFi.
Now I wonder what will we lose in the iPod phone besides memory. Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting they stop the integration effort, because eventually it will work right. All what I am saying is that there is a price for this integration. I could be nostalgic defending the way things used to be, but right now a plain PDA still works better than a PDA than a phone PDA, and a plain iPod is most likely going to work better than a phone iPod. This might change in the future, but until then I will continue to be nostalgic. What do you think?

Amateur Radio and Morse

A couple of days ago, the Federal Commnications Commission (FCC) decided to cancel the requirement to pass a morse code test for the General or Extra license in Amateur Radio. This happened just after I passed my morse code test in November to get the Extra Amateur license. O well, I still think that it was worth it to go through the test because I had to practice the code, and there is nothing like a test to make you study.
I believe that morse code is still important and fun to work with, although many radio amateurs hardly use it in the age of the internet and digital communications. Morse code, however, is becoming more as a nostalgia commodity now than a necessity. Let's face it, nobody really needs to use morse code anymore when they can use voice or digital messaging. Still I believe there are situations when the only available means of communications is morse code. An example is moon bouncing of signals that are too weak and distorted to be intelligible as voice, but can be copied fine as morse code. Another example was an emergency situation when a person was too weak to speak but was able to transmit morse code signals until help arrived. So it seems that morse will still be alive and kicking in the foreseeable future.
I am kind of sorry that the FCC canceled the test to qualify for the more advanced licenses, but in the end those who want to use morse code will still do, because after all they are amateurs, and amateurs do things because they love to do them, not because they have to. What do you think?

PDA versus iPod

I currently use a Tungsten T3 PDA with Palm OS5 operating system that has been serving me very well for the last two years. Prior to that I used a Sony Clie T655 PDA with Palm OS4 operating system which also served me very well for another two years, and since then I must admit that I have become so dependent on my PDA that I don't know how I could do without it. It wakes me up in the morning, reminds me of all my important appointments and anniversaries, has all my contacts, keeps track of my financials, tracks my car mileage, carries my various databases, has my eBooks, plays my mp3 music, and even helps me practice my Morse code skills. I also use it to do simple programming and various computational tasks. This is all fine and dandy, but I thought I needed more serious music and video storage and playback while on the move, so I recently bought a 30 Gb G5 iPod which I am falling dearly in love with. This iPod has all my music library which is over 5 Gb; it carries about 2 Gb of my personal movies that I transferred from my MAC generated DVD's, and it holds all my photos library which is another 2.5 Gb. This is a total of 9.5 Gb, and I still have over 20 Gb of memory left for storing eBooks and Podcasts if I needed to carry any, or I could simply use it as a mobile hard drive to store regular files from my computer. In addition, my iPod has all my contacts from my MAC laptop, although I cannot change or input anything from the iPod itself, and it has an alarm system that I could use similar to the PDA.
Obviously there is some overlap between PDA and iPod here but I would surely say it is far from total at present. Is it possible that some day the iPod and PDA will be one device? Right now I would say the answer is no. To merge the two devices into one you need a PDA that has 30 Gb of memory, that is slim and light in weight, and has movie play capability. Or conversely, you need an iPod with data entry and programming capability.
I posted a question in this blog before whether or not the mobile phone and PDA could merge as one device, and now I reformulate the question as follows: Is it possible in the future that the mobile phone, PDA and iPod will all be integrated into one universal device that could do all their respective functions? It is quite possible that as the level of integration and miniaturization increases over time it would be possible to have one device that can do everything the PDA and iPod are both capable of, and, in addition, has communications capability like a phone. But at least for the foreseeable future, it looks like we will still have three distinct devices: The iPod for music and video, the mobile phone for communications, and the PDA for programmability and data entry. It might be a matter of time before all three can be integrated into one slim device, but I wonder if that makes sense from the business point of view. To me it seems there will always be a distinction between the three dedicated functions that people would prefer to have separate, and most importantly that the manufacturers would prefer to produce as individual devices. What do you think?

Past and Present Knowledge

When you look at the monuments that the ancient Egyptians left behind you wonder how they erected those huge structures. What tools did they have? I don't think it is known up to this day how they did it. In adddition to those enormous structures, they chiseled intricate details with vivid colors that remain until today for over three thousand years! But what really is mind-boggling the mumification process that they perfected, that kept their mummies in good condition for over two thousand years. How did they test their chemicals to make sure they would hold up over the ages? I don't know about you but I have many unanswered questions on how they did all that. Did they have technology that we don't have today? Certainly they had advanced knowledge, but what happened to it? Was it kept secret or did it simply get lost?
We tend to think today that our technology is far advanced than any previous time in history. Didn't we split the atom and release dreadful energy? We even landed on the moon and are on our way to conquer Mars and other planets too. We seem to understand better than ever before how the universe started and how it keeps evolving. We figured out how matter was formed after we examined its tiniest constituents. We have sophisticated machines and electronic devices that could not even be imagined a hundred years ago.
But in spite of all that it seems that there is a different kind of knowledge that was lost somehow along the ages. A kind of knowledge that could rival if not exceed our present day technology. One scenario comes to mind is that a nuclear war erupted and destroyed civilization on this planet once before, like in Planet of the Apes movie. There is an uncanny resemblance to our present day situation, as such a scenario is not too far fetched at all. What do you think?

Is Music Inherently Digital?

Music is by default analog. Or is it? What is the most important thing in music? Isn't it the tempo? Tempo is simply a clock, and that is the core of digital! But the instruments that play are analog, you say. That might be more so for the violin or the cello, but the piano has discrete notes that the player can use, unlike the strings instruments where the player can slide his fingers between notes giving this analog feel. If you go down into the basic notes you will get into the world of digital, which I believe is the nature of all things. Any instrument can be digitized, and that is exactly what the musical synthesizer does. In the micro world, there is no such thing as continuous time, distance or energy. Everything is quantized. Have you heard of the uncertainty principle? It states that position and velocity cannot be simulataneously measured. If you try to determine the position, you affect the particle's speed, and vice versa. Same goes for energy and time, they cannot be determined simulataneously. So inherently musical energy that we hear is quantized if time is to be continuous, and vice versa. So it is either the notes' energies are quantized or the time itself is, or both are to varying degrees. In either case, deep down in the microworld, music then must be digital.
Today music is still played with analog instruments, especially classical music. Players still perform according to the sheet music that the great composers of the previous few centuries wrote. The symphonies are still conducted in real time by the maestro of the philharmonic orchestra. But that does not mean that the same music could not be reproduced digitally. It certainly could. You could have a software program read the sheet music and play it using different instruments whose sounds are synthesized with high fidelity. You could then generate a MIDI file that could be played by the computer. You could record track on top of another track and create a vast symphonic effect, and most of all you could do all that alone, without the need for a whole orchestra.
Still nothing beats the sound of the various instruments performing together in the symphony hall, which is inarguably analog. So it is not a question of is music digital or analog, but it is a question of which is better. What do you think?

The future of mobile phone

First came the FM based mobile phone from Motorola, then came Qualcomm's CDMA based mobile phone which improved the quality of the signal. Then there came G2 technology with various form and shape phones from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung etc. Then while G3 phones were in the making, a transitionary state called G2.5 emerged and the market was flooded with phones that could do email, interact with the internet and take photos. Now the real G3 phones are starting to emerge from Nokia. These new phones will deliver video, and will allow you to purchase songs online in addition to other internet services. Sprint Nextel is already offering songs for sale directly online for $1.99 a song, compared to Apple's iTune $0.99 price per song. The increase in the price is worth it for those who want to get their songs immediately wherever they go.
It does not stop here, because now there is talk about G4 phones targetting 2010, that are supposed to make you even more connected wherever you are. However, based on the delays in G3, it is expected that G4 won't come to the market until much later than 2010.
I am seeing that there a merger between PDA and phone, as phones are having more PDA functions integrated into them, while PDA's are adding modem and phone functions too, which makes the distinction between the two devices become more and more blurry. I wonder, are they going to be completely blended in the future, or are we still going to see distinct PDA and phone devices?
I always felt I did not need a connected PDA, i.e PDA/phone. I was happy with the applications I had on my PDA while reading material from the internet offline. I still don't see a need to be connected, but who knows, maybe if the connection fee goes down it will be worth getting connected. It certainly is a convenience which is just too costly now. But as the price goes down, who will not want to have a PDA/phone rather than just a PDA? What do you think?

Obsolescense

I keep worrying about obsolescence issues that threaten to deprive us of what we have today. Think of all the data that we are amassing from pictures, to videos to word documents to excel spreadsheets to pdf files. What will happen to all this data decades from now if the jpg compression format would no longer be there, or if Adobe changed its pdf format, or Microsoft ceased to exist? We will no longer have access to our data. Is that scary or what?
Our ancient ancestors left indelible traces behind them using indestructible monoliths and colossal granite structures. We can still read the hieroglyphic scripts on their walls today. Funny calling them scripts! I wonder how long will our JavaScripts be readable for?
My grandmother had a shoebox full of old sepia toned pictures. Those pictures still exist today, some are almost hundred years old. I wonder how long will the thousands of digital photos I am taking these days will last. I don't even bother backing up my hard drive. What if I lose all that?
I know what I am going to do. I am going to sift through my many gigs of pictures that I took, then pick the best few ones and print them at Sam's Club. This way I can keep them in a shoe box so that my grand children might get a chance to see them.
As for the other data, I don't know how I am going to prolong their existence. I feel worried that all the digital data I have is going to be lost some day. How do I preserve all my programs and documents? I hardly make hardcopies anymore as I depend only on the files I have saved on my hard drive. The most I usually do is copy the files to a flash memory or a CD. Floppies don't exist anymore, so will the CD's have a better luck? Are DVD's still going to be around twenty years from now?
The nagging question is how can I leave documents that could still be read two or three generations from now? Shall I print them on paper? Publish them on microfische?
I wish I could etch my data on a huge monolith carved out of granite. I bet you that would stand the test of time for a while, unless a nuclear war erupts. Even then, I think the monolith is going to have a much better chance of surviving than any of the electronic data saved in the forms we know today. What do you think?

Initial Posting

This is my blog site that I will try to keep up-to-date as much as I can. There will be times when I will not be able to update it frequently but I promise that I will do my best.