Cutting Styrofoam

Wanted to cut inch thick (pink/blue) styrofoam insulation sheets. Considered hot knives/wire, but they are tricky to wield, generate odor/fumes, have small chance of burns, and often generate less than straight lines (like a jigsaw in wood). Some suggest using a fine saw blade (like from a hacksaw), but that generates a foam dust mess. Some suggest scoring and snapping (with varying degrees of sucess in getting a good clean edge), but scoring and snapping only works well for straight cuts. Arcs and curves are hard to score and snap.

Read about using a serrated knife coated with wax to cut styrofoam. Was skeptical. Was very skeptical after prurchasing an old beatup knife (Goodwill) and rubbing beeswax (A.C.Moore lifetime supply one pound block) on it. Knife looked a mess, with varying thicknesses of wax gooped all over the blade. Beeswax is not very fluid/smooth at room temperature.

Seemed like wax would do more to make the styrofoam chip and gouge, than help make a clean cut, but wax-on-serrated-knife worked like a charm. The starting carving stroke generates friction, but the serrated blade makes a initial clean cut. The side friction warms up the blade and starts the wax flowing and every stroke after warm up is superb. It is almost like cutting a stick of cold butter. Would not have believed it.

Caveat is that working too fast and cutting too far (say about a metre) completely cleans the wax off the working area of the blade. One must regularly get out the wax block/candle and coat the blade again. But that is a small price to pay for a clean cut (straight or curved).

LED Lighting

What technology has been revolutionary in the past quarter century? Many ways of looking at this. Even defining "technology" and "revolutionary" might be debatable.

LED lighting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_lamp
(and even CFL when well implemented)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp
are amazing.

LED bulbs are available at Home Depot, Lowes and Walmart. Such technology at retail here and now is amazing.

Even simple holiday lights are amazing. Can get at CVS a string of 60 warm white lights (string handles heat and light distribution) that consume about 4W (total) and put out about 400 lumens (total - like a 40W bulb). They twinkle a bit, but not a major annoyance. Thinking of supplementing lighting in basement and attic with LED strings.

"The Future of Light Is the LED"
By Dan Koeppel August 19, 2011 12:53 pm Wired September 2011
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/ff_lightbulbs/all/1

Article Points:
Brett Sharenow, CFO, Switch demos LED bulb. New regulations on light bulb efficiency upcoming. 100/60 watt race. Haitz law: x20 light /10 cost per decade. CFL problems. The L Prize (short for Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize). LED history. Heat transfer (new idea) via fluid. History of Switch. Developments by others.

Sidebar: battle of bulbs (6) including:
+ Philips Ambientled - The first commercially available 60-watt-equivalent LED.
+ Switch60 Warm White

Tour de Chooch

Self guided tour of model railroad layouts in MA and NH (sometimes farther afield). Websearch. Look for PDF. 2011 reference...
http://www.rrmodelcraftsman.com/timetable/cm_timetable_details.php?id=649&sortBy=byDate

Did not get to but a couple this year over Thanksgiving weekend...

Carl Senftleben - great steam era modeling. http://www.opsig.org/convention/hartford_layouts/senftleben.shtml

Scott Jewel - excellent On30 and HO use of constrained space.

Enjoyed Stan Ames garden railway a few years back
http://www.tttrains.com/sjrp/
http://dccsig.org/sra/

Stunt or Gimmick Books

Mentioned before stumbling upon the business novel genre (chiefly Japanese). Much more vogue today is the stunt or gimmick book, often represented as stunt or gimmick journalism. Is the sun setting on this style? Who knows? Gimmick is often funny and thought provoking.

Wired, August 2010, Mathew Honan - Print: One Man's Journey Into Stunt Books
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/pl_print_jacobs/

LA Times, September 5, 2009, Scott Timberg - Entertainment: Books & Ideas: Meet the gimmick books
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-gimmick-books5-2009sep05,0,4104835.story

A.J.Jacobs always comes up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Jacobs

One of my favorites:
Esquire, September 1, 2005, A.J.Jacobs - Home/Features: My outsourced Life
http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0905OUTSOURCING_214
-

Embedded Systems Boston 2011

Attended ESC Boston 2011.
http://esc.eetimes.com/boston/expo

Was hoping to meet up with a few of the familiar faces and ask them about new trends in the industry. Keen interest in...

managed code/language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_code

ARM processors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture

Power over Ethernet 802.3af and 802.3at.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet

To twist Archimedes -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes
Give me enough memory and processing power ....

Read Gas Meter with Google Goggles

Have been playing with Google Goggles.
http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles
Vasiliy Khmelenko actually showed me this.

Reading a product barcode is interesting, but being able to read MAC addresss barcodes would be useful.

Sudoku is cute, but really would like to take a picture of a dial meter or digit meter (water, gas, electric, steam, BTU) and have the reading come up. Would be a nice cross over with Google Power Meter. http://www.google.com/powermeter/about/

Have been away a really long time

March, April and May were busy as expected. June is not shaping up much better.

To get a little content in.... Have been to a number of network IT conferences and events lately. There seems to be a common theme of intelligent network monitoring, given that central managament of end points is to be a thing of the past (think mobile and embedded devices). Will be interesting to see how that plays out.

"Private Cloud" = virtual machines with management.

Cimetrics does longterm monitoring/commissioning from the "cloud"... would that then be "Cloud Based Comissioning"? "CBC"? The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has acronym "CBC" already alas.

Enterprise IT theme seems to be the rise and continuance of social networking, and unlocking the knowledge that many to many communication can uncover.

Away from Blogging

Have been away from the blog for awhile.
Still intend to come back to entries on distributed approaches.
Have been many changes lately...
company - move, reorganization, website, and another move.
family - expansion, and potential move.
And there are sundry items like taxes, health, and bills.
It is hard to imagine how, given the trends in bureacracy, one will have mental capacity to handle it all when one reaches old age.