Staying on Track Blogging.

Stay on Track Blogging 2015 by thoughtlight, LLC, Thursday, February 5, 2015 from 6 to 8 PM.

Great group, presentation and ideas. At 50 Milk Street at new(ish) CIC Boston. Visit to the space worthwhile. Takeaways:
- schedule regular blogging
- images always worthwhile (even a little relevance is fine).
- okay to curate or review.

So as a part of the scheduling "exercise": Editorial calendar : (and maybe this has some tongue in cheek spirit *grin*):

Thousand blogs by end of main career (next two decades). Smoothed average: four to five blogs a month.

Current feature: IoT. Ongoing emphasis: Energy and metrology. With a mix of hobbies, book reviews, sociology, robotics, manufacturing, design, toys, transportation, travel, science, engineering and so on.

Internet of Things (IoT) Tools

Great article on tools for the Internet of Things (IoT) from William Toll at ProfitBlocks.
http://blog.profitbricks.com/top-49-tools-internet-of-things/
Rolls up many of the players. ProfitBlocks located in Boston/Cambridge area. Too much to describe in a few words... Go see for yourself.

And it is all a moving target. Saw these and other announcements in the next days: Pinoccio Mesh IoT. Thread IoT Thread Group - Samsung, ARM, NEST. Not to be confused with previous Samsung announcement as part of Open Internet Consortium. Perhaps IoT is about forming consortia like AllSeen, Thread, OIC?

Farms, Orchards, Animals

When looking for something entertaining for the small ones…
Given northern Boston suburbs as a base…
Farms and orchards with fruit stand/picking and animals.

Russell Orchards, Ipswich, MA - long trip, but great store and animals. http://russellorchards.com/

Parlee Farms, Tyngsboro, MA – long trip, but great fruits and animals. http://parleefarms.com/

Brooksby Farm, Peabody, MA – close, smaller but good store and animals. http://www.brooksbyfarm.org/

Connors Farm, Danvers, MA – close, great fruits and store. http://www.connorsfarm.com/

Wilson Farm, Lexington, MA – medium trip, but hard to park – though great store. http://www.wilsonfarm.com/

Bikes Boston - Like-em - but Wrong Way Bikes = Worst Boston Danger

Like bicycles. Like that Boston is working to be bike friendly.
http://www.bostonbikes.org/

Enjoyed the bicycle exhibit at BSA Space (Fort Point Channel)
http://www.bostonbikes.org/2012/05/lets-talk-about-bikes/
http://bsaspace.org/exhibits/lets-talk-about-bikes/

Actually happened to be at BSA Space because of Sunspec Alliance presentation on City of Boston Solar innovations http://www.sunspec.org/2012/07/made-history/

Have worked in Downtown Boston many years now. My only injuries and close encounters with injury have not been crime related, construction related, nor auto related - but bike related. The issue is bikes going the wrong way down one way streets. Know (and have ingrained from childhood) that I should look both ways when I cross the street, but on one way streets it is often only a glance of assessment, with then realistically/rational focused intent on the oncoming traffic. One then goes out and gets hit/clipped/dodged by a wrong way bike.

Now do not get me wrong. I am an avid bicyclist. I believe many pro-bike concepts: Boston and every city and suburb should be bicycle friendly to a point of pain (trail, lanes, parking, rentals, etc.). Like the new bicycle parking structures http://www.mbta.com/riding_the_t/bikes/
rentals http://www.thehubway.com/
and trails http://www.biketothesea.com/

Legislation should impose stricter penalties on motorists who engage bicyclists in harmful ways. Children under ten should be allowed/encouraged to ride their bike (slowly at pedestrian speeds) on sidewalks. BUT bicyclists on the road must obey ALL the same rules that motorists obey. And if they need to "cheat" then they should walk their bike on the sidewalk (become a pedestrian).

Violators hurt the cause of those advocating bicycling. If you like bicycling, and what it does for society and the environment, then challenge your fellow bikers to obey the rules of the road.

Dreamliner 787 Japan

Made trip to Japan to and from Boston via JAL Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner

Great to be able to get on at Boston and go directly to Japan. Increased cabin pressure, humidity and temperature made the trip much more comfortable than on earlier aircraft. Dreamliner was not as big as was expecting, but should have realized the size from the roughly 250 seats. Wing dynamics are interesting to watch as they bend up when in flight. Those sitting in the center will not be able to see the wing tips out the windows during flight.

JAL service was great as always. Personnel were extremely polite, helpful and accommodating. It is a refreshing change from what one finds on North American airlines.

The dimmable windows were interesting, but actually somewhat irritating because it seemed that one in a hundred were malfunctioning. That may not seem bad at first glance, but in full sunlight when passengers are trying to sleep it meant glaring beams of light from varoius locations in the aircraft. Was not really possible to tell if the windows were broken, or that passengers beside the windows were dense or obstinate, or what was going on. Manual shades mean manual actions (either social or technical) can be taken to address such issues.

LED colored "mood" lighting was interesting, but did not seem to add much to the flight experience. And seemed like the crew was eager to play with the feature - like bringing the lights up midway through the "nap" section of the flight to offfer snacks. Seemed past long-haul flights siuch snacks were served in dimness/dakrness to avoid disturbing the general somnolence.

Dreamliner looked and felt new. From the seat base up it presented as modern as any aircraft. But the struts and structures (and wiring and such) below seat level seemed oddly like a throwback to pre 1990's aircraft.

The JEN/Magic entertainment system has more fetaures and function and options than ever.
http://www.jal.co.jp/en/inflight/inter/jen/magic5/

Lots of movies and games, and even ebooks. Touch screen worked well, but unclear how robust that will be in longterm. BUT handheld controllers have gotten even smaller, and are hard for the age-vision challenged to use. Also, the three main buttons - light, attendant cancel, and attendant call - seemed to be in prime spots for being constantly bumped into, or available to small fingers to play with.

Embedded Systems Conference - Boston 2010

Was to ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) Boston 2010 in late September.
http://esc-boston.techinsightsevents.com/

Here are a few highlights:

The platform and OS (operating systems) wars/debates are largely over - so much so that no one even bothers to mention the issue of OS and processor anymore. It is "assumed".

When a generic OS is used, only a few generic interfaces are really supported in all cases - TCP/IP, and serial ports.

For 8bit and similar the continuing players are 8051, Atmel-AtMega and Microchip-PIC architectures. Again this is mostly implied and few speak of it.

Software houses and tool chains vendors are talking about the ways they go beyond simple TCP/IP to get information to "cloud services".

Companies who formerly only sold components or built PC boards are transforming into complete end-to-end design-build companies where they go all the way from design to delivering boxes of the required products ready for you to sell (even with labels and software installed and locked).

Other attendees included trade associations, magazine/book vendors, Flash/SSD providers, tool/environment vendors, logic/JTAG analyzers, emulator vendors and wireless vendors.