The Professor's Notes

For the past few weeks I have been streaming live video from my son’s high school water polo matches and tournaments.  When I first proposed the idea, the coach loved it but was told that it would take a while to get things set up–and check back in a few weeks.  Turns out, it’s really not that hard.  Here’s what we did:

We started simple.  We had a camcorder ¹ on a tripod, and a notebook computer with wifi.²  The camcorder had a Firewire out,  and the computer had a Firewire port as well, so we were able to simply feed the video out to the computer.

I created a UStream account and was ready to go.

I turned on the camcorder, and then logged in to the UStream account.  From that point forward it was quite simple:  point the camera at the action! ³

For later sessions, we added an audio mixer and microphones so that we could have commentators “calling” the match.  The kids loved that, and who knows, maybe we have encouraged some to pursue careers in media.

Families locked on to this quite quickly.  Family members from around the country, and around the world (to include Scotland and Iraq), were soon logging on to watch the live polo matches.  In addition, we picked up a few fans who are fans of water polo (and hopefully now fans of our high school team as well!)  It was quite gratifying to receive comments from the parents that their families were loving the video, and that the quality was outstanding.  The quality was so good that my brother was able to recognize my son, and comment on the plays he (and others) were making.

Of course, UStream provides the option to record the video and make it available for later viewing as well–and many of the families have taken advantage of that option as well.  You can too.  Go watch the videos!

This was a simple solution that I think serves to show how we can take events and provide coverage nationwide of what are traditionally under-covered sports.  Local HS football teams get coverage (every place I have lived has had “Football Friday” HS News coverage) but one rarely, if ever, sees TV coverage (live or recorded) of sports in the pool.

Try it yourself–and stop back here to share the link!

After my trials and tribulations with installing Win 7 today I want to give the first “user” update.

Let me start by noting that while my son has been using a Beta version (and loving it) for about 6 months, I have not been using any variant of Win 7.  I have installed a copy as a virtual machine (that install went quickly) and even upgraded a virtual install of Vista to Win 7 (went cleanly, but by no means quickly.)  This is my first foray into using the OS, and I am diving in head first. ¹

(Read my first reactions after the break) Read the rest of this entry »

After further review it appears my initial install troubles would have been avoided had I installed the device drivers for the SATA drives that I was NOT going to use when installing Win 7.  It seems to have installed, but a brief heart-skip when I saw a “blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) with a USB error (perhaps the mouse problem?)  Unfortunately, the Microsoft tech forum I checked with made no mention of this possibility/problem.  And it wasn’t on the forefront of my thought, since I wasn’t planning to install to those drives anyway.  Make no mistake–I should have thought about it, but on the other hand, the “average” user won’t think about this either.  Read more after the break Read the rest of this entry »

After disconnecting all the other drives, the install went off without a hitch.  The computer booted into Win 7, took me through the first time user screens (adding the license code, setting up the username and password, and selecting the time zone, for instance) and took me to the main screen.

Win7 doesn’t see my mouse!  And this is no trivial matter–it’s a MICROSOFT MOUSE!  The same mouse that Win 7 saw throughout the upgrade process.

I chose “Add a Device” and the computer has been searching now for several minutes.  I suspect a reboot is in order.

*Fingers crossed*

UPDATE:  I have posted an update, with a re-install attempt that seems to be working.

Okay, here we go!  I was excited to have been selected for the Win 7 Launch Party.  I received my “party pack” with my signature edition of Win7 Ultimate (“signed” by Steve Ballmer) and decided to install on an existing partition, keeping my Windows Vista install working until I am convinced that all my software will work under the new (64 bit) OS.

Alas, things did not go smoothly.

First, one of my DVD drives is apparently failing.  Not Microsoft’s fault–but annoying.

Next (and this is MS’s fault) when I went to install, I found that I couldn’t.  Let me explain.

The first few steps (splash screen, select install, select “custom install” and check off the license agreement) went well. What could go wrong there?  But from there, things did not go so well. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times has the story, Broadband Now! So Why Don’t Some Use It? where they ask the question “Why not?”

So for those that have been listening to our podcast Real Tech for Real People, we have talked quite a bit about the numbers of people that don’t have high speed (broadband) internet access.  We have been reporting the numbers we had previously read that had anywhere from 40-45% of the population does not have access.

Okay, I am confused. FCC says 96% of households have, or have access to, broadband.

“No less than 96 percent of households either subscribe to or have access to broadband service, according to an F.C.C. task force, which presented a status report to the commission last month.” (see commission report here)

The article reports that the task force goes on to report that:

• median speed is 3 megabit/second ¹
• 1/3 of households “choose” to not subscribe Read the rest of this entry »

This week I am attending  the 2009 INFORMS “Annual Meeting.”  This is more of a Symposium, or a Conference, than a “meeting” with nearly 70 sessions occurring simultaneously, 4 times a day for 4 days.  That is 1, 120 sessions and each has 3 (or more) presentations! 3,360 presentations! Whew!

Now, I won’t make any bones about it–I am not attending all of them.  Heck, I am trying my best to attend the few that I think I can get the most from for either Supply Chain discussions, or (yes, surprise) Social Networking analysis.

Why Social Networking? Setting aside for the moment that I think it is simply “cool” I am also quite interested in what we can collectively learn from these networks.  But apparently my interest is not the same as the interest of those Read the rest of this entry »

In researching stories for our upcoming “Real Tech for Real People” podcast, I came across this story in the Washington post about efforts to outlaw texting while driving.  There were many things that I thought were “interesting” in the article (such as by allowing someone to claim they were dialing a phone legislators have some how “weasel’d out” of their responsibility. Hmmm… )

What ultimately caught my eye, though was the argument, buried deep in the article, that for such a pervasive and deadly action to be occurring  so frequently (the article reports “at any given moment the drivers of 812,000 cars are in mid-conversation on the nation’s highways”) we are not seeing a comparable increase in accidents/deaths.

What Does It Take to Get Texting Off Roads? (Wash Post)

“Given those findings and vast cellphone use, the experts are puzzled by the fact that overall crash rates haven’t increased dramatically, too. Without statistics to show that, persuading drivers — and legislators — not to use cellphones becomes more problematic, even considering the current impact.

“If it’s not causing additional crashes, then banning it isn’t going to reduce crashes,” Lund said. “The risk of talking on a cellphone is real, but it’s entirely possible that it’s replacing some other risky behavior.”"

I am not seeking to defend (or condemn) texting while driving in this blog post.  I am, however, wondering when we are going to see the return to objective analysis of data.  Wasn’t that what the new Administration was going to bring?  A removal of political motivations from science, and a return to objectivity?

Just a thought.

Want to hear my thoughts more fully on this, and other tech topics that “Real People” have to deal with?  Come listen, as Tony Pittman and I discuss Real Tech for Real People–a weekly podcast talking about tech where we all live.  (Don’t have iTunes?  Go listen at Tony’s site: Get The Next___)

I have written a few times about the theory of petroleum/crude oil production.  Specifically, I have been interested in the argument that says essentially that we are not running on liquefied dinosaurs, but rather on a purely chemical process.  This is called the “abiogenesis” theory of petroleum creation (not to be confused with the more theological discussion my brother has been having on his blog about that OTHER Genesis.)

While this research had been dismissed by many (including my Daughter’s petrogeology professor) the work continues.  In a recent article in Science Daily titled “Fossils From Animals And Plants Are Not Necessary For Crude Oil And Natural Gas, Swedish Researchers Find” the argument is once again made.  Reading from the article:

According to Vladimir Kutcherov, the findings are a clear indication that the oil supply is not about to end, which researchers and experts in the field have long feared.

He adds that there is no way that fossil oil, with the help of gravity or other forces, could have seeped down to a depth of 10.5 kilometers in the state of Texas, for example, which is rich in oil deposits. As Vladimir Kutcherov sees it, this is further proof, alongside his own research findings, of the genesis of these energy sources – that they can be created in other ways than via fossils. This has long been a matter of lively discussion among scientists.

“There is no doubt that our research proves that crude oil and natural gas are generated without the involvement of fossils. All types of bedrock can serve as reservoirs of oil,” says Vladimir Kutcherov, who adds that this is true of land areas that have not yet been prospected for these energy sources.

Some of this is rather disconcerting.  For those that abhor the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) the thought that we might someday run out of petroleum was at least some small solace. Alas, we apparently now won’t.

One of the more interesting points about their research is that they believe they can now more precisely pinpoint where to find petroleum deposits based not on where they believe dinosaurs and other prehistoric life existed but rather based on the geologic fissures.  Using this approach they believe they can improve the accuracy of drilling from 20 to 70%.

I do  have one small gripe: I don’t think they can say (as they do in the article) that the findings are revolutionary.  The findings support theories that have been around for quite a while.  Perhaps these finding will have the effect of moving abiogenesis from being the “Rodney Dangerfield” of geologic science, and start to get real “Respect.”

A “Tipping Point” perhaps?

nb: I find this arena to be quite interesting from a “philosophy of science” perspective, as the “conventional” science has long dismissed this alternative view as “crack-pot” science.  Much of our understanding of energy consumption has been based on this being a “non-renewable” resource.  Perhaps that assumption is mistaken? Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shift “in the wild?”