Photos and Projects

  Matt discovered a NorthStar Horizon unit on display at the British Science Museum with its original wooden top (August 19th, 2024).  The unit gets very hot so often the top is removed during use.  In our case, the top was lost over the years somewhere in the physics department or the professor's house.  We will need to find or make an adequate replacement and perhaps add a fan to keep the unit cool.  What a great coincidence to see one of these on display in a major science museum! The professor purchased a NorthStar computer kit with his own money and had students back in the day help him assemble it.  He used the computer to teach machine code in his 400 level Digital Electronics classes. Main unit without terminal Museum Description

  While walking through the frisbee gold course across the street in the morning, we happened to see a family of Great Horned Owls, first time I had ever seen in the wild.  The parents were off a ways watching, the two young ones were very high up in the largest tree on the course.  Got several good photos below all shot with similar settings at ISO 100 and 400mm.  We did run the images through Topaz Sharpen AI using a Standard setting of 14% to sharpen them up a bit as these were all hand held photos pretty far away. Years ago at Indiana Dunes I remember reading about the Great Horned Owl in one of their exhibits.  It said that their night vision was so good that they could hunt inside the Lucas Oil Stadium with only a single candle lit in the stadium.  Unbelievable night vision! 1/500, f8, ISO 100, 400 mm 1/200, f7.1, ISO 100, 400 mm 1/320, f6.3, ISO 100, 400 mm 1/320, f6.3, ISO 100, 400 mm

  A Shining Season:  Monster Faces A Shining Season, Clip 1 A Shining Season, Clip 2 A Shining Season, Clip 3

  Supernatural Selection "That brings me to the fourth kind of attitude toward ideas, and that is that the problem is not what is possible.  That's not the problem.  The problem is what is probable, what is happening.  It is impossible that everything that is possible is happening." - Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All, p. 77. When used in certain contexts, the number 4.6 billion seems to be a rather large number.  Today, if you had $4.6 billion you would be considered an extraordinarily wealthy person.  If you lived in a city which inhabited 4.6 billion people you would almost have the entire current human population living in close proximity.  If you traveled a lot and accumulated 4.6 billion miles of frequent flier mileage you would have traveled a distance exceeding that of 20 round trips to and from our sun.  And, perhaps the dimension which most magnifies this number from a human perspective is time.  4.6 billion years seems to be a long time when compared to

  The best discussion supporting the student/athlete approach to education that I have ever read is ironically from the Greek Philosopher, Plato.  An old college professor encouraged me to get my own copy of Plato's Republic and this was the first section I happened to turned to.  Another irony was that the professor wasn't familiar with the passage and told me I might have purchased the wrong book.  What a crazy incident.  Anyway, great quote, long but very well thought out.   "Now, the ordinary athlete undergoes the rigours of training for the sake of muscular strength; but ours will do so rather with a view to stimulating the spirited element in their nature.  So perhaps the purpose of the two established branches of education is not, as some suppose, the improvement of the soul in one case and of the body in the other.  Both, it may be, aim chiefly at improving the soul. Have you noticed how a life-long devotion to either branch, to the exclusion of the other, affects

  Excerpt from Cybersecurity training I took last week.  Below is a chart from TUV-NORD showing best to worst methods for detecting and remedying software issues.  The way I summarize this research is topping the charts for the most effective methods for preventing software defects are:  Reviews, Dynamic Analysis and Static Analysis.  Conversely, the least effective methods for preventing defects are:  Excessive Schedule Pressure and Excessive Requirement Changes.  The negative impact of the items in red at the bottom of the list mean that the method not only doesn't prevent defects they actually add defects to the software. Prevention Efficiency Range:  Reviews top the list Prevention Efficiency Range Prevention Efficiency Range: Excessive schedule pressure and requirement changes actually add defects Pre-test and Test Defect Removal Efficiency Range Effectiveness of Test Defect Removal Methods