Quantum Sagas

Forget 23m America's Cup Yachts

This boat, dubbed the Maltese Falcon by it's creator Tom Perkins, is huge:

[Wired] Extreme Sailing: The Biggest Boat in the World

It's 289 feet long, weighs 1,367 tons, has 26,000 square footage of sail area, is opulently be-decked with appointments, and all the cost of a mere $130 million.

***Update***

As it turns out, the boat has its own website:

The Maltese Falcon

A Story of Simple Engineering and Smart Teenagers

Wired Magazine has a great article in the April '05 issue about four young Mexican-Americans from a high-school in Phoenix winning the 2004 Marine Advanced Technology Education Center ROV Competition, beating mostly colleges (including MIT) with their underwater ROV, dubbed "stinky." The article:

Wired Magazine, April '05: La Vida Robot

It just demonstrates that engineering isn't necessarily about using the newest technologies to make devices on the bleeding edge of plausibility; it's about designing intelligently and creatively, with what you have available, working in concert as a team, to accomplish the goals set before you.

The above is a great story, and should provide hope for the future of society and technology.

Carl Hayden Community High School

...also here.

Sorry State of our Education

This just echoes the pleading screams for a smarter America:

EETimes: Education Redesign Urged

Cholesteric LCD Displays

Kent Displays has an LCD technology that may promise to be a significant improvement over current eInk technology, which is currently used in eBook readers. The displays are bistable and consume almost no power, with a readability similar to that of paper. The only power consumed is to change the display from one image to another, and can supposedly operate on two AA batteries for 10,000 refreshes. (This information according to Electronic Products magazine, who has just included the displays in its Product of the Year Awards).

It is unfortunate that there are very little eBook-related technologies out there. I am not sure whether it is the lack of a market, or if the market is lacking because the products are either too difficult to get or are too expensive. There is clearly no concerted effort to try to bring eBooks to the mainstream, but I'm inclined to believe that they would be more popular than assumed. Everyone is all about minimalism in their homes anymore, and eliminating shelf after shelf of paper book material would be a good start. It's not absolutely necessary, but it would be beneficial to cut back on the amount of paper used in society today. It might take a little getting used to, but I think people would be open to the idea. There would have to be an effort, however, to make eBook materials readily available (as much so as print) and affordable (which is the real hurdle), to both produce and for consumers. Sure you could use a tablet PC, but who wants to pay $1000 to read books not on paper?

Comments on the Apple Mac Mini / iPod Shuffle

Apple announced yesterday the unveiling of two new products... The iPod Shuffle (a smaller, more economical version of the iPod Mini, with no display, and as the name indicates, random play order), and the Mac Mini (a smaller, more economical desktop that fits in a very small footprint). Despite these much-awaited announcements, Apple's stock still fell 6 percent yesterday. The article just linked to quotes an analyst as saying that Apple suffers in the market due to high expectations, which is very understandable, what with the Mac junkies the world over salivating over what Steve Jobs will say next.

The iPod Shuffle is not a remarkable product. There are so many digital music players out there, but very few of them do not have some form of display. In my opinion, this was a bad decision on Apple's part. People need their feedback, to a ever-increasing degree, and the feature cost sacrificed by purchasing an iPod Shuffle over, say, a Rio or a Benq, is big. Not to mention that most MP3 Players (again, with the iPods, you almost HAVE to use iTunes) have expandable memory, which makes the possibilities much greater within the same price range. But, of course, we know that Apple fans love their Apple, and will pay the higher cost for the pleasure of having the name. Admittedly, the iPod Shuffle is a step in the right direction, trying to make their products more affordable, but they're getting sidetracked.

As for the Mac Mini, the first thing I thought (as an engineer) when I saw it, and how it is composed internally, was, 'How do they keep it cool??' There are vent fins at the back of the unit, so presumably there is some forced air exhaust. I've been around other Macs, and they get quite warm when they're operating, so I imagine this unit gets toasty. We assume the purpose of making it sleek and small is to reduce the clutter and free up some desk space, but once you connect all of the cabling to it, just like any other computer, you will have clutter again. This can be improved by going with the wireless mouse and keyboard, which add to the cost of the unit. The real kicker is that they are trying to make the systems "affordable" which it is -- if you don't use the Apple displays. People buying the Apple name would not dare connect a non-Apple display to the unit (but the capability is there), and so would likely purchase the cheapest display Apple has, the 20", at a paltry $999. Okay, so now we're back up to $1500... (Configuring a unit with better features on Apple's store puts it up around $2000). Wait a minute; wasn't the purpose to make the system more affordable? Any sensible computer user will realize that for that price, a person could get (or build) two full, faster PC systems. This just goes back to consumerism and branding. How Apple remains competitive in the market is beyond me (especially only accounting for 3% of computer sales in the US), but Macs provide no distinct differences from PCs, in terms of performance or function. From a design standpoint, a computer is a computer, and the structure from MPU up to human interfaces is only marked with slight differences. But the processor is also half as fast as the fastest PC processors, though I've never actually researched speed benchmark comparisons between the two. *Update -- I did some research and the results are all biased, it would seem. But the overall result would have Mac better a graphics conversion speeds, while PCs seems to be better at crunching numbers. The comparisons are tough because the means to compare and contrast are not really equatable.

I will concede that the MacOS has a beautiful interface, but it isn't though the same couldn't be done within any other GUI, legal issues aside.

Overall, the Mac Mini packaging is impressive in size and form (most Apple products are very sharp looking), but it fails in the notion that is it meant to be affordable. Additionally, I have seen other such small footprint systems that were not so popular, but the Appleheads will continue contributing to inefficiency just to say they are Apple users. Personally, if I were in the position to purchase a computer in that price range, I would get a desktop AND a laptop PC for that cost.

As for the iPod Shuffle, I'm not impressed at all.

GM steps up?

After a decade or so of making sub-par automobiles (see Pontiac Sunfire, Buick LeSabre, all Hummers... Hell, most American automobiles rank about 4 on a scale to 10), GM might have an answer to their obvious lack of advancement in the engineering department... And it comes in the way of the Sequel, a hydrogen fuel-cell powered car *prototype* just announced today in Detroit. New York Times has the article, though it focuses more on the environmental skepticism and viability issues. The article begins to address some of the aspects of hydrogen-power, but doesn't go into great detail. Anyways, take a look:

Meet the Sequel

Houses of the Future

YBE2004 Houses of the Future

RFID in the OR

Surgichip has put RFID technology to practical use in the medical field, to prevent "wrong-site, wrong-procedure and wrong-patient surgery." Instead of hand-written instructions and information for the surgeon to refer to prior to surgery, an RFID tag is affixed to the skin like a sticker (not implanted), preprogrammed with patient information, procedure, etc. The image shows a PDA doing the scanning, and presumably the programming. The attending nurse can later review the information and change it if necessary, as can the doctor performing the surgery. Additionally, the patient will be able to verify the information if necessary.

Apparently, incorrect surgical procedures are more common than one might expect. While this will reduce the risk of improper procedure, it is still desirable for medical professionals to do their jobs well. I have a feeling that the real answer is to focus more on the medical profession's inefficiencies, underemployment, and bureaucracy. The RFID Surgichip is a step in the right direction, however.

Two external HDD enclosures

In order to attempt to recover some data from a presumably bad (old) hard drive the other day, it was necessary to purchase an external hard drive enclosure. The first one purchased, however, did not seem to work correctly, and so I ordered a different type as well. Both units, when connected, cause the HDD to behave the same way, making an internal clicking noise, as though the head had crashed, etc. Initially, I thought that the first unit purchased was only capable of supporting the ATA-133 type HDD's. I later found out that was incorrect.

The two units:

Ultra Mini Portable 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure

Sabrent 3.5" USB2.0 HDD Enclosure

Just a few comments about the products. The Ultra enclosure, while a little bit better designed, is definitely not worth the $59.99 listed on the Ultra page. Luckily, I got it at Tiger Direct for $49.99, but I still don't believe it to be worth that. The snap-together case is poorly designed, and feels as though it will break when taking it apart. Also the internal cables aren't long enough to give the operator sufficient room to plug the drive in and fit it easily, it has to be forced. The instructions are vague, and the web page has no more information. There is no explanation of where you might need to place the jumper on the drive, either. On the Sabrent device, neither the packaging nor the enclosure have any indication of the manufacturer of the product. The picture is deceiving because it doesn't have those blue markings on it. This unit was provided with poor quality screws that quickly became rounded-out while installing the hard drive, which was moderately difficult, especially when putting the connector side back onto the case. The instructions were written terribly, as if translated from a foreign language, and so they were worthless. This one was only $29.99, and probably not worth that.

I decided to investigate further how the units were designed, in terms of electronics, so I took the boards out of them and spent a few hours determining which Japanese semiconductor manufacturers made the devices thereon. Most often, when you take apart mass-manufab stuff like this, specs and info for the ICs are difficult to find. Some companies use proprietary devices, as well, making it thus more difficult to troubleshoot more complicated devices.

Continuing along, here is the board out of the Sabrent device (click for an un-marked version):

I was not surprised to find out that the controller consists of a single device... A Google search reveals the part number as belonging to a Genesys Logic device, **GL811. This is a USB2.0 to ATA/ATAPI controller, with an embedded µCu. The device is powered with a 3.3V, 1.0A Seaward **SE8117 LDO regulator. Aside from the connectors and a few discretes, that's it. On a PCB that is probably 1.5" sq. total area. Close inspection reveals that the PCB was assembled quickly, just barely scraping by any normal QC standard.

Here is a close-up of the semis:

The Ultra enclosure PCB is much better designed, and it looks almost as though it was layed out in Protel, judging from the way the tracks and power plane connects are. Here is the back side, and a close up of the dense tracks:

Here is the front of the PCB, with the three devices shown (click for an un-marked image):

 

The devices are as follows:

Prolific PL-3507 USB2.0 / IEEE1394 (Firewire) to IDE (ATA/ATAPI) Bridge

Atmel AT49BV512 512K Flash memory

Agere FW802B IEEE1394 Two-channel Arbiter/PHY

This design is much better, because it allows for usage with two different interfaces. The dual-firewire option is a good one because it allows large drives to be used on multiple computers, as a share or server drive, etc. Though why the designers didn't do the same for the USB side, I'm not sure I understand. This configuration also has a built-in cooling fan, which can be beneficial for larger drives. I didn't try to figure out what the power supply chips were -- one has a logo that I have never seen, and the other has no logo at all -- one is likely a switching supply, as is indicated by the presence of the shielded inductor. Also, the use of a more universal power input connector and the addition of the power switch adds a nice touch.

The Ultra product gets a better grade, but it's still not worth $50.

Storage density keeps increasing

I'm impressed with technology that gets smaller and smaller. Toshiba will be releasing a new 80GB drive in the same form factor as the current iPod drives. I'd like to envision a future where storage space becomes limitless, and the actual capacity is irrelevant, but the quality (and hence, size) of our data is increasing with the technology. Bandwidth can only get more compressed, however, unless we devise new strategies for telecommunications.

Anyways, the article thanks to Engadget:
Toshiba announces 80GB version of the drive found in the iPod