Ones and Zeros

As I mentioned in my last post, I attended Apple’s World-Wide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco recently. It’s been about five years since I’ve gone to a WWDC and I had a few observations.

First, Apple’s gotten cheaper with the food. Now, it’s probably still better than many conferences might have, but it used to be spectacular: catered hot food of various types, friendly to vegan and vegetarian friends, and stuff you’d pay well for in a good restaurant. I can’t fault them for cutting back, but I do wish there had been fruit in the morning. To their credit though, the box lunches were better than the breakfast, and there was free Odwalla juices all day on each floor.

But I solved the breakfast problem by simply buying my own of course. We were in the middle of San Francisco, so it was easy to find a grocery on the way to the hotel.

Second, I’m now past the median in age for the attendees. This one’s harder to solve. There were people there who could have been my kids. There’s not much I can do about this but stay active and lively. Don’t worry, I think I can still show those young whippersnappers a few things!

The trick, as always, is to keep learning. Sometimes it’s good to toss oneself into a new area and be forced to start over. The iPhone has some of that for me I think, while it is not completely new there’s enough new in it to keep me busy. Being forced to start over occasionally forces me to reconsider paradigms and points-of-view as we all did when we were younger. In turn, this keeps my outlook fresher.

Learning to fly did the same thing. I crossed a big hurdle when I realized that I couldn’t learn to fly like I learned other things. That is, I can’t stop the plane to go look up something like I do in software or hardware engineering. I had to learn differently and have it really in my head.

Third, while I was in the upper age half of WWDC, I was in the lower weight half. And I’m no athlete either! Fellow geeks, let’s face it: we don’t get nearly enough exercise! And we eat way to much bad stuff. Think of it as an I/O problem; garbage in, belly out. The human body is a machine meant to be used and we’re just using our brains and fingers. That brain works a lot better when everything else gets exercise too.  When a fifty-year old can leave guys 10 and 20 years younger huffing and puffing, something needs to be done!

Fourth: It was surprising how many of the attendees were either small business owners or running their own consulting operations. This may be one of those areas that the big businesses are in the minority. That hasn’t changed at all from past WWDCs and is heartening for the future of the economy in technology growth.

I spent a couple months working long hours recently writing neat new stuff in software. The resulting demo and presentation to the customer went well. So, my reward in that is to get to write more neat new stuff. (Be careful for what you wish.) I’m hoping, probably too optimistically, that this next round of software writing won’t be as schedule driven.

In a second category of neat new stuff, the new airplane battery works very nicely! On my post-maintenance check flight it started the engine swiftly and easily. No more just barely turning over and almost not working. We (the plane owners) are hoping this is near the end of the spate of expensive repairs this last six months. The last one (we hope) being the next item:

The third neat new item is delayed. The directional gyroscope is still on backorder, once again extended. This time we’re hoping we’ll get it near the end of the month. This is annoying as it’s really interrupting my IFR training! It will probably cost me some time to get back into the groove of things once my instructors and I can get going again. I’m considering a sim flight or two with the new sims that the flight school has.

My wife and I have purchased a new pop-up camper. It’s new to us at least. We’re cleaning it up and fixing it up. We’ll be camping where there’s no plug-in power. But, I have a problem. We’d like to run a couple fans, and perhaps have a reading light or two. Then, I will need power to run my laptop for iPhone programming (see below). So, I’m putting together a small (very small) off-the-grid solar power system. Only about 200 W/day, but that’ll be enough for our needs my calculations say. The panel and charge controller are ordered, I can get the battery locally. The fans are quiet 120 mm size computer vent fans, four of them. And the lighting is LED. Most of the wiring will be 12V DC, but I have a small inverter too. I’ll assemble this next week.

I spent last week at Apple’s World-Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. I’m under non-disclosure so there won’t be any really great news here. But rest assured that you’ll hear all about most of the news relatively soon. I’ve been to WWDC before a number of times, but not for a 3-4 years now. It was nice to be back in San Francisco. I like it there, but I’m really glad my wife and I don’t live there. Cities are too busy, too loud, and too concrete for my taste.

But the Bay Area is a real geek paradise. You can buy parts or scrap electronics, find up-to-date technical books in the local library, and have some really good bookstores around. Stanford and Berkeley are nearby and easy access, and your retired neighbor mowing his lawn down the street was probably instrumental in some key technology breakthrough that changed the world. He’ll have great stories, and you’ll be able to learn something there. So while the DC Metro region is a leading user of technology, the Bay Area is a leading generator of technology. It’s a whole different level.

I spent most of my time at WWDC learning how to program the iPhone. This is something I need to do for work, and something I’d like to learn for myself as well. I remember that years ago UNIX geeks would speculate when they’d get a real UNIX laptop. Well, the MacOSX-based MacBook Pros are UNIX laptops. (The most capable new one has a 3 GHz dual-core processor and comes with either 4 GBytes or 8 GBytes of memory.) And, the iPhone is Mach UNIX internally, so is a hand-held UNIX touchscreen computer. The new iPhone model has a compass and video camera too.

One of the things that keeps me going as a technologist, despite bad project schedules and other major annoyances, is the fascination of new ideas and new devices that were science fiction dreams not so long ago. In my career I started programming on a machine that had no boot ROM and only 4 K of memory and could only do 666,000 instructions per second. Now, I can walk into a store and buy a 8 GByte machine that’ll execute six instructions every 1 billionth of a second, about 9000 times faster. Or more if my code uses the graphics processor. The new machine has all sorts of other features like sound, color, and wireless networking for a start. It will last longer, have many fewer problems, doesn’t require a $350/month maintenance charge, and only costs 13% as much. (Prices adjusted for inflation to current values of course, I’m an economist too.) On top of that, these new MacOS laptops have 500 GByte disks, vs paper tape storage for the the DEC PDP-8 I started with.

So truly some neat & new stuff!

I have a box with the title wording on it sitting on my kitchen table right now.  It seems like I’m getting into gene hacking, but no, it’s a new battery for the plane.  We currently have a flooded lead acid battery in the plane now; we’re replacing it with a gel battery. It’s a similar technology, but uses a gel instead of a sulfuric acid liquid for an electrolyte between the battery plates.  So, it’s sealed, and the electrolyte chemically recombines to regenerate itself.  No genetics at all.

We’re hoping the new battery lasts long and requires less maintenance effort.  I’ll be replacing the old with the new tomorrow sometime.  There are several things that pilots can do for maintenance on their aircraft without a mechanic.  CFR 14-43.7 (FAA regulations 43.7) authorize a private pilot or above can preform preventative maintenance and authorize a plane to return to service after that maintenance.  Then appendix A to part 43 defines what preventative maintenance is.  Item 24, “Replacing and servicing batteries.” is what covers me in this.

I’ve participated in two owner-assisted annuals, and worked under supervision with mechanics on several issues on both my plane and others when helping them out.  I’m reasonably handy with tools, so this is something I know I am qualified to do.  For example, the first time I changed the oil in the plane, I did it with an A&P mechanic to learn the process.  I understood it, and all steps were clear.  So, next time I’ll do it myself.

Two caveats to owner maintenance.  All maintenance actions need to be logged even if I am doing it as a pilot.  I log the work and sign it off with “PPL” and my pilot certificate number. It’s not legal unless signed off.  Even GPS database updates need to be signed off.

Also, the maintenance work is for real.  I need to exercise as much care in my work as my A&P would.  Even if the owner is doing the work, the airplane will still fly.  This isn’t messing around on the car!