Geek

So Earl, Scott and me just got back from a Friday night field trip. After watching two episodes of “Hot In Cleveland” on the DVR, I declared that we were going to go for a ride (though it had nothing to do with what we just watched). I grabbed two fluorescent bulbs from the basement (after confirming that they worked) and we hopped in Earl’s car and headed out to the countryside not too far from where we live. When I found the perfect spot, we pulled over on the side of the road. Earl asked me to put on the warning flashers.

We were parked under the Marcy-Massena Power Lines. The lines are 765kV and are among the highest voltage lines in North America. The voltage is so high on these lines that the experts call this line an Ultra High Voltage line.

Earl and Scott stayed in the car and watched as I hiked into the field headed toward the closest tower. The first thing I noticed is that there was a slight crackling sound coming from the tower itself. Apparently an insulator was losing a little bit of current to the air around it. Once away from the headlights of the car, I noticed that the fluorescent tube in my hand was somewhat illuminated around my grasp of the tube. Once I touched the tube to the ground, the tube lit up impressively; there was enough light coming from the tube that I could see the writing on my t-shirt. Earl and Scott were able to notice the light.

I then walked back to the car, crossed the road and into the field on the other side. I was now walking away from the closest tower (and the crackling noises coming from the insulators) where the three spans start to dip down a little bit. I noticed a repeat of the tube lighting up around my hand, but it was brighter this time. This makes sense, since the wires were a little bit lower than near the tower. I touched the tube to the ground and it lit up impressively, much more than it did the first time I tried it. Earl and Scott were my witnesses and noticed that it lit up. I picked it up, reducing the light to just around my hand again, and swung it around whilst making light saber noises.

My video didn’t come out good at all. Because I was standing in complete darkness and the light coming from the tube was being powered by EMF (Electromagnetic Field) Radiation coming from the lines, I didn’t have a lot to work with in capturing the video.

I need a better setup without being paranoid about the crackling noises coming from the tower and being questioned for my eccentric activity. I need to borrow a friendly farmer’s field.

Update Sat 21 Apr 12 0006 EDT: I forgot that it was Friday night and not Saturday night. I updated the blog entry accordingly. Duh.

Warning: This blog entry is super geeky.

I have always been fascinated by power lines. I’m surprised that I haven’t been overly fascinated in the “Transformers” movies and the like, because as a little kid I thought that the poles and towers that carry powerlines across the country side kind of looked like people.

After taking care of some family business up in my hometown today, I took the opportunity to take some of the less-traveled backroads home. The ride is actually shorter if you can successfully navigate your way through the twists and turns of the Tug Hill Plateau and I was able to do this successfully. It was a beautiful day for this sort of adventure and since I was off from work, I wanted to savor every moment.

The route home included driving by the Bennetts Bridge Hydro-Electric Plant, one of two power plants on the Salmon River in Oswego County, New York (the other plant is the Lighthouse Hill Power Plant).

Built in 1932, Bennetts Bridge has two sets of powerlines coming out of it. The pair of towers carry a total of four circuits. By the looks of the towers, one set was installed before the other.

When I see the pairing of these towers standing along the side road, I actually see a “couple” with one wearing a hat.

The lines on the left are on the older towers. The circuit on the right side of the right tower is a higher voltage than the others, though I don’t know the voltage of these lines. This is the first time I have been able to peg a date on these towers, knowing that Bennetts Bridge was first put into service in 1932. This pair of lines heads toward Syracuse, where it joins the other lines distributing power across New York State near Caughdenoy, which is wear the Great Blackout of 1965 originated (Aunt Clara’s participation in the event notwithstanding).

I decided not to take photos of the power plant itself because there were warning signs all over the place discouraging such activity and I wasn’t in the mood to get into a hassle with the security patrolling the area.

If you’re ever up in that area, the Department of Conservation has built a wonderful park area around Salmon River Falls, with a ranger stationed nearby to answer any questions you may have. When I was in high school it was common for some of my classmates to go up on the falls to party on the weekend. I lost a couple of classmates that fell off the falls.

It’s an especially beautiful drive in autumn as the leaves turn gorgeous shades of colors in this neck of the woods.

So it’s been all over the news outlets since yesterday afternoon, Facebook bought the photo sharing app Instagram for ONE BILLION dollars. Notice I did not say the Instagram “website”. Instagram has relatively little presence on the web; the only way to share photos is via the Instagram app on an iPhone and since last week, an Android device. Instagram had no revenue stream. Users don’t pay to use the service, ads do not appear in the apps. Users simply snap a photo or choose a photo that’s already on their phone, Instagram crops it to a square size, users can apply an artsy or nifty filter if they want and then they post their photo to the Instagram service. Anyone can comment on it or indicate that they like the photo. Users can include hashtag keywords (#keyword) for searching purposes. Instagram also gives the user the option of sending the photo to other services such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

The creator of Instagram had no formal programming training; he’s a marketer that figured out how to build the apps during his off hours. The app has been a hit with iPhone users since it’s inception. I have a ton of photos on their myself.

No revenue stream + very successful app with a large userbase = one billion dollars. It’s 21st century economics! It kind of reminds me of the dot com bubble of the late 90s.

Now first of all, I have to congratulate the folks behind Instagram for making such a fantastic deal. Selling something that was created in this fashion for one billion dollars is a transaction for the history books. Well done.

The folks at Facebook say that they’re going to keep the app separate from Facebook and let it continue to do its thing. However, I have a hunch that there will be some serious data mining going on in regards to the user base; that’s how the folks at Facebook make money, data mining user activities for advertising purposes. Targeted advertising is all the rage and to recoup one BILLION dollars and make a profit one has to do a lot of targeted advertising.

Can’t say that I’m a fan of the motivation, but I am impressed by the transaction. The Facebook acquisition of Instagram will probably affect my use of Instagram. I get creeped out when Facebook offers to sell me a product based on the fact that I searched for a similar product well outside the confines of the Facebook garden. I don’t mind it as much from Google because Google is in the search business and 98% of the time, I’m using Google to search for something on the internet. It makes sense to me when Google offers me a product similar to something I was looking for because I used their product to do my search. But I have never searched for mustache wax on Facebook, yet Zuck and friends are now suggesting to me (through advertising) mustache wax, a bikini wax, shaving soap and a free skin care consultation at a high end department store. With all the photos I have taken over the years and shared on the Instagram, I’m expecting advertising suggestions for cat food, copper to make powerlines and a smattering of random products simply because of the random nature of my photos. I have to say, I’m not a fan.

I really liked Instagram and I have enjoyed chatting with folks on there and admiring the photography of others through the site. It’s kind of sad that I feel like I have to reevaluate my use of the service now because of the new overlords.

As I said on my Twitter feed this morning

Crossposted to techbear.net

A few years ago Earl bought me the first generation iPhone for Christmas. This was an absolutely delight for me for a number of reasons, the primary one being that the idea of having access to the internet in my pocket was sort of a geeky good time. I’d dial up the weather, look up things on Google just because I could and avoid the at-the-time trend of sending a text message by banging out letters on a 3×3 keypad. The original iPhone was my favorite of the iPhone designs because it had a solid, metal presence to it that made me make grunting noises like Tim Allen.

I upgraded to the iPhone 3G when I had the opportunity to do so, so I could do everything I was doing with my original iPhone, only faster. Admittedly, it did feel like a step backwards in the hardware department in that it didn’t feel quite as nice in my hand as I would have liked it to. That phone still lives today in the cubicle next to mine at work, because I sold it when I realized that the city I worked in did not have 3G service with AT&T. This was before Verizon offered the iPhone, so I switched to Verizon and got the original Droid.

I liked the feel of the Droid in my hand but the whole experience didn’t feel as polished. The Android OS felt unfinished and the camera did not take as high quality photos as my iPhone 3G. It was within the first week that I wished I could go back to AT&T and start using an iPhone again, but I couldn’t because of my new Verizon contract, so I stuck it out until that magical day one February when Verizon announced that they would be carrying the iPhone 4. I stayed up that night until I was able to order it and did so. I was so happy to be on the iPhone again.

Last spring I lost my mind for a little while and got bored with the iPhone and opted for an Android-based HTC Thunderbolt. That lasted a week. The phone rebooted spontaneously, usually while I was doing something, the battery barely made it until lunch on a full charge and I felt like I was talking on something the size of a phone book. Plus, I was really missing the quality of the photos taken with my iPhone 4; the Thunderbolt had more megapixels (8MP instead of 5) but the lenses weren’t as good and the quality of the photos suffered. And on Android (which still felt unpolished to me) I didn’t have a way to get to Instagram and I was missing Instagram.

I switched back to an iPhone 4 within a week and I haven’t looked back.

Yesterday, Instagram was opened up to Android users. From a social perspective (and when you think of the user as the advertising revenue product instead of a customer) this makes absolute sense. Folks on the Android platform can now share their photos on Instagram and interact in this formerly iPhone-only space. It’s a good way to share with more friends but the quality of the photos from the Android phones appears to be not as good, in my opinion. A couple of folks have posted comparison photos and the results are very apparent.

Compare these two photos from John Gruber.
iPhone 4S: http://instagr.am/p/I-fP3KFzZT/
Galaxy Nexus: http://instagr.am/p/I-fPpPFzZS/

My friend John Matthews is really good at iPhoneography. He is an iphoneography purist in that he takes all of his photos with an iPhone and his entire workflow takes place on his iPhone. That’s cool! In fact, that’s wicked cool! I guess I have come to think of Instagram as more of a place for folks that thought along these lines to share their photos. Yes, there is a huge social element to Instagram but to me it was a place where iPhone folks could share their photos using their favorite smartphone platform.

Plus, I have that whole Apple snob thing going on¹.

I keep reading stats about how the Android platform is the most prevalent of the smartphone platforms. My question is, if Android is bigger and better, why didn’t someone build their own Instagram-like ecosystem instead of clamoring to get onto the ecosystem already built for iPhone? Why didn’t someone innovate, establish an Android user base and then later open it up to iPhone users so they could sigh with “ok, we’ll let you in the party”.

As my interest in iPhoneography increases (especially with the nicer weather), I’m going to be on the lookout for a social networking site where likeminded photographers (amateur and professional) can share their photos without having to guess as to what type of phone was used and what kind of optics the camera had and the like. Does anyone have any suggestions?

¹ Yes, Sheldon, that was sarcasm.

I am an avid listener of Sirius/XM’s POTUS (Politics of the United States) on channel 124. Listening to POTUS keeps me engaged with the affairs of the country during my daily commute and while there are times when I have had absolutely too much political news and I search for something else, most of the time I end up listening to POTUS. In the morning I listen to “The Morning Briefing”, I catch a few moments of “The Press Pool” at lunch time and on the drive home I listen to “Stand Up with Pete Dominick”. Interesting stuff.

One of the features of the program, The Blogcast with Pamela Kirkland, Pamela mentioned the “Million Mustache March” that took place in DC on Sunday. Please note that Sunday was the first of April. The “Million Mustache March” was a protest demanding tax breaks for the fuzzy faced, equality for all with facial hair. After the mention of the story, Morning Briefing host Tim Farley mentioned that it’s been a long, long time since we’ve had a president with a mustache. So I tweeted this¹:

Imagine my surprise when later in the program (around 0720 ET), Tim came out of a break mentioning the first tweet they had received of the day. And it was my tweet. He mentioned me by first and last name, kind of sarcastically mentioned that with all the problems in politics, this is what I was tweeting about (I was keeping within the spirit of the “Million Mustache March” but apparently couldn’t convey that in 140 characters or less) and then mentioned that I have a rather large, “handlebar like mustache” on my face, with something the size of a small country under my nose.

Honestly, I take that as a compliment. I love my large mustache and I have no plans on taming it or trimming it down. I’m just letting it grow and go where it wants to go.

The mention of it on Sirius/XM kind of gave me the jolt I needed to wake up for the day. So I thanked them with another tweet and went on with my commute.

Thanks, Sirius/XM POTUS 124! You made the small country under my nose ride along with the grin on my face.

¹ When I tweet during my commute, I am usually stopped at a stop sign or pulled over on the side of the road. Even in the small country under my nose, one has to act responsibly.

There’s a lot of negativity in my Facebook news feed (from others) today. Some people seem to be having a bad day, others are dealing with misconstrued gossip and yet others are having smack said about their family members.

What an abuse of technology.

Though I tend to tweet more than I FB (and I don’t G+ at all anymore), I still read Facebook on a regular basis, even if it’s just to catch up on birthdays and wish people good tidings on their day of celebration. Sometimes I write witty things here and there, other times I might post a few pictures of randomness. There are quite a few things about Facebook that make me insane, hence the reason that I’m not as invested in the platform as I used to be.

One of the things that absolutely amazes me about some folks on Facebook is how seriously they take things on there. Folks can post something absolutely random that sounds like it could be true and they take it as 100% accuracy and don’t bother to research to see if it’s really true or not. For example, I could go onto the Utica page and post something like “Olive Garden is coming to New Hartford! It’s moving into the old AT&T building on Commercial Drive” and probably within two days I’d read something about Olive Garden moving into the old AT&T building via Twitter or the Topix boards.

Ridiculous.

Why would Olive Garden move into the old AT&T building, especially since said building was vacated after an irate customer went in and shot some customer service reps because he was pissed about his account? And why would Olive Garden need a big tower in their parking lot anyways? And why would Olive Garden even move to Utica, New York, where good, traditional Italian restaurants are plentiful and the folks here don’t want an Italian restaurant that amounts to boil-in-a-bag.

I’m digressing.

My point is, like anything and everything on the Internet, you need to check and cross check the facts of anything you read, including the stuff on Facebook. It’s kind of like relying on one news source for your news; compare what you hear from Fox News with what you hear from MSNBC with you read in your local newspaper and there’s a better chance you’re going to get a better picture of what’s going on with whatever they’re all talking about. If you see something on Facebook about a family member or a friend that seems startling, do something crazy like pick up the phone and speak with that person to see if the facts are true or not. And for pity’s sake, don’t bring people you don’t know into the equation and start speculating or being rude or obnoxious just because Facebook has decided to show updates from people you don’t know on something that you might have an interest in.

The progression of technology seems to be fueling a regressing in common sense these days when we need more common sense than ever to keep track of it all. People need to remember how to think.

I’m trying out a new theme on the blog just to spruce things up a bit. I guess I’m doing a little spring housecleaning.