Who Cares what Rich thinks!

The only Man in the World NOT on Facebook

Well, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve been hacked.  I had some problems yesterday but was eventually able to get in and change my password.  Hopefully this is really a site mainenance issue.

Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.

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Here’s a scary chart from CalculatedRiskBlog.com.  I’ve added the Obama years in blue so you can understand the amount of time this situation has been on Obama’s watch.  Complete failure…

It feels cold right?  Well, you’re not alone and the temperature data seems to agree with you.  Dr. Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama Huntsville shows in his plot that January could end up below normal globally.  Dr. Spencer obtains his data from several satellites that are run by the NOAA.   They use their own on-board precision redundant platinum resistance thermometers calibrated to a laboratory reference standard before launch.  The nice thing about using satellit data is that we don’t have to argue about the state of the global temperature stations and whether they are now surrounded by air warming city heat island effects.

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Looks like the housing market has started to take another trip south.  This chart shows that in November of last year we’ve started into double dip territory.  Somehow I’m sure that this won’t come up in tonights state of the union address. 

It’s sometimes difficult to explain to people what working in the field of engineering is all about.  I spent a total of 15 years between General Motors and Ford engineering and I think I’ve finally come up with a good comparison to what it’s like to work in those companies.  Have you seen any of the Saw movies?  In the Saw movies you find youself waking up in some sort of twisted puzzle.  A puzzle where if you make the wrong

decision and even if you make the right one, you will be required to bleed much and go through an incredible amount of physical and/or mental pain.

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Check out these little Quadrotors!  They can build structures by themselves or as part of a team.  When they work as teams, they communicate with each other in order to determine whether to hold position or go ahead with the next step in the operation.  Very cool.  I would imagine that this little puppies smoke through batteries though.  I can imagine a scenario where they detect the state of charge of their own battery and then dock at a station until charged.  After charging it could then pick up where it left off or join in where the team left off.

Update:  Apparently I wasn’t thinking out of the box enough.  This company developed a way to beam power to the quadrotor using a laser.  They were able to keep a quadrotor in the air for 12 hours!  Skynet here we come!

I’ve been playing around with trying to use the Loomis techniques for drawing figures.  I have to admit that I’ve struggled a little bit getting the flow going.  I seem to get stuck on the flow somewhere along the line and I wasn’t really sure where until I watched the video below.  I’ll post sample sample heads when I get a chance.

Here’s Part 2

NOAA and NASA have made some headlines recently stating that 2010 was the warmest on record.  According to their own data this wasn’t the case for the United States.  2010 ranks 94th out of 116 years when you go back to 1895.

This, of course, was left out of the press release.  The closest they came to mentioning the United States is when they mention that it was the 14th consecutive year with temperatures above the long term average.  I was warmer in 1934! 

Now does this mean that I’m some sort of Global Warming “Denier”?  No.  I believe that the planet has been slowly warming since the Ice Age ended.  It’s the man made part of Global Warming that I deny.  Now I’m open to being convinced, however.  Let the science do what it should and the truth will eventually shake itself out.  What I have a problem with is the governments of the world pushing this new religion in order to bring about global restructuring.  Pay attention to what they say and to what they don’t say and you’ll eventually come to the conclusion that we’re being hoodwinked with regards to man made global warming.