Haven't gotten back to my smart wear series yet, I will get back to it in due course. But, I did run across this fascinating story in the meantime.

The Blue Crab

It seems that some enterprising researchers at the University of Maryland have found a way to use chitosan (think kite-o-san) in combination with micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) to detect many different chemical and biological substances. Chitosan is harvested from the shells of the crabs. The function is pretty simple, chitosan is placed on an arm that is allowed to vibrate, the frequency is monitored. When a substance is detected, the chitosan changes causing the vibration to change which can then signal the presence of a particular substance. The coolest things are often simple in concept.

Nano Cantilever

The hope is to be able to apply this knowledge to create biological and chemical substance alarms, perhaps to help aid in the fight against terror. Pretty cool stuff.

Technorati Tags: Crab | Nanotech | Science | Sensor

Now that's a big eel, 133 lbs caught by Vic Evans. The world record size Conger Eel as a matter of fact.

It's a sad day in England as the ironically named "sport" of conger cuddling is banned. The object of the cuddle is to knock one's opponents off a wooden platform by caressing them gently (not!) with a conger eel tied on the end of a rope, repeatedly. Full story available here.

Picture of Congers about to be "cuddled".

Technorati Tags: Eel Conger Cuddling Humor

A couple of my prior entries, the smart bikini and buzz off hat, were about clothing that was capable of doing a little more than covering us up (yes, I know it was a bikini and a hat) and being stylish. So I set off to discover what else could be categorized in the smartwear world. (Note: I'm something of an obsessive autodidact, once something like this interests me, it becomes my mission to learn everything possible about it.)

Whenever I explore a new area like this, I find it helpful to establish some sort of framework to view the area through. My initial explorations have led me to establish some high-level categories to lump smart clothing innovations.

• Material innovations
  
  
  
  • Phase Change - Uses phase changes (solid to liquid) for benefit
    
  • Shape Memory - Uses current to form (or reform) to a set shape
    
  • Chromic - Uses external stimulus (light, heat, liquid, pressure) to change properties (color is most frequent)
    
  • Conductive - Uses high metallic content to gain benefit (insulation, EMI shield, sensing, etc.)
    
  
  
• Integration innovations
  
  
  
  • Energy - Photovoltaic (solar) cells, batteries, and hand generators
    
  • Electronic/Communication - mobile communication devices, ipods, and gps with an emphasis on hands-free
    
  • Chemical - Weatherproofing, insect repellent, and stain resistance
    
  • Sensor - Primarily medical or athletic performance monitoring sensors/devices
    
  
  

Technorati Tags: Geek Chic Smart Clothes Smart Wear

As previously noted, I'm something of an Ohio State football fan. One of the joys of being a football fan in the preseason is that all things are possible: winning a national championship, winning the Big 10 championship, beating Michigan, and even having a Heisman Trophy winner. It's great to dream and hope your team will achieve some measure of success.

Recently I stumbled across Adam Jardy's series for BuckeyeSports.com where he is using a video game to model how the season might go for the mighty Buckeyes. If it goes like it has in his simulations, there will be a very happy Buckeye Nation.

Read for yourself:
Northern Illinois
Texas
Cincinnati
Penn State
Iowa
Bowling Green

The rest of the season (Michigan State, Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois, Northwestern, and Michigan) to come in the next few weeks. Let's hope that the Bucks continue to roll, and more to the point, that the real season tracks this story line. Thanks Adam for an excellent series.

Technorati Tags: Buckeye Football Video Game

A colleague of mine has a thing about bugs - he doesn't like them, but they like him. So, on a recent vacation he accidentally stumbled into something that helped with the bugs while attempting to solve a sunburn problem. It's important to note that my colleague doesn't have a proper hairstyle, like me. And as a consequence, his neck is left bare - exposed to the elements. Not wanting to become a redneck, he decided that he'd better get a hat that would provide protection for this tender area.

While the smart bikini is interesting and has UV sensors, the smart hat is practical. No sensors in the hat yet I'm sorry to note.

"Buzz Off" Smart Hat

Note: This is not the actual hat as my colleague's spouse has forbidden him to wear it outside the garden at this point. But I did attempt to convince him to send me an action shot. Stay tuned, he might yet.

What makes this hat so special aside from its obvious style and good looks? It has an insect repellent native to the fabric. You can't detect that the chemical is present (no smell, no residue) but the insects do and leave you alone. It's good for up to 25 washes. Check it out at Buzz Off. By the way, they sell more than just hats... This trend of making clothing smarter and more than just a coverup is interesting. I'll see what else I can find related to this trend and share.

Technorati Tags: Insect Repellent Hat Smart wear

Sensors, sensors, everywhere. Everytime you turn around, there's another sensor embedded somewhere you just wouldn't naturally think. That's the case here, where a sensor for exposure to sun light is now in the bikini. Yes, that bikini, the 60 year old swimsuit. Now, if we can just network them.....only kidding. These sensors do provide a practical convenience, to let you know when you are increasing your risk of cancer with prolonged exposure to ultraviolet light.

Available in two flavors, geeky with a gauge and camoflauged using color recognition. Photos courtesy of Solestrom. I think they're on to a new trend in "smart wear."

Geeky with gauge

Camoflauged with color

Technorati Tags: Bikini Sensors Smart wear

That is, Sun Update Connection, Enterprise version.

It's been three short months since our acquisition of Aduva. In that time, the former Aduva team along with the Sun Update Connection product team have produced the first release of our new product which incorporates all the goodness of Sun Update Connection Hosted and adds a slew of new features and functions:

• Baselines - Create groups of changes to be applied
  
• Automated application - Apply a single change, group of changes, and/or baseline to one or more systems
  
• Simulation - Model proposed changes to your environment before commiting to them
  
• Rollback - The "oops" protection, revert to prior state at the touch of a button
  
• Auditing - Know who made which changes when to aid in compliance
  
• Staging - Pull bits from many different places to a staging ground, mix and match the content in automated change tasks
  
• Introspection - Don't trust what the description says, active comparison of symbols in changes vs. claims in descriptions (metadata)
  
• Provisioning - Deploy configurations to bare metal as workloads and demands change
  
• Management - Be it a data center, an application service, or a grid, actively manage the assets for workload, performance, cost, and availability.
  

Technorati Tags: Patch System Administration Systems Management Grid Software as a Service

Note: I was poised to post this Friday, July 21 in the morning. But the news that Devil's Slide would reopen August 4th preempted the posting and relieved some of my frustration. However, I'd still like to understand the variability of sensor readings to actual timed experience.

Start original blog entry: While I applaud CalTrans for instrumenting the roads and giving helpful clues to commuters about travel times from point A to point B, the accuracy reflected in these clues leaves something to be desired.

Thursday afternoon the 511.org web site and the sign onsite for highway 92W indicated that it was 33 minutes travel time from I280 to Highway 1 on 92W. In reality, it took 18 minutes to move from the sign through the traffic light at 35N and 92W, 0.75 miles. The time for this travel segment, a 7 mile trip over the hill from I280 to Highway 1? 46 minutes.

CalTrans, clearly you've instrumented the road. Why the heck aren't you reading what you collect from the sensors and reflecting it accurately? Bad information is worse than no information. 39% error in travel time is a bit high when actual data is available.

Technorati Tags: Devil's Slide Sensors Commute

Recently I received a telephone message from Congressman Tom Reynolds indicating that I was a winner of the "National Leadership Award." In the background of this message, there was the usual cacophony associated with those telemarketing boiler room setups, which definitely sent the antennae up. Not to mention, I live in California, not New York, where Tom Lantos is my local Congressional representative.

I decline to state my own political views and affliations in this blog. So draw no conclusions about this statement other than it's a fact: This award is sponsored by the Republican Party.

Here are some more facts collected during the return call to Reynold's office:

• It was confirmed that I have indeed won a "National Leadership Award"
  
• The helpful staffer I spoke with was unable to tell me who nominated me or why I was selected
  
• A recorded message from Tom Reynolds was played congratulating me on winning this prestigious award
  
• The award winners names will be in a full page advertisement supporting a Republican-backed tax cut proposal
  
• Award winners are asked to contribute $300 to "defray the cost of the advertisement"
  
• I asked "Do I still win if I don't contribute?" Yes was the answer.
  

All of this reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where Montgomery Burns gives Homer Simpson the award for "Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence." Burns creates the award in a bid to get Homer to release the nuclear power plant from liability due to it's sterilizing effect on Homer.

Scam or innovative fund raising? You be the judge. Whatever you decide, if you get the call indicating you've won, you can make an informed choice about how to respond.

Technorati Tags: National Leadership Award Scam Fund Raising

If you've followed the CalTrans updates, this isn't a surprise. Nevertheless, it is great to have an end to the commute misery in sight. Can't seem to find a link to a CalTrans page that reflects the update, but it's reported by the San Mateo County Times (paper version) and the Coastsider at this point.

A hearty thank you to all the folks who helped repair the damage and help get us back to normal.

Technorati Tags: Devil's Slide Sensors Commute

That's right, and 44 days until the season opens. What season you ask? Why the college football season of course!

Aside from all this tech stuff I'm embroiled in daily, I also happen to be an avid college football fan generally, and specifically a fan of THE Ohio State University Buckeyes. Go Bucks! Can't wait for the season to start, take a look for yourself courtesy of YouTube:

Ted "Ballgame" Ginn Jr. Highlights (click the image to play)

Not sold on college football, well take a look at this:

Cal/Stanford 1982 - "The Play" (click image to play)

No set of videos would be complete without a beating of "That School Up North." So here's a summary of the 2004 game:

OSU/Michigan 2004 (click image to play)

And, just in case you want to interact with a passionate community, I recommend Bucknuts as the place to go......Hope you all enjoy a great season!

Technorati Tags: Buckeye Football Video

The League for Coastside Protection has been graphing commute times (due to the CalTrans sensors in the road - see this blog entry.) Here are the archives for June and July to date. The interesting thing looking at this data is just how erratic the commute times are. Great to be able to view this all due to networked sensors. But still a pain in the neck for those of us living through the chaos.

CalTrans continues the repairs on the slide and seems to be ontrack for a late September finish. Check the updates section for the latest progress.

July 13 Morning Commute

July 13 Evening Commute

Technorati Tags: Devil's Slide Sensors Commute

Smugglers in the Phillipines have been caught attempting to smuggle 1 peso coins out of the country for their metal content vs. their face value.

Interesting world we live in....copper prices have gone up by 75% this year. Now, where did I put that big bottle of pennies the bank won't count....

Technorati Tags: Smuggling Currency Coins

I don't know about you, but I think 100:1 odds of death for an occupation aren't great. That's what the most recent space shuttle crew has been informed of to quantify the risk they're signing up to in the next planned launch (STS-121).

Consider other occupational statistics:

• Stay out of the forest: 118 fatalities per 100,000 for timber cutters
  
• Stay off the street: 20 percent of the 6588 fatal work injuries happened on the road
  
• Stay above ground: 23.5 deaths in mining for every 100,000 workers in 2002
  
• Stay on dry land: 103 in every 100,000 fishermen died while working
  

Technorati Tags: Space Shuttle Jobs Death

Mike Davis recently showed me a cool mashup of the Sun Knowledge Connection with his Google homepage. Way cool. Also, Software Update moved to a new provider over the weekend which included an upgrade to Solaris 10, T2000s, and some new switches. The punchline? The performance has improved 3x and the cost has dropped by 50%. Amazing. If service providers aren't using this technology, they're bad at math.

Technorati Tags: Mashup Solaris T2000

Here in the US football is played with an oblong ball that is only, on special occasion, kicked. However, right now the rest of the world is crazy for football (soccer) played with a round ball that is primarily kicked. The ultimate event is well underway, the FIFA 2006 World Cup.

Since the US team is in, and some of our colleagues are "worldly" caring about the event a bunch, we decided to have a little challenge using the BBC's World Cup DAQ game. This is a market economy where one competes by buying and selling shares in teams, angling for special bonuses (dividends if you will,) and hoping for an outcome of the highest percentage gain in a week. Thus we've assembled a league. What's at stake? Pride.

The thing I wasn't prepared for is how sticky this is. We've got people who've never participated in such an event and are typically non-sporting buying up shares of Poland because of win bonuses and wondering if that's the right selection of if Costa Rica will recover from the thrashing Ecuador provided this week.

If you ever doubt the network is the computer and that fact fuels the participation age, try one of these online events. It'll cure you of that doubt in a heartbeat. Meantime, go Poland! (and US team, I hope you can beat Italy!)

Technorati Tags: World Cup Network Participation Age

Death toll passes 2,500 for US military deaths. Grim. Very grim. It's a good thing the mission was accomplished May 2, 2003....

Technorati Tags: Iraq War Politics

Recently I heard a news interview with a techie nicknamed Aardvark in New Zealand who has undertaken an "interesting" project to build his own cruise missile. Not really a toy. Specifications include: 100 mile range, 400 mph speed, powered by propane, costs less than $5,000.

I am at turns fascinated and horrified by this. The project leader indicates that he's doing this to raise awareness of just how easy this is to do and get attention focused upon this before it's used as a weapon.....

Technorati Tags: Cruise Missile Defense Terrorism

Kevin Chu has written a very comprehensive review of Google Calc. I encourage you to check it out! Thanks for the pointer Kevin.

Google introduced a new web-based spreadsheet that allows for easy sharing of data a couple of days ago. I love to see network services innovation, and this has the look of a good one. I encourage you to visit Google Labs and check it out.

And, don't forget to visit the "Fresh Tools" tab on My Sun Connection, you'll see another new goodie there soon.....

Technorati Tags: Network Services Spreadsheet Google

A colleague of mine, Kevin Sturge, mentioned to me that I should do a blog entry about my watch. So Kevin, here it is...

Before I talk about this specific watch, it's worthwhile to recount my watch history. There's no easy way to say this, I'm a watch abuser. I know it's not a "good thing" - but it's true. I've never met a watch I couldn't somehow break, scratch, lose, crush, or otherwise mangle until 1996.

That fateful day, I had just managed to crunch the latest of my watches by reaching into a tight space in a server cage, getting my wrist stuck, pulling too hard, breaking the watch band, having the darned thing skitter across the floor under my foot where I managed to step on it and crush the glass into the face and hands. It was a fatal injury (Told you I was an abuser, it was expensive, attractive, and it was only 2 months old.)

After the frustration of killing my third watch in a year's time, I made a promise to myself: I'd simply find a cheap, disposable watch that I wouldn't feel badly about losing, mangling, and/or killing. A quick trip to Fry's Electronics and this beauty Casio W-87H was added to my victims list for the princely sum of $8.99 (it was on sale.)

Representative Casio W-87H

Now, in 2006, not only have I managed not to kill, mangle, or lose it, I've had it long enough to replace the wristband 4 times! Note to Casio: the 5 year battery is *still* running 5 years after it was supposed to die. Also, the original wrist band did break in the first year (and it was extremely uncomfortable as I dimly recall.)

Having had such success with watches, I decided to do the same thing with sunglasses a couple of years later. (yes, I'm a sunglasses abuser too.) I hasn't worked yet.

Well, here's to you Casio W-87H. I've kicked you, crushed you, dropped you in tight places, traveled over 500,000 miles with you. You delivered what Timex promises - you've taken a licking and kept on ticking. I hope we get another decade of use together.

The actual survivor Casio W-87H on my wrist

Technorati Tags: Humor Watch Casio

Think people have gone over the edge with patent craziness? If not, this entry might just sway you. The Washington Post reports that an Ohio man has received a patent for a cordless jumprope. That's right, just the handles, none of that inconvenient rope. After all, the exercise is all in the jumping, right?

cordless jumprope

I thought that one was bad but then followed a link to a most excellent site, Patently Silly, where all the latest "inventions of note" are duly analyzed and lampooned. No doubt, one of these will hit it big (my bet, "house slippers" in the Midwest.....) Their tagline? "The humor of invention." Priceless.

"house slippers"

"gas combustion hair dryer" (my note: single use item)

Technorati Tags: Humor Innovation Patents

As promised, some new features have been introduced in the My Sun Connection portal. Chief among them, performance and tuning enhancements, many small requests for enhancement, as well as the new "Community" tab.

If you haven't dropped in to see what we're doing, now is a good time. This week we should have a new thing or two on "Fresh Tools" as well.

The Coastsider has been posting some very high quality information and photos on the Devil's Slide repairs. As you may know, April 2 of this year a 300 foot section of the roadway subsided around 5 feet coupled with a rock fall from 300 feet above the roadway. Repairs have been ongoing and are slated to wrap up late September.

Here's a film clip provides an excellent overview of the failure, the repair plan, and shots of the work in progress. It certainly is an engineering wonder. Thanks to Barry Parr and Darin Boville for the excellent content and footage.

Meanwhile, as the road remains closed, traffic problems continue without pause. Traffic over the holiday weekend was horrible. CalTrans continues to work and monitor the traffic patterns - it's clear they're doing the best they can in a very difficult situation. While it's difficult for folks to see when stuck in 2 hour backups, it is making a difference. Thanks CalTrans and keep up the good work.

Here's a photo of the work site with crane:

Here's a photo of drilling the "nails" into the slide (in a basket, dangling from the crane in the picture above.)

Technorati Tags: Devil's Slide CalTrans Highway 1

A simple equation to be sure. If you've got to manage patches and configurations on Linux or Solaris machines, you should pay attention to this post.

Here's what to consider:

• Baselines - Create groups of changes to be applied
  
• Automated application - Apply a single change, group of changes, and/or baseline to one or more systems
  
• Simulation - Model proposed changes to your environment before commiting to them
  
• Rollback - The "oops" protection, remove changes automatically
  
• Auditing - Know who made which changes when to aid in compliance
  
• Aggregation - Pull bits from many different places to a staging ground, mix and match the content in automated change tasks
  
• Introspection - Don't trust what the description says, active comparison of symbols in changes vs. claims in descriptions (metadata)
  
• Provisioning - Deploy configurations to bare metal as workloads and demands change
  
• Management - Be it a data center, an application service, or a grid, actively manage the assets for workload, performance, cost, and availability.
  
• Realtime - Always up, always up-to-date. Continuous real-time content.
  
• Electronic Prognostics - Telemetry-based prediction of what will happen based on statistical models of what has happened across a broad population segment.
  
• Risk Quantification - Availability Risk Index (ARI) determins not only the severity negative consequence for any known risk, but also the probability of occurance in time period X.
  

Here are some hints:

+ Sun Grid
+ N1 System Manager
+ Aduva OnStage
+ Sun Update Connection
+ Sun Preventive Services
+ N1 Service Provisioning Server

Technorati Tags: Patching System Administration Systems Management Grid Software as a Service