Byrns's Blog

NanoTechnology

2008-04-21T17:49:00.001-05:00

Interesting video on Youtube about nano technology and how Nokia is looking at it.

Miller Park - Brewer's in Legos - With Retractable Roof!

2008-04-03T10:43:00.002-05:00

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is out!

2008-04-03T08:15:00.006-05:00

I love this game! Can't wait to get the new one!

Anyway, I have attached some screenshots of the original version on the 360.

You can scan your face and map it onto your character for multiplayer fun!

New Gadget! - Apple iPod Touch

2008-04-02T17:23:00.003-05:00

What can I say... I love this thing! This is my first Apple product, and I am completely impressed. I purchased the 32 Gig version. My new little media monster holds all 3,000 photos, and my entire CD library. I sure am glad I did that cd to mp3 project a few years ago!

I also purchased the video out cable. Fantastic! The quality is near DVD, certainly good enough for my video podcasts that I watch! I have converted a few DVDs onto the iPod too. I can't believe the amount of use I am getting out of this thing.

The WIFI is great too. Although battery life is a bit to be desired when you are on the net! The safari web browser beats my Verizon WM5 phone hands down! Having a real web browser instead of the fake one Microsoft gives you is a real treat.

If you decide to get one for yourself, check out the web apps. So far I have web apps for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Also found a neat space app called iSkyGaze!

You've probably seen the videos about the user interface of the Touch, but I have to say it is better than I thought it would be. It is fast, and clean! I can find my music easily!

My youngest daughter grabbed it from me (she is 5)! She rotated it around a few times then took her finger and swiped across the screen. Within a few seconds she found her Hanna Montana CD and began playing it! This says a lot about the usability. It was the first time she had it in her cute little hands!

Completely amazing!

2007-03-15T10:20:00.001-05:00

XBox360 Error

2006-04-21T09:17:00.001-05:00

I've heard about the errors that some were getting on their XBox, and now I have experienced one myself. The picture on the right doesn't really show it well, but the "Ring of Light’s” lower right quad is lit up red.

The error came about when I tried to open the tray to remove a movie.

Skype WIFi (I want one!)

2006-04-21T09:17:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting for this Skype phone for a while, and I want to get one.
Unfortunately, the price is a bit to high for me! Amazon is taking pre-orders at $249.99. It should be out around June.

What makes this phone different than the other Skype phones out there is it doesn't require a pc to use. The Skype software is self-contained in the phone. Anywhere you can get a WIFI connection, you can use Skype.
A couple of down sides I see so far... It uses WEP and not WPA for encryption. That in itself isn't bad, since Skype uses encryption, but it is the fact that you have to open up your wireless network to use the product. Also, if you are a traveler like myself, I'm not sure how you would gain access to wireless networks that require a web login first. Many hotels offer free WIFI, but require you to navigate to a web page first to log in.

http://ces.engadget.com/2006/01/04/netgear-wifi-phone-for-skype-no-pc-required/

1/2 Terabyte - Sweet

2006-03-30T10:24:00.000-06:00

Our file server at home has been running out of space lately.
Unfortunately, I've had to delete some files.

So... I decide to look into some of these new usb drives.
I ended up deciding on the LaCie d2 usb2 drive. I wanted to
get one that had ethernet capability (a NAS device).

However, once I started looking I couldn't keep my eyes
off this 500 GB drive. It is only usb2, but it is incredible!

I found it to be very fast, and I can't wait to start archiving
my movies now!

Cool Sign Maker

2005-12-18T22:21:00.000-06:00

I found this while browsing some blogs. I thought it was cool enough to share.

Merry Christmas!

End of an Era!

2005-12-06T19:31:00.000-06:00

Today is a huge day for me. I finally resigned from my current employer. This is a big deal for me since I spent almost the last 17 years of my life with one particular company!

I have met many people over the years at “WCB”. I’m going to miss a lot of them.

I’d like to take this opportunity to personally thank a few individuals that made a difference in my professional life over the past 16 years and 9 months.

Herman Menning: Thanks standing by me and teaching me all I know during my Tool and die apprenticeship. Much of my manufacturing knowledge came from Herman’s vast experience.

Gerry Roethle: Thanks for teaching me that earning the respect of your peers and subordinates is important and with that respect you can accomplish almost anything.

Patrick Gathof: I learned quite a bit from Pat about management styles, basic business applications, and all round IT good stuff. Thanks Pat!

Darren Dickson: Although I only had a short opportunity to work with Darren, I’m thankful for the knowledge he imparted to me. This was my first exposure to working at the executive level of management. For me the lesson learned was to define strategic goals, communicate them, and align the resources to get it accomplished. Thanks for the opportunity to learn Darren!

I’d also like to thank a few friends….

Bob Lowery: Bob, we’ve been friends from nearly the beginning. Thanks for listening to my BS over the years. You’ve been a real friend.

Steve Swets: Steve, we’ve been friends for a while too. Thanks for the interesting conversations about manufacturing, life, and that farming stuff you do.

Brad Goralski: Ahh, yes… the funny guy! Thanks for your friendship, and the good times we’ve had joking around with just about every topic. Please remember that you are an American, and drop the German crap…. Just kidding.

Kelly Pohl: Over the past year or so, Kelly has becomes a pretty good friend of mine… one that I can trust with just about anything. Thanks for listening and good luck with the new house and the new family.

And of course, I can’t forget the rest of the IT team at WCB; Donna Wolf, Mike Petranech, Vickie Rortvedt, Pat Gathof, and Dave Diehl. Thanks for the fun!

There are so many people I’d like to thank, I just don’t have room for them here. Good bye WCB, I wish you lots of success!

Vonage customer support gets an F in my book!

2005-10-20T19:51:00.000-05:00

I have been a Vonage user since we moved into our new home. We chose to use Vonage instead of the conventional phone service. This is not something I regret. Our Vonage service has been fantastic until recently.

I began getting comments when answering my phone that it took long enough to answer it. I thought that was strange, I would usually answer within a few rings. Then I noticed that our answering machine hasn’t had a message in days. Figuring that something was wrong with my answering machine, I decided to call home from another phone to see what was up. I quickly found out that after about 20 rings my cell phone began to ring. I use my cell phone as my network outage number for Vonage (Cool feature for when your internet service goes out for some reason.)

Turns out that many of my calls would never even ring the Vonage line in my house. Promptly I went to the Vonage web site, and used their technical support email option. I haven’t had one response from them yet. I have contacted them four times now, and I haven’t received even one response. At this point, I have a phone system that lets me call out just fine, but receiving calls are a lost hope.

Honey Monkey!

2005-08-30T21:11:00.000-05:00

Do you know who Steve Gibson is? He is the author of Shields up! He is also the author, or at least co-author of “Security Now” a new podcast that showcases security content.

--
I was surfing around the net and found an interesting web site about Microsoft’s Honey Monkey research program.

ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2005-72.pdf

The Honey Monkey Research program is Microsoft’s way at taking a proactive approach to fighting spyware. Basically, the project involves many computers setup to mimic basic users surfing the web. The computers log and record any URL’s that attempt to infect a pc with any malware/spyware etc.

Ironically, Steve Gibson’s podcast was about this very topic. Give it a listen.

Digg This... Mice Regenerate! Forget the cloning of humans just regenerate!

2005-08-30T20:46:00.000-05:00

Scientists have long known that less complex creatures have an impressive ability to regenerate. Many fish and amphibians can regrow internal organs or even whole limbs. "

Pretty freaky! I found this article while surfing Digg.com.

Sorry, the link above is no longer valid. It was pretty interesting though!

Discreet Mathematics - Random Numbers

2005-08-27T22:52:00.000-05:00

Back in College, I wrote the paper below about Random Number Generation. Personally, I really enjoyed creating this paper and thought I'd like to share it with you. You should see a link to a spreadsheet that accompanied this document. Enjoy!

Discreet Mathematics
"Random Number Generation"
Jeffrey R. Byrns

Many people take for granted how computers generate random numbers for any particular program that they may be using. What people generally donÂt understand, or even realize is that computers are incapable of creating random numbers. They do however generate numbers that appear to be random, or arbitrary. Many forms of random number generators are in practice today, all of which are nothing more then algorithms with math equations behind them.

One of the most basic, and most popular, forms of random number generation is the algorithm developed by D. Lehmer in 1951 (Sedgewick, p. 511). It is called the linear congurential method. We can generate a set of random numbers with the below algorithm.

A [0] = Seed
b = Constant
M = Constant

For i := 1 to N do
a[ i ] := (a[ i -1] * b + 1 ) Mod M

In order to get a random number we take the previous random number (a[ i -1] ), and then we multiply it by ( b ) and then add 1. Take the result of this and get the remainder when we divide it by M (Mod M). It can help if you think of a[] as being an array.

One of the first questions to be raised is what should the constants for b and M be? D.E. Knuth (born in Milwaukee, Wi) came up with a few rules governing the choices for b and M. According to Knuth, M should be a very large number. It is convenient for computer processing to make M a power of 2 or 10. The constant b should be smaller than M. It shouldnÂt be too small however. A good rule of thumb is to use a b with one less digit than M.

Below is an example of the above algorithm applied in an Excel spreadsheet. A scatter plot has been provided to show the ÂRandomnessÂ of the output. In the example a ÂSeedÂ of 15 was used, b is set at 1277, and finally M is set to 131072.

A spreadsheet has been included with this report, Random.xls. This can be used to demonstrate the above example

As you can see above, once you know the ÂSeedÂ value you can reproduce this seemingly random number scheme. Seed values can be created by any number of ways. Visual Basic uses the randomize statement to generate the Seed value. In turn it uses the internal clock to create a seed value.

You may have noticed that the resulting numbers generated can be extremely large. Usually, these types of random numbers arenÂt what are required. Often what is required is a random number between one and whatever. This can easily be achieved by adding one extra step, Mod it. Probably the best-known application of using the mathematical Mod function is to ÂWrap AroundÂ. For instance, lets say you wanted a number between 1 and 10. You could take any of the results from the linear congurential method and mod it by 10, and then add 1. You can be certain that your results will be between 1 and 10.

Exploring other methods of random generators can be done by looking at MicrosoftÂs spreadsheet application, Excel. Looking under the Data Analysis menu, one can find ÂRandom Number GenerationÂ in a list of analysis tools. Once opened you will find that Excel provides seven different methods of generating random numbers. The web site http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu:8888/es130/lectures/lecture7/random.html provides a lot of insight on how to use this functionality. The seven different methods are; Uniform, Normal, Bernoulli, Binomial, Poisson, Patterned, and Discreet. Bernoulli and Binomial will be the remaining focus of this document.

Excel Bernoulli method:

Using the Bernoulli method will result in either a 0 or a 1, pass or fail if you will. It is based on the principle of the Bernoulli Trials. Giving the probability of success at 50% or .5 and 10 trials should reveal a result of 5 1Âs and 5 0Âs. The table below demonstrates the output of Excel for this demonstration. An excellent application for this method would be to reproduce a coin-flipping scenario. Given only a pass or fail, any application that requires only two outcomes would be a candidate for this method.

Excel Binomial method:

The Binomial is an expansion of the Bernoulli method. Using a variable number of Bernoulli trials, you can sum them up. In the table, an example of using the Binomial method is displayed. In this case, the probability of success is .5 and the number of trials is 100. Notice the output for 10 separate generations. The numbers hover around 50, or half the amount of the number of trials.

As you can see, computers donÂt generate random numbers; they generate numbers that appear to be random. In a sense, one could say that a computer generates arbitrary numbers not random numbers. Arbitrary meaning that what we require is any number, and it doesnÂt really matter what is returned. The most common algorithm used to date is the Linear Algorithm, and it is incredibly easy to implement. The math involved is very rudimentary and the steps involved are few. Although the focus of this document has focused on the Linear Congurential method, other methods of creating random numbers exist. Using ExcelÂs data analysis tools, one has a plethora of choices when choosing a randomization method.

References

Dewdney, A. (1989). The Turing Omnibus. Rockville. Computer Science Press.

Sedgewick, R. (1988). Algorithms. USA. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.

Vanderbilt University. (Unknown). Random Number Generation. Available: http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu:8888/es130/lectures/lecture7/random.html

Skype International

2005-08-26T12:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I had my first international Skype call yesterday! One of the projects I've been working on at work is to roll out a centralized support framework for a certain system we use. I have chosen to use Skype for overseas communication between them and myself. The conversation I had with one of my associates in Brazil went flawlessly. Ironically, the international call was the best quality Skype call I've had so far.

2005-08-25T19:16:00.000-05:00

4 Meters!

One of my good friends, Brad, kindly let me know today that Germany is under water... "4 Meters" under. You can tell that Brad is one of those people that just adores Germany. I mean really... what tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, German - American male says 4 meters? Real Americans say 12 feet! (Actually 13.123 feet)

Hmmm, for some reason I feel like playing Castle Wolfenstein!

All in good fun Brad!

2005-08-24T20:52:00.000-05:00

Insta Blog! I knew that cell-phone camera would have a use someday!

At .25 cents a pop I can send stupid pictures like this directly to my Blog!

Woohoo!

Call For Help!

2005-08-24T20:06:00.000-05:00

Hey, G4 is going to do “Call For Help” again. According to the TWIT website, http://thisweekintech.com/node/3920, G4 has purchased CFH for viewing in the US. This is great news for me… but not for my wife! Get your TIVO setup, it is on at some really sucky time slot.

2005-08-24T18:47:00.000-05:00

Google is speaking to me!

Out of the blue today one of my friends, Jason, sent me an invite to Google's new voice service. Being one who loves Google, and especially loves VOIP (voice Over IP), I was excited to give it a try. The interface is like G's main page, simple and easy to use.

My first experience with the new toy was miserable! My 1 minute conversation with Jason had decent sound but a 10 second delay. Jason later replied, in chat, that I was choppy and couldn't be understood.

Later in the day, I was sent another invite to use the GV service. This time it was an old co-worker that I hadn't heard from in quite a while. I accepted Josh's invite and within seconds the software began to ring. This time, WOW... How do they say that in Mortal Combat?? "Flawless Victory!". The conversation had zero lag and perfect audio.

I guess only time will tell how well Google's new service pans out.

2005-08-23T22:22:00.000-05:00

Picture of the kids helping me wash the Harley

2005-08-23T11:58:00.000-05:00

Remember ZDTV? How about TechTV? Well, for those that do, the guys from those shows have gotten together once again. They are now doing TWIT... "This Week In Tech". At this time it is a very popular podcast. http://www.thisweekintech.com/

If you like listening to a bunch of guys talk about Tech stuff.... Give it a listen.

2004-06-29T10:55:00.000-05:00

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