The Arduino/IOT Ecosystem Rocks

   I recently purchased my first micro-controller to make a smart device I need for my home. I had no experience with such devices, did relatively little research, and bought the cheapest knock-off I could find. And it "just works". I ended up with an esp8266 based device for ~$3.80(https://ebay.to/2SmFx7Z); I'm sure I will find modules in the future which don't play nicely, or demand a number of pins this model lacks, but for a basic intro to the ecosystem it has been an incredibly smooth ride. I certainly have found the odd bit or two that I briefly stumbled over due to unfamiliarity with the framework, and there's a few things I've yet to work out(namely, how to test this code properly outside of a device), but overall it has been simply enjoyable. After making my device mostly functional for its intended purpose, I moved on to a task I figured that would be rather involved: adding the ability to remotely update the firmware so I may leave it in operation while adding features. As it turned out this took only about 10 lines of code to get the basic operation in place, taken from a platform-supplied example. If your background is coding and you haven't yet played around with a micro-controller/IoT platform like Arduino, I recommend you do; it is quite satisfying.
  

Enough Singing Competitions...that's not enough

    Can we agree that perhaps we've had enough singing competitions, and instead need to focus on other aspects of musical talent for a while? In the age of Youtube and autotune, we have plenty of "good enough" singers, and quite a few really good ones who never become famous. You could surely find a drop-in replacement for most young singers without much fuss. This isn't to suggest singing well is easy, just that it is accessible. Most people will sing along to their favorites songs at some point; a smaller portion will give it a go singing those songs on their own; a vastly smaller portion will attempt to learn an instrument; and far fewer will make a serious attempt at composing new music. We have constant singing competitions even though that is not the bottleneck to new enjoyable music. We need better and more diverse lyricists; we need more individuals talented with instruments who are capable of experimenting with compositions.
    Singing competitions ignore all of this. They make the assumption the winner will have a qualified backing-band, the lyrics will be written for them, the compositions done for them, etc. They may provide input and personalizations during the process, but there seems to be very little effort made to ensure they have talents in these other aspects. These competitions are looking for that drop-in replacement. At the other end of the spectrum you might have a "Battle of the Bands" style event, but that is not the solution either. Taken as a whole, there are countless reasons one band may seem better than another even while individual elements of the "better" band are inferior. Focusing on the band tends to hide the individual effort and talent required to be worthy of band membership in the first place. Importantly, they offer little in the way of a reference starting point for the individual.
    I would love to see a major broadcast network show focusing on band-essential instruments, or an individual instrument. America's Next Top Guitarist, maybe as a summer-season special; or perhaps a show focused on the creation of music rather than strictly the recitation of music. In general I find the most consistently enjoyable artists are the singer/songwriter types who are deeply involved with their music from start to finish. This is true even when they're not the most vocally talented, as the uniqueness of their lyrics and styles offer so much on their own. But for some reason, we are making very little effort to encourage these well-rounded artists from developing. Instead, we've encouraged a sea of next-American-Idol wannabe's who have been led to believe that singing a decent cover of a top-40 song, along with shutting your eyes and waving your hand at the proper time, is what it means to be a musical artist.

Lumina 300. Only 50 Lumens.

Looking at bike headlamps, as it might be nice to ride after dark instead of the 100 degree heat. Found the "Bell Sports Lumina 300" bike headlamp at Walmart. You might think that implies 300 Lumens, but you'd be wrong. It's only rated at 50. I wonder how many people are mislead by that product name. They aren't lying or misrepresenting, but it seems pretty likely that their goal is to confuse and mislead. I didn't purchase, as I've seen brighter ones online for the same price.

https://bit.ly/2NCvLfA

From the article:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44847184

In 2016, venture capitalist Hunter Walk wrote a Medium post about the Amazon Echo which he described as magical, but added that it was adversely affecting his child's behaviour.
The reason he gave was the lack of manners required to get a response.
"Cognitively I'm not sure a kid gets why you can boss Alexa around but not a person," he wrote.
In January 2018, the research company ChildWise published a report warning that children who grew up accustomed to speaking that way to a virtual personality might become aggressive in later dealings with humans.

    I'm all for being weary of Internet connected devices with children for both developmental and privacy concerns. But it seems that this concern of kids learning to be rude by the terse commands given to Alexa or Siri is rather ridiculous. Yes, I expect there will be some learning required for the child to separate talking to a human-sounding device vs talking to a human, but that's ok.  I have every confidence that children and parents are up to the task. Their interaction with pets is perhaps a good example of why this isn't a problem. Nearly any child who has a pet, especially a dog, will issue commands to that pet different than they will ask a person. We issue very terse commands: Sit. Stay. Come. Fetch. I don't recall there ever being concern about such rude commands impacting communication with humans. One difference between pets and an Alexa enabled device of course is that Alexa sounds human and speaks back. but in an age where children are regularly exposed to television and video games, which have their own real-sounding fake people, of which children already do well learning to separate real from fake, I can't see these devices as any more worrisome in that regard.

Kepler cost versus value

A brief search suggests the Kepler mission has cost around $600M. It has found around 4500 planets or candidate planets. Assuming at least 90% of those ultimately verify, that is a cost of $145k per planet found. This is obviously a very superficial and incomplete way to gauge the value of the mission, but I find it an intriguing number none-the-less. I can't help but wonder what the cost per planet found will be for TESS, though I get the sense it will be less than Kepler's. How fun would it be if it one day falls low enough that a crowd-funding effort could suffice:

   "purchase the $50 package, and you can name your own planet! Platinum-package purchases at $500 will get a personalized dvd and poster including the details of a follow-up planetary survey!"

   I know there's a lot of fake/inconsequential star-registries out there where you can pay to name a star, but it would gain a certain legitimacy if it was linked to an actual discovery project...and would be fun.