I’m sitting in my office, staring at my computer, wondering how this outline of a document I just wrote will ever get filled in. The Word file stares back at me, unblinking, unkind, and uncaring. Three weeks ago, in a fit of motivation, I wrote the headings for this document- Introduction, Problem Scope and Motivation, Approach, Approach Evaluation, Conclusion. If that seems non-descriptive, you’re right, and this skeleton of a document is not helping me at all.
My downfall for the past three weeks has not been procrastination or distraction (although I have been battling the two as well), the downfall of this document has been the pseudo-productive task that has driven me away from accomplishing this necessary creative work, but left me feeling satisfied as though I had achieved useful progress. It is only three weeks later that I can see those tasks for what they really were- especially as the glow of the screen shows me my empty document.
It is hard to work at home, I’ve concluded. But I knew that before I undertook my thesis in Arlington instead of Fargo. I moved so that I could be closer to Jaci- and we both knew that I would need a good work environment. So we rented a house with two floors- intending the upper floor to be the work area. A bit optimistically, we thought that separate living and work areas would be better for me to work in because I could “go to work” by going upstairs at 9 and “come home” by coming downstairs at 5. So far it has been mostly successful, but dog still demands attention, no matter which floor I’m on.
What ends up happening is that I take on tasks that seem productive, short term items that are usually completed quickly. They are errands, server updates, bits of code and script that I want to try out, updates to my resume, searching for a job, etc. They nicely get checked off my to-do list, and when 5 comes along, and Jaci comes home, I’m ready for a seemingly deserved relaxing evening. It is a tyranny that demands my time, and siphons my creative process away from my necessary work.
And as I stare at the shell of the document, it becomes clear, for the first time in my life, I think I have writers block! Too bad it is on something so important. The cursor at the end of the title of this document blinks at me reminding me that it is: “Resource Allocation in Hybrid Wireless Networks; A Proposal for Masters Thesis Work at NDSU”. So dear reader, please any advice you can give on breaking the deadlock would be much appreciated!
Ah, another task to check off my list: “complete blog post about pseudo-productive tasks” … doh.
I present to you now, our Twitter conversation during the Superbowl. Lame you say? Probably, but I have also embedded the Hulu ads that sparked such color commentary, making the twitterathon much more understandable. At the very least, our twitter shame will be kept for posterity, here, in the form of a blog post. Enjoy, and comment!
jacib
@AzmatZahra Solution: www.hulu.com/adzone All of the commercial entertainment without the inconvenience of football interruptions.
jacib
That was my most awesomest Superbowl ever. Thanks, twitter. Goodnight, friends. Let’s do this again, next year.
AzmatZahra
Dear #SuperBowl & #Snowpocalypse, I hate you. Thank you for depleting earth’s best resources, thus my drinking dt pepsi instead of diet coke
sumac715
I checked my phone after the game and I had 55 texts from Twitter and Facebook????
Tim and I decided that to deter boredom on a Monday in Arlington while Jaci was at work- we could take a tour of the Boeing plant in Everett. Because of my experience at Porsche in Stuttgart I figured that it would be a PR junket for the company, and probably a large gift shop with very worthless (but expensive) logo gear. Cynical as I may have been, I assumed that at the very least, there might be some good history to learn; and it was a nice day to watch airplanes land and take off at Paine field. Anyway, we both figured it wouldn’t be something Jaci would be interested in- so we may as well check it out since we had the chance. Little did we know that we were in for a very pleasant surprise because the tour was absolutely riveting and educational!
At the Boeing Plant
When I looked online for Boeing tours, I discovered that this was actually a premier tourist attraction. I thought that we could probably just show up at the Future of Flight building- a tiny Boeing museum near the main plant, and that we would be able to get in on a simple tour of the grounds. I did not expect that we would need reservations (we did, we almost didn’t get tickets because we called the day before) and that usually the 6 scheduled 90 minute tours would fill up quickly. The tickets got you into the main plant- we were escorted there by bus- and we could see the entire factory floor, plus access to the interactive Boeing experience, and the Stratodeck to observe flight operations at Paine Field! They cost $15.50 a person, twice as much as a movie ticket, but very worth it!
The Largest Building in the World by Volume
Before entering the tour, we were asked by a well armed guard to lock our cell phones, cameras, and any other electronic gear in a rental locker. We weren’t sure if this was to stop industrial espionage, equipment interference, or flashes but the security was very tight. Other restrictions included a height restriction, and advice that if you couldn’t descend and climb 21 steep stairs or walk a kilometer they would have to provide an accessible option apart from the main group. This only made me positive that we were going to see some cool stuff, though!
Landing in Front of the Plant
After a short introductory video, we clambered aboard a very nice, modern coach bus for a short drive from the Future of Flight Building, across an access road that skirted the Paine Field runway, to the main manufacturing building. Along the way we passed dozens of brand new jets parked on the tarmac outside paint hangers and other support and fuel buildings. Soon, though, we were parked in front of a massive hanger door.
If you have ever been down the Mulkiteo Speedway, you will have noticed this humongous hanger complex that is the largest building in the world by volume. In fact, you could fit all of the Walt Disney World theme park inside of this building and still have room for an indoor parking lot that could hold 1200 cars! The doors, painted blue with Boeing logos are roughly the size of American football fields- 90 feet high by 300 feet long! It looks big, certainly, but when you are standing, engulfed by those doors, it makes you feel downright Lilliputian!
Assembling Twin-Aisle, Wide Body Aircraft
The tour guide (Paul) led us down into an access tunnel that was a kilometer long- each of the 6 manufacturing bays have one. The tunnel runs pipes, cords, and people safely below the assembly floor- in fact, it is used by Boeing employees for exercise during bad weather! The tunnel was long, well lit, and had a laminated concrete floor. I could just envision all the fun things I could do in that tunnel with roller blades, bikes, moving dollies and a tow rope (or vegetable oil and a mattress)…
Halfway down the tunnel we came to a giant freight elevator that took us to the top floor of the middle of the E-shed. The floor was a visitors lobby with security guards, speakers for the tour guide and an amazing overlook view of the 747-8 Assembly station! Previous, smaller jets like the 727 and 737 had been manufactured by a moving assembly line (picture a giant scaffolding on wheels that grew over an aircraft being assembled as it moved down the assembly floor). Unfortunately the 747 was much to massive to be assembled in this way- so it is assembled in static stations.
In the front bay doors are giant aluminum sheet metal cutters, then stations for wing assembly. Wing skeletons are then connected with their control structures in a wing assembly area. The fuselage also has separate assembly structures running gown the far end of the bay. Then coming back down the other side of the bay all the pieces are put together. First, the central fuselage piece are attached to the wings, then the plane moves forward to a giant oven that cures the sealant. The plane moves forward where the front fuselage and tail pieces are moved by ceiling crane to be affixed the central portion and wings. This assembly area has air wing shaped concrete platforms that perfectly fit the growing aircraft. These structures are also used for access to add wiring and other control and structural elements.
Throttle Controls in the 727
After the main assembly, the landing gear is placed on the aircraft, from which point it moves forward as a single structure. Two more angled parking spots allow the plant workers to add the interior as well as do any testing and structural work that needs to be done. Needless to say, this bay is big enough for 5 747 aircraft lined up from nose to tail with space between! It is a massive scale! Sorry that I don’t have pictures- but again, they wouldn’t allow us to bring the camera on the tour.
A Stunning View
Too soon we were pulled from the overlook to move on with the rest of the tour. 747s are awesome, humongous, recognizable aircraft, and to see their birth was pretty extraordinary. However, as we went back down the tunnel to be transported by the bus to the new hangers, we were in for a similar surprise.
The new hangers were built to create the new 777 and 787 aircraft. As before we were taken to a tunnel to be lifted to the top overlook floor. However, the top overlook floor for the 777 and 787 bays was much, much nicer. Digital TVs, scale models, carpet, and sofas greeted us along with the fabulous view of the future of the airline industry (and its pretty cool present).
Landing Gear
If you don’t know too much about the aircraft that carry you when you travel, it may be a surprise to you that there are only really 2 companies that manufacturer your ride- Airbus and Boeing. Boeing aircraft used to be dominant in an airline’s fleet, but Airbus’ sleeker, more efficient planes soon gained a significant market share (think PC vs. Mac). While the 747 had been the workhorse of International Travel – the A340/380 could carry more passengers, farther, for less fuel. Boeing’s answer was the 777.
The 777 is a twin-aisle wide bodied, twin engine aircraft with the farthest range of any commercial aircraft, ever. It is sleek, fuel efficient, and it is the airframe that has carried me back and forth across the Atlantic all except one time. It is an amazing piece of engineering with over 6 million components. In fact the landing gear (seen above) is so high tech, it is the single most expensive component on the plane except for the engines!
We were treated by a view of the moving assembly line that creates the 777. The line- a scaffold on wheels that grows over aircraft as it is assembled – moves at 1.6 feet per minute and can be accessed by stair by the workers. Once again, overhead cranes carry pieces of the aircraft from their assembly bays to the moving line. We watched as the 35th 777 for Egypt Air was being finalized on the cleanest factory floor I’ve ever seen.
However, the 777 is not the future. The future is Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner aircraft that just had its first flight a few weeks ago.
The Future of Flight
Walking around a partition in the gallery we came to a view of the newest bay that is now being used to assemble the 787 Dreamliner. The 787 is a modern 250 seat aircraft that is made of lightweight, stronger than steel composite material. The modern GE engines are super fuel efficient, and that combined with its light weight gives the 787 an excellent range at highly economic costs.
The stronger material also allows the aircraft to be pressurized at 6000 feet, way more comfortable than the 8000 FAA mandated pressure that is normal now. In addition, the air is humidified, which means no more dry mouth! The composite wings also can bend 12 feet in either direction- meaning that they absorb much of the turbulence! Very soon, airline passengers should be treated to lower cost, way more comfortable flights on these amazing aircraft!
Flight Cone
787s are manufactured in a completely new way as well. Parts are no longer manufactured at the Boeing plant, but completed and integrated in specialty plants around the world. They are flown to the Everett plant via the Dreamlifter- a mega lifter created specially by Boeing for the job- essentially a modified 747 whose upper deck has been extended the entire length of the aircraft (it looks like a giant hot dog). The tail is on a giant hinge that can swing out to load entire sections of the 787 at once! Once flown to Everett, the Dreamliner can be assembled at a rate of one aircraft every three days!
To manage the global dispersion of the 787 manufacturing, the newest bay has a modern command center that looks like it belongs in NASA or a SciFi movie! Massive screens track the locations of all the parts as well as the percent completion of every 787 aircraft in production. Reps from every company involved are also forced to man the command center (presumably so that if something goes wrong they can immediately be chewed out!) Manufacturing of the 787 is a modern, technologically, and communication savvy process that is extremely sophisticated and impressive!
A Beautiful Day Watching Air Operations
After the tour, we went back to the Future of Flight museum to look around. We got to play in a real cockpit, design our own aircraft, and experience an interactive tour of the engines. While we were playing like kids in a candy store, we had the misfortune of hearing the massive wind-up of 4 Rolls Royce jet engines that indicated we missed the take off of one of the enormous Dreamlifters. Because of that, though, we discovered that there was an observation deck with a cafe where we could watch the testing air operations for the new aircraft!
Sitting on the Stratodeck watching Boeing Air Operations
The tour was more than I could have expected. Boeing really took care of their guests, providing access without disruption, and allowing complete viewing of the aircraft manufacturing process. The galleries and viewing areas were impeccably designed and furnished, and very comfortable. I could not ask for a better experience in a factory! If you are in Everett, the Boeing Future of Flight Tour is a must see!
More pictures of the day:
At the Boeing Plant
Catching the Breeze
Flying Pan Am
The Pilot
Tim is my Copilot
Throttle Controls in the 727
Through the Windshield
Northwest Pilots
Pull up!
In the Cabin
In Front of the Dreamlifter
Media Server
Flight Cone
Landing Gear
Plane Design
Sitting on the Stratodeck watching Boeing Air Operations
Well we did it! Today, January 12, 2010 we got a 5 for Fiver- 5 posts from the Five authors of Bengfort.com! As you can see, we cracked the Moet and cheers to you guys! New Years Resolutions resolved! One big problem, about this though, is that the five posts are kind of buried beneath the last one (and now this one). Until I can get the separate authors page, I thought I would put the links here up front so everyone could read them:
Just a quick update: I realize that after our extremely successful conversation during our “Bengfort.com Seminar” we came up with a number of action items for the site that I have yet to follow up on. I want to assure you that I’m working on these things, and I just want to give you a status report.
Guyana Cooking Video- still in edit. I haven’t had much time to look at it, but when I did, I realized, I’m not such a pro! I’m hoping to have something together and posted by the end of the month, probably via a you tube stream and an embedded link. If you guys have any suggestions, I could use the help!
Individual Author pages. I have been exploring the following three solutions:
Wordpress MU/Buddypress
Theme edit:
Site Design edit
As I mentioned during our seminar, these aren’t necessarily hard tasks, but they aren’t very easy either. I would like to get a quick solution, but I also want to do it right. You will see more on the virtues of each of these options in future posts. In the meantime, I have done the DNS legwork, so that the following:
ben.bengfort.com
devi.bengfort.com
bethany.bengfort.com
jaci.bengfort.com
winston.bengfort.com
Are all valid, but they just point to the main webpage right now. Soon those will take you to your own author pages depending on how we do it.
Old Post Import: So I have got going on this, you will start to see your old blog posts starting to trickle back into the site. For instance, most of Jaci’s old blog posts are up, but they are password protected (email me if you want the password). Winston’s are all up now too. Bethany, Devi, and My blog posts are sans pictures unfortunately, but we can discuss how to remedy that.
Avatars/Email/Other: A few changes have been made to the profiles section (avatars are now up, you can edit them in your profile if you wish). If you’re having problems with your @bengfort.com email, let me know. I still haven’t found a dashboard style program yet. And if there is anything else, please comment!
I just want to thank you guys again for so lovingly putting up with your technical support geek- I’m really proud of our site and the effort you guys have put into it!
Well, it may have been late, but Jaci got me an amazing Christmas gift this year- an Emotiv EPOC Headset! Although it failed to arrive in time for Christmas- it did not fail to impress! Emotiv is a small company and preferred to save money by manufacturing all orders as close to Christmas as possible (and I think it got held up at customs due to the Christmas terrorism plot) . Jaci had remembered that during a research paper on Brain Computer Interface devices I wrote for an eCommerce class, I had discovered the EPOC and had declared its coolness- so she made a mental note and wallah- a Christmas miracle!
So what is it you might ask? Well I could go into detail about EEG patterns and the “intent impulse” that can be detected by electrodes and translated into computer events, and the potential for machine learning algorithms to divine differences between different impulses and map them to specific events- but wouldn’t you rather just have me tell you that I can now control my computer with my brain!
The Emotiv EPOC Headset is basically a simple wireless EEG machine that takes readings from specific points around your head. More complicated than that- it translates the data back to your computer and a cognitive control panel tries to determine what you’re thinking- or more specifically, it tries to determine what you are thinking you intend to do. By a training process, the software maps specific EEG readings to specific actions (the basics were push, pull, lift, drop) and then other applications can “listen” for these events much like they “listen” for mouse events when the mouse is moved. The result is that you can control the computer with your brain!
Additionally, the software also maps facial expressions, and has an gyroscope to determine where you are looking at any given time. It can even determine your emotions much the same way a lie detector can! All of these applications together provide a very interesting basis for interacting with the computer in the near future. Even now, Microsoft is developing Natal- controlling a gaming device via gesticulation, so it may not be too far off!
But everyone don’t run out and order the headset first thing after you finish reading- it still has a long way to go. Training myself to think correctly was just as hard as training the computer. This certainly wasn’t a speed of thought interaction! In addition the headset can only determine intent to action- it cannot read your mind, so if you were hoping to unlock that novel you know is up there- it won’t be too good for that! It took a long while for Jaci and I to get it on the first time, there are lots of removable electrodes that have to be wet with saline solution (which is why I’m such a mess in these pictures) and they have to be placed in exactly the right spot, unimpeded by things like Mohunlall hair! It is still a geek toy- and man what a cool one! (Poor Chumby is jealous!)
Jaci and I have decided that Christmas cards should be a permanent fixture of the holiday time for our family. I believe in the past we have sent out cards to just family, but this year was the first year that we gave some thought into the matter, and therefore we hope the beginning of successful card giving from here on out. To that end, we created our master Christmas Card list- the one that shall be edited in the future based on naughtiness or niceness with the Bengforts- and we staged our first photo shoot in a hopefully long line of Christmas card photo shoots.
Because many of you were so impressed with the card, we thought that we should share it online now that Christmas is over and everyone should have already received their card. Also, some of you who did receive cards may not recognize this picture, and we figured we had better explain why before we got into trouble (we hope to maintain our niceness on other’s Christmas card lists!) First- if you didn’t receive a print card, that is completely my fault. Our list was fairly short in the beginning- so I only ordered 20 cards, however, during the shipping of the cards, the list ballooned past 40, so as a stop gap measure, we printed pictures and included them in some store bought cards. Also, if you received the so called “nice family picture”, that was because we didn’t realize what a hit the picture would be, and thought we had better also look semi-sane to our relatives. Our bad- if you want a copy of the card picture (or the nice picture) let me know and I can make that happen!
Secondly- the question I get most commonly: “Were Winston’s eyes photoshopped?” No, in fact it was not! While I did use Photoshop to produce that nice warm yellow and red tone to the picture, create good color contrast and balance, and generally touch up the picture, Winston and his eyes are pure products of his doggy modeling ability. Our original intent was that I would be lifting him to the top of the tree as the angel on top. After two attempts at this, both Winston and I felt that we couldn’t keep that up. Instead, we switched over to the pointing method. Winston still refused to cooperate, probably due to the previous two episodes where I was trying to pick him up. However, during the 10th attempt, he finally sat- and this was the resulting image!
We were incredibly lucky to get this shot, and in only 10 tries! As you can see from the nice picture below, Winston refused to behave for even the nice pictures, but we were glad we caught him so photogenically! Here’s hoping your little angels cooperated more this holiday! Happy Boxing Day!
Version 2 of the Bengfort.com Keywords Visualization is now complete. This new update includes tool tips (hover the mouse over a node and the tool tip appears) that describe the data in plain language- in this case, how many times the keyword appears in Bengfort.com (note that multiple appearances in a single post are all counted, as opposed to the number of posts that include the keyword, I hope my grammar was clear enough to explicate this). In addition, now the strength of the links is now visually shown via color and thickness. This actually expanded the graph, so I may have to refactor so it all fits on the screen. Finally, if you click on a node, it searches Bengfort.com for the last 7 posts that include the keyword and present those posts to you!
Additionally, the graph has now been made clearer. Link strength is identified on a 5 point scale, however I have excluded strengths of 1 or 2, this immensely cleans up the graph and only shows the most relevant links. While this means some links no longer appear, other connections have suddenly become more apparent. (I’m especially fond of the link between our disciplines and technology!)
This version finalizes the tutorial on SitePoint.com with modifications made to make it work for Bengfort.com. I know this graph is still far from perfect, and I intend to continue to explore making this application more usable. To that end, any feedback from you guys would be much appreciated! For instance, tell me what you see, and if there is anything I could do to make it better. (Remember, I don’t know what you see, I only see what is on my browser). If there is any functionality you think should be included, if there are any keywords you want added, please let me know! I know that it is easy to read the post and to forget about it, but the more you think about it, the better I can make it!
I’m constantly amazed about how people can manipulate data and statistics any way they see fit to make their own point. I don’t know about you, but whenever someone gives me the “numbers” I’m very skeptical of where they came from. Just consider the fodder from our so called major news networks that John Stewart has to make fun of! I think I’m right in saying that people are all too willing to believe “numbers” just because they look science-y or there is a pretty bar graph. Even simple inspection will reveal flaws- percentages that don’t add up to 100 or whose summation far exceeds 100. Graphs that use highlighting and weighted fonts that don’t necessarily apply to a distribution, or the simple omission of keys (legends) that would prove an opposite point.
That’s why the science (and art) of data visualization so appeals to me. We have learned bar graphs, line graphs, and pie charts since we were in elementary school, but these are the tools that are so often used to mislead us: simply because they are too simple to hold the complex data that we are now used to analyzing on a daily basis. Data visualization attempts to take complex data sets and graphically represent them in a way that humans can instantly comprehend their meaning. Visual cues including size, color, shape, and difference are all used to represent some form of data. With the growth of web technologies and web databases, an ever increasing number of amazing and interesting data visualizations has appeared, and soon I believe that elementary school kids will be taught even more complex data structures.
So, when I got a tweet from Sitepoint.com concerning building a keyword visualizer with Flex- I knew that this would be perfect for our website. So I read the article and built a version of what they used for our website! (Note that at this point, I’m still awaiting the third part of this three part series, and then I will continue to make my own customizations, so stay tuned for more updates with the visualization!) Essentially what is happening is that a script goes through our blog database and picks out keywords in all the posts. Keywords that appear in the same post are considered linked. For instance, by writing science and technology in this post together, those two words will now have a link between them. In addition the script counts the occurrences of the keyword as well as the occurrences of the links. (If you’re keeping score- this is a server side PHP script that outputs the results in a JSON file format).
The visualization is handled by Adobe’s Flex framework combined with the SpringGraph API. The more a keyword appears, the larger its nodes will be- in addition, the higher the count of links between keywords, the larger the link will be. Distance is also a factor- the larger keywords are on the outside, with the lesser keywords on the inside- they “repulse” each other by the strength of their links. Now, by simple inspection we can see that Guyana linked with Recipes and Cookbook- is by far the largest part of our website. Benjamin is connected to China and Ballet (don’t know why) while cat and dog are so closely connected that they are almost touching! You can see how this provides basically a topical analysis of our blog!
I know you guys may not find this particularly interesting, but I hope you can grasp how much data has been distilled into an easily viewable graph- we have over 600 posts in our blog, each with about 700 words in them- all distilled into an easily comprehensible visual medium. As our blog changes, so will the graph. I think that in all our fields- International Relations, Political Science, Anthropology, Business, International Education, and Computer Science- this is extremely relevant, and I hope that you guys will make use of the tools that I have shown you. (speaking of those fields, I should probably add them as key words!). If you are interested in doing any sort of complex visualization- trust me, I’m your guy to develop an application for you that will do it!
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