Over at the IEEE Spectrum there is an article about turning contact lenses into portable displays. So far they have the resolution on working prototypes up to 1×1 but have a non working prototype up to 8×8. The obvious question is “how soon can we play quake on our eyes?”
or at least a technical discussion of some of the problems with LED based lighting appears in the most recent issue of IEEE Spectrum. Good read if you skip most of the device physics (unless you happen to like that sort of thing in which cast feel free to read all the details).
Not much new but a group at NIST has also been able to produce memristors, this time on a flexible sheet. Based on the description in the article I expect a flood of additional announcements as more teams discover that the unintended effects seen in new products turn out to be memristors in disguise.
I recently got to experience two very different customer service events at two different low cost airlines. The first with Southwest the second with Air Tran.
The first involved a flight from San Jose to Los Angeles. When I first booked the flight it was SJC to LAX late in the evening. Within a day or two I had to change the flight. Since this was a fully refundable ticket I didn’t have any fee but I may have confused the agent when I said I would like to change my flight from number X to number Y. The agent said that he couldn’t find any flights by that number from SJC to LAX and I agreed that made sence since the flight I wanted to change to was from SJC to SNA but didn’t want to change anything else. The agent then said no problem. However when I got to SJC the kiosk couldn’t find my reservation so I headed to the ticket counter while booting my laptop to find the confirmation email. When I opened the two copies of the email I found that the second (for the new flight) had changed the date to the day I called rather than retaining the original date. The agent at the desk took a look and then started typing. Shortly there after as I was diging out a credit card in expectation of a fee she handed me a boarding pass and said thanks for flying Southwest. I’ve since heard from others that this sort of no question no problem solution is characteristic of Southwest
The second event involved AirTran on a flight from BWI to BOS. I arrived at the airport at 5pm for a 9pm departure hoping to stand by for either the 5:30, the 6:30, or the 7:30. I was unable to figure out how to get the kiosk to do a standby. When I found a person I was told I had to check in via kiosk before talking to anyone. Once I checked in I was told that since there were in a ground hold due to weather the couldn’t do a standby but that the gate could. The gate couldn’t because of the delays (the 4:30 hadn’t left yet) and sent me to customer service. Customer service was able to but said the chances weren’t good. At the end of a long evening I made it onto the 7:30 which left at 9:30. The notible customer service event was that over the course of the evening the number of agents in the terminal kept dropping. By about 8:30 there was a maintenance guy in reflective vest (possibly a supervisor) as the only person at the customer service desk and a gate agent supervior running both the gate for the 7:30 and 9pm flights to Boston. He was absolutely amazing (to the point that I wrote a compliment to the airline) but it was sort of odd that there was no one there to help him.
I should note that while AirTran and JetBlue seem to aim for the same staffing (one agent per active gate) at JetBlue the flight attendants staff the desk when the show up and know enough of the system to change seating assignments and do stand by boarding passes. AirTran seems to leave the single agent there along.
All that said I would still fly AirTran for sort non-stop flights on the east coast but choose just about anyone else first. Bottom line AirTran isn’t as bad as USAir but I wouldn’t trust them to not loose my luggage if I ever checked any.
I recently stayed in an amazing suite at the Holiday Inn Shanghai Pudong, I don’t think the room was quite representative of the general room, but one of my colleagues was in a normal room and said it was quite nice. I suspect that the hotel was built as either an Intercontinental or a Crown Plaza but someone decided there were already too many of each in Shanghai. Either that or Holiday Inn has gotten much nicer since I last stayed at one by the side of a highway. In either case I would certainly stay there again if I have to go back to Shanghai a city I could easily skip (expecially given the long flights involved).
I’ve recently begun to wonder what industry I work in. I had though it was Embedded Systems but recent events suggest that may be incorrect. Some of these events are too overly obvious to be considered meaningful, for example Virtutech has stopped exhibiting at ESC on the grounds that no one attending the show is looking to buy tools for SW development (I will ignore the question of just how many people actually attend ESC). Other events though require more thought. As a recent example Paul McLellan’s recent article “Arm, Atom, PowerPC” on the EDA Graffiti suggested that PowerPC is essentially unused in embedded. Now From my point of view power architecture is more than 75% of what I see, thus I must not be working in embedded, right?
Digging deeper into this brings up the “question of what is embedded?” Reading the comments on Paul’s article it seems that Embedded is defined by number of units with the bar set at the number of units of 32 and 64 bit processors sold by Intel. Or more clearly if you ship more unit than Intel ships Desktop CPUs then you are embedded, if not you are something else. While clear it could suggest that toothpicks are embedded systems.
Now I would define embedded systems as digital systems containing CPUs that do not have a traditional desktop PC/server user interface (screen, kbd, mouse). Unfortunately this definition makes netbooks and some smart phones not embedded, and many might argue that since they contain ARM processors they clearly are. Using this definition I clearly work in the Embedded industry as I primarily work with customers building: Satellites, Airplanes, Military Equipment, Networking Equipment, Telephone Equipment, and Enterprise Compute Servers. (I’ll admit that Enterprise Compute Servers are generally considered traditional computers and not embedded since they are the direct descendant of the first computers but they generally don’t have a keyboard and mouse.) Given that list lets look at the CPUs used:
So given that list I don’t see ARM any where does that mean these aren’t embedded? Perhaps we should look at power instead. I’ll grant that with the exception of Satellites and Game Consoles the system power for these is generally measured in Kilo Watts or Mega Watts not Milli Watts that most ARM based systems are measured in but on a per CPU basis they all care about power consumption. Or perhaps we should consider price, this time none of these systems tend to be < $100 the way most ARM devices are. Perhaps we should look at the SW stack, most of these systems have very large software stacks, roughly divided between general purpose (read linux) and Real Time OS based but in both cases large teams of engineers devote substantial amounts of time to these, unlike many ARM based systems which can still outsource SW development.
What can I conclude from this? That the markets I work in and the markets for ARM based systems are different. Is one Embedded and the other not? Hard for me to say, I’m not in marketing.
The Hilton Santa Clara is a little disappointing. As one would expect from a name brand hotel the beds and fixtures are quite good, but the network connectivity is slow and the selection of on site restaurants a little limited. While all the food I have tried was quite good there were no simple options. I find that after a long day with customers or at a trade show (the Santa Clara Convention Center across the street being a prime draw for the hotel) all I want is something easy and uncomplicated. The simplest I could find was the pulled pork sandwich with seasoned fries on cibatta bread. The squid ink ravioli with some sort of complex sauce was probably second. No club sandwich in sight.
Also there is no lobby shop as such. There is an automated machine that takes credit cards an sells most of the stuff you expect (water, batteries, iPods, etc…) but its not the same.
All said I would not hesitate to go back when I need to stay in the area though at the moment I’m inclined to try the Hyatt unless it continues to be more expensive.
The Austin Renaissance is one of my favorite hotels. The rooms and service are excellent, as would be expected at a full service Marriott, and the breakfast buffet is amazing.
The rooms differ from the Marriott standard in that they have a certain TX flavour. I can’t think of any other hotel that has a cow hide (with hair) ottomon and pictures of suprs.
The downside is the frequent overpricing, though I have frequently found discount (corporate and weekend rates) that bring the price below that of the local Courtyards.
The buffet is a little more than Marriott standard price, though the selection is also greater. Be sure to get to breakfast on the early side as the staff trys to clear the place by about 8:30am. The lobby coffee shop is good though the selection is odd, no standard bottled water but several types of designer water in glass bottles.
For a number of reasons I tried the
The fixtures in the room were quite new and included a flat panel TV, free internet (wired and possibly wireless), small fridge and microwave. The bed was
The complimentary breakfast was one of the best I’ve seen of the class. The class being free, self-serve, hotel breakfasts. The main reason was that the breakfast room was about twice as large as usual and they had to fill the larger space with something.
The treadmills, stationary bike, and stair master in exercise room were all in working order.
Bottom line: if the courtyard or double tree are available for a reasonable price I’d go there but in cases where they are either unavailable or > $250 I wouldn’t hesitate to fall back to the Fairfield.
It seems my travel season (normally between 8 and 11 months a year) has started and given recent changes in airline alliances I’ve had to reevaluate my preferred route between favorite points A and B. (For those not paying attention Delta bought NorthWest and there is a strong rumor that Continental will leave SkyTeam in the near future, this is relevant because it affects which routs get upgraded and which don’t.)
My current set of point A and B are Boston and SJC (San Jose, CA). Last year my choices were to change planes in: MSP, or IAH unless I wanted to stop more than once (non stop just doesn’t happen on SkyTeam and 6+ hours in coach on a 757 just isn’t fun no matter how often you do it). Now with the addition of Delta we also have the options of ATL and SLC. If we add in SFO as a reasonable approximation of SJC we also add EWR, CVG, JFK, and DTW so lets look at what this means: (when different aircraft schedule different time the longer is shown) (for reverse directions remove 30min to an hour)
| Point A | Point C | time | Point B | time | total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BOS | MSP | 3h30m | SJC | 4h02m | time |
| BOS | IAH | 4h40m | SJC | 4h20m | time |
| BOS | ATL | 3h00m | SJC | 5h29m | time |
| BOS | SLC | 5h40m | SJC | 2h04m | time |
| BOS | EWR | 1h15m | SFO | 6h13m | time |
| BOS | CVG | 2h34m | SFO | 5h10m | time |
| BOS | DTW | 2h20m | SFO | 5h13m | time |
| BOS | JFK | 1h30m | SFO | 7h10m | time |
from this it becomes clear that JFK is almost completely useless and EWR should only be used eastbound. SLC and ATL are both marginal at best and both CVG and DTW are questionable westbound, though all four are reasonable eastbound. This leave us with … MSP and IAH, though if IAH goes away I’m not sure what my second choice becomes, I’ll have to try the routes and decide which planes I dislike more. Ahh the magic, wonder, and elegance of modern travel.