Blog
Celebrating one year back in the hobby…
August 7, 2018 | RalphToday marks my one year anniversary of my return to amateur radio. To celebrate, I presented a talk on the Raspberry Pi to our local radio club, the McHenry County Wireless Association. As promised, I am uploading my slide deck, … Read More
Arduino, Raspberrry PI, or any SPI enabled device: Speak Now!
April 25, 2018 | RalphI happened across an interesting Kickstarter project, BIG BUDDY TALKER , an inexpensive way to add natural sounding speech to your next project. It features more than 1000 sounds (visit the Kickstarter to see the current list of words) that … Read More
Raspberry Shake Wins Innovation Prize
March 24, 2017 | RalphCongratulations to OSOP SA, the team who brought us the [Raspberry Shake], a personal seimograph, on being awarded the Panama National Prize for Business Innovation for their work on the Shake.
Left to right: Amilcar Watcher, Ángel Rodriguez, Kiara … Read More
Review: The Turing Exception
January 31, 2017 | RalphThe Turing Exception by William Hertling My rating: 5 of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5.0 for the book and 5 out of 5 for the series – Amazing glimpse into what our future could be.
I started William … Read More
Fitbit Sleep Data Analysis
January 25, 2017 | RalphDo you ever wonder how your sleep patterns stack up against other Fitbit users? Well, the people at Fitbit did. They gathered 2015 sleep data from over 10 million Fitbit users and compared the statistics by generation (Millennial, Gen X, … Read More
Review: Quarantine
December 30, 2016 | RalphQuarantine by Greg Egan My rating: 3 of 5 stars
3.5 out of 5 — Futuristic hard Sci-Fi with a great premise and so-so characters.
Warning: Not treadmill safe. Listening to or reading this book while on a treadmill … Read More
Raspberry Shake online!
December 6, 2016 | RalphToday, I received my Raspberry Shake (an inexpensive professional grade personal seismograph) that uses a Raspberry Pi for data collection, processing, and uploading data (if you choose to share seismic data with the world).
It took only a few minutes … Read More
Review: Kill Process
September 11, 2016 | RalphKill Process by William Hertling My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Most excellent! My favorite Hertling book thus far.
My introduction to William Hertling’s writing was Avogadro Corp (book one of the Singularity series), a speculative fiction novel set … Read More
Review: Anomaly Flats
August 13, 2016 | RalphAnomaly Flats by Clayton Smith My rating: 5 of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5 – Imaginative, quirky, and thoroughly enjoyable. Could make a great graphic novel series.
Anomaly Flats was a wonderful diversion for a summer’s read. Far … Read More
Review: Avogadro Corp
February 28, 2015 | RalphAvogadro Corp by William Hertling My rating: 4 of 5 stars
3.5 out of 5 Pretty good overall. The technical jargon holds up, parts of the plot and the character development not as much. It was short and fast … Read More