Welcome to engeniusBLOG

From time immemorial, cheating our fellow humans has been with us. From the alchemist instilling greed by persuading the punters that they had observed a base metal being changed into gold, to the trader keeping a finger on his scales while weighing produce. Some offences in Europe carried an automatic death penalty -- like clipping, where a silver coin would be cut evenly around its edge and the resulting haul of silver melted down and sold (the reason many coins were later milled aound the perimeter). There are still scammers out there and the Internet has made it a great deal cheaper, for a lot more, Nigerian scam letters to be distributed around the world. It was nice to read, however, of the Dutch police arresting more than 100 West Africans who were, apparently, behind one of the "You have won 30 milion Euros" spams. But despite all the continuing scams, there have always been many more cheats in the games arena, whether it was by doping horses (or human competitors), loading dice, marking c...

Editor's Note: I'd hoped to get to this second half of tales from the Maker Faire much sooner that a month after the first installment appeared, but the challenges of attending several conferences, our newly-expanded web site, and the normal demands of our weekly publishing schedule just kept getting in the way. Hopefully, it was worth the wait to find out how I narrowly escaped death at the hands of a flame-spewing jet-powered combat hovercraft... Attending Maker Faire in San Mateo was a great antidote for the pre-packaged corporate-designed activities that usually pass for fun these days. The can-do, do-it-yourself, spirit of the Faire was extremely evident in the huge assortment of home-made and radically-modified commercial vehicles that dotted the fairgrounds -- including a DieMoto, a biodiesel-burning motorcycle which its creators hope to pilot to a world land speed record some time this year. Built by The Crucible, a Bay Area non-profit educational collaboration of arts, industry and community, it ma...

Even after working with him for more than a decade, my colleague, Paul, is always surprising me with one thing or another. Last week I was doing research for a story about the environmental issues involved with compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) technology when he beat me to the punch with his editorial. He also went a bit further and pointed out the less-than-rational legislation that's driving their adoption before those problems can be addressed. While I might disagree with Paul about whether or not CFLs are quite the toxic threat that he feels they are, I think his analysis of the legislation that will virtually ban incandescent bulbs in Canada by 2012 is spot-on. More importantly, it's another example of well-intended environmental laws creating as many problems as they seek to solve. Don't get me wrong:- I'm a big advocate of CFLs (about 80% of the lights in my house are CFLs) because of the huge amounts of energy they save; but they really do represent a significant mercury hazard if they are allowed to e...

My daughter sat her very first real exam at school today. A momentous occasion, tackled like a professional with a major reward being that when the exam was over she was free to leave for the day. More exams tomorrow and the next day and then, on Friday, her grade will have their bikes carted off to part of the Galloping Goose Trail, a 55 km multiple-use trail, where they themselves will arrive on a school bus. They will cycle about 10 km to a lake where they can swim, picnic and jape around until it is time to cycle back to the bus. A good way of letting off steam after a grueling week for them all. Now she will take exams every year until she goes to college -- when she still will get little relief. But she is luckier than I was. My first exams were at age eleven when it was decided what sort of secondary education you were best suited for. She is also lucky that until she does her Provincial exams these only count for 10% of the year's grading, with the balance coming from coursework. For me, 100% of the...

What do Internet broadcasters and wind power enthusiasts have in common? It turns out a whole lot more than you'd imagine. For one thing, both technologies have the potential to improve our lives and become the basis of new industries that could help energize our economy. They are also quite disruptive and could undermine existing industries which have become quite cozy with their current quasi-monopoly status. That's why both Internet radio and the wind power industry are under assault by stupid, shortsighted regulations (bought and paid for by the very industries they threaten) that are specifically designed to cripple them. Most of you are already familiar with it, so I won't bore you with a long lecture on the virtues of Internet Radio. But as I said in a 2004 editorial, "It's allowed me to turn off the homogenized audio pap that passes for broadcasting these days and fill my time at the computer with music from lower-power independent college stations such as WPRB, WXPN, and the eccentric, unpolish...

Allowing politicians to make choices for us is generically stupid of us. Allowing them to make engineering decisions makes me, at least, want to scream. A whole swath of politicians, around the world, are offering their sage advice on green issues, and then legislate only those that seem to pan out well when responses from the public show understanding -- and acceptance. When it comes to the really important green issues our elected representatives back off, probably because one or more of their donating financial base complains. In general there seems to be a total lack of understanding that there are other issues than the simple in-your-face statements that are offered. An electric car, for example, sounds like a wonderfully green choice until you sit down and do the complete energy budget. Where does the electricity come from, using what natural resources? What resources did the manufacture of the battery cost us? It's never a simple line, there is always a total cost, an equation which is sometimes quit...

“This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions, you know, the real Wrath-of-God type stuff. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.” - Dr Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters Greetings from Baltimore, home of one of the prettiest harbors on the East Coast, one of the nation’s most disappointing baseball teams and, at least for this week, Dr Lance Leventhal’s Traveling Embedded Difference Engine Exposition and Medicine Show, otherwise known as the MicroTCA Summit.  I don’t take the sudden coziness between DSPs and FPGAs I’ve seen here as an omen signaling the end of the world but, if the buzz at this event is any indicator, Micro-TCA could be the catalyst that legitimizes this mixed-marriage and moves it into the mainstream.   It’s not like signal processing is anything new to FPGAs; most high-end products have been sporting hardware multipliers and other dedicated DSP elements for the last couple of years. But the relatively ...

The time of Spring growth in the garden is a happy one: the roses are budding -- trying to burst forth their colors and aromas; the first strawberry was harvested yesterday and some of the seeds of beans, corn, peas and radishes have germinated, waiting for the moment I have time to transplant them, so another batch can then be started. But while we help nature on its way, and wonder whether the apple trees have done their own thing and properly pollinated, how often do we sit back and ponder how our own professional growth is doing? I remember it as being a very natural process when I was much younger; you leave college with your bit(s) of swankily-embossed paper, having been measured and measured over the previous years. And then you are in a world where someone will still be measuring you to see what pay raises you might get; what promotions you might be offered. But the people doing that job, you find, are rather perfunctory at their duties and you cannot be sure they actually know you, your capabilitie...