Engineering Vistas

Gemini LMM

More Grid Talk

Continuing with our curriculum design talk:

What’s good about substations is their layout is likewise a circuit diagram of textbook quality, looking down from above especially, the “drone view”. Simulations work as well. These are already genres on YouTube. I’m not suggesting we need a lotta peeps flying their commercial drones over substations. On the contrary, I’m only in favor of engineers doing that (not destruction engineers either, the ones who only know how to wreak havoc).

Why we make this our promising beginning is all the electrical principles of capacitance and inductance, impedance more generally, expressed in ohms, are on full display in a highly macroscopic way. Plus we’re dealing with AC. Too many bonehead classrooms never get beyond DC digital. Not that we have anything against digital: the control room takes some of that AC power for its own DC use, to power the monitoring relays, ready to snap a circuit breaker if the waves get too stormy, as in outside safe operational parameters.

Don’t wait until they niche you into “linesman” or something before you take up the topic of carrier signals, used to keep the power supply well behaved. Quoting Gemini (Google + AI):

A carrier signal in a power substation is used for Power Line Carrier Communication (PLCC), which utilizes high-voltage transmission lines to transmit protection commands, telemetry data, and voice communication between remote electrical substations. [1, 2]

What we help our students discern is whether they’re getting a “for dummies” version of everything, not because they’re dummies, but because they live in a society that thrives on dummies and needs them to be dummies. Also good doobies. These go together in a lotta ways. 

So yeah, start with capacitors and circuit breakers the size of a truck, then work your way down to the same principles at work on a motherboard, with everything tiny and maybe also DC, but maybe not? Don’t let them corral you into only thinking about Arduinos though. 

Don’t get me wrong: I love Arduinos and the like. I’ve both taken and taught classes wherein Arduinos were featured. Make Magazine was just down the hall from our code school back in the day.

It’s not either/or. On the contrary, it’s zoom in (tiny small) and zoom out (macro big), with the same topics in focus: electromagnetics, radio transmission, signalling, frequencies, resistance, compression and tension. 

Take advantage of “substation macro” to pry open the secrets of “gate logic micro” later, or at the same time. 

Then use substation literacy to connect back to the hydro-cycle: evaporation (clouds and wind); condensation (rain, lightning); gravity-fed water systems (power and agriculture); deltas and watersheds (fisheries, hatcheries), marine biology, and back to evaporation. 

Cascadian Pragmatism pays attention to the ecosystem embedding (what some people still call the economy).

Hacker Lore

Hah hah, fooled ya. I meant weed hacker lore. That’s a device (a weed hacker is), as in Over the Hedge.

I’ve been joking how I’m “keeping up with the Jones’s” which means competing with others in one’s neighborhood to show off one’s worldly goods. Having a flashy new midlife crisis car in the driveway is classic. That’s not me though: my Nissan is from 1997.

Keeping up with the Jones’s is a way of showcasing one’s own prosperity, or at the very least one’s ability to keep up appearances, and then maybe take it to the next level if one gets lucky and hits the jackpot. 

In the Norman Rockwell version, Asteroid City trad-wives would gossip over the back fence about their latest appliances, inflaming jealousy and subtle hints to the hubby that it might be time to ask for that promotion. A willingness to relocate helps. There’s always another McMansion waiting on the other end.

My old podunk electric weed hacker in the garage, which needs to be plugged in (long cord), is just a toy compared to this new guy, this new cordless “energy slave” I just unboxed. I’ll be able to pleasure the landlord nextdoor with my more manicured-looking side yard, typically a gnarly briar patch. 

No, this is not a promotional posting. Ego is not paying me (that’s the brand). I’m just narrating a sequence of events. I acquired the Ego in Springfield, the town made famous by The Simpsons.

There’s another meaning of Jones however, and I’m not talking about Davy Jones (the guy with the locker), no, I mean Generation Jones. 

You can look it up: some demographers decided it made sense, at least in the population they studied, to split the Boomers into two, by renaming the latter portion of the wave to Jones, in recognition of various sea-changes.

What were those sea-changes? Why not inspire some comments and discussion among my Facebook friends?

Farmland Physics

A motif in these blogs is First Person Physics, which I started as a meme on a physics teacher list (AAPT types) at which point Dr. Bob Fuller recognized the potential and invited me on to his “pirate ship” (his enterprise), then seeking a next NSF grant. 

I became Bob’s project’s webmaster and got to join a meetup in Lincoln, Nebraska in the build-up to the application. I also got invited to an AAPT conference as part of the deal. 

When Dr. Fuller passed away, I was privileged to join an event celebrating his stellar achievement in physics andragogy and pedagogy. Among his acknowledged influences: Robert Karplus and Piaget.

Today was about First Person Physics on a farm. The farm is bordered by a scenic river and the architect-landscaper wants to take advantage of the view’s best vantage points, easily reachable by foot or electric ATV. 

However the river also floods periodically so no additional permanent structures are permitted. Rolling and re-angling a log, already nearby — albeit shortened with a chainsaw — to such a vantage point (the one by Walden Pond — no we’re not in New England) is permissible in terms of codes, but an unanchored log is likely to float.

The final design includes long metal bladed stakes that, when twisted into the topsoil, will anchor the chains over each end of the log bench, keeping it from drifting off. We’ll see if it works. The Gator was enlisted to help with the rolling and re-angling. Even a small log is too heavy for one person to manhandle.

This is where the concept of “energy slaves” enters in. We’re talking about what replaced horses, and human slaves before that (serfs, cow-pokes, many land-bound farmhands), namely John Deere and Kubota tractors, combines, wheel and reel lines, agricultural grade pumping and irrigation systems. 

A mechanized farm still needs personnel, but they may spend more time in the control room than out in the fields.

This Oregon farm where I do work-study is not an animal farm though. No chickens, no pigs, no livestock of any kind. The property therefore doesn’t need to be fenced. However, future owners have been kept in mind during the design process. The animal stalls and watering troughs are all in place, if currently unused. Sometimes a shepherd will rent grazing space, but they bring their own removable fences nowadays.

My suggestion to the owner was we organize university fleet vans to bring doctoral candidates and other degree program students out into rural Oregon for a look see, perhaps to participate in safe work best practices. Tour a windmill farm. Visit the AC-to-DC HVDC site near The Dalles, as well as BPA. 

Check out a data center or two (I recommend Facebook’s in Prineville), and take in a lecture on social engineering from the pros.

Stop in at the aforementioned farm for the rustic C6XTY museum, another roadside attraction. 

If this is your first time in America, so much the better. What could be more authentic than the home of Homer Simpson. You’ll find murals all over town, if you know where to look.

DevOps Retreat

I'm sure some geeks might complain about my use of DevOps here, as "development and operations" already has its own meaning, and people sometimes wish for a neologism versus any kind of revectoring. 

Like with Synergetics, Fuller's writings: there's more re-vectoring than neologism-ing going on, even though he’s accused of having a remote vocabulary. In many respects it’s the same dictionary, just he applies a different spin. That’s what writers do.

In my case, devops is closer to “curriculum development” but we’re factoring in “operational mathematics” more the way Bucky used that term, to imply that his mathy prose had operational significance (think “psyops”).

Am I allowed to say I’m on one of my circuits in my BizMo? Since I’ve done a lot to re-vector that word, almost a neologism, but not really, according the Urban Dictionary, I suppose it’s up to me. 

So my dog and I hopped into a BizMo, stopping for brunch in Hillsdale with Bradford and then continuing on south to our retreat site, there to engage in devops with the others, in a semi-luxurious environment (there’s even a “Walden Pond” with outdoor seating).

What others do I mean? 

These days, it only takes WiFi and some other gear to set up one’s mobile office. I’m able to work both synchronously and asynchronously without expecting others to the burn fuel it’d take to physically join me. My own fuel is subsidized (privately in this case) so it’s easier for me to hit the road maybe. 

Many of my counterparts do not have access to, let alone own, motor vehicles.

Per the embedded picture above, I’m using Gemini to flesh out what happens in Synergetics around Euler and Gibbs as anchoring proper names; how Fuller merges them into his own language, picking up on visual processing on the one hand, and emotional processing on the other (“process work” fits in around here somewhere).

That Euler + Gibbs synergy is a portal into First Person Physics, by way of the observer, and the observer’s psychology (operational). Applewhite, a collaborator on Synergetics, was “in it for the psychology” he once told me (I recall we were discussing pronouns and his including them in the index).

Re-vectoring is often the better choice as one is leveraging pre-existing denotations and connotations, not starting over from scratch. Synergetics builds on our English language heritage, a kind of legacy medium, but alerts its readers (the alert ones at least) about the remoteness of the Synergetics vocabulary.

I’m All Right Jack (movie review)

Most readers will likely be entirely unfamiliar with this movie, that’s my guess. Peter Sellers. Rosalie, my librarian friend, knew it well, and recommended it, but she’s a least two standard deviations to the left (towards literate — as in left brain), not anywhere near middle of the road.

Perhaps I’m simply projecting my own ignorance, as an MMU student with less than full fluency in British culture. Maybe that’s why I found this movie so educational, as it wasn’t afraid to poke fun at (expose, dissect) both tiers of psyche in that social Darwinist environment. 

Management had split off against the Workers, white versus blue (as in collar) and education levels, as well as birthright land rights, made a huge difference in that respect. “Upper class” means a way of talking (the My Fair Lady insight) and projecting one’s insider (owner) status. Of course the whites and blues are all men and all Euro-white, with females (another caste) as trad-wives, moms and, if you’re lucky, rich aunts.

Of course there’s immense irony in the fact that the Peter Sellers character, representative of the working class, is unable to do dishes or darn his own socks. Minus the women’s caretaker role, the so-called workers are effectively ineffective. 

The leading character, a well-acted buffoon, is from the educated insider class. He’s something of a dandy. I found his over-reactions hilarious vs-a-vs those ball-playing women but then the joke was on me cuz I didn’t get this was a nudist colony until the closing scene. Duh.

So our educated dandy is too supercilious to get his hands dirty and the job interviews all bomb. They convince him to go undercover, as working class (the rich aunt is skeptical), at a missile factory and this is where the international relations figure in. 

The aristocratic Brits wanna sell weapons to their colonies in the Levant (a semi-country roiled by competing narratives) and make money the old fashioned way: by dreaming up illusionary scenes (like stage magicians) for the journos to report, while meanwhile they make out like bandits — cuz that’s what they are: next generation Venetian schemers as Bucky describes em (“Venetian” rhymes with “Phoenician” in Fuller’s quasi-Joycean vocabulary (long story)). 

The worker Brits are trying to resist over-exploitation by organizing around their spanking new ideology, a mash of Marxism and maybe Systematic Ideology (another native source of narratives). Peter Sellers plays a worker-bee indoctrinator, keeping his little army in position to exert leverage by inspiring his brand of groupthink.

But the goofy upper class doofus bungs it up, by not catching on (his level of self awareness is close to zero). He inadvertently subverts the labor unions, weakening their collective bargaining position, to where only strikes (stopping working) seem to be a way back to equilibrium. These strikes effectively spoil the business dynamics and the aristocrats see their schemes go up in smoke (which is just as well, as the Levant is better off without the Brit missiles).

The whole plot becomes a wry comment on the hopelessness of the entire economy, which nevertheless makes movies like this one, and brings us Monty Python.

As I was saying to Rosalie later: “I know this culture”. I was actually being groomed as an aristocrat in 3rd grade, wearing a tie, learning how a table was set with the manners to go with. 

I was a lone American (one of maybe two) in that school, not a boarding school. I’d go home to my American parents, but as someone increasingly Britified (I had the accent). Eventually they recognized the pathologies I was developing and they pulled me out, and sent me to a more American school.

I’d avoid any job-roles requiring a tie after that, as a rule of thumb, which in Britain might be a sign I was blue collar, a label I’ll accept (aesthetically, I prefer blue to white — tuxedos look infinitely stupid). 

However out here in Cascadia we’re more an egalitarian meritocracy, an engineering culture, meaning status is not conveyed through dress (millionaires dress down, not up) but by one’s level of fluency in STEM languages. 

In a nutshell: credibility as an actor, in a management capacity, requires knowing at least some computer science, like the workers do. That’s the gist of the so-called AI revolution: you need to talk like a geek to sound agentic.

But we’re talking about a science fiction future with respect to the 1950s. HG Wells might wanna take over the story at this point.

Travel Plans

Oops, I spaced out the presentation at Third Eye, the one Cloud told me about. If you saw my Sacred Geometry video… the presentation was about the Galactic Calendar included therein. 

I was gonna introduce myself as “from across the street” as that’s where Center for Science, Peace and Health has its shingle out. I’d told Cloud I’d be there and all the next day that was my plan. Then I woke up early Tuesday to realize I’d missed the boat.

I keep thinking I’m on the brink of visiting Greater LA, but then stuff keeps getting in the way. Like that galvanized iron kitchen down pipe that finally became irreparable, and had to be replaced. That happened quickly but then a city inspector needed to sign off on it (how it works in Portland) and my plumber mostly works in the neighboring state, with different rules, plus July 4 festivities obtruded. 

The July 4 festivities (Blues, fireworks, summer movies) were welcome and I wasn’t in a super hurry, but neither was I gonna take off for LA to see my sis and other peeps, or even drive to destinations nearby, as long as the plumber was gonna need access to the basement, and, as it turned out, my local WiFi. 

The test and city sign-off were completed yesterday.

On the recommendation of family members, I started watching For All Mankind on Apple TV. I suppose it’s believable that NASA personnel would have been that glum about humans finally landing on the moon if they didn’t feel they’d done it themselves. Humans get programmed with an “us vs them” mindset pretty early — we see the children getting brainwashed. Even with the Marxist-Leninist label removed, the Russians remain the “them”. Russophobia is endemic among the Manifest Destiny dolts, and let’s not forget Sinophobia. The Mickey complex is indeed deeply psychological.

Sydney and I would be up for Wandering with that BizMo, checked out from the BizMo fleet library, so to speak. That’d help with the prototyping (thinking Trucker Exchange, Silicon Forest stuff). I’d be one of the seniors involved, coming in more as a curriculum developer, as my School of Tomorrow has some work-study concepts that might further spread, while benefitting from all the fine tuning. In the meantime, I’m Wandering multi-modally, making ample use of the Nissan.

I’ll head over to Third Eye Crossing later today and buy some of that merch I was gonna get at the presentation I missed attending. That’s a business I wanna support, a neighbor.

Adventures in Wonderland (movie review)

The actual title is longer: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a possessive possessive. This is the one wherein we find Peter Sellers and Dudley Moore, to name two big future stars, in heavy makeup. The movie is pre CGI and uses old school special effects to produce Alice’s adventure, in color, with sound (she even sings and dances; it’s a big part for Fiona Fullerton).

My topic these days is “fairy tales” and, sure, we can argue what constitutes same. Alice’s universe has no entities called “fairies” unless we count the Tweedle Brothers who might be gay, but that’s an entirely unrelated etymology. What’s important is to discount the narrative itself as purely fiction, so we don’t get hung up wondering “how much of this is true?” (answer: none of it is, and she wakes up in the end).

Another confluence was Dr. D, over at Blue House for post dog-walk dining (we were a five-some: three humans and two dogs); he’s been immersed in the Alice lore in past chapters, involving a commercial publishing enterprise and book launch just down the street from Wanderers (Linus Pauling House) on Hawthorne, at Fernie Brae, which no longer exists (Third Eye still does though, across the street).

What struck me, and Dave reassured me this was a main point of the novel, is how blasé and go-with-the-flow Alice was. Her reality was turned upside-down and yet she preserves her even, good temper and optimism, yet not without some exercise of judgement. She draws on her priors and updates quickly. She’s your quintessential Bayesian.

I’m reminded of a quote buried in the Wittgenstein corpus somewhere, maybe in the Investigations, maybe in On Certainty, where he says (paraphrase): “what if I woke up one morning and everything had changed? …Maybe I’d just join in.” I want to add “like Alice”.

Once we identified Peter and Dudley through all that makeup it was easy to project forward and picture them in future movies. I love Dudley in Bedazzled (with Raquel Welch as Lust) and Sellers in so many, but especially Being There.

Backstory: I entered Movie Madness (MMU) with the intent to rent I’m OK Jack, on Rosalie’s recommendation, but to my surprise I couldn’t even find it in the database. However that search did lead me to the Sellers shelf in the Foreign Films section (UK/British) and from there I selected this Alice movie, and a small anthology of early (1930s) British comedies. I haven’t watched those yet. 

At this point I realize the movie is actually I’m All Right Jack and that may well be in the collection. I’ll check next time I’m there.

Gifts from Japan

Sydney and I visited with our friend newly back from Japan, accepting gifts to pass on to our circle, pictures also. 

Sydney is a chocolate English Labrador.  Her main hobbies are eating, sleeping, and grazing like a cow, smelling things. She’s so well-behaved she’s earned her right to walk around the block leash free.

In the news, the Lower48, part of the post USA diaspora, is being subjected to tyrannical rule by a Monster U (aka USSA) engaging in reckless out-of-control warring with no popular mandate. 

Post USA indeed. Pretty obvious, if there’s some awareness.

We look to the Global U to help us with teach ins, about how we got here and how we might make it to a next chapter.

Scapegoating one man is relatively easy. The people hiding behind the scapegoat enjoy having their human shield.  Wealth creation (adding life support) takes more planning.

Our syllabus uses technical shoptalk like LAWCAP and GRUNCH, a lot of which got amplified in the Occupy chapter (which we’ve been revisiting this Summer Term at School of Tomorrow).

For lunch I had Korean BBQ, from a food truck in one of the pods I frequent.

Pattern Language: the Alcove

:: annotated mother goose atop global matrix ::