Monthly Archives: January 2012

Beamforming Math

Quote of the Day A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all. — Michael LeBoeuf, writer and management professor. Introduction I was at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week and spent a lot of time talking to … Continue reading

Posted in Electronics | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Approximation Math

Introduction Back in 2003, I used an approximation for the logarithm function in a hardware application. When originally implemented, the function only had to work for a limited range of input. Recently, a customer has requested that we expand the … Continue reading

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Electronics for Kids

One of our software engineers asked me today if I could recommend any educational material that he could use to train his kids in basic electronics. As far as I am concerned, the best material I have ever seen for … Continue reading

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Great Demonstration of Harmonic Motion

One of the engineers was sending this around today. I thought it was amazing.

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Nuclear Battery Math

My sons always tease me about my interest in space. In order to understand my interest in space, you need to understand what it was like being a boy during the 1960s. I had my own October Sky boyhood. I built rockets, read everything I could about space, built electronic circuits, and dreamt of someday being an engineer and space traveler. While the space traveler part didn't work out, I was fortunate in that I did everything else that I dreamt about it. I have met numerous engineers who are now in their 50s who had the same experiences. Continue reading

Posted in Batteries, Electronics | 14 Comments

Worked PageRank Example

Introduction One of my sons asked me if I could work through a PageRank calculation example a couple of different ways (algebraic and iterative). It was an interesting exercise and I thought it would be worth documenting here. I used … Continue reading

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Bolide Meteor Sighting

I saw a bolide meteor while driving out to Montana last week. For those who are not familiar with bolide meteors, the Wikipedia has a nice description. The word bolide comes from the Greek βολίς (bolis) [2] which can mean … Continue reading

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