Yes, the new movie is on its way - check out this link. I don’t know how I feel about Sylar as Spock… That’s a major re-casting of character.

Andrew Kun

Periodically someone will ask me to prepare a one slide presentation and I wish I could do something along these lines:

Andrew Kun

Hello ecebloggers,

Here’s another post about Jamaica

Jamaicans are very proud with their high schools. In the 60’s Jamaica didn’t have as many high schools as it has today. Students from different parishes (parish is like a province, Jamaica has 14 parishes) were given a choice to go to two or three high schools. As our taxi driver told us the story, he himself had to take an hour and a half ride by bus to get to the school. He’s from a Hanover parish and there are two of the oldest and most respected high schools on the island: Rusea’s (in the picture below) and Manning’s.

The school was build in 1777 after Martin Rusea, a French refugee, left gracefully all of his land (in his will dated July 23rd, 1974) for a free school to be built. The traditional colors of the Rusea’s high school are yellow, blue and green. Originally this school could admit roughly 100 students per year. Over the time the need for higher education in Jamaica forced the school to expand and now it has two campuses and admits more students. I was surprised when I heard that this high school was founded in 1777 (see picture below).

Students who graduate from this school are very respected on the island because it’s not easy to get in. Usually they continue their education.

Rusea’s High School gave one very famous and world wide known athlete: Marlene Ottey (in the picture below).

In the list of all time athletes Merlene Ottey is ranked fourth in 100 meter track and third in 200 meter track.

She holds the record for being the oldest track medalist ever and for winning the most women’s World Championship medals (14). Because of her achievements she is called “Queen of the Track”.

That’s all from Jamaica, mon.

Have a good one,

Nemanja Memarovic

Hello ecebloggers,

As some of you may know my wife and I were on a two week vacation in Negril, Jamaica. This beautiful island has many things to offer: sea, landscape, cuisine, culture… There isn’t a person in the world who hasn’t heard of Bob Marley and The Wailers. Although there’s a lot to write about Jamaica (tourism, music, cuisine…) I’m gonna write about something else that caught my attention.

Because of high poverty people struggle to survive day by day (but they still keep smiling:) ). In such a world some thing’s that we take for granted, like electricity, are luxury and not all the people can afford it. The high price of electricity comes from the main source to generate it: oil.

But people need electricity in their everyday lives, so they get it for “free” (see pictures below).

All the connections, except maybe two, are illegal, or “free”. If you are in a touristic place, like Negril, Ocho Rios or Montego Bay you wouldn’t see these so often. But if you go inside the country these connections are common. Besides being illegal, these connections add additional weight to the pole and create danger for the surrounding area. When we were traveling in the country one of the poles crashed on the road. Luckly nobody was there.

Jamaica is loosing a lot of money because of the illegal electrical connections. Their government is trying to reach to the people and address the problem (see picture below).

These billboards can be seen throughout the country. In order to solve this problem Jamaican government is making a lot of effort to lower the cost of electricity by making their system more efficient and using different fuel to produce electricity.

I hope that Jamaica will find a solution for the problem.

Have a good one,

Nemanja Memarovic

Sony revealed an egg-shaped digital music player named Rolly (picture below) at the end of 2007, but I haven’t had the chance to see it until last weekend. It plays MP3 and AAC music files and supports direct music streaming over a Bluetooth connection. And it is able to dance.

The Rolly is more than an ordinary music player. Thus, it is motion-controlled robot with a bunch of sensors, color lights, and two flapping wings. It uses two wheels that surround the body to roll, wiggle, and spin. In vertical position the wheels can be used to change songs and adjust volume. The Rolly creates motion automatically by analyzing the music, so it can dance to any song. Also, there is a possibility of creating new motions or customizing exiting ones using PC software. You can see the Rolly’s dance in the video below. It is amazing how the sound and motion are synchronized.

Ivan Elhart

As I was searching for resources and information for my current project (the skin-conductance glove) today, I stumbled upon this very interesting, but related, project at MIT’s Media Lab.

They call it a Galvactivator and it is…a glove which measures skin conductance…only it’s not publicly available. However, they use it basically as a modern mood ring, only it’s more accurate. It measures the wearers skin conductance and then displays it via a LED by varying it’s brightness, and it has a variety of uses, according to their FAQ. I do wonder if a similar setup would work better for us, since it seems to overcome the issue with making a glove with finger-tip electrodes fit many different sized hands.

My colleague Andras Fekete and I had a chance to visit the Forney Museum of Transportation in Denver, on our journey with Dr. Miller and Dr. Kun to Colorado for the National Institute of Justice conference. The museum started as the private collection of Mr. J. D. Forney with only a few cars. Today, it is a unique historical collection of over 500 exhibits including antique cars, locomotives, buggies, unicycles, bicycles, motorcycles, rare, exotic, and concept vehicles. The most famous exhibits are: Amelia Earhart’s “Gold Bug” Kissel, Prince Aly Khan’s Silver Ghost Rolls Royce, the Brewster with a heart-shaped radiator, the Hispano Suiza, the Forney Locomotive, and the 4005 Big Boy – the world’s largest steam locomotive (how big it is you can see in the picture below). We were lucky to meet an engineer who had been operating one of the Big Boys and who, in the museum, shared his experience and passion about locomotives with us. The Big Boy was designed to operate at 80 mph with total weight of 1,189,500lb and producing a maximum of 6,290 horsepower. It is really impressive. Only 25 Big Boys were built ever, between 1941 and 1944, and only 8 of them still remain.

The only car in the museum in which we could sit in was the Model T. The model T was the first car produced on an assembly line designed by Ford which was the beginning of the automotive revolution which started in 1908. The Model T had economy of 13 to 21 mpg, 20.2 horsepower, and maximum speed of 40 to 45 mph. In 1927, when the last Model T was built, the Ford Motor Company was producing an automobile every 24 seconds. In the period between 1908 and 1927, more than 15 million Model T cars were built which “put America on wheels”. In the picture below, my colleague Andras and I are enjoying the Model T and for a moment pretending that we are at the beginning of the 20th century.

The museum is really impressive with its huge and unique historical collection of vehicles of all kinds. It is a perfect place to visit for all fans of cars and history. We had a pleasant time and all custodians were more than polite. You can find more pictures from the museum here.

Ivan Elhart & Andras Fekete

If you haven’t heard by now Microsoft’s http://maps.live.com has updated their routing algorithm to account for traffic. Check the box next to “Choose route based on traffic” to recalculated a route with traffic added into the equation.

The technology behind this is called Clearflow. Microsoft’s Adaptive Systems and Interaction group has created traffic models to predict congestion and find the quickest route.

The new dilbert.com is pretty slow. However, if you just want the strip, you can go to www.dilbert.com/fast and read away. On the other hand, the new site has nice features, e.g. you can get code to embed strips in your own website. So here it goes:

Btw, I think those of you have a job in the “real world,” or have had one in the past (read: you’re not a student or a tenured professor), will agree with me that Dilbert is very educational (thus the “education” tag for this post). Perhaps the UNH ECE department should make it part of the curriculum to discuss some of the strips in preparation for an industrial career. I may bring this up at our next Industrial Advisory Board meeting

Andrew Kun

I think Susan Boyce, who visited our lab recently, got some stress relief from the driving simulator demo we provided - see video below.

Andrew Kun