While working on two multicopter drone related projects, I was distracted by the idea of an ultra endurance drone build, inspired by this discussion. There are really three steps to drone efficiency/endurance 1) keeping everything as light as possible 2) using high efficiency power regulators, motor controllers, and motors 3) highly efficient propellers (which is […]
Drone Propeller Efficiency and Noise Test Read More »
I was out walking in the evening near the downtown, and heard a group of people describe Minneapolis as “small and boring.” They were from Orlando. I was insulted, downtown Orlando is even less nice from what I had seen, and the metro area population is even smaller (2.5 mil vs 3.5 mil for MSP).
Minneapolis Travel Guide Read More »
Why do We Care? Why Do You Care? I thought Concrete was rock, how does it fail so quickly? It’s mainly the rebar and “tension” based (rather than compression based) building techniques that require rebar in concrete. Rebar is steel and rusts. Especially when salt gets in, which it does over time from either road
Long Lasting Concrete Read More »
Rome is a city that probably requires a little historical background to really appreciate. Probably good to watch a documentary or Youtube videos for anyone who doesn’t know much already. A short timeline, approximate:~700 BC – 250 BC – town grows to city. Not particularly remarkable in appearance250 BC – 50 BC – city of
My Quick Travel Guide to the City of Rome Read More »
“AI” models tend to be slow. This is generally inevitable to a large degree, lots of calculations to do means more time to run. Simply throwing more compute at the problem is one solution, but limits the ability to run models “at the edge” (ie on a phone) and raises the cost. Another solution is
Testing Quantization of Image Classifiers Read More »
Visiting the town of Lugo, which claims to have the most intact/unmodified set of Roman city walls (Muralla Lugo) surviving, I was struck by a picture I saw showing how the towers used to have arched upper levels that reminded me of the Porta Nigra in Trier. I thought that the towers would really have
AI Rendering of Archeology, the Walls of Lugo Read More »
In the world of forecasting there is a bit of mystery. Many expert forecasters continue to use statistical models despite the strong push of machine learning (ML) and deep learning neural network (NN) models. Those less familiar with the world of forecasting assume, because of the dominance of ML/NN models in computer vision and language
Forecasting: Are ML Models ‘Winning’ Because of Less Preprocessing Needs? Read More »
Background: as advanced algorithms become more common and useful, that’s “AI”, there is the constant background fear being discussed, of skynet and terminator style AI robots destroying all. The truth is less exciting: killer robots require lots of very expensive sensors and compute capability. Their programming tends to be much more brittle and slower to
Autonomous Island Defense (AID) Algorithm Introduction Read More »
The Coral Dev Board (2019), Dev Board Mini (2020) and Dev Board Micro (2023) are almost really awesome. They were really the first products to make running Edge AI operations feasible, the product of Google’s own development of products like it’s smart speakers and smartphones. On the positive side, Google hasn’t killed them yet like
Using the Coral Dev Board in 2025 Read More »
I grew up on a diet of thick World War II history books, with a particular fascination with the technology of the war. Many things about it fascinated me, but it always felt a thing of the past. War happened in my childhood, on the other side of the world from me, mostly against small
Autonomous Ambush Missiles and My First Circuit Board Read More »
