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Showing posts from April 1, 2018

Wyoming and Idaho

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We are back from a quick vacation. I managed to score three (actually several more) bucket list items in 4 days. 1.) Long Snowmobile Trip. 2.) Yellowstone Park and 3.) Wyoming. I reached my 50th State --Wyoming! And we took a 90 mile snowmobile trip in Yellowstone National Park. We went to the "Craters of the Moon--National Monument and Preserve" in Idaho and also stopped at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) where I got to see (with my own eyes) the very cool nuclear powered twin turbojet engine. It was a successful experiment in the 1950s and 1960s. https://whatisnuclear.com/safety-minutes/htre-3-meltdown.html Of course, I had my Radiacode scintillation detector with me and yes, the apparatus is "Hot". The screenshot of the readings from my three walk-arounds the artifact. I swear you could smell the radiation. There was a very un-natural burnt smell something reminiscent of burned bakelite. Although, I am quite certain the emitted radition was not the source...
We can do better than meeting spec http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/04/we-can-do-better-than-meeting-spec.html Well, that's over. Google AI now sounds indistinguishable from a human. And it'll only get more nuanced and more flexible. It can read aloud better than you can. Which means that anything that's ever been written can be perfectly read to you. Which means that anything a computer figures out or computes can be delivered to you with audio quality that meets spec. That's what AI keeps doing... things we said were impossible. Most of us shrugged when computers could drill holes or assemble machines with more accuracy and speed than a person can. And we avoided the topic when we discovered that computers could read x-rays with great skill as well. But now, it ought to make you shudder to discover that something as basic as speech is now better than the typical human's. Any speed, fully customized, in clear tones with great pronunciation...
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It looks like this may be my next partial ownership plane, a Piper Arrow 2. It is categorized as a complex aircraft and it what I need to get my commercial licence which is still the goal. That will bring our fleet to 4 planes. We had an aviation BBQ Saturday. It is always fun to meet pilots around the area. It is amazing how people are interconnected. We had a nice Easter. We went to church and had a nice Easter Breakfast at church afterwards. We took a bike ride and hike and cooked out. The weather is great. I have travel plans for for Nashville, Budapest and Germany. We also have some possible very cool vacation destinations figured out.