Ed Hagopian

In Defense of Polymaths

Polymath is one of those words more likely to show up on the SAT than in everyday conversation. But the reason we don't use the word much these days has less to do with vocabulary than it has to do with practicality: there aren't a lot of polymaths around anymore.

In case you don't have your pocket dictionary handy, a polymath is a person with a wide range of knowledge or learning. Think people like Leonardo da Vinci (artist and helicopter designer), Benjamin Franklin (founding father, inventor, and all-around lady-killer), Paul Robeson (scholar, athlete, actor, and civil rights activist), and even Steve Jobs (engineer, businessman extraordinaire, and marketing mastermind).

Still, while we admire the select "geniuses" that can do it all, we tend to disparage the regular folk who attempt to spread their knowledge around a little. If they are so foolish as to dabble instead of devoting themselves to a single calling, those unfortunates sometimes earn the time-dishonored label of "Jack of all trades, master of none."

But why? What's so wrong with trying to learn new things? Here's what Maya Angelou — herself a polymath (poet, journalist, dancer) — has to say about the saying:

"It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Angelou said to the Smithsonian. "I think you can be a jack-of-all-trades and a mistress-of-all-trades. If you study it, and you put reasonable intelligence and reasonable energy, reasonable electricity to it, you can do that. You may not become Max Roach on the drums. But you can learn the drums."

What's more, in the digital age, learning has really never been easier — and not just for the "geniuses" that walk among us. Polymath status is accessible to just about anyone with a modem, a library card, and the desire to learn.

Information is everywhere, and it's often free. iTunesU gives your everyday-Joe an opportunity to get a free, virtual Ivy-league education from his couch. Khan Academy teaches people everything from beginning algebra to cosmology. Sign into Google's Code University to learn programming languages in the moments snatched during lunch breaks or while the baby's napping. My company iFixit teaches people

Posted by Ed Hagopian

FCC wants to set aside wireless spectum for medical body area devices, our hearts are literally aflutter

Yes yes yes yes yes!!!

FCC wants to set aside wireless spectum for medical body area devices, our hearts are literally aflutter

The FCC has been making a big push towards freeing up the airwaves for medical uses, and it just took one of its biggest steps on that front by proposing to clear space for wireless body area networks. Agency officials want to let devices operate in the 2.36GHz to 2.4GHz space so that patients can stay at home or at least move freely, instead of being fenced in at the hospital or tethered to a bed by wires. Devices would still need the FDA's green light, but they could both let patients go home sooner as well as open the door wider for preventative care. Voting on the proposal takes place May 24, which leaves our tech-minded hearts beating faster -- and if the proposal takes effect, we'll know just how much faster.

FCC wants to set aside wireless spectum for medical body area devices, our hearts are literally aflutter originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 May 2012 17:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Ed Hagopian

IPhone Cover for Engineers

With everything going digital these days I started to think that current and future Engineering/Mechanical students are going to rely a lot on software to solve problems, it's happening now, I do it. When something new or something that we haven't done in a while in Engineering arises we always look...
By: Danny Tas

Posted by Ed Hagopian

The Oatmeal’s Tribute to Nikola Tesla

This is AWESOME. And Edison WAS a Douche of biblical proportions.

The Oatmeal’s Tribute to Nikola Tesla

via adafruit industries blog by Tyler Cooper on 5/15/12

Online comic strip, The Oatmeal, has done a fantastic job with their long tribute to Nikola Tesla.

Geeks stay up all night disassembling the world so that they can put it back together with new features.

They tinker and fix things that aren’t broken.

Geeks abandon the world around them because they’re busy soldering together a new one.

They obsess and, in many cases, they suffer.

Over one hundred years ago, a Serbian-American inventor by the name of Nikola Tesla started fixing things that weren’t broken.

What a great intro to a well written overview of Tesla’s accomplishments. Take some time today, and read through the whole thing.

Filed under: awesome

Posted by Ed Hagopian

Multitouch table uses a Kinect for a 3D display

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Multitouch table uses a Kinect for a 3D display

[Bastian] sent in a coffee table he built. This isn’t a place to set your drinks and copies of Make, though: it’s a multitouch table with a 3D display. Since no description can do this table justice, take a look at the video.

The build was inspired by the subject of this Hackaday post where [programming4fun] was able to build a ‘holographic display’ using a regular 2D projector and a Kinect. Both builds work on the principle of redrawing the 3D space in relation to the user’s head – as [Bastian] moves his head around the coffee table, the Kinect tracks his location and moves the 3 dimensional grid of boxes in the opposite direction. It’s extremely clever, and looks to be a promising user interface.

In addition to a Kinect, the coffee table uses a Microsoft Surface-like display; four infrared lasers are placed at the corner and detected with a camera next to the projector in the base.

After the break you can see the demo video and a gallery of the images [Bastion] put up on the NUI group forum.

Posted by Ed Hagopian

Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft — Microsoft has drastically overhauled the network running its Skype voice-over-IP service, replacing peer-to-peer client machines with thousands of Linux boxes that have been hardened against the most common types of hack attacks, a security researcher said.

Posted by Ed Hagopian