Replacing an iPod Nano’s battery

I bought a first generation iPod Nano more than 2 years ago. I use it every work day (see also http://dbenn.wordpress.com/2006/08/27/astronomy-science-podcasts/), but the battery has been on the way out over the last few months. In the end it was holding charge for less than an hour, irrespective of charge time, often dying before my walking trip was over.

Getting it replaced through official channels would’ve cost in excess of AUD $100, about a 3rd of the device’s original cost. So instead, I spent AUD $20 on an iPod replacement battery kit from JayCar (I’ve seen them advertised elsewhere on the web too).

It came with the 3.7V Li-ion Polymer battery (400mAh instead of the original 340mAh), two plastic tools to pry the case open, and a brief but effective instruction sheet.

The most painful part was getting the case open. The plastic tools from the kit only get you so far and I pretty much wrecked mine. My wife Karen and I took turns carefully prying open different sections of the case with a small flat blade jeweller’s screwdriver (not suggested by the instruction sheet, but effective nonetheless), in addition to using the plastic tools.

Once the back of the case was off, the battery was easily removed, and I used a fine-tipped soldering iron to remove the three wires from the PCB, and fine solder to connect the new battery’s wires in place before putting the case back together.

I replaced the battery on the weekend and didn’t have to charge it again until 3 days later. Hopefully this will make my Nano last another 2 or 3 years, by which time it will probably be time for an iPod upgrade. It won’t owe me anything by then, that’s for sure.

Now, all I have to do is stop breaking earphones.

A War, a Grandfather, and a Great Uncle

Once again, ANZAC Day is here, a day on which we recall those who in far too many cases died fighting someone else’s battle.

My grandfather, James Melville, fought during WWI in Egypt, Gallipoli, and France. He always struck me as a proud, meticulous man. After the war he worked in several jobs, including on trains in outback Australia. As a child I loved his Scottish accent. I wish I had known him better, talked with him more, not seen him as so “other”. I’ve been a pall bearer for two people: my Grandfather and my Mother, who died 16 years apart.

My Great Uncle, Frank Jagger, served in the German army in that same war. I recall a family member years ago remarking that he and my Grandfather may have been in fighting in the same area of France during the war. I don’t know if this was actually the case or mere speculation, but it probably happened to some. Uncle Frank stayed with us for a short while in the late 70s. He was a real character. After he returned to Germany, I used to help translate his increasingly German letters to my family. He too is gone now.

The saying goes: “Lest We Forget”. Indeed. But please please please, Let Us Not Glorify. War is a terrible thing, something I hope my kids never have to participate in. As Skyhooks put it so well in the 70s: “Horror movie right there on my TV, shockin’ me right out of my brain.”

Those who romanticise war haven’t seen enough death. If you watch a movie like Saving Private Ryan and don’t feel viscerally offended, then the world we’ve constructed has succeeded in numbing you. Anyone who has seen dead people and terrible injury up close and personal (I was a nurse before I was a programmer) understands that War cannot be a clean thing any more than car accidents or cancer. The best way to honour the War Dead is to Just Stop It. Just Get Along. Life’s too short to do otherwise, and as a species we take ourselves way to seriously. We need to get over ourselves and just get on with Living and Learning. There’s no salvation, no Higher Purpose. It’s just Us. Carpe Diem.

Another saying goes: “No Fate But What we Make” (Terminator 2). The only thing we are not free to choose is our freedom to choose (Sartre). Yeah, we’re stuck with one other and we had better make the best of it. As Carl Sagan said “We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.” Providing the answer “War” to any question just doesn’t qualify.

 

NACAA 2008 Impressions

What impresses me about The National Australian Convention of Amateur Astronomers (NACAA) is that it demonstrates how much can be achieved with sufficient motivation and relatively few resources.

NACAA is convened every 2 years. I attended first in 2002 when it was held in Adelaide. In 2004 my family came with me to Hobart, and in 2006 to Frankston. This year the event was held in Penrith,  Sydney.

Some of the highlights this year from my perspective were:

• “Probing Pluto’s Atmosphere with a 10 inch Telescope” by Dave Gault. Along with others in Australia (including Blair Lade at Stockport) and New Zealand, Dave’s observations yielded a light curve from which Pluto’s atmosphere — with a pressure measuring in microbars — could be discerned, using only a 10″ SCT and Meade DSI imager.
• A workshop on light curve analysis using data from automated surveys to look for contact binary star systems. Surjit Wadhwa who ran this excellent workshop also won the best paper award for his work and peer reviewed publications over several years, revealing previously unknown contact binary star systems.
• Ragbir Bhathal’s “45 Years of SETI”, including an overview of recent optical SETI developments. Whether or not you think that SETI is ever likely to lead to positive results, the technology involved is interesting and potentially useful elsewhere. Not to mention the philosophical questions it prompts us to ponder.
• Encouraging words from Arne Henden, Director of the American Association of Variable Star observers, about being an amateur scientist in the 21st Century.
• Entertaining talks such as: giving astronomy lectures on the final voyage of the QE2 (by Ray Johnston), the current state of planetaria worldwide (by Martin George), and examining the possibility that Australian Aboriginals were the world’s first astronomers (by Ray Norris).
• Useful and interesting ad-hoc conversations during breaks and in the corridor.

There were workshops and sessions to suit a wide variety of interests. You can read more about NACAA 2008 here: http://nacaa.org.au/2008/

In short, a very worthwhile event. I plan to be in Canberra for NACAA 2010.

If the bible is literally true then π is 3 and my odometer is wrong

“What is not possible is not to choose.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)

Consider the following:

• “He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.” (1 Kings 7:23). See also 2 Chronicles 4:2.
• π is the ratio of the circumference (30 cubits) of a circle and its diameter (10 cubits).
• ∴ π is 3.

Either the bible is literally true, and π is represented as the ratio of the two integers 30 and 10, or π is irrational with a value of around 3.1415926. We recently set up new odometers on our bikes. The manual for the device instructs the user to multiply the diameter of the bike’s wheel by 3.14, yielding the wheel’s circumference. So, for a 700 mm wheel, that’s about 2198 mm for a π of 3.14 and 2199 mm for a π of 3.1415926. But what if π is 3? That circumference becomes 2100 mm.

Now, for say 50 revolutions of the wheel:

• for a circumference of 2.199 meters we have 109.95 meters (if π is 3.1415926);
• for a circumference of 2.198 we have a 109.9 meters (if π is 3.14);
• for a circumference of 2.1, we have 105 meters (if π is 3).

If π is 3, the wheel traverses almost 5 meters less. So is π 3?

Choose

Read more about the π saga than you probably want to in this Gospel of Reason blog entry and follow-up comments.

“It makes sense to revere the sun and stars, for we are their children.” (Carl Sagan)

Consider the following:

• The world was made by God in 6 days (see Genesis), including all living things.
• Massive stars exist for millions of years before exploding as supernovae, the only known means by which elements heavier than iron are created.
• Our bodies contain elements heavier than iron, e.g. iodine.

Either the bible is literally true and the world and us (including heavier-than-iron elements) were really created in 6 days, or the universe really is old.

Choose

“What is not possible is not to choose.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)

The Human Appendix vs Intelligent Design

So you want me to believe in Intelligent Design (ID)? First you’ll have to explain why the human appendix exists.

Mine landed me on an operating table around midnight a couple of weeks before my 4th year High School exams. If left alone, it would have burst, spreading infection throughout my peritoneum. The surgeon showed it to me after I had recovered enough to care; I recall it being black.

The appendix plays a role in cellulose digestion in some mammalian species. If however humans were really created by an intelligent designer, independent of all other creatures, with no evolutionary path between some other species with a useful appendix, and us, one has to ask: why create the human species with a useless and dangerous organ?

As Douglas Theobold has said:

If the appendix does have an important function that we have yet to find, it is a leading candidate for the worst designed organ in the human body. How nice if the appendix would just degenerate away after it is no longer needed, so it could never get infected and kill us needlessly.        

A programmer might say that God ought to have noticed that the appendix was “unreachable code”, and so could be optimised away.

Perhaps ID actually denotes “Incompetent Design”.

It seems to me that we have two explanations for the existence of the human appendix:

1. It serves a useful role in some other mammalian species, and in some of our ancestors, but does not do so in us.
2. God created each of us with an appendix because he/she is not benevolent or not omnipotent.

If the Designer is not omnipotent, why is he/she/it in the business of universe and people engineering?

In Science, just one chink in the armour of a theory can bring it down. Not so for ID?

The simple joy of a healthy child

Last week my little girl (Heather, who is 3 years old) was in hospital for 3 days on intravenous antibiotics and oxygen. My wife (Karen) is a nurse, as I used to be before a career change to software development, and I can tell you that we were both very worried about her. It was Influenza A and a secondary bacterial infection. We have it in our heads in this age of vaccination and antibiotics that people don’t easily die of simple illness. But the young and the old, far too often, still do.

Karen stayed with her throughout the ordeal, while I spent most of that time looking after our son (Nicholas) who had a milder dose of the flu, as did we all. I found leaving them at the hospital to be almost unbearable, perhaps because another goodbye in a hospital, almost 5 years ago, was final: my Mother, who died after failed heart surgery. Two completely different circumstances, but no-one ever said people were logical, not even most of the time, or as Oliver Goldsmith so nicely put it:

Logicians have but ill-defined
As rational the human kind.
Logic they say, belongs to Man,
But let them prove it if they can.

Heather is home with us again, still recovering, but pretty much back to her old self. To have Heather with us again, albeit a little cranky to start with, was a joy that I just cannot describe to you. It was almost as good as having her home for the first time from hospital after her birth, but this time tinged with the sadness and fear of what could-so-easily-have-been.

As if Heather’s ordeal was not enough, she had a visit to the dentist today after Karen noticed some tooth decay; a good thing she noticed this early too! Apparently Heather displayed stoicism beyond her years throughout two fillings, the poor little thing. This despite our (Karen’s mostly) best efforts to give our kids the best chance at dental health.

Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1)

After first seeing Comet McNaught two nights ago from a beach in Adelaide (Australia) with my son Nicholas, my wife Karen and I had a great view of it tonight from suburban Adelaide (after the kids were in bed) starting at around 8:55 pm, eventually peering through a gap in a neighbour’s fence to see it for as long as possible low on the horizon.

The tail was striking whether to the naked eye or in 7×50 binoculars. One particularly beautiful moment was when the coma emerged from under a thin bank of passing cloud, appearing brighter than before and orange-hued.

Comets Hale-Bopp (1997) and Hyakutake (1996) were impressive, but McNaught is something else, truly deserving of being placed in the Great Comet category.

On the importance of pure research

I recently finished reading the book Engines of Logic (2000) by Martin Davis (apparently published as The Universal Computer in some countries) of Davis-Putnam SAT-solver algorithm fame, a book about the origins of computer science from the viewpoint of the mathematicians who founded it, in particular: Leibniz, Boole, Frege, Cantor, Hilbert, Godel and Turing.

Leibniz had the notion that it ought to be possible to be able to write down ideas in a language (he called this a universal characteristic) such that “serious men of good will” could sit together to solve some problem by calculation using an algebra of logic he referred to as the calculus ratiocinator.

Despite attempts at such a language and algebra of logic by Leibniz, it was ultimately the work of his successors that gave rise to the logic that made automated computation possible.

Of Leibniz’s work Davis said that “What Leibniz has left us is his dream, but even this dream can fill us with admiration for the power of human speculative thought and serve as a yardstick for judging later developments.” 

In the epilogue, Davis had this to say:

The Dukes of Hanover thought they knew what Leibniz should be doing with his time: working on their family history. Too often today, those who provide scientists with the resources necessary for their lives and work try to steer them in directions deemed most likely to provide quick results. This is not only likely to be futile in the short run, but more importantly, by discouraging investigations with no obvious immediate payoff, it shortchanges the future. 

These days, universities and it seems, too many aspects of society are becoming shackled to the oft-times short sighted and petty expectations of business, as if it mattered as an end in itself. We would do well to pay attention to history.

On the subject of history, it occurs to me increasingly that most of what we study is in fact historical in nature. Incremental advances in computer science, software engineering,  astronomy, and Science in general are mere blips on the vast landscape of accumulated knowledge. When I read books such as Engines of Logic and The Art of Electronics, I am overwhelmed by the contributions of countless scientists and engineers over decades, to say nothing of the work of the founders of Science such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein.

Kierkegaard and Stroustrup

This Lambda the Ultimate post pointed to an interview with the creator of the C++ programming language Bjarne Stroustrup in which he says he was influenced by the 19th century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. It immediately reminded me of a Kierkegaard quote to which I find myself drawn over and over:

What I need to make up my mind about is what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every action…The vital thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. Of what use would it be for me to discover a so-called objective truth…if it had no deeper significance for me and my life? (Soren Kierekgaard)

I am still very much in search of this “idea”. I first saw this quote on Julia Watkin’s University of Tasmania website. During the brief time that I knew her, I enjoyed talking with Julia about philosophy and other subjects. Sadly, Julia is no longer with us. I wonder what she would have had to say about Stroustrup’s interview comments re: Kierkegaard?

I went back to Stroustrup’s book, The Design and Evolution of C++ (Addison-Wesley, 1994) to see what he had originally said about Kierkegaard. Here are the relevant excerpts (page 23):

I have a lot of sympathy for the student Euclid reputedly had evicted for asking, “But what is mathematics for?” Similarly, my interest in computers and programming languages is fundamentally pragmatic.

I feel most at home with the empiricists rather than with the idealists…That is, I tend to prefer Aristotle to Plato, Hume to Descartes, and shake my head sadly over Pascal. I find comprehensive “systems” like those of Plato and Kant fascinating, yet fundamentally unsatisfying in that they appear to me dangerously remote from everyday experiences and the essential peculiarities of individuals.

I find Kierkegaard’s almost fanatical concern for the individual and keen psychological insights much more appealing than the grandiose schemes and concern for humanity in the abstract of Hegel or Marx. Respect for groups that doesn’t include respect for individuals of those groups isn’t respect at all. Many C++ design decisions have their roots in my dislike for forcing people to do things in some particular way. In history, some of the worst disasters have been caused by idealists trying to force people into “doing what is good for them.” Such idealism not only leads to suffering among its innocent victims, but also to delusion and corruption of the idealists applying the force. I also find idealists prone to ignore experience and experiment that inconveniently clashes with dogma or theory. Where ideals clash and sometimes even when pundits seem to agree, I prefer to provide support that gives the programmer a choice.

In Julia Watkin’s book Kierkegaard (Geoffrey Chapman, 1997, pages 107-108), she had this to say:

In his use of the Socratic method, Kierkegaard strove to keep his own view to himself through the use of pseudonyms, acting as an “occasion” for people’s discovery and self-discovery instead of setting himself up as a teaching authority or arguing the rightness of his own ideas. I would urge that it is this feature of Kierkegaard’s writing that makes him especially effective in a time when two main tendencies seem to be especially dominant – a pluralism that accepts the validity of all views but stands by the correctness of no particular view of the universe, and a scientific or religious fundamentalism that is rigidly exclusive of views other than its own. Kierkegaard avoids the pitfalls of both trends, and he also does something else; he makes room for truth, both intellectual and existential, through encouraging people to be open-minded, to be aware of the spiritual dimension of existence, and to venture in life as well as in thought.

Although Stroustrup remarked in the interview referred to above that he is “…not particularly fond of Kierkegaard’s religious philosophy”, there is some resonance between his comments and Julia’s analysis.

Rising beyond the mundane…

A conversation with my wife Karen tonight (in between parts of a Dr Who episode) reminded me of some quotes that mean a lot to me. Each speaks of rising above the mundane and the petty…

The effort to understand the Universe is one of the few things that lifts human life above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. (Steven Weinberg)

We make our world signficant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers. (Carl Sagan)

What I need to make up my mind about is what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every action…The vital thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. Of what use would it be for me to discover a so-called objective truth…if it had no deeper significance for me and my life? (Soren Kierekgaard)

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away. (Thoreau)