Headworx

Las Vegas is fabulous. You know that even before you arrive, as this is exactly what the flight attendants tell you when boarding a LAS flight. Of course. It cannot be anything else but fabulous. And the Vegas fame aside, it really was fabulous for us las week at LightFair International, the first grand industry trade show after COVID19. There was desire and energy in people to meet face to face and shake hands. We saw that back in March at New York's LEDucation. Which was the indicator of the LightFair to come. The booths were crowded for all three days - we has meetings up until the last hour. And of course mornings ad evenings were busy too with joint breakfasts with customers and after hours parties. It has been so encouraging to see that much energy in people and so many happy faces. This all means the lighting industry is back up to speed and guess what is the leading theme these days? Energy savings. Of course. LED retrofits are becoming no-brainers and with lighting control...

Early May this year I was reading (or rather listening to - to be precise) the Endurance (Shackleton's Incredible Voyage) by Alfred Lansing . The story is truly incredible and the overall reflection is this was probably the last one like that. The last major expedition without radio communication. Something that simply is not possible today. Even when the first daredevils fly to Mars, their every minute will be covered on the Internet. There were many fascinating aspects of surviving on pack ice. I highly recommend immersing in this book. But probably the most striking has been the realization that a trip like that - a trip of a lifetime, is not possible today. Thanks to the radio communications and GPS satellites the world is no longer an uncharted area to explore. I got so fascinated with what (and how) they did, that I decided to learn using a sextant for navigation. Of course not to drive from one city to another but to restore that skill of finding geographic coordinates base...

I have finally managed to get my Android Auto setup working reliably. It has been the goal since I purchased the collectible Subaru Forester STI JDM (MY2005). It is an awesome car, probably the best Forester Subaru has ever done. But being 18 years old it lacks some convenient modern features, mopstly related to the head unit - navigation and apps. I decided to retrofit it with a Pioneer AVIC-F80DAB 2-DIN unit, one of the first models with capacitive touch and Android Auto support. Unfortunately I could never get the Android Auto working reliably. It was either not connecting to my phone or disconnecting randomly. So I gave up.  Until recently when I decided to give it one more try (assuming 4 years have passed and both Pioneer and Google probably have figured out most of the quirks and fixed them). I also had a suspect USB cable, with an extender on Type-A connectors, which I was blaming for the random disconnects. After all the latest firmware updates and replacing the cable all ...

There is the proverb saying the darkest place is under the candlestick. And it is so true when looking around and seeing the obvious things not happening. Especially in product design. I blogged about digital camera companies many times in the past and there is one theme in common. They struggle to survive, being killed by camera - enabled smartphones. Yet consistently they keep pushing themselves into the grave. E.g., the lack of standard connectivity options is so evident. Sharing a photo taken with a dedicated camera is tedious, painful and only a small elite of enthusiasts are doing that. The lack of protection against accidental deletion of a photo is another gap, solved 30 years ago by Windows and Macs by the concept of a wastebasket / trash bin. And now when the still cameras have gained video recording capabilities, the sound recording part is completely unsolved. OK, the cameras have 3.5mm microphone jacks. That is it. And then you can buy a clunky set of wireless microphones ...