The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (that’s “I-triple-E” to those who know what it is), of which I happen to be a member, published a list of the top 10 technology developments in the decade 2000-2010. This is not a list compiled by some self-styled “tech-savvy” journalist, it’s the list of important technology compiled by people who built the stuff (or similar stuff).

If you don’t want to read the original article, which is brief enough, I’ll give you just the list.

11) Class-D audio amplifiers, which I’d never heard of until today
10 – Digital photography
9 – Flexible AC power transmission (foundations of the “smart grid”)
8 – Planetary rovers
7 – Drone aircraft
6 – Cloud computing
5 – Multicore CPUs
4 – LED lightbulbs
3 – Voice-over-IP
2 – Social networking
1 – Smartphones

Of those, I don’t think “social networking” really fits in: all the others are more nuts-and-bolts technological breakthroughs, whereas social networking is just a Havard dropout’s idea for making a gazillion dollars by selling people’s private information. But the other 10 I’d agree are a big deal.

Basically, the highlights are:

• “these new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol … the real dose to the skin is now high”
• “In addition, it appears that real independent safety data do not exist.”
• “Because this device can scan a human in a few seconds, the X-ray beam is very intense. Any glitch in power at any point in the hardware (or more importantly in software) that stops the device could cause an intense radiation dose to a single spot on the skin.”

Concerned yet? Passengers are supposed to have the right to opt of of going through the scanner, but the alternative is a “rigorous” pat-down search that encompasses all the private areas of the body.

So, I strongly urge my readers (both of you) to make an informed choice about whether to submit to radiation exposure simply to get on board an airplane. The ACLU has a fact sheet explaining your options.

A few days ago, I had to write a short autobiography for one of the engineering papers I was writing for work. Of course I mentioned my advanced degree, an M.S. in mathematics. M.S. stands for Master of Science. I kind of like the sound of that. I wish we expanded that abbreviation more often. Think about it: I’m a Master of Science!

I almost feel like I should be practicing my villain laugh or something. I’m a Master of Science! Bwa-ha-ha!

Even better, that’s not just a title I made up for myself. I earned it! I even have a piece of paper proclaiming (in calligraphy no less) my Mastery of Science!

That will take a bit of time, though.

When I left 1&1 (on good terms: their service was really not bad) I downloaded all my files and backed them up and thought I was all set. It turns out I forgot something important. You see, this blog runs on the popular WordPress software, which uses a database (MySQL if you’re interested) as the back-end for storing all the articles and sorting them into categories and so forth. When I downloaded all my files I kind of assumed my database was among them. It’s not. The database is gone. In fact, the databases to my other Web pages are gone as well.

Now I could probably recover that database today by writing a frantic e-mail to 1&1. I would probably have to pay a few bucks to re-open my account. But it would be a big hassle, and it’s quite possible that 1&1 has an automatic script to clean out a customer’s disk space when he leaves.

What I really think is that there was not too much on my old blog that’s important to save. I’ve learned the hard lesson, so next time I’ll have the backups in place. I look at this as an opportunity to set a new tone for my blog. I have a clearer idea of what kinds of things I want to write about than I did when I started blogging. I’m optimistic that I can make this new incarnation of The Runes of Binaria more informative and entertaining.

Just recently (two days ago, in fact), I decided to take the plunge and get my own Web hosting service from a real hosting company (namely, 1and1).  Partly this is because I’m tired of hosting my pages at Comcast (more specifically, I’m tired of Comcast’s lousy service and crooked policies); partly because I want to do some things that comcast won’t let me do, like run my own Wiki; and partly because I have plans to put enough diverse content online that it makes sense to have separate domains: arsmagica.andrewgronosky.org, photos.andrewgronosky.org, and so on.

When I started thinking about what I’d like my main home page to look like, I realized I would probably want to change it pretty often.  That’s starting to sound like a blog.

Now, I said earlier I hate blogs.  That’s really a half truth when I get down to it.  I hate most blogs.  My wife has a blog.  My friend Mark Moses has a blog.  Even slashdot could be considered a blog.  Those aren’t bad.  So maybe I don’t hate blogs — just lame blog posts.

I guess I’ll be OK as long as I dont post lame stuff.  If my blog ever disappears, you’ll know why.