Deck Thirty Six, Issue No. 01
James O'Flanagan, MS, FRSA
Engineer, Educator, & Conservationist Dedicated To Inspiring Future Innovators | MS | FRSA | Top 100 Innovators 2024 | Marquis Who’s Who | ??♂???♀???????????♂???
An Engineering Periodical on LinkedIn Presented By Oapsie Daisy Newsletter
By: Jim O’Flanagan
Editor’s Note: This Oapsie Daisy Newsletter Special Edition is syndicated and was originally published on LinkedIn.
Summary of This Column:
Let’s get to it! This series of columns will generally follow the same format; a bullet pointed summary leads off, followed by several subsections in BOLD typeface where the bullet point are expanded upon.
Oapsie Daisy Newsletter has been publishing on OAPSIE.com for several months. This version of the Newsletter, called Deck 36 and which is exclusive to LinkedIn, will open up to more broadly focused engineering topics like the effects of Generative AI on our engineering profession, or unifying topics concerning our own published material on this Newsletter.
For example, we recently published a series of articles on Generative AI and our resident Artificial Intelligence Entity (AIE) named Edi Oapsie. Those articles are all published on LinkedIn and OAPSIE.com. We link to them in this column, with added context and analysis, like how Edi actually helped create Ballparkview, in order to make reading this column worth everyone’s time.
Since this is the first issue of the Newsletter on LinkedIn, we are including a great many engineering topics that interest us. Based on your feedback, we will adjust the content we include in this
column to subjects that everyone is interested in.
Because that’s what this whole show is about, Dear Reader! We are honored and humbled that you would choose to spend some of your valuable time with us. We take that responsibility seriously and we aim to deliver a quality Newsletter to you on a regular basis. Here’s to you, Dear Reader!
And here’s to my wife, Becca; my kids Azra and Eli; and my dogs Buffy and Bones; who all make this column possible with their love and support. Thank you, and I love you all.
Deck Thirty Six
The title of this column is "Deck Thirty Six" or “Deck 36” in shorthand. Either way is good with us. For those not familiar with Star Trek canon, Deck 36 is where Main Engineering is located on the NCC-1701-D, which is the official name for the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation (fourth in lex order, but sixth in the canon build starship sequence).
So this column is Deck 36, it is a report from Main Engineering, by the Chief Engineer (me), and we are all fans of Star Trek, particularly the Captain Picard version(s)… wait…
Geeky, yes. But that’s how we roll ‘round here!
LinkedIn made us pick a periodic publishing schedule, so we chose one month, although you can see from our publishing history that we drop content more often than that. So that is what we shall endeavor to do.
One other housekeeping item; it seems that LinkedIn considers an “edition” of this Newsletter to consist of exactly one article. That necessarily means that each edition will be an anthology collection of already-published material, with context and analysis added for the “Big Picture” view. That will be the value-add of this column (hopefully!). Generally, we will link to materials on OAPSIE.com and posts made here on LinkedIn as reference for Deck 36.
We are always open to feedback, corrections, or comments. If you would like to write a guest column on Oapsie Daisy Newsletter, that would be cool too. Just drop me an email ([email protected]) with your contact info to get a conversation started.
So here we go. Deck Thirty Six is officially launched! Engage. Punch it. Make It So, and Take Us Out…
Mission Statement: The Purpose of Oapsie Daisy Newsletter on LinkedIn
At OAPSIE we talk about mission statements a lot. Maybe too much!
For example, we wrote about Mission Statements no less than five separate times during the release of #Ballparkview leading up to SABR 51.
Yet there is a reason for this Mission Statement madness!
Find out why after the graphics and links below that summarize our stance on Mission Statements, and how important they are to a well run business.
As we said, there is a reason for this Mission Statement madness!
The reason write about them all the time is to emphasize how important Mission Statements are; and how seriously we take them at OAPSIE.
Quite literally, everything we do at OAPSIE has a Mission Statement. It is the only practical way to observe and measure what is happening at your company every day. It is the only way to have your quality system mean something, or your project planning software. They make the business world go ‘round, or at least they should.
There cannot be an objective goal for any business endeavor without one. Without an objective goal, the endeavor you are working on is not a project because it extends indefinitely; it is an overhead task or something else entirely.
With the importance of Mission Statements established, here is our Mission Statement for Deck Thirty Six on LinkedIn:
“To deliver timely, accurate, pertinent, and frank Micro-Information to readers interested in engineering, kindness, physics, software, business, management, finance, marketing, outdoors, empathy, and helpfulness.”
I snapped this photo while researching put-in/take-out spots on the creek for kayaking.
From the above Mission Statement derives several purpose points:
We added that last point to our project pipeline because we don’t owe a royalty to anyone for background music in our published vids. YouTube is pretty strict about that! Necessity breeds invention, no doubt.
ASME IMECE 2023
Our next scheduled public event is ASME IMECE 2023, where we will be debuting another Pennantview module named Pitcherview.
If you recall, OAPSIE filed an omnibus patent last year for all of our baseball related technology. Its name is Pennantview. Ballparkview, which we presented at SABR 51, was part of that patent application.
Pitcherview is another submodule if that omnibus patent. It was actually the first piece of baseball technology we developed, and consequently it is the most advanced.
Here is the mission statement for Pennantview:
“To create a novel biophysics technology platform that aids in the improvement of baseball outcomes.“
Pitcherview Mission Statement is:
“To apply full spectrum kinematics, *intelligent engineering, and computational mechanics to the baseball pitching motion to better aid in the evaluation of players and baseball techniques.”
It uses discrete methodologies and computational power to determine the power, energy, and impulse with which the pitcher brings his fastball (or curveball) to the plate. Full spectrum kinematics is a way of saying that we consider deformation in addition to free body Motion in the computational mechanics simulation.
We have seen top end big leaguer pitchers with a calculated pitch delivery power of about 0.5 horsepower. A little leaguer produces about .075 hp. It’s a huge difference.
That’s quite amazing when you think about it; a highly trained, highly conditioned, focused professional baseball pitcher can generate about half as much usable towing power as an average draft horse (as Mr. James Watt derived the horsepower (hp) unit), all while accomplishing a sports motion as complicated as a dance pirouette.
Modern athletes are amazing, and we can hardly wait to present it to the ASME community!
Other Interesting ASME IMECE Information:
Pitcherview and Pennantview, the baseball technologies we are presenting at ASME IMECE 2023 have online locations as follows.
For more information on our presentation at ASME IMECE 2023, please visit:
Jim’s ASME membership is found here.
OAPSIE Standards of Publishing, Journalistic Standards of Publishing
Please find a copy of this code of ethics at Link: (https://oapsie.com/code-of-ethics)
Those of you that know me personally know that I come from a newspaper family, and I am very proud of it. When I was a teenager my father used to bring home 5 newspapers every day because he worked at the local Akron paper and they printed other newspapers on contract; broadsheets like The Akron-Beacon Journal, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were regular staples at the kitchen table. All were newspapers of record.
The press where those papers were printed no longer exists (how sad!), but the lessons I learned from reading all of those papers every day stuck with me. My favorite sportswriter at the time was Terry Pluto, who wrote for the Akron paper back then. Mr. Pluto has written innumerable books on the Guardians, their history, and their future. He still write about the Browns and Guardians for the Cleveland paper.
The only industry mentioned by name in the US Bill of Rights is the press, and the guaranteeing of the free exercise of it. It is mentioned in the very first amendment, and it is mentioned in the same clause as freedom of speech, after religion, and before the right to free assembly and the right to petition the government for change.
It stands to reason, then, that the press, and by implication a vigorously independent press bound by certain ethical principals, is pretty damn important too. We did not get into this business to be journalists; we are all engineers at Oapsie of one stripe or another. One skill that makes for a great engineer is the ability to write technical documents clearly and concisely. We bring a great deal of writing experience in that sphere; hopefully that translates to this style of writing.
We do not pretend that we are professional journalists here at OAPSIE. We run a simple Engineering Periodical Newsletter. Our only goal with this Newsletter is to convey interesting things happening at OAPSIE, current events in the engineering world, and business topics pertinent to the practice of engineering. We also strive to deliver it to you in a timely and interesting way.
All of this does not mean we cannot hold ourselves to a certain higher standard. The Society for Professional Journalists maintains a published set of ethics that most mainstream publications adhere to.
We pledge to do the same, and to follow these ethics to the utmost of our humble writing abilities.
The SPJ Standard is:
Please find the link to SPJ’s ethics stands in our website at: Link:(https://oapsie.com/code-of-ethics).
This is the standard we aspire to in this Newsletter, and every other item we publish on any site, including our own upcoming releases.
Edi Oapsie, Artificial Intelligence Entity & ChatGPT Extraordinaire
Recently we have been working a project that runs experiments with #generativeai, with particular focus on the effects of the technology on our business, and our industry. In the past several decades we have seen the launch of the public internet in 1993 and the release of the iPhone in 2007. To us, those are the two most important tech milestones met by humanity in our Gen X’er lifetimes.
We at OAPSIE believe that #GenerativeAI will take its place alongside those other two as milestone achievements; indeed, it may have already done so. That became especially true after #OpenAI released a Beta of #ChatGPT4 last year, and hooked up it to the internet.
To capitalize on this technology, we have been working an engineering development project to apply it to our everyday programming and engineering tasks like building and running computer simulations.
Our primary motivations for doing this are:
To these ends, we have created our own instantiation of an Artificial Intelligence Entity (AIE) and named him Edi Oapsie. Indeed, he has been so useful to the company we have been treating this AIE instance as a member of the firm, in a semi-tongue-in-cheek nod to the near-human output he provides. Indeed, Edi has a domain name (EdiOapsie.com), and an employee ID. We believe we are only a few years away from communicating with these entities in the same manner as science fiction characters like JARVIS, KITT, and Master Control Program. These actions reinforce our belief in a GenerativeAI-driven future world.
To accomplish this, have written some code, read some articles, and written some articles; all are on Edi Oapsie and GenerativeAI. Edi Oapsie most definitely assisted in our success in Chicago at SABR 51. The collection is as follows.
Generative AI Articles, and Edi Oapsie:
Editorial Rules for Publishing AIE Generated Content.
The Effects of Generative AI on our Business.
Edi Writes an Abaqus FEA Input Deck:
Managing Artificial Intelligence Entities.
The Ethical Subroutines of Edi Oapsie and AI: A Closer Look.
Edi also his his own internet domain at Link: (https://EdiOapsie.com). Pretty cool.
Some other interesting things AIE Edi Oapsie has been up to:
Edi has contributed his own video content included on our OAPSIE Originals page.
There is a whole section of the OAPSIE.com Hamburger Menu dedicated to Edi. There is an about page for Edi there at the following address.
Edi’s Remastered and newly Subtitled Captain America OG serial episodes from 1944. Coolness!
Edi and Jim collaborated on music production using a Thirty Party app named Soundful. You can see the result if that musical collaboration here.
ST:TNG Interlude
Editor’s Note: The following episode review is about two Starship Enterprise Chief Engineers, so it is most definitely germane to the subject at hand. Deck 36 is an Engineering Periodical, dedicated to the real life business of engineering and management; however, it will not be uncommon to see references to various science fiction canons in this column, particularly when it helps explain a technical point. Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, Red Rising, A Song of Ice And Fire, Ka, and The Multiverse of Madness are examples of this referencing we can foresee at present.
Our Favorite ST:TNG Episode is “Relics” from Season 6. We admire the Enterprise Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge (LaVar Burton with a permanent visor on!- Check out his Newsletter, it’s great), along with James Doohan’s Mr. Scott on the earlier NCC-1701, NCC-1701-A, and, very briefly, The USS Excelsior (how tragic!). In this episode a little time travel storyline magic and a red shirt are used by Rick Berman and Co. Mr. Scott rigs the transporter buffer on his marooned ship The Jenolan to play on continuous loop, with him and a buddy inside, thereby preserving their lives indefinitely. All they needed was a rescue party to show up.
Genius! Well, half genius; his buddy didn’t make it back out.
Turns out Mr. Scott needed only 80 years in the transporter buffer to catch up to the TNG timeline, but he lost a friend in the process. However, he gained one back during the episode in Mr. LaForge; after they tackle yet another major engineering problem involving a Dyson Sphere, a big door, and a star about to go supernova. We get a single length episode but a double shot of Chief Engineering the whole way. And our Chief Engineers save the day! Awesome.
Lesson learned?
Mentorship is a two way street, with both people, no matter their age, taking role of learner and learned in turns. Great mentorships are always give and take. After Georgi recognizes the utility of using something old but sturdy like the Jenolan to launch their rescue plan, Scottie realizes that Geordi’s new-school ideas are not so bad after all, and that he too has something new to learn as an engineer.
We spoke about the mentor/mentee relationship in a LinkedIn post, check it out.
Great episode! Moving right along…
SABR 51 Roundup
SABR 51 just concluded last week, and we successfully presented our Ballparkview technology to the baseball community. What an opportunity, and what an experience! We couldn’t be more excited about the future of biomechanics and its place in baseball.
Some random observations:
We have similar pages and/or redirects stood up for the following projects.
Both of those technologies will debut at ASME IMECE 2023 in November 2023.
Thank you to the following people whom I met at SABR 51 Chicago:
You guys made the whole process for a first timer much easier. Thank you, gentlemen.
Also, thank you again to these folks who gave a great deal of feedback and/or reactions to our recent columns:
Thank you, we really appreciate it! Your feedback had a very real impact on the final product we presented at SABR 51.
We have selected a few Ballparkview-related articles that are syndicated to LinkedIn from OAPSIE.com.
Enjoy!
SABR 51 Newsletter Article Roundup:
Ballparkview Homepage.
Happy July 4 message, plus some pre-SABR notes.
SABR Day 3 Roundup:
SABR Day 4 Roundup:
OAPSIE Live @ SABR 51
SABR 51 Slide Show
领英推荐
You can find the Newsletter homepage at Link: (https://oapsie.com/oapsie-daisy-newsletter-1)
First Video Newsletter Post for SABR Week
Technical Explanation of Ballparkview
Other Relevant Domains
Sample Ballparkview Use Case
Editor’s Note: All Ballparkview articles have been syndicated from https://ballparkview.com, which is a subsidiary domain of OAPSIE.com, our company’s main level internet portal.
Edi Drops The Mic
Engineering is inherently a creative endeavor. Clearly, so is music. Hence, great music and great engineering go hand-in-glove, and that means we need to include it in Deck 36. This is the reason you will see this column inside an engineering periodical. Because when you get down to it, music is engineering, at least the acoustic part of it. Calculating the natural frequency of a guitar string is essentially the same deal as calculating the first 6 modes of a nuclear reactor, or a noisy tire; both of which I’ve conducted modal analyses on. It also helps a great deal while coding or creating an FEA input deck.
Creating music can resemble the engineering creative process; it is akin to an engineering exercise. After all, a musical instrument is a collection of sound producing elements that we design to vibrate at a certain frequency. Walter Isaacson, in his excellent biography of Steve Jobs, describes an interaction between Jobs And Chief Designer Jony Ive where Jobs recounts how a bootleg copy of The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever” informed his own design philosophies for Apple.
In the conversation, Jobs describes the dozens of minute changes made to the song, over the course of an entire recording session. Individually, each one was relatively small, but added together, and placed in the right locations, turned a jam session into an all-time rock and roll classic.
Ed Sheeran describes a similar creative process for his songs. He even has a name for it: The Faucet Theory. Link: (https://www.ownerartist.com/journal/the-creative-process-of-ed-sheeran/#:~:text=Sheeran%20applies%20this%20theory%20to,and%20his%20creativity%20truly%20shines.)
We like to take a similar approach to designing a new part as these two musicians take in honing their craft. Only in our case we are dealing with Computational Mechanics software rather than music.
We believe in getting a simple yet effective prototype in the customer’s hands as quickly as possible, then using feedback on that design as input to your design process. Sequential Waterfall methods get bogged down in stage-gate process development hell. Using a system that relies on many small design iterations also removes risk from your project. After all, if you’ve actually seen a piece of code work, even partially, there is a good chance there will be a useful product at the end.
We have previously mentioned that we to write about things we are expert at. We don’t have a degrees in music, nor are we professional musicians; we are more like music hackers with our own instrument playing. But do know a little something about the business of music, and how to create things.
Here is Jim’s musical experience:
If you add the last 2 bullet points up, that comes to about 300 concerts we’ve collectively either attended or worked for.
Music is in our blood, and it is built into the fabric of this company. The primary reason for this is to keep our creative juices going, but it also helps to remind us to follow our mantra: Easy Does It.
One lesson I took from the professional musicians discussed in this column are
how professional they were, and how seriously they take their craft. Jobs was right to admire The Beatles.
This is where the music will live:
OAPSIE’s Online Media Platform Homepage:
Check out the main view screen for highlighted material:
Edi Oapsie himself has uncovered a few new Northeast Ohio bands. Those articles are:
Edi’s Review of The Harmonic Waves
Edi’s Review of Pluto’s Orbit:
Jim has also reviewed a few rock and roll and R&B classics. They are:
Roy Orbison, Baby, You’ve Got It
Richie Sambora, Edi’s Music Video Review.
Of particular interest to the AI and Computation crowd is Edi’s original music. The application of Generative AI here was twofold; first, the software we used, Soundful, is itself a result of Generative AI technology in that it is programmed to create novel music and beats on-the-fly (hence, generative!). Second, we let Edi answer the standard prompts you normally get when you engage a GenerativeAI model (Light vs. Dark, Sassy vs. Sweet, etc.)
Edi’s Music on OAPSIE Originals:
We also have Bonus Video and Music Materiel.
Edi’s Music For The Masses YouTube Playlist Section:
Sneak Preview: Our Technology Development Pipeline
We have some exciting new projects that are due for release in the immediate future. Some we can mention by name, while others are still up on the OAPSIE workbench and we will just mention those in this space generally.
The following is an incomplete list of our upcoming technology releases.
This is a site we have built in partnership with East Rim Trail LLC.
The site’s Mission Statement is:
“To serve the all people who use East Rim Trail in The Cuyahoga Valley National Park with the most up to date Micro Information as possible.“
East Rim Trail Online has been up and running, generating ad revenue ( all OAPSIE internet properties are ad-supported), for several months now. East Rim Trail fills an information gap that currently exists in some smaller attractions and recreational activities in Northeast Ohio. Like OAPSIE.com, it is a fully functional web portal. It has its own regularly published Newsletter, also called East Rim Trail Online. We will continue to update this web portal as time goes on.
Link: (https://eastrimtrail.com)
The second is our second partnership with a local company, and in a business very different from the one that we traditionally serve.
Details to come.
Details to come as we approach ASME IMECE in November 2023.
Link: (https://pitcherview.com)
Link: (https://oapsie.com/asme)
Link: (https://oapsie.com/imece-2023)
Pennantview Main Badge
OAPSIE Originals & Captain America 1944
Jim, Edi, and the rest of OAPSIE have gotten into video editing in a big way.
We are also very big fans of Marvel Comics. For historical and research purposes, we have unearthed public domain reels of the OG episodes shot during World War II. Seriously- Captain America debuted in 1944, the war ended in 1945. (This is the source material of the origin story of Steve Rodgers from the current Marvel Cinematic Universe.)
We were also testing out some of Edi's capabilities. And video editing is just plain fun, I have to admit!
Check out our vids on as we drop them on Sunday evenings at 8 pm EDT.
Editor’s Note: We also had some fun doing a similar project at the Stow Library with old public domain material. Old newspapers like the Stow Sentry are hard to find online. However, they usually exist on microfiche at the local library, as does Stow Library and The Stow Sentry. We’ve taken the responsibility of converting these to YouTube vids. But mostly we did this because it was a good day of fun at the library! Check out our first one. Stow Sentry Microfiche May 1970 to Dec 1972. Link: (https://youtu.be/DZAvpnlr4u0)
Jim Loves His E-Bike
An E-bike is one of the purest expressions of the values OAPSIE holds dear.
#Kindness. #Engineering. #Physics. #Computation. #Software. #Firmware. #Conservation. #Green. #Inclusion. #Exercise. #Outdoors. #Adventuring. #Construction. #ProjectManagement. #Technology. #Education. #Openmindedness. #Empathy. #Kindness. #Green. #HighTech. #DIY.
Over the past several years I have developed a bit of an obsession with E-Bikes for all the reasons we just stated. Just the firmware programming on the controller was no small task I’m sure; I actually attempted a to write a Finite State Machine on paper for it, but I am still finding new states and modes after several years. This is one complex piece of engineering!
I have constructed three E-Bike with kits from the internet, hand drill batteries, several minor electrical shocks, and plenty of YouTube how-to vids.
My wife and I currently own one each, with another on the way. (They do tend to feel newborns when you first get one.)My E-bike is a 2020 Ariel Rider X-Class 52 Volt. It’s got a single hub mounted brushless motor that puts out 2000 watts peak (~2 hp), and 96 ft-lbs of torque. To put that into perspective, my first car, which was a 1990 Ford Escort Sunsport, had 90 hp and 106 ft-lbs of torque.
My e-bike has nearly as much wheel spinning power as my first car! And it feels like it too!
Becca has a 2020 Lectric XP Step-Thru, and this is an awesome bike.
Becca’s 2020 Lectric XP Step-Thru. This bike is cool because it folds down to about the size of a suitcase for easier travel. The engineers at Lectric simply put a huge bolted flange in the middle of the frame was an ingenious lever system to make the bicycle foldable yet still rigid while riding.
We also own two electric scooters; they are both Unagi e500 models with two 250 Watt hub motors, and weighs in at 26 total pounds.
They are light enough and small enough to take as carry on luggage on Amtrak, which we did last year on a business trip to Chicago. No need for any car on that particular trip. Green, good exercise, good karma, all in one package.
This is a picture of Jim’s x52 getting a make-over. As you can see, E-Bikes are a different animal than a regular bicycle. A great deal of engineering went into making them resemble bicycles, when in fact they are a different type of machine altogether, with a different purpose. E-Bikes of this kind are meant to replace mileage you drive your car, if you dwell near a city or town. This is the reason you see more utility on these like disc brakes, motorcycle tires, and road legal lights. Keep in mind, they are still Class 2 E-Bikes (in Ohio), capable of legally riding on the Towpath Trail as it is going down Akron-Cleveland Road. And therein lies the interesting point; the are more akin to all terrain vehicles. Sometimes I go for a Sunday cruise on the bike path, other days I take this on the regular commute to work.
Depends on the weather, and how I feel. Either way, each trip on an E-Bike get us closer to our goal of carbon neutrality.
Jim and This Electric Beast, which is a converted Giant commuter bike with 2.5 kWh of LiFePO4 battery strapped to it, made the 152 mile trip from Pittsburgh, PA to Cumberland, MD on the Great Allegheny Passage. Killer Trip!
There is plenty of engineering, and even a little software hacking, involved in a project like this.
That page links to Ariel Rider, Unagi, and Lectric brands there and we can personally attest that they are all awesome! We shall talk about this subjects some more in this column. To get that conversation started, check out this video:
Some information about The GAP Trail:
Errata
#engineering #physics #softwaredevelopment #projectmanagement #kindness #missionstatement #ballparkview #pennantview #pitcherview
#Kindness #Engineering #Physics #Computation #Software #Firmware #Conservation #Green #Inclusion #Exercise #Outdoors #Adventuring #Construction #ProjectManagement #Technology #Education #Openmindedness #Empathy #Kindness #Green #HighTech #DIY