Michael Suesserman's Blog

Medical Apps on Smart Phones/Devices

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:55:02 GMT

It's fascinating how many things seem to move in cycles. I started my career in the 1980’s focusing on medical devices and then switched in the late 1990’s to Internet technologies in part because of frustration with the extended FDA process needed to commercialize medical devices. I much prefer the freedom that Internet businesses offer. For the first time in many years, I recently started looping back towards medical devices. My main expertise focuses on medical device transducers that convert biomedical signals to something that can be processed by electronic instruments. The smart phones/devices that nearly everyone is carrying around these days are like supercomputers compared to many of the specialized microcontrollers/microcomputers that I previously developed for processing biomedical signals. Given the broad popularity of rich apps on smart devices together with the processing power the devices offer, it could be an ideal time to build biomedical transducers and apps for use with smart phones/devices. In addition to the local processing power offered by smart apps/devices, access to cloud services creates opportunities for extending apps in very interesting and useful ways. I recently started working with iPhone/iPod/iPad apps to determine if the platform can actually be used for creating medical devices. I’ll be describing my experiences in this blog.

Mutant Vehicle Bus Conversion

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 06:00:51 GMT

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been converting a school bus to a mutant vehicle for Burning Man. Some info is available on the Castle Anomalous site.

It’s been a fascinating multiyear, large-scale art project. The long term goal is to create a mobile “castle” with three distinct areas: a private living area inside the bus, a driving area in the front of the bus and a large deck on the roof of the bus. For Burning Man, the roof deck holds 30 to 40 people (plus a 2000W sound system for a DJ) as the “castle” drives around the playa.

The first year of the project focused on building the roof deck. It involved welding about a ton of steel onto the roof of the bus. I have a lot of photos I’ll upload soon. After that, the infrastructure for the inside was built out. Over the next year, the final “castle” skin needs to be permanently added to the bus. I’m currently using temporary castle panels that get added to the bus on the playa. I plan to cover the bus with fiberglass formed to look like castle stones as a way of creating a permanent castle skin.

I have lots of info and photos that I plan to add to my blog soon.

Chainmail Jewelry

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 05:53:00 GMT

I’ve been assembling various forms of chainmail for a long time. I’ve made shirts, belts, neckties, and various pieces of jewelry including earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. I enjoy the combination of look and function that chainmail offers. It’s also very detailed, repetitive work that is a very nice distraction from the that deep technical work I normally do.

I have a chainmail bracelet I’ve been wearing for over eight years. It’s made of silver, and I hand soldered every link. There is no clasp on the bracelet, I built it onto myself over eight years ago and it has not been off since. Here is a photo of me in a Vegas buffet letting someone test the chainmail with a sharp steak knife:

As I said above, I like chainmail because of the combination of look and function. Chainmail can be formed into various shapes and fabrics all of which look very interesting. In addition the interlocking loop design acts to stop sharp objects from penetrating the chainmail fabric. It’s interesting to see how chainmail works. When a sharp object pokes into a specific loop, the surrounding loops get recruited in a way that strengthens the fabric at the point of impact making it harder for the sharp object to penetrate the chainmail.

As shown in the above photos, I’m often willing to demonstrate this with the chainmail bracelet I’m always wearing.

I have a lot of info and photos about chainmail I’ll add to my new blog over time.

Craps from the Dark Side

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 04:31:33 GMT

I just started writing my first book. I've been playing craps for a lot of years, and I've been generally successful. The last few years, I've been playing craps from the Don't Pass side (i.e., the "dark side" of craps). Craps is a fascinatingly superstitious game, and largely for superstitious reasons very few if any people usually play craps from the Don’t Pass side. Playing craps from the “dark side” for multiple years has given me a very interesting perspective on the game.

Over time, I’ve come to believe that many more people should be playing craps from the dark side, and the math backs me up. The math says that on average half the craps players at a table should be playing Pass and the other half should be playing Don’t Pass, but the actual numbers are very skewed with nearly everyone at a craps table always playing Pass. I’m writing the first craps book that goes into details about playing from the dark side. In addition to covering some of the unique experiences that result from playing the dark side of craps (many people at a craps table actively hate and chastise anyone at the table that plays from the “dark side”), I will be including a lot of math and computer simulations that will clearly demonstrate why more people should be playing craps from the dark side.

Experimenting with Green Technologies at Home

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 04:27:48 GMT

I recently started turning my home into a big, ongoing experiment for testing green products, services and technologies. This evolved out of my experiences running a theme camp at Burning Man, which clearly demonstrated to me how hard it is to supply over a week of infrastructure and energy for a large group of people while leaving no trace. Based on my experiences, I believe there could be a better way to balance energy generation, energy distribution, consumption, waste, etc. than is currently be done in most homes/communities. I'll be blogging about the experiments I plan to do at home in this area.

Homemade NY-Style Boiled Bagels

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 04:23:06 GMT

I love fresh, hot bagels, and I eat them often for breakfast. Unfortunately, all the bagels I can get here in Seattle range from mediocre to terrible.

About a year ago, I got tired of spending a lot of time buying local fresh bagels that rarely were worth eating. As a result, I taught myself how to make NY style boiled bagels at home. After trying a lot of approaches, I ultimately settled on Peter Reinhart’s approach as covered in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. After various tests, I agree with Peter that formed bagels must be retarded in a fridge for at least a day before cooking to bring out a really full, rich bagel flavor. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any bagel bakeries that follow this approach which in part explains the poor flavor of most fresh bagels.

I’ve tried fresh bagels from lots of bakeries all over the country, and after just a year of practice the bagels I make at home are far better than anything I’ve bought in a very long time. Everyone that tried them have said my bagels are amazing (probably because very few if any people have ever eaten a properly retarded bagel).

Since learning to make bagels at home, I’ve wondered why bagel bakeries do not retard bagels (i.e., let slowly rise in a fridge for one or two days). I assume it’s largely a business issue. Given the narrow margins that already exist on bagels, how can a business leave formed bagels in fridge for two days before coking them? Can it be done profitably? Personally, I like the business scalability opportunities offered by separating the processes of making bagels from cooking bagels. I’m really tempted to start a bagel bakery here in Seattle and see if there is a market for properly retarded fresh, Artisan bagels.

I’ve learned some interesting things about making bagels over the past year, and I’ll be posting more of what I learned in my blog over time.

If you know me and want some amazing fresh, hot bagels, you should contact me (I make batches of bagels at home all the time).

New Blog Based on Orchard CMS

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 04:17:06 GMT

After an extended time offline, I finally have this new blog and personal web site. If you want to know what I have been up to professionally, check my LinkedIn page. I'll be describing my ongoing activities this new blog.

In part because I've recently been doing most of my Web dev using MVC, I decided to use Orchard as the CMS for my new site and blog. A key reason why I selected Orchard is because it supports SQL Server Compact 4.0. I find having a file-based db makes initial dev and deploy easier, particularly when the db is still actively being modified as part of developing the site. So far, I’m very pleased with how SQL Server Compact 40 works with MVC and how easy it is to deploy (not having to pay my site hoster for more db instances and space every time I prototype a new site/service is great).

As far as Orchard, I have mixed feelings after a first pass through the code base as part of building/deploying this site. I think Orchard has a lot of potential, but it’s still a very early product and is still missing a lot needed functionality. For example, simple things like displaying Permalinks and Trackback on blog posts is not yet included. Adding permalinks is easy enough, but adding trackback would require developing a module. I like how modular Orchard is, which make it very flexible from a dev standpoint, but the downside is the framework is fairly complex and requires significant ramp up time (it’s not as simple using standard MVC programming to extend functionality). Personally, I really like MVC and I often got frustrated that I could not use standard MVC in Orchard and instead had to conform to the variation of MVC required for the Orchard framework. It'll be interesting to see how Orchard evolves as a product. I'll be blogging more about why I decided to use Orchard as well as my experiences using/developing Orchard as I build out my site.