Month: December 2022

Technician Tuesday: About that flashlight standard.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about flashlight specifications. At the end of that post, I mentioned there was a standard for flashlights.

I was curious. I went looking for a standard described as ANSI NEMA FL 1. ANSI is the American National Standards Institute. NEMA is the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. I assume FL 1 means it was flashlight standard number one.

Searching for “flashlight” on NEMA’s site brought up the result “Flashlight Basic Performance Standard.” That link takes me to a page which says ANSI/NEMA FL 1-2009 (ID: 100237) has been rescinded and is now held and maintained by the Portable Light Trade Organization (PLATO) and is no longer for sale on the NEMA site.

(PLATO is a catchy acronym, but I’m not sure where the A comes from. There’s no “a” between the L of Light and the T of Trade.)

Now I go to PLATO’s website. This standard appears to be the only standard they issue and it’s now called the revised ANSI/PLATO FL 1 2019 standard. Their first edition of ANSI/PLATO FL 1 was released in October 2016, with a revised edition issued in 2019.

And it costs $500.

The website says it is provided free to PLATO members. The cheapest membership on their member dues page is $1,000.

I don’t know what is in that standard that it costs $500 per copy, but I hope it’s something pretty impressive. No, I am not going to buy a copy to satisfy my curiosity.

PLATO’s site includes a list of seven icons (after I scrolled down the page a bit) included in the standard for use with flashlights, and an explanation of each icon. I did find that to be useful.

Monday Mindset: Help and hindrance, standards

At one time I read product standards as a full-time job. I left that job years ago but I still look at what standards a product says they comply with, or are expected to comply with.

Simplistic description of standards.

Many standards do serve a useful purpose: they set expectations for a product. Depending on the standard and who issued the standard, those expectations might cover safety, features, performance, reliability, or other things.

Some standards are free, some cost a bit to purchase, some cost hundreds of dollars to purchase. Some are fairly straightforward to read, some are very dense. The trickiest seem straightforward when reading them, except there are certain terms which have a specific meaning in the industry or market covered by that standard, and that meaning isn’t well known to people outside that industry or market.

Standards can become a hindrance when the market expects or insists a product has to meet a certain standard. A person might have a good product idea but find themselves in an industry or market where the required standard is very expensive to buy or very expensive to comply with.

Standards are by definition reactive and a reflection of the past. Standards describe what has already been made and how it should be made going forward. I don’t know of any standard which was written about an imaginary product, in the hopes someone would read the standard and create a product to meet that expectation.

Standards are a really good way to show the limitations of language in describing the world.

Standards are initially written with an ideal something-or-other in mind. As time goes by, there are revisions which are almost organic in growth. These revisions usually come from someone trying something which didn’t work, or didn’t work as expected.

If a standard is written very precisely and explicitly, it’s easy for someone to avoid if they want to: find a way to describe their product which is different than that precise definition. Then the standard doesn’t apply. And if the definition is written more broadly, then someone who wants to avoid it can argue about the meaning of the words or the intent of the writers. And the standard still might not apply.

Any product or facility which was built or designed more than five years ago, and is being held to a standard whose initial edition was written more than five years ago, will have at least one place where the language or practices have shifted and it’s possible someone could claim the standard possibly wasn’t being met.

The best way to I found to learn a standard is to write a summary of each clause. That’s also very painful and arduous.

Why am I talking about all of this?

I don’t get to turn my brain off because somewhere a product standard got mentioned. I don’t get to turn my brain off because a product says they comply with a certain standard. And I don’t get to turn my brain off because a product doesn’t say it complies with a certain standard.

Standards can be helpful. Like any other tool, they can also be a hindrance.

Technician Tuesday: It’s not magic, part II.

Yesterday I wrote about users who expect technology to be magic — and then find out it’s not. (That post was written and posted December 19, 2022.)

Later yesterday I was catching up on some old episodes of Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast. Episode 604 is titled “SPI 604 – I Really Wanted to Believe This” and it’s dated August 19, 2022. It’s about almost exactly the same thing: technology is not magic.

Flynn uses a good analogy of an amateur photographer who buys a new camera lens and hopes that will make all of his pictures better. At best the lens only showcases the photographer’s skill at timing and framing and composing. At worst it becomes a distraction and another thing to clutter up the photographer’s bag.

Flynn calls this “squirrel syndrome.” I’ve also seen it referred to as “shiny object syndrome.” By either name or any other name, the hope is the same: I get this and everything becomes easier or better. Flynn even uses the word “magic” to describe this hoped-for effect.

But technology doesn’t work that way. It’s not magic. It’s only a tool.

It was nice to hear someone else say that. And a bit of synchronicity to hear that old podcast episode cover the exact same thing I had just written about.

On one side note, that was a good podcast episode. Flynn suggests that everyone do an audit of the tools they currently own and be really honest about how many they actually use, how many they actually need, and how much money they are paying for tools which are subscription-based.

On a second side note, I originally planned to write about product standards today. That’s a post I still intend to write.

Monday Mindset: Technology which is supposed to be magic, isn’t.

I regularly talk to people who are frustrated the piece of technology they bought isn’t doing what they wanted.

I ask what they wanted. What they wanted is not what they bought because they wanted something which can’t be bought. They wanted to create something beautiful, they wanted to impress someone else, they wanted to make something people would pay money to buy, they wanted to make something which would have all the family names and family tree on it and “would bring the whole family together.” (Yes, those are all true stories and that quote is an actual quote from a conversation I had.)

The technology they bought was expected to do this, because — and that’s where the reasoning starts to get shaky.

Usually, if I ask long enough what the reasoning was I’ll find an assumption that the technology they bought should be able to do this because technology can do anything. Technology is magic.

But it really isn’t magic. Whether software, hardware, digital, electronic, old, or new, it’s a tool. It can help the user achieve a goal. The user still has to choose the goal. And that gets back to what is the goal and why is that the goal?

Technician Tuesday: Some of the measurements for light

The human eye has a huge dynamic range for the amount of light our eyes can use. We can read in bright sunlight and most of us can read by candlelight. Yet the difference in the amount of light from those two source is almost ludicrous.

Trying to decide what light source to use by looking at specifications, instead of repeatedly buying-and-trying, is also almost ludicrous. There are multiple measurements used. The measurements don’t always measure the same things.

The best description I’ve seen recently is in the article “Lumens, Candela, & Lux” by Richard Nance, in the January 2023 issue of Guns & Ammo magazine.

(No, I still have not looked up how I should be citing my sources.)

For the terms lumens, candela, and lux,

  • lumens is how much light comes from a source,
  • candela is the intensity of the light in a chosen direction, and
  • lux is the amount of light on a surface when it’s a specific distance from the light source.

If I’m buying a light for my desk or nightstand, I’ll probably start looking for a lux specification. For portable lights like flashlights or worklights, I’ll look at both lumens and candela to see how much light there (theoretically) is and how focused that light should be. A small focused beam of light is great when I want to see tiny detail. A wider beam is better if I want a more panoramic view, such as if the power goes out and I want to see the entire room well enough to not run into the nearest table.

Light temperature is an entirely different topic.

And then . . . ugh. The article mentioned there was a flashlight standard, ANSI NEMA FL 1. I thought that would interesting to look at. And it was interesting, in a way that’s mildly frustrating and not at all what I expected. I’ll make that a part 2. There might be a part 3 where I post some good links I found about the flashlight standard which don’t cost at least five hundred dollars to view.

Mindset Monday: Know what you want to achieve before you start asking for assistance.

I often talk to people who say “Hey, you’re good at computers, how do I . . .”

Over decades of experience, I’ve learned to ask why they want to do whatever-it-is they are asking about.

Frequently the answer to “Why?” will reveal a belief that computers and digital technology are magic. They must be magic, because the questioner has no idea how it works, but the technology can do all these amazing things. Someone who can work with one part of the magic must be able to use any of the magic, right? The answer is “No.”

Usually the assumption isn’t exposed and challenged until it’s too late. A friend, co-worker, or relative was begged, cajoled, or drafted into helping with one technological project because they’re comfortable with a different type of technology. No set goal was specified. The person asking didn’t know what was reasonable to ask. The person trying to help wasn’t sure what was possible or how much effort and pain any of this would require, especially if it was a type of technology they weren’t familiar with. It ended with everyone being vaguely frustrated.

This is why ComputerGear has a t-shirt for sale which says “I’m a {Programmer}. I write <code>. I don’t fix computers.” and used to have a t-shirt which said “No, I won’t fix your computer.”

(Yes, I still need to look up what is the correct citation format for citing websites.)

Technician Tuesday: A 3-way battle for my web camera.

The Unexpected Problem.

It was working last week. It’s been working for months.

I have a laptop with a built-in webcam. It has Zoom videoconferencing software installed on it (I don’t really like Zoom videoconferencing that much, but currently it’s very popular). It also has VMix video streaming software installed on it.

Today, Zoom videoconference would show me the incoming video. But Zoom videoconferencing insisted it could not connect to my laptop’s built-in webcam, but only to VMix.

Vmix in turn is saying my webcam cannot provide input in any supported format.

Yes, I updated both VMix and Zoom videoconferencing. I checked the laptop webcam driver and found nothing more recent.

The Battle is Joined.

There’s a three-way battle between Windows, VMix, and Zoom videoconferencing as to who can access the webcam. All three were cooperating together last week.

Now it’s off to forums, help desk tickets, and possibly uninstalling and reinstalling multiple things.

Immediate Lessons.

What did I learn from all this? I don’t do videoconferencing or video streaming for a living, or as part of my living. If I did, I think it would become a regular practice to turn on the computer assigned to videoconferencing and video production at the start of each work day, make sure everything is working, and then turn off all software updates until the end of that work day.

The laptop I currently have is Windows 10. The problem of computer programs fighting to access hardware devices on a machine goes back to Windows 3.1 and 3.11 in the 1990s. It seems like it’s now more difficult to tell the Windows operating system which programs have access to which hardware devices than it was back then.

What I Really Want.

I wish avoidance of this type of software and hardware conflict was taught more in programming classes. I wish it was emphasized more in the companies which create and distribute software.

It matters less how much memory a piece of software takes up when installed, and matters more how much of itself it spreads throughout the operating system and how insistently selfish it is. Does it insist on installing itself to load at startup? Does it insist on running in the background even when not open, just in case something might occur which might need its attention? Are hardware resources caught in a digital deathgrip merely because a program was installed? Then that piece of technology is causing problems merely by being installed and will probably be uninstalled. Was that the goal?

Mindset Monday: The tool is not the skill.

Way back at the beginning of this blog, I wrote about the importance of knowing what I want to achieve when I start working with a piece of technology. That post was about the importance of knowing my goal and motive.

My post today is the importance of not confusing the tool with the skill. There are lots of drawing and art software programs available, but none of them make me a good artist when I buy them. There are lots of software programs for music and sound available, but none of them make me a good musician, composer, or sound technician just because I bought them.

Becoming good at a skill takes a lot of work. It takes practice, and research, and looking at other examples in that same field, and more practice, and more research. It’s a slow process. I have to put in the work. I can’t trade money for the software program or electronic gizmo or whatever and have that also be a trade of money for time and effort. The tool is not the skill.