Day three at CES.

Day three is done.

I spent all morning in North Hall and as I expected, it was mostly Automotive electronics with some audio sound systems thrown in.

All the major world car makers have a presence at this show. It is quite a change from a few years ago when only a far thinking few showed up. There are all electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and even hydrogen powered vehicles. The hydrogen power by Toyota is still a few years away but the infrastructure is being put into place. By 2016 five Northeastern states will have hydrogen refueling stations.

Of course, the talk of the show and TV is the self driving cars by Audi and BMW. I see them driving around the show grounds and also on the nearby streets, Kind of weird to see the driver just sitting in his seat but not doing anything. 

Then there is the Chevrolet Corvette. It is the Z06 Stingray with 460 HP if you have the 7 speed manual transmission. Top speed is 190 mph. Quite a leap from my 1962 Vette.

Here are a few other vehicle oddities I saw. Are they cars or motorcycles? All have a single rear wheel.

How about a glass car? TRW Corporation built this to show all the internal workings they provide to the automotive industry. 

Again, it is hard to get a good photograph as the booth lighting is deliberately harsh to show off the cars.

Then there is this. I think it was a Jeep to begin with and then they added speakers, lots of speakers. Maybe it is Speaker powered, a new type of drive system.

 

CES day 2.

Oh what a relief it is!

Two Aleve in the morning to combat the leg, hip, and foot pains and a pair of Merills on my feet instead of dress shoes made all the difference in comfort this day. No problem staying on my feet most of the day and also feeling much better at the end of the day.

Much accomplished today in getting some of my questions answered by Canon and Samsung.

Some really impressive displays that I will go back to for hopefully better photos.

I did stop at the Sony display and watched a rotating very, very thin TV which was less than the thickness of my index finger. I took several photos as it turned and edge on the TV is barely visible in the photo.

Curved TV's are also the rage this year. As I said to one Samsung representative, “I am always a decade behind the curve”. He laughed and said “Me too”.

I spent a half hour in the crush of people at the GoPro sports camera booth not realizing I was standing next to the owner/developer of the GoPro and everyone was trying to have their photo taken with him. I did not get my photo taken.

Tomorrow I am in the North Hall in the morning or all day if that is what it takes. Mostly automotive electronics I think.

Day One of CES.

Day 1 of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is over and already my feet and hips hurt from all the slow walking from booth to booth.

Dick and I decided last night that we would visit the 3D printing area which this year is at the Sands Convention Center.

Our normal mode of transportation is to drive to Circus-Circus and park in their back lot and then walk to the front where the Number 7 Route buses are which take you to the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). However this morning there was a slight change as buses were going directly to the Sands which saved us a lengthy transfer at the LVCC.

The 3D printing area has really grown since last year. We saw many displays of 3D printed products including those made with a sugar base which is eatable. Even chocolate can be used to make eatable products.

Most 3D printing is done from coils of plastic much like that used in a weed whacker and are built up layer by layer and all controlled by a computer program. It is not a rapid process and many small pieces may take up to 24 hours to complete.

Some future materials that will be used are wood, limestone, iron, and bronze.

How about a wearable plastic dress? I can't imagine that it would be very comfortable to sit down while wearing this.

This afternoon I switched venues to the LVCC South Hall Lower floor where a large robotics area had been setup. Here were displayed floor robots, widow cleaning robots, and solar panel cleaners. There are also robots to clean your BBQ grill and how about a Beer Pong playing Robot. It hit the cup almost every time. 

 Two window cleaning robots, one inside and one outside.

 

Beer pong robot.

The rapid growth of Helicopter drones is very evident. In fact they are everywhere at the show. From one booth 3 years ago it has grown to thousands of square feet of displays. From palm sized to large drones 3 and 4 feet in diameter, all were on display.

Probably the most unique were the ones made by Qualcomm who are better known for their cell phone technology. When asked about this one of the exhibitors explained the cell chips were very adaptable to the drone technology. They certainly are also unique in shape as you can tell from this photo, They look more like the old WWI tank shapes but are very functional.

Drone is the wierd blue shape with green propellers in the middle.

I apologize for the poor photos. There are so many people vying for attention that trying to get photos is difficult. Also, all drones must fly within a cage for safety.

Just a short post.

A short post to say that I have arrived in Baker, CA with no problems.

After dinner at the Mad Greek restaurant I caught up on all the blogs and decided to post this short note

All went well with today's travels. I had no real traffic until I climbed the Grapevine on I-5. Even them it was not bad as there were few trucks. There were however lots of folks going home from the holidays with their cars packed to the gills and boxes and bags strapped to the top and back.

Much traffic on Hwy 58 to Barstow and also to Baker. Folks coming South on I-15 from Las Vegas were backed up in many places so I am sure it was a long ride home for many.

The Mad Greek was the busiest I have seen it. It was also nice and warm so Dick and I lingered after our meal. The outside temperature is 47 degrees with a slight breeze at 8:30 PM.

Tomorrows drive is only 90 miles so we should be there around noon time.

More later.

Happy New Year.

A Happy New Year to all!

I have been remiss on my blogging lately. Everyday I tell myself that I need to blog but always find an excuse to not do it. So, I am watching the last football game on TV for today and typing this entry.

For the last several days I have been working from a to-do-list in preparation for leaving for Las Vegas on Sunday morning where I and a friend will attend the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) next week. The show is 4 days of nonstop over the top displays and cutting edge electronics. Some of the new stuff even shows up as products we use in 2 to 3 years. Four days of walking endless isles looking at products takes it's toll on the feet and legs. Having done this for years, I have learned to take numerous breaks. Also. I never pick up any of the magazines or heavy literature until the end of the day as they are just dead weight.

After the show ends and a couple of days of shopping, buying groceries and eating at In-and-Out Burger we will drive to Quartzsite, AZ for a long week. Clyda, Budd and Brenda will join us there about the 20^th of January.

From there we will drive with both RV's to Houston, TX, visit Tim and family and then move on to New Orleans and the Florida gulf coast. It has been Clyda's wish to see the white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle for some time. After all the repairs to the RV this fall, now seems like a good time to do this trip.

More blogs from on the road.

Some updates to the last blog.

Location, At Home

Some updates first.

I did pick up the RV on the 16^th.  The slide out did work this time when we tried it in the lot before I hooked up and drove home. I haven’t tried it since.

I did finally manage to get some satisfaction out of my new Dell Laptop. I have no idea what happened but I down loaded a few Malware removal programs, ran them, and then installed the Fire Fox browser and lo and behold,,, It worked. Not sure why but I won’t question it.

On to new stuff. I have been getting the RV ready to leave in January. There is always something to check, fix, or replace. The batteries are topped off and everything I removed before it went into the shop has been put back.

I needed to repair a small hole in the A/C shroud which happened somewhere in all this repair mess. The easiest way is to put a fiberglass patch on it. I bought a repair kit and then removed the shroud and found out that the repair I did a few years ago did not adhere to the shroud itself. I suspect that the shroud is plastic not fiberglass so it won’t stick.

After himmming and hawwwwing I decided to buy a new one on Amazon. It is due to arrive tomorrow so if it is not the correct one I can still do some repair on the old shroud before I leave.

I think we are ready for Christmas. We did have a problem with one package we sent to Texas. I was tracking it and found out the Post Office is returning it because of “Insufficent Address”. So now I guess it will become a New Year’s present. Bummer.

This is the small palm tree in our front yard. A California Christmas Tree I guess.

Merry Christmas to all who follow this blog.

The storm is gone.

Location, At Home

The storm of the Century, or decade, or year, has left the area.

We had intermittent showers yesterday which didn’t amount to much but the real storm started last night after I was in bed. The wind really blew and along with the rain left a mess of leaves and anything else that was loose and deposited it in our driveway. I swept up what I could of the mess this morning.

The power went out during the night but was back on when I got up this morning. We again had intermittent showers during the day but for the most part the sun was out by afternoon. My rain gauge has about 3.5 inches in it which is really good as that makes about 8 inches in the 3 storms we have had in the last couple of months. Last year we only had about 6 inches total when our yearly average is about 14 inches.

 

Clyda has some tree dahlias in our side yard which had just begun to bloom before the storm. They suffered from the wind.

 

 I have been spending way too much time putting together the Christmas letter and doing the mailing labels. With my cobbled together computer system, it is a real pain to get this all to work. It is something I have struggled with ever since I have owned a PC. Hopefully, I have it under control until next year.

My struggles with my new Dell 1100 laptop continue. I again spent the better part of one day on the chat line with Dell support trying to find out why I cannot use Mozilla Firefox as my browser. They gave up and had me install Google Chrome. I don’t really like Chrome but at least it works.

I much prefer Firefox as I have it on all my other PC’s and they are synced so all my bookmarks show up on any machine.

On another subject: my long awaited RV repairs appear to be done and I will pick the RV up tomorrow. It has been since the beginning of June when the RV was last parked beside our house. It will only be here until the 6^th of January when I leave for Las Vegas with it.

We plan to use the RV for a prolonged trip this winter now that all the major parts of the running gear (tires), etc, have been replaced. After that??? It remains to be seen how long we will continue to RV.