Understanding and Converting GPS Coordinates

If you’ve used a global position system (GPS) device or an online map application, you may have noticed that geographic locations on earth can be precisely described using latitude and longitude values. Latitudes range from -90 to +90 degrees, where -90 degrees is the South Pole, 0 degrees is the equator, and +90 degrees is the North Pole. Longitudes range from -180 to +180 degrees, where 0 degrees longitude is the Prime Meridian on which the Royal Observatory sits in Greenwich, England.

You may have also noticed that there are 2 main systems for the communication of latitude and longitude: degrees/minutes/seconds (DMS, a.k.a. “sexagesimal degrees”) and decimal degrees (DD). In DMS notation, each degree is divided into 60 minutes, and each minute is divided into 60 seconds, just like a clock. Fractions of sections can be represented by decimals. In DD notation, the latitude and longitude coordinates are simply expressed as decimals, with a greater number of decimal places conferring greater geographic precision.

To complicate matters, in both DMS and DD notations, locations relative to the equator and Prime Meridian can be expressed using either positive/negative values or north (N), east (E), south (S), and west (W) designations. Positive latitudes are N of the equator, while negative latitudes are S of the equator. Positive longitudes are E of the Prime Meridian, while negative longitudes are W of the Prime Meridian.

There may be times when you may need to interconvert between DMS and DD notations. For example, if you need to navigate to a certain location and are provided with DMS coordinates, it may be easier (or possibly your only option) to enter DD coordinates into your GPS device. A free DMS-DD converter is provided by the Federal Communications Commission, and there are numerous other free options available.

Deepfake Audio

For decades, it has been confusing for people to know if they should trust what they see. From the moment that Photoshop became a verb, it had been well known that pictures could be “doctored” to alter one’s perception of reality. In the past few years, artificial intelligence (AI) could be applied to alter videos as well.

Recently deepfake audio was in the news because of a fake robocall in which Joe Biden’s voice was digitally impersonated in an attempt to suppress New Hampshire democrats from voting. Do you think you can tell the difference between an authentic audio clip and one that has been digitally created through AI? Fortunately there is ongoing research that uses AI to help detect AI-powered voice cloning.

Flight Delay Notifications

It seems that most airline passengers nowadays are receiving electronic flight notifications via email and/or text messages. Today I was waiting at LAX for an American Airlines flight to Orlando and received a series of flight delay notifications via email (example above) text messages:

As I sat for an extra 2 hours at the gate waiting to board the plane, each time I received a flight delay notification via text message, I could hear a collective groan from the other passengers who had received notifications at the same time. The groans grew louder with each successive delay. Fortunately I eventually made it to my destination, but I thought it was funny that we were all sharing the bad news in synchrony. As the saying goes, misery loves company.

YouTube Copyrighted Content

I have a YouTube channel that I use to share my home movies. I do not monetize the channel and therefore am permitted to use certain copyrighted songs in my soundtracks, as long as the owners of those songs allow them to be used in that manner. Some song owners, however, do not allow their songs to be used at all, even if the channel does not monetize its content.

Recently I received a notification from YouTube that a video on my channel which I posted 9 years ago has now been blocked in 4 territories:

Upon viewing details in YouTube Studio, the song is “All Around The World (La La La)” by A Touch of Class (or “ATC”) and has been blocked in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. It does not provide any additional information beyond what is pictured below.

My guess is that it somehow boils down to money, but I am unable to speculate about the laws or policies that led to this music being blocked in those countries. On the bright side, the video is still available in the United States where my main audience resides.

MMA: Not Yet Mainstream

Apple introduced a Sports app in the iOS App Store. Upon quick glance, it appears to provide sports scores for MLB, MLS, NBA, soccer, and a variety of other leagues.

However, it does not currently support mixed martial arts (MMA) which is the sport that I follow most. For that, I will continue to use the ESPN app which does provide results of some MMA promotions.

Although the ESPN app does cover MMA, I have to say that it leaves a bit to be desired. For example, Bellator has been acquired by Professional Fighters League (not reflected above), and the MMA section is missing important promotions like ONE Championship.

Failed 3D Prints

There are many reasons why a 3D print can fail. As a beginner, I’ve made many mistakes while learning to print 3D models. Here are some reasons why my 3D prints have failed.

Bed Leveling. Even though my 3D printer has an automatic bed leveling feature, sometimes I get lazy and make many successive prints without leveling the bed. I hear from many experienced people that it is not necessary to level your print bed before every single print, but eventually it may be necessary to level the bed. I haven’t heard of a magic formula to determine when you should level your bed, but I’ve experienced print failures due to not leveling the bed after a long print job (e.g., 48 hours).

Z Offset. Sometimes after bed leveling, I don’t correctly adjust the Z-axis offset. This is often due to my laziness when performing the “paper test” where you want a piece of paper to be gently grazed between the nozzle and print bed. You see, I usually don’t bother removing all the filament from the nozzle before the paper test, so this results in me setting the Z offset too high which results in insufficient bed adhesion. The photo above illustrates that a pile of spaghetti can be the result of setting the Z offset too high.

Nozzle Temperature. When I first started 3D printing, I heard that 200 degrees C was a good starting point for printing PLA filament, and I had success with many prints at that temperature. However, it later occurred to me that depending on the filament that you purchase, there may be different recommended temperature ranges. Many of my print failures have been due to setting my nozzle temperature too low. Nowadays I default to a nozzle temperature of 205 degrees C, but I pay more attention to the recommended temperatures of different filaments and may adjust the slicer settings accordingly.

Heat Break. My prior 3 examples have all been related to settings that can be configured on the 3D printer or slicer software. This last example is related to a piece of hardware, the heat break. The heat break is designed to pass heat from the heater block (which heats up the nozzle) to the heat sink. You see, the filament is supposed to melt only in the nozzle and not anywhere upstream of it. The filament tube is meant to channel the filament to the heat break and should never melt. My Creality Ender-3 V2 Neo comes with a standard heat break which in some circumstances can result in a jam due to melting of the filament tube or filament melting too far upstream of the nozzle. My fix to this problem was to upgrade my heat break with a design that puts a little more distance between my filament tubing and the nozzle. Check out this video for more information:

I hope this has been helpful. Can you think of other reasons why a beginner might not get successful prints?

FasTrak Dyslexia

My wife recently received an invoice from Bay Area FasTrak for a toll violation. I had previously received a similar invoice from FasTrak after accidentally entering a freeway in the FasTrak lane in southern California, so I suspected that it happened to my wife as well. Personally I feel that the FasTrak freeway onramps should be more clearly labeled and optimized for nighttime visibility (that was when I unknowingly used FasTrak), but that’s a different topic altogether.

It turns out that upon inspecting the invoice, it claims that the toll violation occurred on Freeway 101 in the Bay Area (we were not in the area on the date of the alleged violation), and the photo evidence showed a vehicle make and model that is different than my wife’s Tesla. The resolution of the photo in the hardcopy invoice did not permit us to clearly see the license plate, but I was able to retrieve a digital version of the photo online (pictured above). It turns out that FasTrak system transposed 2 characters of the license plate which erroneously linked the toll evasion to my wife’s car. We submitted an online dispute, and this was a portion of their reply:

Thank you for contacting the Bay Area FasTrak Customer Service Center. I appreciate that you brought this issue to our attention, and I will process your dispute for violation ##### concerning the license plate numbered ABCDEFG.

I have reviewed the violation and the images associated, and found the license plate in the image is ABCEDFG. I can confirm this violaton has been dismissed and transferred to the correct vehicle. I apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this may have caused you. No further action or payment is required. If you need further assistance please contact the Bay Area FasTrak Customer Service Center at 1-877-BAY-TOLL (1-877-229-8655.)

I assume that FasTrak applies some sort of optical character recognition (OCR) technology to convert photo images into text-based license plate numbers. In my experience with OCR, it is common for images to be converted into the incorrect characters (e.g., incorrectly translating a photo of the number “1” into the letter “l” or vice versa). However, I’ve never seen an OCR error where a sequence of 7 characters are all correctly identified, but 2 of those characters have their positions incorrectly swapped—that seems to be what happened here.

In the end, I’m happy that the violation was dismissed, but it does highlight an opportunity for them to improve their technology, especially if they are going to be coming after people for money in a “guilty until proven innocent” manner.