Sunday, May 11, 2014

One tough interview for a very tough job... Watch this today!


These folks decided to conduct job interviews for the world's most difficult job over Skype.  The job requirements sound ridiculous, but it is for a real job, and that is just what it takes for this Director of Operations position.   After crazy, unreasonable, insane requirements, you find out there is NO pay.  Wow!   Definitely something that is relevant today.

Watch the video and see what you think.

Monday, May 5, 2014

SAMi Sleep Activity Monitor - a gadget for detecting epileptic seizures



I like to see projects that solve real life problems.  It is design thinking at it's best.  Here is a cool Indiegogo project from a friend and former housemate of mine.  It is called SAMi - the Sleep Activity Monitor.  He and his wife had a son who was having epileptic seizures.  They created a night vision camera with motion detection specifically designed to alert parents when a child is having a seizure.  Apparently epileptic seizures can be dangerous and can happen while sleeping.  For a parent, the options are mostly pretty grim.  You can get a baby monitor and be woken up every time your child makes noise, and yet it can miss quiet events.  You can get a bed motion sensor, which works pretty well, but it only captures rhythmic motion and it doesn't go with you when you travel.
The SAMi Sleep Activity Monitor gives a live video feed in complete darkness so you can check in on your child, senses motion and triggers an alarm if it detects what looks like a seizure and, it will make a recording of the motion events which can be reviewed with your doctor.  It helps that Charles is a digital signal processing guru, so he was able to tune an algorithm to detect likely seizures.  See the video of the demo.  Nice work!


Please help Charles and Cynthia by supporting the project on Indiegogo, and consider telling your friends about the project.  This is the kind of thing that should be spread wide and far to help as many people as possible.  More information is available at the SAMi website.

Charles and Cynthia's story is here: