Tyler Whitaker’s InfoTech

So we hit a new decade just the other day, but what most of us missed was the significant of the next day, January 2nd, 2010. It was the first date palindrome for in this decade: 01/02/2010 or 01022010. Luckily Scott Lemon (@humancell) and Phil Windley (@windley) reminded me via twitter.

Which prompted me to write the following python code to figure out when the rest of these date palindromes occur within this millennium: (I know I could have used a list comprehension with filtering, but this wraps better…)

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
day = timedelta(hours=24)
def calc(start=None):
    date = datetime(2000, 1, 1)
    for i in range(0,365*1000):
        date = date + day
        str = date.strftime("%m%d%Y")
        if str == str[::-1]:
            print "%s %s" % (str, date.strftime("%m/%d/%Y"))

Which results in the following:
10022001 10/02/2001
01022010 01/02/2010
11022011 11/02/2011
02022020 02/02/2020
12022021 12/02/2021
03022030 03/02/2030
04022040 04/02/2040
05022050 05/02/2050
06022060 06/02/2060
07022070 07/02/2070
08022080 08/02/2080
09022090 09/02/2090
10122101 10/12/2101
01122110 01/12/2110
11122111 11/12/2111
02122120 02/12/2120
12122121 12/12/2121
03122130 03/12/2130
04122140 04/12/2140
05122150 05/12/2150
06122160 06/12/2160
07122170 07/12/2170
08122180 08/12/2180
09122190 09/12/2190
10222201 10/22/2201
01222210 01/22/2210
11222211 11/22/2211
02222220 02/22/2220
12222221 12/22/2221
03222230 03/22/2230
04222240 04/22/2240
05222250 05/22/2250
06222260 06/22/2260
07222270 07/22/2270
08222280 08/22/2280
09222290 09/22/2290

If you tweak the code to use the time format (”%m%d%y”) you get the 2 digit year palindromes which are really only interesting over a 100 year span since they repeat:

101101 10/11/01
102201 10/22/01
011110 01/11/10
012210 01/22/10
111111 11/11/11
112211 11/22/11
021120 02/11/20
022220 02/22/20
121121 12/11/21
122221 12/22/21
031130 03/11/30
032230 03/22/30
041140 04/11/40
042240 04/22/40
051150 05/11/50
052250 05/22/50
061160 06/11/60
062260 06/22/60
071170 07/11/70
072270 07/22/70
081180 08/11/80
082280 08/22/80
091190 09/11/90
092290 09/22/90

So get ready now for the 2 more this month, your next chance to party is in November of 2011.

This past weekend was the 2009 Families Supporting Adoption (FSA) Conference held in Layton, Utah. It’s was a wonderful conference covering all aspects of adoption. I especially enjoying Joshua Steimle’s Marketing 101 presentation, which I had the pleasure to host.  This year was also my first chance to be a presenter. You can find my PowerPoint presentation here: Adoption in the Digital Age.

Families Supporting Adoption (FSA), an organization sponsored by LDS Family Services, seeks to promote a positive view of adoption. It focuses its efforts on three main areas: outreach, media, and education and support. My wife and I are currently serving on the Executive Board as co-secretaries.

While surfing the web the other day I ran across a pretty innovative wind turbine from Clarian Technologies. It’s called the Jellyfish Wind Appliance. It’s quiet and affordable. Clarian hopes to mass produce them for a retail price point of $400.

I like the vertical design and the price point. Distributed power generation should play a key role in the next smart power grid. It promotes self reliance and energy conservation by reducing the power loss through transmission. While this model isn’t designed to be directly connected to the grid, I think it’s a good start and a perfect low cost addition to existing solar installations.

I just read an interesting interview with John Deal, CEO of Hyperion Power Generation. Hyperion is building a nuclear reactor small enough to be shipped by train or truck but powerful enough to supply electricity to a small city. At a cost of roughly $30 million each, this reactor can supply up to 30 megawatts of usable electrical power, or enough to power 20,000 US households. The reactors life span is 8-10 years.

Just doing the math, $30 million spread over 20,000 homes, for 120 months equates to $12.50/household/month. Not bad. Not bad at all.

With all of the talk about a national energy policy during this election, its good to know at least one company is willing to push the nuclear option into the commercial market place. The next U.S. President should adopt this company and streamline the regulatory process to these into working in small towns across the nation.

As many of you know, I recently spent 2 weeks in Peru and Ecuador seeing the sites and working on content for our new travel site, MunchkinTravel.com. We took our 4 year old with us and he had the time of his life.  This is the second in a series of blog entries detailing some of the technology I saw on the trip.

Ever since I saw my first GPS I’ve had an strange desire to go to geographically significant places. Last year we took a road trip to Bad Water, Nevada in Death Valley National Park which is the lowest place in the western hemisphere at -282 feet below sea level. This year we went to the equator near Quito, Ecuador.

First thing I found is that their are two "equator places" in Ecuador. The first is Ciudad Mitad Del Mundo or Middle of the World City. This is the bigger and more commercial place to see the Equator. This traditional site was based on work of 2 french geographers during the 1700s .  Interestingly enough, this is not the true location of the equator. It’s actually 240 meters to the north at what is called the Intiñan Solar Museum.

  The Intiñan Solar Museum is billed as the actual equator based on measurements taken by military GPS. This fun little museum has some fun equator experiments and Incan cultural exhibits. 

They have a number of different sun dials which show you how the sun spends half of the year in the northern sky and the other half in the southern sky. No trip to the equator would be complete without trying to balance an egg on the head of a nail. Which I have to admit was pretty easy.

One of the most mind bending demonstrations was of the Coriolis effect. This is the force that supposedly causes drains to flow in opposite directions depending if your in the northern or southern hemisphere. To demonstrate this behavior our guide took a mobile sink filled with water, pulled the plug, and tossed in some leaves to show the direction the drain was flowing. He did this 3 times: once on the equator (no drain rotation), once on the South side (clockwise), and finally once on the North side (counter-clockwise). Some say it’s a trick. Here’s the video for you to decide.

One thing was bothering me at both of these sites. My Magellan Explorist 600 GPS wasn’t reading all zeros for Latitude. So I started walking north, through the Intiñan Solar Museum  grounds, out through the parking lot, and finally out on to a busy road. And wouldn’t you know it, right on the far white line the counter hit zero. So dodging big trunks and heavy traffic, I got my picture to prove that I had been  to the Equator!