Rnd(): Happy Birthday to Me – FB Post Analysis, Helium Balloon Experiment & Gifts

Recently, I celebrated my 31st birthday amidst the unprecedented social-distancing lockdown that has become our new daily normal in 2020. I can’t say that I look forward to celebrating another year – by now, it’s more of acceptance rather than embrace. It was a bit different to normal – there was no visiting Taronga Zoo for a gold-coin donation as there was no leaving the house, but then again, I normally don’t really celebrate it much aside from with family. Instead, I kept myself busy, not finding the time to really post about it until now.

Facebook Post Analysis

As the yearly tradition goes, I look at the number of Facebook postings on my wall on birthday day as a proxy for the relevance of the platform. Prior projections suggested irrelevance would set fairly rapidly … it seems this year’s results are perhaps somewhat in line with expectations.

Including the first year I looked at this metric, it seems that the number of postings went up in 2012 and 2016 but otherwise has maintained a downward trend. Of course, the population continues to grow and surprisingly, the Facebook monthly users also seems to have grown without interruption.

This year, a total of three postings were counted. One was from family, two from friends. I guess I can count on a posting from my family which will skew the results somewhat …

… but in terms of percentage of friends, it seems that it has now reached below 1%. This means one of a few things – perhaps people are sick and tired of performing “mechanistic” social interactions like sending generic “Happy Birthday” messages, which is a good thing. But on the other hand, it probably reflects the social disconnection between “Facebook friends”. Perhaps it also indicates that I’m irrelevant to the vast majority of my Facebook friends … which is probably true. There aren’t many that would read my random, sometimes very technical musings.

As usual – thanks for participating (by posting or choosing not to post) in my experiment. Is there a point to it going forward? I doubt it … I don’t see a resurgence being on the cards. In fact, I don’t find myself opening Facebook except very occasionally to make sure I didn’t miss a message. Instead, I find myself being actively annoyed by the number of fake notifications they’ve peppered in to try and increase engagement, to the point I just don’t really give it any consideration anymore. “X has posted for the first time in a while.”, “Y page has changed their name to Z.”, “A and B are going to events that you might be interested in.”, “C added to their story.” often none of which I really care much about.

In which case, why do I still have a Facebook account? That’s a good question and one I’m seriously thinking about. I post links to my blog to my profile there, but aside from that and the odd person that uses Facebook Messenger that I have no other means of contacting, there really isn’t anything left in it for me.

Helium Balloon Experiment

Every year, I like to do something perhaps a little different and thought provoking. This year, it’s the helium balloon experiment.

Thanks to my family, I received a metallised mylar foil helium balloon, of the variety that is banned in the MTR stations. Most would probably look at the balloon as a decoration, but the first thing that popped into my head was a science experiment.

Ever since I was a kid – I knew that helium balloons float, but not for long. After a while, depending on the sort of balloon, it will start to sink as it becomes neutrally buoyant and eventually, end up on the ground like a balloon filled with air, but notably deflated.

With the metallised balloon, this is not much different – while it’s still floating, here’s how it looks today. It is noticeably less pressurised.

So when I first received the balloon, my first thought was to quantify the buoyancy of the balloon and how it changes over time.

I decided to do this with a generic low-cost electronic pocket scale that measures up to 500g in 0.01g increments. I would attach the balloon to a stable mass of about 250g to put it in the middle of the scale’s range. I would weigh the combined mass and balloon regularly to see how the measurement changed over time, compared to when there was no balloon attached.

How would the buoyancy change over time? Perhaps it’s worth having a guess now before you look at the results so far …

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It seems that the balloon has about 4.4g of net buoyancy (i.e. upward force above that of its own weight) when I received it. This means, to lift a 60kg human being, I’d need about 14,000 balloons. This decreased roughly linearly at a rage of about -0.41g per day, which means I should still have three or four days of the balloon floating in air.

Perturbations in the curve are not unexpected – the scales themselves aren’t 100% accurate to the last 0.01g, but also, the density of air changes due to changes in room temperature and atmospheric pressure.

I’m not sure what gas is in the balloon and the quality of mylar film, but I expect the loss rate will vary depending on how well it is sealed, what material is used and what gas mixture is put inside.

What’s going to happen in the last few days? Will it continue the same trend? I guess I’ll have to wait and find out … but I certainly didn’t have the answer or numbers before I tried it.

Gifts … of a sort

A care package from the family contained a variety of food and confectionery items, only a fraction of which is shown above. There was also a cake and a video-call cutting ceremony, which was a bit different. But that’s perhaps not as interesting as the other “gifts”.

The first was a package from Hackster.io as a prize for fulfilling the Azure Sphere challenge check-in requirements.

The package arrived when I was out of the country on my recent trip, so I decided to save it until my birthday to open it. So it technically isn’t a birthday gift, but I might as well mention it.

The main reason is that it is my first Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer. As an avid user of Raspberry Pis, I’ve still got plenty of original boards serving in my network. The latest iteration is quite a departure from even the 3B+, being much more powerful, so I was looking forward to having one in my hands. The downside is that the cost of the board seems to have crept up over the years, at least in Australia.

The latest boards since the Pi 3 are packed in a glued-shut cardboard box and this seems no exception.

The rear lists some key specifications, many of which are quite impressive. This includes the 64-bit quad-core Cortex-A72 processor, 2GB LPDDR4 RAM which should mean snappier performance, two micro HDMI outputs which support two screens, the presence of USB 3.0 ports, true Gigabit Ethernet (not via USB), 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. This is a long way from where they started.

Like previous iterations, the board is “thrown” into the box without any ESD protection, which seems a bit improper.

It comes with a small folded leaflet with some information, along with a pictorial quick-start card.

The board has a similar form factor to the previous generation board but with enough changes to make it incompatible with most cases. From the top, we can see the heat spreader on the SoC with the RAM right next to it, but also a PHY for the Gigabit Ethernet and VLI controller for USB 3.0. There is also the power management circuitry and wireless radios underneath the shielded can. This board claims to be Made in The UK.

The underside of the board has only a few components, but it’s noted that there are a lot more mess near the jacks due to the number of connections necessary for USB 3.0 and Gigabit Ethernet with PoE option.

One of the things I dislike is the departure from the old. No more micro-USB which was cheap and cheerful – now we’re into USB-C. No more HDMI which was common, now using the micro-HDMI connectors. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much USB-C gear available, but this one also wants a 3A supply meaning that perhaps just any USB-C cable and a regular supply might not be enough. The micro-HDMI really makes things hard since I have absolutely none of those around – so I’ve had to order some and this board will have to wait.

The top side doesn’t show much in the way of changes.

The board uses a microSD card as with predecessors, but in this design, the LAN and USB ports have switched places. Just another reason why the old cases don’t just “fit” this variant, so some careful modification (or purchasing a new case) will be necessary.

I have a feeling that I will be very fond of the capabilities of the board – but perhaps less keen due to the cost of the board. When all the necessary peripherals are added in, the Raspberry Pi 4 certainly doesn’t feel as low-cost as its predecessors.

The package also included an enamelled pin of the Hackster.io logo. I’m not sure how many people would recognise this in public, but it’s definitely a quality item.

The next item was a little gift to myself – a Logitech MX518 Legendary mouse being sold by a grey import seller online at around half price. This is a revamped version of the classic MX518, which I thought was a good thing to have, especially since I’ve replaced the left-click button on my Steelseries Sensei and the scroll wheel is starting to wear out as well.

It has a simple shape which seems to fit me well and sufficient DPI to navigate my large screens with a tiny amount of desk space. Best of all, it has none of the RGB-LED craziness of most modern peripherals. For now, this will stay in its box, ready to be deployed as needs arise. I don’t really buy much in the way of things for myself – online shopping has been rather uninspiring lately.

Another unexpected surprise was that Rohde and Schwarz released a new firmware for the RTM3004 oscilloscope I RoadTested earlier. This one has many improvements, one of which is sorting out the issue regarding the former K18 Spectrum Analysis option that was not available to US-model units.

The update replaces K18 Spectrum Analysis with K37 Spectrum Analysis – the new option being available worldwide and is functionally identical to K18. Those with the RTM3K-COM4 package who don’t have access to it can request an option key from their local representative.

Luckily for me, I was tipped off by a fellow RoadTester and asked. I received my key overnight and applied it …

… with success! Now, my RTM3004 is “complete”, gaining the K37 Spectrum Analysis option features.

This means I’ll have something to do – evaluate how this option performs. I’ll probably have something to say about this in a few weeks once I have a chance to fully exercise all its capabilities. Technically, this was not a birthday gift … but it certainly made it in good time!

Conclusion

By now, I’m really not keeping count of the years, but this is definitely a memorable year and a memorable birthday, done remotely. Facebook seems to be becoming irrelevant as I expect, but perhaps it is me that is becoming irrelevant? Something I learned was that if you give me a helium balloon, I’ll turn it into a science experiment, but it seems that buoyancy loss over time is roughly linear which is pretty interesting. I got a few gifts from the family, a gift from myself and a few other things that weren’t technically gifts but were well timed …