"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

Day: June 29, 2012

License plate reading progress

I thought I would put up a brief update on the license plate reading project.  The first thing we have to do is gather a bunch of images of the backs of cars in the right setting.  I have made further progress on the application to do that.  Our plan is to send out a camera and a netbook computer with some mounting hardware to my cousin in Oregon how is starting a new drive-through business.  We will set up an ftp site in our office to gather images for a development and test data set.  The business in Oregon is not yet open and we will probably not be ready to send anything out there for a couple of months anyway.  Still, we have a good start and I am capturing images from a webcam.  The next step will be to use an industrial machine vision camera rather than a webcam so it can handle life in the wild.

I am doing most of my programming on a Windows laptop, but also have my Xubuntu netbook which will be the delivery platform.  I have a microcontroller for digital I/O hooked up and talking to the windows laptop.  Tomorrow, I am going to get that going on the Xubuntu netbook if I have enough time.

Understanding the Times–Thank you David Noebel

Day 313 of 1000

Understanding the TimesLately, our family talks about world views, morality, and world events more than has been normal for us in the past.  I think this is because of the election in Mexico on Sunday, the election in the US in November, some Supreme Court rulings, propaganda filled college orientations indoctrinations, events in the Middle East, and our own rapidly changing lives.  In the midst of all that, Christian is selling a lot of our old homeschool books to raise money to buy books, cell phones, and other stuff he and Kelly need for college.  One of those books is titled, Understanding the Times by David A. Noebel.  Kelly, Christian, and I read the book aloud together.  We liked it very much because it pulled together a lot of material we had studied previously into a discussion about world views.

Actually, I have already written about the book a number of times.  You can find those posts by clicking on the following links:

We read a lot of books, listened to audio talks, and watched videos about different worldview issues.  Paul Johnson, Lila Rose, William Lane Craig, Greg Koukl, Dale Carnegie, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, Robert Spenser, and others helped us to understand the historical reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the seminal role of Christianity in science, law, commerce, education, and the emancipation of slaves and women.  They showed us why abortion and homesexual behavior are wrong and traditional marriage is right.  The main thing Understanding the Times gave us was a grasp of how different worldviews understand all of these important topics and what to expect from people who are true to these competing worldviews.

The reason this has all come to mind is that we really tried to give the kids a sense for why they should hold to a biblical worldview.  This book helped tie a lot of disparate topics together into a cogent whole.  The deeper we delved into these subjects, the better we understood the truths on which a biblical worldview are founded.  Understanding the Times did a good job of giving us the big picture when the kids were just starting high school.  It has gone a long way to prepare them for what they have confronted in college.  For that I am grateful.

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