Gray code at the pediatrician's office
Hmm. As a geek I like Gray code and think it has many useful applications, but this is not one of them: <i>Iris stood against the post and the nurse adjusted the bracket to exactly the top of her head. Then she read off Iris's height from an attached display.</i><p>How is this an advance on looking at a conventionally numbered ruler (with a similar bracket to touch the top of the head) and writing down the number? It's technological and presumably expensive, but it isn't delivering any discernible benefit that I can see. Measuring height via computer vision + Gray code would be very useful in security applications where you want to log biometric information for a large number of people efficiently (camera + abstract-looking wall design in an access corridor or at a security checkpoint), but if you're paying a human to take the measurement you might as well use a scale that's easily human-readable (<i>ie</i> at a glance). I hope the doctor's scale was at least using bluetooth or similar to automatically update the patient's digital record...but I wouldn't bet on it.