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: 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.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 (ie 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.