Each year The Edge asks prominent thinkers a simple question. This years question was What are you Optimistic about? Why? The responses are up.
I’ll have to have a think and decide what I’m optimistic about. I’ll post it in the comments.
Update: I’ve posted my optimistic predictions for 2007 in the comments.
I suggest you read this. Do yourself a favour and look at the alternatives to Zune first if you don’t want an iPod. Then do yourself a big favour and buy an iPod anyway.
Saw this on Brian May’s Soapbox. New initiative to try and preserve dark skies at night so that people can see and appreciate the stars, nebulae and other celestial objects. At present the amount of light that goes up into the sky from lights is ridiculous. Just take a look at the pictures of cities, or indeed the Earth from space, at night. Or look out the window from a plane when landing in a city at night. Lots of light from street lamps, building lights, etc. goes up into the sky. Surely if nothing else this is a waste of electricity? If street lights had mirrored reflective hoods to project all the light downwards would this not allow a reduction in the amount of energy required to light a location and also reduce the amount of light that was wasted and allowed to escape upwards? Surely in these times of awareness of climate change and the impact of power generation on the CO2 emissions this is the perfect time to address the light pollution issue as well?
I’m moving to a new job!! If you look at the side bar it says that I’m employed as an IT Consultant by a UK based IT services company. I live in Belfast, UK, and work mainly in Northern Ireland. Well that’ll soon have to change to something like I’m employed as a Senior Solutions Architect by a UK based IT services company. I live in Belfast, UK, am based there but my work is focused on the education sector in England.
I’m moving sideways in the company I work for into the Managed Services Education section that delivers solutions for the Building Schools for the Future project. The new job will be helping to deliver environments and solutions to the education sector. It involves using technologies to create flexible learning environments, both physical and virtual, so that students can learn at their own pace, access lesson materials when not able to attend lessons (for whatever reason), adopt new technology to enhance learning (podcasts, digital media etc.).
I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll involve finding out how people learn. How the environment they are learning in influences this. How technology can help keep students interested and make them want to learn. Obviously the job will involve more than that, but I’ll learn that as I go along. I’ll transfer to the new role in January. Can’t wait.
The Royal Society of Chemistry have started a Podcast, hosted by Chris Smith of Naked Scientists and Nature Podcast fame. You can get the RSC podcast here.
I’ve decided to cancel my registration on the OU Technology course I posted about here. I’m going to use the money for a trip instead. Probably WWDC 2007.
I’ve signed up for a first course in a series that are required for an Open University MBA (Technology Management). Given that I’ve got about another 20+ years to work in the IT infrastructure sector I think this’ll help me add more value for the clients and companies i work for in the future. I’m starting with the course Technology management: An Integrative Approach as this is relevant to the work I do at present. I’ll do the pure management Stage 1 course after the technical stuff I think.
The Moscone West Conference Centre is ready for Apple’s WWDC 2006. Registration opens on Sunday and the event starts on Monday. This is my first WWDC. Can’t wait 🙂
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I tried out the Nike+ iPod Sports Kit on a timed exercise session yesterday. I set it for 45 minutes. Worked perfectly. Every 5 minutes the music fades out and the voiceover tells you how many minutes are gone, or if after the halfway point, how many minutes are left. At the halfway point it cuts in and tells you that as well. For the last 5 minutes it counts down on the minute which is good. This think this is definitely going to help me exercise more. Here is a screen shot of the 45 minute walk as graphed on the Nike+ website.
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It was uphill then a downhill section towards the end. Hence the speed increase. I also triggered my Power Song with a few minutes to go just to test it. Marvellous 🙂
I’ve also been doing a bit on my exercise bike. See side bar on right for totals. The miles listed are as reported by the bike. I usually do an hour per session and it reports about 13 miles in that time. The calories used is a combination of the number burnt according to the Nike+ and the bike. Probably not very accurate. The bike is good as you can read at the same time!
I got the Nike+ iPod Sport kit today and tried it out tonight. I don’t have a pair of the proper Nike shoes yet so I just stuck it under the insole of a pair of Caterpillar trainers I have. They have a thick insole so I was just aware of the sensor under my foot but it didn’t make it impossible to walk. It’d be uncomfortable to use it that way all the time though. I tied putting it under the tongue and laces of the trainer but it didn’t work there. I set it for a 2 mile distance program. It’s pretty cool. As I walked the distance counted up on the screen. It’s shown in 0.00 format so it goes 0.01, 0.02 etc. When I’d done half a mile the music faded down and the instruction voice told me I’d done half a mile. After a mile I was told I was half way there. At 1.5 miles I was told I’d half a mile to go. I had to stop after 1.75 miles as I the car park in Stormont was due to close!
When I docked the iPod it uploaded the data to the Nike+ web site and asked me if i wanted to visit the site. Here is the result –
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I’ll need to get the proper shoes and calibrate it over a known distance. All in all I’m impressed.
So who’s won my podcast war. Or, to put it another way, which podcasts do I look forward to? There are five that I listen too. Here they are in order of preference, but I do like them all.
2) Science Talk: The Podcast of Scientific American
4) Seed’s Science + Culture Podcasts
I’ve recently added the TED Talks video podcasts as well. They look good but as always time will tell.
I needed a new chair to use at my desk. After much research I settled for a Herman Miller Mirra. It’s good. Still tweaking the various settings but so far it’s very comfortable and should help prevent back issues due to spending a lot of time at the desk writing, typing and computing in general. Click picture for larger view.
Vacuuming is a pain right? To quote Homer Simpson, “Can’t somebody else do it?”. Well failing that how about a robot? Enter the iRobot Roomba. Set it down in a room. Press clean button. Close the door. Come back later and it’s done 🙂
Of course it doesn’t do behind furniture (unless you move it out of the way first), doesn’t do stairs and can’t get right into corners, so you still need to do real vacuuming periodically. But for sheer geek value it’s pretty cool. Plus it does a really good job in the areas it does reach. I still have to get into the extras like timed cleaning, automatic return to power station etc. For my other vacuuming needs I have a Dyson DC15 All Floors with the The Ball. That’s pretty cool as well. Can’t believe I’m posting about vacuum cleaners. What’s the world coming to?
Al Gore’s follow up talk at the TED conference on climate change is available to watch via video podcast from the iTMS. Well worth watching. The video of Sir Ken Robinson’s talk is very good as well. In fact, I’d recommend subscribing to the podcasts via iTMS and watching them all.
Apple have an article on their Pro website on the use of Apple products in the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Queen’s University.
Saw this on Cosmic Variance. We are all still here thanks to the common sense, nerve and intelligence of the Soviet military officer Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov. See the details on Cosmic Variance, but basically he decided that a computer alert that the USA had launched a few missiles, likely with nuclear warheads, was a computer error rather than a real launch. So he failed to pass the info up the chain of command and therefore most likely averted a retaliation and possibly a full nuclear exchange.
I bought a MacBook Pro. I took it back a few days later. I already have a cooker in my kitchen. I didn’t need another one. Boy did that thing get hot. The serial number indicated it was manufactured in week 9. There is anecdotal evidence that those with week 12, 13 or later serial numbers run less hot. I’ll wait until later in the year and get one after a revision of the design I think.
Scientific American has started a podcast. The first one is available via links at their site. First impressions are good. It’s got subdued production values and gives you information without a lot of gee-whiz bells and whistles getting in the way.
The TV show CSI gets a mild ribbing as well at the end of the podcast 🙂
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I’m crap at directions. Even in a place as small as Northern Ireland! So I decided to get some electronic help and, after some research and a recommendation from a few VMware employees I was out and about with last week, bought a TomTom GO 700. I went for the 700 as it was the only one with Northern Ireland maps as standard. Actually you get all of western Europe as standard on this model. The 500 and 300 only come with the GB part of the UK as standard. It has a 2.5Gb hard disk for storage. When you plug it into a Mac via USB2 cable it mounts as a hard disk (works on Windows as well). Mine has 1.4 Gb used and just over 1Gb free.
I’ve only used it in anger around Belfast to see what it is like. Bloody marvellous is the answer! The verbal instructions are very clear. You get plenty of prior notice about turns etc., both verbally and via the map display. It is very accurate as to where you are at any time. For example, the car location marker is drawn on a roundabout as you go round said roundabout. To navigate to a destination you can enter a postcode and it’ll calculate the route you need to follow. If you miss a turning it’ll recalculate the route based on your current position. Sometimes it’ll tell you to “Turn around at the earliest opportunity” for a while then calculate a new route based on the direction you are heading. If you don’t know the postcode you can enter road names (e.g. A20) or street names.
As a test one of my work colleagues gave me a postcode that is out in the back end of nowhere in the west of Northern Ireland. This place really is in the boondocks. It is 20 odd miles from anywhere even reasonably big. We entered the postcode and set the unit to demo route mode (another nice feature) and analysed what it came up with. My colleague, who makes the trip to this place regularly, was impressed with the route taken but also with the fact that it was able to navigate to the location at all. It even had a new mini-roundabout that was added recently in a town the route passed through.
I’m well impressed with it. The fact that it mounts as a hard disk under MacOS X means it’ll be easy to drag new and updated maps on to it as they are released as well. It also works as a Bluetooth handsfree kit for phones put I haven’t set that up. You can also subscribe to a service that will update you to traffic info and stuff via GPRS phones. I haven’t set that up either. I just want to get directions! It has multiple voices and multiple languages, both for the verbal instructions and for the menus. You can buy a John Cleese (it is actually him) voice as well. The interface is very easy to use as well. It comes with a suction cup wind screen mounting kit that is pretty unobtrusive.
I like it. More info and demos at the TomTom site.