Category Archives: information sys

Take me to the river

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Via Bruce S comes this very nice ubicomp project.

Amphibious Architecture submerges ubiquitous computing into the water—that 90% of the Earth’s inhabitable volume that envelops New York City but remains under-explored and under-engaged. Two networks of floating interactive tubes, installed at sites in the East River and the Bronx River, house a range of sensors below water and an array of lights above water. The sensors monitor water quality, presence of fish, and human interest in the river ecosystem. The lights respond to the sensors and create feedback loops between humans, fish, and their shared environment. An SMS interface allows citizens to text-message the fish, to receive real-time information about the river, and to contribute to a display of collective interest in the environment. *

AMPHIBIOUS_2-web

Fish Sensor from xDesign Project on Vimeo.

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Also – augmented reality seems poised for a big takeoff – at least buzz-wise. I’ve been seeing AR posts everywhere (especially on Bruce S’s blog); like ubicomp, AR makes info in one’s surroundings more accessible. Maybe spoken word:writing::5 senses:augmented reality?

Cell phone III – E71x first impressions

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Another cell phone jump – this time, only a little ahead of schedule. An interesting side note – did you know that cell  phones and cell phone batteries have cunning little patches that indicate if the device has been immersed in – just to pick a random liquid – water? They do! I once again resisted the siren call of the iPhone – two things are holding me back. First is the whole Apple=control freak thing.  I don’t want my first interaction w/ the phone to be jail-breaking it – I have absolutely nothing against cracking the darn thing open, but if that’s the first thing you need to do, something’s wrong. The second barrier is more important – cost. The monthly bill for those little candy bars is significantly higher that for any other smart phone and that’s before AT&T reveal the additional $$s you’ll need to pay for tethering (you can tether now, I’m told – see point 1: jail-breaking). And there’s the additional $$s for text messages and I’m sure there are other charges that I’m not paying attention to. I’d also looked at the G1/Dream but purchase price (how quickly we get used to carrier-subsidized prices) and concerns about functionality on a ‘foreign’ network put me off.

I ended up with a phone I’ve been eyeing for a couple months – the Nokia E71x. It runs the Symbian S60 OS – an oldy but goody with a lot of software written for it. Hardware-wise, it’s got a 3G cell radio, 802.11 b/g (WiFi), a GPS, a hardware keyboard (something I’ve found I prefer) and a decent screen. The front panel size is on par with most landscape-screen-above-chiclet-keyboard devices I’ve seen, but it is a lot thinner. A couple pictures with my work Blackberry for comparison:

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Speaking of hardware keyboards – notice the PC Keyboard in the top photo? It’s an IBM Model M – at least 11 years old and still clacking away in bomb-proof style.

First impressions of the new phone are very favorable. Battery life isn’t great, but it never is on a smartphone. I think if I could stop asking the phone to jump through hoops all day long (ooh! shiny! as applied to software) it might last a little longer between charges, too. It comes preloaded with a ton of AT&T bloatware, but as soon as my new micro-SD card arrives, I plan on using the instructions here to get rid of most of it. Things the phone will do for me (some out of the box, some with additional software):

  • make phone calls. Quality and reception are very good – my office is a cell phone torture test area and the new phone makes and receives calls. Win.
  • tether to my Nokia N810 (and presumably other bits of hardware – haven’t tried that yet).
  • run a full Twitter client. I’m using Twittix – had some trouble installing the demo of the other contender – Gravity – so Twittix wins by default.
  • scan barcodes. See this demo over at Mediated Toynbee to get a sense of what’s going on.
  • check email. I can see both my gmail account and my super-seekr1t personal account using Nokia Messaging.
  • see where I am. I’m using Google Maps rather than the preloaded (and not free) AT&T/Telenav mapping app. I’m also trying to load Nokia Maps – no luck so far. If I need turn-by-turn naviagtion, I’ll use my N810 – better screen and free navigation app.
  • set up an ad-hoc wireless network. Saving the best for last – I installed JoikuSpot Premium. JoikuSpot turns the phone into a wireless access point with a cell uplink – I fire up the application and a new wireless network appears. If you connect your computer (or iTouch or N810 or…) to the network, the phone gives you access to the internet via it’s cell connection. Big win.

I still have some tweaking and tuning to do but so far – big thumbs up.

Nerdism

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I realize this is not the sort of display behavior that brings all the girls to the yard lek, but I’m OK with that. I yam what I yam, as a famous mariner once said. From back to front – fancy Swiss aquarium filter foam scraps I’m saving for God knows what reason, an envelope full of Blubberbot, on top of the bot – a transmitter for (next thing down) a remote bownet release and finally an aquarium controller that is tasked with turning the lights over the vivaria on and off.

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I’m messing around with a macro lens –  also trying out an extension tube that will allow me even closer shots, but I haven’t gotten as far as the extension yet. I need to work on depth of field; in olden times that meant shrinking the aperture/cranking up the f-stop with an attendant longer exposure time (if I remember correctly). Some thing may have changed as we switched from film to CCDs, but I’ll bet optics remain much the same.

A bamboo shoot

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A tree peony

Busy, busy

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I’ve been doing a lot of vivarium work – I plan on posting construction details within a month.

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And quite a bit of dog training – Dinah’s retrieve work is coming along.

Additionally some (heterogeneous) reading:

Categorize this, NSA!

In the on deck circle – refreshing my soldering skills (is it true that US English is the only variant not to pronounce the ‘l’?). Component to printed circuit board soldering, that is.

Patent Number 2,292,387

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Long-time readers of my blog know that I’m fascinated by Hedy Lamarr (originally – Hedwig Kiesler). In honor of Ada Lovelace Day (today!) I though I’d post a short run-down of the patent she and her collaborator, composer and pianist George Antheil,  filed in 1942. The title on the patent was “Secret Communication System” and it outlines a way to radio-control a torpedo in a way that makes jamming very difficult. The scheme the movie star and the composer came up with is what later came to be know as frequency-hopping spread spectrum. Wikipedia says, succinctly:

Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) is a method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly switching a carrier among many frequency channels, using a pseudorandom sequence known to both transmitter and receiver. *

If you’re camped on one frequency while trying to transmit control info to your torpedo, you’re a sitting duck – your signal can be swamped by a transmitter on your target. If you are hopping from frequency to frequency in a way that your adversary can’t predict, but the receiver in the torpedo can, you’re in much better shape.

The mechanism K and A used to sync the transmitter and the receiver was one that had been used to control musical instruments and would be used a couple decades later to load programs on computers – paper tape!

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An interesting wrinkle – based on the tape above, I gotta believe that the frequency change interval is variable – perfectly understandable, given the one-to-one communication; it’s also a feature that would make an adversary’s job tougher.

Keeping the 2 tapes – one on the warship with the transmitter and one on the torpedo with the receiver – synchronized is essential.

Clearly the rolls have to start up at exactly the same time. In the invention each roll has an extra track and in that track is just one perforation inserted as a start marker. When the system was first armed (switched on), a little pin passed through this start perforation, restraining the roll from playing. The two pins were operated by an electromagnet, one at the ship end and one at the torpedo end. when the two electromagnets were switched on, that is when the device was armed, the pins appeared and were used to hold back the rolls. The electromagnets were connected together by two wires that ran from the ship’s transmitter equipment to the torpedo’s receiver. Once the torpedo was fired, the wires broke, breaking the circuit that operated the electromagnets, the two pins that held the roll withdrew and the rolls started playing at exactly the same instant… *

Additionally, they have to run at the same speed – not quite as big a trick as starting the run at exactly the same time.

It’s an excellent idea – perhaps a bit ahead of its time, but feasible (I think) given the tech of the day. It didn’t go anywhere though. Why? Two thoughts come to mind. The obvious explanation is that Kiesler and Antheil were outsiders. I can hear it now, “A movie star and a guy who writes ‘modern’ music have an idea for a torpedo remote control system? Haw, haw – tell me another.” Less obvious is an objection that may not have been apparent to Hedy. Hedwig Kiesler’s first marriage was to Friedrich Mandl, an Austrian arms dealer and manufacturer. The Germans were pioneers of electrically propelled torpedoes – Hedy may have heard discussion of them before her escape from Mandl and Austria in 1937. The problem was that the US used torpedoes powered by compressed air – no source of electricity to power the receiver.

In the overall scheme of things though, she and Antheil had a great idea – cheers, Hedy!

Patches, I'm depending on you, son…

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Two items of note.

My Nerd Commando P8tches arrove yesterday:

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A fun and interesting bit of work – well done John “Tikaro” Young and Kenn “Wappenbee” Munk! I understand the Japanese are way ahead of us in the ‘point your cell phone at a barcode and get info’ race (we in the US lag in most cell apps, it seems); I’m counting this as continuing to get my feet wet with ubicomp.

Via my Fickr contacts feed, a great patch designed by Gi for Esther Dyson. Dyson is in Star City training as a backup cosmonaut.

The design:

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Realized:

Huzzah, Gi!

Unbooks

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Via Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird comes a link to the unbook.  Big quote for folks who do not wish to click through:

1. An unbook is never finished, but rather continually updated, based on feedback from users andtheir evolving needs.

2. An unbook is released in versions. As in open source software, version 1.0 of an unbook is a significant milestone, indicating that it is stable and reliable enough for use by the general public. The significance of a new release is indicated by the size of the gap: For example, the difference between 1.1 and 1.1.3 is minor, while the difference between 1.1 and 2.0 is major.

3. An unbook is supported by a community of users who share their experiences and best practices with each other, and help each other troubleshoot problems encountered in their practice areas. An unbook’s community is a very real part of the unbook’s development team. *

Implied by the unbook – though not necessary – is print on demand. The physical object is important, but fixed print runs aren’t and are likely counterproductive.

How does an unbook differ from a wiki?

4) A wiki does not have a linear narrative while an unbook does: Before a physical book can be printed the order of its pages must be determined.

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An unbook is a narrative object: a developing narrative, a story that may change significantly over time, like a children’s story that is told and retold with additions and changes by multiple authors. Like a story an unbook has a clear beginning and end, although those things might change over time.

A wiki is a map object: a virtual space that can be searched, explored and navigated in various ways. A wiki, like a physical space, has many starting and ending points. You can enter a wiki many ways and there is no “end” to a wiki. *

For some interesting discussion of the concept – pro and con – see the comment thread on Warren Ellis’ post. [Web ‘better practice’ – checking the pingbacks from other blogs on posts like Mr. Gray’s can lead you to good stuff.]

The future – here, but not widely distributed

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Three quick forward-looking links.

Crooked Timber is doing a Charlie Stross book event.

A New Year, a new Crooked Timber book event. But instead of one book, we’re covering a dozen or so, all written by Charlie Stross, exploring different forms of the SF genre from postcyberpunk to alternate history and beyond. For this we need an all star cast, and, in addition to several CT regulars (Henry, both Johns and Maria), we have contributions from Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong and Ken MacLeod. Between us, we’ve managed to cover nearly everything. Glaring exceptions include the Laundry series, which every fan of Len Deighton and HP Lovecraft should read, and Glasshouse. I’ve added an open thread at the end of the seminar, for those who want to discuss what we missed.

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Geoff Manaugh is getting close on the BLDGBLOG book.  Close enough, in fact, that he’s posted some Wordle word clouds – looks like it’s going to be an interesting read.

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At City of Sound, The Personal Well-Tempered Environment.

SUMMARY

  • A real-time dashboard for buildings, neighbourhoods, and the city, focused on conveying the energy flow in and out of spaces, centred around the behaviour of individuals and groups within buildings.
  • A form of ‘BIM 2.0’ that gives users of buildings both the real-time and longitudinal information they need to change their behaviour and thus use buildings, and energy, more effectively. An ongoing post-occupancy evaluation for the building, the neighbourhood and the city.
  • A software service layer for connecting things together within and across buildings.
  • As information increasingly becomes thought of a material within building, it makes sense to consider it holistically as part of the built fabric, as glass, steel, ETFE etc.

Smart Grids

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It was this article that got me started thinking about it – the money graf:

Around the corner at Madigan Lane, John Sweeney, a member of the town’s conservation-minded Heat Advisory Committee, took a characteristically green approach to powering his home during the storm. He reported his achievement in an e-mail, saying it was no big deal, but that his wife thought it an impressive tale worth sharing: Sweeney ran his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan, and several lights through his Prius, for three days, on roughly five gallons of gas.

Up here in New England we just got through a short duration disaster (the ice storm). As a country (and globally), we in the beginning of a longer term disaster – the current recession/depression. One of the factors that kicked the recession into high gear (IMHO) was the spike in oil prices last summer and fall – the spike affected consumer spending directly – less money spent on other things – and indirectly, as people tightened their belts. Like it or not, it’s consumer spending (particularly American consumer spending) that has driven the global economy for decades. Oil prices have dropped recently (in large part because of the global economic contraction) – I don’t think that relying on energy costs staying low is a good bet. Kunstler’s take:

Many were stunned this year to witness the parabolic rise and fall of oil prices up to nearly $150 and then back around $36 by Christmas time. Quite a ride. I said in The Long Emergency that volatility would be the hallmark of post peak oil because it was obvious that advanced economies could not absorb super high prices and would crash in response; that at some point after crashing, these economies would respond to the new lower oil price, resume their cheap oil habits, and build to another price rise. . . and crash again. . . in a declension of ever-lower industrial activity.
What I probably didn’t realize at the time was how destructive this cycling between low-high-and-low oil prices would actually be in the first instance of it, and what a toll it would take right off the bat. We can see now that our first journey through the cycle took out the most fragile of the complex systems we depend on: capital finance. As a result, a huge amount of capital (say $14 trillion) has evaporated out of the system, never to be seen again (and never to be deployed for productive purposes). It will be harder for the USA to rebound from the grievous injury to this crucial part of the overall system, and Europe has foundered similarly — though the European nations are not burdened to the same degree by the awful liabilities of suburbia. *

JHK may be too pessimistic, but to put things in context – last spring (I think) a friend put Nouriel Roubini (aka Dr. Doom) in context by describing him as the James Howard Kunstler of economics. On December 3, 2008, Nassem Taleb – author of The Black Swan – suggested that Roubini is an optimist. What’s that saying – hope for the best, plan for the worst?

So – three things – severe weather (say what you will about climate change, but from a risk/reward perspective, the chances of climate change being real need to be down near zero if you want to justify staying the course), volatile energy costs and a recession that militates heavily for big government spending – if I could do a 3 circle venn diagram a la Indexed, one of the things in the climate/energy/spending intersection would be smart grids. I was a little surprised to find – as the result of a lunchtime rantlet – that some folks haven’t been exposed to the notion. A smart grid is not a thing – it’s a bunch of desired outcomes and technologies to achieve those results.

Before examining particular technologies, a proposal can be understood in terms of what it is being required to do. The governments and utilities funding development of grid modernization have defined the functions required for smart grids. According to the United States United States Department of Energy‘s Modern Grid Initiative report,[11] a modern smart grid must:

  1. Be able to heal itself
  2. Motivate consumers to actively participate in operations of the grid
  3. Resist attack
  4. Provide higher quality power that will save money wasted
  5. Accommodate all generation and storage options
  6. Enable electricity markets to flourish
  7. Run more efficiently *

Bullets 3, 5 and 7 are of particular interest to me. Efficiency – wasting less – is one of the most important ways to go after climate change and energy costs. There is no free lunch – there are costs associated with any kind of power generation – but improvements in efficiency are as close to a free lunch as we’re going to find. Bullet 5 touches on the Prius example I started the post with. A lot of non-fossil energy options are intermittent – wind is probably the classic example. Being able to do some curve-smoothing by storing/releasing energy in a fleet of plugged in hybrids? Interesting. Bullet 3 ties back to climate from the other side – as weather gets more severe, being able to resist disruption is a very good thing. Bullet 3 also links nicely to John Robb’s concept of resilient communities. There are tension here as well – at least for the purposes of this post. I’m arguing that the Federal government ought to spend some money on implementing (not just designing/armwaving) a smart grid – Robb argues that resilient communities must be bottoms-up and self organizing. Given that my chances of affecting prez-elect Obama’s decisions on anything are virtually nil, I’ll kick that objection under the rug. I do think there’s an example where we meet in the middle, though – you’re soaking in it (the Internet).

I’m sitting by the phone, waiting for the call from Washington that let’s me know I’ve been tapped to be an Special Presidential Advisor on technology, foraging and comics (I plan to telecommute) – while we all wait for an announcement, keep your eye on the grid and on resilient communities.

Update – I swear I did not know about this when I posted:

At a committee briefing Boxer held Wednesday in Washington, green tech evangelist John Doerr called for stimulus money to be used to update the nation’s electrical grid. He said a modern grid that could better handle wind and solar power would enable a green technology boom. A venture capitalist who backed Google and Amazon in their early days, Doerr says the green revolution has much greater potential for job creation than the Internet did. *

There go my Presidential Advisor chances…

Trackwork

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I have to agree with Dale Dougherty (guestblogging over at BB) – nothing enhances a Christmas tree like a loop of model/toy train track (model NEQ toy, but either one works). The comment thread on Dale’s post was a good one – among other things, I may try to make a pilgrimage down to the Tech Model Railroad Club sometime. The big discovery in the comments, though, was finding Tim Warris’ blog.

A good rule of thumb – in my opinion – is that edges and interfaces are where interesting things tend to happen. It’s true in the woods and it’s true when you’re talking transportation. Ships and trains are cool by themselves, off running along, but bring the two of them together and stick a Hulett unloader (I know – off topic) in the middle and things get very interesting.

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Both Tim and I have a copy of Where Rails Meet the Sea, a book largely about car ferry operations – rolling boxcars, etc., on and off ferries and barges. Tim is modelling the CNJ Bronx Terminal – a yard in about an acre with no connection to other trackage except via car float. Not only is the yard tiny, it is also quite complex. Check out one section that Tim has fabricated – no, you are not going to find switches like this at a hobby shop:

Definitely worth keeping an eye on and he’s going to be (sort of) in the area with the layout in January.

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While we’re on the topic of interesting track work, I’m going to dredge up an oldie but goody – Austrian trickster-collective monochrom‘s Turing Train Terminal. Yes, a Turing machine implemented in model trains. The abstract:

Scale trains have existed for almost as long as their archetypes, which were developed for the purposes of traffic, transportation and trade. Economy and commerce have also been the underlying motivations for the invention of computers, calculators and artificial brains.

Allowing ourselves to fleetingly believe in an earlier historical miscalculation that “… Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons.” (Popular Mechanics, March 1949), we decided to put some hundred tons of scaled steel together in order to build these calculating protozoa. The operating system of this reckoning worm is the ultimate universal calculator, the Turingmachine, and is able to calculate whatever is capable of being calculated. One just would have to continue building to see where this may lead…

I’m still digesting the paper this layout is based on (here – warning, PDF) – being a woodsman of very little brain, it make take a couple more passes – but what’s not to like?

AV Gadgetry

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Over the past six months I’ve picked up a few pieces of hardware that have changed my media consumption habits a bit. Brief descriptions/reviews:

Sans Digital AccuNAS AN2L – network storage. I bought one at work to use as a quick and dirty data bucket (the fact that it would mirror 2 disks was the big draw) – once I got a first-hand look at the other things it could do, I bought myself one to use at home. Web server? Check. FTP server? Check. BitTorrent client? Check – you can grab a .torrent on your PC, copy it over to the NAS box and the NAS box will handle downloading the file. Nice power saving opportunity – turn off the honker PC and let the low power AN2L run 24/7. UPnP streamer? Check – a nice and reasonably standardized way to access content on the NAS box (think audio and video) without needing a Samba client (see Archos, below). Update – just realized I’d used a potential confusing TLA – NAS = Network Attached Storage.

Popcorn Hour A-100 – media player. This little box lets me play all kinds of stuff on the teevee/stereo. It can access the NAS box using standard Microsoft file sharing (SMB/Samba) or talk to any UPnP streamers it sees (another way or getting at the NAS box). One very cool feature? It will play .iso images of DVDs – I can rip one of my DVDs to iso format, store it on the AN2L, and replay any time – no loading the DVD player necessary, and you get everything – menus, special features, etc. It doesn’t upscale – my DVD player does – I’m not sure if my TV will and I’m pretty sure I don’t care enough to fiddle. If you throw a hard drive into the PCH it will do torrents and UPnP just like the NAS box, but without a drive, it is dead silent (good thing). It doesn’t mirror (out of the box – someone has probably tweaked it), so the AN2L is where content lives.

Archos 705 – personal media player. I wanted a media player that I could use in the house and on the road – I also wanted a screen that I could see. This gadget hit both targets – it will not fit in your pocket, but it will store a bunch of eps of The Prisoner, Deadwood, Venture Bros. , etc. along with hours of tunes (though if music is your primary focus, it is too big) and you don’t have to squint. I also picked up the base unit that allows it to become a mini-DVR. Copying files to/from it is a PITA – Archos have apparently killed it’s file sharing capabilities, so to get files off it you need to connect it via USB to a computer. As a be-all and end-all convergence gadget, it’s lacking – as a satellite screen, it works like a charm.

In action, the sequence of events might look like:

  • I hear about an interesting torrent (I know – ancient example). I find the .torrent file and fire up the AN2L. Time passes.
  • Download complete! Now it’s evening and a little light entertainment sounds like just the thing. I use the PCH A-100 to play the downloaded file (physically on the NAS box in the basement) back on the living room teevee.
  • Phone rings – dang. I pause playback and talk talk talk on the phone. “KTHXBAI”, hang up phone and look at the time – late! “I think I’ll watch the last 10 minutes of the show in the master bedroom suite [massive exaggeration]”.  Grab the 705, queue the show up to where it needs to be and watch and/or go to sleep before the show is over.

I’m not there yet, but my bog-standard teevee watching is so minimal at this point (weather, amurcan football and F1 when I can find it) that my cable feed may have a limited life span.