digitalecology

Bio implant headset for audio augmented reality overlay

2013-04-17T23:05:00.000+01:00

So here's the thing; all of the AR spotlight seems to focus on the visual sense as the main element of reality as we perceive it that is in most need of augmentation, but we seem to be neglecting the rather obvious aural sense amid the rush to bag ourselves a set of Google glass-es or something...

As far as I recall, the auditory nerve was the first one to be targeted for surgical intervention to add direct electrical connections to the human body in order to give people back their hearing via cochlear implants. This I find really amazing, since it shows just how far the reality has come in terms of the possibility of interfacing electronically with our bodies.

So how about we use cochlear implants by choice rather than only therapeutically, and use the interface to add an audio overlay to our reality? If we can add a voice mic perhaps by another small vibration sensor mic implant in the throat, we have all the ingredients for a directly integrated headset! Either would serve independently different tasks even if only one were to be installed. The mic could be the input to voice control interfaces in all sorts of devices, while the audio implant would do what we're doing already with headphones. Together, they are a handsfree headset of course so could be used in mobile telephone or video calling with total privacy.

Thinking about this, the effectiveness of even quite advanced implants is a long way from the fidelity that a person who has normal hearing so the risk reward of the full bionic ear is probably too much to bear. In its place we should develop a mechanism for installing an audio pass thru to either regular ear buds, or bone conduction headphones, thus maintaining a clear ambient audio path over which the at overlay has control.

I don't know if this is feasible but if the super low energy requirements of the latest Bluetooth 4.0 stack could be combined with some sort of kinetic or biochemical energy harvesting tech, we could power the implants with our own bodies. This would truly be body enhancement...

We already do this audio AR thing without surgery of course, using Bluetooth earpieces, but lacking the total bio integration bit. There is certainly scope for more audio AR app support in a safe and non-invasive way for most of us! There is scope for using TTS (text to speech) to provide the audio AR overlay, for more than just navigation guidance, surely?

Ikea Hack: Expedit Loft Bed

2013-04-08T23:03:00.000+01:00

Here is my latest Ikea hack, where I'm using a pair of 4x2 EXPEDITs to make a single loft bed. It seems that the 79cm width of EXPEDIT is a perfect match for a UK 'small single' mattress which is 2'6 wide by 6'3 long, or any of IKEA's junior beds that are around 77cmx168cm long.

Note - i'm fully aware of the fact I'm mixing feet/inches and mm - just go with it!

Ingredients

2x EXPEDIT 4x2
Either: 1x junior bed e.g GULLIVER
OR Small single bed frame (2'6x6'3) made by me from timber, or alternatively:

4x CLS timber 63x38mm
6x Planed Smooth Timber 38x18mm
2x Planed Smooth timber 144x18mm
+ Optional: 2x PERFEKT ABSTRAKT plinth (or 2 more 144x18 timber)

Big bit of 6mm Perspex and some aluminium profile that I had lying around

Recipie

Build both EXPEDITs as per instructions
EITHER Build a bed frame using the following cuts:

2x CLS timber to 6'3 (structural sides)
2x CLS timber to 2'6 (structural ends)
2x PS timber 144x18 (or PERFEKT plinth) to 6'4.1/2" (containing sides)
2x PS timber 144x18 (or PERFEKT plinth) to 2'6 (containing ends)
12x PS timber 38x18 to 2'6 (slatted bed base)

OR: Build the junior bed (GULLIVER), cut the legs off, and use either PS timber or PERFEKT plinth to make up a solid side guard, bolted at each end to the side.
Bolt everything together, and to as many walls as are available. I actually used 4x wall fixing brackets from PAX wardrobes, opened up the holes in the short part of the "L" to marry up to the fixing bolts in the top of each EXPEDIT, and screwing the long part into the sides of the bed, from the inside.

Outcome

I've built the bed frame myself so as to fit a small single and to make the best use of the available space in my boy's room. I didn't have PERFEKT plinth available and didn't have time to go back to the shop, but would have used it on the front fascia had I had it since its one less thing to paint and would be a gloss finish to match the gloss turquoise & white EXPEDIT units. I also built the ladder using CLS timber that will need painting too. Finally, the entrance to the bed at the top of the ladder in this case definitely needs another grab rail on the wall so as to make it easier to get in & out so I'll be adding a couple of long LANSA handles later; in the mean time I've added a spare IKEA handle (something like this but now discontinued).

In-Car Netflix hack: system check

2013-04-04T00:12:00.001+01:00

For my In-Car Netflix hack I received my MINI HDMI2AV adapter box off eBay today:

I tested it using both my daughter's Icoo D70 tablet (with HDMI out) and my Samsung GSii (with MHL to HDMI converter) into the back of my TV at home and can gladly confirm that:

a) it works
b) it doesn't actually need a power supply (at least while the HDMI cable is juiced up)

Tomorrow I'll install it into the car and do a final update...

In-Car Netflix hack

2013-04-03T00:21:00.000+01:00

A few years ago I picked up a dual-screen portable DVD player so the kids could watch something while we're on long journeys in the car and its been a great success. Recently they want to watch something on Netflix so I've mounted my phone to face them in the back so they can see it, but because the Samsung GSii, and indeed pretty much all phones, tablets & mp4 players for that matter, run HDMI out whether directly or via MHL, its not possible to route the video directly into the composite aux in on the DVD unit without additional stages.

So last night I ordered the HDMI/Composite adapter that completes the picture (I already have the other elements knocking around):

Here's the network diagram:

I expect the delivery towards the end of the week so over the weekend will set it up and hope it works!

I have a Nexus 7 tablet, too, but that unfortunately doesn't have HDMI out, although the kids have generic android (Icoo d70 pro) tablets that do. With this, an alternative that would leave my phone alone to use it as simply a phone and wifi access point, my nexus 7 as a satnav head unit, and an Icoo tablet as a Netflix/media player would look like this:

I prefer this option, even if I don't use the Nexus 7, simply because it keeps my phone as a separate device from the media unit and I can still use Google Maps Navigation on the phone, too.

Ikea Hack: Recurve Bow Sight (Version 3)

2013-03-31T09:21:00.003+01:00

While version 1 never got used because it was superseded by version 2 before I even finished writing it up, I did try version 2 and unfortunately it didn't come out of the blocks quite perfectly.

The big idea of using INTEGRAL hinge brackets to create a demountable attachment is definitely the way forward; I would go as far to say that the same idea can be applied to a whole bunch of possible 'things you need to clip solidly to something'. However, the sight adjuster, and to a degree the sights too were not quite as solid as they needed to be. The 40lb Supernatural Vaampyre bow, as with all archery kit, will need to withstand a significant vibration as the arrow is released. Unfortunately the way I built version 2 it just rattled apart within a couple of arrows.

So I went back to the drawing board:

This time I used a bit cut from the top rail of the KVARTAL , together with the rail insert, and bolted everything at least twice to every bit. I've made the vertical and horizontal adjuster knobs from other KVARTAL spare parts, making it that bit more usable.

I'll comment when I've given it a shot...

Ikea Hack: Recurve Bow Sight (Version 2)

2013-03-25T00:19:00.000Z

Version 2 of my recurve bow sight, now even more Ikea!

This time I'm hoping to make the best of the already demountable features of the INTEGRAL hinge, while increasing stability and reducing overall weight.

Inventory

1x INTEGRAL aluminium door hinge bracket
1x KVARTAL aluminium rail kit
1x KVARTAL ceiling connector
5x KASSETT machined nuts and threaded screws
several sets of 100402/100644 bolt/nuts (you get these for attaching cabinets together)
1x m3 threaded bolt (not Ikea but a 10042 bolt wasn't quite long enough)
1x m4 threaded screw (also not Ikea in my case, but only because I wanted something long enough to go through the whole bar and not just a side)
1x long and 1x short L-shaped steel brackets (not sure which Ikea parts - probably something from a kitchen!)

Sight Arm

Cut the KVARTAL rail to size, about 30cm is about normal for extended recurve sights. Now, completely disassemble the INTEGRAL hinge, first by unclipping the two parts, then removing the screws, putting them both to one side. Mark and drill holes (4.2mm and 5mm) as appropriate to connect the bit of the hiinge with the clip release to one end of the rail. Use the little hex bolt and sliver bit from the KVARTAL to attach one end of the KVARTAL rail, and run a slightly longer M4 bolt through the rail to connect up with the threaded hole on the hinge.

I couldn't find an Ikea sourced m4 threaded bolt quite long enough so that is the only element of this that isn't Ikea; to reach 100% would have meant using the original threaded screw through a larger hole on one side of the rail, only picking up the structure with the one side and I wanted it to be as sturdy as possible.

Adjuster

I bolted the long and short L-shaped brackets together leaving a space through which the connector bracket from the KVARTAL is allowed to slide for vertical sight adjustment, using the bolt as a locking mechanism for when it's set. There's the smallest sliver of double-sided foam in the gap to maintain vertical alignment on the slider. A long-ish m3 threaded screw (or a 100402) through any one of the visible threaded holes in the vertical adjuster provides lateral adjustment and can be locked off with KASSETT nuts. The whole assembly is simply attached to the rail using a 100402 threaded screw through one of the existing grub-screw holes.

Sights

I've actually made several sights all by hot-glueing various bits to 100644 bolts that will attach right onto the lateral adjuster bolt.

Mounting

Attach the INTEGRAL hinge bracket directly to the bow's riser, since the holes present precisely the correct standard pitch for riser sight fittings (how convenient!)...

then attach the sight by simply clipping it on!

It clips on and off my new Supernatural Vaampyre in seconds, and because the hardware is designed to carry heavy cabinet doors, its pretty solid once its on there so there's little chance of much in the way of vibration or movement. The little black square spacer is from a PATRUL cabinet lock since the bolt running through was still a little long, and anyway it spreads the load on the aluminium without adding much weight, which by the way is around 150gr, even without drilling holes throughout the length of the arm, which could perhaps knock off another 20gr.

Ikea Hack: Extended Recurve Bow Sight (Version 1)

2013-03-22T00:39:00.003Z

After just managing to get over the line by one point on my self-imposed target of 500 in an indoor Portsmouth, I did as promised and duly bought myself a new Supernatural Vaampyre bow. Since I don't have a proper bow sight to go with it, and didn't want to spend any more money on kit I thought I'd make myself a new bow sight to go with it.

This isn't quite the first bow sight that I've made but its definitely the first one made with 90% Ikea spare parts!

Inventory:

2x INTEGRAL aluminium door hinge bracket
1x Billy MOREBO aluminium door handle
1x KVARTAL aluminium bottom rail
4x KASSETT machined nuts & bolts
1x BLANKETT 50mm aluminium door handle, or a small piece of L-shaped aluminium profile from hardware store
2x Ikea shelf support pins.
1x cheap (short) recurve bow sight e.g. cartel side sight

Tools:

Hacksaw
Steel file
Screwdriver
drill, with 4mm & 5mm hss steel drill bits

To mount the sight rail, I cut a small piece of aluminium profile at a steep angle, then drilled holes to match the pitch of the fixings in the back of the sight rail, then attached to one end of the KVARTAL rail by drilling through and bolting together.

The back of the Billy MOREBO handle happens to be about the same size as the thickness of the KVARTAL frame, so I used the INTEGRAL hinge brackets to bolt everything together onto the short stem of the side sight, and used an extended bolt across the top to pull everything together. I drilled a couple of holes and used two shelf support pins to stabilise the extension though I'll see if this is necessary when I first shoot it next week.

Bolting everything together

Overall, this has the advantage that I can demount the sight extension from the bow without having to remove it completely from the riser.

I'm going to wait until I actually shoot it to see if the vibrations are acceptable, and will plan to damp it first using blu-tack to get an idea of how much & where it's needed, then use Sugru for a more permanent damping setup. I might also try to lighten the overall rig by drilling holes throughout both sides along the length of the extension.

Even as I'm writing this I'm already working on Version 2, where I'm planning to use the clip-on part of the INTEGRAL hinge bolted to the against the bracket directly attached to the riser (since the holes have exactly the correct pitch).

Silicon Sunflowers - High Level Architecture

2013-03-07T22:15:00.000Z

I blogged earlier about my concept of the silicon sunflower, harnessing solar energy and the ubiquitous computing power of the smartphone to enable a new era of digital farming. Here I'm going to develop the idea a little more.

Goal
The overall goal of the system is that individual, autonomous, relatively low power (in all senses) units come together to produce something far greater, by collaborating with peers to create a dynamic fabric that can lend itself to a broad range of classically 'elastic computing' use cases. Giving rise to (pessimist) SkyNet or (optimist) Jane would be something of a bonus!

System Design
The silicon sunflower system essentially is composed of 3 major components:

an energy generation subsystem
an ultra low power networked computing & storage subsystem
a collaborative (hive) 'mind' - software operating system that can bring coherence and accessibility to the system both as a node, and when participating in collaborative groups.

ECM, then?

Figure 1: High Level System Design

Each part has a few basic requirements but the general implementation could vary quite widely. lets take each piece in turn for high level requirements:

Energy

output must (at least) match the requirements of the Compute subsystem
totally independent energy generation
may be capable of collaboration with other Energy peers to maximise its output profile to requirements.

<UML component diagram>

Figure 2a: Energy subsystem

The Energy subsystem must be able to produce sufficient energy to drive the compute subsystem and do so with total independence from all 'grid connected' energy sources. while solar is definitely the front runner here, there is a strong body of applicable renewable generation technologies that could apply here, such a wind (silicon windmill), tidal or other hydro (silicon salmon). getting really esoteric (and ultra-ultra low power) we could consider kinetic or ambient energy harvesting technologies such as <link> electro-active pavements/roads, or radio-like hydra that could collect minuscule electrical power from ambient electromagnetic radiation or magnetic fields.

Compute

totally local compute, storage, (probably wireless) networking
of sufficiently low energy consumption to be totally reliant upon the Energy subsystem for its requirements.
may be capable of (either static or dynamic) collaboration with other Compute peers to maximise its configuration according to environmental conditions.

<UML component diagram>

Figure 2b: Compute subsystem

The Compute subsystem right now is likely to be some sort of (relatively) cheap, fully integrated single board system such as the innards of a modern smartphone. these already tick most of the boxes we need;

small (what ever that might mean)
high level of computing capability
low power consumption
(wireless) fast networking
decent software support

Even without going down a custom design route, there are literally hundreds of quad-core ARM-based smartphones out there that can do this stuff in a few hundred milliwatts.

(Hive-)Mind

provide a software operating system appropriate to the local Compute's characteristics
must be capable of collaborating with other Mind peers to make best use of available resources, and to respond appropriately to environmental conditions.
must provide a coherent, accessible platform for the development and deployment of services without requiring a complex understanding of the underlying complexity of process management.

<UML component diagram>

Figure 2c: Mind subsystem

Interestingly this bit, the Mind, is rather appropriately multi-layered in its requirement. it needs to be able to leverage all the local capabilities of the ECM node directly (ie it needs to be, or at least incorporate a local OS), but it also must provide a coherence to any number of collaborating peer ECMs and therefore act as a hive-Mind super component; self similar in requirements (since groups of individuals may choose to collaborate too) but one, two, n, levels up from the local OS.

Software is obviously the Great Enabler. The idea of something similar to a HPC cluster based on this kind of substrate would have to stand on some pretty great shoulders to find routes into developing a software architecture that can enable truly accessible collaborative substrate onto which developers can deploy and distribute whatever services would dream up. I'm referring to this layer as the 'mind'quite deliberately. the well documented potential issues of latency that would arise in any clusters of this type would in my view need some sort of conceptual consciousness to bring the illusion of coherence to what will undoubtedly be a very messy multi-priority, multi-tasking operation.

Sum > Parts
What is interesting is that what makes up or at least could make up each component in turn already has its own very strong body of research/community/capability out there. Each part already has in its own ways already realised much and in some cases all of the high level requirements stated here, and even before attempting to integrate, each has its own totally independent research & development roadmap.

hiveMind 1.0

Another interesting point is that its quite possible to 'build' an ECM both individually in groups/hives using existing examples from each area:

a mobile solar charger (link)
a mobile smartphone (link)
a peer-network streaming application such as flash video.

Only a thought experiment, but basically if you get a bunch of smartphones all charged using mobile solar chargers (ie off grid), forming the entire peer community of flash video player participating in streaming the same file, store somewhere exclusively within the same peer group. that would be an example of an ECM group that could exist today with no further development needed in any layer. it would be weak as an example mainly because of the highly specific nature of the peer to peer application being used and the fact that the application in no way attempts to achieve 'hive mind' status, but its a fairly clear example to grasp.

Energy generation is a huge area, and I'm only asking for 'micro-energy' generation sufficient to power the local ECM compute node, although not discounting the possibility of larger collaboration at the energy grid level its not really the point to go fully centralised. at the extreme, if 100% of a national grid were from renewables, and you plugged in your smartphone that was running hiveMind in collaboration with a bunch of nationally located peers, technically that's an ECM hive, but not quite up with main ethos of this concept.

Similarly, a supercomputer is a collaborative cluster of compute nodes, running a HPC OS of various sorts. again this (at least if it were entirely powered by renewables) would probably qualify as an ECM group, and possibly even a hive, but its not 'quite'what i was thinking about when i came up with the idea.

however, what i do see as entirely feasible is to develop an App, call it hiveMind, that runs on existing iOS and Android smarphones, that does indeed begin to realise ECM groups/hives by providing that main requirement of contributing coherence to the loosely coupled network of peers who choose to participate by allowing the app to run in their background. Again, you might think of Seti@home on a mobile peer platform, though i would see that only as an application (a 'thought') running on the hiveMind.

Nexus 7 Bluetooth Keyboard by IVSO - Initial Impressions

2012-12-27T19:37:00.000Z

(initially written 28/11/2012, updated 27/12/2012)

So, due to the wonder that is Amazon Prime, I ordered this little keyboard yesterday evening and it was at my door while i was sat eating lunch at midday.

First impressions are good - it appears very solidly built (surprisingly heavier than expected!) and is an excellent design match to the nexus 7; the back is the same matrix-dotted matte black plastic, and the surround is the same, or similar, silver coloured edging. it really does look pretty good.

it came charged so pairing right out of the box was easy. For the avoidance of doubt there is a small instruction pamphlet in the box that very clearly explains, with full colour screen shots, what needs to be done.

Now for the 'in use' part. first up i have to say that of course the keys are way tinier and closer together than you would be used to on any full sized or even small scale chicklet keyboard for a 10 inch tablet (link). the first few sentences are definitely somewhat error-prone, since you have to readjust your finger positions which is not that easy particularly if you touch type. When i do manage to accurately hit a few notes in a row, the feel of the keys is very good - a fair amount of travel (a little more than 1mm) solid action and quick spring return.

I'll come back to this after a full week of use to report on how i adapt.

It has some obvious special keys that are useful with android devices;

'home' button goes to the home screen
'search' button pulls up whatever application context search box (eg in gmail it brings up the search mail facility)

There is a comment in the instruction pamphlet about multimedia controls when holding down the Fn button followed by Fn1..12, except that there IS no Fn key, or F1..12 keys! it has also been noted in other reports that it is lacking a TAB key. This is true and at the moment i cannot see a way of TABbing by any of the more obvious key combinations. i suspect that its some sort of 'bug'; the Q key is obviously what should have been a TAB since its so elongated; either the entire keyset should be one to the right, or the Q should have been split into a small TAB and a regular sized Q key. Maybe there's a way of bringing up TAB as a special character, or modding the character maps? again i might come back to this.

After this last 10 minutes of typing i'm now adjusting quite well to the size and my accuracy is improving with every line. I can imagine that my typing speed will be up to near-normal within the day if i did a full day's worth of meeting notes on this.

Initial Verdict = excellent, though the TAB key might put some (coders) off.

UPDATE 27.12.2012: So I've decided that I can live for now with only a Nexus 7 + this keyboard, in place of what I had previously ie the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with a similar keyboard (that i also reviewed).

Big Brother, Little Brother? (okay Nexus 10 awaits...)

I'll see how long I manage to hold off before bagging a Nexus 10, once they stop making unicorns look so quotidian...

Winter fashion that adapts to warm environment

2012-11-16T18:31:00.001Z

Its getting cold in London, which means everyone is donning their winter coats. The trouble with this of course is the temperature when bunged together at rush hour on the tube!

Take off your scarf, gloves, or even your coat! Obvious, but near impossible in the sardine-like environment of a packed tube train!

So, how can we apply design, materials, and tech, to solve this?

Design
Zips, lots of zips! Actually this is where I got the idea. I was about the only guy on the train the other day wearing a suit and a polo sweater with a zip on the neck, which I opened to allow myself to cool down a bit. it acted as functional ventilation when necessary, then once zipped up did the double of keeping me warm, and looking smart to boot. I have a walking jacket with zips under the arms to allow some ventilation where its needed more. But to be honest, there's only so far this can go before fashion styling takes a bit of a dive from the sartorial elegance of the sharp city suits!

Materials
We could take a lead from the sports world and use different heat management materials in the make up of the layers. A classic wicking base layer, with sections for warmth and others for cooling or wicking. Phase change materials could level out the temperature variations, and could also potentially work in collaboration with other sardines/passengers to moderate the actual train environment, so reducing the temperature in the carriage, then adding warmth to the wearer once back out on the street. How about materials with variable insulation properties, something as simple as an inflatable matrix that increases its loft, therefore its u-value, only when the bulk is acceptable and the insulation required? When not inflated the garment could even incorporate perforations to make it almost completely un-insulating. Cool.

Technology
We could use tech to inform us when our journey is going to be at its most comfortable, by hooking into environmental monitoring data mashed up real time with foot fall data. If we absolutely had to travel at the times of greatest hot/cold variation, we could combine our design and materials above, with monitoring and management tools to automatically balance the heat retention versus ventilation in personal environmental suits, that could do its best to capture the energy in the ambient heat of the tube train, store it, then deliver it back, maximising or amplifying the similar capabilities of the phase change materials.

Personally i think i'm going to to try to invent my 'variable insulation' jacket material, since that has the highest likelihood of being do-able, cheap to implement, and good for designing a great looking overcoat!

Smartsheet Project - Conditional Formatting

2012-09-21T10:59:00.001+01:00

I use Smartsheet to get a grip on my projects, particularly useful when working cross-organisation as is the case with mergers, joint ventures etc. One of its cool functions is to be able to apply conditional formatting (as you would in a spreadsheet) to highlight anything in rows, columns etc by applying simple rules.

These are the rules I use most frequently for a 'project' Smartsheet, as they allow you to focus on short/medium/long term milestones, combined simply with progress.

Status:

If Status is ‘At Risk’ then apply this format to Status Column

If Status is ‘Complete then apply this format to the entire row

If Status is ‘On Track’ then apply this format to the Status column

Progress:
If % complete is not equal to 100 and End Date is in the past then apply this format to the entire row

If % complete is not equal to 100 and End Date is in the next 5 days then apply this format to the entire row

If % complete is not equal to 100 and End Date is in the next 20 days then apply this format to the entire row

If % complete is not equal to 100 and End Date is in the next 40 days then apply this format to the entire row

Of course you can do much more sophisticated conditional formatting than this, but I find this one useful for keeping me focused on the tasks that matter most to ensuring whatever needs to be delivered is going to happen.

Silicon Sunflowers - Big Data Farming?

2012-09-19T00:19:00.000+01:00

It seems from an initial Google search for 'smart phone cluster' that it's a good couple of years since this interesting article, and this blog post over at Linux Mag where Douglas Eadline reviewed the then rather unappealing possibility of a HPC running over a networked cluster of smart phones. However, things move fast and if you join the dots in last month's wired magazine you might arrive at an interesting conclusion:

Big Data
Quad core smartphones with large storage capacities (not even counting sdxc)
NFC & 4G wireless, etc...
A review of portable solar chargers

= the potential to run scalable commodity solar powered distributed nodes in co-operative super-clusters?

Why?

That depends on what you want to find out I guess. As raw compute infrastructure you could build many thousands of independent solar powered cooperative fields of compute node 'flowers', or even scale up and out in to solar 'trees', or even forests.

Could Big Data Miners could become Big Data Farmers?

Wired -> data farm
Tired -> data mine
Expired -> data base

I like the aesthetics of this idea, particularly the biological analogy of it all. not quite "steel magnolias", more "silicon sunflowers", or "compute forests"?

I particularly like the idea of co-operative, distributed or to be more specific decentralised infrastructure that this could provide. In a manner analogous to the possible decentralising drive that community/local power generation has to offer, this simple step takes the same drive into the space of infrastructure as a potentially decentralised commodity, too.

Not too soon, some might add, since there are some notable cases this year of our great Internet's reliance upon a relatively few centralised sources of hosting infrastructure; it really is simply an illusion that "the cloud" is somehow ephemeral and intrinsically redundant.

Done right, the basic building blocks could manifest in any number of physical variations. If manufacture were also capable of being decentralised (i'm thinking 3d printing, commodity electronics, common low level software interop), I can well imagine the potential for immense power in numbers. Perhaps even enough threads to host our first virtual Jane (Ender's Game), or even Skynet could be lurking in our pockets?

Cybernetically enhanced hyper-teams?

2012-09-11T19:58:00.003+01:00

The classic HPC examples tend to be about co-opting individual users' spare CPU cycles to run as part of a large latent network of nodes (eg SETI@home etc), but there is an interesting thing about the new trend in 'gaming 'everything, where the human owner of said phones is now a potential big part of the new infrastructure.

Decentralised HPCs = see later posts.
Social gaming for problem solving = many examples in various app stores - already mainstream.

Hybrid of HPC and Social Gaming
If you have a problem and you need a smart network to solve it, and you can build an app that looks fun enough to play as a game, and (bla bla), then how about you have your users' smartphones hosting social games that harness the synergy between the human users need to pass the time with a fun game, the well documented crowd-sourced efficiency in pattern recognition and goal seeking problem solving, with the local CPU power of this years superphones, some sort of hybrid of highly parallel human/computer thing could emerge, that who knows where we could go? i'm not even entirely sure what to call it?

How about "cybernetically enhanced hyper-teams"?

System Test: Samsung SGT10.1 Bluetooth Keyboard Cover

2012-09-11T00:17:00.000+01:00

I bought one of these aluminium bluetooth chicklet covers for my samsung galaxy tab 10.1 pretty much within the week i bought the tablet, to give myself the chance of using it as a netbook replacement. i can definitely say its been a major success. i've used this regularly in place of what you would otherwise use a laptop for during my working days while in meetings and while commuting on the train for an hour each way.

This is a test of the typing ability of the same bluetooth chicklet/cover keyboard but using the new ICS 4.04 on the samsung galaxy tab 10.1, where i got my ota upgrade yesterday evening (25th August)

Best thing to start off is that the damned software keyboard doesnt keep popping up which is quite frankly a MAJOR bonus!! (good call, google for fixing this in the gmail app - yes i'm using gmail email drafting to write this blog, because its what i do in my regular minute taking workflow in meetings in a professional context therefore is a good test, and secondly its the best note taking method i've stuck with over time, after trying various alternatives all of which have in some way or another managed to lose my data by various means, but not gmail especially if i have a data connection flipping in and out since it does its damnedest to push a few Kb over the wifi to continuously safe the draft to the gmail server cloud)

Clearly i'm rambling a little only so that i manage to type as quickly as i can on this keyboard to make sure every keystroke is getting picked up (it is).

Next step is to let it go to sleep for a second and see how long it takes to reconnect...

...

No, not sleeping yet! (was about a minute)
...

Okay 3 minutes and it definitely went off to beddy-byes, but amazingly one button click reconnected, yay!!! the tablet woke from its screen off/locked state, asked me for the password to unlock and accepted the keystrokes right away. this might sound like an obvious test but believe me on the honeycomb bluetooth driver it was a major pain getting the keyboard to reconnect - i had to dance on the keys for about a minute sometimes to get tie strokes to start getting picked up....

Another MAJORMAJORMAJOR annoyance gone!!!

Just one more MINOR issue; there is a combination of a small lag (probably me) on the shift key release, combined with the fact that shift-SPACE doesnt do a space, rather it selects a language. i need to get better at releasing the shift key before a space, basically...

So there you go - a live test of the new ICS 4.04 upgraded Samsung Galaxy TAB 10.1 using a mobile bluetooth chicklet keyboard cover that i got from ebay for about 25 quid, and that makes the SGT10.1 into a very functional netbook replacement that i seriously, HONESTLY, use literally every day in a professional context.

I can tell you that i can speed type on this baby almost as well as i can on the Microsoft Arc keyboard, which to this day i still maintain is genuinely the FASTEST keyboard i've ever used for documenting and emailing, though probably not ideal for coders due to the odd decision of having a single 4-way rocker key for the arrows. its something i've gotten used to but still not quite internalised if you know what i mean.

Ikea Hack: iPad Desk Stand

2012-08-19T23:48:00.003+01:00

This very simple Ikea Hack is made by using a hot glue gun to stick a kitchen handle to a curtain rod holder, that makes for a very nice iPad desk stand. It works in both portrait and landscape mode, and while it maintains a clean minimal look, its got something of the modernist mid-20th century in it, don't you think?

I started with two elements:

a white ikea kitchen door handle
a silver/chrome ikea curtain rod holder

Unfortunately I think these particular two elements arent on the ikea catalogue this year, but I'm on the lookout for similar items that would work to create the same basic hack.

I hot glued the two elements together (my hot glue gun technique is a bit amateurish!), and used a few self adhesive foam stickers that i saved from something else:

Complete!

My 'other half' uses this all the time on her work desk, and when she's not using it i tend to shift it around to the kitchen island to use with my samsung galaxy tab 10.1 (since this hack is agnostic).

ikea hack: ipad wall mounts made from upside down kitchen handles

2012-04-21T01:00:00.000+01:00

next to this (free) ipad mount hack, this ikea hack for 2 quid is a much neater second, dont you think?

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/30222231/#/90222233

though, essentially, use any ikea kitchen handle upside down as an ipad wall mount. if you want to make it a little more stable, attach a bit of leather (suede side up) or even draught excluder to the inside to give it a little grip, but basically all ipad wall mounts are nothing more than posh shelves (discuss, or throw £40 at one....).

Passivhaus amateur design Part 1: insulation and airtightness

2011-09-06T03:22:00.000+01:00

The big deal about Passivhaus or CSH3+ design is all about minimising energy losses, and the most obvious way of doing this is to insulate. Pretty much everyone knows that a decent amount of loft insulation is a Good Thing for your pocket (and the environment), but in the extreme the idea would be to lose as little heat as possible through the walls, windows, roof and floor. To take this to the next level means to take a serious look at draughts. i've seen some resource suggest that up to 30% of space heating is wasted by having a draughty home. Again, Passivhaus (or the similarly informed CSH standard to grades 3 or above) takes it to the next level, and effectively requires the property to be almost entirely airtight, so no cold air can come in, and no warm air can escape.

The main elements of the basic fabric of the house that I wanted to focus on was to insulate as much as I could afford, and to use a wet plaster finish internally to provide a sound airtight barrier.

Renovations are always going to be a compromise, but I was already working with a standard built filled cavity wall structure and had zero intention of going the external cladding route. In the end I used the various tools available on the celotex website in conjunction with greenspace live on sketchup to gauge what thickness of sandwich celotex/plasterboard called PL4000 was most cost effective. Of course this has the additional benefits of the radiant reflective foil layer, which aids airtightness and heat retention.

I did investigate the use of membranes and drywall but came to a conclusion that there should be some mileage in relying upon good workmanship on the part of the builders in fitting internal insulation panels to the walls, and the age old craft is wrt plaster finish, which is both durable and visually attractive as well ad providing a good degree of airtightness.

Passivhaus Renovation - results!

2011-01-22T22:30:00.000Z

okay so i guess it would have made much more sense to start a blog before kicking off the project, then run updates throughout the design and build process with pretty pictures and lots of opportunity to crowdsource as much as possible where i had difficult decisions to make. To be perfectly honest, though, i was so busy actually pulling everything together to keep the project running that i just never had enough time to get it off the ground!

so i'm running my blog posts about this topic in a Memento-style cut up series of flashbacks...

i'm starting a good 7 months after we actually moved into our new home. we're very happy now that all the 'big stuff' is out of the way. as with all homes there are always a few loose threads to tie off at some point. here, i have a good few still outstanding but nothing that materially impacts our daily lives as did some elements earlier, such as the porch build (which ran a month into us having moved in), or finally connecting the humidistats for the MVHR system so we didn't have to leave the shower room door open to let the steam out.

The long and short of it is that through the 'system test' of the coldest winter on record, i'm currently running with a £640 credit on my gas bill and a £250 credit on my electricity bill, 7 months into actually living in the new home. Based on 95sqm area, this projects today to 144kWh/sqm/year for overall energy utilisation. Exponents of Passivhaus will know that one of the the criteria for achieving the standard is a maximum 120kWh/sqm/year for overall energy utilisation. Yes, there are others, but i knew i was going to be nowhere near able to achieve 15kWh/sqm/year for heating in a renovation of this type... oh yes, and the end-state design is for a 110-120sqm floorplan by virtue of a small rear extension that should perform much better than the deliberately temporary rear ground wall in place at the moment, with leaky upvc double glazed patio doors reused from what was already onsite.

Assuming no worse, this basically means that once the extension is in place, simply the larger floor area means that the whole house energy use figure could come in at around 114kWh/sqm/year; well into the 'green' zone of the Passivhaus standard!

First, a bit of background. we used to live near canary wharf in a lovely flat by the river, notably with 2 bedrooms. we had our first child, in 2007, and life was sweet. we went for our second, and hit the jackpot with twins, and life is (now) even sweeter. obviously at 9 weeks in when we discovered we were having twins, plans for moving were somewhat accelerated! We started looking for bigger houses pretty much immediately, and put our flat up for sale. a week later, Lehmans went bust, and ramp up to the credit crunch was well underway. timing couldnt have been less perfect! long and short of it is that we eventually sold the flat, then bought a great little 3 bed house in blackheath close to a great school.

Thats basically the subject of this renovation. we had the great idea when we saw this lovely little 3 bed 1950's ex council end of terrace, of 'modernising' while we lived in a rental. basically we wanted to construct an open plan living/kitchen/dining/office area downstairs by knocking out all the walls and extending (a bit) at the back. This morphed somewhat into reconstructing the house to be a healthy, practical (for modern living with three very young children), and sustainable family home.

I basically learned as much as i could about UK building regulations, the now-famous Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH), i bought and avidly read the Green Building Bible (both volumes), used Google SketchUp with a cool free plugin (greenspace live) to gauge thermal performance, and of course to construct the overall design of the renovation work, with particular elements of interest to either the builders, the leccy, plumber etc. many late nights ensued, but keeping it on track wasnt as hard as Grand Designs implies it is (okay so the budget did head north a bit... okay a lot).

Basically it was a massively enjoyable experience for a bit of a geek as i am to throw myself into an area i previously only had a layman's view of, and finish with an element of pride that i've contributed significantly to building the family home that now gives us so much pleasure, and will for years to come.

i'll post about detailed elements of the project as and when i manage to bank enough sleep to type till the early hours.

ANT dependency activation example

2008-11-13T22:43:00.000Z

here is an example of an ANT script that will enable you to optionally use a <taskdef> only if its resource exists without causing the build to fail outright if the dependency is not critical

<macrodef name="activate-dependency" description="load a taskdef only if it exists in the ANT runtime.">
<attribute name="name">
<attribute name="resource">
<sequential>
<taskdef resource="@{resource}" onerror="ignore">
<available resource="@{resource}" property="@{name}.available">
</sequential>
</macrodef>

an example of using this would be (say) to load checkstyle only if it is available in the ANT runtime environment, and gate the task execution that would otherwise fail:

<target name="init-checkstyle">
<activate-dependency name="checkstyle" resource="com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/antlib.xml">
</target>
<target name="default" depends="init-checkstyle" if="checkstyle.available">
<checkstyle config="@{config}">
<formatter type="xml" tofile="checkstyle-report.xml">
<fileset dir="${src}" includes="**/*.java">
</checkstyle>
</target>

this has the effect of the build only executing checkstyle (in this case) if it is able to resolve and activate the dependency, which could be useful if you're creating an ANT file that will be executed in multiple environments, say by developers and by a CI server, each with different capabilities.

essentially, this is a very simple type of dependency injection (with subsequent dynamic behaviour) in ANT.

a more useful version of the macrodef would include criticality:

<macrodef name="activate-dependency" description="load a taskdef only if it exists in the ANT runtime.">
<attribute name="name">
<attribute name="resource">
<attribute name="critical" default="true">
<sequential>
<taskdef resource="@{resource}" onerror="ignore">
<available resource="@{resource}" property="@{name}.available">
<fail taskname="activate-dependency" message="critical dependency unavailable (@{name})">
<condition>
<and>
<istrue value="@{critical}">
<not>
<isset property="@{name}.available">
</not>
</and>
</condition>
</fail>
</sequential>
</macrodef>

i'm planning to use this in an example where i will always want antcontrib to load, but optionally execute checkstyle and findbugs dependent upon if they are available.

Windsynth Linux Stack

2008-06-25T10:24:00.001+01:00

hi all

i recently picked up a Yamaha WX7 midi wind controller from ebay; had my sights on one since they came out in 1988! once it arrived (minus any hard synth) i had the problem of getting sounds out of it on one of my linux-only laptops.

now - i'm pretty much a MIDI newbie as all my music in the past was pretty much analogue; tenor sax, guitar, piano, clarinet etc. even when i was doing music production it was with either a rickety old tascam 4 track or a 24 track desk down to reel 2 reel, then mastering onto dat...

so here i am, with a brand new asus eee pc 900 runing standard xandros linux, and a toshiba m200 running ubuntu hardy heron (8.04). first things first, there's a great HOWTO in the ubunto forums about the Ubuntu Studio setup. (@link-todo) follow this to update the ubuntu kernel to use 'real time scheduling', which for the musicians out there basically means (really!) low latency. i installed a bunch of useful prerequisites as the ubuntu studio HOWTO suggested; namely:

jack - low latency linux midi/audio connections
qjackctl - GUI for configuring jack.
ZynAddSubFx - additive/subtractive/fm synth with midi control
Vkeyb - virtual midi keyboard (for testing)

This was enough to run USB/MIDI from the wind controller, routing MIDI via JACK to the zynaddsubfx synth, to get the wind controller honking away on both the asus eee pc and the toshiba. To get breath control working i needed to switch zynaddsubfx to 'advanced' view, open the 'controllers' dialog, and tick the 'volume' option. with this, the clarinet synth preset was reasonably expressive to both pitch bend and breath control; at least good enough for getting used to the keys on the WX7!

now to get something a little more realistic sounding! i think someone with more background than I in synthesis could get a decent FM patch under zynaddsubfx to create a fairly robust sax sound. i couldnt, nor did i particularly want to spend the time messing with the myriad controls at least in the short term! i wanted (if possible) a PM (physical modelling) sax tone. this brought me to VSTi - VST is a plugin architecture from Steinberg (of cubase fame). to use a VST plugin, or a VSTi (instrument) you need a VST host. under linux i managed to get the following up and running within about an hour of head scratching:

dssi - a linux sound api.
jack-dssi-host - connects dssi to jack (part of dssi core installation)
dssi-vst - a dssi based VST host (needs to be compiled from source)
dmiFlute (VSTi) - a physical modelling flute VSTi from espace-cubase.org
TubiLeSax demo (VSTi) - precursor to SaxLab (2) downloaded from KVR audio.

At the moment i'm having a bit of trouble running the SaxLab2 demo installer under WINE so am stuck with the TubeLeSax demo while i'm testing. if they're good enough i'll gladly pay for a decent VSTi sax sound.

Getting all this working for the asus eee pc or ubuntu will be the subject of my next post.

FYI there are loads of VSTi plugins available, and once dssi-vst is up and running on your box, most of these are accessible. others of note include BRASS, SaxLab2, Kickass Brass, and others. the KVR Audio website lists many more...