Sparklines turned out to be fairly easy. I’ve written a basic Java library for talking to the printer, which I’ve shared on Github. The latest version of Microprinter.java connects over USB to the microprinter_sketch.pde Arduino sketch which then simply relays whatever you send to it on to the printer.

The Java library contains a method called printSparkline(), which takes a label and an array of data. Here’s how you’d use it to create the printout shown above:

int[] sawBytes = new int[256];
int current = 0;
boolean flip = true;
for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++) {
   if ((current >= 7 && flip) || (current <= 0 && !flip)) flip = ! flip;
if (flip) {
   current++;
} else {
   current--;
}
   sawBytes[i] = current;
}
microprinter.printSparkline("saw............", sawBytes);

int[] sineArray = new int[256];
for (float i = 0; i < 256; i++) {
   sineArray[(int) i] = (int) (Math.sin(i / 5) * 1000);
}
microprinter.printSparkline("sin............", sineArray);

Please feel free to adapt and improve. If you make any serious changes I’d love to see them, and don’t forget to get involved on the microprinter wiki.

The Theremin, in our household is the catalyst behind a whole series of funny little gluey threads, binding our two worlds together, and into a bigger, beautiful picture, which to me, helps to explain just what it is that makes a geeky person what they are.

When I was 12, Blue Peter featured a chap called Musaire, an old man, dressed somewhat forlornly in a clown costume. He brought with him an amazing, strange and eery instrument called a Theremin. It was a huge box full of valves, painted on the outside in a classic 'big band orchestra' type of way, with white, swirls and probably stars. He proceeded to play, and for some reason, his performance stuck in my mind. Years later, it was one of my top Blue Peter memories and would come to mind in idle moments every now and then. It combined the pathos of a lost moment in British history - the variety end of the pier show, with something magical, spellbinding but somehow rendered slightly tatty by age. At the time, Musaire reckoned there were only a couple of people in the UK who could play the instrument. It, too, was a lost moment in time.

I am strongly of the belief that that triggered something. There are many people I know who can remember that TV appearance. That, and then years later, the brilliant documentary that managed, astonishingly, to find Leon Termin, released quietly from his exile. The rise in hobbyism that the internet so supports and these two rare media outings for this incredibly strange instrument seemed to hit a nerve amongst a certain type of person.

In 1995, McK was living with a friend, a stand up, who was driving  up to Ed with some of McK's stuff, given that both of them were doing shows. I had met McK only tangentially, at a party in Balham, where I talked to him about tea for a couple of moments, then we ran out of things to say to each other and we both moved on to other party goers. I volunteered myself to share the journey to Ed with my newish friend, Stew, given that I wanted to get to know him better, and didn't have the money for a train. Stew was putting things together for the car, and lifted up a bin bag, in which seemed to be a huge box.

Stew has / had an amusing one-upmanship in his character, which tends to be with regard to esoteric / geeky lifestyley (music/books/comics) things. I remember when I was kipping on his sofa one night after some party or other, he showed me his record collection. "All in A-Z order, obviously", he said, somewhat triumphantly, not adding "So there, beat that, then" on the end of the sentence. He was a bit put out when I said "Well, obviously" (I mean what kind of *idiot* wouldn't meticulously order all of their records in A-Z order? Hello?). Another time, we were watching old videos and I grinned quietly to myself as I discovered, to my great amusement that he had written down all the music videos on a list, with the timings on the video tape where the video in question was. I had done exactly the same things with my vast collection of Tube and Snub TV videos - to the point of putting all the running times in a little ringbinder.

Anyway. Back to the box. he was holding a big box. He said "I'll bet you can't guess what's in this box. I'll give you a clue. It's a musical instrument". He stood, wry but smug, knowing I hadn't a chance in hell of getting the answer. I think, although I may be romanticising the memory, that I didn't hesitate,  and I said "A Theremin". He nearly dropped it on the floor.

A year or two later, I  went with McK to the house of one Tony Henk, master Theremin maker, to meet Lydia Kavina, universally acclaimed as the great Theremin player of the age and found her to be a lovely person. She was taught the instrument by Termin himself from the age of 3. It's a sadness to me that wev weren't able to stay in touch with her. She now teaches in Moscow, and has supported a new Russian built Theremin which is apparently the best model you can buy.

McK still has his Theremin. He used to play a big valved box one at the Science Museum but his personal Henk model is a lovely wooden, slim and modern version. It's been stuck in its case for too long.

Meanwhile, I discovered the other day that Mr Neil Armstrong personally recorded on to tape a vinyl recording he had, "Music out of the moon" to take with him on the Apollo 11 journey. It's a rather wonderful album of Theremin music, played and composed by Dr Samuel J Hoffman. evidence of this is shown as being one of the jigsaw puzzle pieces that explain why Armstrong is somehow weird, eccentric and strange in his privacy. He was always weird, see. He liked Theremin music.

No. it means he was as fascinated by this amazing instrument as I have been, as McK has been and now, as many thousands of internet inspired, interested people are, all over the place.

...it really is time McK took his Theremin out of its box.

Happy Apollo 11 anniversary, Neil.  Happy Apollo 11 anniversary, Mackay.

mugs, originally uploaded by russelldavies.

Russell’s got the right idea…

Get yours (or don’t) from http://moleitau.spreadshirt.net

There are traditional online video productions, which are essentially video made for the web. Good examples are Dr Horrible and The Remnants. Both high quality videos made to be distributed online, both created during the writers strike last year. (No coincidence there I think).

Then you’ve got your Alternate Reality Games. I’m going to assume you already know (or will quickly learn) about The Beast, Majestic, Starlight Travel, World Without Oil, Why So Serious, The Lost Ring etc. Three specifically interesting examples…

‘I Love Bees‘ (2004) was ostensibly a radio drama, but one distributed using payphones around the world which the ‘audience’ became players of a game in order to follow the story. Implausibly difficult for anyone to follow alone, it worked as a community experience with players working together to find, record and share the fragments of story being played through payphone around the world. It was commissioned as a viral campaign for the Halo 2 game.
Hear the story from start to finish here, and read more about the background from 42 Entertainment or the predictably detailed Wikipedia entry.

‘Perplex City‘ (2004 - 2007) was
“A city obsessed with puzzles and ciphers. A game that blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality.” An ambitious treasure-hunt ARG project, supported by the sale of collectable puzzle cards. Though not necessary to play the bigger game, the cards did provide some of the clues and integrated with the imaginary universe of Perlex City. Particularly of note is the fan-run wiki which the developers ended up relying on as the canonical record of what had happened in the story.

‘We Tell Stories‘ (March 2008) was ‘Digital fiction from Penguin’ built by Six To Start.
“Penguin UK is launching its most ambitious digital writing project to date. In collaboration with fêted alternate reality game designers Six to Start, Penguin has challenged some of its top authors to create new forms of story - designed specially for the internet. … But somewhere on the internet is a secret seventh story, a mysterious tale involving a vaguely familiar girl who has a habit of getting herself lost. Readers who follow this story will discover clues that will shape her journey and help her on her way. These clues will appear online and in the real world and will direct readers to the other six stories. The secret seventh story will also offer the chance to win some wonderful prizes…”. This was most interesting

Incidentally, there’s a long history of Alternate Reality Games being used to extend and enhance TV experiences too.

Online drama using social networks are an ever growing field. Here are a few that have caught my eye:

‘lonelygirl15‘ (June 2006 - August 2008) was “the first of many shows within the fictional LG15 Universe, tells the ongoing story of a group of young adults fighting against a mysterious secret society called, The Order. … On the LG15 website, community members can interact with the characters and each other in the forums, chat rooms and comment boards, and can create their own community generated videos and storylines that add to the ever expanding LG15 universe.” (If you’ve always wondered what it was about, there’s a 300 word plot summary you might enjoy. Also worth knowing that in its early stages it was a perfectly believable story of a normal girl, and there was a fair bit of controversy and discussion when it was discovered that she was an actress. Easy to miss, when looking at the story now, but it was controversial at the time). LG15 also involved a small amount of product placement (sorry, product integration), though this was taken a lot further in later spin-offs…

‘Kate Modern‘ (July 2007 - June 2008) was “an interactive online drama which ran from July 2007 - June 2008 and was produced by the creators of lonelygirl15 - EQAL. During it’s highly successful year long run it was nominated for two TV Craft BAFTA awards, a Webby Award and won the Broadcast Press Guild Award for Innovation 2008″. A spin-off from lonelygirl15, Kate Modern ran for two seasons. (Review). Product integration apparently allowed Kate Modern to turn a healthy profit. (Season 1, 2007, was supported by MSN, Tampax, Pantene, Gillette, Orange, Paramount Pictures UK and Buena Vista International UK. Season 2, 2008, by Toyota Aygo Platinum, Cadbury Creme Egg, Warner Bros & Skittles.)

‘Sofia’s Diary‘ (March 2008 - June 2009) has run for three seasons on Bebo, was broadcast for about a year on ‘Fiver’ but recently dropped Sponsors have included Sure Girl and Transport for London. (More info)

‘The Gap Year‘ (May 2008 - August 2009) “The brand new daily reality show, from the makers of Big Brother”
(another Bebo production, this one in conjunction with Endemol. Sponsors include Sony PSP, Trident and Doritos).
Freak A Freemantle co-production with MySpace. ‘The first UK online drama from MySpace’. Launch date: 20th July. Brand partners include Tampax and Red Bull.

‘Hollyoaks: The Morning After the Night Before‘ (July 2009)
Is an online video drama made by Channel 4 in partnership with the Home Office to promote the Know Your Limits sensible drinking campaign. Character profiles on Bebo and episodes online at E4.com. “Hollyoaks: The Morning After the Night Before is a brand new Hollyoaks drama … It’s all happening here on E4.com. All of the episodes will be online, and you can find out behind the scenes gossip right here too - with exclusive interviews, spoilers, photo galleries, behind the scenes videos and more. Make sure you check out Josh , Sasha and Dave ’s Bebo profiles, keeping you up-to-date with what the gang are getting up to in between episodes… “ (The 12 episodes will be released online every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through July)

What has the BBC been up to? A couple of recent examples:

‘Proper Messy‘ (January 2009) A teen drama from Switch.
“Proper Messy was an exciting new interactive drama where YOU could influence the story … As well as weekly episodes on BBC Two there was loads of stuff on bebo and extra exclusive vids online each week. If you were aged 13-17 you could have also signed up to get texts EVERY DAY from the two main characters Imogen or Jake. … This is where things really got exciting - if their texts stirred you into action you could reply and your comments could have influenced the decisions they made. And, what was even better is that it was all free!” (Review)

‘The Well’ was announced just yesterday. “BBC Switch has commissioned digital production company Conker Media, part of Lime Pictures (whose credits include Hollyoaks), to create and produce an interactive, digital drama thriller for its teen audience. The Well will air in the autumn in the Switch zone on BBC Two (Saturdays 12noon-2.00pm) and extends online at bbc.co.uk/switch where the audience can immerse themselves further in the story, exploring a spookily atmospheric recreation of the main drama location in a multi-level game.”

‘Psychoville’, exploring the possibilities of comedy on the web, have strategically dropped a few website addresses into their episodes and site, and encourage viewers to explore the web looking for answers to a weekly question.
“The mysterious stranger knows what you did: stop your secret going public by answering the messages below. Keep an eye out on TV and scour the internet for character websites you will need to visit. Answer the questions correctly to continue and come back after each episode for a new question.”
So, not quite an ARG (and actually, I notice that I’ve drifted away from Drama too. Maybe I’ll make another post about Comedy soon), but it is a great way of exploring the world of Psychoville and discovering things like Mr Jelly’s homepage. The results are every bit as darkly funny as you might expect.

Going back a bit further, CDX (2006) is an ‘interactive film experience’. (Read an article about it from DigitalArts or a review in Joystiq) though some thinking about games from the BBC is a post I’ll save for another time. What else? Torchwood did an ARG and Dr Who didn’t (even though a prominently placed phone number made many of us think they might have).

So what about the future? Only time will tell of course. I’m interested to hear of other examples though, and what you think works.

“The rough argument is we do things that are strategic because they get people to ultimately use the Internet in a clever and new way. We know that if they use the Internet more, they search more, watch more on YouTube, and we then know that our advertising [will reach them]. We do not require each and every project to be completely profitable or not profitable — we look at them in a strategic context: are they making the Web a better place? By making the web a better place, by getting more and more people online — especially on broadband connections — we have lot of data that says this results in very, very strong revenue growth from us because of targeted ads that we offer.”

I’d love to ask Schmidt exactly how many additional ads that Google Chrome will help it sell. My suspicion is that he doesn’t know, and that the actual number will be as close to zero as makes no difference.

And if he doesn’t actually know what the hell is he doing signing off on this multimillion dollar tilt at windmills?

Posted via web from Ian Betteridge’s lifestream

Posted via web from Ian Betteridge’s lifestream

“But this is par for the course if your job is breaking news as fast as possible, as there is no reward for being late nor is there a penalty for being inaccurate.”

With process journalism, there is no penalty for being inaccurate. If something is wrong, just go back and rewrite it. There’s no pressure to ensure the facts are right when you hit the publish button. 

How anyone with half a brain can think that this is a better method than dull, old-fashioned fact-checking and multiple sourcing I don’t know. Of course, doing proper, in-depth reporting takes time and money and effort - it’s hard, and it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get the story right.

But it does mean you have a better chance of getting the story right than any other method.

Journalism as beta isn’t journalism. Saying that there’s such a thing as “beta journalism” makes as little sense as saying there’s such a thing as “beta car making”. If your car broke down, would you be happy if the car maker turned around and said “oh, sorry, we’re trying out a new system called ‘process manufacture’. We’ll fix it for you, but sorry you got stranded out in the woods. We got a new set of parts and took a chance on them fitting right without bothering to check the measurements.”

Or to put it another way: next time Jeff Jarvis is flying across the Atlantic to tell newspaper people how to fix their industry, I bet he’d be pretty unhappy if Boeing had used “process plane making” to construct the 747 he’s on.

Of course, news writing isn’t in the same league of importance as the safe manufacture of products which we trust with thousands of lives. But businesses can be hurt and lives can be lost because of news stories. When you have the kind of influence that major news vendors have, you bear a massive responsibility to get it right first time. 

(via)
And, Still Alive, that will-never-die Portal theme tune, played on a bell tower.

I love that person.

Portal 2 please, Valve. C'mon. GlaDOS didn't die! She can return, bigger, badder and .. binaural! Why not!

It can't really get any worse, can it? Poor, poor artoo.