Jonathan Oxer
[Blog]
>> The power of place
Thu, Aug 28th 2:44pm 2008 >> Web Development
Just like the hottest rock bands, the latest "hot new thing" in e-business may seem to suddenly appear over night when in fact it's been in gestation for years, bubbling away below mainstream consciousness and appreciated by just a few bleeding-edge early adopters who saw the potential before it became famous. Then at some point in time a confluence of events results in an "ah-ha!" moment in the collective psyche, and all of a sudden the latest hot new thing seems to be everywhere you look.
I believe we're currently right on the cusp of just such a moment, and in the next 12 months we'll see a certain concept go from obscure "why on Earth would anyone want that?" status to "can't live without it!" ubiquity.
That concept is location-based services.
The great catch-cry in the early days of the internet was globalisation: the concept that an obscure little company in a backwoods country town could throw up a website and gain instant access to a global market and compete with existing multinationals, with their location being irrelevant. Nice in theory, but of course there were all sorts of catches and even now it's a rare business indeed that can trade online without consideration for the geographic location of its customers.
So people are now starting to realise that things like search results really need to take into account geographic location. I can't even guess the number of times I've done a web search over the years and wished I could apply a rule such as "only show me results for businesses within 20km of my current location". When you're searching for somewhere to buy a washing machine it really matters where it's located: the electrical goods retailer with the best washing machine website in the world isn't going to be a lot of use to you if you're in Melbourne and they're in Minneapolis or Mayfair. I dream of the day that Google Maps and Google Search are merged into one, and I can select an area on the map and say "search for 'dog grooming service' right *there*", or "search for 'scuba dive operator' right around this area *here*".
Most of the time we *want* location to be relevant, but on the internet we've lost the sense of physical context and proximity that is so important when dealing with people and businesses in the real world. We've been stripped of something that is fundamental to the way our brains are wired.
Another application where location could provide enormous additional value is social networking. For years I've talked about a hypothetical device that people could carry around in their pockets that would be a sort of "proximity alert" that tells you when a friend or colleague is nearby, allowing you to stumble upon chance meetings that right now are probably passing you by. Walking down the street there are times you meet people you know, but it's likely that far more often someone you know will have walked down that same street one minute before, or one minute later, or have stepped into a shop while you walk past, or been on the other side of the street. Wouldn't it be cool to have a device in your pocket that could say "hey, your friend Mark is just over the street in that coffee shop!" rather than walk past totally unaware? And for someone like me who travels a lot it would be particularly handy, because by expanding the "alert" range from say 100 meters to perhaps 20km when I travel to another city it would help me catch up with people I don't get to see very often.
You know what? You may not have heard about it yet, but those devices are in mass production right now by big-name companies including Samsung, Sony, and Nokia. In fact you probably already have one in your pocket. It's called a mobile phone.
A moment ago I talked about location-based services suddenly becoming a recognised mainstream phenomenon, and there are a couple of trigger events that are bringing it about.
The first trigger event is that almost all new mobile phones now have GPS built in: a while ago it was unheard of for phones to include cameras, but now many of them have two. Likewise phones with GPS have been few and far between, but very soon it'll be almost impossible to buy one without it. GPS will be everywhere, in everyone's pocket, and nobody will think twice about it.
The second trigger event is the release of simple, easy-to-use software and online services that take advantage of the ubiquity of personal GPS. That's the stage we're at right now: the hardware platform is out there in people's pockets, and now enterprising developers are dreaming up new ways to utilise that platform. One perfect example of the sort of building block currently being put in place is a new service from Yahoo! called Fire Eagle (fireeagle.yahoo.net), which might sound a little bit obscure at first but has enormous potential to change the way online business is conducted. The simplest way to understand what Fire Eagle does is think of it as a pinboard where you can post a note stating your current location, and that information can then be used by third parties to provide you with more relevant services. Fire Eagle itself doesn't do anything "useful" as far as an end user is concerned, but as a building block for other services it's critical.
The way it works is that you create a Fire Eagle account, and then use one or more methods to regularly update your location within the Fire Eagle system. You can do it manually by logging into the website and setting it, or you can run a little program on your mobile phone that regularly checks your location by GPS and updates it automatically, or by linking your Fire Eagle account to a travel planning service like Dopplr that knows what cities you will be in and when.
With your current location in the Fire Eagle system you can then authorise other services to make use of that information. Examples include websites like wikinear.com, which looks up your location and cross-references it to Wikipedia articles related to places nearby - a great way to find random interesting things in your vicinity that you may never have been aware of previously! Or rummble.com, which is a search engine that personalises your search results based on factors including interests of people within your social network and your current location. Or www.outalot.com, which (provided you're in New York or San Francisco!) uses your location to find nearby restaurants, bars, movies, and shops. Or zkout.com, which does the same thing but for people you know who happen to be nearby. Zkout even provides a live map which updates to show what's going on around you.
How does this relate to e-business? Right now: not much. In the near future: a lot.
As users become aware of the power of location-awareness we're going to see a lot more services spring up that take advantage of it, and people are going to start expecting websites to "locate" themselves geographically. For example, websites will need to have location metadata embedded so that they will appear in search results when users search for things like "cheap washing machines within 20km of my current location".
And if we're really lucky we'll see an end to those really annoying websites that ask you to select from a country before you can proceed: websites should just know automatically where you're located, and behave accordingly. As a side issue while talking about this, one of my all-time most hated websites is www.bunnings.com.au, and for one specific reason: it won't even let you get to the home page until you tell it your postcode! They've got the right idea, but it's implemented in such an obnoxiously obtrusive way that it drives me nuts.
So in a year or two when you're doing a web search and restricting the results to your local area, or walking down the street and your phone tells you that your best friend is two blocks away, it will probably seem like the most natural thing in the world. Once again science fiction becomes a typical everyday event.
Just like the hottest rock bands, the latest "hot new thing" in e-business may seem to suddenly appear over night when in fact it's been in gestation for years, bubbling away below mainstream consciousness and appreciated by just a few bleeding-edge early adopters who saw the potential before it became famous. Then at some point in time a confluence of events results in an "ah-ha!" moment in the collective psyche, and all of a sudden the latest hot new thing seems to be everywhere you look.
I believe we're currently right on the cusp of just such a moment, and in the next 12 months we'll see a certain concept go from obscure "why on Earth would anyone want that?" status to "can't live without it!" ubiquity.
That concept is location-based services.
The great catch-cry in the early days of the internet was globalisation: the concept that an obscure little company in a backwoods country town could throw up a website and gain instant access to a global market and compete with existing multinationals, with their location being irrelevant. Nice in theory, but of course there were all sorts of catches and even now it's a rare business indeed that can trade online without consideration for the geographic location of its customers.
So people are now starting to realise that things like search results really need to take into account geographic location. I can't even guess the number of times I've done a web search over the years and wished I could apply a rule such as "only show me results for businesses within 20km of my current location". When you're searching for somewhere to buy a washing machine it really matters where it's located: the electrical goods retailer with the best washing machine website in the world isn't going to be a lot of use to you if you're in Melbourne and they're in Minneapolis or Mayfair. I dream of the day that Google Maps and Google Search are merged into one, and I can select an area on the map and say "search for 'dog grooming service' right *there*", or "search for 'scuba dive operator' right around this area *here*".
Most of the time we *want* location to be relevant, but on the internet we've lost the sense of physical context and proximity that is so important when dealing with people and businesses in the real world. We've been stripped of something that is fundamental to the way our brains are wired.
Another application where location could provide enormous additional value is social networking. For years I've talked about a hypothetical device that people could carry around in their pockets that would be a sort of "proximity alert" that tells you when a friend or colleague is nearby, allowing you to stumble upon chance meetings that right now are probably passing you by. Walking down the street there are times you meet people you know, but it's likely that far more often someone you know will have walked down that same street one minute before, or one minute later, or have stepped into a shop while you walk past, or been on the other side of the street. Wouldn't it be cool to have a device in your pocket that could say "hey, your friend Mark is just over the street in that coffee shop!" rather than walk past totally unaware? And for someone like me who travels a lot it would be particularly handy, because by expanding the "alert" range from say 100 meters to perhaps 20km when I travel to another city it would help me catch up with people I don't get to see very often.
You know what? You may not have heard about it yet, but those devices are in mass production right now by big-name companies including Samsung, Sony, and Nokia. In fact you probably already have one in your pocket. It's called a mobile phone.
A moment ago I talked about location-based services suddenly becoming a recognised mainstream phenomenon, and there are a couple of trigger events that are bringing it about.
The first trigger event is that almost all new mobile phones now have GPS built in: a while ago it was unheard of for phones to include cameras, but now many of them have two. Likewise phones with GPS have been few and far between, but very soon it'll be almost impossible to buy one without it. GPS will be everywhere, in everyone's pocket, and nobody will think twice about it.
The second trigger event is the release of simple, easy-to-use software and online services that take advantage of the ubiquity of personal GPS. That's the stage we're at right now: the hardware platform is out there in people's pockets, and now enterprising developers are dreaming up new ways to utilise that platform. One perfect example of the sort of building block currently being put in place is a new service from Yahoo! called Fire Eagle (fireeagle.yahoo.net), which might sound a little bit obscure at first but has enormous potential to change the way online business is conducted. The simplest way to understand what Fire Eagle does is think of it as a pinboard where you can post a note stating your current location, and that information can then be used by third parties to provide you with more relevant services. Fire Eagle itself doesn't do anything "useful" as far as an end user is concerned, but as a building block for other services it's critical.
The way it works is that you create a Fire Eagle account, and then use one or more methods to regularly update your location within the Fire Eagle system. You can do it manually by logging into the website and setting it, or you can run a little program on your mobile phone that regularly checks your location by GPS and updates it automatically, or by linking your Fire Eagle account to a travel planning service like Dopplr that knows what cities you will be in and when.
With your current location in the Fire Eagle system you can then authorise other services to make use of that information. Examples include websites like wikinear.com, which looks up your location and cross-references it to Wikipedia articles related to places nearby - a great way to find random interesting things in your vicinity that you may never have been aware of previously! Or rummble.com, which is a search engine that personalises your search results based on factors including interests of people within your social network and your current location. Or www.outalot.com, which (provided you're in New York or San Francisco!) uses your location to find nearby restaurants, bars, movies, and shops. Or zkout.com, which does the same thing but for people you know who happen to be nearby. Zkout even provides a live map which updates to show what's going on around you.
How does this relate to e-business? Right now: not much. In the near future: a lot.
As users become aware of the power of location-awareness we're going to see a lot more services spring up that take advantage of it, and people are going to start expecting websites to "locate" themselves geographically. For example, websites will need to have location metadata embedded so that they will appear in search results when users search for things like "cheap washing machines within 20km of my current location".
And if we're really lucky we'll see an end to those really annoying websites that ask you to select from a country before you can proceed: websites should just know automatically where you're located, and behave accordingly. As a side issue while talking about this, one of my all-time most hated websites is www.bunnings.com.au, and for one specific reason: it won't even let you get to the home page until you tell it your postcode! They've got the right idea, but it's implemented in such an obnoxiously obtrusive way that it drives me nuts.
So in a year or two when you're doing a web search and restricting the results to your local area, or walking down the street and your phone tells you that your best friend is two blocks away, it will probably seem like the most natural thing in the world. Once again science fiction becomes a typical everyday event.
>> Old ticker still ticking slowly
Thu, Aug 28th 11:01am 2008 >> Misc
I just got back from a quick visit to the doctor to figure out what's going on with a swollen lymph node in my neck, and during the visit he took my blood pressure. Which meant the machine measured my heart rate. Which was 52bpm. Which is pretty damn good for someone who hasn't done any serious exercise in years.
Typical resting heart rate for an adult male is about 70bpm, with lower rates indicating a higher level of "efficiency" (for want of a better term). A high level of aerobic fitness generally results in a lower resting rate because the heart can work less to achieve sufficient blood flow.
Way back when I was riding and running every day, going to the gym several times per week and swimming fairly regularly my resting rate was down around 38bpm. I'm old and decrepit now but at least I still seem to be enjoying the residual benefits of previous exercise!
I just got back from a quick visit to the doctor to figure out what's going on with a swollen lymph node in my neck, and during the visit he took my blood pressure. Which meant the machine measured my heart rate. Which was 52bpm. Which is pretty damn good for someone who hasn't done any serious exercise in years.
Typical resting heart rate for an adult male is about 70bpm, with lower rates indicating a higher level of "efficiency" (for want of a better term). A high level of aerobic fitness generally results in a lower resting rate because the heart can work less to achieve sufficient blood flow.
Way back when I was riding and running every day, going to the gym several times per week and swimming fairly regularly my resting rate was down around 38bpm. I'm old and decrepit now but at least I still seem to be enjoying the residual benefits of previous exercise!
>> Want a job at IVT?
Fri, Aug 22nd 1:24pm 2008 >> IVT
We need another 3 staff in our Melbourne office right away. We're writing up full job descriptions at the moment and they'll be posted at www.ivt.com.au/jobs in a little while, but in the meantime if you're interested in working at www.ivt.com.au on web applications based on a FOSS platform, let me know if any of these sound interesting:
* Helpdesk Support Analyst: Assist existing customers with using the administration functions of their websites, intranets, extranets, and custom web applications.
* Web Application Integrator: Take approved interface design concepts and convert them to HTML/CSS, then deploy them on either SiteBuilder (our existing web application platform) or Brilliance (our new development platform) systems on behalf of customers.
* Web Application Developer: Work deep in the internals of Brilliance, our next-generation web application platform, building new features that will be used by millions of users around the world. Based on a combination of Flex, PHP, and MySQL, all running on a big Linux server farm.
Sound interesting? Know someone else who might be interested? Contact me!.
We need another 3 staff in our Melbourne office right away. We're writing up full job descriptions at the moment and they'll be posted at www.ivt.com.au/jobs in a little while, but in the meantime if you're interested in working at www.ivt.com.au on web applications based on a FOSS platform, let me know if any of these sound interesting:
* Helpdesk Support Analyst: Assist existing customers with using the administration functions of their websites, intranets, extranets, and custom web applications.
* Web Application Integrator: Take approved interface design concepts and convert them to HTML/CSS, then deploy them on either SiteBuilder (our existing web application platform) or Brilliance (our new development platform) systems on behalf of customers.
* Web Application Developer: Work deep in the internals of Brilliance, our next-generation web application platform, building new features that will be used by millions of users around the world. Based on a combination of Flex, PHP, and MySQL, all running on a big Linux server farm.
Sound interesting? Know someone else who might be interested? Contact me!.
>> Social networking, online video, and brand promotion
Thu, Jul 31st 9:40am 2008 >> Web Development
Over the last couple of weeks I've been watching an interesting project unfold as Samsung run a promotion here in Australia called "Samsung People". The promotion has been carefully designed to use the power of social networking to increase awareness of their brand and particularly of a new product, the MX10 video camera. I'm not involved in running the project in any way but I am involved as a contestant, so I've been able to see a bit of what happens behind the scenes as they put all the pieces in place and it certainly makes an interesting case study of how companies are starting to use social networking for marketing purposes.
This particular promotion has several stages, each designed to encourage people to use their own social networks to get others involved and therefore exposed to the brand. The basic premise is to promote the Samsung MX10 video camera, which uses a memory card instead of video tapes or hard disk and is designed to be very simple to operate. Samsung wanted to spread the message that this camera is ideal for people wanting a basic camera to post video diaries, put video online on sites such as YouTube, and generally communicate with their friends and family. So they hired a promotions company who equipped a number of staff with the MX10 and sent them out into the streets of Sydney to talk to random people and ask them the question "where is your mind?", recording the interviews and posting them on a special "Samsung People" website that they set up for the project. They also invited people to enter a competition by answering the "where is your mind?" question online at the Samsung People site.
The next stage was selecting ten finalists from the people who entered the competition, and this is where the social networking effect really kicks in. They gave each of those ten finalists an MX10 camera and video editing software, with instructions that they have to keep a video diary until the end of the competition period at the end of August. The rules state that finalists are only allowed to use the camera and software supplied by Samsung, and the video diaries must be hosted on the Samsung People website. Finalists were each given a username / password so they can log in and upload new diary entries whenever they want to.
During this stage of the competition the public can view the video diaries and vote for the finalist they think should win. This obviously means that it's in the contestants own self interest to promote the competition as much as they can, and reach out using their social networks (both in the real world and also online using sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn) to get as many people voting for them as possible. This turns the contestants (and, to some extent, their first and second degree friends who will want to help their friend out of loyalty) into active promoters of the competition. Each contestant's vested interest in winning the competition becomes their motivation for promoting it, and, in turn, promoting the company behind it.
Very, very clever.
Of course, *I* have a vested interest because I'm one of the ten finalists! The grand prize is quite significant (a trip for two to Tokyo, New York, and London) and I'd love to win it, but quite apart from that I'm fascinated by the way the competition has been engineered to maximise exposure for Samsung. There are some serious technical problems with the way they have implemented the diary system itself, but as a concept it's very interesting and probably a good indicator of the sorts of promotions we'll see more of in future as companies start to gain some understanding of what web 2.0 and social networking actually means.
So please vote for me! I'll send you a postcard from London if I win ;-)
Oh yeah, and you can find the competition site at www.samsungpeople.com.au.
Over the last couple of weeks I've been watching an interesting project unfold as Samsung run a promotion here in Australia called "Samsung People". The promotion has been carefully designed to use the power of social networking to increase awareness of their brand and particularly of a new product, the MX10 video camera. I'm not involved in running the project in any way but I am involved as a contestant, so I've been able to see a bit of what happens behind the scenes as they put all the pieces in place and it certainly makes an interesting case study of how companies are starting to use social networking for marketing purposes.
This particular promotion has several stages, each designed to encourage people to use their own social networks to get others involved and therefore exposed to the brand. The basic premise is to promote the Samsung MX10 video camera, which uses a memory card instead of video tapes or hard disk and is designed to be very simple to operate. Samsung wanted to spread the message that this camera is ideal for people wanting a basic camera to post video diaries, put video online on sites such as YouTube, and generally communicate with their friends and family. So they hired a promotions company who equipped a number of staff with the MX10 and sent them out into the streets of Sydney to talk to random people and ask them the question "where is your mind?", recording the interviews and posting them on a special "Samsung People" website that they set up for the project. They also invited people to enter a competition by answering the "where is your mind?" question online at the Samsung People site.
The next stage was selecting ten finalists from the people who entered the competition, and this is where the social networking effect really kicks in. They gave each of those ten finalists an MX10 camera and video editing software, with instructions that they have to keep a video diary until the end of the competition period at the end of August. The rules state that finalists are only allowed to use the camera and software supplied by Samsung, and the video diaries must be hosted on the Samsung People website. Finalists were each given a username / password so they can log in and upload new diary entries whenever they want to.
During this stage of the competition the public can view the video diaries and vote for the finalist they think should win. This obviously means that it's in the contestants own self interest to promote the competition as much as they can, and reach out using their social networks (both in the real world and also online using sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn) to get as many people voting for them as possible. This turns the contestants (and, to some extent, their first and second degree friends who will want to help their friend out of loyalty) into active promoters of the competition. Each contestant's vested interest in winning the competition becomes their motivation for promoting it, and, in turn, promoting the company behind it.
Very, very clever.
Of course, *I* have a vested interest because I'm one of the ten finalists! The grand prize is quite significant (a trip for two to Tokyo, New York, and London) and I'd love to win it, but quite apart from that I'm fascinated by the way the competition has been engineered to maximise exposure for Samsung. There are some serious technical problems with the way they have implemented the diary system itself, but as a concept it's very interesting and probably a good indicator of the sorts of promotions we'll see more of in future as companies start to gain some understanding of what web 2.0 and social networking actually means.
So please vote for me! I'll send you a postcard from London if I win ;-)
Oh yeah, and you can find the competition site at www.samsungpeople.com.au.
>> Into the final round for Samsung's vlog competition
Wed, Jul 16th 8:38am 2008 >> Tech Toys
Woot! I just heard that I'm one of the 10 finalists in the "Samsung People" video blogging competition, which means they'll be sending me an MX-10 flash camcorder in the next day or two and then I need to spend the next 6 weeks creating a video blog using it. The ultimate winner will be decided by a public vote for the most interesting vlog, so when the time comes I'll expect YOU to be voting! Yes, I'll be in the intarwebs examining the packets with a magnifying glass just to make sure.
Now I just need to find a bunch of things to do little videos about. I can feel some serious hardware hacking coming on... ;-)
Woot! I just heard that I'm one of the 10 finalists in the "Samsung People" video blogging competition, which means they'll be sending me an MX-10 flash camcorder in the next day or two and then I need to spend the next 6 weeks creating a video blog using it. The ultimate winner will be decided by a public vote for the most interesting vlog, so when the time comes I'll expect YOU to be voting! Yes, I'll be in the intarwebs examining the packets with a magnifying glass just to make sure.
Now I just need to find a bunch of things to do little videos about. I can feel some serious hardware hacking coming on... ;-)
>> Replacement for the NSLU2?
Mon, Jul 14th 9:45am 2008 >> Tech Toys
One of the most interesting little devices in the last couple of years was the NSLU2, which was originally intended to act as a "head unit" to connect USB disks to a network so they can be used as network-attached storage. However, it very quickly became a favorite geek hacking platform because it's basically just a tiny Linux-based computer. With ethernet, 2 x USB ports, flash memory, and very low power it was great for connecting random devices up to a network.
But now they've stopped making them, and I'm in mourning.
So I've spent quite some time hunting around for an equivalent device and I can't find one. The closest thing would be something like a wireless access-point that's been modified to run OpenWRT or a trimmed-down Debian, but then I'd be paying extra $$$ for the wifi hardware (that I really don't want) and they don't have regular USB "A" connectors.
Any suggestions, Lazyweb?
One of the most interesting little devices in the last couple of years was the NSLU2, which was originally intended to act as a "head unit" to connect USB disks to a network so they can be used as network-attached storage. However, it very quickly became a favorite geek hacking platform because it's basically just a tiny Linux-based computer. With ethernet, 2 x USB ports, flash memory, and very low power it was great for connecting random devices up to a network.
But now they've stopped making them, and I'm in mourning.
So I've spent quite some time hunting around for an equivalent device and I can't find one. The closest thing would be something like a wireless access-point that's been modified to run OpenWRT or a trimmed-down Debian, but then I'd be paying extra $$$ for the wifi hardware (that I really don't want) and they don't have regular USB "A" connectors.
Any suggestions, Lazyweb?
>> Old friends and superconductors
Mon, Jul 7th 10:53pm 2008 >> Friends
Back when I started year 7 at St Michael's Grammar one of my classmates was a kid from Latvia named Viktor who arrived speaking very little English but rapidly picked it up and became one of my best friends during my school years. He then moved to Germany and due to certain circumstances that I can't go into I lost touch with him and had no idea where he was for about 19 years.
Then thanks to the miracle of Facebook we found each other again a few weeks ago and discovered we were living only about 30 minutes apart so we got together for a BBQ where we had a great time swapping stories about the missing years.
One of the little bits of memorabilia that Vik had on file was this article from "Computing Australia" magazine published on October 12th, 1987:
(Click it to see a larger version)
The relevant article is the top one about the kids making a superconductor, but I was so amused by the fact that it was right above the OS/2 update story that I didn't trim it down!
In typical journalistic fashion they not only got the school wrong in the photo caption (it was students from St Michaels, not Upwey High) but also got the names all mixed up. That's me right in the middle with the Elton John glasses and the enormous hair, and Vik is just to the left with safety glasses on. And yes, that's liquid nitrogen that Helen is pouring out of a thermos flask without wearing gloves - you'd never see that today!
I loved that project. It was done outside of the regular school program with one of our physics teachers just keeping an eye on things, but otherwise we were left to ourselves. We were given access to whatever school facilities we needed and the teachers turned a blind eye to us not turning up to class while we babysat the material in shifts during the cooling process. I even fell asleep in one of my classes after being up all night logging the furnace temperature every few minutes, and the teacher just let me sleep with my head on the desk and then woke me up when it was time to go to the next class.
One of the raw materials (either Yttrium or Barium, I can't remember which) was quite hard to obtain and we had to get it shipped down from some university in NSW. I went off to Spencer St station with one of the other students to collect the parcel that had been sent down by train, and it felt like we were Mission Impossible agents. Exciting stuff when you're a 16 year-old geek.
One of the tricks to making 1-2-3 superconductor is controlling the cooling curve very accurately, so one of my contributions was writing a little Basic program on an Apple IIe to generate a table showing the optimum temperature at regular intervals so we could read the actual furnace temperature with a thermocouple and adjust it during the 14 hour cooling cycle. We set shifts and sat there for hours watching the temperature and tweaking the furnace to make it match the optimum cooling curve.
It was all worth it in the end and definitely one of my happiest memories from school.
Back when I started year 7 at St Michael's Grammar one of my classmates was a kid from Latvia named Viktor who arrived speaking very little English but rapidly picked it up and became one of my best friends during my school years. He then moved to Germany and due to certain circumstances that I can't go into I lost touch with him and had no idea where he was for about 19 years.
Then thanks to the miracle of Facebook we found each other again a few weeks ago and discovered we were living only about 30 minutes apart so we got together for a BBQ where we had a great time swapping stories about the missing years.
One of the little bits of memorabilia that Vik had on file was this article from "Computing Australia" magazine published on October 12th, 1987:
(Click it to see a larger version)
The relevant article is the top one about the kids making a superconductor, but I was so amused by the fact that it was right above the OS/2 update story that I didn't trim it down!
In typical journalistic fashion they not only got the school wrong in the photo caption (it was students from St Michaels, not Upwey High) but also got the names all mixed up. That's me right in the middle with the Elton John glasses and the enormous hair, and Vik is just to the left with safety glasses on. And yes, that's liquid nitrogen that Helen is pouring out of a thermos flask without wearing gloves - you'd never see that today!
I loved that project. It was done outside of the regular school program with one of our physics teachers just keeping an eye on things, but otherwise we were left to ourselves. We were given access to whatever school facilities we needed and the teachers turned a blind eye to us not turning up to class while we babysat the material in shifts during the cooling process. I even fell asleep in one of my classes after being up all night logging the furnace temperature every few minutes, and the teacher just let me sleep with my head on the desk and then woke me up when it was time to go to the next class.
One of the raw materials (either Yttrium or Barium, I can't remember which) was quite hard to obtain and we had to get it shipped down from some university in NSW. I went off to Spencer St station with one of the other students to collect the parcel that had been sent down by train, and it felt like we were Mission Impossible agents. Exciting stuff when you're a 16 year-old geek.
One of the tricks to making 1-2-3 superconductor is controlling the cooling curve very accurately, so one of my contributions was writing a little Basic program on an Apple IIe to generate a table showing the optimum temperature at regular intervals so we could read the actual furnace temperature with a thermocouple and adjust it during the 14 hour cooling cycle. We set shifts and sat there for hours watching the temperature and tweaking the furnace to make it match the optimum cooling curve.
It was all worth it in the end and definitely one of my happiest memories from school.
>> Using a Canon HV30 with FOSS tools
Sat, Jul 5th 11:08pm 2008 >> Tech Toys
I've been having fun with the HV30 but had a bit of trouble getting footage off it. The camera is a bit light on when it comes to bundled software: basically MacOS and Windows tools for getting still images off it, and that's all. No video editing software at all.
Even though I personally prefer to use open-source software whenever possible there are still times that I resort to starting up a Mac to get something specific done. This was one of those times I assumed that it would just be easier on the Mac so I fired up an old Power Mac G4 with iMovie.
Epic fail.
The Mac was only running MacOS 10.3.9 and the version of iMovie included is too old to support high-def video, and it wouldn't even recognise that the camera existed at all. It would probably have worked with iMovie2 on MacOS 10.5, but that's extra $$$ I don't have.
Turns out I already had everything I needed on Ubuntu and shouldn't have even bothered starting up the Mac!
All I had to do was plug the camera into the FireWire port, put it into playback mode (but not actually start playback), and:
dvgrab then starts the camera automatically and saves all the clips to disk as .m2t files. The "-f hdv" tells it to use high-def mode, and the "-a" is for auto-split so each clip on the camera is saved as a separate file.
If you don't get any output check permissions on /dev/raw1394 and put yourself in the group with r/w privileges and you should be all set.
FOSS wins again!
I've been having fun with the HV30 but had a bit of trouble getting footage off it. The camera is a bit light on when it comes to bundled software: basically MacOS and Windows tools for getting still images off it, and that's all. No video editing software at all.
Even though I personally prefer to use open-source software whenever possible there are still times that I resort to starting up a Mac to get something specific done. This was one of those times I assumed that it would just be easier on the Mac so I fired up an old Power Mac G4 with iMovie.
Epic fail.
The Mac was only running MacOS 10.3.9 and the version of iMovie included is too old to support high-def video, and it wouldn't even recognise that the camera existed at all. It would probably have worked with iMovie2 on MacOS 10.5, but that's extra $$$ I don't have.
Turns out I already had everything I needed on Ubuntu and shouldn't have even bothered starting up the Mac!
All I had to do was plug the camera into the FireWire port, put it into playback mode (but not actually start playback), and:
dvgrab -f hdv -a
dvgrab then starts the camera automatically and saves all the clips to disk as .m2t files. The "-f hdv" tells it to use high-def mode, and the "-a" is for auto-split so each clip on the camera is saved as a separate file.
If you don't get any output check permissions on /dev/raw1394 and put yourself in the group with r/w privileges and you should be all set.
FOSS wins again!
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