void

I'm in the xmas void. between xmas and new year. Used to be one of my creative times of year but now Its just child care child care child care.

Did you know that there is no UK equivalent of Mint ?  http://www.mint.com

something for a smart up and coming UK company todo now that logging in to your Bank is becoming  so pathetically difficult on line.

This from HP labs looks fun.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2009/oct-dec/cense.html

also another truism but I don't seem much of these games on the  on the iPhone yet, which is odd I think its rather obvious.

'Location-based games will spread, littering the landscape with puzzles, monsters and easter eggs,' 
from 


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6874009/Technology-predictions-for-2010.html?utm_source=telegraph&utm_medium=TD_Technology&utm_campaign=Technology2412

Low day

Very low today ( long story) I have noticed that the sensor net had collapsed over the weekend.
This was due to memmory allocation problems in java/processing. Need to restart the server at intervals to cure this.

I've got the last of the balls that came off after the crash back on. 5 are not working. I was hoping to work on the solution at home over Xmas but it looks like the motor controller is dead. I can't even get the PIR sensor to work ( you need a bread board and I am now at home ).

The pressure is really on now. I've got to get a small grant application in, reformat the CHI paper as a work in progress then do the other grant application in , put the cloud up and run the experiment  not to mention do this couple of days of 'extream' exam writing for M255 and atten to full days of a sand pit event. January is going to be such a crap month + I'm not looking forward to two weeks of child care with out a break over the next couple of weeks.

Ill musings

Hi - I'm sitting at home feeling a bit crap. I had a cold this weekend and looking after kids when your feeling low is one of the outer rings of hell.

So I'm does up in bed and checked out Slashdot where there is a entry on what would happen if Facebook switchted from PHP to C as programming language of choice. What I thought was curious was that most of the comments began to talk about the 'speed' of PHP against C then comment on the ease of development of PHP against C++. Talk about Splughing.

I've talked at length about creating a new language based on C/C++ but removing things like buffer over runs (forbidding binaries with gets). But the C code would be embedded into the HTML code. Like this


[%C println("HELLO WORLD") ; %C]



Naturally there would be extensions for doing basic operations ( in built hashes? Strings, pattern matching ? ) and talking to Msql and so on. There would be a new stage where the code would have to be compiled into a binary with the HTML embedded.

I think what is most interesting about PHP/ASP and so on is that the languages appear to work because they embed code with HTML ( presentation) which is against the general separation of presentation and operation.

I think I've talked about this before but I'm so short of time I don't think I could create 'Green' quickly.

Digital ecology

I've spent most of today getting the cloud back into running order and showing some natural laguage people round. While doing that I've been thinking about some kind of future interface. I met up with T. and told him the interface is like a word on the tip of your tongue. Nearly there but you can't say it.

How did it start - talking about putting an interface on the Surface where if you put your IPhone on it the Iphone interface would 'spill its guts' on to the Surface letting you have more interface time and space. Like a full sized if virtual keyboard.
I wondered if you placed two Phones each running photos or calendars what would happen?
What would happen if you placed your phone next to your iMac the machines would notice each other and  communicate ( T mentioned the next generation iPhone would have an RFID tag) . How would your Laptop then expand the interface ?

So how would the interface work ? I like the idea of an intelligent layout manager and interface definition which would let you expand the iPhone/Android sized  app on to the bigger screens. It might be simpler to store multiple layouts too ( as Paul suggests). I like the idea of having resolution in the layout description allowing you  to specify what should go when the interface is reduced.

I'm thinking we need a  whole new GUI/OS something that would support the notion of 'user',  mutli-treading in the rendering layer,  a cloud based model, seeing things like the Microsoft 2020 vision I'm thinking it would be good to have animation based at the lowest level.

A blog on Ubicomp

[ dtools ]

[ I Stuff ]

Its that video again

This time on YouTube took me ages the find the one with the right music.

Chi fall out

Put current paper in as work in progress
Do second study and out in for ch2011

Bad cloud day

This morning I calibrated the cloud and it looked mightygood.
I set the grey balls to go to level 8 and got called away. When I came back balls had gone into power down mode and about 3 had come off and all had cause wire to come off. One cut off might have broken not sure.
Not good.

the long day of Chi reviews

Just waiting for the xmas list to printout before going to bed.

So I got the official CHI rejection I was expecting it but no more uncomfortable non the less. I guess the paper was 50% of the way there as we weren't able to finish the second study in the big lab.

I think what surprises me is two things. Firstly we get highly commended in all departments and no specific faults given yet the reviews where very low ( 2.0's ). You think for a score of 2.0 people might have been able to point as some specific fault in the study.

Secondly all the people reported high expertise in the field of space syntax which is strange. It was clear the reviewers had some vague knowledge, they knew that space syntax had to do with pedestrian movement numbers and that was about it. Our study didn't have anything to do with numbers of people passing which was the main misplaced criticism of the study.

So what is the way forward.

1.  Do the main lab study - looks like the separators will arrive soon.  We can redo the lab study and get the paper we wanted done done. 
2. I'm interested in doing the study of the numbers of people passing a display this would do the study that the reviewers thought they where reviewing. Need to think about this more

Clouds and tables

So ran the cloud all afternoon. No new motors failing. I have ordered replacement controller to augment what is there. Spent morning looking at development app on surface.
Spend lunch thinking of tangible app to write for experiment on surface.
Tried r. out with univesal interface idea for tables and hand heldsvwhich went fell on stoney ground.
Need to get windows programming book.

Microsoft Surface arrives

Just before I had to go home to get kids from school  - more play in the morning  - heavy, comes with  fiducals. More later

PIR infrared sensor info

very nifty.

big cloud weirdness of the day

Well this is high on my list of strange. 
I when I compile the code on the macMini to down load to the arduinio motors s,t and k start going down and don't stop ( until you pull the plug). When I down load the same code from my laptop it runs fine even when I change to talking to the board from the macMini. 


The mac mini will only run Ardunio 17 my latop is on 15. I'm down loading all the fixes to the mac mini in hope this sorts things out. 


Looks like motor 'O' is off line and naturally 'E' is to feeble. 


I still havn't run the cloud on full yet ( except accidently ) bit nervous about blowing the board. The network is now down so I'm a bit stuck. 

Cloud

Fairly cruddy day. My bike broke on the way in.
I was hopeing to work on the cloud this afternoon. Hear from Paul that y thinks we should give up on cloud until jan. More delays but this is December so the building will be very empty from now on.

I was working on cloud switching to being controlled from a mac mini. When I did this balls S and T start to go down and keep going down. I have no idear why. Perhaps the controller chip has gone.

I feel like ordering motor kits.

I really should be working on grant proposls not mucking around getting hard ware working. I think I need a couple of short experiments to get publications with

Rickys talk

FORM FACTOR

SUGGESTED Benefits of tabletops

• Enhanced collaboration - face to face vs side,by side
• More equitable participation
• social 'flattening'
• - subtle social benefits.
• supports eye contacts, casual interaction with device,
• Natural interaction
• Mimics the physics of real world - so simpler to use
• Can support hightly 'fluid' interaction
• Bimanual interaction - higher interaction bandwidth
• 
  

Territoriality

- people use orientation and proximity to identify personal zones

- centre space is public/shared

Moving items

- momentum

- magnified control

- [ river along the edge ]

- spinning table

Problems

- bad lag

- what causes lag in a vision system ?

- lag proportional to number of people in system?

- fidelity of recognition

- fingers are quite big ( 1-cm sqaure )

- text orientation

What are tables good for?

Ordering in restaurant

Augmented table tops

- tracking real objects ( background subtraction... )

- arms /hands ...

- IR pens..

- Pen's

- when pressed down..

Is the ecology of devices about designing for multiple screen sizes

- how to prioritise what is important to display

- how to respond to near by devices.

What are my three inspirations/applications

- 1. huge card sorting

- 2. calendar with in-situ expansion of days.

- 3. zooming catalogue of anything.

On the 'if I had to build a carpet again' pile

http://www.glowsafe.com/e-shop/index.php?cPath=39_41

For that Tron effect.

works mostly on clothing. I wonder what voltage ?

+44 (0) 870 199 8524

more bits about the cloud

from meeting with Richie

He's still on about getting it perfect and not needing external PC. I'm more concerned about building something that moves.

I'm going to order those Motor-shields and get them built by the guys in electronics.

lab port - Ctrl/2/42

shields.

http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=17_21&products_id=83&zenid=0ebc36853cd859761469bdde6097b26a

16:55

http://www.lantronix.com/device-networking/embedded-device-servers/xport-direct-plus.html

16:58

http://www.ladyada.net/make/eshield/

What a day.

OK I got in this morning ( after getting rained on via the way in) - no problem.

I was trying to sort out the wireing on the board when I manage to blow one of the H-bridges on the board - opps. Ian then comes over and tries to figure out the wiring electrically. and in the process manages to zap the board and over the course of the day 4 more h-bridges start smoking.

I get panicked by this and start pulling together plan b. This as 2 parts

part one get 4 motor stepper shield [ here or here ] or [ here for two ] the down side is it looks like you can't by then prebuilt (boo).

The second part is to balance one ball (orange) against another ( blue), this means we can run 2 balls from one motor meaning 12 motors in all or 2 per row, so I just need 3 separate arduinios with 3 separate power supplies.

Plan C involves replacing the balls with lighter ones.

Options to reduce power

1. Use lighter balls

Gymnic Home & Office Opti Swiss Ball

number of sizes

http://westons.com/acatalog/Online-Catalogue-PR15201.html

exercise balls a s small as 50Cm

http://www.gymworld.co.uk/prodpage.asp?ProdID=2525 -

So by the end of the day Ian managed to get the up cut off switches working. I'm hoping to do a software fix to make the right ones work. The problem is I can't work on it on Monday/Tuesday.

Over lunch we talked about forgetting the whole thing. I pointed out we have made the vidieo already.

Tried, but while I was working on the cloud someone came in who wanted to use the cloud in a photo shoot about signing a memorandum of understanding. Life is too weird.

Not bad day

Got all the sensors on line.
Only have to change floor mat on sensor 2 to make sure getting reliable counts.
i might work on network to get it to be more reliable.

Stats

I have revived an email. Looking for a suitible stats program to do some analysis with. This time the datais in my SQL format.
To be sure there is no stats program with a good interface I could recogmend. Personally I am temptered to get my old copy of statview working.
Strange

Sensor net back on line

All the arduinos are now talking to the server!

Pressure pad on unit 2 (central stairs ) might have worn down. We need re-calibration.

State of the sensor network

1. Sensor 202 ( entrance ) - network off line. I think the machine its self is OK. Contact networking again.
2. Sensor 201 ( central stair case ) - one line and working but I think pressure pad is down replace.
3. Sensor 203 (far staircase) -network ok. won't work from external power supply, Need to check pads. Fix put in 10K resistor to RX ping to ground. - Might get USB power supply to.

I think I can get 2 up and running by end of week. Possibly 3.

Friday the 13th not bad...

In many ways it is quite a good day for me.

I did an outline application with Helen for the in the wild EPSRC bit.

Yvonne resubmitted a bit in to In the Wild.

The EPSRC bit with Ruth is going well.

Now Ann A. invited me on the small public engagement bid.

More importantly my IPhone app was cleared so it appeared on ITunes connect!

This was all so pleasing that even having a flat tyre on the bike on the way home hasn't put me down at all.

Curiosu new language of the day

It's called Go from google.

Compiled, odd notion of classes but most intreastingly of all appears to have multiple returns. I'm glad to see the return of truely compiled languages.

remember the experiment from hell well..

So I have the chi reviews.

I can't say much except I'm disappointed. The reviews sound very positive but they gave abysmally poor scores (2s) but no indication as to what was wrong with the paper. The only area for improvement someone gave was a couple of missing papers ( well we cutout far more than 2 papers to make it fit into a note).

Like many people I'm not convinced that the reviewers knew what they where talking about but manage to express this in such a vague way it was hard to pull them up on something specific which might have made a difference to the overall review. One good review might have been a good start.

To be honest I thought it had a reasonable chance of getting in and a better chance that some of the other papers that got better marks.

I'm starting to think that the thing that threw them was that we rejected the original hypothesis and then failed to come up with a convincing and ardent explication for what was going on. If the paper had just confirmed space syntax that would have worked. If we had said flatly this is because of X then I think they might have gone with it if it seemed plausible.

I think the thing that also went wrong was that we used fairly obscure syntax ( isovists ) and combined it with HCI/psychology style experiments. All of the reviewers didn't seem t understand the power of the winthin subjects 2*2*2 test and one critiqued the full reporting we did of all ANOVAs.

I don't know. I'm feeling like I've been defrauded by CHI. revolutionised

At least I'm not alone. May other researches think the same about their papers.

Box physics

http://www.box2d.org/

hmm - I like the version of this in processing but the lack of documentation was always a drawback.

very useful for doing more real interfaces for the table.

My new favorate link of the day

Links to HCIbib lovely browsing experience.

Microsft reinvent ZUI and lots of other things from 20 years ago.

Came across this link to a Microsoft demo.

• Naturally there are bits I like and bits I don't.
• So pen input - fairly normal even the mac has stroke to text.
• The zoomable interface I like a lot but I would say that wouldn't I?
• I like the notion of zoom able searching ( get more back)
• The selection through eye tracking is again fairly old ( cute how the guy writing the blog is fairly excited by this). The big problem is that the eye cascades over the interface quite quickly. If something on the screen moves ( like the animated icon opening ) then you get the eye moving toward it. It must take a lot of blinkered self control to do this part of the demo.Given your motor vision and the eye movement are separate why not just let it grow under the finger/mouse.
• Speech recognition -again fairly old - I saw this in 1994? this has the same problem as any command line interface, you have to remember the command.
• Now you could use eye tracking as part of the emotion interface (the machine sees what are you looking at - why not start to load plain links before you look at them?) . Its also useful for the computer to know if you are looking at it ( use a audible alert to get your attention if your not).
• I do like the flexible interfaces and the glass interface.
• the gesturing looks fu. Again your don't want to do this more than occasionally with out getting gorilla arms ( remember I did VR research )

Cloud All new motors installed

but 8 are not working, 14 are and we are missing 2 wires.

I spent most of the day working on the new grant proposal with Ruth.

The building is dead

And it's getting dark.

Not a soul around

Chi reviews

Just got the chi reviews back. No that hot but not clear what they were objecting to either. I'm going to give it a day to calm down then have a constructive look at them.

Cloud Plan B.

Got all but 4 motors not attached.

Found this link to a prebuilt Adafruit motor sheild for Ardunio.

Can run 4 bidirectiona DC motors. That is one per row or one per two rows if we can put the same voltage across two motors ( assuming current it is OK). So need 6 of these or possibly three if luck ( we never are).

Now wondering what to do with 22 DC motors...

Did I mention we are on Itunes U.

The labs project videos are now on the web - so much more lush than the one I made ( see you tube).

I was away when they were being done so I'm not in them.

Note these will open up in your copy of Itunes via ItunesU ready for down loading

http://bit.ly/3irpPI

http://bit.ly/WOPiW

JLB - meeting

We had a long meeting about the failure of the building for the academics. Not for research I must admit but people are staying at home to work in droves. Many people think that the OU is step up for remote working - it isn't. Teaching students at a distance has huge support but there is nothing to support academics working on building courses together short of emailing word documents around.

The meeting was looking for suggestions. I liked the talk of dividing the building up between mostly monastery - people looking to work in absolute silence, no phones the slight hint of a conversation would be met by people walking out into an open space. And the cafe - people tolerate noise/conversation and use head phones to exclude the outside world when they need to.

I suggested work rooms like IET - places to go and work when you need silence/exclusion. Other suggestions included monastery/cafe times - assumes a lot of social cohesion.

I thought security was being ignored so I spoke up for the use of rolltop desks big enough to cover your computer. That way leaving your desk to was a simple task of covering the whole thing with one key. That way you can leave things on your desk and come back to it undisturbed. That went down better than the IET style work places.

Lovely conversation about reintrodiction tea time - taking time to have tea with each other once a day. Generally thought to be sensible to put groups together again.

After woods I suggested using floor tiles + giving out an interruption meter.

Not so hot day for cloud

Ok to day I had one tutorial. One big meeting but I managed to get 4 spheres installed. The down side is that the second row gets about half the voltage of the first row. This results in no movement up and only some down. Not cool. I am not sure I want to loose a couple of weeks with electronics guys looking at ciurcit again.

Back to work - surface is coming

Being with Paul is so inspiring at times.

I've got a fairly bad day today finishing a student exercise. This is the first draft so I am going to write this, send it out then have a meeting then rewrite it, end it out then have a meeting rewrite this, send it out then have a meeting, have a meeting then send it out again. Given the acreage of corrections its hard to get started and more importantly its hard to want to do it well given that everyone feels obliged to correct what is there anyway so no matter how well you do something you will still have to re-do it.

Still its a small price to pay for the chance to do some interesting research.

Back to Paul. What I like is while the last experiment is a blast he is so encouraging to go out and do something . I mentioned a couple of things - one about place and another about text based adventures that he was positive about. Just the kind of lift I need at the moment.

The other big news is that the Microsoft surface is ordered. I'm wondering if it would fit well in the office behind me. A good chance for me to go out and get a book on #C.

Computer languages I love that experience of catching the next language. It comes every 5 years and somehow reminds me of the Olympics.

This new one Field sounds cool I like the notion of inbuilt editors. From Paul looking at some Ballet dancers research. I would like to play with the python syntax to. Lets see if I can do multi touch with it. This or Scratch I can't decide.

bad day

Today was a bit of a blow out of a day. I had to do a presentation to the faculty about what is ubicomp. I was filling in for Y at the last moment. The down side was that I couldn't get anyone to do the experiment in the morning. Then Amelia was ill so I had to go home in the afternoon.

So over the two days we go zero people through the experiment.

So I'm not wild about this...

lost weekend

I've been writing a student exercise and began thinking about one writing a single user adventure now titled interactive fiction. The idear was to use hashmaps to represent each room, these would be read in from an xml file.

The things I wanted to do was create an audio game - use speech synthesis to get the text to be read out so you could play it on an iphone or something with your vision else ware.

I was chatting with Ruth and we both agreed the narrative and characterisation and mostly dialog in games is in my experience quite pitiful. So the notion would be to bring this to the centre of the game so you would focus your efforts on it.

So one thing irritates me about interactive fiction it all appears to be written in the first person "You see this, you see that". I thought it would be good do something in the third person ( Lara picks this up, Lara looked round the room to do this).

I think the second thing I liked the look of was introducing a companion who would travel with the main character to get more description out of her/him. In the case of doing a tombraider like interactive fiction I like the notion that someone goes with Lara and they don't get on.

"You want me to jump of this ? are you crazy, do I look insane to you or something".

Looking at the sites on how to write interactive fiction this appears to be a no no - it is thought to interfere with the game begin run by the player.

So looking around and after an excellent wikipedia article on audio games, strong disabled access notion. I'm not against this but I think with mobile audio systems a strongly audio game would be good. Most of the audio games require good use of live stereo sound to get positions.

I checked out the iTunes appstore and after a copy of advent (ure) there is nothing strongly audio game is ( lots of audio in games but nothing audio centric).

http://www.audiogames.net/page.php?pagefile=articles

Ruth and I thought it would be fun to have an augmented reality game where you operated like an adventure but you do this in the real world. So you create an alternative London but set in the spaces of the real one. Naturally you can still walk into any public part but inorder to go from one space to another in the adventure game and get an audio description you have to solve a puzzle(unlock a door, carry an item or something). I quite like this. I guess to be sure of it being interesting I would have to look at a lot of similar augmented reality games. The HCI lit is full of them for some reason.

I should really get on with some proper research but I might come back to this at a later date. No in the end i realised this was too complex for the M255 students to handle.

very cool

more links

Flat cables .

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000YFBQEU

http://www.ramelectronics.net/showPDF.ep?pdfName=tips%20and%20techniques.pdf

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?product=BARS#NFLS-x30

Narrative and games

I was thinking about the solitude of the average platform/adventure game.

I was thinking it would be good to have a second character. At this point you could have lots of interaction between them building up the tension. So for example you could walk into a fairly normal space but then A says 'You look worried', B says 'I've got a bad feeling about this..'

I guess the idea would be to build up the character and the environment by having large amounts of dialogue. The dialogue would be pre-scripted, so the player simply triggers this dialogue by moving from one space to other, doing something, finding something, finding someone, or just spending to long in some space. With a modern DVD (forget blueray!) the potential for having huge amount of general dialogue is significant.

I was thinking about proto-typeing this and thought about how one might implement a character engine. One cheap way might be to pull together a text based adventure. One thing which might be interesting would be to use the speech synthesis options on the mac to create an audio games machine, almost no graphical user interface.

Thinking about it why do most adventure games work in the first person ( you walk down the path , you see a snake.. ) Why not an adventure game more like a book ( Lara strode down the path, lara noticed the snake). I quite like the idea of something that you could capture the text output of which would generate your own a 'book'.

The two other elements I like in an adventure game - use a block world/SHRDLU like interface so you could issue simple instructions ( get red block ) and then the system generates (Lara puts the blue block from the treasure chest and puts it on the ground, Lara opens the treasure chest, lara gets the red block..

I also like the notion of using a language where much description is generated using grammars so you get a little variation with the same central theme. Bu then i like the notion of a patter matching more prolog like language to express the whole thing in.

Perhaps I could do something basic in processing

predictions

OK I predict that within 5 years somone will make a facilty on a mobile phone/smart phone that will put your phone into meeting mode ( off ) but this will come back on automatically after 30mins,1 hours, 90 mins, 2 hours.

eduroam note

Hay I'm sitting in UCL using eduroam to talk back to the OU. I'm quite impressed worked with the iPhone too!

Some weirdness with sending email from iPhone but it looks to be working now. Strange how difficult it is to extract any internal information from an application. Trying to figure out what is broken is so tricky.

Of earcons and technology transfere

10 Papers about auditory display to start with

http://www.icad.org/node/395

At the ACM http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=1101530&type=issue&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=63935125&CFTOKEN=60674422

Mia D. stopped by to tell me about the technology transfer officer.

http://intranet.open.ac.uk/strategy-unit/offices/innovation-enterprise/

www.open.ac.uk/research/innovation-and-enterprise/

http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/innovation/fundingkt/bpc/forms.htm

http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/cmsweb/downloads/rcuk/innovation/bpc/proposal.pdf

Kathryn Dunn was mention along with A.Hardy ?

DANA Centre

Paul found this link to a vidieo of the DANA/Science museum gig

You can see me with my table, Yvonne and Jeffs table not to mention Paul/John in the background, well its everyone, Dayphone, Jen's table

Surface Tension: Interactives and workshops from Dreamtime Film on Vimeo.

Cloud watching.

Spoke to dave this morning. He is rebuilding new spindles and will drop some round as he builds them. We would like to have the cloud and the table working for a visit by VC on November 10th.

I'm watching the cloud move.

on threshold 2000 out of 4095

going down 1/3 grey OK
going down 1/4 orange OK.

Orange 4 eye look to be coming out.
Going up

Up grey 3 slower then 1 on full power. I've tried changing the min power to 2100 ( >50%) but using a very quick increase to min voltage followed by slower increase to full power.

LCD multi touch $2990.00

We have been talking about a large multi touch LCD display as the basis for the table industry. With this you could put your feet beneath it ( and treat like a real table ). 30 inchs isn't bad.



Not with a border.

talk Siân Lindley from Microsoft

Play and Wayve

The Playful and the Serious: An approximation to Huizinga's Homo Ludens http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/rodriges

Roger Caillois http://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Play-Games-Roger-Caillois/dp/025207033X

Salen & Zimmerman Rules of play http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp/0262240459/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1255521359&sr=1-2-fkmr1

TellTable

Constraints good for creativity

Marget Boden

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Creative-Mind-Myths-Mechanisms/dp/0415314534

Broadcasting within a tiny community.

Limited period of time - implied people planned more intensively.

So context provided structure.

Bill Gaver Ludic engagement with no rules

how ever here the constraints helped with creativity. Constraints might be outside (cultural/social )

the Wayve help to be bbuilt by the Technology partnership

ten little fingers

Lovely animation. I would love to try this interface even better if I could do some user evaluation. Makes me want to do a user interface with with two mice. This is really a bi-manual interface.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

QRCodes

I was chatting with Mike and mentioned I fancied building an erring or broach on Ponoko which would be an engraved with a QRCode.

I thought I could use a processing library but it turns out the library needs a perfect image. I couldn't find an Mac application that worked but I've down loaded an iPHone application that looks OK ( works against the screen)

I've found to problem which is the image has to be the quite big. I wanted something which could capture an image of a face ( + earrings/ broach ) then pull out the image in much worse conditions. i.e something like a party picture or an image you might grab of someone.

OK so two problems with QRCode firstly it needs to be big secondly its a binary image which is hard to encode as a physical image cut into something. I thought about doing something with rectorvision glyphs. But they are hard to cut too ( the image is bits within bits within bits )

So I've been wondering how difficult it would be to design a low bit rate glyph which only had one body with a number of holes. Perhaps a good masters project except the students never want to do interesting projects.

cool link of the day

http://www.environmentallights.com/shop/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=infrared

Yvvone gave a good talk this morning. At the end I met Meiron Williams who had built his own table as an MSc project. He had found an excellent location to find predone IR stip LEDs.

Using iPhone app this is the smallest image I could get.

I've been trying to make some QRCode jewellery. I've experimented with a code for QRCode reader but the processing one needs perfect images. I've been looking for others but they mostly seem to be on mobile phones and iPhones and I just get the run around from download sites that 'claim' they have one but don't.

The public wireless doesn't work with the iPhone here so I can't experiment on it.

Looks like If I do want to do something with tangible calculator then I will have to use rector vision.

Or invent my own - paul suggested multiple colours (R,G,B). hard to engrave.

Visit from the Vice chancellor and a little bird

I came in this morning thinking that it would be quite, quiet. I normally have the ground floor of the JLB2 to my self and I've taken to unplugging my headphones and listening to music via the speakers since there is no one else around to bother and I don't get sweaty ears.

You can imagine my surprise when I found not one but three people around, even Jeff turned up later. It only took me a second to realise that the VC was coming in for 10 minuets at 12:45. and this ment a higher then normal turn out.

It was during this time a bird flew on to my desk. I no not from were. Quite odd. It was so tired I managed to pick it up and carry it outside ( picture proof above).

Martin Bean comes over as nice enthusiastic person I quite like him. Not many people turned up to see our illustrious leader of the OU. So I think the VC must have gone off thinking that the computing department must be only 20+ people strong and very productive for it. To be honest most of the people present were the admin staff so I guess the VC thinks we must be leading the world with such a high proportion of female computing lectures.

I spent the afternoon testing my new IPhone app. It takes about 30 mins to do the touch swiping test. I did it once using the simulator and the mouse and once using the touch pad.

I've also requested a meeting about the cloud on Monday.

Yvonne is currently in Disney land at Ubicomp conference.

Looks like I will be second supervising G. I must meet up with this industrial sponsor which might want to come in as an industrialist on the signage project.

Leverhulme app submitted

Got the OK on the numbers and finally pressed go. Feels good and I can't change it now but strangely it only gets to the OU central people to recheck the work they just did. Still its in the que.

Verification

I see a lot of programming work with statements like ( by redoing software like this it would be possible to do formal things with it ) . For example functional programming languages make this big claim that using this you could make something 'provable'.

This is the first time I've every seen something actually proved and its of some use. I think the next thing they should attempt is a garbage collector. I wonder how they handled multi-threading ( I guess that's what took 6 years )

Lonley

I'm quite Lonley at the moment. When I meet with Jeff he treats me like an RA which is a amusing inversion of what should be happening, he's never done a single thing that didn't suit him or done it when he wanted. Basically I'm on my own down here I'm putting up with it.

With Huge (now head of department) gone upstairs and Anthony off in the Deanary so it's is really quite. I've taken to playing music without headphones on Fridays ( not wanting standards to slip to much or the meeting room to be effected).

There was a fire alarm yesterday and I was thinking of inviting the evacuees from the department for a coffee. One interesting discussion come up.

Basically it appears that people have decided that the building is a library and we should treat it like such. My opinion is that we should teat the place like an office - conversation is permitted even encouraged and you can retreat to a meeting micro-room if things get too disturbing. I was told in no uncertain terms that "the micro-rooms are too stuffy to work in". One problem with the building as library thesis ( which is the only other office plan academics have experienced) is what happens when someone phones up? How does a phone call work in the context of the vow of silence.

I even logged into second life and there is no one there either ( on the OU world).

I can see why most people work from home.

I'm working on the iPhone experiment - I have some nice ideas about how to test it out. I'm thinking of releasing the game on the Itunes store and getting the data emailed back. I guess this must have been done before but I wonder what the search words would be.

Stacking

Very nice stuff from Hasso Plattner Institut

Almost too clever.

But does inspire me to think of a tangible photo manipulation program.

The command line strikes back.

I've been thinking about command lines for this unit I'm involved with. The idea was to show that command lines as an interface are not 'dead' just revised. Google was the obvious choice but wolframalpha is new and the video is quite impressive ( well I'm an engineer by background and habitually quantative ) . I think this is the first example of sematnic web doing something interesting.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html

still has all the big problems with command lines though.

CHI papers

OK so paper number 1. Which is just a note is in the system.

I think its turned out OK. Definitely a contribution to knowledge. Paul did a terrific job.

The other paper about the cloud is in troubled making at the moment.

Now back to

1. Sorting out Grant application

2. Doing virtual test

3. Redoing lab experiment

4. Getting on with the Iphone tracking thing.

5. Doing the probation

Because you know about architecture and stuff

Deep in the middle of CHI deadline ( now that's bad).

http://www.digital-architecture.org/london/

To celebrate London as a centre of design and innovation, the ‘Digital Architecture London’ Conference will take place at the Building Centre on 21st September 2009. Presenting a selection of London’s leading architects, artists, designers and engineers, the conference will examine how London is shaping the digital future of the built environment.

http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/

more cursed research

email today.

I have checked with the Events Office and unfortunately these are needed
for a big conference next week. The Porters will need to collect these
tomorrow.

So now I am faced with at least a weeks delay in getting any results in. Pushing very close to the CHi deadline. So do I try to get something else up or do I try to get the paper partly written to minimise time near the end....

I'm back

Holiday now thankfully over I'm back to organising experiments in time for Chi.

Looks like the signage experiment hasn't gone as well in my absense as I would like.

Paul and everyone is off at a conference.

I missed the Leverhulm deadline ( so Signing up for the 1st December).

Scratchy input

More seriously cool input - ideal for portable table.

Back to square one

Almost litrarally. With the failures over the weekened everyone is helping out getting the cyber tiles working. Image of Paul grooving one tile, Jeff has been 'Mr Electricity' too. We've gone for a bus design with a change of edge connectors.

Paul is talking to the dean about getting funding for more display research to help the faculty.

More shopping interfaces

On the subject of more shopping interfaces.

You might want to mentioned that LEGO are already doing this kind of tangible/digital fusion with display box (http://toyology.typepad.com/play_a_while/2009/01/lego-display-box-shows-your-potential-purchase-in-3d.html ) Prada stores have done it with fashion http://designarchives.aiga.org/index.html?s1=2|s2=1|eid=8942 In a store designed by Rem Koolhass they had a lovely mirror if you turned quickly it would freeze your image letting you look from behind.

Lego Tangible interface

First shopping tangible interface I've found live.

You hold box up to the display and it projects a 3d model on to it ( you hold box up to the mirror and see the object projected on it )

Floor disaster

Richie worked for about 8 hours over the weekend trying to get the cyber carpet installed. Unfortunately the result was far to thick. Paul came in and declared it was unworkable.

So Richie, Paul ( and others I'm not sure ) took all the cyber-tiles up leaving the pressure pads.

Everyone has had some idears about what to do to fix it but not a good moment.

We are expecting the new motors today. If they turn up we can run one into the ground to test.

NewmotorS

The cloud saga continues. Current solution is to change motors. Shame we like precision microdrives.

Handy website of the day

I found this a websites from the late 1990's with the original site + anonymised log data.

handy could do with a few more.

the white table gets musical application

Image of the big table in use by some of the Music students doing collaborative music application on the table I designed and built. I wish I had time do work on 8 things at once. Back to writing grant application.

CloudFall

Richie has been running the cloud with the new acceleration code I wrote yesterday. Its been going fine all morning but when they got back from Lunch one sphere started bobbing. I looks like the gear has gone on that one.

Richie and Nadia looking for frayed wires ( one found).

Cloud Disaster

New controller arrived to drive the cloud R had it up and running this morning.

Looks like the weight of the balls cause them to strip the gears. Very Very Low moment.

Project idea of day

Do face counting of display in the engineering building.
How do people use this display ?

Arduino being very hip.

I have one of the new sense boards. for TU100.

Gadget makers, also known as hackers and tinkerers, have created an underground network that stretches from Argentina to New Zealand...

using Arduinos... .

you should see the lab at the moment it looks like one of these events

Me showing how the table worked.

Proff Yvonne Rogers doing the talk
Tables from above.

Whole thing Jeff and John in Background.

Image of the open day

Busy week for the table. Image of Paul demoing the table at the OU open day.

Images from DANA center gig

DanaCenter

Conductive paint

We are having lots of wireing problems at the moment. I quite like this use of conductive ink puts electronics half way between painting and lego.

Floor sensors

Not bad got new floor sensors done logging is going

Floor sensors

In tensive morning doing exams and planning next experiment. Y asked what do retailers and advertisers know about location of signs must find out.
Afternoon getting floor sensors working with new mac addresses and this time theyworked fine!
I am rebuilding floor grid looks exciting but need good two weeksbefore data.

DOWN

I'm feeling a bit slumped - why ?

Well I don't feel I did as good a job with the table as I would have liked. These few weeks I've had a constant stream of interruptions, some welcome like the cyber carpet and footfall but others like M255.

Being down stairs I've lost touch with everyone. Simon is hiding working all day in his 'music lab' s and having scored a number of interns for the summer who can blame him (o no chat there).I'm overwhelmed with the amount of junk email. I.e unfocused emails sent to almost everyone which are in generally irrelevant. It doesn't give me a sense of what's going on.

I'm not on every email from the M255 co-ordinators or at least this is how this feels. So I'm constantly being caught by last minuet - by the way you have 2 days to deliver this exam or that TMA or that meeting. So I think I'm getting upset by the general response to the questions which is generally that the grammar isn't up to much. OK its hard when you have a reading age of an 8 year old to re-read what was written not what is in your head and harder still when your under pressure to meet six deadlines at one and have no time to catch up when your at home or over the weekend. The whole dyslexic thing doesn't take kindly to criticism no matter how artfully framed or constructive in approach.

So I'm quite low and bitter about the whole thing.

Live from DANA center

Absence of blogging for a bit while I was in a tizz getting the big table working. After much work managed to get everything sorted. I'm currently sitting in the DANA center now. Falling behind on teaching work. Mean while the table was working but now isn't.

I'm now sitting in the cafe waiting for the event to get going. The table is off line I'm now stuck under a bit of direct sun light which completely overwhelms the tables vision system.

Talk from Tavs Jorgensen: Autonomatic

We are Autonomatic. We do research that explores the use of digital manufacturing technologies in the creative process of designing and making three dimensional objects

They have a digital loom (yum).

Accuracy of inputs is a real problem

Rhinois tool of choice for 3D manufacturing

Nice wall of plates from ceramics transfer printer

Nice thing from automake

Decorative plaster work Hayles and Howe Bristol

Reinvigorating craft. Learning curve of CAD still hard.

Don't want to be dictated to by CAD

Lucy Turner Higher Market Studio

Science museam here we come

I've been silent and stressed over getting the table ready for the science museam. Some bits to do but y. gave the ok to go with the software and the table style.
Richie is nearly wiped out but nearly finished with the attrium experiment.it's going to be huge I'm very excited by it.

Table Progress 2

This afternoon was mostly getting the sock to look smooth stretchy with out wrinkles enough.I've figured out that starting from the bottom and working up the excess can over the top and then be hidden under the felt. The big advantage of this is that I don't have to paint the edges of the table ( Tuur I still could do but would have to staple/velcro  the nylon to the bottom of the table.

From Tabletop

 This is the table in blue screen mode,in a dark space it would look quite elegant and inviting.  If we have time I might get Dave to smooth out the bits jutting down.  I also need to pull the power cable down ( does look a bit like a vein at the moment). 

Friday I'll need to get Mary to help sow on all the velco to keep stuff in place. 

From Tabletop

Table

two weeks to go on the DANA gig..

I'm worried about the light ( will it be  to much  for the projectors). We now have felt new mirror and nylon. Dave has mirror and will move the the screen up. Found OUT people willing to try cutting Felt if we can get the outside in the box.

Need to sort out the software too. 

Time is running out. 

arduino ethernet

 and the senararium project is also having problems.

I can see these things in the lab but not outside 

 I've tried this and I can see it from the south wing
ar -r
...
arduino-03.open.ac.uk (137.108.48.141) at (incomplete) on en0 [ethernet]

but when I try to telnet or ping it I get

PING 137.108.48.141 (137.108.48.141): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: No route to host
ping: sendto: Host is down

telnet !$ 80
telnet 137.108.48.141 80
Trying 137.108.48.141...
telnet: connect to address 137.108.48.141: Host is down
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

Arduino Ethernetsheidl code.

I couldn't find any on line code to check the ethershield working on Arduino so here is mine. You need telnet.

#include

#include

#include

/*

* Chat

* this is an example of the simplist possible hello world

* program. Use telnet to talk to the machine

* telnet ipaddress you give the machine.

*/

int boardLED = 13 ;

int ledPin = 12; // LED connected to digital pin 13

int greenLED = 11;

byte mac[] = { 0x85, 0xDC, 0x1D, 0x14, 0xD7, 0x53 }; // second mac address 85:DC:1D:14:D7:53

byte ip[] = { 169,254,74,14 };// find your own network address

byte gateway[] = { 169,254,74,32 };

byte subnet[] = { 255, 255, 0, 0 };

Server server = Server(23);

//int thing[12];

void setup() // run once, when the sketch starts

{

pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // sets the digital pin as output

pinMode(greenLED, OUTPUT ) ;

pinMode(boardLED, OUTPUT ) ;

Ethernet.begin(mac, ip, gateway, subnet);

server.begin();

}

void loop() // run over and over again

{

digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // sets the LED on

delay(random(0, 250));

digitalWrite(boardLED, HIGH);

delay(random(0, 250));

digitalWrite(greenLED, LOW);

delay(random(0, 500)); // waits for a second

digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); // sets the LED off

digitalWrite(greenLED, HIGH);

delay(random(0, 1000)); // waits for a second

digitalWrite(boardLED, LOW);

Client client = server.available();

if (client) {

server.write(client.read());

}

}