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