2010.02.08 / AR in Lego
I came across this via Derren Brown's Blog
I'm fascinated by Augmented Reality and I think this is such a fantastic real-world use of it. It's more than a gimmick, it actually has a useful business purpose.
2010.02.03 / 3 hours 3 rolls and a whole lotta fun
My D&D group met up last night for the first time this year. Being an adult sucks when work and family and all that grown-up stuff gets in the way of having fun.
My friend Adam is DMing our current campaign, a story that is entirely of his own making.
We're nearing the end of our quest, having so far defeated an Orc army, dispatched the Great Bear and founded the Cult of the Great Bear (penis)*,
In our bid to retrieve the final piece of the Great Wizard (whose name I've forgotten), we have to rob the bank in the paranoid insular city of Skitt.
Last night we managed to make our way to the city, having previously obtained trading licences and secured protection duties with a local trader. Last night was all about casing the bank and formulating a plan.
The awesome thing about our session last night was that it was almost entirely roleplay, I think we made a total of 3 dice checks - Briar checked the entry to the vault for traps whilst scoping it out in his rat form, Faern made a bluff check whilst attempting to pursuade the bank manager that he was passionately interested in the mind-numbing world of accountancy in order to gain his trust to later spike his drink and Brior made a stealth check to successfully avoid being noticed skittering across the vault floor during the manager's morning security checks.
We left having thoroughly explored our options and laid out our plans. Next week, we'll get to see if we can pull the heist off without landing ourselves in hot water!
*a long story
2010.02.03 / Widgets
Is it just me, or does it look like something is missing [from the home screen]?
I felt exactly the same about the iPad home screen, it just doesn't look quite right, the spacing of the app icons is too much relative to their size.
Widgets would go a long way to 'solving' the multitasking 'problem', given the right limitations by the OS, they wouldn't negatively impact the user experience - I'd be happy with a little status indicator for my chosen IM app that alerts me that someone has sent me a message and lets me either shoot off a quick reply or launch the full app to join a conversation.
Perfect.
2010.02.02 / User Experience
There's a button on my laptop that doesn't work.
I've had this laptop for about 2 years. It was the most advanced laptop that money could buy at the time, but even from day 1, the button didn't work.
I exaggerate a little, the button works as long as I don't suspend my computer. As soon as it awakens from sleep the button no longer responds.
As a general rule, I don't need to press the button all that often so it doesn't cause me much inconvenience, but it still irks that I have a very expensive laptop that doesn't work properly. I contacted the manufacturers when I first noticed the issue and they instructed me to re-install the driver for the button. It had no effect, and subsequent calls yielded the same response, so I gave up.
Computing is about learning to accept these errors as part of the experience. "try rebooting it", "uninstall and reinstall the application", "It's always been like that, nothing seems to fix it".
I think things are slowly changing.
2010.02.01 / Old World vs New World computing
Old World vs New World computing
I came to this via Daring Fireball, it's a very interesting read.
I've invested a lot of time in learning how to bend computers to my will. I'm now the resident Computer Guy for a lot of people (and I'm not even the official Computer Guy). Initially, it's frightening to think that I might not be the Computer Guy in the future, but think of what people will be able to accomplish when they can just do it and it works.
The iPad isn't that device yet, but it's a huge step towards it.
2010.01.30 / On multitasking
Reading around various commentaries on the iPad one criticism in particular stands out, it's usually the first thing the tech writers mention, as if it's some horrifically fatal flaw.
"no multitasking".
It occurred to me that most people (specifically the people the device is aimed at) don't really understand what multitasking is. I even wonder if the people writing about it fully unstand what it means because the iPad (and the iPhone/iPod touch for that matter) multitask just fine - there's a mail daemon running in the background checking my mail, there's a notifications daemon checking for new notifications, a calendar thread checking for reminders, you can play music and browse websites at the same time and so on. Even within applications, multiple tasks run together.
It strikes me that there is really only 1 thing neither the iPad or iPhone do in the background that even the "normals" the devices are aimed at want. The Killer App for these classes of device. Instant Messaging.
I have skype installed on my iPhone and it works ok but in order for my contacts to see that I'm online I have to have the application running and I can't be doing anything else. This will hold true for the iPad.
Notifications don't really cut it because it doesn't really provide a way of not being online, or changing your 'status' or whathaveyou. I wonder if this is an issue with how it has been implemented in individual applications (indeed, Skype doesn't use them at all, but that's a whole other story).
I think if Apple were to provide some tools and a bit of guidance to enable instant messaging client developers to provide the kind of behaviour users expect from their IM experience, much of the multitasking discussion would fade away.
2010.01.28 / Apple iPad
So Apple announced the iPad yesterday.
I followed the event via the engadget liveblog and whilst the device looks awesome, I was left a little underwhelmed.
In recent years, Apple's launch events have sparked a huge amount of anticipation and hype and even with the best will in the world, delivering everything everyone wants is impossible.
I started writing this post this morning, then (puny body wracked with man flu) shelved it for a few hours.
Since then I've been able to soak in much of the response to this new device and I have to say that I fall on the iwantitrightnowpleasewantonewantonewantone side of the fence.
Sure, it's missing a camera, user-instigated multi-tasking, usb ports, gps, a phone, micro-fusion power source, hover board and flash but y'know what, so what?
My primary income is from teaching (I say it that way to make me sound enigmatic, I'm a teacher) and with the vga out cable and keynote, this thing will be awesome (once I get past the whole "sir, is that an iPad?" thing).
Another facet of my teaching experience made it immediately obvious as I watched the photos posted of the Missing Plugin place holder that you don't display something like that by accident, "whoops, how embarrassing, it's not working quite right" it was not. I recognised it as a dig at Adobe right away - "iPad doesn't do flash, we don't care, you're all gonna love it anyway". I wholeheartedly agree.
My only hesitation is that I know for sure that the iPad will be so successful that Version 2 will be better, longer lasting, camera toting, micro-fusion powered (but still no flash), and on my teacher salary, I probably won't be able to justify buying another one.
I'll just buy Version 3 when it's the size of a box of matches with direct neural input and a 50" holographic 3D display!
2010.01.27 / Viruses
This XKCD comic made me think about viruses. It's interesting, viruses are kind of a household name really, I'd say that the vast majority of computer users understand that viruses are something that can happen to them, even if they don't know how or why, or what to do to prevent against them etc etc.
I haven't had a virus for many years, and it has nothing to do with me using some exotic operating system; my day-to-day computer was Windows XP for years, only recently has it been upgraded to Windows 7.
It might have something to do with not having any kind of virus scanning software installed - I decided early on that the risk of maybe getting a virus was preferable to definitely having a computer that ran like shit.
I suspect though it mostly because I'm a vaguely intelligent law abiding type. I don't steal software or music or movies, so I have no need of P2P apps that aren't explicitly tooled to downloading updates for the games I have bought. I'm comfortably endowed so have no reason to open many of the emails I receive from for'n parts, I endure Windows Update regularly and I use Firefox as my primary web browser, oh and I rarely browse the internet outside of a firewall.
That pretty much cuts my attack vectors to obscure browser/plugin/OS vulnerabilities and maybe a trusted correspondant deliberately sending a legitimate looking attachment that I'm expecting for some reason.
Of course, I wouldn't be writing about this without ever having installed a virus checker, that would be foolish. The machine I am currently using started life with XP, 'upgraded' to Vista and then finally upgraded to Windows 7. The Vista incarnation lasted about 2 years and right at the end, a few months before its (probably final) metamorphosis I installed AVG, sat it scanning and went out for a few hours.
The result: No Viruses Found
Consider my feeling that riding bareback all this time was well worth the increase in performance justified.
Viruses are for thieves and old people.
2010.01.22 / Apple
Tycho wrote a little something about the Apple Tablet on Penny Arcade.
For me, Apple flew under my radar until they released the iPhone, it was my first Apple product and has so far been my last for the single reason of price.
I love this paragraph from the above, I think it epitomises where Apple have brought themselves:
It's got to be so annoying to compete with Apple, at anything really, because it's not like they're doing something fucking crazy. Everybody's had these ideas before. The difference, and this is grim if you are a competitor, but the difference is that everyone else spends a lot of time (and often, money) determining why those things aren't possible. And then it comes out, for real, only you didn't make it. Some other guys did. And when you come out with what is (on paper) a better version of the same thing, maybe even multiple times over, it's too late. You made a "product" to compete with their "product," tastefully arranging your regiment, only to discover that they hadn't made a product at all - they made a narrative. A statement about how technology should interface with a life.
2010.01.15 / Apple Tablet
I'm never going to be a major source of news, so I don't rush to post about all the KoOL N3W StuFFS! but I'm getting quite excited about the prospect of an Apple Tablet of some description.
John Gruber has been keeping my saliva glands going over at his Daring Fireball Blog.
Dan Moren posted on the Macworld blog regarding text entry on the still mythical device:
And now for something completely different - Everybody likes to watch Steve Jobs pull a rabbit out of his hat—especially if he’s not even wearing a hat. (Did I just blow your mind?) Will it be nose-based text entry? Psychic text entry? Camera-based lip-reading? Sub-vocal voice recognition? There are so many possibilities that it wouldn’t surprise me to see something that we'd never even thought of. Odds: 20 to 1
This is my personal favourite of his options, whatever you think of the iPhone, I really do think it changed the way we think about mobile devices and I'd like to think this new tablet device will too.
I've used tabletPCs in the past - a few different models all running WindowsXP Tablet Edition. I didn't mind it too much, got fairly good with the handwriting recognition and was usually happy just scribbling straight into OneNote, but it was clumsy and definitely slower than typing.
As for things we never even thought of - I've always been interested in chord keyboards, which you don't really see these days but has some mileage in mobile devices. It certainly has the steep learning curve that I've seen rumoured regarding the new Apple machine.
I don't think mobile devices will really move forward in this area until we have some kind of direct-telepathic interface, which is not nearly as crazy far-fetched as it once was!