Technology! Just because you *can* do something…

… doesn’t mean you should. I bought a Philips hue starter kit a while ago. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a system for controlling the colors and intensities of LED lightbulbs remotely, via a wireless base station connected to your home network, which in turn speaks the Zigbee protocol (I believe) to the … Continue reading “Technology! Just because you *can* do something…”

… doesn’t mean you should.

I bought a Philips hue starter kit a while ago. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a system for controlling the colors and intensities of LED lightbulbs remotely, via a wireless base station connected to your home network, which in turn speaks the Zigbee protocol (I believe) to the lights. Essentially, it allows you to do stuff like this:

There are actually 3 lights in that picture, red and green ones visible, and a blue one lighting the top right corner.

Anyway, my thinking when I bought the kit, was that I was going to use the (very cool) RESTful API it provides to do some interesting web hacking of my the lights. Of course, I haven’t had time to do that — I don’t know why I thought otherwise — and so what I have effectively done, at this point, is replace a perfectly functional light switch with an app on my phone. I.e. enter room, get out phone, start app, tell lights to go on, put phone away. Not a win.

But wait, I think, someone must have built a light switch that will control a hue setup. All it would have to do is tell the lights to go on when the switch is flipped. Well… this may exist, but I couldn’t find it. The closest I could come was this:

The WeMo Light Switch

So, this is a light switch that, in addition to doing what it normally does (i.e. switch the current to a light on/off), also talks to your wireless network. That, in itself, wouldn’t solve the problem, but along with the obvious feature of giving you yet another app that can control your lights, the WeMo switch also interfaces to the brilliant site IFTTT (a.k.a. “if this then that”).

IFTTT is a website that lets you set up simple rules based on a trigger (i.e. “this”) and an action (i.e. “that”). It behaves exactly as you’d expect: when the trigger happens the action gets executed. There is quite a range of triggers and actions — it’s worth checking out — but the operative detail here is that WeMo light switches can be triggers and hue lights support several actions including turning on and off. Can you see where this is going?

The sequence of operations is this:

  1. Hit WeMo light switch
  2. Light switch connects (over the internet) to IFTTT.com
  3. IFTTT tells all (3 of) my hue lights to turn on.
  4. Room lights up

Unfortunately, aside from the completely gratuitous use of the internet to control something entirely within my home office, there are two real problems with this:

  1. One of the 3 hue lights is connected to a wall sconce that is physically switched on/off by the WeMo switch. Because the power to that light is interrupted when the light is turned off, when it turns back on, it comes on white (i.e. it loses whatever color setting it had before).
  2. Although IFTTT does get the other two lights to turn on, the time between when the switch trigger happens and the resulting action is fired is… variable. Often it’s only a couple of seconds, but I have waited as much as 15.

Oh well. The end result is I can now almost turn the lights on and off again, and I have learned an interesting lesson in the limits of technology.

(Oh, and my lights flash when someone blogs about Orion. 😉 )

Pics of the new deck.

After 17 years, our old backyard deck had had enough: the wood was rotten in several places, the dog nails had shredded several of the boards, and the stairs were failing to the point where they were starting to get dangerous. Since we really do use the deck a lot in the summer, we decided … Continue reading “Pics of the new deck.”

After 17 years, our old backyard deck had had enough: the wood was rotten in several places, the dog nails had shredded several of the boards, and the stairs were failing to the point where they were starting to get dangerous.

Since we really do use the deck a lot in the summer, we decided to get it replaced. Here are some pics of the new one.

East half of the deck

Back of the deck

West side of deck

We’re very happy with the work that was done, and as you can see, the results are stellar.

And now, a bonus picture. We also had our garage door replaced. Here’s the new one:

New garage door

ChromeBooks

So, my wonderful wife decided to get me something especially nice this Father’s Day. I had pointed out to her the Chromebooks that they have down at the local Future Shop, so she took me out Friday night and we went and got one. This one, to be exact: At $250, it’s clear that compromises … Continue reading “ChromeBooks”

So, my wonderful wife decided to get me something especially nice this Father’s Day. I had pointed out to her the Chromebooks that they have down at the local Future Shop, so she took me out Friday night and we went and got one. This one, to be exact:

From the Samsung website

At $250, it’s clear that compromises were made, but it works surprisingly well given it’s specs — 2Gig RAM, 16Gig SSD, 1.7 GHz “Samsung Exynos 5” processor (ARM Cortex-A15). The benchmarks show it as faster than a base Atom machine, but only 30..50% of an i3. Anyway, plenty fast enough.

To give you some idea what it’s capable of, as I type this, I’ve got a mouse and keyboard plugged into it, along with an external (HDMI) monitor. I have about 10 Chrome windows open (because, really that’s all you can do <g>) with one of them pointing at Rdio (and playing the latest Punch Brothers album over the HDMI speakers), one showing a remote desktop on my home server, one SSH’ed into my Raspberry Pi, a couple being used to write this blog post, and one connected to JazzHub where I’m keeping notes.

It also has a builtin microphone and camera and will happily participate in a Google Hangout video chat. It will cold boot in about 10 seconds and wakes from sleep in about a second.

As to the apps for it, in addition to the above, I managed to find solutions to almost all the things I normally need to do:

  • Files — DropBox, GoogleDrive, iCloud
  • Mail — iCloud Mail and GMail for home email; iNotes for work
  • Chat — Hangouts; no solution for Sametime yet
  • Twitter — Tweetdeck
  • RSS — Feedly
  • Reddit — Reditr
  • eBooks — Kindle Cloud Reader, Kobo Instant Reader, Google Play Books
  • Office — Google Docs, Sheets, Slides (and iWork once it comes out of beta)
  • image editing — Pixlr

I even managed to get access to my password safe, albeit without the full browser integration.

Of course, the reason I wanted one of these was to use it for testing the experience of working with Orion. I’m going to try to use it for my day to day development and testing for at least the next few weeks. So far, the experience has been good, but I’ll let you know if I discover anything particularly limiting.

So what don’t I like about it?

  • Regardless of the offline support some apps provide, this really is a one trick pony: It’s for being on the internet, and if you don’t have a connection, you might as well save your battery life.
  • The external hardware support works, but just: I wasn’t able to get the acceleration rate high enough on the mouse I use; the max resolution on the HDMI port was lower than the native resolution on the monitor I use; I hung the entire machine twice while getting the display hooked up; etc.
  • The keyboard layout is pretty wonky — massive ctrl and alt keys, with a tiny shift key and hard to hit return key, and somebody must *really* like the backslash character since there is a key to enter it on both sides of the keyboard (in exactly the right places to have you accidentally hit them while going for the shift and return keys).
  • It really does have an incredibly small SSD drive, plus limited ability to expand that using the built in SD card slot since the memory card sticks out so far you have to remove it when you aren’t using it. *sigh*. The former I might understand given the low price, but it makes the latter unforgivable.

Anyway, it’s not a replacement for the MacBook Pro, but it works pretty well. I could see taking just this device (and a USB HD to download pictures) if I was travelling. I believe the pricepoint is interesting too. It’s a nicer experience to work on than an iPad (even with a keyboard) at a significantly lower price. Now all they have to do is get the app ecosystem a bit bigger and it might start to make sense for the wider community.

First workout

In an effort to finally get back in some kind of reasonable physical condition, I’ve started going to the gym again. Last week, my wonderful wife took care of getting me (and Dennis) signed up at Goodlife where she was already a member. Today I did my orientation and a first workout: all 9 machines … Continue reading “First workout”

In an effort to finally get back in some kind of reasonable physical condition, I’ve started going to the gym again.

Last week, my wonderful wife took care of getting me (and Dennis) signed up at Goodlife where she was already a member. Today I did my orientation and a first workout: all 9 machines of the “basic” set, twice, 12 reps on each, followed by 15 minutes on the stairmaster. Of course, all of that on settings so low that I suspect catatonics could keep up, but in any case, it’s done, in just under an hour of steady work.

Now all I have to do is keep going regularly. I could imagine getting there twice a week, but I doubt I’ll be able to do more than that. I guess we’ll see.

All I need is a Portal

No, not that kind of Portal. In this case, I’m talking about any device that can connect to the internet: desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, e-readers, smart TVs, and I’m sure many more that I have missed. I’m probably late to this party, but I have finally clued into that fact that I no longer do … Continue reading “All I need is a Portal”

No, not that kind of Portal.

In this case, I’m talking about any device that can connect to the internet: desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, e-readers, smart TVs, and I’m sure many more that I have missed. I’m probably late to this party, but I have finally clued into that fact that I no longer do anything that doesn’t require a connection to the internet. “But wait!”, you say, “what about…”

… Professional Life?

I’m guessing most people get this already but, of course, there’s email. And then there’s the myriad of web forms that I process. And the scheduling that lives on a central server. And the 7 (!) instant messaging systems that I’m always connected to…

Like most people in the high tech industry, the entire context for the work I do lives entirely on the internet (or at least the intranet). Heck, my team is split across half the world, so I couldn’t even communicate with them without Sametime (*sigh*) and IP phones.

But then what about the actual software development tasks that I’m supposed to be doing? Well, you know desktop Eclipse is still my bread and butter, and aside from downloading it (and updating it) via eclipse.org, it really will run without an internet connection on your favorite desktop. But then all of the content that I work with actually lives on the eclipse.org servers, so I do need a connection to pull/push my work, even if I can get by without one in between.

And that’s the important detail, actually. I now think of working locally as “working from the cached” data; it’s certainly useful to have a way to work without an internet connection, but I absolutely must have one when I’m doing something real. That progression is what’s at the heart of the Orion work.

Orion actually seems like the most natural thing in the world to me now: I could run an Orion server on my local machine, which (together with a browser) gives you a story conceptually equivalent to Eclipse desktop: Local tools, running against a cached version of something that really lives on the internet. But why would I want that? If I need the internet to get the “real” data, why not serve the tools from there too? Obviously, they would need to still perform well and be fit for purpose, but beyond that there really isn’t anything special about having them local.

Case in point: While waiting for a laptop upgrade at work I was stuck for a few days running on a 1Ghz netbook with 2Gig of RAM. (Long story, better left untold.) During that time, I used the netbook as just a portable web browser — think “Chromebook” [Aside: why are all the current Chromebooks slow?]. On it, I kept web pages open on Lotus iNotes (for work mail/calendar), iCloud (for home mail/calendar/address book), and GMail (to hold my bugzilla spam 😉 ). I also spent the time doing useful Orion work, again with multiple windows open. All in all, this worked perfectly well. It wasn’t speedy, but it wasn’t holding me back. On that machine, at least, there would have been no hope of getting Lotus Notes and Desktop Eclipse both running reasonably. No way.

I can even get to all of those sites, and work with them, on my iPad. With an external keyboard, it’s actually almost good enough as a full time “portal”. Even without one, the first time you realize you can now do work anywhere there’s a cell signal is quite an eye opener.

Regardless of the tool to get there, I really can’t do my work without access to the internet. Maybe I could have at one time, but now if the network goes down, it makes more sense to go home, or anywhere else that you can get a network connection. (I actually shared my phone hotspot with others the last time that happened, so they could keep working.)

Ok, so what about…

“… gaming?”

Well, let’s see, what games do I currently play? Truthfully, all the games I play are PC based. It’s been years since I played a board game or card game, and I only occasionally play games on handhelds or consoles. For me, it’s all about PC gaming (and really that’s only reason why I still have a PC 😉 ).

So, what am I playing? There are the MMOs, of course, which are internet only by definition:

(and those are just the ones I’m currently playing).

Then there are the blockbuster single-player titles that I still make time for — things like Diablo, Deus Ex, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and hopefully Watch Dogs (I’m expecting good things).

The thing is, I never go to a brick and mortar store to buy PC games any more. I almost always download the games from one of the online providers like Steam or (if there is no other choice) Origin. When you use one of these services to buy your games, the systems requires you to check in with them (via an internet connection) when you go to play the game. Not ideal, but I’ve gotten used to it, and (at least in Steam’s case) they also provide the side-benefit of uploading your game saves, so you can just delete the entire game off your system, and if you ever decide to play again, pick up where you left off at the cost of a (free) re-download.

Diablo 3, of course, is even more tied to the internet. It is effectively running an MMO backend, under the covers, even when you are playing in single-player mode. Your character can’t do anything without a connection. Wow! A couple of years ago, that idea would have been laughed at, but clearly that’s changed.

In any case, for me, computer gaming really does need an internet connection.

Ok, so what about…

“… everything else?”

You get the picture and this post is getting too long.

I make music; it uses samples from (and gets saved back to) SoundCloud. I watch movies; they come from iTunes. My car dealer, dentist and family doctor all remind me of upcoming appointments via email, and almost all of my bills now come in the same way. I buy things from Amazon and pay by PayPal. When I travel my GPS app gets current traffic info from the web. When I buy coffee, I pay for it with my phone. I’m an avid reader of ebooks, but haven’t read a paper book in years…

It would take 10 more articles this long to capture all the ways I depend on the internet.

So, like I said, my entire life needs an internet connection. I’m actually ok with that. I’ve come to grips with the fact that we’ve crossed a boundary we can’t uncross. What about you?

George and the christmas decorations.

He was a bit confused when we started building a tree in the living room, and when we started bringing out the boxes of decorations, he figured it was best if he just stayed out of the way. He’s only tried to eat one of the Christmas balls so far, but I suspect he hasn’t … Continue reading “George and the christmas decorations.”

He was a bit confused when we started building a tree in the living room, and when we started bringing out the boxes of decorations, he figured it was best if he just stayed out of the way.

He’s only tried to eat one of the Christmas balls so far, but I suspect he hasn’t quite learned that lesson yet.

A theme away, A theme away,…

I upgraded to the latest wordpress and ended up with a completely trashed theme. This is just the standard “2011” theme. It will do until I can find something better. One of these days I’ll get around to doing my own. (note to self: Orion needs a project type for creating wordpress themes.)

I upgraded to the latest wordpress and ended up with a completely trashed theme. This is just the standard “2011” theme. It will do until I can find something better. One of these days I’ll get around to doing my own.

(note to self: Orion needs a project type for creating wordpress themes.)