Watching an HBO series on DVD and just pondering this. HBO caught a generation with the “Dead Channel” intro (even spoken to by William Gibson) but it’s a lost meme. What would be the meme today? A 404 going to a webcast/web stream? Not sure if there is a translation to what they made a staple.
Posts Tagged Life in General
Contemplations.
Oct 8
Generation Gap
Jul 23
OK, been quiet for just TOO long. Wanted to post a quick observation to break the silence. I’m an old Geek. (If you’ve met me you know I can’t lie about that.) But I do try to keep up with ideas (and hopefully get ahead of a few.) But something’s been bothering me and it’s a very SOCIAL not Technical thing.
I’m still used to having my username assigned.
Gen Today is used to generating their own username.
THIS IS KEY.
If you’re a corporation – you’re used to on-boarding people (Spellchecker wanted the hyphen, I’ve never seen it in real life) and part of that process is generating a user ID that more than likely permeates through the organization. Sometimes two or three or a dozen. You expect people to have this as their primary, most of their waking life identity. Their identity is key to their day job, and anything they do outside of that MUST be separate.
If you’re an independent you expect to have control over your ID and anything that may be pre-generated becomes a task and something that you’re just going to have to deal with, but like waste disposal, do it as quickly and efficiently as you can to get back to the real stuff. If you don’t have this – unfortunately you don’t really succeed as an independent, you end up on someone’s staff.
If you’re of my generation – your “True Name” may be something supplemented an alias you don’t hang your hat on in public. It’s your RPG/Shadow/Ghost name. “Mr Slippery” isn’t a name for someone that has an office address. Something you say what you think with (hopefully) little hope of reprisal. If you don’t have one then traditionally you may have been a “Lurker.” Someone that hears much, says little and stays in the wings of the theater.
But that’s changing. More startup companies and business are identifying either both online and offline as the same thing, or identifying with their online identity first. You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your given name, so to some extent that’s not as surprising as it might be.
I find this VERY interesting.
New Location
Dec 21
You may notice something new as check your feed or visit my blog. I’ve been doing some renovation and changes to get ready for the new year. It seems about this time every year I look at the site and really want to do something new with it. New version of the software, new type of operations, it’s always something.
Well this year, I’ve decided to really push things. I’m going to continue learning about SEO and what that means from a content and development side. But not just that, I’m running in a hosted environment now as well – I’ve worked for a very long time with a server of my own (physical or virtual) and I really thought I’d like to learn about the environment that most users and developers work in.
This site is the result of the intersection of both of those pushes. And as a side effect, I’ll get to learn a good bit about PHP under IIS 7 as well, and how this world compares to my more familiar world of SharePoint and capabilities that I’ve been using so long.
It’s a grand experiment, you’ll probably see me break some things, do some flubs, trip up on some items, but I’m going into this with the same attitude that I generally do with cooking. If you already know how it’s going to turn out, then what’s the use of doing it?
So if you’re tired of shooting Zombies in Left4Dead on your XBox, or have beaten the “I, Zombie” level on Plants vs Zombies one too many times, and you’re in the Seattle area – try the live action event!http://blog.seattlepi.com/digitaljoystick/archives/172804.asp?from=blog_last3
I want! http://nevver.tumblr.com/post/128929601/realtime-3d-airtraffic-fubiz Of course I mean the display hardware mostly. The controls seem like they could be refined a bit more.
Pavel sent this to me a while ago, but I haven’t been keeping up. You know those super expensive universal all in one programmable remotes? Well he put together one all on his own, the great part is that he can can keep adding to it or tie it into other systems to work. On his post below he shows how to take a simple IR LED and a Micro Framework board and create his own multisystem IR remote. But once you do that, you’ve got the basis for LOTS of other stuff – add an RF transceiver and you’ve got a bridge/extender. Add an IR photocell and you’ve got a learning remote. Take advantage of the networking capability, and you’ve got a house controller that doesn’t have to be hard wired in any particular location…
Oh, and did I mention that Servos work off the same concept of pulse modulation? No, I don’t have to, you’ve already figured that out!
http://bansky.net/blog/2009/04/microframework-device-controlled-via-tv-remote/
Microsoft Hohm enters Beta
Jun 25
Some of you may have already seen the Hohm site – but if you haven’t you can take a look over at www.microsoft-hohm.com (and sign up while you’re there.) I’d also recommend taking a look and possibly subscribing to the team blog – http://blog.microsoft-hohm.com.
So why the blog post? Well lots of people saw what Hohm is about – letting you know your energy usage and allowing you to plan and optimize what you’re using (which is pretty critical as I type this and look at my weather station readings – 107.32F right now.) This helps us survive the bills and the weather and our power grid survive the demand load that summers generate with record breaking heat and expanded populations in the hotter parts of the country.
But there was something in the announcement that I don’t know that a lot of people caught. That was this line in the release – “… if you are a customer of a Hohm-partnered utility company you can choose to automatically upload your energy usage data into the application in the near future.” Hmmm. Now that’s interesting. I was hoping for something like this eventually, but it sounds like the feedback loop of our “Smart Power Grid” efforts are actually starting to come about in the real world! Now that’s progress!
BTW, why did I put this also under Robotics? Because that feedback loop that’s starting to happen is exactly what mobile robots have to do all the time. Not just send instructions on power consumption, but monitor usage, monitor needs, prioritize, and then manage that consumption to goal. Lots of crossover opportunities.
Signs of life.
Apr 28
Did ArcReady Austin today, CloudCamp on Saturday. Look for some more blog posts later this week.
Amazon is really working hard to become the first place you go to find digital content. We all know what the Kindle is doing for eBooks, and the Amazon digital music service is my favorite today. Well, I just found out that they’ve just jumped into the XBox 360 Live Arcade Games market as well! That’s right, if you want that cool new Live Arcade Game but forgot to pick up a point card (or just don’t really want to figure how how much that price translates to) then just head over to http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=979417011 and pick up your points or that game you were looking for through the Amazon purchase process. Now you’ll still have to enter your code in on your console (chat pad is handy for that) but that also lets you give gifts of games. So now you can get your friend that you KNOW you can beat a copy and they can join in with you online!
