Cultural transfer

Among the things that once confused me in the advertising in Byte and other US magazines was that some companies had telephone “numbers” that contained letters, and I wondered what US telephones might look like. An article in Dr. Dobb’s Journal gave away that there apparently were letters associated with the digits on the dial. Very strange, but eventually, as mobile phones appared, they also had letters on the handset, but they were used for texting, not phone numbers. Until now. This is the first occurrence of alphabetic phone numbers I’ve seen in Sweden, has anyone else seen them earlier?

Angry and disgusted

I’ve been tangentially involved in consumer aspects on what’s known as the Internet of Things, so when SICS announced the Internet of Things Day 2012 I thought it was interesting enough that I took the day off to attend the presentations.

Professor Kia Höök, whom I otherwise much respect, argued in her introductory presentation that applications for the Internet of Things need to be emotionally attractive and to function in everyday life. However, “everyday life” turned out to specifically mean “leisure activities of affluent Westerners”. At some point I’ve had it deeply embedded in me that my task as an engineer is to make the world a better place and at the end of the day I don’t think computer games are a high priority in that respect. In fact, as far as I could tell, the proposed applications were explicitly geared towards increased consumption, probably with the assumption that Expanding the Economy is a Good Thing.

Interestingly enough, the more technical presentations in the afternoon session did demonstrate e g environment-monitoring applications, but the wrap-up presentation introduced a training aid for the Swedish national ski team and it was obvious that a corresponding body posture monitoring program for, say, cleaning staff, hospital orderlies, or garbage collectors had never been and would never be even reflected on even though it would affect a lot more people who would be more likely to get longer-term benefits from such help.

Back in the day, when the students’ union was still organised along party lines, Socialistisk Kårfront (the Socialist Student Front) had a slogan like “Technical development for the working class”. I thought it was rather silly sloganeering at the time, but technical development that automatically excludes the working class is never going to be user-centred in my mind.

Professor Höök also spoke about making “desirable” applications, which I find even more insidious. One of the keynotes was delivered by a Chinese official and I reflected that while dictatorships may use various means in order to coerce desired behaviour on part of the population, it is usually clear that this is imposed from the outside, whereas marketers manipulating our emotions make us believe that it is we ourselves that want to behave in the prescribed manner, making it that much harder to break free.

Kauniita sanoja

Jostain syystä juuri mekaniikan alan sanat ovat minusta erittäin kiehtovat ja kauniit. Nyt satuin löytää Eero Aulan Englanti-suomi tekniikan sanasto. Omaperäistä on että kyseessäoleva tekniikka näyttää olevan metsäkoneisiin liittyvä ja ehkä sen takia löytyy ei ainoastaan sanoja kuten ”lattakaapeliliitin” ja ”tehonsiirtoketju” mutta myös ”kangassillihapero” ja ”variksenmarja”.

Things that work

A colleague had installed some software on his Mac: “…and it worked, just out of the box. And the most disgusting part is that I was totally unprepared for that!”

Honeybuns and I had long discussed upgrading to a proper system camera. So, being an aware consumer I went to the Råd & Rön website and looked up their test of system cameras. Now, this is one of the tests behind the paywall, so I was requested to send a text message containing a code to a given number. I did so, and within seconds the browser magically updated and brought me to the test spreadsheet. The best-performing camera was easy to pick out: The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2. Clicking on it I was brought to Pricerunner, where I got a list of suppliers and the prices they charged. Amazon UK turned out to be the cheapest by a wide margin, so I clicked on that link, was brought to the Amazon page for the camera, added it to the basket and checked it out. A couple of days later I had a package to retrieve at the nearest Coop and there was the new camera. I noted that it had been cheaper than the compact camera I bought seven years ago.

First obstacle: the battery charger was supplied with a British-style plug, but the charger itself had a standard two-pole connector, so half a minute of rummaging in my cable drawer brought out the right kind of cable.
Second obstacle: the camera was delivered without any memory card at all. That I thought was pretty stupid. So I had to buy a separate card. A life of experience strongly suggested one should always buy as much memory as can be fit into the device—it will soon be used up. So, a 64 GiB card should be the thing. Back to Amazon. After a bit of back and forth I came to the conclusion that no supplier will deliver 64 GiB cards to Sweden. Weird. So, let’s try a 32 GiB card then. Here I found a supplier, but as I am checking it out the price is suddenly doubled. What? Hm, they’ve slapped on 99 quid in postage & packing! OK, no sale for them. Finally I found a supplier who sells cheap, delivers to Sweden, and doesn’t charge ridiculous amounts for the postage and then I had a new package a couple of days later. Camera complete!

The future pounces on you

Every now and then I realise I’ve ended up in the future. As now, when I transferred all my digital photographs to my new MacBook Pro, iPhoto, in passing, scanned them all for faces. Now I can select a random photograph and click on Name and I get a little box marking a detected face in the picture and I get to name that person. Then iPhoto suggests a number of other photographs and I can just confirm or deny that that person is in that picture. The algorithm isn’t 100% perfect, and I hadn’t expected it to be either, but it’s much, much better than I had expected, matching faces with and without hats, with and without glasses, in shade and in light, looking this way and that. Every now and then it confuses Honeybuns and Kipper, but in all suggestions it has found the human faces and never random faces in places.

Social services

A couple of weeks ago my employer informed us in a brief meeting that the company would perform “cost reductions”, i e layoffs. Further information to come by the end of June. I had seen the writing on the wall and wasn’t particularly surprised, but unemployment was of course still a course of concern, so as soon as the meeting was over I got on Facebook (allowed at work) and sent out an SOS. Within minutes consolation and suggestions started coming in. A particularly hot tip came from a former student who works for Major Corporation. By next evening I had updated and sent off my CV. In the morning came the phone call: could I come for an interview the next day? Indeed I could!

A week later I was in for a second interview. I left with a signed contract and felt relieved, elated, nervous about how I’ll manage the new job, but also deeply grateful to my friends who came through so effectively, and of course also to the fancy social networking system that speeded up the job search so remarkably.

Now I’m wrapping up stuff and will soon be looking at the world from Kista Science Tower. Banzai!

Hippo happy

250 K and the already strained public transport breaks down completely.

On the crowded train a teeny child is unhappy—hot, bored and with the sniffles. It cries dejectedly. Its mother thinks for a while, then pulls out her mobile and puts this on repeat. The child immediately stops crying and stares at the funny animals with a beatific smile for at least the twenty minutes I was with them on the train.

I'm pleased that at least someone got something good out of the day; myself I am thawing frostbite for the second time today.

More scary robots

Boston Dynamics, whom I've mentioned before, have created a pole-climbing robot:

Warm air

On the 25th Christmas celebrations were over and I was to join Honeybuns to see her Arctic relatives. When I left I noted that there was a lot of snow on my balcony, but temperatures had crept upwards and the snow threatened to melt.

Note the snow on the tracks: No trains continue north from here.

My firstclass ticket got me a comfortable seat with power and Internet connection to play with as the grey train bored northwards. This ended in Sundsvall, only halfway to my destination, where I had to change to a coach.

The temperature was probably around 260 K, but the double-decker coach arrived soon enough that I didn't have to freeze. Quite a few people were continuing northwards, so we were late in departure from the station. As I had a fairly tight change in Umeå, I asked the bus conductor, when he came by selling snacks, whether we would make it in time for the 18:15 connection to Vindeln. He looked a bit non-plussed and responded that I was sure to make it to the 22:00 connection, which was the only one running that day. What!? He took my ticket and went off to double-check. He returned a while later, having confirmed on both telephone and web that since it was a red day, no 18:15 service was running, and me having been issued a ticket for it wouldn't help the matter, sorry.

I texted to this effect to Honeybuns and soon had a response back that she and her dear mother would pick me up in Umeå. I briefly considered protesting that I could manage on my own, but didn't really look forward to arriving in the middle of the night and gratefully accepted the offer.

The afternoon was already quite dark, so I couldn't see much of the surrounding landscape and read a book instead.

The young woman who'd silently sat next to me since Sundsvall got off in Nordmaling and was replaced by a very large youngster who all but crowded me out of my seat and regaled me with a non-stop monologue relating his dangerous, awesomely skilled and/or illegal stunts in all kinds of motor vehicles as well as the exact number of screws, metal plates and other surgical repairs he had in his body at the time. I was thus doubly relieved to finally arrive in Umeå and see Honeybuns and her mother inside the bus station.

We were soon in the car, still warm after the ride down, and travelled another hour through the darkness to arrive in Vindeln to be met by a long-awaited dinner. Then Honeybuns and I went out into the winter night for a walk. I equipped myself with extra socks, ski pants over my jeans and thumb gloves in addition to my bulky jacket and hat. We went out, trying to find a bit of darkness to see the stars from, but even here civilisation insisted on lighting up the environment to keep anyone from feeling afraid of the dark. Or perhaps, keeping everyone in fear of the dark. After an hour or so my cheeks were frost-bitten and I had icicles in my beard so we returned indoors.

The next morning Honeybuns' father and brother turned up for the next stage, driving deep into Lappland. We drove through the light hours of the day through Christmas card landscapes and arrived in Sorsele at dusk and snowfall. We went out for an evening walk again, but even the quite moderate wind tore away the protective layer of warm air around our faces and let the cold bite at the exposed skin.

The screen of my mobile was unfamiliarly blank—my operator had no coverage here. Within a few days the battery was empty, the phone having cried itself hoarse. “Hallo? Anybody there? Hallo!? Can anybody hear me? Speak to me!”

When the wind abated it was quite pleasant to move around (still clothed in layers on layers) even though it still snowed and the temperature was still low.

There's the sun—don't blink or you might miss it.

Our last day the temperature had dropped overnight to 240 K. The car tyres deflated as the cooling air in them shrank, the pneumatic strut for the bonnet no longer supported its weight. The heating system soon warmed up the interior and having topped up the tyres we left coastwards, our little bubble of warm air speeding through the darkening landscape.

After a night in Vindeln I caught the morning coach to Umeå (having called the bus company and ascertained it did run). A gaggle of girls of the fjortis persuasion sat at the front, chattering away while I tried to read.

In Umeå I had a an hour's wait for my connection, which I spent munching on the plentiful food packet Honeybuns' mother had supplied me with. Apparently quite a few people were going to Sundsvall, a bus company employee went around asking those getting off at stops before Sundsvall to get on an extra bus from a different gate. I had removed my hat and gloves while indoors at the bus station and when my bus arrived I didn't bother putting them on, expecting to get on the bus quickly. This was not to be, the queue got on the bus only slowly, people buying tickets as they got on, fiddling with their luggage and in general being very slow about things. The luggage compartment turned out to have frozen, necessitating a bit of violence on behalf of the bus driver to get it open, so when I finally got on the bus I was very cold, yet the bus just stood for a while with the front door wide open.

Then, when we left, the heating did not work. The bus driver fiddled with knobs and buttons on the dash and eventually I could feel warm air slowly blowing from the overhead nozzles, but it stayed on top of the cold air below and never reached floor level and my feet, which remained frozen the entire trip. And not only they, a passenger came up to complain that the lavatory had frozen and would not flush. The bus driver stated he could not do anything about this and we'd just have to cross our legs and bear it. I think he was a bit stressed by all this, as he almost left a passenger behind in Härnösand and almost left with the luggage of a passenger who got off in Timrå, in both cases only stopped by the rest of us shouting at him.

Anyway, I forgave the driver when we arrived at Sundsvall central station well before my train would leave. Well enough in advance that they hadn't unlocked the doors yet, so I and the other passengers stood on the platform, nervously bouncing on our toes to keep warm, until we finally could get on the heated train, jack in to the Internet and roll southwards. I hopped off at Arlanda, in the tunnel station which is cold every time of the year, likewise now, and waited for Upptåget to take me the minutes-short hop to Upplands Väsby, where Honeybuns had flown ahead of me.

Then, everything was warm again.

Pneumatic art

We passed the Stockholm International Fair a couple of weeks ago and found this wonderful contraption:

My dreams arrived…now?

I went to Norrköping today to visit the Norrköping Visualization and Interaction Studio. Ow, how performance has increased since I myself worked in the area.

We were treated to a demo of the Uniview interactive planetarium software. Our guide put us in space somewhere above the Earth, and then zoomed in on the International Space Station, its real-time position computed, but then time sped up and we could see ISS move around the Earth and then various other classes of satellites were added until the Earth was wrapped in a dense cloud of orbiting dots with an almost equally dense torus of geostationary satellites further out. Then they were gone and the surface of the Earth was mapped with economic indicators for all countries, but soon we left Earth for Mars, having a look at its surface before we sped out of the solar system, the Oort cloud enveloping it, continuing out of the galaxy and on and on until we passed the boundary of the visible universe. To my surprise space was hour-glass-shaped, an artefact due to the disk of our galaxy hiding most of the universe from our telescopes—clearly there is so much more to find out for us!

In the next room, another surprise: a Mitsubishi television screen, 73" across and perhaps 0.4 m deep. The screen was back-projected from a DLP projector inside the housing and not only did it do $1920\; \times \; 1080$ pixels progressive display, but it could be switched into active stereo 3D mode, displaying a crystal-crisp image. (The skydiving video really made me consider taking up skydiving.)

How cool that all the things we dreamed of then finally have appeared!

After taking leave of the NVIS people I returned to the station by way of Hobbyhörnan, where Håkan was in such a garrulous mood that I had to all but gnaw my leg off an hour later in order to catch the bus home. (Yes, bus. Due to track repairs, rail communications between Stockholm and Norrköping are limited at the moment.)

Technology is beautiful

I got this Christmas card from my friends at the Center for Parallel Computers.

Death in the age of Facebook

The mobile on my nightstand played its chirpy little tune. Picking it up I automatically noted the time: 01:27. My older half-brother S had—unexpectedly and prematurely—died a few hours earlier, please forward the message to Sis and Mom. I decided I could probably wait till morning to call them. While I returned to sleep the search for the members of a scattered family in infrequent contact continued, using Eniro, Hitta and whatever other sites allowed suitable searches for incomplete ID information. S's partner M was travelling abroad and had to be reached. A friend of hers in another city was located who managed to get hold of M on Skype in the early morning.

In the morning I left voice mail messages to call me on my mother's and sister's numbers. As I came in to work I saw S still logged in to his Skype account, where he'd left it going for his final exercise round. More subdued phone calls during the day, there would be a viewing at the hospital the next day. I was unfamiliar with the term, but googling confirmed that it was an opportunity to see the body. When had this procedure been (re-)introduced?

The next morning grim-faced siblings and half-siblings met at the hospital chapel with S's children and M. Raw unconstrained grief from M, we others struggling to keep outward emotions in check in the prescribed Nordic manner, this sometimes necessitating rapid exits to the bathroom, outdoors or just fixed staring away, breathing deeply. (I turned on my clinical mind and observed.) A hospital-issue welfare officer hovered nearby, but soon withdrew as she felt her presence unnecessary.

Eventually we had to leave, making space for others to meet their dead, and all went to S and M's house to find solace in each other and to manage the situation by planning practical details. Work, always a sure way to keep oneself from thinking. Where should the ceremony be, how should it designed? Buddhist or Orthodox ritual? “But none of that God stuff.” Those who had their laptops with them brought up iPhoto and shared their pictures of S.

The next few days we made points of friending each other on Facebook, adding each other to our Skype contact lists, updating our telephone numbers and email addresses to better stay in touch.

Eventually came the funeral, on the time when it had been possible to book a chapel and officiants. A completely secular occasion in a chapel in a silent forest burial ground, restrained and sad; token memories offered by grieving friends and colleagues. For practical reasons the actual interment took place at a different burial ground, now with an Orthodox priest blessing the dead, rapidly reeling off the necessary many words in the cold air, comforting perhaps not so much through any presumed presence of God, but by the familiar ritual, ingrained since childhood, the bedrock of generations behind. We others, brought up in Western Lutheranism, may not have understood what was being said, but still recognised the fundamentals of ritual and the support it gave.

And perhaps it is a modern kind of votive candle that S still is logged in to Skype.

This is what flying was meant to be like!

“Fusion Man” Yves Rossy straps on his jetpowered wings, steps out of an aircraft and flies off.

A very good video is made available by The Guardian.

I want this so bad!

Squarely in the uncanny zone

While a technological masterpiece, I find the Boston Dynamics Big Dog rather creepy.



It seems the developers Pantless Knights also have noted the weird feeling the opposing legs give and made an alternate version of the video.

A bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes

Yesterday morning I found my email didn't work. I wasn't terribly surprised, it was fairly obvious that Comhem had screwed up the transfers of accounts due to my recent move, and I even had a fairly good guess about what the precise problem was.

So I call customer support. “Right now many are calling us, call back later.” Lather, rinse, repeat.

Eventually I get “You are placed in queue. You are now … number 43. For speeding up processing, please enter your customer number and press #.” I enter my customer number and press #. Then I fiddle with stuff for fifteen minutes while the queue is processed.

Finally a human voice responds. I explain my problem and what I want done about it. “Uhm, err, OK. What's your customer number?” The one I just entered for you, so processing could be speeded up by you not having to ask for it? I give my customer number. Possibly I do this through gritted teeth, because I have to repeat it a couple of times before it gets across properly.

Of course the person I speak to is unable to solve my problem but has to escalate it to someone who actually knows how to operate a computer, but they'll call back! “Do you have a number we can reach you at?” Yes, and it's in my customer records that would be in front of you if you hadn't been abandoned by your management and forced to use quill and papyrus as working tools. I give my number, with the mandatory repetitions.

Of course I do not receive a tracking number for my case, so now when I still have not been called back and still don't have working email, I'll have to explain it all from the beginning for the next customer support droid who will have no idea of any previous call from me…

Probably hand-wash only

Haute couture is really not my bag—I dress in whatever happens to be at the top of the clothes drawer, but Ny Teknik brought the fashion guru Hussein Chalayan to my attention. His Spring/Summer collection for 2007 contained several sets of animated dresses, i e they are equipped with motors, batteries and effectors so they can reshape themselves. Just watch:



Now, once you get more power in the system, so the transformations can be done faster and you add a bit of intelligence to the system so that it can react to the environment, then we're gonna be going places!

Also, looking at the entire event, who on Earth created that soundtrack? The models certainly don't look too happy either. The Clockwork Orange music in the background suggests the Ludovico treatment in action…