Posted by Jerry on August 29th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology
It’s good to see some rain at last – but still only a trickle compared with what we need. Today has been a fixing day, replacing blown light globes in the dashboard of the car and in the speedo and tacho on the bike.
The Lostbiro web project is coming along and I have been madly preparing a site plan and getting photos taken ready for the great site building. Sharon has very helpfully organised the contents of my personal part of my ANU site into something resembling a decent site, and she has agreed to do a bunch of special graphics for me – *happy dance*!
Lostbiro? Yes, I’m now the proud owner of a domain name! I shall be moving a whole pile of stuff from my ANU site and will be building a full-on site for my band, Full Circle.
The big priority at the moment is to get the band site organised so we can go live by next weekend. The band email address is already working (fullcircle@lostbiro.com). Why the urgency now? Well, our National Folk Festival application goes in this week (first thing tomorrow), and our band’s web address is being listed – so I guess we ought to have a site ready for people to view.
I’d be interested in any ideas for things people would like to see on the site – so feel free to email me (or the band) or leave a comment on this blog entry.
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on August 27th, 2004 — Posted in Technology, Travel, Writing
I would venture to say that anyone who has travelled with a computer has given thought at some point to how to do it without carting around the ubiquitous briefcase-sized anvil. But I wonder how many have actually managed it? A recent series of articles recounts how an enterprising journalist sold his laptop on ebay and decided to use the proceeds to come up with a pocket solution that would cover the basic functions of an office on the move.
I found it interesting that the journalist had to restrict the technology to that of a couple of years ago, because some functions have disappeared, despite the much trumpeted convergence of technologies, and the so-called wireless revolution.
My needs are different from those presented in that series of articles, but only a little. And my version also fits in a series of pockets – though not the fishing vest the author advocates.
So here is my version of the laptop-less traveller. First my travel needs: I want to write stuff on a comfortable keyboard. I want to keep my expenses straight, and I want to keep appointments scheduled. I want to be able to send and accept notes to a fellow traveller’s palm-top. I want to be able to build and display web pages. I want to be able to scan text and to take photographs – and integrate the photos with the web pages. I want a common, compatible, storage medium that goes across all devices. I want to be able to print stuff. And I want to be able to use the internet. Above all I want battery power to last from Canberra to London, or to last for several days in places where mains power is at best intermittent – even if it is available.
My other condition is that I can’t afford to buy laptop, so my entire technology suite should fall within the price range of a base-level laptop.
Here’s how I did it. The centrepiece is the PDA. I don’t want to learn how to write all over again, so I immediately ruled out almost all of what is available today – yes you can buy separate keyboards, but they have extra hinges to break, sockets to get dusty, and above all, a portrait screen that doesn’t let you lay out written text very well. My choice was rapidly narrowed to a couple of machines that had integral keyboards – and some of those were more like calculator pads rather than keys, or required one to have fingers the size of a gnat. Some even required that you typed only with two thumbs. Some might say my typing may as well be with two thumbs! But I found the one I needed – a Psion 5MX – not made now for four years, and still streets ahead on practicality over most other PDAs.
There are some limitations – no WiFi connection, no USB ports (although you can use serial-USB connectors), the thing won’t (yet) play movies, and there is no colour screen. so why on earth would I persevere with such dated technology? Even the EPOC operating system is no longer supported (although some EPOC-6 programs will run on EPOC-5). And I have yet to be able to convert Psion Presentation documents to powerPoint (the mac doesn’t speak PsiWin – and it is one of the very few things left out of Neuon converter).
Here is why. The keyboard is still the best that has ever been on the market for such devices. It is small, but with keys large enough and well enough spaced to type quite comfortably – and even on the smallest aircraft you have room to spare on the tray for a coffee while you type. It also weighs only 350g including batteries Psion made some good choices for connectivity. Storage is on Compact Flash cards – which now go up over 1GB – more than enough for an extended trip. You can even take backups for all your favourite applications, and a whole library of e-texts. The ‘Word’ application can be persuaded to save as RTF which is readable by most word processors. Battery life is at least two weeks of heavy usage, and the thing uses readily available AA batteries – even up-country in PNG! The Opera web browser is good, providing well laid out pages very similar to full scale computer display.
The compact flash is one major key – it also fits the cannon A40 digital camera – and you can quite happily take the flash card out of the psion, throw it in the camera, take a few hots and load it back into the psion and embed the images in a web page – which can be displayed on the psion.
Sometimes I will want to scan small bits of text, say an entry from a travel book, or my airline ticket number. for this I use a wonderful little device called a C-pen 600c scanner. Mine again is quite old, but it does the job quite well. And I can beam its contents to the psion using the IrDa infra-red port and plBeam utility.
And I have a GSM travel modem – also psion, also no longer made, but which works well on a dialup connection through which I can send emails and surf web pages. Of course this is strictly hotel room stuff because you need a fixed landline connection. Or I can wait until I get home, transfer the compact flash card to the USB card reader on my mac and upload files straight from the card.
And that’s it – so far. As for a printer, there are a couple of travel printers that take IrDa input through an infrared port and no doubt I will get one before too long – I’ll let you know what I choose when the time comes.
In the mean time, I have yet to be stopped in airport security lines with my PDA being waved through, and I generally take only the Psion and camera on board – the rest (mainly power adapters) I stow in my baggage. The psion fits in one pocket, the camera on a belt pouch and a couple of spare batteries in another pocket – oh yes the camera also takes AA size batteries I have one tenth of the hassle of those who feel the need to cart laptops on board – perhaps to play games or watch a movie. I’m happy with a chess game and a couple of others, and I have a good selection of e-books to read.
Let me know what your travel set up is!
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on August 18th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Technology
My neighbour a few years ago thought I was mad when I told him I was making an electric motor. “You can’t make one, you buy them!” he said. Nevertheless he was intrigued when I took a piece of dowel, a large steel bolt, a reel of insulated copper wire and a tin can that I set about demolishing with some tin snips. He was even more amazed when I connected up three ‘Dolphin’-type square batteries and started the thing spinning. He even brought his young son over to watch the contraption. Yes it cost more than a new small electric motor, and yes it was less efficient than a bought one. but I had the satisfaction of knowing exactly how it went together. The instructions came from a 1950s children’s encyclopedia that I had picked up from a Lifeline bookfair.
I was therefore delighted to find a website devoted to all these neat things you could build out of household (or nearly household) items. Ever tried to build a ‘hero’ steam engine or thermopile? How about a crystal radio – or even a laser communicator powered by a cheap laser pointer used in lectures and presentations? They are all here on this site! It’s like that children’s encyclopedia, but updated and includes how to make your own solar power panels! It’s well worth poking around – and maybe you too will get inspired to find out how much of our modern ‘black box’ technology you can build yourself 🙂
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on August 14th, 2004 — Posted in Technology, Travel, Writing
I was recently reading a book on Ancient Egypt by Lorna Oakes and Lucia Gahlin. It is richly illustrated and covers a lot of cultural and belief system issues not covered in such breadth elsewhere. One of the cultural issues referenced in passing is the production of textiles – ancient Egypt was big in cotton and linen production.
About 60km south-west of Cairo lies a large depression in the Libyan desert – a fertile area around a large lake, called the Faiyum. It seems that in Phaironic times, the kings used to time out visiting the Faiyum area for a spot of fishing. Interestingly, in the reign of Ramses II (1279-1213BC some of the ladies of the harem were employed in the production of textiles there. There are references to Maathorneferura, the daughter of the Hittite king Hattusilis being one of these women. She lived in a palace at nearby Miwer, which appears to have been a textile production centre.
Several sources state that large estates and palaces in Ancient Egypt usually contained various workshops, including spinning and weaving studios, to provide the household with necessary items. The evidence would suggest that within such studios, tens of people, usually women, were involved in the production of cloth.
In royal palaces, these women were often the numerous wives of the pharaoh. Along with their children and servants, they were housed in harem palaces in remote areas, such as that at Abu Ghurab.
The linen from the towns of Tennis, Damietta, and Shata in the Northern Delta and in Faiyum and El Bahnasa in Middle Egypt, were particularly famous. Tennis, one of the most famous linen manufacturing centers, was known for a fabric called Al-Qasab Al-Molawwan, or the Brocade of Tennis. Historical sources state that Tennis had around 5,000 weaving workshops with 10,000 weavers and that there was no house in the world that did not have Tennis fabrics or clothes.
Linen, woven from the flax plant that grew prolifically in Egypt’s fertile delta region was first spun and then woven. There is a bit more information abut the actual spinning and weaving processes here.
Anyhow, Oakes and Gahlin’s book Ancient Egypt: An illustrated reference to the myths, religions, pyramids and temples of the land of the Pharaohs is a great read, lavishly illustrated and well worth buying!
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on August 11th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Technology
I watched the movie “Timeline” tonight – hired on dvd – a fun action movie based on Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name. The story involves an archeologist who is transported back in time using the concept of breaking the 3D person down into packets of information and ‘faxing’ the data to another place – except a wormhole gets in the way and sends them back in time.
I thought I’d look at the purported principle and found that, for example, the ANU has actually achieved quantum teleportation of a few photons of light. It makes use of a principle known as the “Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlation” or “entanglement” to impart information (spin) from one particle to another. The folks at IBM manage to explain it quite well in this site at www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/
Fascinating concept, but I think I might wait a while before giving it a whirl…
cheers
Jerry
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