home to a blogger formerly known as lost
Geek
Google Latitude
Feb 5th
So there’s Google Latitude now. Possibly meant to be primarily a mobile phone feature, it can also be accessed as an iGoogle widget, meaning that even on a computer (probably a portable laptop), you can proudly broadcast your location (to selected friends, of course).
I was quite curious how the location feature worked on a computer, since it doesn’t rely on mobile network towers or GPS (which is usually what a phone would rely on). It seems to provide a level of accuracy far beyond that of simple IP location matching (although that’s a possibility I guess). Google claims that they rely primarily on WiFi router strength – Weiyi provided me a link about WiFi triangulation, and it seems like that’s the way that Google does it. Although they would still need to know the relative signal strengths available at various locations – could it have gathered the (Singaporean) data while taking photographs for Street View? Does it not work to such accuracy in certain other countries? Hopefully the random geeks who stumble upon this post (it happens!) can fill me in on this.
Annoyingly enough, there doesn’t seem to be a way to chat with other people via Latitude (or at least, I couldn’t find any way to do so) on my phone – I was hoping to use it as a Google Talk client. I guess maybe it’s not available on the S60 version?
In not-so-but-slightly-related news, Google Chrome seems set to support extensions before June. I foresee a migration from Mozilla Firefox among the geeks… I certainly would, if it’s faster and has all the features I’m used to in my pimped-up Firefox. Assuming it supports OSX by then, of course.
iPhoto '09?
Jan 31st
It’s like Apple hates me or something. Everytime I buy a new machine they release something groundbreaking shortly after, so I’m not too surprised that shortly after I’d started using Picasa for Mac they decided to mock me by releasing an extremely impressive iPhoto '09.
I especially like the ability to tag photos with faces and places, functions that Picasa already has – but only online. I’m pretty sure the Picasa client will eventually catch up, but probably not soon enough – especially not the Mac version’s! I feel a little like I’m betraying Google, but I think I just might give iPhoto a spin once more…
Policy: The Game
Jan 27th
I haven’t worked so hard on a project for awhile… this one was surprisingly fun, though! Basically designing a simple board game for a tutorial tomorrow. It’s a group project, with some input from all, but Kenny and I have been the main contributors for the game itself. Here’re the PowerPoint slides for tomorrow when I present the game rules – check it out if you like. The formatting’s a bit different after uploading, but the text is all there.
Anyone interested in publishing this for us? =P
Jobs evolution
Jan 25th
I randomly happened upon a video of the first Apple Macintosh by Steve Jobs – and boy, I totally didn’t recognise him. This followed with me checking out various other videos of his keynote addresses. It’s interesting to see how he’s changed across the decades, as has the Macintosh.
Macintosh (1984)
iMac (1998)
iMac Aluminium (2007)
You can also check out the 2001 iPod introduction, when we were first introduced to the most popular line of MP3 players ever. I think it’s really impressive for one man to pretty much bring Macs, iPods, and even Pixar into the world, regardless of whether you actually use/encounter all these products. Hopefully his health improves soon – I’m quite eager to see what else he can crank out in the decades ahead!
Picasa for Mac
Jan 6th
Picasa’s been released for Mac! Finally. Having used Picasa to organise my photos on Windows prior to switching to Mac, I quite dislike iPhoto. Very much, in fact.
If I were to stop playing games on the PC, there’ll be practically no reason for me to boot to Windows anymore…
GPS fun
Nov 25th
You know a something’s really fun to play with when it makes you go jogging, after weeks of (exercise) inactivity.
I’ve been playing with the GPS function of my new phone for quite a few days now, initially just to locate myself on the Singapore map, but more recently with turn-by-turn voice navigation, albeit with simple familiar routes. That in itself was already rather entertaining – perhaps it was just the novelty of it all, but I do think voice navigation is pretty useful, especially for someone who’s really bad with directions (such as myself). After all, why bother researching how to go somewhere if you don’t go there often?
The fun factor really scaled up, however, upon discovering Nokia Sports Tracker. I was trying to figure out how to chart the path covered using GPS, which struck me as a relatively simple thing to do – the program just needed to keep a log of the calculated location as it changed. The default navigation program wasn’t able to do that, though, and I later found one that was.
Yesterday afternoon, I decided to take a test walk around my neighbourhood, making a trip to Novena Square before turning around and heading home. The data collated was easily uploaded for analysis and easy sharing (click here to see what the interface looks like). Pretty nifty! Now I really wanted to play with it a little more.
So about half an hour later I was out for a run. I wanted to replicate the route I’d used to run before NIE started, since I’ve been curious what the exact distance covered was, and to more thoroughly test the various features of the program.
Sadly, it wasn’t particularly successful. As you can see, although I was out for about 45 minutes, somehow the program stopped gathering data at about 20 minutes. The photos I’d taken along the way (all after 20 minutes) were supposed to be automatically tagged to the map, but as a consequence are all registered as being taken at the last location recorded. I suspect it’s because of the version I was using (changes for the experimental v1.82 include “Fixed a problem with GPS sometimes turning off in the middle of exercise.” – d’oh!)
Strangely enough, the location data is accurate when I examined the photos on my phone, so I assume duplicate (erroneous) copies were created for the program. I managed to upload the geotagged pictures to Picasa (and have their location automatically registered). You can take a quick look at the album (and observe the mapped locations at the right of the picture) – among other things I managed to capture somebody riding a Segway (in Singapore? Seriously?)
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| CJC running route |
I really wish I’d had this capability back in my university days, it’d have been great to chart my running routes in the UK and Japan. Or even my holiday travels. The possibilities are not limited to sports alone – I’ve even read some online comments on people trying it on their airplane flights!
I’ll be trying to map the route of the night cycling event my GESL group has organised tonight, hopefully there’re no glitches this time and my battery somehow manages to last the night!
Nokia N85
Nov 24th
So I got myself the N85 after all. I wasn’t able to find someone with a spare phone upgrade (with contract extension) they weren’t planning to use, but armed with my arsenal of Tangs vouchers, I still managed to get it cheaper than the standard SingTel price (with a 6% rebate earned when using a Citibank card, too!).
I was actually debating if I should upgrade the phone the day I got it – I was actually quite contented with my previous phone (which I managed to sell for a cool $150), and I didn’t really need the mobile entertainment value the Wi-Fi connectivity offered, since I’d be in Japan for nearly a month. That last factor, however, was what pushed me to get it in the end – having read an article on using GPS in Malaysia (also applicable to Singapore), I was really keen to try out using GPS when in Japan this time round. I don’t think I’ll have voice navigation available in the region, but it’ll still be pretty fun (and useful) to be able to locate myself on a map while on the road there.
I’ve not been disappointed with the phone so far, aside from maybe the rather hard-to-press control buttons. Thankfully, the number buttons (the ones used for text messages) are much better. Wi-Fi connectivity has (thus far) turned out to be less useful than anticipated, though perhaps after installing more programs it’ll be appreciated more. Battery life has been good so far (it’s the main reason I’m avoiding the iPhone), although with all the extra functions I tend to play with it more and increase recharge frequency.
All in all, it’s been a pretty good purchase, and I’ll probably update again after having more thoroughly explored some its potential functions.
New Macs
Oct 15th
So there are new Macs now. It seems like shortly after I purchase a new machine, they announce a new (relatively) major change – luckily this isn’t as big as as the switch to Intel chips announced 3 years ago, or I’d be so terribly annoyed. At least my current machine can still run Windows and games pretty well.
But for anyone still holding on to an old machine and wanting to upgrade, this seems like a great time to do it – new aluminium bodies for MacBooks, dedicated graphics cards, TWO graphics cards for the MacBook Pro (one generation more advanced than mine, too), spiffy new design… Sigh! I want one too!
Maybe this time I’d wait for the next major revision (3-4 years later?) before getting the next one…
Web design for education
Oct 4th
Wow. I just spent the last few hours working on my physics assignment. My partner pretty much produced all the content for this task (it’s supposed to be my turn the next time round), but I did spend quite some time and effort working on the presentation (in the form of a website). Much of the time was probably spent figuring my way around using iWeb, which I’ve never used before but was delightfully easy to pick up.
So here’s the final product – let me know if you see any mistakes, or areas where it can be improved!
Interactive Simulation Task on Critical Angle & Total Internal Reflection
I’m actually really proud of the way it turned out – I modified one of their default templates, but it still looks pretty good, and (I think) iWeb isn’t used frequently enough for it to be instantly recognised as superbly unoriginal. It’s great to see something I’d occasionally toyed with (web design) come in handy for my future career, and that even something as frivolous as this domain can come in handy!
I think I can see myself using technological tools quite often in my lessons. Now, if only I had more ideas on how to integrate it with English Language classes…
The scurrilous Mac
Sep 13th
So I’ve given Spore a try – it’s fun enough in the early stages, I suppose (I really quite enjoyed customising the creature), but later stages (tribal, civilization, space) rather lack depth, and I don’t really enjoy customising building and vehicle aesthetics quite that much. I’ll probably not be getting myself a copy, perhaps after they release some expansions (I’m expecting they’ll be milking the series much like they did with The Sims) to make the later gameplay somewhat more engaging?
Anyway, I recently got myself a Time Capsule for my home since I wanted a network drive for my laptop to do automatic backups on. I’m sure that buying a separate drive for my old Wireless-G router would have been cheaper, but I wanted the faster Wireless-N capability as well – large backups take a lot longer on the older technology! Besides, MOE is offering me S$400 per year I can spend on technological products (among other things), so I figured I might as well indulge myself this once.
I was rather shocked to realise during a backup one day that there was a file on the network drive which looked suspiciously like it was referring to my butt. I mean, I know I’m not the slimmest guy around, but I do draw the line at allowing my machines to make disparaging remarks about my rear end. Logic kicked in soon enough though, and upon investigating the detailed file information, it turns out that the backup file actually had a ‘sparsebundle’ extension, which when coupled with my continued use of the default computer name resulted in a very unfortunate contraction.
Maybe I should rename my computer someday…
