My hands and the visual side of my brain had some free time today.
Tim
He’s being so good this morning. Sitting and playing and "talking" to himself.
I appreciate this bit of sleuthing, from my friend, about Facebooks inability to delete your data:
Taylor presents a good point. I think it’s important that we are all aware of what kind of company we are giving so much of our trust to. For related reading I would recommend this article from Giga Om.
I call this look: "wait until you see how much mayhem I cause when I can walk around like you guys". In other news, those two front teeth are starting to work. He mangled some rice cracker things tonight in his high-chair while we sat around the dinner table as a family.
I think we have an explanation for the volume level around here
recently. There are a couple sharp jagged things growing out of his
gums.
Eyes in the sky: Funny River Fire hightlights potential for unmanned aircraft
This article gives us a little more detail on the work that was done to monitor the fire on the Kenai peninsula in Alaska recently. The amount of work necessary to get this operation to work is impressive, but it begs for automation and simplification. Matt Parker and Marty Rogers seem to have been very creative and resourceful in their deployment of a UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) to map and monitor this fire. Here’s the sticking point that represents the first and biggest problem to solve for timely and effective UAS deployment in disaster situations.
One hurdle that was made apparent during the Funny River Horse Trail wildfire, was a lack of regulations in place for operating manned and unmanned vehicles in the same airspace, Rogers said.
While working on the edge of the Funny River Horse Trail wildfire, the UAV flew at night because the central Kenai Peninsula airspace is clear of manned aircraft after 11 p.m., Rogers said.
Google wants to start beaming internet from its high-altitude balloons next year | The Verge.
The video in the above article is from Google’s Test in Brazil:
In a future not too distant, in a world slightly more distant from us, there will be internet available in the most rural areas of the world through a network of extremely low altitude satellites. Communication relay gear suspended from dozens if not hundreds of helium balloons will soon be circling the globe if Google has it’s way. This could be one of the most significant advancements in closing the global digital divide, ever. It’s exciting to see what free and open access to information through the web will mean for the rest of the world.
I know that my job will get a lot more exciting and boring at the same time once every Compassion project is reliably connected with a high-bandwidth, high-availability internet connection.
Another interesting point about this is the political network design aspects. The balloons can be launched and based in one country and could physically cross borders with other countries on the upper air currents. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed. Assuming the connections are more or less on an open protocol, this means the residents of nations with an censorship/isolation regime will be facing a population who has unfiltered access to the internet. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to shoot these balloons down at their cruising altitude of 65,000 feet.
That’s another nice option for iPhone - *ography. Haven’t gotten any replacement video stuff yet. I keep lists of things like this bouncing around. A collection of compact accessories to make shooting photos and videos with an iPhone a little more pleasant and productive. Little tripod and grips are the first line of defense against bad image quality.
Becca and I were lucky enough to get to go see the new Library in Colorado Springs before it opens this weekend (June 21st). We saw a lot of incredible things. The new library takes up a huge space in an old MCI building at 1175 Chapel Hills Dr. in Colorado Springs. It’s just up the hill from the Chapel Hills Mall and Wal-Mart on North Academy.
We enjoyed the appetizers of course, but mostly we were there to see the technology and the community meeting spaces. There is a decent sized Maker Space containing three different 3D printers, a 3D scanner, a laser etcher, and a CNC routing table. This idea is huge, this technology represents a glimpse into the future of so many industries. At your public library you can now submit any project to be printed, and the only cost is for the raw weight of plastic that your design uses. (Prices to be determined still). This shows that the Pikes Peak Library District understands their future as an enabler for the information technology infrastructure for people that otherwise don’t have access.
There was also a decent start on a Video Production studio. They had a nice HD camera and a green screen and lights. There were 2 PC video editing stations as well as 1 iMac editing station. All in all a nice place to do some video projects. They say the video studio has a long ways to go.
Also on the top floor of the building is a couple of computer laps for teenagers to design and build video games. They had nice Alienware PC’s with several games as well as dev tools, Unity and ZBrush installed. Pretty cool. Lot’s of teenagers get into programming because they wanted to build their own video games.
The co-working area is on the south side of the second floor, it is pretty nice, I think they found a good balance between open and private. And, there is a wealth of conference rooms to be had in this building. There were probably 8 different rooms that I saw. All in all this felt more like a student union from college, or a big university library than it did a community library. Colorado Springs is blessed to have this kind of infrastructure in place for creative and technical people. I feel so happy that I have an option for going somewhere to make things since I don’t have space for a workshop at home. And I can see Becca and Simon coming here to spend an afternoon a lot. There is so much to do and the views are really nice.
I really really believe in this kind of effort in our community. This new facility could possibly make the Library relevant again to a whole bunch of people that would otherwise never step inside one. You did an incredible job, PPLD. Thank you!