Ramble

I got a RaspberryPi recently and have been wondering what to do with it. After looking at the comments of a recent HN post on making a magic mirror out of an old Nexus tablet, there was a link to Jasper, a voice control platform made for a Pi. I’m kinda keen on doing something similar now (“Mirror Mirror on the wall… what’s the forecast for this evening?”). I think the issues are going to be how to keep it as low profile as possible, and to reduce power consumption. There were a few suggestions of full size monitors to put behind a two way mirror in the comments, but those tend to be pretty thick and chew up quite a bit of power. Some of the modular displays for things like the Pi seem like a better idea, and having them tied to something like Jasper for activation, rather than being on all the time could further cut down on the usage. ...

A lot of what I think about seems to be sparked from podcasts lately. I listen to a lot of them as I drive between towns, while I walk or run, as I shop. A lot of them are about technology, with a few generally interesting ones thrown in (lots of the NPR podcasts are great - it’d be nice if we did more of this in Australia). Recently I’ve had a bit of an overlap between two podcasts that I listen to: Vector (about technology) and Planet Money (which I guess is economics, but really seems to cover just about everything - I’m sure the economists out there will say that this is just as it should be). ...

Just a continuation of my admiration of useful changelogs in the iOS App Store. Etsy’s latest release promises to maximise my happiness. I wonder if I have to be using their app to be happy, or if it’ll increase it with a background update.

I’ve written before about how I feel about trackpads on pretty much anything that isn’t made by Apple (spoiler: I hate them), which is why I have mixed feelings about the reports of all the multitouch stuff coming in with Windows 10 (link for an Ars Technica review). On one hand one of the features I really love about OS X is the way in which it handles application switching, which is why it’s great to see some of that finally coming to Windows without third party software. ...

Since the July school holidays closely follow Apple’s WWDC this is usually when I feel motivated to sit down and have a crack at some of the programming projects that have built up in my todo list. Despite the winter weather being unusually pleasant this year, and in amongst a couple of road trips around the South-West (mostly Ingress-related), I’ve actually managed to do a surprising amount of coding done (even though they’re mostly proof of concept projects). ...

There has been a bit of a trend (if you can call it that - it’s mostly by one company: Facebook) of late when release app updates in the [Apple] App Store, but presumably it happens elsewhere too. The convention is that when you release a new version of some software, you tell your users what is new about it. If it’s a feature update then they can decide whether or not they want to upgrade (especially if it’s a paid update) and if it’s a bugfix update then they at least know what has been fixed, and in an ideal world only submit bug reports for unfixed bugs (but who are we kidding, these days “bug reports” are just analagous to one star reviews). ...

First of all, this post is not about charities or charitable donations. This is about a specific method of soliciting donations which seems to be disturbingly prevalent recently. The scene is you’re walking along, possibly listening to music, talking on the phone or otherwise minding your own business. Some chirpy (usually foreign) 20-something greets you like a long lost friend. Feeling a disconnect, you engage with them to find out what their deal is, hoping to clear up the misunderstanding. Before you can get a word out, you’re asked for your name and they immediately go for a handshake. ...

Being an Apple nerd I’ve been following what’s been going on at WWDC this year as usual, which includes listening to a slew of (often repetitive) podcasts from people who are actually there. John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame has done a live episode of The Talk Show there for a while, and so that was on my list. Now I run hot and cold on Gruber; when he’s in form he has some really good insights but lately I haven’t been that impressed by a lot of episodes of the podcast. So when the intro started and it sounded like more of the same I just about deleted the episode and moved on with my life until he introduced the special guest (complete with an “I shit you not…”) which was Phil Schiller. ...

One of the things which got me thinking about the previous post about teaching computing was a series of episodes of the Planet Money podcast. The series arc, which begins with Episode 621: When Luddites Attack, looks at automation and its effect on jobs, as well as historical and more contemporary reactions to it. It finishes with a piece of speculative fiction about what happens when there are no more jobs. Check it out. It’s pretty light going, with short episodes. ...

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about the identity of Computing as a subject. This has been brought on by a few factors, some recent, like a professional development day held by the local vocational training provider (South West Institute of Technology) where a local business council member looked at results of a survey of small business and the skills that they were after from young people coming from education and training. Of course I mostly paid attention to the technology skills, which were the same old song we’ve heard since I started teaching a decade ago: the Office suite, and not much else. ...