mechtopia

I thought I'd add my bullshit riot explanation to the mix.

Image by Bluesquarething

The media is still in a post-riot speculation frenzy as to the underlying cause of the recent rioting in London. So far I've heard the following:

• Social deprivation
• Racial tensions
• pseudo - racial tensions
• Government cuts
• Gang culture
• Anarchism
• Alcoholism
• Authoritarian conspiracy
• Lack of policing

... And many more.

So what's my bullshit explanation? well, it's more complicated than any one explanation. People yearn simplicity in explanations, so that they can find a simple fix. Sadly, life can be more complicated than that.

My hypothesis is that the events that unfolded formed around an idea: an idea to have a riot and to start looting that formed simultaneously after the reporting of the Tottenham riots, when people saw that there was violence and looting that was nothing to do with the protest, and that it was possible to exploit a situation without regard to an underlying cause.

This triggered a fire-storm of communication heralded by ubiquitous handheld smartphone ownership that has come about very recently. Maybe some of the reasons listed above were used to goad people into coming out on the streets, but none of these were central to the idea. A form of peer pressure and hysteria (perhaps with a little alcohol influence here and there) blinded people to the consequences of their actions. This brought people out to do things that they would never ordinarily have done by themselves, or even in small groups of their peers.

So how do we stop this from happening again? Personally, I don't think that it will happen in such a widespread fashion again for a while: The subsequent arrests have shown that the idea of rioting and looting in a city with such high CCTV coverage was stupid. The social networking that enhanced the transmission of the idea was also one of the most powerful tools to identify those involved.

But in 10 years, when this event has faded from memory, it may happen again.

Posted at 02:06PM Aug 14, 2011 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

The app is dead. Long live the web!

Recently I was asked to speak at a local dorkbot, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to have a bit of a live audience inteteraction experiment. Nothing fancy, but just enough to see if enough people had smartphones to make such interaction useful.

An app seemed like a good idea, but the more I thought about it, the less appealing it was. If I wanted to write an app that covered all of the possible phones out there, I'd have to pass the following hurdles:

Six App stores

Apple, Google, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm and Windows each have their own app stores, so I'd have to set up a developer account with each one. Some of them have a charge, bringing the up front cost to around 140 pounds. 6 app stores mean 6 developer agreements, 6 lots of making sure that they conform the the agreements, 6 lots of worrying if the apps will be accepted or not, potentially flushing months of work down the drain.

Four Development languages, Six SDKs

Android, blackberry and ovi could be developed in java. I'm proficient in Java, so it might take a few days getting the hang of several APIs, but not a big problem. Palm OS uses an html/css based approach which I'd need to investigate. Windows mobile will require me to dust off some rather rusty .NET skills, and for Apple, I'd have to start again from scratch with Objective C.

New hardware

My desktop environment is Linux.. Maybe I could run the windows SDK in a VM, but the real killer is going to be Apple. I can't develop iOS applications on Linux, or in a VM, I have to buy a mac. A basic mac is going to cost me at least £500.

Why not just develop for the big two?

I suspect that's what a lot of people end up doing. I'll only have to learn one new language, but I still have to buy a mac. But I'm excluding members of my audience who have smart phones! That's a tough choice to make.

The Web

You could see where this was all leading.. The web. The web has worked well for us for 20 years now, why doesn't it work well on smartphones?

If you want to do a 3d game, html and javascript still has a long way to go, and it doesn't work well offline. There are latency effects that can make user interfaces a little sluggish, and monetisation isn't so easy with web pages.

It does, however have some strong points. One SDK can be used. Tweaking for multiple phones doesn't require a rewrite. There are no app store agreements to sign, your app won't be pulled without notice. You won't have to go out and buy a mac.

HTML5

This is one reason why things are going to get better for the web, including the web on smartphones. Vector graphics and 3d graphics will soon be possible, and are already possible on some smart phones. Many companies (such as amazon) are providing apps via HTML 5 already, in order to get around restrictive App store policies.

Ultimately you might be using the web already. I understand from some insiders in the app business that a lot of apps are little more than a front page, and that the real functionality is provided by a back end web page.

Conclusion

I think the smartphone app still has legs. If you want to do something CPU intensive, want to easily monetise your product, or want to do something low level with the hardware, then an app is probably the safest bet. However, the web is fighting back, and HTML 5 will play a large part in that fight back, combined with better and faster mobile broadband connections. More basic data entry scenarios and even basic graphical applications (I've seen a demo of a javascript mobile game that is quite playable) are more easily and quickly brought to the market using the power of the web. The audience interaction system was written in a day, and supports every smartphone I've tested it with.

Posted at 12:50PM Aug 10, 2011 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

At the exact moment (A disaster amplifier)

This is something that I made for the curiosity collective's time show last year. Time show 2 is on the horizon, so I thought I would write it up.

One thing that has caught my attention over the years is the concept of stopped clocks during disasters. Often a museum will display a clock that stopped at the exact moment a ship sunk, or a bomb went off, or an earthquake struck.

These disasters are large, life changing events, and yet we devalue the concept of such disasters with our everyday, mundane disasters: perhaps we failed a test, we broke a glass, we ran out of milk.

I then wondered how I might artificially amplify these mundane disasters so that they had the same impact as a proper "stopped clock" disaster, and so I made a machine.

The disaster that I chose was running out of chocolate bars. This was selected because I could mechanically sense when the last chocolate bar was removed from a stack. When the chocolate bars run out, a mallet is released, which smashes a clock.

When we ran out of chocolate bars, we could then exhibit the clock with a message that told of the conditions that led to it having stopped. It was very much like a pile of sticks game: you didn't know if you were taking the last chocolate bar, and woudln't know if your bar was the one that destroyed the clock, creating a heightened level of suspense. In all, it went well. The trigger mechanism needed adjusting slightly, and we did run out of chocolate much more quickly than anticipated during the reception event, but ultimately that was the point: those mini disasters were forever marked with the stopping of a clock.

Posted at 03:59PM May 27, 2011 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

Audience voting and participation with smartphones

I've often wondered if there are enough people with smartphones in a specific audience to be a useful means to provide audience feedback. I was asked to speak at the recent dorkbot anglia and I took an opportunity to create an application that might test this hypothesis.

I thought I'd start with something simple: smartphone users would select a colour from a range of colours using their touch screens, and the corresponding square for their seat would light up on the screen. This would allow me to ask the audience questions that could be expressed in terms of colour.

The process starts with individual QR codes attached to each seat: these are 2D barcodes that can be interpreted by reading software on smartphones, and converted into web site addresses. Each QR code resolves to a different web address.

When you load the page at the address, a grid is served which contains coloured squares. Selecting a square will communicate that colour to the server, which is running on the internet

The laptop running the projector at the front of the room has a page that shows the currently selected colour for each seat

So what have I learnt from this trial?

1. It shows that you don't need apps for this kind of application. Indeed, apps would be difficult to implement, as you would need a different app for every kind of phone that you might anticipate, and exclude phones that had browsers, but no app engine.
2. This audience was pretty tech savvy: I'd say that around 70% of the audience had a suitable phone, but it shows that a usable proportion of people may have an appropriate phone in many situations (although you couldn't use it where you wanted instant feedback from every member of the audience)

Where do I move from here?

I'm planning an interactive charity pub quiz that will use similar technology to this (although it'll be a little more complex) and I'm also planning on experimenting a little more with the javascript capabilities of mobiles.

If you are planning an audience participation project, feel free to contact me at the email link in the sidebar.

Photographs courtesy of Ross Scrivener

Posted at 02:58PM May 04, 2011 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

My new site: www.findthebestday.com

There are a number of event scheduling sites out there, all with their positives and negatives, but this is my take. The idea is to get people up and running as quickly as possible, and to make things simple. There are restrictions, but the idea is that if you had more complicated requirements, you'd use another site.

Here are the main features

• You can only choose from dates in the next 8 weeks: this is primarily designed for one day ad-hoc events
• The 8 weeks roll over constantly, so you can use the same URL to plan future and ongoing events
• Better use of screen real estate than other schedulers
• No Access controls: if you have the URL, you can edit all of the data
• Minimum number of clicks required to do anything

I've been running a few test events, and the lack of access controls don't seem to be a problem: Ultimately the site has similar levels of accessibility as a noticeboard in an office or on a campus.

To visit the site, click here

There's a test event for people to play around with here

Posted at 04:54PM Mar 21, 2011 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

Composite Image from 1944/2011

Martlesham Heath was once an airfield, and served during both world wars, but in the 1970s, it was developed into a housing estate. The control tower is now an aviation museum and pre-school nursery. The area that was once hard standing for bomber escort fighters is now a car park. With the assistance of Martlesham Heath Aviation Society I took a picture that corresponded with this one, taken in 1944, and created this composite image.

It's an interesting combination, as they are both colour photographs: a lot of similar photographs I've seen online are black and white, and that helps reinforce the disconnect between past and present. I've had comments that the photographs aren't well matched, and that is intentional.

You may also notice that the hand rail has been replaced: Although it's the same height as the original, the spacing between the posts are different. Also, the edges of the concrete are now much further from the old sandbag wall: The outer walls still exist, they hardened over the years, but as they are not kept together with mortar, earth has been piled up against them to stabilize them, and as a result the entire car park looks narrower, making it much harder to overlay the image. You can still see sandbags protruding from the earth bank on the more recent photograph below.

Posted at 11:41AM Mar 10, 2011 by ohp in General  |  Comments[2]

Apparently they wanted garlic bread...

Actually it's not a hilarious mistaken bakery order, it's a loaf I made for a friend that bears a striking resemblance to a popular alien cyborg.

It's a white bread loaf, brushed with egg white, and baked for half an hour at gas mark 7.

Posted at 11:56AM Feb 20, 2011 by ohp in General  |  Comments[2]

Pumpkin soup in an actifry

I've made pumpkin soup in the past by boiling the pumpkin in stock, and then blending with a stick blender. I've seen many recipes where they roast the pumpkin to caramelise it, but it's a bit of a faff. I'd also like to use a jug blender to get a nice fine soup, but transferring boiling water from pot to blender is also a bit of a faff. Thankfully I've got a new way to roast the pumpkin.

The tefal actifry is touted as a low oil fryer. it lowers the oil by cooking with hot air in a small amount of oil, which makes it ideal for roasting. It's also easier to transfer dry ingredients to a jug blender.

Quantities are rough, as it will depend on how much pumpkin you have.

Equipment

• Hot air fryer
• Jug blender

Ingredients:

• 600g orange pumpkin
• 2 small onions
• 3 teaspoons cumin
• 3 teaspoons coriander
• 1 spoon of olive oil
• 400ml vegetable stock
• single cream - few tablespoons
• coconut milk - few tablespoons
• salt and pepper to taste

Process

1. Chop the pumpkin into roughly 20cm cubes and put into the actifry
2. Chop the onions coarsely (if they're too fine, they will dry out in the actifry) and add to the actifry
3. Add the cumin and coriander into the actifry bowl, and sprinkle with one cup of olive oil
4. Run the fryer for about 20 minutes
5. Pour the roasted mix into the jug blender
6. Add the stock, cream, and milk slowly to get the best consistency as you blend

If you're making large batches to freeze, use cold vegetable stock when you blend.

Posted at 10:08AM Feb 19, 2011 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

The triangle on a sphere FAQ

Welcome to the Triangle on a sphere FAQ. I'll try to respond to responses people have about the video. If you're not interested in geometry, I suggest you leave now!

Still here? We'll begin.

Well, Duh, that was really easy. My 1 year old brother or sister could do that

The video is misleading.. it looks like a triangle, but was it a real triangle? It's drawn on a curved surface, and as a result, the angles don't add up to 180 degrees. Don't triangles have angles that add up to 180 degrees?

Small triangles on the earth's surface are virtually flat,
but as they get larger, the curved surface increases the corner angles.
Image courtesy of Lars H. Rohwedder, available on a cc-by-sa license

The angles don't add up to 180 degrees, so it isn't a triangle.

When people learn geometry at school, it is almost all geometry on flat surfaces. This is called euclidian geometry, named after the Greek mathematician Euclid who lived in 300BC. In euclidian geometry, triangles have angles that add up to 180 degrees. A balloon, however is (roughly) a sphere. The rules for spherical geometry are different.

This is all pointless. Who needs to know about spherical geometry?

Spherical geometry is important for navigation over the surface of the earth, and for navigation in space. If you've ever taken a flight on a plane, or a voyage on a ship, or even watched satellite TV, you should be glad that the people behind the scenes knew about spherical geometry.

I'm still confused. Is it a triangle?

Yes, it's a triangle, but it's a special triangle, one that doesn't operate to the same rules of geometry that you learnt at school.

Posted at 11:00AM Nov 09, 2010 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]

Bean Tajine

I thought I'd share with you a vegetarian tajine that seemed to go well. I used my slow cooker. I make no claims of authenticity :) Many of the ingredients I just had hanging around. This will serve about 5-6 people.

Ingredients

• 2 onions
• tablespoon of ras el hanout
• salt to taste (I use a salt substitute)
• tablespoon olive oil
• 1 can plum tomatoes
• 1 can of out of date chick peas (you can use newer if you like :)
• 1 can mixed beans
• handful of chopped apricots
• handful of raisins
• handful flaked almonds
• handful finely chopped or grated carrots
• 1 butternut squash, chopped into half inch cubes
• teaspoon chopped ginger (I used a jar of that lazy ginger stuff)

1. Chuck the plum tomatoes in the slow cooker, and turn it on to high. mash up the plum tomatoes a bit.
2. fry up the onions in a pan with the oil, when they are clear, and the spices, stir for another minute or so, then pour the remainder into the slow cooker
3. Add all of the other ingredients, and stir
4. after two hours, turn to low.
5. add salt to taste, add more seasoning if required
6. leave for further 2-3 hours.
7. Serve with couscous

Posted at 01:35PM Nov 06, 2010 by ohp in General  |  Comments[0]