"You Had One Job" => Go here to listen to the podcast.


Recently a friend shared this podcast with me. The 3rd act is the reading of a story titled "You had one job", by "Scott Brown". The story is being told by a police bomb disposal robot named Miles, who ends up being ordered to blow up a criminal. It's a brilliant, thought provoking, sad, cute, melancholic story and definitely worth listening to.
This has been inspired by real life events that took place some months ago in Dallas, where an "Remotec Andros Mark V-A1 [5-A1]" was apparently for the first time used to do away with a shooter that had killed several cops.

Labels: Artificial Intelligence, Food For Thought, Robotics, Short Stories, Technology

A friend of mine just asked me if I finally read Drexler's "Radical Abundance", which reminded me that I didn't write anything about it... or anything else I've been reading recently. =P Yes, I read it, and I re-read it, and finished doing so a while back. And I'm a big fan!

K. Eric Drexler, who is for all intents and purposes the father of nanotechnology, is probably the most qualified person to explain what we've already accomplished in the field, what's to be expected, the obstacles, the misunderstandings, and why we're not where we could be yet. In this book he also does an amazing job in describing in a very straightforward and "none-fiction" way, what the future could look like if we did in fact realize the potentials of the field.

I'll probably read this again soon enough... huuuuuuge fan!

Labels: Authors, Books, Nanotechnology, Reading, Science, Technology

Last month I started having some really sneaky hardware issues on my main machine, which kept escalating and eventually I ended up consulting a friend of mine who, let's just say,  has a thing or two to do with the VAIO line.

Aside from discussing solutions to the peculiar problems at hand, naturally it also occurred to me that I may have to replace my main machine in some not too far away point in the future. So I asked him what would VAIO have for me. And then he did a double take, stammered a bit, and said something like "uhmm, well, uhh, I thought you knew… VAIO isn't there anymore, at least not the VAIO we knew". To which I nearly yelled back "well I guess I don't receive the internal memos anymore".

Argh. Thought it was a bad joke. Turned out it wasn't.

What the hell? Well, it turns out Sony has officially had it with the PC business, and has sold the VAIO line to a Japanese firm that is now developing it into a standalone brand. They're going to continue producing VAIO PCs, but well obviously they'll have nothing to do with Sony anymore and at least for the moment they'll also not be available anywhere outside of Japan. Well, *sigh*.

So that was that, and since then I've been looking into what I might what I might want to get next. This has also been the topic of discussion with friends and colleagues, and well, it looks like the absence of VAIO is leaving a real hole in the notebook market. Simply put, there's nothing out there with even so much as comparable quality. And that is the state I am in right now, no idea what to get next. I need something powerful, slim, with high quality long lasting hardware. Suggestions?

P.S.: Is it really ridiculous that I feel horrible that I can't get VAIOs anymore? =( I basically never had a notebook that wasn't VAIO!

Labels: Hardware, Horrible, Notebooks, Technology, VAIO

So that's it, I've just removed both the Facebook app and the messenger from my Android tablet. Goodbye and good riddance.

I've simply had it with the nonsense. The main FB app is a terrible battery sucker. I have plenty of memory on my device which is why I hadn't paid attention, but it also uses up faaaar too much memory. Then as of the recent versions you don't really have much of a control on what you're being fed. The feed is automatically set to show you what FB believes is most important, and you have no way of changing that. If you simply want to see the recent posts you have to specifically select a feed from the menu screen. And the list goes on.

Now of course to make things even better, FB recently decided that it wasn't enough that we have to deal with one power sucker, so instead they decided to force the users to install yet another one, in order to send and receive messages. This new app is simply useless. Half the time it doesn't give me any notification for received messages, and when it does, it's likely it won't actually show the new message [it doesn't update]. And it never shows if my message has been seen.

So at any rate, today I finally got fed-up enough to remove both from my Android device. Trillian will kindly inform me of new messages, and for everything else I'll simply use my browser. Of course for me it's more complicated than most, seeing that I don't use a cellphone and Facebook / email and few other things are my way of staying in touch with the world. So let's see how long I'll last.

Labels: Android, Apps, Facebook, Social Networks, Technology, Web

In September 2006, SONY released their very first line of ebook readers, PRS-500. By October 2006, I had already got my hands on one, despite the fact that the product was at the time only available in USA [and I was living in Canada]. A few months earlier I had already come across the leaked specs for the device, and I knew I was looking at the realized version of something the need for which had been running around in my head pretty much since I started reading.

Hand held devices and tablet computers on which I could read eBooks weren't anything new, but this was something entirely different. Aside from the nice proper size, ease of use, and well, being able to carry around a whole library in my back pocket, on this device I could read for hours without tiring my eyes due to the E-Ink tech. Having come to the conclusion that in a life like mine I simply couldn't buy and carry around paperbacks, I moved to the ebook side long before that. But this was the first time I was well and truly freed of paper.

I can't begin to describe how much I enjoyed my first reader, and since then I have kept a very close eye on the development of ebook readers from different brand. I guess that part is obvious, given the number of posts on this blog on the topic. Another thing that's obvious from the posts on this blog, is that I've not up to this day found a reader that I've liked more than the Sony Reader line. [And yes well… for a time I was involved with the development… ]

I imagine by now I've made it pretty clear about the kind of dislike I have for Amazon Kindle, and the reasons. And I don't have much positive things to say [comparatively] about the other popular products out there either. But then it's not as if I've always liked how the Sony Reader has turned out.

Since PRS-500, I've basically tried every single Reader model that Sony has released [yes and I still have all of them =D], and not all of them have been so great. I loved PRS-500 since it was my first one. =) PRS-505 was very functional and very cool. PRS-700 was pretty much the love of my life. It was just beautiful, very smooth in every way, amazing performance, and it had back light. And then came PRS-T3. And every model that I haven't mentioned, it's because in some way or the other I didn't really like it.

But oh my world, PRS-T3! This is quite easily the best Sony Reader up to now, and in my opinion very much the best ebook reader currently available. And well, remember how I recently mentioned something about amazing Sony products somehow being constantly dissed by online reviews? That applies to this product too. I can't for the life of me figure out how it is that readers with terrible hardware, glitchie software and all sorts of limitations  are gaining name, while the Sony reader isn't even on the charts!! [Probably a question for marketing people.] I can't quite understand exactly how Kindle still exists, how it's still being produced and bought, when a piece of art like PRS-T3 exists.

The device, which runs a mini version of Android OS, simply functions very very smoothly. It supports a wide range of ebook and image formats, including ones that Kindle and the rest of them don't support, and you have no limitations as to where you get the books from. The note taking functionality works very well both with finger and a stylus. It's naturally WiFi connected and there are no browsing limitations [you can go wherever you like via the browser]. The device has an optional "light cover", where a very nicely designed reading light extends from the back of the cover. [And unlike the previous version, it doesn't require a separate battery. It uses a negligible amount of the reader's own charge.]

But I guess the most important feature of all is nothing new, the E-Ink is still there, and smoother than ever. The device's display is brilliant, and you can stare at it for hours without any pressure on your eyes, or at least no more than staring at paper [hint hint to Kindle Fire users].

Oh, and to explain the part about "stolen and repurchased". Well, originally I bought the T3 about 4 months ago. But less than a month after that I was robbed in the train, and the reader was stolen from me. So I had to repurchase it… well it was rather annoying seeing that for various reasons I purchased this one from Canada and I had to have my mom buy it again over there and send it to me… But yes, the new one's been here a few weeks now and all is back to normal.

Labels: Electronics, Reading, Reviews, Sony, Technology

Yesterday evening at the Transmedia Zurich event, we were introduced to 2 very interesting new location based games: "Rundercover" and "Gbanga Famiglia Rise and Fall". Even as the so called "cell-phone boycotter", I found both pretty cool / creative. I think this genre of game generally appeals to my need for being physically active while playing… The games are both being developed here in Switzerland, and they both have crowd funding campaigns that you can check out and then hopefully support. Here:

Rundercover website / Kickstarter

Gbanga Famiglia Rise and Fall on Indiegogo

P.S.: The mandetory back-side shot courtesy of these guys.

Labels: Events, Games, Pictures, Switzerland, Technology, Transmedia, Zürich

Last Thursday evening I attended a very interesting presentation on the pretty cool new features of the upcoming GHC 7.8. Though I've personally not yet had the chance to play with the new release, I'm very excited about it, since apparently many of the features that were discussed for a long while are now finally included. As it was mentioned in the meeting, it's not that it's not a mess anymore, it's just that it's much less of a mess. ;)

Here you can find a PDF copy of the presentation slides [sans code]. [The talk was hosted by the Zurich HaskellerZ group.]

Labels: Coding, Computer Science, Haskell, Programming, Technology

Recently I attended the launch event for "3D Hubs" in Zurich. I really didn't know anything about the service before that event, but I had in fact been wondering if such service exists. There are people with 3D printers, there are people who need something printed, it would be great if something connects them all to each other. And "3D Hubs" does exactly that. Check it out!

Also, there were some rather amazing printed items to see at the event. Here's some examples:

This glove was entirely 3D printed, all the links together!

The brown one was printed out of PLA filament containing wood dust. It actually smells and feels like wood!

Transparent PLA!

Pretty stuff! =P

Inside looks a lot like a real analogue camera!

Labels: 3D Printing, Activities, Events, Friends, Fun, Technology

A couple of days ago I attended this really great presentation on "RabbitMQ Internal Architecture", which was hosted by the Zurich Erlang group. The presentation slides are available here, so if you have any interest in RabbitMQ, Erlang, or both, do check them out. =)

Labels: Activities, Coding, Erlang, Events, Friends, Programming, Technology

AOP is something that I've been hearing about for the past… well… forever, and it's always seemed that every time someone makes a mention of it, someone else goes about mentioning all the cons.  

I can't say that I've really looked that deep into it in the past, but I guess last night's presentation on AOP using PostSharp has made me re-think. I should probably at least give it a try… any opinions? Anyone else want to tell me about all the cons? =P [Cause that's what I've been hearing since morning….]

Labels: .NET, Activities, Coding, Computer Science, Events, Programming, Technology

One of the more interesting events that I've recently been to, was the "Press Start To Play" at the Basel Toy Museum. The event that was hosted by the Webilea group, consisted of a tour of the exhibition, presentations by several game developers, and a good deal of play time. The venue was beautiful and altogether it was quite a fun evening.

My favourite presented game was "Ago", a very nice game for Android. Currently installed on my tablet. ;)

My collection of pictures from the event can be found here.

Labels: Activities, Basel, Coding, Digital Art, Events, Fun, Games, Switzerland, Technology, Toys

Of all the Zurich Dev events so far, I think this last one [last week] was the most interesting to me. The talk was about "Scriptcs", which allows you to develop C# apps outside of Visual Studio, in any text editor. It's basically turning C# in to a scripting language, using Roslyn for compilation. This is something I'm going to have some fun with..

Slides from the presentation are now online and can be viewed here. Totally worth checking out!

Labels: Coding, Computer Science, Events, Interesting, Programming, Technology

This keeps popping up in conversations… so… time for a blog post.

I have a Twitter account, mainly because nowadays not having one can make life a tad complicated. There are many people and organizations who's Twitter posts are the only real way of staying in the loop with them. But I don't really use Twitter, and I really do not in any way like the service.

What appears on my Twitter page is actually my Facebook activities that get forwarded to Twitter via this brilliant little tool: IFTTT, and I basically log onto the service every once in a very very blue moon. That being said, if I'm following you on Twitter, that means I DO see your posts. How? Well… that's where it gets complicated and here's also one of the major reasons why I don't like Twitter.

You see, Twitter actually has user feeds. Or "had", to be more precise. They were never highly advertised, didn't show up on the user pages and didn't get detected by browsers, but they were active and I generally developed the habit of subscribing to the RSS feeds of the people I follow, and checking their updates on Feedly [or previously GReader], which is what I actually do check pretty frequently. This wasn't working too badly, but a while back, Twitter made some changes to their API which resulted in a change in the general format of the feed address. Major pain, as I had to re-subscribe to all the feeds. Now, as of last week, Twitter has officially retired their REST API 0.1, and with it, their RSS feeds!!

Of course someone already came up with a service to take care of this problem [probably using Google Scripts or something similar], so now you can use "Twitter-RSS" to generate Twitter RSS feeds… well… obviously. But then this also means one more round of re-subscription to _all_ my Twitter contacts, yes, all the 80-something of them.  But the real disaster is of course happening to anyone who ever wrote a piece of code using the V0.1 API…. and from what I've seen, it's a good number of people. Ask me again why I just luuuv Twitter.

So anyway, you can see my Facebook activities on Twitter, and I can see your Tweets via Feedly, which works but is slightly dysfunctional, and a tad ridiculous. So, if you would like to keep in touch / stay in the loop with me, how about just trying my Facebook instead? As much as I'm not a big fan of Facebook, for a long list of reasons, it's what I'm currently actively using. 

Labels: Aasemoon, Social Networks, Technology, Web

Last week at the "Embrace the Cloud with F#" talk which was organized by the Zurich F# group, this was presented : {m}brace. It's a cloud computing framework in F#, and it's pretty cool. 

Labels: .NET, Cloud Computing, Coding, Computer Science, F#, Programming, Technology

Last Thursday the HaskellerZ group in Zurich held a talk on "Edward Kmett's lens  package", which I attended and enjoyed… and so I have been having some fun playing with the package. It's here for any Haskell enthusiasts reading this, check it out! =)

Labels: Coding, Computer Science, Events, Haskell, Programming, Technology

Last week I took part in IoT Zurich's city walkshop. Put simple, we went around the city making observations about various types of sensors collecting data about people and the environment, what kind of data was being collected and how open to public access these collections of data can be.

Regardless of the fact that it was raining frogs, the walkshop was very informative and quite a lot of fun. =) We even did a bit of snooping into CCTV feeds from various stores and such… ;) Looks like Zurich is quite a smart city, but as to how accessible the data is in general…. I think some work needs to be done in that direction.

In case anyone would like to look into the rout we took, here it is. Definitely worth checking out. And here you can find everything about the walkshop.  

And here's our little group….

Labels: Activities, Electronics, Events, Fun, Learning, Technology, Zürich

Map of the Internet by Peer 1: Discovered this app this morning and I've been playing with it here and there all day. As the title suggests, it's a 3D interactive map of the internet, and it's quite nice to play with. =D

Labels: Data Visualization, Interesting, Internet, Software, Technology

By the way this is pretty cool: Structure101. Last week there was an interesting talk hosted by the "Zurich Developers .NET User Group" with the topic of "Rediscovering Modularity", which was to a great extent about the above software architecture  management tool. Aside from the fact that I managed to walk into a glass wall, [yes, really, quite the classic!], it was a great event and quite informative. And now I'm seriously considering giving the tool a try as it seems to be possibly what I've been looking for, for a while… If anyone here is using it/ ends up using it please let me know.

Labels: .NET, Coding, Computer Science, Events, Programming, Technology

Ah, great, I just noticed now that the slides and all the relevant material from last week's "Understanding Eventual Consistency and Riak" are available here.

The event that was hosted by the "Zurich FLOSS and IT geeks", was as usual interesting, informative and well organized. Looking forward to their next one…

Labels: Computer Science, Events, Programming, Technology, Zürich

EPFL's "Salamandra Robotica II", pretty cool design! More about it here.

Labels: Design, Electronics, Engineering, Mechanics, Mechatronics, Robotics, Switzerland, Technology