Kim Bach . Org

Friday I went to the Science Fair – dubbed Science After Dark – that was held at Copenhagen City Hall Square (Københavns Rådhusplads), and I enjoyed it very much. I didn’t really know what to expect, but when I read that there would be live electronic music, I knew that I was going.

The first thing i noticed was that attendance, despite the location, was disappointingly low. I feel that it was because the venue looked quite uninviting, due to the fence, and the rather closed looking pavilions.

I also got the feeling that the PR for the Science Fair had been less than satisfactory.

ConDio – Controlling Audio

Anyway, the first thing that grasped my eye was the ConDio, Controlling Audio. The ConDio is a device with which you can control the playback of sound, simply by moving physical bricks around on a table surface. The ConDio uses pattern recognition to determine the position of the different blocks, which translates into a specific function, for instance one brick changes the track that is being played, others applies filters.

It’s remarkably simple, efficient and intuitive to control a computer in this fashion, and it was a real crowd puller.

The ConDio has been developed by the medialogy branch of the University of Aalborg, and It was really great talking to the students that were responsible for the project. They were really feeding from the enthusiasm of the people that were looking at it.

I’m really envious that the students of today get to play with technology like this, to quote Haladjjan, the founder of Violet (manufacturer of the Nabaztag intelligent WiFi bunny):

“le début de l’internet a été une aimable kermesse… Maintenant les choses sérieuses commencent” – (translation: “the beginning of the Internet has been a friendly festival…Now the serious stuff begins”.

What a great time in history to be alive in.

Kim Bach – The failed scientist

I also enjoyed visiting the Bio Chemistry tent, where I had a discussion about how to bring science to the public (”videnskabs formidling”). The scientist in charge asked me it I’ve heard about Jens Martin Knudsen – and the regular reader would know that I just posted a tribute to him – we need more like him – since he was able to bring across complicated matters in lay-mans terms – we also discussed the great Richard Dawkins.

What I really hope is that someone could take up the reins from Jens Martin Knudsen, because we need those positive role-models from the scientific community to teach us the importance of understanding our world.

I also had a chance to redeem myself. I label my self a “failed scientist”. I’m really a product of the inspiration of the space program and the lunar missions, and when I was a kid, I desperately wanted to become a scientist – but “something” happened along the way – and it’s too complicated to talk about here – but I basically got fed up with boring educational system.

But it does seem like I have some basic scientific intuition, and I got some high marks from “the teacher” for thinking like a scientist, when I was observing the strange creature the Daphnia.

It was also interesting talking to the students from the Nano technology line. They’re looking into how to produce solar arrays that are less harsh on the environment, it turns out that you can use fruit juice from black berries as the base of a solar cell, instead of silicon – amazing.

Bend my circuits

But what I really enjoyed the most, was the tent dedicated to audio, which also included live performances from Dødskuglen, Rumpistol and Bjørn Svin (who I missed).

In the tent some interesting and simple demonstrators were set up, one was a Theremin that was controlled by a plant. You could actually play music by touching the leaves of the plant – very entertaining. Another was a tube with a number of nozzles from which gas could escape, and be lit, if you then played music, the sound-waves would modulate the flames – Daft Punk’s Robot Rock looked quite good “going up in flames”.

Dødskuglen plays with circuit bending, and they had gutted a lot of electronics with audio capabilities, for instance a couple of Furbys, that now looked – and sounded – like mean birds, and when you hooked them up to a keyboard, they were capable of making some wonderful noise.

Dødskuglen has their name from a dome shaped device, that is the center-piece of their show. According to them it’s filled with gutted electronics from Happy Meals and the like – I’m not surprised.

We also got a live demonstration of how to circuit bend – don’t try this at home – you might hit the AC power-supply and die – but if you’re careful, just take a cheap electronic keyboard apart, and try to apply some wire patches live – it was amazing to hear how the standard drum-machine suddenly went into a completely different state, and sounded completely different, only to return to it’s standard loop after being reset.

Kim Bach – The failed musician

After Dødskuglen, Rumpistol took the stage, and he’s using his computer in combination with analogue synthesisers to produce great electronica.

Besides being a failed scientist, I also consider myself a failed musician, but with the simple technology being showcased here, that is so much more fun and intuitive to control than a traditional instrument, I might be able to express myself – I know that I have some music in my head – maybe I can finally make some music – I know that I want a copy of the guitar simulator for the Nintendo DS called Jam Sessions.

A child’s mind

There’s a strange unifying synergy between science and music. When doing science and music, you really need to have a child’s mind, and like to play. That’s something I still, I’d say increasingly, possess – so I might still become a scientist/musician. It’s also noteworthy that a number of my heroes for instance RMS (Richard Stallman) and N (Peter Naur), actually play music themselves.

I went home after having had a great time, with renewed faith in our educational system, it seems to be producing playful scientists – I wished someone had told me that science was about playing, when I was a student.

I hope that Science After Dark will become a recurring event.

Show your <3 for science – make some NOIIIIISSSSSEEEEE!!!

I did, however, hear some rumours the Science After Dark has been frowned upon from the established scientific community. Come down from your ivory towers, Science is FUN and NOISY. Show your <3 for Science – make some NOIIIIISSSSSEEEEE!!!

Bad Penguin – Click here for the most popular videos

So I thought that Linux was ready for prime time, but not just yet – it was hurting my productivity too much . I need some help setting my system up, and will attempt to get that when I soon will attend LinuxParty in Roskilde.

It did make for a couple of interesting Jaiku presense stream though (Kim Bach: Former Mac user and Installing Ubuntu on my new Lenovo V100 – Firefox on WiFi from the Live CD while my drive partitions. Have I died and gone to heaven?.

Performance of the applications is really great though, and I hit on one of the biggest obstacles, non-functioning DVD playback due to patent issues – really amazing that the International anti-thrust organisations haven’t looked into that .

I hope to return to the Linux world soon, Ubuntu keeps improving

But the future really lies in simpler technology, and “the puck” is moving elsewhere than the monolithic computer. My mobile is increasingly my primary Internet access terminal, and Apple might just have got it right with the iPhone. The iPhone is actually much more Linux than people realise, it’s powered by FreeBSD and contains source code form from several open source projects, most noticeably KHTML which is the basis for the Safari browser.

Accept my sincere apologies for spamming you with Zorpia invites

Zorpia is a spam-trap, so please DON’T register with the service.

I know that you used to trust me, but you shouldn’t trust me this time. Zopia are terrible people, but sometimes good things come from bad, so:

(more…)

Welcome to ICT Mythbusters Episode One – who needs prequels, start your numbering scheme at one!

ICT Mythbusters is inspired by the great Discovery show Mythbusters

It’s also premiering a new concept in advertising that will revolutionise it:

Commercials that the host – in this case me – don’t make any money from, so click the banner and support the REAL Mythbusters, if you want to me support, send me some money .

Was Bill Gates wrong?

A very famous quote from Bill Gates is:

640KB of RAM should be enough for everyone

Everybody has been laughing at that statement, but was he actually right?

I can access the web in high-fidelity from my Nintendo DS, and any modern phone with Java ME can run the Opera mini browser, and these phones rarely have more than 1MB of RAM. I’d say that approximately 4MB should be enough for everyone.

So Bill Gates was right, or? Why is it that he wasn’t? It’s of course because we’ve moved our storage to the server, as a college of mine was so friendly to point out – actually I think he was quite annoyed with me – but that’s only because he didn’t understand what I meant.

The desktop and portable computer is an anachronism, as I’ve written before, and we need to move ALL the storage to the server – where it belongs, and run only thin clients. VERY thin clients would actually suffice for something like 90+ percent of the worlds business users.

So yes my college is right, yes 640K isn’t enough for everyone, neither is 4MB, but how much is then?

And we’re talking server storage, to cater to the computing needs of the entire world, at the time, not considering the more than exponential growth we’re likely to se in the future.

Help me do the math, or should I just submit it to Jamie, Adam, Toby, Grant and the red-hot Kari.

So you thought you could build an economy on other peoples work, and even have the audacity to charge them (that is us) for it!!!

Well! You have your “Pyramid” – and it’s beautiful – unfortunately for you we‘ve just invented the “Arch”.

So Google will remain a fantastic monument, but we‘re building the Aqueducts, Viaducts and last but not least the beautiful temples.

And how come Google and all the other search engines, seems to ignore the copyright all together? No let’s boycott Google, and ask to be delisted, or have them block commericals.

So let’s put Google and all the SEO “creeps” out of business, and get rid of the commercial search engine, “itsy bitsy spider, walk along the web” – it’s not that hard to build a better google than google. Where we’re going we don’t need Google.

Civilisation has just gone out of beta!

LinuxParty – LinuxParty
LinuxParty kan måske blive sjovt i år

Da jeg skal til at “spise hundemad”, har jeg seriøst brug for hjælp, hvad mon der sker hvis man medbringer en “pristine” Vista maskine, og slipper nørderne løs med at gøre den til den sejeste Linux kværn i byen!

Jeg skal nok give et par omgange gutter!

Flickr: SCHPAASTLER MOVIES

Kunne godt tænke mig at lege med det selv, men de burde tage den til et højere niveau, og lave deciderede spoofs, ikke bare ændringer af teksterne, men også ændre billederne.

Oh well det er jo ikke deres koncept, men da de er så dygtige, kunne det være spændende at se hvad de kunne få ud af at deltage i en konkurrence som denne: Steve Jobs goes to the movies.

Og hvad med at tage den videre til album covers. Jeg kom også i tanke om en vellykket manipulation jeg lavede for 8 år siden, den ryger på Flickr på trods af tvivlsom copyright.

SOSUME

Listening to an old issue of one of the best technology podcasts Go Digital from the BBC, I was reminded of John Perry Barlow ((born October 3, 1947) is an American poet, essayist, retired Wyoming cattle rancher, political activist and former lyricist for the Grateful Dead (source Wikipeida)).

In 1996 he formulated a Decaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, and after listening to the BBC, I’m focusing on this quote!

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Amen!

It should not come as a big surprise that I’m a serious gadget junkie, it’s probably easier to list the gadgets I don’t have.

For the last two days, I’ve been “packing serious heat”, being equipped with 4 devices capable of accessing the Internet, so I decided to do a field test of the devices, focusing on determining which device of the four, is the best suited for basic Internet browsing of a public Wi-Fi hotspot.

Let’s find the “weapon of choice for the road warrior”.

The Fantastic 4

• Apple PowerBook G4 12″
• Nokia N800 Internet Tablet
• Nintendo DS with the Opera browser
• Nokia 6070 GSM phone with the Opera Mini browser

The test was performed at the Café High-Q, on Sønder Boulevard, Vesterbro, Copenhagen, Denmark. High-Q has a WEP encrypted network, just ask for the WEP keyphrase in the bar.

Internet access wants to be free

Nokia 6070 isn’t capable of using Wi-Fi, and since I’m charged serious green for accessing the Internet using my phone, and Internet access wants to be free, it’s bye bye to the GSM/GPRS/EDGE device, even though it’s probably the most high-tech of the devices, and the only one of the four devices that offers true roaming.

For pure simplicity, it’s actually the best device. You can for instance do microblogging on Jaiku, since you can send a blog-entry by simply TEXT-ing the Jaiku server. Hey my 70-year old mother and my 14-year old niece could even do that! And I’ve given up trying to get them to do regular blogging

How do you like them Apples?

Since High-Q is a café, and you’re in a social setting in the IRL sense, the Apple PowerBook was the next device to get delegated to it’s bag. Even though the form-factor of the PowerBook 12″ is nice, it’s simply too big, bulky and since I can write a lot of text, and it offers a full browsing experience, I tend to “disappear” into cyberspace when using it in public, much like Jeff Bridges in Tron, so no more Apples for me, it’s too annoying for basic browsing and presence updating.

For full Internet access and serious writing, however, the PowerBook 12″ rocks – and I still consider it to be the nicest computer I’ve ever used – and for updating a web-site or writing a blog-entry I would not choose any of the other devices. I’m actually happy that Apple’s current offerings are so unsuitable for me, it’s healthy for my economy.

Halfway mark

Next up was the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, my newest “computer” – and that’s what it should be considered.

The N800 was made for Internet accees and it’s a great device for just that, being one of the first devices to offer an always-on experience of the Internet if you’re doing limited roaming.

The N800, is a new class of device, consider it a PDA on steroids. It runs a version of Linux called Maemo, and it is full of open source thinking, sponsored by Nokia. It has a nice touch screen, that works well without the pen, and it automagically detects if you used the finger to press the screen, offering a bigger onscreen keyboard and menu system. On top of that, the N800 also does handwriting recognition.

N800 has a nice big widescreen, exactly the size of a standard business card, and the webcam cleverly pops out, and auto-launches the video chat application, when you press it. The video chat application seems to be using a protocol build on top of Jabber (Gtalk uses Jabber). I’ve yet to use it, because I don’t know anybody else that has a N800, and I don’t know what standard PC software that might work with it, iChat maybe?

The buttons on the N800 works great, and it’s a major improvement on the classical PDA, that offers quick-launch buttons for applications.

The N800 has a cell-phone like navigation joystick, a back-key, a context menu key, a task-bar key, that lists all open windows. On top it has three keys for zooming the UI, and a button to put it in full screen mode, hiding the menu and status bars.

You quickly learn to navigate it using a combination of the keys, the pen and your index-finger, and you can hook it up to any Bluetooth keyboard, I’ve used my Apple Wireless Keyboard with no problems at all.

The N800 would do better if I could use the video-chat for anything, had better battery life and was slightly smaller and lighter. The list of applications is huge, mostly due to the Linux heritage, hey it even runs VNC, making it the KEWLest remote control EVER!

My favourite feature is the task-switcher, it’s fast, and since the N800 runs offers true multitasking – I don’t like to close anything – the list of open windows and application quickly gets extensive.

The bundled RSS-reader is quite good, and the way that visual and audible notifcations you get when a new Gtalk IM arrives or you leave/enter a hotspot, simply works, making it an always-on Wi-Fi device with roaming support.

I only miss a bundled calendar application with support for the iCal format – but you can get that from Maemo.

The most ground-breaking feature of the N800 is that it shows, that Linux really does have the potential to become the last OS you’ll ever “wear” – Linux is ACTUALLY happening and Maemo and Ubuntu is paving the road. Poor, poor Apple and Microsoft: software wants to be free. The N800 also made me think of the Alan Kay quote Steve Jobs used during the MacWorld 2007 keynote:

“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” Alan Kay

With the N800 Nokia has realised the potential of the community process, so I’ll try to improve on Alan Kay:

“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware, but stop re-inventing the wheel.” Kim Bach (*blush*) AND Alan Kay

I find it so strange that Nokia isn’t doing more to promote the N800, you can’t get a real live demo anywhere in Copenhagen, unless you run into me – it’s actually not that difficult, if I remember to update my Jaiku presence . The N800 also wins on the RSS-reader, making it extremely well-suited for “presence checking”.

The main problem with the N800 is that it, like the PowerBook, delivers a full Internet experience, sending me too far into cyberspace, and I think that battery life is too low, offering only 2-3 hours of continous browsing, at least if you have both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled. Stand-by time is pretty impressive however, and if you’re roaming, it is great at connecting to the network automagically.

Nintendo DS

The Nintendo DS is a portable gaming console, but it’s different. First and foremost it features a dual-screen layout, and one of the screens is a touch screen. I love the Brain Training Games for the DS, but the greatest thing is that Opera has developed a browser for the DS, and it has a lot of optimisation tricks up it’s sleeves, that enhances the browsing experience.

Innovative use of the dual screens. In the standard mode the page is optimised for the strange 4:3*2 formfactor, and an awesome overview mode, where a full version of the websites is rendered on the bottom screen, and a zoomed view is presented on the top screen.

My favourite feature is the fast scrolling that happens when you combine pressing the top buttons and using the “joystick”.

It’s also very nice that the top screen is used to advertise some of the more advanced features, like the screen-shot feature where you can take a “screenshot”, and have it display on the top-screen.

On the hardware side, I love that it’s so easy to switch between online and offline. If you want to go offline, you simple close the screen, and you flip it open when you want to go online again, it’s instantaneous.

The DS is the perfect device if you are doing limited roaming and browsing. The DS offers great browsing experience of basic XHTML standards compliant web-sites like Google, Wikipedia, Gmail, Flickr and Jaiku.

I think that a lot of intelligent choices has been made by Nintendo.

You can only configure 3 different hotspots, but that reflects a lot of real world scenarios – @home, @work and @ “favourite watering hole”.

Battery life is amazing. I need to measure it, but it feels like it’s close to 10 hours, Nintendo must have some very clever power management tricks up their sleeves.

The DS is quite rugged, and that’s great when you’re in public.

On the downside, the Opera browser only “talks” English, and some Danish letter are strangely missing from the onscreen keyboard. The lack of WPA support is OK, since you’ll most likely be using it to access an open hotspot.

...weapon of choice…

…the Nintendo DS…

For basic browsing, that doesn’t send you too far into cyberspace, the Nintendo DS with the Opera browser, is a surprising capable device for Internet browsing and simple TEXT style messages, like “Jaikus”, and the rendering tricks are quite simply amazing. The Nintendo DS is more than a toy, and it’s the least annoying of the devices, and it offers hours and hours of Internet browsing, I’ve been using it for 2 days without charging it, and the battery indicator still flashes green, indicating that the power-adapter can stay put. The DS is also much cheaper than the N800.

The N800 is a close contender however. Any talk about Linux being too difficult to use must cease, and the open source philosophy of Maemo is right up my alley

Another big plus is the fact that the UI, and the applications, all are translated to Danish.

The N800 would win the test if Nokia improved battery-life – I’d like 10-12 hours of modest use, if they shrunk the device just a little, and maybe adopted the intuitive way of “hanging-up”, like on the DS, by closing the lid. As it is designed right now, you have to push a button and select “off-line”, followed by another key-press and the selection of “lock” – I have to add that you could skip locking the device manually, since it locks automatically after a set interval.

For now, however, I’ll be getting this take on a classic Mae West quote:

“Is that a DS in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

As you might have noticed, I attended the reboot “(un)conference” in Copenhagen last week, and it was great.

I’d like to draw your attention to the feature “Rebooting the Web 2.0 age” on reboot 9 that BBC ran during the “(un)conference”.

Here’s a quote from the article:

The future of the web is being debated at Reboot 9.0, a leading European grassroots technology and design conference in Copenhagen.

But…”oh-my-two-dot-oh-NO” they’re using the “two-dot-O-M-G” dreaded “two-dot-oh-YEAH” word…

The big question here for the start-ups and opinion formers is how to use Web 2.0’s focus on community to build the next generation of web tools and become Europe’s Web 2.0 poster child.

I guess I can forgive the BBC, since the feature is “more than decent” , and they capture some of the spirit of reboot in this quote:

This year’s conference theme is Human? with many speakers grappling with such deep philosophical queries as what it means to be human. One session was called Humanism 101.

Understanding human behaviour and how to adapt those behaviours to technology and the web rather than the reverse is rare for technology devotees.

And Last.fm deserves all the love in the world, iTunes might never know what hit them.

However, it is no surprise as the big subject in the bars and on the grass outside was this week’s sale of London social software music service Last.fm.

Its creator Martin Stiskel, explaining why US broadcaster CBS would want to buy a music preference tool said: “They want to move from a content company to an audience company, giving the audiences control and learning from this and that’s why Last.fm was their choice.”

I’m nominating Last.fm for the price of being the “greatest service on the planet”, even though it makes it look like I have absolutely no taste in music – is it about time to get more discriminating, and start “acting my age, not my shoesize” – nah some people have actually expressed love for my personal radiostation , and I get shouts like this:

Du er på alder med min far, men jeres musiksmag ligger usandsynligt langt fra hinanden. Det er meget godt klaret! Respekt herfra

(translation from Danish: You’re the age of my father, but your taste in music is unbelievably far from each others. That’s well done! Respect ).