May 17, 2006 by Duncan | permalink
Making Ubicomp Approachable - workshop at UbiComp 2006. Sounds like an interesting workshop.... Topics include:
* Specific applications and scenarios for early adoption of augmented objects
* Physical embodiment vs. external augmentation.
* Functional vs. thought provoking/playful augmentation.
* Augmenting accessories vs. tools.
* Augmentation related or unrelated to the original function of the object
* Everyday vs. special purpose interaction.
* Original and augmented affordances, and their perception.
* Cognitive barriers to object augmentation.
* Trust issues related to augmented objects.
* Social acceptability and consumer acceptance.
May 16, 2006 by Duncan | permalink
A reminder to myself about the mythical man month:
When a task cannot be partitioned because of sequential constraints, the application of more effort has no effect on the schedule. The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned. Many software tasks have this characteristic because of the sequential nature of debugging. In tasks that can be partitioned but which require communication among the subtasks, the effort of communication must be added to the amount of work to be done. [...] Oversimplifying outrageously, we state Brooks's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
May 16, 2006 by Duncan | permalink
Came across the back logged life while browsing 43folders Merlin Mann's site on life hacks (linked from Make:) The posting and the 43 folders site contain common sense (but useful reminders) on how to deal with the glut of information digitisation has created.
May 09, 2006 by Duncan | permalink
took delivery of 20 motes, a mix of 20 sensor boards, internet gateway and the new moteview software. Started by following the user guide and the tutorials and got simple temp readings out. When i started to try doing my own thing I started to struggle - here are a few reminders for me:
you cannot use the internet gateway with xlisten or xserve from the command line (at least i couldn't figure out or find the syntax to use....) so dig out the serial gateway....
most laptops no longer have serial ports so i am using a USB Serial converter - this means the port(in Cygwin terms) is not Com4 (as displayed in port settings) but /dev/ttyS3 not quite sure why or what the logic is i just found reference to this address somewhere and tried it....
the IP of my device on the intranet is 10.3.0.32
next step is to look at programming all sensors so that i get a stream of all sensor data not just temp.
