Personal – Page 8 – Stilgherrian

18 August 201326 August 2013

They’re letting me lecture to students regularly now

Apparently I’m not scary enough for the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). My guest lecture earlier this year, Algorithms and the Filter Bubble, is now a regular fixture.

I was rather chuffed to be told a few weeks ago that the students had voted it the best lecture of the semester, and their course feedback said the material had to remain in the course. So I’ll now be delivering a similar lecture once a semester.

Well, twice this semester, because high student numbers mean that I have to give two performances, at 0900 and 1300 on Monday 26 August.

14 August 2013

New “Corrupted Nerds” podcast, and we’re on iTunes

Two more small steps in Corrupted Nerdsâ€™ plans for world domination: I’ve posted a new episode, and the podcast is listed in Apple’s iTunes Store.

Episode 4 of Corrupted Nerds: Conversations is a chat with Dr Kerry Hinton from the Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) about the looming energy crisis that’s being brought on by the move to cloud computing and, in particular, millions upon millions of inefficient wireless devices.

It’s a remarkably engaging conversation about how the internet consumes electricity.

Meanwhile, Apple’s approval process for the iTunes store was passed, and we’re listed, so that’ll make it easier for many people to subscribe. I’ve written a blog post explaining the different subscription options.

With four Conversations episodes online, plus an Extra with Senator Brett Mason’s speech from last year that inspired the title, it’s time for me to start tidying things up for some fundraising and sponsorship-seeking, so stand by for some news on that front very soon.

11 August 2013

Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 10

“‘Day 10’? But the last post was Day 5,” I hear you complaining. Well, the dynamic of my Nokia Lumia 925 / Windows Phone 8 trial changed a bit last week, so I’m skipping over the dull bits.

Day 10 is Thursday 8 August 2013, and the photograph with this post was taken one minute before dawn on that day.

In the intervening days, I had continued to use the Lumia 925 much as I had been, and I continue to appreciate the quality of the camera and the ability to customise the start screen in Windows Phone 8. It makes the iOS grid of icons look positively old-fashioned.

However you may remember that I was having trouble with the Wi-Fi link dropping out when the phone was physically handled. Well, I put that question to Nokia and Microsoft on Monday.

Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 10”

10 August 2013

Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 5

It’s time to catch up on my Nokia Lumia 925 / Windows Phone 8 trial, skipping over Day 4 to Day 5, Saturday 3 August 2013 — when I finally discovered the proper way to synchronise the phone with my MacBook Pro.

I’d been frustrated by the slow process of using Bluetooth to transfer photos. Nowhere in the “Welcome” booklet that comes with the phone is there even a suggestion that you can plug the phone into a computer, let alone that there exists an official Microsoft Windows Phone for OS X application!

And it works!

Furthermore, if you use Apple’s default workflows for managing your images in iPhoto and your music in iTunes, then that all works too.

OK, so I’m an idiot. Maybe I should have looked, or perhaps browsed Nokia’s support site. But I still think this is something worth mentioning from the beginning — particularly as certain phone configuration options are only available from the management software.

Continue reading “Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 trial: Day 5”

06 August 2013

“Corrupted Nerds” podcast goes cloud and big data

I’ve finally posted a new episode of my Corrupted Nerds podcast, a wide-ranging conversation with Peter Coffee, vice-president and head of platform research at Salesforce.com.

Cloud computing is inevitable, says Coffee. “Processing power has grown at about 25% per year, and compounded over a period of 30-some years that’s a lot. But bandwidth has grown at about 45% per year over that same period of time.”

So whatever the application, no matter how complex, eventually it’ll be cheaper to process the data somewhere else, and your device — desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone — only has to manage presentation and interaction.

I’d been wanting to catch up with Coffee for two or three years, and we finally managed to arrange being in the same room at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and I think you’ll enjoy it too.

05 August 2013

“Fleeting mists” goes Android

I’m re-posting one of my favourite photos from last year, “Fleeting mists”, because it’s being used in the new Android weather app BWeather by Denver-based developer Brit Clousing of Atomicboy Software.

There’s a screenshot of the app at right, and you can click through to embiggen it. The app itself you can download from Google Play.

It’s Clousing’s first smartphone app and it’s pretty basic — but it’s free and there’s no advertising, and I really like the way the temperature for the days ahead is shown as a vertical bar.

“The photograph displayed on the top section is designed to match the current weather forecast. There are about 20 different photographs for the different weather and day/night conditions,” writes Clousing in an email.

I’m hanging out for a foggy day to see my photograph in context.

Clousing was previously responsible for the turn-based strategy game Empires of Steel, published in late 2009.

I publish most of my photographs under a Creative Commons Attribution license, so they can be used for pretty much everything. I enjoy knowing that they’ve been appreciated by someone else.

[Photo: Fleeting mists, originally posted in Weekly Wrap 89: Storms and too many podcasts in February 2012.]