TedPage

So, as I'm sitting here listening to my MP3 player I'm thinking: These earbuds could be so much smarter. I think that they need to embed a small heat sensor into the actual earpieces so that they could detect whether they are in your ear or not. By using this information the MP3 player could handle common user interactions more completely. For instance, when someone walks up to me and I take my earbuds out, it pauses the music. Or, if I take one of the earbuds out (because I want to hear some ambient noise) the player should switch to mono, and stop wasting energy on that earbud. All of this sounds like something Apple would do on the next iPod. They like these advanced user interactions (and so do I).

Implementation notes

The most difficult part of dealing with this problem is dealing with the existing interface for headphones. You basically have three wires, left, right and ground. How will the heat sensor signal the player? How will the senor get power?

I think that the best solution is one where the switch doesn't use electricity. If you can bind together two metals that expand at different rates, you can get a primitive switch based on the temperature of the metals. This is similar to how the old circular thermostats work (I wouldn't recommend the mercury switch in them though).

To signal back to the player the earbuds can either short out the connection, or hold it at high impedance. Both of these can be detected at the player, but the high impedance situation also corresponds with removing the headphones -- which should have similar user interactions. So, if the player detects no current on one of the headphones, it should assume that it has been disconnected and stop outputting music to it. If both earbuds are in this state, it should pause the music (and probably rewind a couple seconds - the sensors won't be that accurate).

Man, this would be cool.

posted on Thu, 28 Apr 2005 at 19:52 | permanent link

I got a new lens for my camera today. It is very exciting. It is a Cannon 70mm to 300mm telephoto with image stabilization and built with defractive optics. It is much smaller than a comparable lens, but should be very cool to work with.

I feel just like a little kid, I'm excited to go to the zoo this weekend and check this little guy out. I'll make sure to post those pictures.

posted on Wed, 27 Apr 2005 at 03:23 | permanent link

This weekend I went to the Festival of Books up on the UCLA campus. It was a fun event, and an excuse to spend sometime outside in the beautiful weather. Of course, I took pictures, you can expect them online sometime in... probably 2006. There were tons of book vendors and publishers there; from the crazy liberal to the moderate liberal, what else do you expect in California? They also had several panel and author presentations, a few of which I went to.

Brave New World: Monopoly, Media, & the Right to Know

This discussion basically boiled down to a discussion of the changing media landscape between new media (blogs and the Internet) and old media (network news and printed newspapers). All of the panelists thought that news was changing its face to the average American, but how fast, what it means, and why was definitely up for debate. Several interesting facts and observations came out of the discussion.

One of the facts that seems to be effecting news today is how it is becoming increasingly corporate. The reality is that corporations want to play it safe, they don't want to be tagged anything disagreeable so they will avoid stories that offend large segments of viewership. When politicians have 70% approval ratings, media companies are unwilling to run exposes that offend that large a segment of the potential market. An example is how the Los Angeles Times got labeled as "Anti-Arnold" when it ran stories that uncovered negative details about the now Governor Schwarzenegger. This made his supporters (he won handily) disfavor the newspaper.

One statistic that was used to support this was that when the state of California's population was 19 million, there were 900,000 subscribers to the LA Times. Now that the population of the state is over 30 million, there are still 900,000 subscribers. People are looking to different sources to find their news. Hugh Hewitt believed that they were looking for more conservative sources of news like the Wall Street Journal (to which an audience member yelled out War Street Journal -- gotta love California). I'm not sure that that's the case. It seems like more Americans are turning away from traditional sources of news, and to sources like The Daily Show.

Americans used to get 90% of their news from the big three network news programs, now that number is closer to 40%. An interesting point that was derived from this statistic is that the American public used to have a common set of 'facts' from which to make decisions. Now, there is no common understanding, and in fact this makes the entire country more fractured in its outlook at the world. I thought that this was an interesting perspective into how politics are today, everyone is avoiding truly understanding the other side, they don't have to anymore. But, it was also brought up that even in the editorial section of the newspaper, people tend to read the columns of who they agree with (and have for generations).

A point that Ken Auletta made is that investigative reporting is expensive. It takes a lot of money to allow a reporter to go off for several months investigating a story, and even more to leave that reporter in an international location for months at a time. With increasing demand on news rooms to maintain a profit margin, it becomes harder and harder to justify those expenses; but, this is the kind of money that bloggers don't have. If we are going to get truly in depth reporting on complex issues, someone has to spend the money.

Something that Arianna Huffington kept saying was that she loved blogs because they were so "obsessive" (I think she meant persistent). She loved the fact that in the blogosphere, people don't forget that Wolfowitz said the war in Iraq would pay for itself. She was disgusted how the mainstream media just ignored the fact and ate the government line. I thought it was interesting, and I think I almost prefer "obsessive" when describing blogs.

Of course, any discussion of the media today brings up the War in Iraq and the Bush Whitehouse. One comment that I hadn't thought about was that: "The Bush Whitehouse doesn't believe that the media represents the people anymore." Which is an interesting thought. One one hand, I'd have to agree that ABC, CBS and NBC have squandered the public trust; but who else should question the President? Congress doesn't seem to be doing a very good job. I doubt he's worried about condemnation from my blog. The feedback simply isn't there, we need to figure this out.

Kevin Smith

I can't say that I learned nearly as much from Kevin Smith, but I laughed much harder. I'm surprised that they didn't move him a little bit farther away from the kid's area, his sole prepared material was reading a letter from Hustler. All in all, seems like a fun guy to just hang out with, of course, you'll have to turn your sensitivity meter up a little bit first.

Jared Diamond

After reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steal I was very impressed, and was interested to go to his presentation. The presentation was mostly about his newest work, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Collapse is about how civilizations collapse, and he found that most were after destroying the environment in which they lived. For most ancient times, this was through deforestation, through that was not the only factor in their demise.

One case study he presented was that of Easter Island. There, an advanced civilization had lived, but eventually destroyed itself. The biggest reason for this was through removing forests, and thus they were unable to fish without canoes. When he presented this to his students (he's a professor of Geography at UCLA) they asked: What was the person who cut down the last tree thinking when it happened? While no one can really answer that question, he said that many of his students have hypothesized the answer: "Your environmental models are incorrect, we need to study this further", "Protecting the environment isn't my problem" and "Do not worry, God will provide for us".

One of the things that surprised me in the discussions was the first question, from a African-American, about how he felt that Africa wasn't given a fair shake in Guns, Germs and Steal. This was funny to me, because I found one of the underlying themes of the book to be an attack on racism. It felt like that was one of Diamond's goals. Now, I don't expect a liberal professor from California to hurt the recruiting of the KKK, but I do believe that he laid a significant amount of evidence down to discredit any intellectual basis for racism.

When Diamond was talking about societies that succeed, one thing he mentioned was the ability to reevaluate core values of the society. People must look at their values and change. (When talking about the Norse in Greenland he described them a "hopelessly conservative", which got a laugh) One value that he thought must change in America was consumerism. Coupled with the fact that an average American uses 32 times the natural resources of a member of the third world, it seems pretty obvious that the resource usage is unsustainable. But, I'm curious if we don't just have to move our consumerism from things like furniture to temporal collections like ring-tones.

Conclusion

Wonderful event. I got the chance to walk around in the beautiful weather, take pictures, and listen to interesting speakers. It gave me a new perspective: all the time that I was in Arizona I was constantly surrounded by everything conservative, at the festival, I got to see the ugly side of liberal too. It's kinda fun being in a state where I can be called a conservative.

posted on Tue, 26 Apr 2005 at 00:55 | permanent link

With my last senior project finishing up (which is really cool) it is time to propose another senior project. Here's what I'm thinking, comments are welcome (though I don't have long before this needs to be final).

SVG Difference Tool

In order for developers to work together version control is used maintain consistency. Sometimes changes result in collisions, at which time the developers themselves step in to resolve the conflict. In order to do this, the person resolving the conflict must have intimate knowledge of the file format in order to understand the intricacies of the structure and the nature of the conflict. As a result, the majority of version control is limited to software development and other technical disciplines.

This project would involve making a difference tool for the SVG file format. This tool would be usable as a difference tool for popular version control systems such as CVS and Subversion so that they could be used in graphical work flows. The application will present the conflicts and differences in a graphical manner such that an artist could resolve the conflicts.

The difference tool created will be a cross-platform GUI application using the GTK+ toolkit and Open Source methodologies. This project requires determining structural differences in XML documents and also finding intuitive methods for displaying them to the user. Techniques must also be developed for understanding which changes in an SVG document are substantive and which are cosmedic.

posted on Fri, 22 Apr 2005 at 18:38 | permanent link

Another quote of Friedman's that I like:

Blaming someone else is not a substitute for analyzing or coping. ... Only in a society that embraces self-criticism can the political process produce real facts to cope with real problems. (p. 176, Longitudes and Attitudes, Thomas L. Friedman)

From reading that you'd think he was talking about the post-9/11 analysis of intelligence gathering, right? He was talking about how backwards Arabic dictatorships blame all their problems on the Israel-Palestine conflict. I feel so ... backwards.

posted on Thu, 21 Apr 2005 at 17:47 | permanent link

Bryce Harrington has put up a post about Wikipedia, but delves into Open Source project management. If you're at all interested in understanding Open Source, you really need to read that post. I think that Bryce does a very good job of bringing understanding to the details of an Open Source project.

This reminds me of a term used by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steal -- "The Anna Karenina principle". The phrase that starts Anna Karenina is: "All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion". Diamond talks about how this applies to the progression of societies, not one element lead to their success, it requires the perfect mix of a whole host of elements working in concert.

This applies directly to Open Source projects, many fail for one reason or another, a project needs all elements working together to be successful. As soon as you try to pigeonhole it into one principle you've already lost understanding of what it takes. Getting a perfect blend is hard, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

posted on Tue, 19 Apr 2005 at 03:29 | permanent link

If there's one thing I learned from this trip to Israel, Jordan, Dubai, and Indonesia, it's this: thanks to the Internet and satellite TV, the world is being wired together technologically, but not socially, politically, or culturally. ... At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we've ever had. ... Worse, just when you might have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. (p. 248, Longitudes and Attitudes, Thomas L. Friedman)

Wow, that basically describes the Internet pretty well. We've empowered individuals to get information all over the world, it empowers the good guys, the bad guys, and the folks who like sheep a little too much. Through the American experiment we've seen that empowering the individual can be awesome, now it is going to a new level, all over the globe.

posted on Mon, 18 Apr 2005 at 21:11 | permanent link

I, and I'm sure others, always hear things like "you're different, you're an engineer." I've always took this to be a pretty silly thing to say, I don't really see engineers as any different than anyone else. Just because you're good at math doesn't mean you cook differently, right?

In the March issue of Computer magazine, Bob Colwell wrote an article comparing computer scientists and electrical engineers. In his analysis he hits on some interesting points describing what makes an engineer:

We take courses in system design, control theory, electronics, and fields and waves. But mostly what we're taught, subliminally, is how to think like an engineer.

Behind most of the classes an engineer encounters as an undergraduate is one overriding paradigm: the black box. A black box takes one or more inputs, performs some function on them, and produces one output.

It seems simple, but that fundamental idea has astonishing power. You can build and analyze all engineered systems -- and many natural systems, specifically excluding interpersonal relationships -- by applying this paradigm carefully and repetitively.

This talks about what is 'fundamental engineering' -- which is never taught, but is very important to understanding engineering. But, other fields that use this abstraction very effectively. Social scientists break groups of people into larger systems, systems that interact without looking at the individual factors. I think that economists do this regularly. I don't think that we can say that engineers are the only people that use abstraction as a professional method. Perhaps we use it more, but, engineering conversations are also different:

I was intrigued to observe that a group of 10 engineers sitting around a conference room table invariable had a subtle but apparent common mode: They all used the black-box abstraction implicitly and exclusively, as naturally as they used arithmetic or consumed diet Coke. Although these engineers came from different engineering schools, and their degrees ranged from a BS to an MS or a PhD, they implicitly accepted that any discussion would occur in one of two ways -- either at one horizontal abstraction layer of the design or explicitly across two or more layers. It was generally quite easy to infer which of those two modes was in play, and all 10 engineers had no difficulty following mode changes as they conversation evolved.

When thinking about this (and yes, I probably should have been paying attention to the technical discussion instead of daydreaming), it occurred to me that the first two years of my undergraduate EE training had sometimes seemed like a military boot camp. In fact, it was a boot camp. With the exception of social sciences, humanities, history, and phys. ed., all of our classes were done in exactly this way.

So, perhaps engineers are a little bit different in the end. Or, perhaps we're just waiting for everyone else to catch up <smile/>.

As far as the difference between hardware and software engineering, I've always described it like this:

The difficult problems in hardware are taking something that is innately parallel and making it serial. The difficult problems in software are taking something that is innately serial and making it parallel.

posted on Fri, 15 Apr 2005 at 17:08 | permanent link

I took this test, mostly because I didn't think I'd score that well, but it'd be fun. Hmph.

I think the question that killed me was thinking that BASIC was less of a programming language than Assembly. But, it's basic! That was a trick question. (yeah, I think it is a percentage value)

Then I noticed on Planet OpenClipart that Nicu took a different test, so I had to try and do better. I think that they might just have me pegged.

posted on Thu, 14 Apr 2005 at 17:19 | permanent link

Sven of GIMP fame has set up svenfoo as a weblog. He as an entry on dealing with library objects in the GIMP. He is working on this for GIMP 2.4, and Inkscape folks should take notice. While we don't have the problem yet, we will as more and more gradients, patterns and markers start appearing. Solving it in a similar way as The GIMP would be good.

This could also be an issue for extensions, although some problems have been solved by including load/unload functions so that only metadata has to be stored in Inkscape when the extension isn't being used. I'm not 100% sure that will be enough. Working on getting a large collection of extensions first.

posted on Wed, 13 Apr 2005 at 17:58 | permanent link

This has to be one of the coolest websites I've seen. It takes house hunting to a new level by integrating Google Maps and Craig's List to have a browsable map of house listings. It is all very well integrated -- I would have loved something like this looking for apartments. With this, I'd say that Craig's List is better than MLS.

I got the link from a blog complaining about Google maps not using SVG. I agree, and the link is cool.

posted on Wed, 13 Apr 2005 at 14:50 | permanent link

A pearl of wisdom from Dave Henning:

Linux is kind of like watching C-Span, going to the orchestra, or reading a classic novel. It's not glamorous or initially appealing, but it's often a lot more satisfying than watching Friends, listening to Britney Spears or reading pop fiction.

posted on Tue, 12 Apr 2005 at 19:11 | permanent link

I've checked in a few things that will make scripting better. The primary one being quick GUIs for scripts and other effects than don't have a GUI. This works by just taking the parameters and making them into a small dialog. While this isn't a good long term solution, much faster development can occur in the short term. Think of it as a place holder for more good stuff.

Most of this has been motivated by Aaron Spike who has put together a wonderful page on Inkscape scripting. I'm very excited to start using some of these tools. I think I need to implement a few more things to make him happy -- but it is very motivating to have someone using your work.

Hopefully, everything will come together for the next Inkscape release, but I'm not sure we'll have enough time.

posted on Tue, 12 Apr 2005 at 02:24 | permanent link

Nicu has set up a Planet for Openclipart.org. This is a cool way for people to get to know each other for more than the dialog on the mailing list. My favorite post so far is Bryce's life history all in one post. 5 years in 500 words, impressive.

posted on Mon, 11 Apr 2005 at 12:38 | permanent link

Here are photos from our trip down to Kartchner Caverns State Park. It is a very impressive park, they've really done a good job of preserving the caverns. Unfortunately, preserving it includes not taking pictures.

  

posted on Mon, 11 Apr 2005 at 00:59 | permanent link

I was searching the web for information on Thomas Friedman and I came across his webpage. Or, more accurately, his publisher's webpage about him. On his site there is a contact form, so I thought I'd write about an issue that has been bugging me in his writing. Given the chance of him actually reading it, I thought I'd post it here too.

Dear Mr. Friedman,

I've enjoyed much of your work, and your insight into the events of the world. I think that I've had "all four" responses to different articles that you've written. Please keep up the good work.

One thing that I think you don't seem to have a complete grasp on is open source software. It seems that in several articles you've placed open source developers as against Microsoft, or a way to get development done for free. As an open source developer myself, I think those are both incorrect ways of looking at open source development. It is about letting innovation happen, no matter who, what, or when. And letting it happen outside the control of marketing or Dilbert's pointy haired boss. Mostly, open source is about engineers having fun. I think that it ties closely into your concept of 'flatism'.

I hope that you'll have the time to look into this further for future articles. If you have any questions for me, I'd be happy to answer them.

Thanks,
Ted Gould

posted on Fri, 08 Apr 2005 at 14:21 | permanent link

I was reading Linux Journal where there was a discussion about Linux devices at CES. (yes, I am reading old Linux Journals to catch up) The author made the comment that "Open systems always win". Which I thought was pretty brash, but I was able to think of some good examples:

• Betamax vs. VHF One of the key differences in these technologies was that Sony controlled the Betamax format, and required content to be licensed through them. They stopped content like pornography, but also were slow to license the technology to other companies. The inferior, but more open format VHS won out in the end. More info on Beta
• PCs vs. Apple The PC allowed for other vendors to provide expansion cards, and increase the functionality of the PC without IBM. This spurred innovation as people all had different ideas about how the new device could be used.
• Democracy vs. Totalitarianism We see the trends of societies towards providing more open systems for people in general. Those societies that allow for freedom tend to have economic advantages as a dynamic economy reacts to a changing world. Control of even an enlightened few doesn't equate to success.

Of course, open doesn't guarantee success. There are many systems that haven't resulted in success just because they were open. But, it seems that in the long term, the author is correct: Open systems win. I don't know that I'm going to bet against cheap though.

posted on Fri, 08 Apr 2005 at 13:38 | permanent link

I've started reading Thomas Friedman's Longitudes and Attitudes, which is a collection of his columns surrounding September 11th, 2001. He talks extensively about the attitudes in the middle east, and how America is viewed there -- and also provides insight about how we can work in the world today. He said some things that I think we should have listened to:

To not retaliate ferociously for this attack on our people is only to invite a worse attack tomorrow and an endless war with terrorists. But to retaliate in a way that doesn't distinguish between those who pray to a God of Hate and those who pray to the same God we do is to invite an endless war between civilizations. (p. 51)

I'm afraid that many of our actions haven't made this distinction clear enough. Yes, war is messy, but we should have made more effort in making our actions clear, and precise.

We also need to look towards the future, and non-military solutions.

At the same time, U.S. strategy can't just be about punishing the bad guys. It also has to be about helping the good guys. Jordan is a country with a decent government and an economy that...grew 3.9 percent last year...We have a fundamental interest in this model succeeding, for all its neighbors to see. Terrorists thrive in failing, stagnant, weak states with illegitimate regimes -- not countries on the rise. (p. 53)

And, this is the reason that I'm excited about President Bush talking about supporting democracy. Now, I haven't seen much action, but the idea of our foreign policy being about supporting freedom instead of limited, short term, economic interests excites me. Hopefully it isn't only lip service.

Lastly, this is also why I'm optimistic about Wolfowitz being put in charge of the World Bank. Wolfowitz is a man with a one track mind. Before, the only tools that he had to drive his ideas forward were cruise missiles. In the future, the only tools he'll have are loans and grants. Directed, results based financial initiatives to support governments encouraging freedom and democracy is exciting. Also, hopefully, placing someone with significant political weight in a position of international prominence will encourage the U.S. to support institutions like the World Bank.

Hmm, I guess they're going to take away my liberal membership card now.

posted on Tue, 05 Apr 2005 at 14:17 | permanent link