Making an Object Out of Thin Air

 

It'd be hard to justify the investment in my 3D printer for the practicality of the items I have made. The parts I printed for securing by drone's propellers during travel being a lone exception. That is not the point though. My Flashforge Adventurer 3 is a relatively cheap, but geeky, way to introduce myself to the technology. I don't know which I find more amazing: the hardware or the software! 

First, being able to accurately shoot a thick fishline of corn-based plastic through a 0.4 mm glue gun at around 400°F sounds pretty sophisticated. Then, the fact the bed and nozzle are accurate enough to create an object out of thin air is pretty amazing too. This isn't a typical creation where one starts with a block of material and whittles away until it becomes the object.  Rather, the process starts by adding layer upon layer of material to nothing. 

However, without software, the physical components could do nothing. I load a 3-D project file on a tiny application on my PC and the software figuratively slices an object into minuscule layers from the bottom up. Then, it creates a file for the printer so the information that can direct the nozzle to apply the hot plastic to the right place at the right time, in the right order.

   

The implications boggle. In the future, when the tech is more advanced, people may not have to buy certain items at a store.  They will, instead, be able to order only the plans or even download public domain copies. Many simple objects could simply be created directly by an end-user. Imagine how that could affect transportation, distribution, warehousing, and retail!

A 'Webby-er' Web

I was thinking how 'long in the tooth' Flickr has been looking lately. That site, as you might know, is pretty nearly the definition of what has become known as Web 2.0, after all. The photo-sharing site was one of the first to realize that the value of their site was all to do with the content of its users. Yet, over the past couple of years, I really hadn't noticed much updating except for a few changes to site layout.

Overall things seemed to offer little in the way of modern, social-networking integration. Then, suddenly, voilà! Today, I noted a brand new panel promoting the connections I'd already made with other websites. It's surely a step in the right direction.

Someday, just like neural networks in a living brain, information added to the Internet will be accessible to other net applications regardless of the original form and location.

I Grew Up in the Dark Ages

It seems as though I'm a little late to this party, but in this case a few years doesn't matter much. The US version of Life on Mars aired on ABC during the fall of 2008 through the following spring. I'm only up to the fifth episode out of 17. I am thankful to Netflix for letting me catch up on things I may have missed the first time around.

Earlier, I got involved in Mad Men just because the early 1960's seemed so well portrayed in that TV series. That decade is of interest to me historically but not really personally. I was too young to actually remember much about that period of time. The show I'm presently watching, although a cop show genre, really is about life in the NYC of 1973. That seems so much more relevant to me even though I was only in junior high school at the time.

Life on Mars really does make it seem like a different world. It's not all about the changes in technology. Yet, I do have to admit it's fun seeing old radios and an absence of computers. Every episode so far has dealt with changes in societal standards. Woman, gays, and blacks were treated differently nearly four decades ago. It's not completely foreign or strange but mildly irksome. Then, there are also little comments the characters make which slide right by quickly, but leave one pondering how archaic the times were. The main character asked an obviously pregnant woman if she knew what sex the baby would be. His colleague spoke first on the woman's behalf by saying, "No one can tell whether a baby will a boy or a girl before the birth."

Wow, dark ages, eh?

(Broad) Band on the Run

I'm having a difficult time adjusting to the idea of Internet access from anywhere. First, I associated using the Internet at one particular computer. Then, over the last couple of years, it's all been about Wifi and my local network. It was like, "Look ma, no wires." Lastly, only for a few weeks I have been getting used to 3G access via my phone. (As well as the applications and Internet browsing on the device itself, my Nexus One can now act as a mini-wifi spot thanks to version 2.2 of Android.)

I felt downright sinful yesterday. I started playing a YouTube music video. I walked right out the door into an elevator and my phone switched to G3 service. I then walked to the other end of Carnarvon Street but didn't miss a beat. I was streaming more than audio. The phone was in my coat and my headphone were on, so the screen was displaying the video to the inside of my pocket.

I'm a fairly conservative guy when it comes to money and energy. It felt a little decadent using all that bandwidth along Carnarvon Street Hey though, that will be the way of the future. I don't know if or when 4G will actually hit any part of Canada, but even the current connection speed in my pocket in the middle of the intersection at 6th Street amazed me. I remember when I first made a personal Internet website. In those days it was best practices to keep all text and graphics on a page to under 50K. Doesn't that seem quaint nowadays considering how much data we throw around less than twenty years later?

Some people dream about a future with an unlimited, low-cost energy supply. To me that might just go along with an unfathomable amount of cheap broadband everywhere.

Personal Tourism Robots

When I was small, I was looking forward to the invention of devices I thought of as tourist robots. I envisioned having a remotely controlled robot with a video camera. I figured it could be controlled from my living room and I'd watch robot's progress on a television. I figured I could visit places all around the world this way.

Well, now I'm 50 so I doubt I'll get a chance to see the exact implementation of my idea. Yet honestly, I'm quite impressed with a weaker alternative. At the present time I cannot drop into a city and roam the streets in real time. Google's Street View has made it possible, however, to do a fair bit of exploring. It's a common habit by now:

1) Open http://maps.google.com.

2) Type in a city or town for exploring.

3) Press the + side of the zoom slider two or three times.

4) Select the little guy from to top of the slider and drop him on a street of interest.

5) Click the tiny 'full screen' icon on the top right side of the image.

6) Use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate on a virtual walk around the location.

Following these instructions, I just explored Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I chose to navigate the beach area near the Zona Romantica. To follow in my virtual footsteps just click on the image above. It's not quite as good as being there ...

Witnessing a Major Shift

Right now, I'm in the BCIT library. I always give a one-hour project when I teach COMM 0004. That is what's happening. My fifteen students are working in pairs in various places around the building. They walked around the entire facility and are now planning and writing a description of one particular location. It's always interesting to have an activity take place outside the usual classroom. After this, we will walk back across campus to NE1 to finish the remaining three hours. Some of this will be spent studying new material, some writing an assignment, and we'll also spend a bit of time in the computer lab.

I didn't even mention to the students that today is my birthday. I don't want to have any fuss over the fact I'm fifty years old today. It might be due to the occasion which marks the passing of years, but my idea of libraries has certainly changed. Honestly, walking between stacks of yellowing paper seems very anchronistic. I am sure that during the centuries between the great libraries of the Roman Empire and a few years ago, these items on the shelves constituted a collection of the sum total of man's knowledge.

I have nothing against regular, old books. They are a terribly efficient way of carrying around information. They are portable, light-weight and can be produced cheaply. I always sort of laughed at those who talked about the demise of the library. That was, until today. The rushing tide to electronic storage and access will continue unabated. I'm sure that in another fifty years there will be a campus building called a library. I do not expect, however, that its function or layout will be recognizable.

Marconi Madness

Earlier this week one of my students chose electromagnetic radiation as an oral presentation topic. He did a great job of describing what it is and how it might affect us. Of course it wouldn't be pleasant to be in the part of the spectrum that microwave ovens use. It seems as though we're in the middle of a big experiment though. We've already been playing with radio for a hundred years. That isn't long. It certainly isn't enough time to establish its long-term effects on humans.

It's not radio or television broadcasting that concerns me much. After all, I expect these technologies to decrease in importance. More and more media will be heading to us via the Internet. At first blush, I might have thought that would mean a reduction in EMR exposure. Yet on a tiny bit of reflection, I see that's rather silly. There's hardly a location at my technical institute that's not blanketed with wireless signals. At this moment my text is travelling through my living room to my wireless router. I'm on my notebook now and I can also 'see' at least ten or a dozen networks. Cell phones, G3 broadband, powerlines, and applicances and equipment surround us.

At no time in history have people been subjected to so much background electromagnetic radiation.

Springfield Got Wider

I get it. I understand how TV viewing is going to be in the future. I will not need a separate satellite connection for programming as I will be able to watch every production on demand via the Net. I know this because I've moved video from my computer monitor to the living room 42" Toshiba LCD.

There's a difference between knowing about something and actually experiencing it. We're quite crippled here in Canada due to geographic copyright limitations. If I run a VPN and obtain an IP that looks to NBC as if I live in Los Angeles, then I can view their programs. If I pretend on my borrowed IP, I can use Hulu and the other major US networks. Of course, all of these restrictions are really silly in the Internet age. The copyright holders are begging for more restrictions rather than figuring out new ways in which to monetize their operations.


I thought I had an ExpressVu PVR timer set to record the Simpsons. For some reason, we haven't kept up this season. Has that show really been on the air for twenty years? I didn't know that, for example, they finally went high definition this February. We caught up on a few episodes today through Hulu. It might not have actually been in HD but the wide-screen format looked as good as I get off satellite.

Where's Scotty?

I am damned disappointed. When I was a youngster, I thought by the year 2009 I would be able to teleport to other places on earth and beyond. The sci-fi fantasy of stepping into a chamber and being beamed to an alternate location seemed worthy of becoming the 'next big thing'. To be de-molecularized, shot across vast distances, and re-assembled at a microscopic level did sound a little scary, but boarding a 750,000 pound Boeing 747 and managing to fly through the air across the ocean would've sounded pretty far-fetched at the turn of the last century as well. Yet, those metal beasts entered commercial use in 1970.

Today teleportation sounds very environmentally-friendly although I suppose it'd take substantial amounts of electricity to accomplish the task. Still, out here in BC, as a fair amount of the province's power comes from hydro, I'd definitely be reducing my carbon footprint were it to come to pass.

Lunch at a Paris bistro, anybody? Or perhaps a pizza in the Cinque Terra town of Manorola, Italy?

Getting Back on the Horse

I'm now typing inside Windows Live Writer rather than typing into the online box of blogger.com. Today, I am setting up my Acer to act as my computer whenever I’m not sitting in my living room. I have come to think of what happens in that chair as my authentic Internet experience. Of course, I use my work station computer at BCIT but have always considered both my laptop and extraneous computers as merely temporary diversions. Now, I am totally changing my schema and I am setting up my notebook to actually be my computer wherever I happen to be.

Although wireless is common, I was accustomed to often carrying around my laptop but being stuck without access. Last fall's trip to Europe was a prime example. This seemed so common that I began to totally doubt whether the concept of a futuristic computing cloud could really work. That term denotes the possibility of having most data sitting out on the Internet rather than on a local hard disk. I’ve been tilting that way for many years. Windows Live Mail and Google Mail are two good examples. I can hardly remember the time when email messages were downloaded and lived locally on a hard disk. With the application and data online, I am confident that as long as I'm at an Internet location, then I will have access to my messages.

One conundrum is that I sometimes plan to be without Net access on my netbook. Today, I witnessed how we'll deal with this stop-gap measure. I can see how we’ll manage until there is a WiFi or 3G connection at every location on the surface of the earth. For you see, I just set up Gmail for offline use on this little computer. It syncs up a local database to the data on Gmail’s server. So, when I’m out and not connected to the Internet, I will still have access to my contacts as well as a few months of messages. When I get back in range, any messages and changes will be re-synced.

Just being able to blog and communicate by email means that this Acer Aspire One will be useful at all times. Even if later in the year, I'm deep in the jungle in Sri Lanka for days at a time, I can complete daily entries and messages. When I get to a wireless access point, they will be freed from the confines of this little device.

When Documents Weren't on Screens

Today, I had some fun digging through an old box of paperwork. For work, I am trying to come up with some documents which show my employment history prior to my eleven and a half years of teaching at BCIT.


Old documents really take one back to the days when both truth and proof were substantiated on mere paper. When I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in 1981, my college had a 'placement file' service. As a bonus for graduates, they'd keep letters of recommendation, documents, and employment papers on file. Upon written request, they'd mail off officially stamped paperwork directly to an intended recipient. The entire department ceased operating a half dozen years later.

Compared to today's email and electronic documentation, it all seemed so quaint. I knew I would someday get to a point where I'd look back on things from my early career and take joy in fondly remember them. I am just a bit surprised that day has seemed to arrive so quickly! In bits and pieces over the last decade, I've put a small amount of information online. For example, prior to widespread use of Adobe Acrobat I once saved previous letters of recommendation in standard image format. Then later, I thought it'd be fun to scan some yellowing paper-based memories into standard PDF format. Doing this wasn't nearly as fun as I thought, and my collection is somewhat incomplete.

Just a few minutes ago though, I was able to find a box which has some of the originals. Luckily they didn't need to survive trial by flood or fire. As it is, they have weathered great distances and substantial time. Perhaps it's good that all things haven't ended up as computer files for there's nothing like the pungent smell of old paper.

Deciding on Diversions

It is easy for one's attention to wander nowadays. I didn't use that phrase in the traditional sense. I was trying to think of another way to express the improving 'virtual-ness' world in which we live. I can comment by writing something here, have it automatically written to my Facebook wall, and get comments from geographically dispersed readers the very same day. Something like that occurred earlier this week.

The term 'virtually' was coined too early and now has lost its initial impact. I think it may even have a slightly negative connotation now. It feels like the second best choice when compared to the real world. My mind, however, can be occupied on an increasing number of things, some of which my be physically far away. Books have always been a way to escape from the current surroundings. Reading, in general, can be classed as a mental task capable of keeping one involved in some other place or even time. Likewise, I'm sure everyone has stumbled out of a movie theatre and had that jarring sensation of coming back to a present reality.

Technology just keeps on making it easier. The variety of diversions continue to multiply. Jay was talking by phone with his sister in Sri Lanka about an 'American Idol' type show on television there. As the PS3 is connected to my router, I can stream Internet sites directly to the television. This morning, we watched the recent finale of Dream Star on the big 42" screen. At such compressed data rates it couldn't be considered even standard definition. Action appeared pixel-ated and all rapid camera panning was unclear. It amazed me anyway. Perhaps it's because I could only watch over-the-air, black-and-white television from stations 100 miles away when I was a kid.


I spent a good hour or so watching segments of the final episode although I don't speak the language. Our choices for using time virtually will undoubtedly increase in the near and long-term future.

Feeling Rather Stupid

Okay, I'll admit it; I think I'm brighter than the average bulb. It's not that I think ordinary people are, well, challenged. Humm. Wait a minute, actually that's exactly what I believe.

A few years ago few people set up secure wireless Internet connections. It used to be easy hitting the road in any major urban area and surfing off the free Net connections on others. On our Eurotrip of 2005, I was seldom out of range. Last year in parts of formerly, Eastern Europe I found it harder to find free Internet. Lastly, on the recent three-week trip to Italy there was only one place where I found unsecured access.

Being a few weeks without the Internet left me feeling rather, shall we say, uninformed. I find myself, under ordinary circumstances, running to the computer numerous times per day to find answers to questions I come across in life. On a vacation, there would be many more opportunities to look up information. Although I don't imagine searching on a future incarnation of a phone, I do expect to someday be in constant range of Wikipedia on a hand-held device.

I look back on how we used to live just a few years ago and I see them as dark times of ignorance. I am sure that in a decade or less I'll look back on having to travel without a persistent wireless connection in the same manner.

Open Sesame

I'm a little too old to have been affected by the television content of Sesame Street. It must have played in the house when my sister was small. Or perhaps, we used to watch it in the dorms at college. I'd say it's fairly safe to assume that most folks have heard of the Cookie Monster or Bert and Ernie. The show affected countless people. In fact, I remember finding it fascinating to see an Arabic-language, localized Iftah Ya Simsim co-production on Kuwaiti television in the early 1980's.

 

The only reason I'm bringing this up is I recently spotted the series on the PBS HD network lineup. It seems that everything, except the local CTV news, has gone high definition.

Technology changes but things do tend to repeat. I grew up with TV but remember the first sets in our house as being bulky boxes with many tubes. Importantly, they only showed black and white. We had relatives who must have had one of the first colour sets I can recall watching. I remember my father in the mid-1960s remarking how quickly things were changing. He was amazed that even the news program had, at the time, begun being broadcast in colour. Remember, that's when most viewers were seeing NBC's peacock in lovely shades of grey.

Now four decades later, I marvel that even Sesame Street is available in high-definition! In the 2040s will people be installing some type of interactive holographic receivers?

The Confessions of a Thief

For the majority of human existence, music was an oral tradition of individuals and tribes. Musical notation in a historical perspective may have started more than 4000 years ago with a cuneiform script in the lands of what is currently Iraq. Still, modern notation is most closely associated with European classical music. So, in the scheme of things, even being able to keep a written record of reproducible music is but the blink of an eye in human history.

Let's jump to the relative recentness of the last 150 years. We have invented ways to capture actual sounds and reproduce them at will. I'm barely a baby-boomer but have personally played LP's, 8-track tapes, cassettes, and now digital files. I know fortunes have been created and lost because of changes in these technologies. Access to it has dramatically allowed the accumulation of fortunes and vast power. The roads to artistic achievement have witnessed various twists and turns as the music industry has undergone continual growth and change.

BitComet is running as I type this. I have to admit it is just too damned easy to share little computer files containing songs. It is easier than going to the library to rip a copy from a CD. It is simpler than signing into an online music store. It is certainly less of a hassle than actually getting to a music store in the mall. We simply will no longer stick to outdated modes for music distribution, nor should we.

The thorny issue involves how to remunerate those who put all the effort into making those tracks. I haven't a clue as to how it should work. Perhaps those who create music will have to earn money by putting on live performances and simply giving away the little digital files. In a way, those gatherings will be a little closer to what music has been for the majority of its existence. For the majority of human existence, music was an oral tradition of individuals and tribes.

Warning: Nerd Alert!

THE FUTURE: 1950 STYLE

Eventually, automated homes such as those described by Ray Bradbury will exist. As of today, I am one step closer to the part where the house plays music. Let's forget about the exact scenario of the short story from The Martian Chronicles as I'd rather leave the fear of nuclear devastation for another blog entry. Also it's important to note that he wrote this short story fifty-eight years ago. Smart houses are assuredly taking longer to come to fruition than my childish notions would've predicted.

SERVING MEDIA

I'm thinking about There Will Come Soft Rains, as I have thousands of .mp3 and .wma files on an external hard drive near my computer. I use it for the collection and backing up important info. from my main drive. As discovered on Saturday the new PlayStation 3 will play these networked songs through the built-in media server in Microsoft's MediaPlayer 11. My PS3 lacks a direct DTS output for stereo files, unlike my computer's sound card. However, there's something quite simple and satisfying about making a selection on the large TV screen. It just feels right to pick music with the same remote I use when watching a DVD.

GETTING IT TOGETHER

Many people already have some sort of home network today. Most are wireless and used just to get the Internet on a notebook computer without a plug. This could be a wonderful basis for a smart house. The problem is that most of our consumer electronics products do not get along. Most of the devices are not designed for interoperability. In order to make any of them work together one must work too damned hard.

TO KNOW ME IS TO LOVE ME

I envision a day when, as one walks into the house, all gadgets will ask permission to connect to the home's network. For example, I should be able to listen to a podcast on a visitor's iPod. If the system were clever enough, a graphic representing the temporary device would automatically appear on a screen showing the current technology environment. As well as the calling-card information previously entered by the visitor, the system would recognize the unprotected media on the device. I'd simply be able to direct the system to play the podcast.

FIGHTING IN A FUTURE

This is a little more complex than Ray Bradbury's circuits and tapes in the walls. However, I can easily think of a good topic for a new, short story. Let's assume that all the system devices on our imaginary network have a priority on the system. What if various devices started fighting for supremacy in the heirarchy? Every iPod Nano lusts for power, you know. Somehow, that'd make for an interesting read.

My Future on the Silver Screen

I didn't have to go to the campus today. It's the first day I've had off in the last eleven. The upcoming week promises to continue being hectic. My next free day occurs in December. Jay had to use up another of his twelve, use-it-or-lose-it sick leave days. This morning was for shopping. After lunch, we drove to Richmond to see Beowulf in IMAX 3-D. The experience was pretty amazing.

I'd venture the feature would not be nearly as awe-inspiring on a standard screen. By the end of 113 minutes I was delightfully dizzy. The industry is finally getting closer to the day when authentic-looking film making needn't bother with reality at all. Technically, this movie is substantially better than Polar Express. There were far fewer creepy moments this time around when watching the actors do their motion-capture, computerized thing.

Certainly there's a promising future in this type of storytelling. Thirty years ago, I had never seen such real looking spacecraft as Star Wars allowed. I'm sure the audiences 44 years prior to that, thought the effects in King Kong were the ... well ... bee's knees.

So perhaps when at the theatre in 2025, I'll be able to step into the scanner booth when buying my movie ticket. For the price of the ticket, I'll be featured in the big action sequences in a tiny role as an extra. That'll force me to have to look very hard for my fleeting moment on screen, however. I expect if I were to cough up enough extra cash, I'd be able to purchase a much larger segment of screen time. By that time I'll be retired and, most probably, as frugal with cash as I am today. So, don't expect to see me flying around on a dragon ... ever.

Future Bump

I checked out the DVD of Minority Report (2002) from the library today when I was returning some travel guides. I like how future technology is presented in the film in a way that doesn't jump and shout about its very presence.

Today was just another day, but some aspects of it wouldn't have been common or even possible when I was in college. For example, I started the day after an old-fashioned coffee by answering an email message from the YMCA in Munich, Germany. It'd been typed in Europe a few hours before while I was asleep. They confirmed reservations for a stay with them during a planned autumn trip. Before eating lunch, I entered some students marks online from home. Later, during my afternoon class, half of my students had oral presentations. Some talked about their researched topic while showing PowerPoint slides on an enormous screen in the front of the room. The images and text danced around the screen in a colourful yet effective manner. After getting home, I threw the previously-mentioned DVD into my computer's disc drive and copied the movie onto a round, duel-layer DVD disk. I found it difficult to think that I had finished college by a few years before the use of consumer video tape became widespread. Oh, and my day's not quite yet over.

How the things we take for granted have changed. Yet we've adopted so well, the world surely doesn't seem very Jetson-like.

File Viewer

Television has evolved into a screen for the playback of digital files. Currently, I collect them via satellite in real time and store on hard disk. I am sure that in the not-so-distant future, they will be available on demand from a network. As long as the bandwidth is sufficient and the local storage space large enough, my future programming will most likely be shuffled around just like I do with present-day digital photographs.

Some Year in the Future

Dennis: Hey, Hal.
Computer: Yes, Dennis?

Dennis: Delete that episode of CSI: Kissimmee. I'm finished and I'll never trust a guy dressed as an animal again!
Computer: Done. What can I do for you now?

Dennis: Hal, how about a personal network search?
Computer: Okay.

Dennis: Jay said I used to have a beard in the late 1990's. I want to view an image taken of me in that era. Try to find one of me when we were leaving after a free night at the Holiday Inn in Kelowna.
Computer: Found. I accessed it in your Flickr collection of 2006.

Dennis: Put it up on the wall screen.
Computer: Yes.

Dennis: It must have been originally on film. It was scanned with an old scanner, obviously. Can you enhance the image, please?
Computer: Enhancing ...

Dennis: Make my face a little less green.
Computer: Is that to your liking?

Dennis: That's better. What is the file format?
Computer: Standard jpg.

Dennis: Convert to .holo format. Just try moderate relief texturing.
Computer: Yes. Done.

Dennis: That's a good job. I'd almost swear it was taken with a 3-D camera.
Computer: Shall I save?

Dennis: Yes, Hal, but keep the original too. I really did have a lot of hair back then. Jay was right. Okay, Hal.
Computer: What can I do for you now?

Dennis: Let's try a Microsoft Connect 2023 vidcon to see how Jay's younger sister is doing.
Computer: Okay, connecting video conferencing to Sri Lanka. Proceed.

Dennis: Hi, what time is it there ...