This week has been one of those that I’ve found myself rushing around like a chicken lacking a cranium, but have very little to show for it.

We have been asked to design something that DaVinci never got around to doing. DaVinci was clearly a busy man.

For a bit of inspiration in what was a very vast spectrum, I decided to link this back to my food project. After several ideas along the lines of packaging, and making comfort  food, I settled on a doughnut hole puncher.

This will hopefully be exhibited alongside the Museum of Science and Industry’s Da Vinci exhibition that’s going up later this year.

Other than that, the food cushions are coming along well, looking nice and squishy, just like I intended.

Will be looking into making a life-size gingerbread man, for a bit of a change from cushions. He could be used as a hug-buddy, a rug, a scarf…

If I ever work out what I did with the rest of my time, I’ll let you know!

Computer rendering of E. coli bacteria. A newly developed E. coli strain is capable of efficiently producing unnatural polymers, through a one-step fermentation process. (Credit: iStockphoto/Sebastian Kaulitzki)

A team of pioneering South Korean scientists have succeeded in producing the polymers used for everyday plastics through bioengineering, rather than through the use of fossil fuel based chemicals. This groundbreaking research, which may now allow for the production of environmentally conscious plastics, is published in two papers in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering.

read the article here

This is the problem with reading Wired as a blogger; you basically want to write a post on every feature they do. In the latest edition, there’s all kinds of stuff which would suit the PlayLondon remit, but I was immediately drawn to a piece about rubber band music.

The guy who does it (an annoyingly young designer called James Reynolds) has worked out the frequencies required to strum well-known tunes on a stretched-out rubber band. They’re just tacked onto the wall with coloured dots to indicate what sequence you should twang the thing, and you get to play tunes like Ode to Joy, Billie Jean or U Can’t Touch This.

Infuriatingly I can’t find a video of it on his site, but here are some pictures.

In the meantime, here’s something else I’ve nabbed from Wired’s December issue: another young scamp who’s making what he calls “electronic synthesiser-type noises with household objects.”

I think it’s rather awesome; the cat jabbing its claws into my lap disagrees.

I often wish I had photographs of certain people or places from my past.  I constantly damn myself for not chronicling my life better.  I’ve even wondered if anyone else might have photographed those people and places.  This gave me an idea for a great invention, the Universal Photo Database (UPDB).

I have lots of old photos of my mother and father, and some of my grandparents, with a few of my aunts and uncles and my cousins.  If there was a UPDB, I could submit my pictures to it, along with the names of the people in the photos.  Then if anyone in the world put in a search, for example “George Delany Harris,” my father, they’d find the photos I uploaded.  It’s not likely people would be searching for him, but he was in the Air Force for twenty-four years and maybe old service buddies wondering what happened to their old pal would.  On the other hand, other people might have photos of my dad that I’d like to see.

[Jim Harris (me), Patty Piquet (spelling?), Becky Harris (my sister) and Jody in front of house in Lake Forest subdivision, Hollywood, Florida, Christmas, 1958.]

When I was growing up, we’d often go outside to take the photos to have good light.  Us kids would stand on the sidewalk in front of the house, often grouped in gangs of friends.  Photos for the UPDB could also be tagged by location, such as Maine Avenue, Homestead Air Force Base.  My sister and I had a bunch of friends on that street but no photos, so maybe Arthur or Alice, or Gary and Gerry, if such a UPDB existed could post their family photos, and if I searched on “Maine Avenue” and “Homestead Air Force Base” and (1961 or 1962) I’d find them.

Or I could search for “Lake Forest” “Hollywood, Florida” 1958-1963 and I could find photos of the old subdivision where I grew up.  Facebook has accidently created a beginning of a UPDB for the Lake Forest (Hollywood, FL) Historical Appreciation Society.  The group has 90 photographs, some of which seem to come from the era when I lived there, so obviously, this idea of mine might have widespread appeal because there are other people feeling nostalgic for that neighborhood too.  Multiply that desire by millions and billions of people and you’ll see the potential.

[Patty Piquet (spelling?), Michael Kevin Ralph and Becky Harris (my sister) in front our house in Lake Forest subdivision in Hollywood Florida, April, 1959.  Patty and Mike, are y’all out there?] 

The tremendous popularity of Facebook is due to nostalgia I think, but so far its technology is based on simple groupings allowing people to reconnect with old acquaintances.  A UPDB with key fields based on names, locations and dates would redefine our interest in the past, and it could be used for other purposes other than wistful remembering.  Think what it would mean to biographers, writers and reporters?

My favorite science fiction writer is Robert A. Heinlein.  What if every fan photo, interview photo, magazine photo, fanzine photo, convention photo ever taken of Heinlein was uploaded into the UPDB along with information, memoirs, interviews, etc. linked to the photos, wouldn’t that create a wonderful library of information for researchers and fans to study?

Also, how often do you find old family photos where you don’t know all the folks in the shot?  Uploaded those photos to the UPDB and someone might identify the mystery faces.  Or how often do you clean out old closets and drawers and throw away ancient photos?  That’s history buried in the landfill – ain’t that a crying shame?  Every photo is a snapshot of reality from a unique time and space location, and who knows what value it might contain.

Most libraries have a special collections department that collects local photos, but they are impossible to use without visiting each collection in person.  Imagine if all the special collection photos where uploaded to the UPDB?  Or old archive photos from newspapers and magazines?  Or all the school photo annuals?

Imagine if Google Maps was cross-referenced to the UPDB where you could zoom in and see photos based on location and time period?  What a fantastic mash-up that would make.  Now that we live with pocket telephones that have built-in cameras, wouldn’t it be easy to create photo diaries of our lives?  Especially ones with GPS tech built in that could date/time/location stamp each photo?

When I was growing up, buying a roll of film for the Kodak Brownie was a rare event.  For most years of my life I doubt there were no more than 2-3 photos taken of myself, and some years none.  There is a small chance I’m in other people’s photos.  During the decades of my parents life, they probably went years without being photographed.  And their parents and grandparents were probably only photographed a handful of times during their whole lifetime.  If we don’t make an effort now, those photographs will soon disappear.

On the other hand, the current digital generation will have hundreds, if not thousands of photographs of themselves, so they will overwhelm the UPDB and techniques will be needed to weed out the photos worth saving.  One of my favorite blogs, Times Goes By written by Ronni Bennett has a top masthead of 10 photos of Ronni taken across her life that makes a wonderful timeline image.  I wish that everyone I meet on the web had a linked page with a similar timeline photo of themselves.  At minimum, each person should have a photo for each year of their life.  Go look at Ronni’s photos – doesn’t that time dimensional aspect add so much to your immediate impression of her?

Everyone is amazed by what the Internet does now – I’m waiting to be blown away by what it will do in five years, or ten years.  Imagine and contemplate what Facebook could be in 2015?  or 2025?  Picture me singing and smiling like Al Jolson, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

JWH – 11/25/9 (My birthday – age 58)  

We live in interesting times. New fangled inventions emerge daily. And that in itself is not a bad thing. I am writing this on my phone as we head back home. We have come a long way from the days of the word processor. Indeed a long way from the bush telegraph and carrier pigeons. Some changes are good. Certain other things that have evolved though, that are not necessarily so. I don’t know how or when, but they are now as firmly entrenched as though they have always been.

Before I continue, I must remind you that this is all about life as I see it. So relax, and come with me if you please.

He said what he meant. He meant what he said. He was quite an orator. He spoke at length because he knew his time was limited. He is still with us, only not in the form he once was. He spoke about many things, and importantly, taught us how to pray. The first line of the prayer is  ’Our Father, who art in heaven’

In some parts of Christiandom today, there is this term known as ’spiritual father’. It is usually used to refer to a pastor that whose teachings are so inspirational that the ’spiritual child’ has decided to closely follow said pastor’s ministry. And so you hear people saying ‘So and so is my spiritual father, I have all his books etc’. This might be a very simplistic way of putting my point across, but I hope you catch my drift.

So where did it all start from? And how did it become such an integral part of the Christianese vocabulary?

I do not profess to be a Bible scholar. Far from it. I read it though, as regularly as I am able to, but am yet to come across any part that says we are to appoint our fellow human beings as our spiritual fathers. If perchance, it is written in there, I would appreciate it if you my reader can point it out, so I can go back, read it, and update this post with my findings accordingly.

I know that in these interesting times that we live in, it is now a fairly straightforward process to divorce one’s parents. The process of doing this is called emancipation. Children do it for various reasons, some justifiable, others not so much. But how do you divorce a spiritual father? If somewhere along your journey you discover that the humble, tongue speaking charismatic preacher that you have admired for so many years has fallen headlong into sin, what would you do?  Disown him? Declare that he is no longer your father? In which court?

I believe the reason why he started the prayer the way he did was because he knew the hearts of men. And he understood that no matter how anointed we are, we are still human. Subject to the same temptations and failings that the rest of the human race face daily. So he directed us to the only one who could nurture us perfectly.

Our Father, in heaven.

Here’s today’s idea: air bags for bananas or other easily bruised fruit. I see Ziploc or Glad being the manufacturers. You know those inflatable air bags that are used as packing material these days? They weigh very little and provide good cushioning so places like Amazon.com use them. Well, we need something like that in a sleeve-shape for bananas. You’d slip the banana into the flat bag, then inflate the bag around the fruit. Voilá – your produce is protected from lunchbox abuse. They could have variations for round fruit (peaches, plums, etc) too.

Gosh, maybe I should look into being an inventor…

Time magazine has just produced its list of what it regards as the top 50 inventions of 2009.

Ares rocket off to the stars

No doubt the first of many top list for the year and for the decade,its top of the hit parade is NASA’s Ares rocket which the magazine describes as

The best and smartest and coolest thing built in 2009 — a machine that can launch human beings to cosmic destinations we’d never considered before — is the fruit of a very old family tree, one with branches grand, historic and even wicked.

I’m very interested in the trend with devices such as XBox 360 towards a convergence of media types and delivery with it’s support of Sky TV through the XBox and broadband via Sky Player – Stephen Nuttall from Sky was quoted as saying: ‘Our partnership with Xbox is a further example of our commitment to put choice and control in the hands of customers.’

I’m particularly interested in the ‘blurring’ or perhaps integration is a better word between the different media types so the idea of interactivity around watching a football match whilst downloading stats and also interacting with other fans is cool, also concepts around adding value to experiences through ‘back channel’ activities is something becoming more prevalent, as is the concept of ‘on demand’ services.

I think the really interesting stuff will be when the boundaries between an interactive TV experience, a gaming experience or an internet experience all disappear to the extent that they become platform neutral and coherent rather than bolt on things. The announcement of the Boxee box earlier this month is a step in the right direction, this really is opening up the rich resources and putting power int he hands of the users. It also means that you no longer need to get content ‘produced’ on a TV channel in order to get your content to a large audience, consumers become producers.

I’m very interested in using gaming technology and interactive TV in more powerful ways to develop engagement and learning, supported with internet they become extremely powerful tools.

What will be necessary to maintain human life in the year 7000 CE?

In the post called, Humanity’s “Laws of stability” in the year 7,000 CE, it is postulated that there will be 100 million people living on Earth at that time. In the future, after 5000 years, nearly all of the natural mineral resources which current high technology society depends will be gone and people will be relying on renewable sources of energy and carefully recycled materials. Because human society will have been in balance with what the resources the Earth provides for over a thousand years what is needed will be known with precision and appropriate adjustments made. At present it is only possible to speculate, but some things are obviously going to be required for a high tech society. However, if society reverts to a hunter gather type then the population will be forced to fall to a much lower number, probably below 1 million. The Earth’s resources will have been greatly degraded from the time 10,000 years ago when humans first developed the ways to move out of hunting and gathering lifestyle. Then there were about 3 million humans living. If the EarthArk is implemented then there might be more people able to survive in either a high tech society or a low tech one because the environmet may be more fully restored.

How can food be moved from where it is created to where it’s needed?

An absolute necessity which must be fulfilled under all conditions is food for the people. With so large a population as 100 million there will be cities which must have food transported to them. At this distant future time with no gas, oil, coal and limited mineral sources the energy for the power to create food and transport it to the cities must come from the sun. This energy will probably come from electric solar cells, surface wind farms and wind kite farms. On land this electric energy would be moved to where it is needed with high voltage power lines which could power the farm equipment, electric trains and the cities.

How can material and people be moved in a sustainable way?

 The trains could be relatively low-speed for transporting materials and food but the high-speed trains would be used for human transportation. As fuel for airplanes would have to be created from raw materials by electrolysis their use would be limited to moving only the most time critical items. Land based communication between cities would be done with high-speed electric trains not much different from current ones but linking the whole planet. Ocean crossings would be powered with wind, solar energy and stored electric energy and would be quite slow compared to the trains. There would need to be trans polar train routes from Europe to America and China for faster travel. North America and South America would have a train link across the isthmus of Panama. At some of the difficult places like the Bering Straights, and the straights from Singapore to Australia  there would still be ferries and some floating bridges. Water travel is much slower than train travel so the various ferries connections would be as short as possible.

What are the long term problems with an all-electric society?

On average of a year or more sunlight is very constant and over a ten year  period the wind is also constant. In a society so dependent upon electricity there would be a critical need for the maintainance of the conductors of electricity from where it happens to be abundant at a give time to where it is needed. Such movement of electricity over long distance requires metals such as copper, aluminium and some rare ones like silver, bismith and yttrium. It is possible that some forms of carbon may be used. Perhaps for the long power grid connections there might be super-conductors but even these will probably require these metals. So they might become the limiting factor on maximum population size when everything requires them. Not just energy relocation needs metals, the electric motors will also require these things.

Food is the limiting factor for population but food creation may be limited by the power available.

***** Best tech, inventions,  cars, computers, cameras, technology.

http://kl.am/54Fm

I suggest you try this instead of on-line games:

‘The Norton Online Risk Calculator, unveiled within a microsite to coincide with the launch of Norton 2010, calculates your net worth on the black market by asking a few questions about your personal Internet use.

‘It takes a few minutes to answer the questions, after which you get three results: how much your online assets are worth, how much your online identity would sell for on the black market, and your risk of becoming a victim of identity theft.

‘The main point isn’t to promote software or instill fear, but to spread awareness on cybercrime, said Marian Merritt, Internet security advocate for Symantec.’ -IT World

Turns out the whole sock thing is out there for a lot of people. My colleague M, who lives in a small house, with only one other adult (ie no children or animals, who could add a random element to the household) and is a pretty tidy sort of chap, mentally and physically, has had socks go missing on him – and then reappear, sometimes when his partner points to an obvious place where the sock should have been, wasn’t, and now is. I could tell in conversation that this does make him puzzled, and on occasion, downright uneasy. He is one of a tiny percentage of people where I work to wear smarter clothes (trousers and a shirt, as opposed to jeans, or dramatically artistic here I am type clothes), and having to work all day in socks that may be of different origins can be difficult and impede concentration. He also mentioned that although he has tried the logical workaround of buying socks en masse, it’s still not the same; somehow socks from different original pairs, though the same make and model, are visibly and tactiley (sp? word?) different.

He also went down the making it obvious route – socks with graphics. These can be innocuous, perhaps days of the week, or coloured toe areas, down a rapidly descending taste tunnel to cartoons and onward to communicating the idea that the wearer is a sex god (this is something experimented with by our mutual boss, I hasten to add before M sues, apparently as the bosses’ offspring find it amusing. It’s disconcerting for us, probably doesn’t do much for cred in some company areas – but may do a lot in others, where such messages may be construed as an  invitation – which the boss may not be entirely comfortable given we are a diverse organisation). Bit of a bracket digression there, but people in the UK papers are paid for that sort of stuff so I’ll take the liberty. Anyway, even experiments with socks with graphics, completely against M’s nature, have failed. Where do they go? Why? How do they get back?

Moving forward, other colleague J, who is of a practical bent, and had already come up with one brain wave earlier, that of a Pets Accident and Emergency room (built upon speculation that an absent staff member’s cat had gone wrong over the weekend, and could only be booked in for fixing on Monday), then came up with the possibility of integrated socks. Integrated to what needs working on, as do the hygiene implications, but it’s out there for consideration…

A team of engineering students from southern India have been designing a small light-weight satellite that is set to be sent into space soon. The Indian Space Research Organisation is supporting the project in the hope that it will encourage more students to be more interested in space technology.About 40 students, mostly engineering under-graduates from seven top colleges in Bangalore and Hyderabad are working together at Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology in Bangalore.Under the guidance of the research organisation, the students hope to build one of the smallest satellites ever designed. It will be used for remote-sensing applications. It will orbit the earth at an altitude of 700 kilometers and will send 30 minutes of data everyday.The students have already built a master-control ground station to track the location of the satellite in space. The satellite is expected to be launched before the end of the year through the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.Once the satellite is launched and placed in its final orbit, all its systems will be monitored by the students themselves.

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I saw a commercial on TV the other day, and I realized that many of today’s most popular technologies are the result of combining two or more older technologies. The commercial was for Pyrex kitchen utensils that included wire whisks with thin rubber spatulas attached to each piece of the whisk so that you could beat stuff and then scrape the side of the bowl. Another example was a baking dish that comes with a cover so that you could just store the cooked food in its original baking dish in the refrigerator.

Another thing that occurred to me is that, when we think of emerging technologies, we usually think of high-tech, electronic contraptions. Kitchen utensils doesn’t spring immediately to mind, at least until now. The Pyrex commercial reminded me to think about simple innovations as well as complex ones.

I mentioned a couple of months ago I didn’t know how to convey the sentiment “I’m sorry” while driving.  Why didn’t I think of this? (via MetaFilter.)

The Sezmi TV service aims to provide a more personalized, Net-savvy, inexpensive alternative to cable and satellite. -Harry McCracken, Technologizer -PCWorld

EDGE Competition

Originally uploaded by dkzody

Starting with this assortment of odds and ends, my four marketing seniors developed and built a product for a target market in 30 minutes which they then presented in the form of an infomercial to a panel of judges at the local college.

They were among 11 teams, all the others made up of college students. Pretty daunting for my inner city high schoolers, but they held their own and took third place. I was very proud of them. Just going out to the college and competing took lots of guts. I told them, “you never win anything if you don’t take the risk.”

My students made a comfort carrier with all sorts of goodies to carry on a plane and use in the hotel room. The infomercial they created was very clever and I think that is what won the prize for them.

I was flipping channels and was delighted to see that “Everyday Edisons” on in 30 minutes, so I set the timer. I am a nerd/geek in my mind and heart and I fully admit it. So for me, Everyday Edisons is an exhilarating program. When I watched the show, I learned about really cool (yet simple) inventions – from Michael Diep’s cat jungle gym that also files a cat’s nails to Aaron Tang’s feisty alarm clock. Perhaps you have a good idea that the world needs, considering attending a casting call. In the meantime, visit Edison Nation, a community Web site dedicated to idea people. Edison Nation holds monthly Live Product Searches that allow you to submit your ideas online. The world is waiting for your idea to make a bunch of lives better!

It was a cool, October day.

I went to pick up Sweet Pea from first grade.

She got into the car, beaming:

“Guess what!  I am going to do Convention Convention!”

Me:  “What is ‘Convention Convention’?”

“I don’t know!  But I want to do it!”

And that is my daughter.

She wants to do it because she can.

Later, I discovered that she was talking about Invention Convention.

“So, what do you want to invent?”

“I don’t know . . . something cool!”

And then we started brainstorming.

*sigh*

Here were her ideas and our reasons why not to do them:

1)  Sweet Pea:  Something that mixes colors, like how red and yellow make orange.  Us:  Done-called the color wheel

2)  Sweet Pea:  A car that flies.  Us:  No.  Plus it would exceed the $15 budget allotment.

3)  Sweet Pea:  A robot that does all my chores and is as big as me!  Us:  How?  And everyone wants that.

So, after much careful deliberation, we decided on a game.

Sweet Pea wanted a game that involved climbing a tree and answering animal questions.

The Lumberjack was in charge of helping Sweet Pea come up with the animal questions.

“What do you call a school of fish?”

That was his favorite one.

“It’s a trick question!  Get it?”

I took the liberty of omitting that one.

I am not sure if first grader’s are ready for trick questions.

Sweet Pea actually had a pretty good idea.

The game was a lot of fun!

I think Convention Convention was a success!