Watching an HBO series on DVD and just pondering this. HBO caught a generation with the “Dead Channel” intro (even spoken to by William Gibson) but it’s a lost meme. What would be the meme today? A 404 going to a webcast/web stream? Not sure if there is a translation to what they made a staple.
Archive for category Life in General
Contemplations.
Oct 8
Just a quick update.
Mar 21
I finally got around to updating some of my links and the Contact Me page. Hopefully, I’ll remember to keep things more up to date.
Just saw a trailer for “Buried” on the Zune marketplace (OK, I don’t get to see many movies in the theater these days.) Wondering about the premise today when cell phone localization is making such leaps and bounds. How fast does that movie go into the “Suitcase Cell Phone” nostalgia movie bin – assuming it’s not there already.
“Where are you calling from?” becomes “I see you’re getting a “94”signal off of cell tower 451 and a “41” off of 447. We’ll have EMS there in less than 10 minutes to dig you out.
Movies become rather shorter unless they have a few more plot twists. “EMS here, we found a MicroCell relay at that location – we need a packet trace on the VOIP traffic from address <xxxx>”
Generation Gap
Jul 23
OK, been quiet for just TOO long. Wanted to post a quick observation to break the silence. I’m an old Geek. (If you’ve met me you know I can’t lie about that.) But I do try to keep up with ideas (and hopefully get ahead of a few.) But something’s been bothering me and it’s a very SOCIAL not Technical thing.
I’m still used to having my username assigned.
Gen Today is used to generating their own username.
THIS IS KEY.
If you’re a corporation – you’re used to on-boarding people (Spellchecker wanted the hyphen, I’ve never seen it in real life) and part of that process is generating a user ID that more than likely permeates through the organization. Sometimes two or three or a dozen. You expect people to have this as their primary, most of their waking life identity. Their identity is key to their day job, and anything they do outside of that MUST be separate.
If you’re an independent you expect to have control over your ID and anything that may be pre-generated becomes a task and something that you’re just going to have to deal with, but like waste disposal, do it as quickly and efficiently as you can to get back to the real stuff. If you don’t have this – unfortunately you don’t really succeed as an independent, you end up on someone’s staff.
If you’re of my generation – your “True Name” may be something supplemented an alias you don’t hang your hat on in public. It’s your RPG/Shadow/Ghost name. “Mr Slippery” isn’t a name for someone that has an office address. Something you say what you think with (hopefully) little hope of reprisal. If you don’t have one then traditionally you may have been a “Lurker.” Someone that hears much, says little and stays in the wings of the theater.
But that’s changing. More startup companies and business are identifying either both online and offline as the same thing, or identifying with their online identity first. You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your given name, so to some extent that’s not as surprising as it might be.
I find this VERY interesting.
New Location
Dec 21
You may notice something new as check your feed or visit my blog. I’ve been doing some renovation and changes to get ready for the new year. It seems about this time every year I look at the site and really want to do something new with it. New version of the software, new type of operations, it’s always something.
Well this year, I’ve decided to really push things. I’m going to continue learning about SEO and what that means from a content and development side. But not just that, I’m running in a hosted environment now as well – I’ve worked for a very long time with a server of my own (physical or virtual) and I really thought I’d like to learn about the environment that most users and developers work in.
This site is the result of the intersection of both of those pushes. And as a side effect, I’ll get to learn a good bit about PHP under IIS 7 as well, and how this world compares to my more familiar world of SharePoint and capabilities that I’ve been using so long.
It’s a grand experiment, you’ll probably see me break some things, do some flubs, trip up on some items, but I’m going into this with the same attitude that I generally do with cooking. If you already know how it’s going to turn out, then what’s the use of doing it?
So if you’re tired of shooting Zombies in Left4Dead on your XBox, or have beaten the “I, Zombie” level on Plants vs Zombies one too many times, and you’re in the Seattle area – try the live action event!http://blog.seattlepi.com/digitaljoystick/archives/172804.asp?from=blog_last3
Microsoft Hohm enters Beta
Jun 25
Some of you may have already seen the Hohm site – but if you haven’t you can take a look over at www.microsoft-hohm.com (and sign up while you’re there.) I’d also recommend taking a look and possibly subscribing to the team blog – http://blog.microsoft-hohm.com.
So why the blog post? Well lots of people saw what Hohm is about – letting you know your energy usage and allowing you to plan and optimize what you’re using (which is pretty critical as I type this and look at my weather station readings – 107.32F right now.) This helps us survive the bills and the weather and our power grid survive the demand load that summers generate with record breaking heat and expanded populations in the hotter parts of the country.
But there was something in the announcement that I don’t know that a lot of people caught. That was this line in the release – “… if you are a customer of a Hohm-partnered utility company you can choose to automatically upload your energy usage data into the application in the near future.” Hmmm. Now that’s interesting. I was hoping for something like this eventually, but it sounds like the feedback loop of our “Smart Power Grid” efforts are actually starting to come about in the real world! Now that’s progress!
BTW, why did I put this also under Robotics? Because that feedback loop that’s starting to happen is exactly what mobile robots have to do all the time. Not just send instructions on power consumption, but monitor usage, monitor needs, prioritize, and then manage that consumption to goal. Lots of crossover opportunities.
Bio Post
May 4
Philip Wheat started out in development back when you learned from Compute Magazine (by typing in the code) and had to know something about soldering to expand your memory with most computers. When he entered college he had his eyes set on Aerospace Engineering, but between the call of the code, and the job market at the time, he quickly realized that there was pay in knowing about his passion, and he completed his studies in Computer Science.
After his graduation, he worked in the field for a number of years, and seeing the state of the industry decided to go back into the Master’s Program in Computer Science – which was one of his better ideas as it brought him to the attention of Texas Instruments, which called him to their Dallas campuses and enabled him to work with the early stages some of the groundbreaking technologies that are in use today, such as ASIC design, DLP manufacturing, DSP development, and floor and wafer fabrication systems (plus some other things he still can’t talk about). But as incredible as the opportunities there were, the Internet Gold rush was on and he submitted to several former co-workers entreaties (well, maybe just tempting offers) and headed to Austin, TX to work with a (then) small consulting firm on the cutting edge of development and solutions delivery.
He spent several years at Catapult Systems as their most demanded consultant, being called in to Microsoft to do briefings on Collaborations, Portals, and other Web information management technologies (in addition to his project delivery role) before moving to a regional role with Avanade, Inc. There he led regional Collaboration Solutions efforts and was a primary resource globally for SharePoint technologies. During this time he ran dual projects in the Office 2007 TAP program that led to successful deployments of custom solutions based upon SharePoint 2007 even before official release of that platform. He currently works with the Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism group as the Community Architect Evangelist for Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, engaging with Architects on the needs and requirements of their role and helping developers to be more involved in the Architecture space.
Some of his personal projects include Embedded Systems, Knowledge Management, Augmented Reality, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems. You’ll find him supporting groups of both geek social, and developer focus, and connecting with as many interesting people as he can. If you see him around, come up and introduce yourself, and let him know what you’re doing. He’s always interested in hearing what people are doing, and learning from the innovative people he knows, passionate developers, designers, and architects! If you want to keep up with where he is and what he’s doing, you can find out some of his current activities at his blog
(Phil is also an admirer of Jonathan Pryce and sometimes shows homage by referring to himself in the 3rd person when he talks about himself.)
(See the director’s cut of “Curse of the Fatal Death” if the reference isn’t known to you.)
Signs of life.
Apr 28
Did ArcReady Austin today, CloudCamp on Saturday. Look for some more blog posts later this week.
