Author Archives: Scott C. Lemon

About Scott C. Lemon

I'm a techno futurist, interested in all aspects of humanity, sociology, community, identity, and technology. While we are all approaching the Singularity, I'm just having fun effecting the outcomes of the future!

Busy with projects …

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I noticed that I am *WAY* behind in my blog reading, and posting. I’ve
been having a blast and just too busy with life in general … it just
hasn’t been a priority. Besides spending time with the family, I’ve
been working on:

  • My full time job at “Agilix Labs”. We are well into our partnership with Blackboard, and are deep into the development of our next generation of the product. GoBinder
    is going to end up being a very fun project. With our next gen
    product, it will become a fully open and dynamic platform for education
    and work. Our SDK will open up GoBinder to allow for the addition
    of custom pages and capabilities. I can’t wait for the next
    builds to come together.
  • Cell Phone Services – I’m working on two projects in this space
    that are coming together nicely. And they both interelate and
    have the ability to support each other. One is related to social
    networking, and then other is a information service … I’m n ot going
    to say much more for now … but we now have operational web sites.
  • Zombie Tracking – I have a prototype of my system for tracking
    and reproting on suspected zombie machines on the Internet. I now
    have 10 of my hosts reporting in to my central collection system and
    basic reporting working. The information that I am gathering is
    interesting already, and I’m not even done yet. I have a lot more
    to do here … but I want to complete the cell phone services first.
  • Wireless Hot Spots – I’m still working on the NoCat open source
    project, and have recently begun the process of integrating my changes
    into the core release. I’m also working with Schuyler at NoCat to
    get the NoCatSplash project completed with full captive and passive
    support.

So … with all of this going on … it’s easy to fall behind in
reading and posting. I’ve actually enjoyed getting back into
coding and have been writing a good bit of Perl and PHP again … doing
some REST web services … and playing on the Internet in
general. Fun stuff.

May CTO Roundtable

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This morning was the  May CTO Breakfast
coordinated by Phil Windley.  There was a good group of people,
and the usual varied topics.  I came in a little late and so I
missed the beginning conversations, however we quickly moved into
languages.

We spent a good bit of time talking about computer languages … from COBOL to APL,
C to Java to C#.  I linked to APL since we spent some time on APL,
and talking about what the core values were of this language.  I
suggested that computer languages have evolved to meeting the demands
of individuals who want to describe or communicate an abstract concept
into a form that a computer can use and process.  There is a huge
human side to computer languages … the computer language of choice
seems to be related to the ability of the individual to express their
ideas – the abstract thought, concept, or process – in that
language.  In addition, it was brought up that there could be a
better language that is more effective or efficient for that individual
… however they might not have ever taken the time to learn that
language.

Another point that was brought up was how corporations and developers
often develop in the languages they know … even though it might be
far more cost effective to develop the solution in a different
language.  One thing that is changing all of this is the
translation of software source code into intermediate langauges that
are executed by various run-time engines.

The subject of differences in global cultures – from here in the USA,
to Europe and China – also came up, and the motiviation of younger
generations in these other countries.  We ended up talking about
how “guilt and humiliation” can often be good motivators, and are
present in other cultures.  In addition, we talked about the
various role models that are present here in our country.

Finally, the topic of schools and education came up.  It was
interesting to hear the various points of view about our education
systems in the country, and how it is the parents involvement that
directly relates to the behavior and participation of the student.

Overall … as usual … a very interesting set of discussions. 
Of course afterwards I spent some time chatting with Phil about some of
our ideas, and some of the projects that I am working on.  I’m
about to announce a demonstration of one of them … and there is one
that I might be able to work with Phil on.  We’ll see …

The next wave of Robots

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When I was growing up, I remember seeing the Heathkit HERO Robots
… kit robots that you could buy from the premiere electronic kit
company.  They were too cool, and of course made me and friends
think about owning our own R2D2 robot.

Yesterday, I found out about the RoboBusiness Conference & Exposition
that was held this week in Cambridge, MA.  I am really impressed
at the conference, and the speakers, and I am sorry that I was unable
to attend.  I would have really liked to hear about the progress
that has been made in the areas of robotics and telepresense.  It
is really this second topic – telepresence – that really interests
me.  This is where robots are being used to extend the “senses” of
a human operator.  In military applications, these robots can
enter a building or cave and allow the human operator to look around
without being in danger.  In personal applications you could
remotely interact with one of your grandparents, and look around their
house for them and to keep an eye on them.

If you visit the website you will see a lot of companies working in
this space … and some very innovative solutions.  One of the
interesting robots is White Box Robotics and their new Model 914 PC-BOT … the next generation of hobbyist/experimental robots.  Is is available for purchase now, or at least to reserve one, and it is priced very aggressively.

There are many other examples, and again I really am impressed by the
list of speakers.  I’ll have to talk Doug Kaye into getting the
conference proceedings on ITConversations!

Learning more about the brain

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I am constantly amazed at the progress we are making with knowledge of
the brain.  I am so glad that there are ways that we can continue
to experiment and learn.  This article
was amazing to me … that we are actually learning about the effects
of various drugs, and finding ways to alter and effect the neural
wiring of the brain.  The brain-damaged firefighter – Donald Herbert – has now started to interact with his family nearly 10 years after an accident left him in a coma.

It is amazing what we have been able to do … and what might be coming
in the future … as we continue to more fully develop our knowledge
about the human brain.

Music Plasma

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Clint Carlos showed me a Music Plasma tonight. It’s a very graphical version of the older FireFly Networks that was bought by Microsoft.
Music Plasma is a very cool site that allows you to enter the name of a
band, and it will show you a very cool graphical display of other bands
related to the band you searched for. The relationship is a
“people who like this band, also like these other bands” … and the
size of the bands graphic is the size of their following.

It’s a very cool way to find new music and to think about data
relationships. I have more that I wanted to say about this,
however I have to run …

Head Mounted Displays

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I haven’t really been tracking the Wearable Computer market as much
lately.  It’s not that I don’t want to … it’s just that the
high-tech crash really crushed a lot of the innovators and stopped the
progress cold.

One area that was getting so close to delivering was in Head Mounted
Displays (HMDs).  I recently found that some vendors are again
stepping into this space.  I’m not sure that I saw Icuiti before, however I have to admit that I am pleased to see their progress!

Check out the monocular HMD, and binocular HMD … these are pretty good, and the price is not too high.  I might have to pick one up to check them out …

Welding

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Note to self:  At some point it would be fun to learn how to weld.

This weekend, I had a primary pully on my mower desk shear off.  I
have a John Deere 12-hp lawn tractor that I use to cut my back yard …
my back field.  While out cutting, I suddenly heard a screech from
underneath and the blades stopped.  I quickly shut off the PTO to
see what was up, and there laying next to the front tire was a
pulley.  I recognized it as one from the mower deck, and so I
headed to my barn to investigate further.  Once I had the mower
deck off, it was obvious where the pulley came from, however there were
no signs of how it had been attached!  No threads, no key, no
nothing.  I called my neighbor Jerry Ellis and he came over to
look.  Jerry retired from the Utah Highway Dept. years ago, and is
a skilled mechanic and welder.  He too was puzzled on how the
pulley had been attached, but offered to weld it back on if I wanted.

I put the mower deck on my wheelbarrow and rolled it up the street to
his house, and then around the back to his shop.  There he had his
electric welder with it’s thick black cables.  Ten minutes later I
had a repaired mower deck … along with a quick education about
current technology in welding equipment.  (He had this killer
helmet that had an automatic lens to protect your eyes!  Something
like this!)

Within 30 minutes I had the mower deck re-installed on my tractor and
was cutting the back yard again.  Man … if I didn’t know someone
like Jerry, it probably would have been a long time to get this fixed
… and a lot of money.  Hmmm … I’ve always wanted to learn how
to weld …

SCORM and eLearning

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In my new job at “Agilix Labs” I have been introduced a lot of new –
and unknown to me – electronic learning technologies. We have
recently partnered with Blackboard, one of the leading creators of e-Education software and systems. I have also been educated about WebCT, another leader in this same space. In the Open Source community, there are also Open Source solutions like Sakai that are gaining ground at various higher education facilities.

Overall, I had no idea that so much was going on in the automation and
computerization of education systems. Of course it only makes
sense, but it is the extent of it – and the growing maturity – that I
was oblivious to.

Today I was quickly educated about SCORM
– the Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model. Amazing.
There is a good SCORM “brief description” here. It is actually a rich specification for the creation of courseware –
educational software – that includes the course material, coupled with
exercises and exams (assessments), and even some metadata about the
“flow” of the course – the order that students have to accomplish
different parts before progressing, and even scores that must be
attained – along with where to send the results.

I had my first demonstration of SCORM today in the form of a government
course being given by the Navel Postgraduate School. It was
pretty cool … a .zip file contained the entire SCORM course
(something on marine navigation) and once loaded into Blackboard there
was all of the course material, the exams, and for the student a way to
begin learning.