Seven weeks of development …
I continue to be amazed by the rapid evolutionary development of my son. Over this week, I realized that the awareness of the world is increasing. He is smiling and laughing … giggling … and starting to use his hands more and more. His legs are gaining strength and he just seems to be getting bigger and bigger. His sleep cycle is getting longer, and we’re seeing sometimes 4+ hours of sleep at a time. It’s a blast …
Internet Access Everywhere …
I have to get into the blogging mode again. It’s been so long that I’ writing about things after the fact … instead of during the events. In this case, it’s funny to write about last weekend … especially when I was staying in a remote southern Utah town where I was able to get Internet Access!
I went to Hankville, UT with some friends for a “Fusion Weekend” of hiking, scientific discussions, and general life reflection. It was a blast. We stayed at the Wispering Sands Motel, and the manager is also the ISP for the town of Hanksville. He has installed a 56kbps Frame-Relay link into the Qwest cloud … connected to XMission here in Salt Lake City. If you are curious about why we all went to Hanksville, you’ll have to go visit the Fusion Weekend link above … it’s where to stay if you want to explore Goblin Valley and some of the incredible Utah slot canyons.
Don, the manager, was so cool that he let me put my mobile 802.11b Access Point in the lobby of the motel and we were all able to get wireless Internet in our rooms. This really got me thinking about just how connected we are becoming. I’m going to be talking more with Don about our http://80211.net project … he might be assisting us with more locations in the south.
Lastly … our weekend trip was a fun family adventure. With the birth of my son Sam our truck had become quite crowded. In order to provide more space for luggage and the possibility of road trips, I picked up a camper shell for my truck so that the bed is now fully enclosed. It worked great. We did the drive and started to get the process of driving with a baby worked out. All of this is in preparation of our trip to Seattle for Thanksgiving. It’s going to be a fun trip!
The Birth of Samuel Curtis Lemon …
I’ve put together some pictures of my son’s birth. And also of the my parents first visit to see him. Samuel is named after my father and grandfather as a tribute to who they are in the world for me. One thing that I truly recognize is how my father has been committed to me all of my life, and how my grandfather was committed to him. Sam’s middle name is my middle name … so I do get a little bit of a link through his name.
Now I get to be committed to generating him in the world … and I look forward to the adventure!
Time gaps …
It’s funny how I have slipped from blogging from time to time. It seems that life just picks up and gets going at a pace that I just can’t keep up. Looking at my last post, I just can’t believe that it’s been that long. I’ve been keeping very busy the last several months … and of course that means that huge shifts have occurred.
I can’t believe it, but I just celebrated my one year wedding anniversary! Even with my wife Tracy being very pregnant, we had a great time close to home. We celebrated it in Salt Lake City … and talked about planning the next one to be somewhere very different. This special day was barely four weeks before the anticipated due date of our baby …
On the due date of our baby … the baby chose to arrive! Well … almost. He was actually born at 2:19am on the 13th of September … just hours into the next day. The last five+ weeks of my life have been amazing … what an experience. I just created a new category to post about my son – Samuel Curtis Lemon – and keep track of some of the amazing transformations that occur with him each day.
Anyhow … I am looking forward to getting back into the blogging … I’m starting to really have some fun with things …
WarBlading II … going on III …
So a couple weeks back – before my two week long set of business trips, I headed out WarBlading again. This time I had a couple of objectives:
The unit ran cooler … actually all night on the single ElectroVaya battery … however I had to use the tablet display since I couldn’t get a pointing device working! It sucked!
The issue with the pointing device is that Windows 2000 would keep freaking out with the GPS and Mouse connected at the same time. I wanted to skate and had to bail.
So this Thursday will be it … I bought a new USB “miniature hand trackball” that you use with your thumb. I’m going to install it and see if that works better … we’ll see.
I also got my 2.4Ghz radios working with Win2k … so that I can see if we can do some “peer to peer” wireless exchange of GPS location information. While I was on the business trip last week, I was able to spend a lot of time, while we were driving up and down the northeast coast, working on my “waypointer” application. I am adding the “target” tab so that I can store a set of “waypoints” that I want to keep track of. While writing this I just realized that I want to have a “track on/off” capability to keep entries in this table whether I am tracking them or not … duh!
The last area of interest is the new pack. I found a great pack at REI that is made by North Face. It has a completely ventilated rear pocket that is perfect for the wearable … good cooling.
More later … and I’m making great progress with the HX2002 … I’m hoping to have some info on the web site soon …
WarBlading …
It was a very cool experience last night … I went WarBlading for the first time … and it worked! Although the temperatures were very hot, and the machine croaked a couple of times, I was able to rollerblade around Salt Lake City last night with my Xybernaut wearable computer, with a GPS connected, running NetStumbler, searching for 802.11b access points …
What really hit me is that this is going to be big … very big … and goes far beyond mapping 802.11b access points … just wait. 😉
Faking videos … the future of “proof” and “evidence” …
I was recently at the Foresight Institute conference and saw a presentation by David Friedman. He was talking about the issues of technology and the justice system … and joked about the use of technology to create pictures and videos. (Visit this link and search for “Say It Ain’t So” …) As the technology evolves forward, it will be harder and harder to determine a “real” video from one that has been “created” … and this work is providing that we are already there. It is only a matter of time till we are going to be questioning more and more what we “see” with our own eyes!
*************************
At MIT, they can put words in our
mouths
May 15, 2002
*************************
MIT scientists have created the
first realistic videos of people
saying things they never said,
raising serious questions about
falsifying video and film images.
The MIT technology is the first that
is “video-realistic”: volunteers in
a laboratory test could not
distinguish between real and…
Time between posting …
I am starting to learn that my weblog provides a good display of time for me. I can’t believe that it has been almost a month since I caught up on my back-log of reading, and made my last posts.
I have been having a lot of fun though … and am about to venture out and make some more changes to my blog page. I have been in contact with a few open source projects … working on some digital identity work, and getting NoCat working for our http://80211.net project. I also was able to buy and install a new keyboard on my laptop which is making typing a lot easier! I had started to learn whole new ways of typing when my left-hand CTRL and Shift keys started to fail. 😉
Overall the last month has been a blast … I had a few trips on the road – New York to Chase Manhatten for work on a disaster recovery solution – Silicon Valley for the Foresight Institute Senior Associates Gathering and a series of analyst and partner meetings with Vultus. The more I have been working with Vultus the more I am learning about the implications of the Web Services revolution … giving me lots of ideas about the future.
I also ended up doing a couple of presentations on Wearable Computers … one for the State of Utah School systems “Test-out” Challenge talking to a lot of high school students from across the state … another for the Utah Computer Society. I’m also meeting with a variety of companies on my “mesh network” ideas … one that is implementing a last mile solution – UINetworks – and another making some inexpensive radios that will provide me with some peer-to-peer wireless that I have been looking for.
Lastly … I’m completing some work on my video/photo kiosk ideas, my wearables, and my location-based services applictions. Oh yeah … and I have a baby coming in September, so I have been learning a lot about what to expect with fatherhood!
It’s been a fun month … and it’s going to be a fun summer …
Bandwidth being seen as a utility …
I like to see things like this occurring … the perspective that bandwidth is simply a utility. The streams of bits flowing into, and out of, your computer being seen like a two-way water pipe.
As this perspective continues to gain ground, it will become more and more apparent that you are free to do with your bandwidth what you like … just like what you do with water or gas.
Bandwidth is going to become a public utility …
Wearable computers and rights of Cyborgs …
This is great … and I have to admit that Steve Mann is pushing the limits of wearable computers! I have recently been following the leading edge research of Steve in the area of rights of people with wearable computer augmentation. Mann has been looking at the various social implications of wearable computers from the perspective of the “cyborg” who begins to integrate them into their life and depend on them. He has explored the potential impacts of removing visual augmentation from someone how has physically adapted to it, along with the issues with potential damage to these devices by electromagnetic forces, radiation, or physical search.
His issues are very legitimate as wearable computers can be seen as extensions of humans much like many medical devices – wheelchairs, etc. In this particular case, Mann even had a heart monitor that was attached in way that its removal left him bleeding.
It now appears that Steve is suing an airline for damages and personal impact suffered when he was detained and searched. The line between biological and technological life is beginning to blur …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1897000/1897264.stm