The Matrix doesn’t need us!
Ok … a friend sent me this article about batteries that are powered by bacteria … and it’s a good one. I had seen one earlier this year where a University is now working on batteries that run on alcohol … now all we need is primitive bacteria!
If the machines are going to be able to get power from bacteria … they don’t need us for power. Anyone that is worried about the “Matrix scenario” ought to worry a little more … the Matix scenerio doesn’t need us! 😉
Regular Posting …
This morning, I thought it would be a good idea to just get back into the habit of regular posting. I’ve been creating lots of reasons on why I was going to wait … so now I’m going to be unreasonable. 😉
I worked all weekend on the building in Heber. Saturday was a good day getting ready for painting on Sunday. I completed painting the computer room ceiling, and also started to get all of the phone and CAT-5 wiring ready. It is amazing all of the finish work that starts to emerge the more that you complete!
Sunday was a day of painting … the second coat of the computer room walls, and a lot of touch-up around the building. Lastly, we painted the computer room floor.
The best part was having my son Sam there all weekend … he’s going to be one year old this next weekend! He was having a blast carrying around the various tools, and “assisting” me doing the work. I’ll have to post some pictures …
Out of communication …
Wow … it’s been months since I spewed a single post! Way too long.
There are several excuses that I could create, however it just comes down to what I’ve been committed to lately. I have been on a push to finally complete the remodel of my building up in Heber City. I bought the place years ago … started the remodel to build out offices on two floors, and then the tech crash occurred. Things sat for a long time, and so about 6-8 months ago I chose to get it complete … and we are almost there. I’ve now completed the electrical and plumbing, we insulated and got the sheet rock done. After the taping and texture, a friend and I painted the entire place. As of yesterday, we got the finish electrical and plumbing complete. I’m down to a lot of finish painting, and then getting a couple of floors done. With all the other things to do in life, I figure we’ll get it complete before the end of September!
Outside of that, one of the companies that I was consulting to – Vultus – was acquired by The SCO Group. In the acquisition, I was asked to change from a part-time employee status to become a full-time employee. With everything that is going on, it was an interesting choice to make … however I chose the job with SCO.
Since joining SCO right around the first of June, we have taken on making a huge difference with the product groups at SCO. The lawsuits and legal issues are all with the “other” division of SCO – SCOSource – while we are now a part of the SCO products division. This organization has now gone through significant changes since we joined … new management … new vision … new strategies.
As the SCOx Chief Architect” I am now working with a great team of people to create a new abstraction layer above operating systems. I’ll post more about this as time progresses. The SCOx Application Substrate is what we are calling it, and it was announced last week at the SCO Forum in Las Vegas. It’s a cool concept that leverages all of the advances in operating systems, along with their bundling of common languages and services, and uses Web Services (SOAP) as the current common API. I was glad to see that the folks that invented UNIX were interested in exploring what comes next!
Outside of these two huge projects, I of course have been having an incredible time with my family and new son. Sam (named after my father and grandfather!) is almost one year old, and is growing like crazy! He’s now walking, and starting to learn words … it’s wild.
I actually am a little bummed that I haven’t been blogging more about him … and myself.
More wireless deployments …
I have been very busy lately on a number of fronts. Two of my key consulting clients are both going through huge changes … one of them is creating the potential to change the computer industry in a way that I would have never imagined. More on that later …
On the wireless front, 80211.net has continued to expand it’s services and offerings, and we are now providing service to several different types of customers. We recently added some more Internet Cafes, and have both apartment and residential users. With all of this, we are learning a lot about the management and administration of a wireless network.
One thing that occurred recently is that our wireless relay on the mountain here in Wasatch County failed. It appears that one or more of the wiring connections got loose, and the batteries didn’t get charged. Once they died, the shed went down … for days. It sucked.
I am now working on a solution to remotely monitor the shed, and it’s electrical system. I’ll write more in the future, however we are close to deploying a solution – tied into MRTG – that will allow us to monitor the temperature, humidity, light-level, airflow, battery voltage, charge current, and load current. I am also looking to provide alarming in this solution.
Besides just providing service … we are working no how to provide “manageable” service. And we are learning a lot in the process …
My father and his blogging …
While I have been spending all of my time lately doing everything *BUT* blogging, my father has now got some press about his blog. I set him up a year or so ago with his own place to express himself on the web … SamSaid!. I wanted to do this for him to have this place to publish, and also as an experiment to see how easy it is to blog. My father is not a heavy computer user and so he is a good “average user” for me to learn from.
Somehow he ran into someone in the local press where he lives that was intrigued by his blogging, and so they wrote this article about him. Very cool … my father is proof of the power of the blog, and that it is something that can be done by almost anyone!
Now it’s time for me to get back into the swing of blogging … I’ve been catching up on my reading … I want to start writing again!
The silence again …
It’s kind of wild … I haven’t felt like writing for a while. There are some many things going on in my life – and it’s a blast! I have a four month old son, Sam, who has added a whole new dimension to our family … and life in general. In addition to Sam, I am spreading myself thin as usual as I pursue several different projects in very interesting (to me) areas of technology. In one of my ventures, http://80211.net, we have been deploying a county-wide wireless network and learning a lot along the way. I’ll be writing more about that. In addition, I am still pursuing HumanXtensions and now on a more agressive pace. The new web-site is coming along well, and I’ll be glad when it is complete as it is both a much improved web-site while also being an interesting experiment with technolology. Lastly … my newest venture … is a unique system for distributing multimedia content. I’ll post more about that one also …
Anyhow … I’ll be posting more in the coming weeks!
Mesh networks at a small scale …
This is an awesome article that outlines the current state of mesh network R&D at the military level. Mesh networks are going to be the next generation of wireless networking … where every wireless node becomes a “repeater” for the rest of the nodes. With this architecture, nodes are able to “relay” messages for other nodes increasing the distance over which nodes can communicate, and also increasing the fault tolerance of the entire network.
There are numerous examples of where mesh networking is going to be very powerful. Groups of people who are working together in a geographic area can now create a large mesh network that is fully distributed, and requires no central “access point”. Imagine fire fighters out in a wilderness area fighting a major forest fire. Each fire fighter is wearing a mesh networking radio, and becomes a node in a mesh network with all of the other fire fighters. As they become spread out fighting the fire, they are all relaying communications traffic back and forth between each other. If any two firefighters become separated by a ridge or other physical obstruction, they will still be able to communicate if there are other fire fighters in between them.
I can see this expanding even further into personal communications, or even automobile communications. If your car was a node in a mesh network, then communicating from car to car on a highway might enable large groups of cars to have Internet connectivity if any one of the cars was able to get to the net.
At Comdex this last week, I was able to see a demonstration and presentation by one of the first commercial vendors of this type of technology. Mesh Networks is the company … and there will be many more of them …
The “last wire” … wireless power! (Almost!)
I have to admit that in this world of wireless communciations, it’s great to go visit companies that are using 802.11b networks. There is no longer the need to search for Ethernet jacks, and to have a mess of cables spread across the conference room table. I plug in my wireless card, might have to get some settings from them, and I’m on the net and running.
There is still the issue of power. What I am finding now is that people are looking for outlets to plug in their laptops for power. And so the tangle of power cords is still the “last wire” that will be dealt with. There are the fancy conference room tables that have outlets in the center, and then even some that have outlets for each seating position … or outlets on the floor or the walls around the table. All of this represents one of the last “pains” of mobile computing … power.
I am impressed that this company – MobileWise – has picked this as a new solution space. They are creating a pad that can provide power to devices that are placed on it. The pad could be placed on a desk or table, or possibly built into furniture, so that power can be delivered conveniently … and without cords.
I suspect that this is going to be a very successful company if they are able to execute on their plans. Powering and recharging all of the mobile devices that we are going to have is an important market.
One last thought … what about wearable computers? I just realized that I might want to chat with this company about how I’ll recharge my wearable by having a pad embedded in a chair that I’ll sit on. The conductive component of my wearable would then be built into the seat of my pants! So when I require a recharge, I’ll just head to an Internet Cafe to connect wirelessly to the Internet … and then “sit around” on a MobileWise chair to recharge my batteries!
‘Wire-free’ electricity juices mobile devices. MobileWise has unveiled a pad with a conductive surface that can power computing devices placed on top of it. The technology is due out early next year. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]
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 …
RSS – Expanding the world of publish/subscribe …
I love to see articles like the one below. It shows the growing trend for publishers to utilize formats like RSS to increase the effectiveness and useability of their content. In my opinion, this is only going to increase due to the readers beginning to learn the value of the various “news aggregator” software that is available. At Vultus we are working on a variety of applications that allow a user to monitor RSS feeds for news. We deployed a simple one that monitors Slashdot on our demo web site – scroll down and look at SlashMon.
I am in the midst of putting together a presentatiuon for more of these publications that outlines the true value of RSS as a publish/subscribe mechanism. As publications learn that they can have RSS feeds for their headlines, for specific topic areas, and for individual writers, they will see that they are then providing a more customizable resource that will attract – and keep – readers interested. There are numerous sites that offer RSS feeds … but few of them offer the diversity of feeds necessary to really get things rolling. But it is coming.
All of this relates to a new generation, or classification, of software that I call HumaNueral. When software automates a process that allows a human to operate in a neural fashion … that is HumaNeural. Two core software technologies are combining to provide this solution – news aggregators and blogging.
News Aggregators – tapping into RSS feeds – allow me to receive news articles or blog posts – “signals” – from a wide range of sources. Reading all of this content allows me to then synthesize my own ideas and memes and then write my own “news” to my various blog channels. Blogging is the means by which I generate my outbound RSS feeds that others can tap into. I subscribe to the “meme streams” that I choose to monitor, and then generate my own outbound “meme streams” …
Collaborative software that is architected around this HumaNeural architecture – a form of biomimicry – is one of my core fields of interest for the last several years. More announcements like this indicate it is coming!
Computerworld has ten new RSS feeds. If you’re a Radio user, be sure to get the nifty RSS Explorer tool, and then click here to choose the Computerworld feeds you’d like to subscribe to. It’s a pretty nerdy pub, but they can probably tell you what IBM is up to and Unix and wireless stuff, and Microsoft. [Scripting News]