the.Inevitable.Org/anism

Yes … I touched one! When I was skiing on Sunday at Park City Resort I started down one of the runs and happened to see something laying on the slopes. At first I thought “Uh oh … someone lost their iPhone!”, but instead it was an Apple iPod touch.

Woohoo! Finders keepers? No … but it was my chance to take a look at an iPod touch. I have to say that I am very impressed with the UI. Amazing. It has the Jobs touch.

I dropped the iPod in my pocket and figured that I would notify lost and found when I was leaving. In my rush at the end of the day I got home and remembered that I had the iPod … so I figured that I would play with it and give the lost and found a call. The UI took me only a few minutes to learn, and it really was smooth, and operated like I would have expected … and beyond what I expected. The main menu provided access to the core features, and scrolling with my finger was simple. I really liked being able to ‘flick’ a long list of songs and see it scroll smoothly and quickly down the screen at the proportional speed. You could even attempt to scroll in the wrong direction and you see a strange, almost natural looking, “stretching” against some simulated elastic stop.

The unit that I found was an 8GB iPod … far too small for what I like to carry around with me. I’m still using my 80GB iPod video which is $50 less than the $299.00 price tag on the iPod touch 8GB. I do have to admit that the UI was truly impressive though … an amazing experience.

Well … I looked through the music collection, which was quite varied, and then hit the Settings button where I found the owners name. I then went to Contacts and found there was a record with the full details of the owner - cell phone, address, etc. I called her Sunday night and left her a message … one that I’m sure she never expected to get.

Yesterday I met the owner of the iPod touch up in Park City and returned it to her. It was fun to see her happy to get it back. She gave Andrea and I a little gift, and a card with the following paragraph:

Karma:  usually understood as a sum of all that an individual has done, is currently doing, or will do.  The effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one’s own life, and the pain and joy it brings to them and others.

It got me thinking about another post that I’m going to write.  It was fun getting to play with the iPod touch … nice experience.  It was more fun surprising the owner who had lost it!

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, karma, park city, skiing, touch, utah

I wish! With the closure of CompUSA retail stores(as lame and expensive as they were) I am really beginning to worry about where I can go and pick up electronic and tech items here in Utah. I’m actually shocked that with the large tech community here we don’t have any better store for picking up tech gadgets and components.

When Incredible Universe went under years ago, I had really hoped that Fry’s Electronics, the owners/operators of Outpost.com, would take over the location as they did in several other states. I know there have to be hundreds, if not thousands, of Utahns who have been to a Fry’s Electronics store someplace … in California, Las Vegas, Arizona, Oregon … they are an amazing electronics outlet with everything from appliances to books, to TVs, to software, to computer components … and much more. On top of that, the prices are very competitive.

I’m not sure if it would do us any good … but I want to start a mail campaign to send them e-mails requesting that they consider opening a Fry’s Electronics here in Utah! I mean … we even have Ikea moving here … why not Fry’s?

If you want to participate, I am proposing that we send them *lots* of e-mails asking them to consider a store in Utah! I’ve built a specific link below that is a mailto link to automatically generate the e-mail for you … and allow you to customize it before sending. I want to keep the subject line consistent, so that they see the same thing each time a new mail comes in. Here is the message:

To: feedback@frys.com; service@outpost.com; press@outpost.com
Subject: Open a Fry’s Electronics in Utah …
Body: I am writing to you to request that you consider opening a Fry’s Electronic store here in Utah. I am part of a large and growing community of people who can appreciate the value that your store could bring to our state. With the closure of CompUSA, we are now left with no real source for electronic and technology products. The Utah population is continuing to grow, and many large retailers - like Ikea - are moving into the state. Please consider our state as a great location for the next Fry’s Electronics store that you open, and feel free to contact me if there is anything I can do to support your efforts to open here.

When you click the link below, your e-mail client ought to open up a new message containing this text … feel free to customize it and then send it on its way. Forward this post to all of your friends … send it to neighbors … get the word out and lets see if we can get them to do something.

Click here for the Fry’s Electronics in Utah e-mail message!

As a tech worker in the state of Utah, I would love to have a Fry’s Electronics in Utah!

---

UPDATE: I actually received the following response from Fry’s/Outpost.com … so the e-mails are getting through!

Dear Scott,

Thank you for taking the time to let us know how you feel. That’s quite an endorsement! We work very hard to please our customers and it’s great to receive such a compliment. Your email has been forwarded to management.

Thank you for contacting Frys.com.

Frys.com
1-877-688-7678 - Toll Free
1-800-856-9800
1-408-487-4700 FAX
www.frys.com

Technorati Tags: compusa, frys electronics, orem, provo, retail stores, salt lake city, utah

Well … that really was pretty cool. Now you see it, now you don’t. At ~6:40am the Key Bank Building went down. With the news helicopters circling overhead, the crowd atop the American Towers building woke up as a line of charges began to fire up the left side of the building. There was almost a strange pause, and then the charges continued to fire … now seeming to go in inside the building. By that time, the left side of the building had already began to drop and as charges continued the entire building slowly collapsed sideways, with the left side leading the way.

Immediately, a large dust cloud began to rise, and as the crowd let out a cheer the entire area became enveloped in a huge ball of dust. It was amazing to see the dust cloud rise and completely obscure the Marriott Hotel, and then move over the Salt Palace and continue to blow west, and north west. It took a good 10+ minutes for the dust to clear, and what was left was a pile of rubble. Within 30 minutes, the rooftop was pretty much cleared and everyone was on their way.

It was interesting to see the large amounts of dust that were left spread across the buildings and streets in the area.  In front of the Salt Palace on the street you could see a line that almost looked like snow … near white/tan dust and then the black asphalt another block down.  I’m sure the clean-up will take a while.

There was a pretty good group of us up there, Dave Biesinger of DNA Films joined us and filmed the implosion in high-speed/slow motion, Phil Burns and his wife joined us, and several other friends. So we have a variety of pictures and video to sort through and post. I’ll do one last follow-up post when I get my videos up on YouTube.

And so the re-construction of downtown Salt Lake City continues …

Technorati Tags: demolition, implosion, key bank, salt lake city, utah

I’m always into new experiences.  Participating or witnessing something new.  On August 18th, 2007 - here in Salt Lake City - we are going to have quite an event.  The old Key Bank Building in downtown is going to be imploded.  Now I have seen all sorts of videos of various buildings being dropped, but I have never seen one in person.  This time I will!

The schedule is for early Saturday morning …  ~6:00am-6:30am … to avoid the people and crowds.  From what I understand, they are going to close off 9 square blocks of the city - from North Temple to 200 South, and from 200 West to State Street.  They will clear everyone from the area, and not allow anyone to get any closer than those limits.  I’ve been thinking about the best place to watch the drop … I’ve got friends with access to numerous buildings in the surrounding area.  I’ve been thinking about exactly which windows or rooftops would give the best view of the event.  I’m wanting to get as close as possible, and will probably video tape the event.  It’s not like you get to see a building imploded every day … this ought to be a fun event to attend.

If anyone is going to plan a Implosion Party, comment here … I’d love to find out where people will be hanging out!

Technorati Tags: demolition, implosion, key bank, salt lake city, utah

This last month flew by. It went just too fast. I started the month busy on projects and work, and looking forward to my long planned vacation to visit my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I left on July 10th for Pittsburgh with my son Sam, and my girlfriend Andrea, and it was too much fun. It was great to see the old stomping grounds, visit my old home, and hang with friends.

We ended up taking a rafting trip on the Middle Youghiogheny out of Ohiopyle, visited Laurel Caverns, driving around Brownsville, PA where my father grew up, ran around downtown Pittsburgh, rode the inclines (part of the mass transit system since the 1870’s!!), visited Westminster Presbyterian Church (where I went to church and was also a custodian), went hiking in Boyce-Mayview Park in some nice forests, went out catching fire-flies (lightning bugs), got some incredible Italian hoagies and pizza at Ardolino’s, ate at Primanti’s, and went to a Pittsburgh Pirate’s game. The week we were there was just not long enough … I’ll have to go back … maybe in the fall.

Of course while out of town, all sorts of crap started to fall apart back home in Utah! On the Friday night before returning (we were heading back on Tuesday the 17th!) two of my servers went down.  One … an old NetWare server … the other was a Linux box.  I had a friend go to my building in Heber City to see if he could recover the boxes … but both were out of commission.  Ouch!  The Linux box was a systems management box, and so it wasn’t too critical, but the NetWare server still had 20+ web sites hosted on it.  And the calls began to come in.  It sucked … there was nothing that I could do.

Upon returning to Utah on that Tuesday night, I hit the building and grabbed the two machines … recover attempts began that night.  The NetWare server?  Dead motherboard or RAM, so I chucked the hard disks into an old chassis I had laying around … moved the LAN cards over … booted and up it came!  I ran some tests, allowed the hard disks to re-mirror (I was using RAID 1) and then it was ready to go.  My Linux box?  Ugh … dead as could be.  The hard disk failed … it would spin up, but the controller card was dead.  The mirror drive?  Mis configured and useless. Time to start from scratch.  I used the opportunity to upgrade the motherboard, memory, hard disks, and version of Linux … it took an extra day or so, but I have a much better machine now.

Of course I head into work on Wednesday, and while there … more failures.  What the heck!?!?!  I then spent that night at my building rebuilding another Linux box that had a failing SCSI drive.  It was educational to say the least as I learned about how to juggle drive partitions to consolidate three SCSI disks worth of partitions onto my two remaining good drives.  I actually did pull it off, and was able to get the server back up and running.

That next weekend, I took the time to do a *LOT* of preventative maintenance.  I completely rearranged my server room, brought in the spare rack that I had, recabled, installed the new KVM switch that I bought 6+ months ago, and put in several new UPS units.  In total … I spent another two full days over the weekend working on things over there.

And today?  Well it’s now August 1st … and with all of that work and effort the rest of the month of July slipped right by me.  I have a short list of things to do, but hopefully this month I can get back to coding and projects … I’ve got a lot of ideas that I want to turn into code this month!

Technorati Tags: fire flies, inclines, laurel caverns, linux, netware, ohiopyle, pirates, pittsburgh, utah, westminster, youghiogheny

A couple of years back, I started to play with Marc Andreessen’s Ning.com. At that time it provided a very interesting hosted service for creating a wide range of mash-up sites. Ning provided developers with a set of templated PHP web sites that could be customized for different markets and users. I did a little development, but didn’t have time to really do much more than experiment.

At the end of February Ning transformed itself, and began to focus on becoming a hosted “turn-key” social network provider. They are still allowing developers to get into the code and create custom modifications and additions, but now even the average user can create an account at Ning, and very quickly create their own custom social network.

I was reminded of all of this last week, when a friend of mine showed me the site he put together in no time … WakeUtah … a site for Utah Wakeboarders. When I saw that, I decided to spend an hour or two this weekend and get back up to date with Ning. I have to admit that although it’s a little thin in places, they have done an incredible job. I still had my old Ning account - which still worked - and I logged in and within an hour had learned what I needed and created UtahNetwork … the Utah Entrepreneur Network.

I have found a few things that I think are weak with the default features of Ning … but I’m sure that they are going to continue to evolve and enhance the platform. Some of the immediate features that I found lacking are:

• Events - there is no event calendar that I could find
• Blog Aggregator - I couldn’t find a component that would pull from numerous RSS feeds
• Google Maps - they used to have some great tools for doing Google Maps mash-ups … this seems to have faded

Overall, I am very impressed … you are welcome to go and check out my site. I hope that you do check it out for multiple reasons. First, I’d like some feedback on thoughts about the Ning platform. Secondly, I’d like to see if there is some value that we could create in forming a Utah Entrepreneur Network where we can communicate and exchange information about entrepreneurial activities going on in the state. Take a look, create an account, and try it out!

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, facebook, myspace, network, ning, social networking, utah, utahnetwork

I have to admit that I have long been a fan of Microsoft’s Local.Live.Com for mapping.  There are just some features that I like a lot more than Google Maps.  One of the major features (of Local.Live) is the ability to easily add my own pins to the maps - just by right clicking and adding text - and then being able to send the marked up map to a friend using the URL.

Tonight, I read this great blog post from Google LatLong and I have to admit that I am impressed.  There is now the ability to create “drag and drop” routes on Google Maps … and to easily send them as URLs to other people.  For example, it took me only a few minutes to create this map of my motorcycle ride in the Utah mountains last weekend.

There are still some real limitations in my opinion … but it’s getting better.  Here are a few UI features that still bug me:

• I placed the start and end near each other, and then began to “drag” the route as described … but the map did not scroll as I got near the edges.  So I had to keep stopping - and Google would add an interim destination pin - and then manually scroll the map.  I later had to go back and delete all of the extra interim destination pins.
• I still can not find a way to add my own text to the various pins … so I can’t figure out how to label the start, interim, and ending pins.  I actually saw on the right pane the ability to ‘edit’ the interim pin label … when I did that it blew away my whole route!  Ugh!

It is a cool new set of features for Google Maps.  I did a little experimenting and created this other route of another motorcycle ride off the Mirror Lake road in the High Uintahs that I really like to ride.  Not only was this simple to create, it also allowed me to discover and look at alternative routes like this one that I have never been on!

It is amazing where these technologies are going … now if only Google would add the ability to label the pins … then I would be happier with their product!

Technorati Tags: cartography, google, local.live.com, maps, microsoft, motorcycle, routes, uintahs, utah

Today was a really nice afternoon … I had some time and took my motorcycle out for a ride.  I’ve got a 1988 BMW R100GS … I’m going to post some pictures of it … and I love the bike.  Not only is it a nice ride on the road, but it is fully capable of taking me off-road on the many amazing fire-roads and 4WD roads in the mountains of Utah.

I’ve been getting out on my bike again after taking a break for quite a while … almost 8 years since I’ve ridden it off-road.  Today was the first off-road trip that I’ve taken this year, and it was a blast.  Even for a 1000cc bike, it’s amazingly agile for cruising the dirt roads.  Today, I took a long round-trip ride from Heber City, up to Strawberry Reservoir, and then on East Main Canyon Road - a dirt road that degraded into some really rough and rutted less-than-one-lane parts - to Wallsburg.  From Wallsburg I headed back into Midway, cruised around the Heber Valley for a bit, and then headed home.  You can see my Heber-Strawberry-East Main Canyon-Wallsburg-Heber ride here … on Local.Live.com.

I’m looking forward to a few more rides this summer.  I’ll be heading up into the Uintah mountains, and maybe take a trip up towards Yellowstone.  We’ll see.  If you are into riding here in Utah and want to explore some nice rides, comment on this post … we’ll see if we can get a good group together to take some rides!

Technorati Tags: bmw, Heber City, motorcycle, r100gs, rides, Strawberry Reservoir, utah, Wallsburg

Last Sunday and Monday I headed down to Moab, Utah for the Desert Rocks Music Festival.  It was really an amazing experience.  Some friends invited my girlfriend and I to join them to see a band - Kan’nal - out of Boulder, Colorado.

We all piled into their Winnebago on Sunday afternoon, and we took the 4+ hour drive down to Moab.  The event was out in the desert about 13 miles south of Moab at Area BFE.  It was a beautiful site, and the weather was great … not too warm.  We arrived as one of the concerts had just finished, so we broke out the BBQ and got dinner going.  As the sun set (which was incredible) we got our act together and wandered down to watch the Fire Dancers, and then head over to the main stage to see Kan’nal.  I was impressed … they rocked!

For those who missed the concert, in June you can go and see Kan’nal at the Salt Lake City Arts Festival.  I’m going to make sure to be there … it was an amazing performance.

Monday was the typical return trip … we got some sleep, hung out a bit, and then joined the masses of traffic returning to the Salt Lake City area.  It took a while, but was well worth the trip.  I’m thinking of going next year … and maybe even contributing to the Desert Rocks event with an outdoor light show … we’ll see!

Technorati Tags: area bfe, concerts, desert rocks, kannal, moab, utah

For the last number of years I have had the privilege to present to high-school students from all over the state of Utah when they participate in a “Challenge” at the UVSC campus. The “Challenge” is allow the students to demonstrate their understanding of technology and computer skills. This used to be the “TestOut Challenge” but this year there is a new sponsor and so it’s the “LearnKey Challenge”. On Tuesday I got to do this again and had a blast.
Each year I’ve been asked to present on Wearable Computers and Virtual/Augmented/Mediated Reality. This is an area that I am really interested in as the man/machine interfaces continue to evolve … and computers and peripherals begin to become more embedded. I love to show the students the miniature computers and hardware, and to show them the hardware that I have collected over the years. I also love to shown them the videos of some of the advanced research going on around the world in these areas. If you want an idea, go and check out ARQuake and the Tinmith project, and the Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore, the HIT Lab at the U of Washington, or the work of Steve Mann at the U of Toronto.
The real reason that I love to give these presentations is to see if I can encourage and inspire some of these kids to think out of the box. I want them to get my enthusiasm about technology, and what is coming in the near future … to expose them to things that seem almost too far in the future … things they might not understand they could be involved with. Some of this work is pushing the limits of what we believe is possible … stuff of dreams. I want these kids to know they too can get involved and create the future … and play with some really cool computer stuff. This year they even recorded the presentations and put them all on-line … my Wearable & Mobile Computers is here! One warning … most of the initial presentation is about tech jobs, my experiences, what to expect, and what to consider to love your job.

It was fun to have so many of the student come up afterwards and ask questions … where to learn more … what degrees to pursue … where to go to school. Overall … they seemed to enjoy it, and I know that I did. If I made a difference with just one of these kids it’s all worth while.

Technorati Tags: augmentedreality, learnkey, mediatedreality, utah, uvsc, virtualreality, wearablecomputers