"Anyone else thinking of the Tommorrows World sketch on Not the Nine O'Clock news and the device to let deaf people know when their telephone is ringing!"
Not wanting to bring a downer on what was (mostly) an excellent programme, but deaf people do (or did, in the days before they all got SMS and email and instant messaging) use telephones. For one-to-one conversations there is the textphone (basically a modem with a keyboard and a small display) which can be used directly to another textphone user or via BT's typetalk service. For other things a lot of deaf users used fax machines.
Either of those works a lot better if you know when there's an incoming call :-)
Anecdotally I find that a good speedup can often be had on ADSL simply by sorting out the internal premises wiring. We live perhaps 3km from the ("rural", BT-only) exchange in a straight line, probably double that by cable as there's a hill in the way. Our ADSL1 sync speed (which of course bears little relation to the actual download speed) is rarely under 6Mbps while neighbours are on 5Mbps or less. The difference? Our modem is connected directly to the master socket using a replacement splitter faceplate. A lesser difference (given that the splitter is good) is that extension telephones are wired in Cat.5 so there's less spurious noise.
An aquaintance was very pleasantly surprised when he moved his modem from the back of the house at the end of standard telephone extension wiring to the front of the house near the master socket. Of course it did mean installing network cable to the computers which stayed at the back, but the well-over 1Mbps sync speed increase was worth it he thought.
Probably most will use this system as many already do, though some use it to set the default language for a site; try www.museumwales.ac.uk and www.amgueddfacymru.ac.uk for example.
Already in production and not *terribly* expensive...
One of our suppliers has already sold their initial stock of these screens. They list both 46" and 22" screens, the 22" having 1680 x 1050 pixels. The 46" is available for around £1,150, which while a bit more expensive than your bog standard LCD TV isn't totally unreasonable. When I first heard about these things (which are, after all, just a standard LCD screen with no case and no backlight) I thought "niche product, it'll be around £5,000)". We have several possible uses...
> "- and I'm sorry to all those Linux coders out there, but your documentation *stinks* (*)"
> I don't agree. Some Linux-oriented projects have very good documentation, but some do have bad documentation...
Point taken - I think I probably meant FOSS coders, though I am also known to complain about commercial software, particularly that beast of a system Director (hence the Lingo reference). But then I'm using Director under duress, as it were. Anyone got any hints for something that can do similar things, preferably cross-platform, but is "nicer" to work with?
As for apps that are well documented, well the aforementioned BBC BASIC for Windows is pretty good and one of my other main apps - Xara - even comes with a chunky printed manual!
I, too, grew up on Spectrum and BBC Micro. The problem was what to do with them. The two hardware purchases that "unlocked" the Beeb for me were firstly a disc drive and secondly a printer, but without that *excellent* manual and the community (magazines) I would have been stuck and, as a previous poster has already pointed out, being able to "keep it all in your head" was phenominally useful.
I've recently come back to coding (of sorts(+)) after a <mumble> year gap and so in some ways I can see the problems of kids just starting out - the ecosystems are so vast and complex now that even just getting started is like dropping a weak swimmer off on Flat Holme and asking him to swim to Minehead. He has the basic moves, but he's not going to get very far without a lot of effort. Why bother? Light a fire on the beach and someone will come to rescue you. Need a simple utility to (oh, I dunno) crop a JPEG? Don't code one yourself, five minutes with a search engine and you'll get one already built and tested.
Something simple like this, or the Lego Mindstorms or that mbed thing or an Arduino or a Stamp is great - so long as the system is as well put-together as my Beeb was, and so long as there is an incentive to learn - i.e. a "killer project" that gets you interested.
So the problems I see with a bit of hardware like this are that
- you have to add hardware to it before you can do anything
- so if you're having problems with the ethernet, it isn't in the manual
- if it's running a Linux then it is not simple enough to keep in your head
- and I'm sorry to all those Linux coders out there, but your documentation *stinks* (*)
What it needs, is to look back to the Beeb, or the Psion series 3 or (better, I reckon) series 5 and work out what those systems did that made them such an easy-in and yet so flexible. Personally my favourite things were:
- the Beeb was almost fully documented and there was one official way to do everything
- there was even a circuit diagram in the back of the manual, right next to the memory map
- BBC BASIC (don't laugh) was way ahead of its time and an excellent launch point
- in fact some of my current coding is being done in BBC BASIC for Windows. Love it!
- the built-in assembler with its exceptionally easy integration into BASIC
- OPL's excellent user guide and documented API
- a small OS that is fully modular
- so that you only load up the functionality you need and so that other developers are forced
to assume nothing. It's more than that (I hate the way *ix scatters config files, for example) but
I can't think of a better way to put it
And on-line manuals are no substitue for the printed thing. If you're developing in one window, where's the convenience in having to have another open for the manual? Even my two-monitor setup is a pain, focus-switching being my particular rant.
Better stop and do some real work.
But at £15, even though I don't have an HDMI-capable telly, I'd buy it.
(+) Anyone else ever used Lingo? Talk about fighting to get it to do the simple things...
(*)Particularly (pet hate) VLC. In-app documentation is abysmal and the online documentation, help pages and community pages are so disorganised it's a wonder anyone not directly involved in developing the software can get anything slighly out-of-the-ordinary done with it.
Anyone else read William Gibson's The Diamond Age? I remember thinking when I first met a 3D printed object in 2001 (a spanner) that it sounded just like the first generation of machine that would end up as the "matter compiler" of Gibson's 1995 book...
I know these things take time, but most of the stuff given as examples here doesn't seem terribly far advanced over the parts I met 10 years ago, and it was obviously not new technology then sitting, as the spanner was, in a post-grad's desk drawer up (near) Sheffield...
Well, it's mostly a solution. I have a Logitech 525 and the trick is *not* to use the device "power" command to turn it on. Most of the kit I have will come out of standby if you press (for example) one of the numeric keys on the remote, so on my 525 I tell it to do that instead of sending the power command and that way if the device is already on, it doesn't turn off.
The downside is that for devices which will accept one digit as a valid channel number (e.g. most TVs) you end up switching channel, but that needn't be as much of a problem as it sounds.
In the subject of touchscreens versus real buttons; real buttons every time.
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10 posts • joined Wednesday 27th January 2010 20:22 GMT
"Anyone else thinking of the Tommorrows World sketch on Not the Nine O'Clock news and the device to let deaf people know when their telephone is ringing!"
Not wanting to bring a downer on what was (mostly) an excellent programme, but deaf people do (or did, in the days before they all got SMS and email and instant messaging) use telephones. For one-to-one conversations there is the textphone (basically a modem with a keyboard and a small display) which can be used directly to another textphone user or via BT's typetalk service. For other things a lot of deaf users used fax machines.
Either of those works a lot better if you know when there's an incoming call :-)
Hwyl!
M.
Not all BT's fault
Anecdotally I find that a good speedup can often be had on ADSL simply by sorting out the internal premises wiring. We live perhaps 3km from the ("rural", BT-only) exchange in a straight line, probably double that by cable as there's a hill in the way. Our ADSL1 sync speed (which of course bears little relation to the actual download speed) is rarely under 6Mbps while neighbours are on 5Mbps or less. The difference? Our modem is connected directly to the master socket using a replacement splitter faceplate. A lesser difference (given that the splitter is good) is that extension telephones are wired in Cat.5 so there's less spurious noise.
An aquaintance was very pleasantly surprised when he moved his modem from the back of the house at the end of standard telephone extension wiring to the front of the house near the master socket. Of course it did mean installing network cable to the computers which stayed at the back, but the well-over 1Mbps sync speed increase was worth it he thought.
M.
Re: Aliases
Probably most will use this system as many already do, though some use it to set the default language for a site; try www.museumwales.ac.uk and www.amgueddfacymru.ac.uk for example.
M.
Already in production and not *terribly* expensive...
One of our suppliers has already sold their initial stock of these screens. They list both 46" and 22" screens, the 22" having 1680 x 1050 pixels. The 46" is available for around £1,150, which while a bit more expensive than your bog standard LCD TV isn't totally unreasonable. When I first heard about these things (which are, after all, just a standard LCD screen with no case and no backlight) I thought "niche product, it'll be around £5,000)". We have several possible uses...
M.
Documentation
> "- and I'm sorry to all those Linux coders out there, but your documentation *stinks* (*)"
> I don't agree. Some Linux-oriented projects have very good documentation, but some do have bad documentation...
Point taken - I think I probably meant FOSS coders, though I am also known to complain about commercial software, particularly that beast of a system Director (hence the Lingo reference). But then I'm using Director under duress, as it were. Anyone got any hints for something that can do similar things, preferably cross-platform, but is "nicer" to work with?
As for apps that are well documented, well the aforementioned BBC BASIC for Windows is pretty good and one of my other main apps - Xara - even comes with a chunky printed manual!
Must have a purpose
I, too, grew up on Spectrum and BBC Micro. The problem was what to do with them. The two hardware purchases that "unlocked" the Beeb for me were firstly a disc drive and secondly a printer, but without that *excellent* manual and the community (magazines) I would have been stuck and, as a previous poster has already pointed out, being able to "keep it all in your head" was phenominally useful.
I've recently come back to coding (of sorts(+)) after a <mumble> year gap and so in some ways I can see the problems of kids just starting out - the ecosystems are so vast and complex now that even just getting started is like dropping a weak swimmer off on Flat Holme and asking him to swim to Minehead. He has the basic moves, but he's not going to get very far without a lot of effort. Why bother? Light a fire on the beach and someone will come to rescue you. Need a simple utility to (oh, I dunno) crop a JPEG? Don't code one yourself, five minutes with a search engine and you'll get one already built and tested.
Something simple like this, or the Lego Mindstorms or that mbed thing or an Arduino or a Stamp is great - so long as the system is as well put-together as my Beeb was, and so long as there is an incentive to learn - i.e. a "killer project" that gets you interested.
So the problems I see with a bit of hardware like this are that
- you have to add hardware to it before you can do anything
- so if you're having problems with the ethernet, it isn't in the manual
- if it's running a Linux then it is not simple enough to keep in your head
- and I'm sorry to all those Linux coders out there, but your documentation *stinks* (*)
What it needs, is to look back to the Beeb, or the Psion series 3 or (better, I reckon) series 5 and work out what those systems did that made them such an easy-in and yet so flexible. Personally my favourite things were:
- the Beeb was almost fully documented and there was one official way to do everything
- there was even a circuit diagram in the back of the manual, right next to the memory map
- BBC BASIC (don't laugh) was way ahead of its time and an excellent launch point
- in fact some of my current coding is being done in BBC BASIC for Windows. Love it!
- the built-in assembler with its exceptionally easy integration into BASIC
- OPL's excellent user guide and documented API
- a small OS that is fully modular
- so that you only load up the functionality you need and so that other developers are forced
to assume nothing. It's more than that (I hate the way *ix scatters config files, for example) but
I can't think of a better way to put it
And on-line manuals are no substitue for the printed thing. If you're developing in one window, where's the convenience in having to have another open for the manual? Even my two-monitor setup is a pain, focus-switching being my particular rant.
Better stop and do some real work.
But at £15, even though I don't have an HDMI-capable telly, I'd buy it.
(+) Anyone else ever used Lingo? Talk about fighting to get it to do the simple things...
(*)Particularly (pet hate) VLC. In-app documentation is abysmal and the online documentation, help pages and community pages are so disorganised it's a wonder anyone not directly involved in developing the software can get anything slighly out-of-the-ordinary done with it.
The Diamond Age
Anyone else read William Gibson's The Diamond Age? I remember thinking when I first met a 3D printed object in 2001 (a spanner) that it sounded just like the first generation of machine that would end up as the "matter compiler" of Gibson's 1995 book...
I know these things take time, but most of the stuff given as examples here doesn't seem terribly far advanced over the parts I met 10 years ago, and it was obviously not new technology then sitting, as the spanner was, in a post-grad's desk drawer up (near) Sheffield...
M.
The Diamond Age
Totally thick, me, I said William Gibson. Should of course have been Neal Stephenson.
Sorry.
M.
My solution to the macro problem
Well, it's mostly a solution. I have a Logitech 525 and the trick is *not* to use the device "power" command to turn it on. Most of the kit I have will come out of standby if you press (for example) one of the numeric keys on the remote, so on my 525 I tell it to do that instead of sending the power command and that way if the device is already on, it doesn't turn off.
The downside is that for devices which will accept one digit as a valid channel number (e.g. most TVs) you end up switching channel, but that needn't be as much of a problem as it sounds.
In the subject of touchscreens versus real buttons; real buttons every time.
M.
How many bedrooms?
Does the 32G version have one bedroom and the 64G two?
http://www.yournewhome.co.uk/Barratt-iPad-homes_2
http://www.barratthomes.co.uk/About-Us/Testimonials/Joanne-Milne/
M.