Yes, I’m off to WordCamp Toronto tomorrow for two days of blogging and social media fun in-depth conferencing. Not only will I get to hear some great speakers and meet interesting people, but I get a t-shirt, baseball cap and free food!

The only speakers I’ve actually heard of before are Matt Mullenweg and Mark Jaquith, but there are many other interesting presentations that I’m looking forward to. I’ll have my big heavy laptop with me so I’ll be denting away.

It’s also our 5th wedding anniversary on Saturday so Jen and Aidan are joining me and we’ll be going out for a romantic (well, as romantic as you can get with a three year old in tow) meal somewhere fancy.

Identi.ca

Identica is fairly new on the scene, only released by Evan Prodromou for public consumption a couple of weeks ago, but it has received a lot of attention. It is a micro-blogging platform similar to Twitter, except it is completely open, both from a code perspective and a data perspective. It is built from the open source Laconi.ca software project which allows anyone to have their own server with complete inter-operability between servers. All the public data at Identica are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. As the FAQ states:

The goal here is autonomy — you deserve the right to manage your own on-line presence. If you don’t like how Identi.ca works, you can take your data and the source code and set up your own server (or move your account to another one).

My Identica profile is here.

Librivox

Librivox has been around for a while, since 2005 in fact. It is the brainchild of Hugh McGuire, a Montreal based writer and web developer. Librivox aims to provide all books in the public domain in audio format. Books are read by volunteers and the resulting audio files are published on the Librivox site. Librivox is non-profit and ad-free, and the recordings are all in the public domain.

Praized

I heard about Praized fairly early on in its development because one of the developers used to do the job I’m now doing. Praized is a local search tool with a twist. It allows users to “Praize” or “Raze” businesses as well as comment on them and add them as Favourites. Because it’s a Montreal based project a lot of the top Praized businesses are in Montreal, but the site has listings for all of North America and I expect it to grow and evolve as more people start Praizing. I also hope they add listings for other countries. As well as the main site there is also a Facebook application, plugins for WordPress and Movable Type, and a published API.

My Praized profile is here.

Montreal Tech Watch

Finally, a handy resource for keeping up to date on the Montreal tech scene is the Montreal Tech Watch blog, which is in the process of re-inventing itself but is basically a central hub for all things tech/startup related in Montreal.

Of course, I’ve also tried many software solutions. I’ve tried iCal, which is great but not portable enough. I’ve tried Google Calendar, which is very cool but for some reason doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried 30Boxes, which is beautifully designed but also doesn’t quite work for me. I’ve even tried Outlook, but that has the same problem as iCal.

After realising that graphical calendar applications don’t work for me, and because of my love of the command line, I went looking for a command line application. I found remind, and so far it’s working better than anything I’ve tried before.

Remind uses text files to store reminders, so you can edit them with any text editor you like, or write scripts to add reminders, or there are front-end applications if you like that sort of thing. The contents of the files look something like this:

REM      Feb  2        MSG Ground Hog Day%
REM      Feb 14        MSG Valentine's Day%
REM      Mar 17        MSG St. Patrick's Day%
REM      Apr  1        MSG April Fool's Day%
REM      May  5        MSG Cinco de Mayo%
REM  Sun May [Week_2]  MSG Mother's Day%
REM  Mon May [Week_3]  MSG Victoria Day%
REM 06 Nov 2008 +3 AT 13:00 +120 MSG Doctor %b.%
REM 24 Nov 2008 +3 AT 08:00 +60 MSG Dentist %b.%
REM Tue 1 +3 MSG Quiz Night %b.%

REM is the keyword for reminder, which most of your entries will begin with (there are other keywords, but for simple usage REM is all you need).

After REM comes the date the reminder will happen on. There is a huge variety of possible date formats making for ultimate flexibility. You can specify a full date, like the Doctor appointment above, or just a partial date, such as the statutory holidays above or even the quiz night entry, which evaluates to the first Tuesday of every month.

After the date you can specify an optional delta, for example +3, which means remind me every day starting 3 days before the event. You can also use *n which means repeat every n days.

Next is the optional time setting, for example AT 13:00, meaning the event happens at 1pm. This can also have a delta, for example +60, meaning remind me 60 minutes before the event starts.

Finally, we tell remind what to do when it’s time to remind us. Usually we just want a message, so that’s what the MSG keyword is for, which is followed by the message itself. The message can contain substitution variables, such as the %b in the above examples. The %b evaluates to “in n days”, “tomorrow” or “today” depending on how close we are to the event.

There are many other options, and it can be a little overwhelming if you try to figure it all out, but if you stick with the basics until you find you need something more, it’s a very powerful tool. There are lots of useful resources relating to remind at Roaring Penguin.

Sadly, budget cuts means one of these Mars rovers, Spirit, is to be put to sleep and the other will have reduced duties. While the US government spends the amount required to keep this research alive for a year every week in Iraq, NASA are forced to reduce funding. It costs $20 million per year to keep the rovers running, a pitiful amount compared to US defense budgets, but the US government are too busy killing people to be interested in science (unless the science helps with the killing people).

The team are planning an appeal against the cuts; I hope somebody listens.

The GP2X is a portable media player, similar to a PSP or Gameboy, except it’s linux based so the platform is completely open. It’s slightly cheaper than a PSP.

The hardware seems to be well built. It’s bigger than the iPod I got used to carrying around, being slightly smaller than a PSP but that’s to be expected as it’s more than just a music player. It runs on two AA batteries which bulks it out a little bit more but means I can take extra batteries on long trips.

The screen is a good size and the buttons are well placed. I got the new F200 version, which has a direction pad instead of a joystick and also has a touchscreen display. The touchscreen seems like a strange addition but maybe it will come in useful for something.

The only thing missing is a switch to lock the controls, which I realise can be done with software but a hardware option would take the onus off the developers.

The machine has various orifices: SD card slot, headphone socket, USB port, EXT port, AC adaptor socket. These are all “protected” by little rubber things, which don’t fit quite right and are just terrible. I’m guessing I’ll end up chopping them off.

There is no hard drive in the device, so I had to go buy an SD card for it. I picked up a pack of two 2Gb cards for $50 which is enough for a big chunk of music plus all the software I want to install on it. Despite dire warnings I found on various websites, the SD card was “plug and play” and connecting the GP2X to my laptop via USB caused it to be mounted as a drive.

The software that comes with the machine is fairly basic. You get a movie player, a music player, an image viewer, an ebook reader and some built in games. I’ve only really used the music player and image viewer so far.

The music player plays MP3 and OGG formats, which is good because most of my music is in OGG format. Unfortunately it doesn’t play AAC format, and I have some of those downloaded from iTunes. A quick hunt around got me OMMPC, an alternative music player which has a very cryptic interface but does play AAC files (non-DRM of course). The biggest problem with playback is the volume; the minimum volume setting is still very loud. Unless I find a solution for that I will have to buy some new headphones with built in volume control.

As for other software, because the F200 model is so new, the community is still playing catch-up so most software out there is still for the F100 but will still work with the new model. As with most open source software the quality varies, but I haven’t found anything really terrible so far. The biggest problems I’ve had have been knowing which buttons to press to make things go, as documentation is often lacking.

I’ve just started exploring the games available. So far I’ve concentrated on games written or ported directly to the GP2X. The other option is emulation, as it is capable of emulating many popular gaming systems as well as some of the good old favourites like the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64 and the BBC Micro. I’m looking forward to playing with some of those for the nostalgia.

Many of the native games are silly little puzzle games which can be amusing for a little while but I soon lose interest. There are a few platform style games, and I’ve been having fun with Cave Story and SuperTux. I also discovered Sqdef, a tower defense game which is fairly unique and fun to play on the metro.

Overall I’m very happy with the GP2X. There are a few minor annoyances, and it is a little rough around the edges compared to more proprietary devices, but if you enjoy a little bit of hacking around it’s a lot more fun than an ipod.

One of the problems I always had with games which try to present a reality containing actual humans was that the humans never looked quite right. That lack of rightness had a fundamental psychological effect which made it difficult to believe in the characters you were seeing. This isn’t just a problem in gaming; animated movies have the same problem, which is why the more successful computer animated movies are those that don’t have too many humans, or that make the human characters ‘cartoony’.

For example, Polar Express was a good movie, but it tried too hard to make the human characters look really human, and it didn’t quite work. The animated Tom Hanks just looked slightly wrong.

What I didn’t know until today was that this phenomenon has a name. It’s been called the “uncanny valley”, the point where human likeness is almost, but not quite reached. And apparenty the valley has been bridged. According to the chief honcho at game developer Quantic Dream – “I can officially announce that there is no uncanny valley any more, not in real-time.”.

I’m skeptical until they release a demo, but it has to happen at some point.

What is this un-necessary data collection for? At first I though it was so that they could send junk mail to known customers, but my wife pointed out that a postal code usually only targets a set of addresses, not a single dwelling. Jen thinks that it’s so they can analyze sales data per customer area, but what would be the point, and why not just asked for the first part of the postal code?

Whatever the reason, I’m pretty sure it’s not of any benefit to the customer. It slows down the transaction, making people wait longer, and it’s just another small erosion of our privacy.

If someone asks you for personal data, ask yourself “do they need that?” before giving it to them. That’s especially true in an online setting.

Google Streetview is a fantastic idea; I love being able to take a stroll along Hollywood Boulevard without leaving my office (I’m really hoping the implement a “walking between two points” feature to eliminate all the clicking) and I love the idea of being able to explore a new city before actually going there.

Of course, it does have its privacy concerns, but it doesn’t bother me as much as other intrusions; I’m not sure how doing something on a public street can be considered “private” anyway. Having said that, I’ve always had a problem with public security cameras and the whole Big Brother fear so I have to consider what the difference is.

Firstly, Google Streetview is just a still snapshot of any one location whereas security cameras tend to be recording in full motion twenty four hours a day. The amount of information that can be gathered by the Google car about any “private” event on the street  is minimal compared to what a video camera can capture.

Secondly, Google are doing this as a service to their customers, not as a way to monitor the public. The company motto of “Do no evil” has so far not been breached. I have to admit to a certain discomfort about the sheer number of services Google provide and how much data they are collecting from those services but until they do something overtly bad I’ll give them the benefit of doubt.

Finally, Google Streetview is a valuable service to me. I get no benefit from security monitoring. Some might say I would get a benefit if a crime was committed against me, but I’m guessing even if my bike theft had been caught on camera I still wouldn’t get my bike back.