Google Glass

Oh wow, so I haven’t blogged here in a long time. But this annoyed me and was too lengthy for twitter, so here we go…

Saw an intriguing tweet from Google’s corporate account earlier:

Project Glass: building tech to help you explore your world & put you back in the moment. We’d love your feedback: g.co/projectglass

No context about what it actually was (sigh 1), but sounded interesting and I guessed it would be some kind of augmented reality thing based on recent news stories so clicked through on my phone. Was taken through to a Google+ profile page (sigh 2), which read:

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

We started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment.

Follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too.

Which again, told me basically nothing about the project (sigh 3). Clicked on the “Posts” link to see if that had more useful information. “Please sign in to Google+”. (Sigh 4)

Signed into Google+. Immediately taken back not to the Google Glass page, but to my home feed (sigh 5) populated by the few people I know who are still actually using Google+. There was however a helpful banner at the top of the page telling me I could download the Google+ app for Android. Which I already have (sigh 6), and which it should have opened in to start with to save the signing-in hassle.

So jumped back to Twitter, and clicked the link once again to get back where I was. Clicked on “Posts” and lo-and-behold, was able to read a single post:

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.

Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?

Again, basically information free. (Sigh 7). Still clicked on the video, since Google are apparently no longer capable of explaining things with text, only with cutesy videos. And boy was this cutesy and hipstery. (Sigh 8).

But anyway, my point is: this is definitely something I’m interested in. I wanted to learn more about it. So why were so many roadblocks in my way? They even say it themselves: “technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t”, which is basically the exact opposite of my experience.

I do love Google, many of their tools are incredibly useful and they are still kings of search. But in my opinion they would be far better off fixing annoyances and doing a better job of explaining/marketing their existing products than constantly churning out new things. With an experience like this, there’s no way I’d want them in my eyes all day long.

Reddit – Doing it right

Over the past few weeks I’ve been spending more and more time at reddit.com. It’s a site I’d known about for a long time, but only through occasional links via it. I never had it in my favourites or made a habit of checking. Now I’ve delved a little deeper, and found it’s a remarkably nice community (well, actually a collection of separate communities, which is part of the attraction).

Things I really like:

  • The huge choice of sub-reddits, and how you can subscribe/unsubscribe to them for the front page
  • A remarkable self-policing community
  • A clean, simple interface
  • I switched off AdBlock Plus for reddit today, as I’d heard their ads were fairly unobtrusive and I want to support them. First thing I see? “Reddit would like to use this ad space to say: Thanks for not using AdBlock!” with a thumbs up from their cute alien logo. Clever both technically and psychologically, it raised a smile (and prompted me to write this post) :)

Big Bang Theory

Watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory on the plane, but laughed harder at the episode description than anything else: “Sheldon atttempts to invent 3-player chess”. Because my housemate had been trying to do that just a couple of weeks earlier.

It really is the most inconsistent series. Some episodes are brilliantly funny with clever references. And some are just poor, with terrible “jokes” followed by a gale of canned laughter. Sadly this was one of the latter type.

Journey review

Just because.

Cambridge-Peterborough, Crosscountry
Fairly quiet, punctual. Nothing to complain about. Still think Cambridge station is being greedy by having 3 AMT coffee stands and should share them with less fortunate stations.

Peterborough-York, East Coast
Fast, quiet and on-time. Ridiculously huge amounts of legroom. Loads of power sockets. “Free Wi-Fi” did turn out to be free for only 15 minutes, after giving away all your personal details, and be slower than just using the intermittent 3G. But on the whole A++ would ride again.

York-Blackburn, Northern Rail
Absolutely rammed, especially after Leeds.

Blackburn-Darwen, Northern Rail
Late. Inexplicably swapped destinations with another Northern train arriving Blackburn at the same time, causing much confusion. Also fairly certain train was on fire. Well done Northern Rail.

Travel Promotion Act

Travelling to America soon, and I have to go through ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) to enter without a visa. Joy. I quote:

On March 4, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Travel Promotion Act (TPA) of 2009, Pub. L. No. 111-145. The Act directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish a fee for the use of the ESTA system, comprised of $10.00 for each VWP applicant receiving authorization to travel to the United States and $4.00 for the processing of the ESTA application.

Apparently the word “promotion” means something different in America.

Pink Floyd Fan’s Guide to Cambridge

Took a quick look at a Pink Floyd Fan’s Guide to Cambridge in a bookshop today, and there were some amusingly tenuous links.

  • Trinity College: Isaac Newton studied here, and also discovered the phenomenon illustrated on the cover of Dark Side of The Moon
  • The Regal: The Beatles played here. Syd Barrett bought a ticket, but never made it to the gig because he had an interview.

Review: Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is supposedly a classic novella, or short novel. Well it certainly felt short on plot, yet reading it seemed to drag on forever.

I’ve never given up on a book partway through, but this time it was incredibly tempting. The narrator’s prose is tedious and nothing of consequence seems to happen for ages (perhaps because he is constantly travelling with a fixed goal, and only meets other characters briefly). Only the fact that it was short encouraged me to plough on.

Fortunately later on it did pick up a tad. Actually my favourite part was the meeting between Marlow and Kurtz’s fiancée, something of an epilogue to the actual story.

However I still can’t understand why it’s regarded as a classic. Kurtz, the driving force of the story, exists mainly through reputation and other characters extolling him, rather than any of his actions. “Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an exceptional man…” “I was then rather excited at the prospect of meeting Kurtz very soon…” “I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz…” It’s as if Conrad had never heard of ‘show, don’t tell’. Then inevitably, finally meeting Kurtz seems like a huge anti-climax. Nor did I find the supposed anti-colonial themes compelling. Perhaps when it was written they were more shocking, but the fact that colonialism was not all sweetness and light hardly qualifies as a revelation these days.

Oh and by the end if Conrad title-dropped the words “heart” and “darkness” one more time I was quite ready to drop dead muttering “the horror! the horror!” myself.

Review: Masters of Doom

Masters of DoomMasters of Doom by David Kushner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have to say first of all, what a fantastic choice of topic! It’s amazing what an influence ID have had in computer games and beyond, and I was delighted to find a book like this had been written.

And very well written it is too. Kushner has researched his topic in incredible depth, as is made clear from the author’s notes at the back of the book including how many people he interviewed. More than that he strings all the disparate details into a compelling story. Clearly the author is a fan of the two Johns and the other people involved, but he doesn’t shy away from presenting their flaws.

My only quibble is that there could be more detail in places, especially on Carmack’s significant technical achievements.

Review: Starship Titanic

Starship TitanicStarship Titanic by Terry Jones

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had always thought this book was more of a close collaboration (à la Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens, one of my all-time favourites). However it turns out that Adams spent his time on the computer game of the same name, with Terry Jones writing this novel based on the setting pretty much on his own.

So it’s somewhat unfair to compare it with other works actually written by DNA. That’s fortunate, because it doesn’t stand up too well. There are a few great Adams-esque elements – the bomb springs to mind. But much of the book is taken up with unexpected raunchiness and dull relationships.

This would probably have been a 2 star review for the book, but it gets bumped up one because I listened to the audiobook version, recorded by Terry Jones himself. He does a great job with that at least, including some hilarious screaming!