tech

What the iPad changed

Not that long a go a “workstation” implied an integrated effort. Hardware and Operating System engineered by the same company which ensured a more seamless experience. There have been many companies that have produced these integrated efforts including Sun and Apple.

Certainly the out of box experience of Lisa’s iMac was exceptional The unit was unboxed. The power cord was attached to the back and the wall. The power button was pushed. The computer suggested putting the batteries in to the wireless mouse and keyboard and connected them to the system when that was complete, and a few clicks later Lisa was ready to get to work. One wire. If only Shipstone existed outside of Heinlein books.

That experience, as great as it is diminishes over time. Why? Because after all that is over, it’s still a computer. You have apps to install, files in a file system, bookmarks in multiple browsers etc. Essentially, all the baggage of computing that has accrued over the last 25 years or so.

The iPad is yet another step along the path of washing all that away. Many of us are used to a near continuous connection to the nets. Many of us have storage “in the cloud” that makes our work available where ever, whenever. The IPad hides the OS, it hides the file system, it hides the computer. It make software as much of an appliance as the hardware has become. It seems, while you use it, do only do one thing. As if at that moment it’s nothing more than a email device. Or a “todo” list. Or a spreadsheet.

Once again it’s about simplicity. It’s about making choices as a designer, having an opinion about what’s needed, for whom and when. Will it be all things to all people? Of course, not. But it could well be a device for many people for much of the time. And easier and more convenient to use than a laptop or desktop computer. We’ll see.

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feeds, realtime, and stuff. a link dump.

Some of the stuff we’ve been exploring lately…

10 Futuristic Materials

Accelerating Future » 10 Futuristic Materials:

1. Aerogel

Aerogel

Aerogel holds 15 entries in the Guinness Book of Records, more than any other material. Sometimes called “frozen smoke”, aerogel is made by the supercritical drying of liquid gels of alumina, chromia, tin oxide, or carbon. It’s 99.8% empty space, which makes it look semi-transparent. Aerogel is a fantastic insulator — if you had a shield of aerogel, you could easily defend yourself from a flamethrower. It stops cold, it stops heat. You could build a warm dome on the Moon. Aerogels have unbelievable surface area in their internal fractal structures — cubes of aerogel just an inch on a side may have an internal surface area equivalent to a football field. Despite its low density, aerogel has been looked into as a component of military armor because of its insulating properties.

[There’s nine more. Awesome stuff.]
Source: The Hole

Where are the true believers?

Where are the true believers? – Good Experience: Or should we invest $50 billion in a new electronic medical record? That’s the proposal from the government, and I can’t imagine it changing anything. [I know they won’t for two reasons… and in this case I will stick to the computer tech of the situation. When I worked at a compnay that worked with hospitals, i saw first hand the mess that is many hospitals data infrastructure. I mean it’s really truly horrible. Monolithic, badly engineered hacks rule the day. I can imagine how it got there… but I blame the administrators who obviously invested the bare minimum in their infrastructure and now have a huge morass out of which to climb. Second is at a more personal level. I have a fine primary care physician. I trust him, he pays attention, knows the family history, etc. Because of the business side of the doctoring business he joined the equivalent of a conglomerate, which naturally centers their IT cost. All good, except they have a EMR system and when it fails to connect to the database (I wasn’t there as a tech, but as a patient) the system is worthless. No EKG or other tests. No access to records, no updates. Just a few simple paper pages to record new information that no doubt will have to be transcribed (with errors) by the staff. It’s 2009 for criminies sake… what the hell is that? No local storage? No syncing of records? What a freakin mess. And this from a major player in health care in my area. “Sucks” doesn’t begin to describe it…

BTW, as for the true believers… I think they’re there. I’m just not sure there’s enough of them where it matters.]

“New” Tech (things that have caught my eye)

Part of being a developer (IMHO) is keeping up with trends and ideas. I’m fond of “exploiting” the work of others to my benefit, and I love when folks simplify old gnarly issues. Anyway, every once in a while I write one of these posts to highlight some of the stuff I’ve been tinkering with in the lab. It acts a signpost for me, and reminds of projects often long gone by the time I look back. Some or all of these will appear in various projects at work or my own projects in the near future. Awesome stuff I assure you.

In no particular order they are

Applying changes to hosts file on OS X (without restarting)

Some machines seem to have no problem with changes to the hosts file, others seem to have quite a bit of trouble with caches and things hanging onto information. This has worked once or twice now, and I thought I’d bother to re-document it (for myself at very least).

To add an entry:
Edit /etc/hosts
sudo niload -v -m hosts .  Clear Private data and clear things.
lookupd -flushcache

To remove the entry:
Edit /etc/hosts
sudo niload -v -d hosts .  Clear Private data and clear things.
lookupd -flushcache
Notice the -d for deletion.

Source: Coding In Paradise

Merb *is* Rails

Merb *is* Rails: Wow this has been a hectic, emotional week. The Rails and Merb core teams have been silently working together towards this monumental announcement. The announcement is that Merb is Rails and Rails is Merb.
http://rubyonrails.org/merb
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2008/12/23/merb-gets-merged-into-rails-3
http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/

[This is awesome news. There’s parts of both frameworks that I love, and now, with a bit of luck, all of them will wind up in the same place.]
Source: Brainspl.at

How to Use DataMapper From Rails, Including Migrations and Tests

How to Use DataMapper From Rails, Including Migrations and Tests:

I was bored this evening and wanted to do something at least semi interesting. I settled on integrating DataMapper with Rails. Seemed like a nice enough thing to do. Searching for datamapper on rails on Google gave me a link to DataMapper 0.9 avec Rails (Google translation). Nicolas’ article was very interesting, but it’s focus is just on the basics. I decided to tackle migrations and testing.

[Cool.]
Source: A Single Programmer’s Blog

Practical Improvements

Practical Improvements: The result? A non-leaking, non-dribbling, non-spilling way to drink that Susan can easily find even in the dark. She doesn’t have to lift a bottle or cup, and can just let the bite valve fall out of her mouth when she’s done.

I believe this may be the best use of Camelbak technology, ever. I’m surprised that they don’t have setups like these in hospitals; they’re much easier for a sick patient to get to than a traditional cup.

[Many years ago (way more than 5, which puts its in the misty, hazy, time before my reckoning) my mother had shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff due to a fall. The confluence of “her side of the bed” and the shoulder surgery made it extremely painful to pick up a glass to have something to drink. So I grabbed my Camelbak, hung it over the post of her bed, and left the tube on the other side where she could reach it pain free. Not only is it easier to handle, but you can adjust the height easily. While Eldon was ingenious, he was not breaking new ground, as I doubt I was, even back then.]
Source: Fat Cyclist