Andrew's Rants

First pics… The front of the Coolermaster case… Managed to get the card reader, as well as three USB 2.0 ports in front. Good start

The back of the case. Yep – 8 USB 2.0 ports, 2 Firewire, 2 Gigabit ethernet, 2 x DVI.

Drool – 4 x 2Gb RAM, Quadcore 9400, 2 x 500Gb SATA, and best of all PLENTY of space to grow If you look carefully you can see that there’s four spare SATA ports on the motherboard just waiting for me to ramp up the file storage.

And just check out the size of those fans on everything… Heaps of empty space and the big fans – should be great for cooling/ventilation.

Booted it up into the very sorry looking 32Bit Vista Home that was installed on it – which can only address 3.5Gb RAM – and the WEI score for everything other than the graphics was 5.9 (no graphics driver installed so it only got a 1.0). Now installing 64Bit Vista Ultimate to see what it can do.

I stumbled on an article posted last week that talked about the top ten technologies that would be in place by 2013, and the top five technologies that would be gone by the same time. "Wow!" I thought, "I love these kinds of articles, they really stretch the mind and make you wonder what’s possible!" So off I went and spent the next 15 minutes reading a multi-page article that seems to regurgitate information from a number of other sources, many of which themselves highlight stuff that’s already in place, and those that don’t are "finger in the air" kind of statements.

If you want to see the article, here’s the link: The Digital Home of 2013

Now, a quick summary of what I think of the author’s points (including direct links to each page):

1. High-speed telecommunications
   I’m not so sure about this one – we could be even better off than what he’s saying here… oh, hang on, let me rephrase. The US could be even better off – Australia’s probably not. 🙂
2. It’s an HD world
   Yep, it is. Already.
3. Gaming gets real
   What’s wrong with Metal Gear Solid 4? I don’t really get his point, and he seemed to just take a cheap shot at gamers for no reason. In fact, if anything, he’s hurting his own point in doing so.
4. Reach out and touch something
   Yes, I’ll pay this one.
5. Automated home control
   Yeah, ok. It’s been a long time coming, but this one is probably true.
6. Green goes mainstream
   Huge discussions already going on, and the public knows it too – why else would GE report such huge increases in sales.
7. Welcome to the cloud
   Google Docs has already been going on for a while, Microsoft’s Live Mesh is now upon us, and other various bits and pieces are here. Don’t need to wait another five years thanks.
8. The rise of streaming media
   This is growing every year, and it takes very little thought to throw this in to a list such as this one.
9. Online distribution of TV, movies
   By his own admission, this is already happening. As in, now. But further to that, it’s just a sub-point of point 8.
10. Collaborating across town, and across the world
    Dunno about him, but I already work in a company that depends on this. Now. Again, already happening. And using Photoshop Express as an example of good collaborative software? Please!

And the five destined to die technologies:

1. Blu-ray – huh? I don’t know about that. His argument is kind of the same as saying CDs won’t take off because of the truckloads of cassettes (or vinyl) out there – oh…snap. With HD comes consumables capable of storing HD. I can already dump an hour of video off my $200 handycam and have it nowhere near small enough to fit on a DVD. If I had an affordable Blu-ray burner and consumables, I’d be on it.
2. Desktop PCs – Yeah, but I don’t see a huge difference between the way most people use laptops and desktops, and I would have liked the author to actually state reasons for why this might happen as opposed to saying it’s based on sales (although that would require actual prediction rather than following existing stats).
3. Slow mobile networks – well, duh. If we’re talking WiMAX and 4G in Point 1, then it’s a no-brainer to say the corollary.
4. Locally stored files – I disagree with this, although I suspect that people like Mitch are going to disagree with me in turn. 🙂 What’s the benefit of having your data up on the web? If you’re a traveller then sure, maybe. But for the average home (which this article is supposed to be talking about), I see it as unlikely. Most people will prefer to keep a hold of their data where they can get to it easily, and regardless of how quick your internet access is, it’s still slower than a local network.
5. Desktop Operating Systems – I don’t get how this can work. What does the browser run on?

*sigh* How about some imagination!? Some creativity!? Maybe even some magic!? Pretty much everything mentioned is either already upon us or will likely be realised in only a year or two – not five. How about for the home:

• In-built video conferencing in your TV so you can video chat to your relatives overseas (through your gaming console of choice)
• Live collaborative video editing so you can dump the video of your child’s soccer game on the laptop, and have your wife help you edit it from home.
• Pet management tools. Feeding, yard care, health monitoring for conditions such as worms, ticks, etc.
• Health monitoring for your family. Warning signs for the elderly or the infant. Blood pressure monitoring for the highly stressed worker. Automatically dispensing appropriate medication as part of your daily diet.
• Community Grid Computing and Community Networks. that somehow shares the load of water/electricity/gas consumption. Also, maybe better Neighbourhood Watch that keeps the streets a little bit safer.
• GPS-everything with more up to date maps and intelligent software that reroutes based on traffic, weather, important dates in your life, etc. Imagine, you’re creating a route to go pick up that amazing tri-level snooker table you picked up for a steal on eBay and the device pops up that it’s also your wedding anniversary and along the way is a place that stocks that brand of handbag your wife loves, so provides an additional routing to incorporate that if you choose to. And then, while you’re out – the Home Automation system kicks in, transmits to your GPS that you’re out of dog food and the GPS pops up a suggested diversion to get it from a pet shop that’s in the vicinity, and promises to get you home on time because it’s found a better path around the peak hour traffic.
• Integrated kitchen technology. Have the freezer automatically deliver the frozen meal to your microwave, have the microwave cook it to the right level by reading the info off the pack and then deliver it to your serving area. Oh, and have it initiated remotely, so when you’re 10 minutes from home you can kick it off and have it ready when you walk in the door.

Sure, OK… none of these things may happen, but wouldn’t it be kinda cool if they did?

I’m tired… this will probably look completely wrong in the morning… 🙂

Technology is cool. Normally I’ll get excited about the "big" stuff – Surface Computing, Silverlight, how sweet Uncharted Drake’s Fortune looks in high def…

But the day to day stuff really rocks my socks as well. Case in point.

My favourite dance group back in the late 80’s was an Aussie group called Boxcar. I had their first album on vinyl – and then later on got their other two on CD. Thing is, about 12-13 years ago, I lost the record. I was devastated because of the memories the songs evoked and while the remixes were still accessible through the CD, they just weren’t the same – I wanted the original.

For years, I would check out music stores, and periodically trawl the web looking for their stuff. As the time went by however, I think my hope died too and I haven’t looked around for that album for a year or so.

When talking to a friend on Friday, I mentioned my desire to still get this album if I could find it, and while it was fresh in my mind, I thought I’d do another web trawl.

And boy, am I thankful that I did.

First hit was pretty much a Wikipedia article on the band, which then linked in turn to other Wikipedia articles for their albums and external links to sites such as discogs and most impressively of all, to Boxcar’s own site. This in turn revealed that they’d made a mini-comeback late last year and were now working on a new album. Their website actually cycles through all of their music, so I was able to hear a couple of favourites that I hadn’t heard for a very long time.

This then gave me hope enough to check eBay out. And yes, someone was selling a copy of Vertigo! With a reasonable Buy It Now price and reasonable shipping. In less than 2 minutes, I had logged into eBay, clicked the buy button, navigated my way through PayPal to pay for it and received the confirmation that I had indeed purchased the CD. Then I noticed that the auction had been due to finish in only 5 minutes after I found it. If any part of that process had fallen over, I wouldn’t have made it in time. But everything worked – Google, Wikipedia, Discogs, Boxcar’s own site, eBay, PayPal…

Five years ago, the information wouldn’t have been present on Wikipedia and even Boxcar’s own site didn’t exist. I might have lucked into an eBay auction, but I had been checking eBay semi-regularly, so maybe not. Internet access was slower, so getting to the finish point of buying the album might not have happened either (and I wouldn’t have even known because finished auctions don’t display by default).

I know it’s small, and it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it was a "cool!" moment for me on Friday when it happened, and here I am 3 days later still with a smile on my face when I think about it.

Technology empowers.