Tablet PC Handbook

I have been working for the past two months on a new project. This is my first attempt to launch a website that is dedicated to a specific topic. The Tablet PC Handbook is a wiki-based living book that I have been writing and developing as a resource for information about Tablet PCs. I was hoping to have it more developed by this point, but I have made available what I currently have. Moving forward I will continue to develop more content and fill in the gaps that still exist on the site. There is an associated blog and twitter account for the project.

Check out the Tablet PC Handbook at http://tabletpchandbook.com

Seeker: Reinventing Assassins

In the past, Speed School Student Council hosted a game called Assassins that was played at Speed School. The concept was fairly simple and it was an easy, social, game that allowed players to have fun during the semester. The rules were fairly simple: You were given a target and a secret. The targets were assigned in a circle such that when you found your target, you then were to find their target. The system kept everyone honest by requiring you to enter your targets secret to confirm the "kill." In the end there would be only two people that would need to find each other. Despite the violent name, Assassins is harmless and is more like a big game of hide and seek.

The concept of the game is brilliant, but there are some major shortcomings. The main problem is that the game was designed to be played with pencil and paper. If every player was given an index card with their target, when they found their target they got their index card, in the end the player with the most cards won. However, Assassins in practice was played on the web, requiring players to memorize or carry their password with them and go back to a computer to tell the system they found their target.

Less than two weeks ago I was talking to Mike and Alex about the game and it turned out if we slightly changed the rules some interesting things happened. We played out what would happen and it seemed to work. The first problem is the circle of targets, in the end two people have each other. Additionally, the targets are not secret because the person you eliminated has no reason to keep quiet. Another problem is that once you are found you are out of the game, no more fun for you. Lastly, requiring players to use a website to progress in the game takes you out of the experience. I believe I managed to fix all of these shortcomings with Seeker.

The first change is to issue contract targets at random. The first side effect is that multiple people can have the same target. No problem, first one to reach the target gets credit. When issuing a contract there are some limitations: you can't have someone that has your, you won't be issued your previous target, and you won't be issued someone who is not in the game. This still provides a large degree of randomness in the game. When you are eliminated you fail your contract and if someone reaches your target before you do you fail your contract as well. Since contracts continue to be issued, this is not a problem. When you are eliminated or found you are only out of the game for a short period. In this case 24 hours. This respawn time is taken straight out of the way video games offer. To keep the game moving contracts will expire after 72 hours.

The last problem is how to play when you are not around a computer. While some players would have smart phones, it is not a guarantee. However, a large fraction of college students have text messaging plans. ZeepMobile provides a free web based text messaging API that was used to allow players to play the game. By allowing players to get their current secret and target along with completing contracts via text messages it makes the game more transparent to the player. Additionally, players will get text messages when they get a new contract, are eliminated, or fail a contract.

I managed to code the entire game in a single weekend and we started playing the next week. It is still somewhat a work in progress and I am still working a few of the bugs out, but it seems to be working. The game is open source and you can see the code at seeker-game on Google Code. The best part about Seeker is how simple the concept is. At the core, there is only a table of users and a table of contracts. The most complicated part is keeping the game state updated. Once that is ironed out the rest is up to the players.

UofL Ekstrom Library's August 2009 Flood Collection

In August 2009 there was a major flood in Louisville. With my trusty camera I hiked to UofL's campus with some friends and took a lot of pictures along the way. I posted them to my blog (Old Louisville Flood Flood Damage) shortly after the flood. I posted all of the photos to Flickr under a creative commons license and submitted them to the library for their digital archive.

The library posted the August 2009 Flood collection recently and it is worth taking a look at. However, if you only want to look at a few photos, look at the photos I submitted to the collection.

What operating system will I end up using tomorrow?

The battle lines have finally been drawn. Microsoft has thrown Windows 7 into the ring, Apple OSX, and the final contender has been Linux with its army of open source developers. I will coincide the point that companies have supported Linux, but this has been centered around the server market. In that case a robust system that includes a combination of Windows Server and Linux based systems, along with other systems. The consolidation of this market is highly unlikely in the near future. Additionally, I feel this aspect of computing has little influence on the future of computing, it has become a transparent layer confined to the inner workings of data centers.

The point of interest is the desktop, but the battle may have already moved to a new front. While Microsoft and Apple fight for the desktop, Google has hoisted the flag of Linux in order to take over the internet. Immediately after Google Chrome launched, a new web browser by Google that this blog post is being typed in, I conjectured that Chrome was designed to be an operating system. Anyone familiar with how operating systems are composed would likely have reached the same conclusion. The architecture was simply too complex for an ordinary web browser.

What does it mean now that Google has entered the operating system market with Chrome OS? Not much at the moment, but there are some long term consequences. The trajectory of Windows and OSX moving forward are in the same direction. While they differ in some major aspects, they are only a few degrees apart. Even Ubuntu is on the same path as Microsoft and Apple, but Chrome OS has taken off in an entirely new direction. Think of it like everyone is trying to colonize Mars by building bigger and bigger ships, but Google just sent a tiny one man rocket to Pluto.

Chrome OS seems to have a major shortcoming in that it does not support any native Linux applications, even though it would be technically possible to run them. Why make such an anti-geek decision? The answer is not clear at the moment, but a few things can be guessed at. First, the system will be easy to use and target the average consumer. Taking the Apple approach of tightly coupling the hardware to the software will make the experience very pleasant. They are taking a Microsoft approach by providing a platform that developers can build applications on that will reach many millions of people. Restricting Chrome OS to only a web browser may not work at this point in time, but as we move to a more cloud based society, this may become the best option for security and sustainability.

The general trend at the moment is towards more centralized computing power. This pendulum has moved back and forth over the years, but with ubiquitous network access it may find itself stuck at the centralized computing position in the near future. While it is not possible to perform high definition video editing entirely in the browser now, nothing is stopping someone from making a method for doing this type of work. Think of even the most complicated applications, PhotoShop, AutoCad, Mathmaticca, these could all be rendered in the browser in some method. While a high power server will need to stand behind these applications, the front end does not require much processing power. I can not think of a single application that could not run by having a very stripped down, browser based interface into a system that stands behind it. Companies are already working on this with video games that require high frame rates and quick response times. While for consumers it makes sense for companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to provide the processing power, companies could run their own local services that they manage to insure uptime and responsiveness.

What is the conclusion to reach here? The point to take away is that we do not know what the future will hold for technology. While I support the improvements that Microsoft has made with Windows 7 and find some of their applications, such as OneNote, to be central to my daily productivity, the next big thing is still out of focus. Chrome OS is focusing on Netbooks today, but this is only the beginning. However, I can imagine a world where all of our devices run a front end platform that is simple a window into the internet. It does not matter who made the window or how it works, by this point in time the web will become the universal human language. My hope, my dream is that this arrives in such a fashion that is open and free. Will Google deliver on these dreams, I can not say. However, it appears that the move is towards the centralization of computing and the ramifications of this have yet to be felt.

Preserving the History of Engineers' Days

As the Director of Administration for Speed School Student Council one of my main responsibilities is to "keep all Speed Student Council records other than financial." In this modern age of technology, this is coming up with a system to use modern technology in such a way that it will not be lost to history. This has primarily materialized in how I manage the Student Council website (http://speedcouncil.org). Specifically, the main records that SSSC produces are meeting minutes. At the moment, I am using Google Docs to manage these documents and it is working out nicely for the generation of new content.

While I still want to tackle the issue of all of the old meeting minutes, I have been actively uncovering historical records in another area. Engineers' Days, now known as Engineering Exposition, is a long standing tradition at Speed School. My new mission has been digitizing the past programs from the events and posting them on http://engineering-expo.com.

I have been scanning in the collection of old programs that have survived the years in the council office. The oldest program that survived was from 1975. However, even older programs dating back to the 1930's have survived in the University Archives.

What I have been doing is scanning in the programs and creating PDF versions of the paper programs. This is a good first step, but how is it possible to preserve these records online without trusting that some service is around years from now. The approach I have taken is somewhat complicated, but it seems to be working.

The new E-Expo website is hosted using an install of MediaWiki that allows for very simple editing. The PDF files can be easily uploaded to the wiki and made available on the internet. However, the level of accessibility is somewhat limited. Google has made available Google docs Viewer which translates any PDF or PowerPoint into an HTML iFrame. This way the actual PDF is hosted by SSSC, but an easy way of viewing the document is provided by Google.

Here is the 1975 Program for Engineers' Days:



All of the programs and information about each of the past events is available under Past Events on the E-Expo website.

Moving forward I still need to find a way to get digital copies of the programs that are located in the University Archives. Because the library charges to scan in these documents there is no means for getting digital copies of these materials at the moment.

Additionally, even with the programs hosted on council's website, they may not survive the test of time and technology. One method of preserving these records may be to release them under a Creative Commons license and publish them to the Internet Archive.

This task has taken up quite a bit of my time, but I feel that preserving this history is well worth all of the work that it takes.