I was working on my thesis last night, and had the Commonwealth Games showing on the tv in the background. All of a sudden I heard Ray Warren (the announcer) shout “Fargus is going to get gold”! The name Fargus was familiar to me, as I used to train with a girl called Joanna Fargus when I used to live in Hong Kong. So out of curiousity I went to watch the end of the final lap of the 200m backstroke.

Initially I thought Ray was calling the race wrong, because there was an English swimmer coming in second, and it could have been Joanna Fargus. I was amazed to find that at the end of the race that the Australian swimmer was indeed the Joanna Fargus that I used to train with under Captain Harry Wright’s tutelage in Hong Kong! Glad to see that someone from the Mantas/LRC swim team continued to be successful with their swimming!

I know of a few people that religiously carry a Global Positioning System (GPS) with them everywhere they go.  They use the device to log their locations, and then overlay their tracks onto Google Maps.  They find this quite useful when they go on their weekly bike ride around Sydney.  Furthermore the geo data that the GPS unit logs can be used to associate photos with a set of coordinates.  This allows photos to be searched by location.

The problem with GPS units is that they are big and bulky, and they have the form factor of a brick.  However, geek demand for these gadgets is obviously on the rise, as we are starting to see a new generation of GPS units that are smaller and more portable.  The TrackStick is the first I’ve seen of a GPS unit packed into the form factor of a USB stick.  The TrackStick is simply a GPS unit with a USB interface, and costs around USD300.  It records up to about 1MB of data (location, speed, heading), and can export the data to a number of formats for use with Google Earth,  Google Maps, etc.

What I want to see is the convergence of GPS and other portable consumer goods such as digital cameras, music players, and watches.  I’ve already mentioned that photos can be organised according to location, therefore geo data would be an excellent feature for for next generation digital cameras, especially since EXIM metadata supports location information.

Personal music players would be able to use GPS data to play certain tracks depending on where you are and how fast you are moving.  The GPS enabled music player might detect that you are moving at about 8 km/h, which is about jogging speed, and will play tracks that you have marked for your exercise routine.  If you are travelling faster, then you might be driving around town, in which case tunes that you have selected for such an occasion will be pumped through the speakers of your car.

We should be able to expect this technology built into our mobile phones.  The mobile phone is the ultimate convergent technology, with some models that look more like cameras or music players than mobile phones.  I for one would like to be able to track my phone on Google Maps, especially if it ever were to be stolen!

If you are able to read this post, then the upgrade of http://ca.rroll.net from WordPress 1.5 to WordPress 2.0 went smoothly.

I have also added a Flickr badge and Google Adsense to the sidebar of the main index page.  I added these features for two reasons: firstly I needed something to fill up the blank space in the sidebar; and secondly I wanted to try out Google’s adsense so that I get a better understanding of how much revenue one can make from it.

If you are using daemontools, and come across the following error even though the supervise directory and all related files exist:

svc: warning: unable to control /service/dev: file does not exist

Then you can do the following:

1. Use ps -afx to display a hierarchy of processes… really quite cool.
2. If procreadtitle is running in the process list, then do the following:
ps axww|grep readproctitle
3. That should display the error that is preventing the service from starting. If you are using daemontools with openacs, then the problem might be a misconfigured run file, or that you haven’t set the right permissions on the server log files.

I presented a conference paper at ICWE on Thursday. One of the keynote speakers at ICWE that morning was Lars Rasmussen from Google. His talk was focused on using javascript to deliver Google Maps. He directed us to have a look at the Google Maps API. It is quite simple to use and very impressive. I was able to scratch this up within an hour. So now you’ll know exactly where I work.

I am now leaning back to using AJAX for my concept maps application, based on Lars Rasmussan’s presentation. They dismissed a flash based Google Maps simply because Flash is a proprietary format. Although the same argument doesn’t apply to Laszlo, as Laszlo’s LZX files are of an open format. It just happens that they compile LZX files to flash.

Anyway if I am to take Google’s approach, I will have to put up with a lot of work-arounds and hacks to support cross-browser compatibility. I think I will do a bit more experimenting before I commit to either AJAX or OpenLaszlo.

My blog was down for about 4 weeks due to a server mishap. It kind of worked out for the best, as David managed to procure a new server and have it linked to a fat pipe. So the site should be able to display quicker! Anyway I’m just thankful that the site is back up so that I can finally start blogging again.

Lately I’ve been thinking about setting up an LDAP server for storing information about my contacts. I read this article, which basically tells me how to configure LDAP to use an addressbook like schema for storing contact details. The reason for using LDAP is that I will be able to synchronise contact details across all my email clients both at work and at home. If necessary I can even share the contact details with friends.

I went along to the CeBIT exhibition down at Darling Harbour to check out what is happening in the World of IT. To be frank I was very disappointed. Luckily it didn’t cost me a thing… but I wish I could get back the 2 hours of my life that I spent looking at the lame vendor exhibits.

A few vendors there were offering Content Management Systems (CMS). Some of them looked like blatant rip-offs of Plone. But then if another business was wanting to pay what the vendor was asking for, then serve them bloody right! Especially when they can use a far more superior open source product.

The most fascinating thing at CeBIT this year was the Laserpod, which looks like an aluminium spaghetti tin with a cheap laser pointer inside, and topped with a plastic dome. That pretty much summed up the stuff on display at CeBIT… cheap, tacky stuff that you can build yourself.

Better luck next year.