Links for 24-11-08

First, on the energy monitoring front clever people have started to build things - here's a prototype desktop app to parse data from your Current Cost electricity monitor and then share it on the web. I'm going to try this out soon but I've been oscillating between using something like this (or the code libraries out there) or making my own. By the way, if you want a Current Cost, buy one from their EBay shop, all the latest models and cables. And in the last missive from Bruce Sterling's Viridian movement he suggests getting rid of all that junk you've got but keeping the good ones - "The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don't seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects"

I've been thinking a bit about activity streams on the web and how to mark them up, there's a bit here on Adding richness to activity streams and there's a big table of activity streams around the web on this wiki.

In Icelandic news; Iceland is Out of Orbit - I have no idea what this infographic is trying to show, but it's some kind of representation of Iceland and its financial situation in the form of orbiting planets. And Fiona Sims discovers the new culinary movement in Reykjavik in the Guardian - "'After next month you won't see any more foie gras on the menu in Iceland - it's all about sourcing as locally as possible now,' says Ulfar Finnbjornsson, food critic for Gestgjafinn, the country's top (and only) gourmet food magazine, and my foodie guide to the city."

And finally The Bad Plus check out Google's Life photographic archive for jazz dudes - "Holy shit, check out Coltrane's shades!"

More at http://www.delicious.com/tristanf

The four day week

I've just started working four-day weeks in my job at the BBC. Today is my third week in. I want to be able to start some side projects, reduce the amount of commuting I do and hopefully get more inspired, learn new things and read more - all of which should hopefully cross-fertilise with my day job as well.

My initial plan is to do some hacking and visualising of the Current Cost electricity monitor, though possibly not in time for HomeCamp. I also hope to keep this blog a bit more active, do more writing (of text and of code) and maybe even do some more baking.

If you do have anything that might interest me (that wouldn't conflict with my BBC work) then do let me know at tristanferne[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk.

RjDj - experiments with context-driven music

I recently picked up RjDj for the iPhone, alerted to it by reading this by Reverend Dan Catt and actually he's probably mostly said it better than I'm going to but I've got some live piano at the end. Anyway, RjDj is a music app that generates, samples and adapts music based on your environment and context, using the iPhone's inbuilt microphone or, apparently, other sensors. It comes with a number of Scenes, each of which creates music differently, some use samples of your environment in the music and some just modify the inbuilt patterns (the free version just comes with a single scene) and they are planning on releasing more Scenes. Interestingly the scenes themselves are created using Pd/PureData, an open-source sound platform, and then presumably compiled somehow for RjDj.

I've been trying it out and about in town. The app will record itself if you like and this is the 10'28" tube journey from my daily commute one morning, from the ticket gates at Waterloo to the gates at Oxford Circus using the somewhat ambient Eargasm scene...

Play or download the MP3

I also wanted to try some of the scenes with my piano and I found that the WorldQuantizer scene worked well - it loops and quantizes sampled sounds from your environment. So I pointed the iPhone mic at my amp, plugged in some headphones and sat down at my electric piano. Quite an interesting experience this, trying to lock my playing onto the loops which WorldQuantizer generated, and this then feeding back into the app creating an echoing, recursive positive feedback loop. So this is me, my piano and the nearby radiator (warning: jazz-like, ambient music)...

RJDJ World Quantizer Piano by tristanf

If you want to go and play yourself then you can get RjDj from the iTunes store. Ideally I'd like something like the RjDj application but also incorporating fragments of radio programmes, podcasts and your own music collection into its context-driven soundscapes. Could that be a future of music?

Links for 08-11-08

Looks like there are some really interesting applications appearing for the Android mobile platform...

Mobilizy - Wikitude AR Travel Guide
"The truly compelling feature is the augmented reality cam view, users may hold the phone’s camera against a spectacular mountain range and see the names and heights displayed as overlay mapped with the mountains in the camera. Users may look out of an airplane window to see what is down there. Users may walk through a city like Seville, Spain, holding the phone’s camera against a building and Wikitude tells what it is."

BreadCrumbz
This Android application creates sharable sets of photographic route directions using the phone's camera, GPS and compass.


The EchoNest continue to amaze me with what their code can do and how much of it they release...

echo-nest-remix - Google Code
A Python API from the EchoNest for remixing audio using their analysis software. So you can do things like...

   beats = audioFile.analysis.beats 
   beats.reverse()

Tempo and key distribution for more than 10000 tracks from the EchoNest
"Left: Tempo distribution for more than 10000 tracks in all styles (spikes are at 120 BPM, and 100 BPM). Right: Key distribution for the same tracks (from C, C# to B, where blue is minor and red major). Most popular keys: C major, A minor, and G major. Least popular keys: Eb minor and F# major: No surprise…". Personally, I don't mind Eb minor.


Food!

Mix your custom-mixed muesli
"Your custom-mixed muesli. Mix your very own cereals online. We ship it right home to your place."

inamo restaurant, Soho, London
"Diners place orders from an illustrated food and drinks menu projected on to their table surface. You’ll set the mood, discover the local neighbourhood, and even order a taxi home.". I think I might have to visit this.


The future of our planet...

Biodivertido: Flickr creating polygons out of points, what about species distributions?
OK, he's actually suggesting doing this properly, but I like the idea of getting species distributions from Flickr photos of wildlife.

homecamp / FrontPage
"Home Camp is an unconference about using technology to monitor and automate the home for greener resource use and to save costs."


And finally...

IDEO Labs » The Incredible IDEO Global Chain Reaction Experience
Watch this video of a worldwide, multi-site, physical and virtual Rube Goldberg (trans: Heath Robinson) machine from Ideo.


More at http://www.delicious.com/tristanf

Some small things, loosely joined from Playful

I attended Playful on Friday - a conference on play and games. It was pretty good and a bit inspiring with an interesting mix of low-level game controller hacking and high-level theories of play and gaming. I liked the low cost, informal, non-corporate feel of it, which the venue Conway Hall contributes to. I guess Interesting is a bit like this but are there any web conferences like it?

Some highlights and things for me to think about...

Brass Band Hero and the Singing Sock Puppets from Matthew Irvine Brown were great, aimed at music learning. I liked his mantra of making more dots so that people can join them.

Chris Delay of Introversion Software showed their procedural generation of trees and cities for game environments - basically so they can save money. I don't quite know why but it just looks so compelling to generate your own city layouts like this.

Kars Alfrink talked about play, particularly how users will use tools to create their own meanings. So for applications like this designers should underspecify and, indeed, limit the tools, to encourage play and creativity. He had a lovely example of children playing at horses in Habbo Hotel (in which there are no horse avatars) and also the playground pattern from A Pattern Language which suggests providing an area with raw materials for children to create their own play.

Tom talked about everything being multiplayer. Amongst (rather a lot of) other things he showed the Obama iPhone app which includes a leaderboard of who has made the most calls and noted that the real world is aynchronous, and that's supported by game-like apps such as Flickr and Nike+

Oh, and Matt showed the Radio Labs DABagotchi in his talk about hardware hacking - respect.

I see that Roo has some more comprehensive notes up already.