Main : Timeline

It’s been a great week for progress. I’ve picked up a whole bunch of extra motherboards from a couple of suppliers and commenced work on the UWS sculpture. In addition to this, I bought all the fixings used to connect them together, and learned a new aesthetic principle to guide my further works. The way my circuit board works are held together, is with thin threaded rod or long bolts, with nylock nuts and washers. These terminate in little dome nuts on the outward viewer facing surface. Previously, these were all the same outer size, however the bulk dome nuts I ordered from a local bulk supplier were a whole spanner size larger on the outside, while having the same inner thread size. I thought this was going to look unbalanced, but when combined with the washers they supplied, which were also larger diameter, it actually works a lot better. What had previously just been a functional support which ended in the dome, now has this deliberate appearance where it’s thickest at the end, and then tapers down through the nylock nut, to the threaded rod.

Just one of those wonderful surprises that turn up when unlooked for.

Due to the new arrivals of numerous blue motherboards, my plans for the colour scheme of the work have changed somewhat. I’d previously planned to have a tree with purple leaves, sitting on a patch of gold, with black & green as the rest of the colours of the rock. Now that I’ve got ten blues, four purples and a red, the plan is to have the tree grow out of the red one with the purples around it, radiating out to blue. The leaves now can be gold, which makes a certain sense as they’ll be the most beautiful, eye-catching part.

Other developments, I’ve submitted an update to The Metaning, which enables panel numbering via a setting that the user can switch on or off – better yet, the setting is remembered between reads.

Another project on the EPUB front, my first book of roller derby photography is in development – Derby Daze [squareformat], a selection of images which worked in the square cropped format.

It’s been a fantastic week. I’ve found a new source for computer motherboards, who’s happy to keep stockpiling for me, and I finally cracked a web design thing I’ve been meaning to learn for a long time – using jQuery to set and retrieve cookies.

What this brings is the ability to do things like switching between versions of artwork within The Metaning, as well as globally switching things like captions on or off. Having implemented the captions changeable version, the effect is subtle, and beautiful, with the numbers fading in as the page flip is completed.

I’m starting work on another photography EPUB, this one packaging he square cropped images from the roller derby shoots I did.

I’m also close to locking down the final form of the UWS sculpture.

A frustrating week of trying to get the computer motherboards from the local repair guy. After multiple trips around the block to his shop, the effort finally netted a grand total of 3. I need to find a better and more efficient way of doing this, though I suspect going to the computer shops is still going to be the way to get the materials I need.

With a little over 2 months left to complete the work, I think I’m going to stop working on Surfing The Deathline 4 for a bit, and get the UWS sculpture out of the way, at least so that I’m not worrying about it.

So the plan for now is:

1. Get Circuit boards.
2. Mock up the sculpture, possibly in cardboard or foamcore.
3. Build the armature.
4. Locate braided hose.
5. Finish construction.

Once that’s done, I’m thinking that I’ll start releasing an episode of Surfing The Deathline every month, which would give me 3 months to get book 4 finished, and take me through to the end of the ArtStart grant.

The other big news is that I’m going to New Zealand  in April for 3 days, to visit Gibbs Farm, one of the largest private outdoor sculpture collections in the world.

Occasionally, I like to engage in a bit of recreational tech prognostication, and with the current hubbub over what Apple will do next, it seems there’s a considerable slice of the world who thinks the next big thing is a “smart” watch.

This is dumb.

Brutally dumb.

Apple, in its current aesthetic is a premium product company. If they are going to make a product, it will feel like the most materially luxurious version of that product. Hence the metal and glass design language they’ve adopted over the past few years.

Here’s the thing, most people don’t wear watches any more. They’ve become an enthusiast device, and the premium end of the market is mechanical. Mechanical to the point of fetishising that very nature, so that whole new classes of designs and movements are being invented, creating even more baroque ways to enable accurate progression via purely mechanical means. The joy of the modern watch is to wear a mechanical engine on your wrist.

That leaves the other wrist. Whatever Apple is working on, will be something you’d keep on your wrist while NOT wearing a watch. It will not be a portal to your phone, it will probably not have a screen at all. My bet, it’s going to be a motion recorder, like fitbit, which allows you to log and stream all your movement for interactivity like a wiimote.

More importantly, it also acts as a wearable passcode key for all your devices. Your mac unlocks when you approach, and locks again when you leave, your phone and tablet unlock when you pick them up, and it talks to iBeacon-using smart house devices (ie those who will fill the void left by NEST becoming a pariah for joining Google) around your house for smart house integration. iBeacon will be the new feature for home environment and control devices, the way AirPrint became a must-have for printers. It’ll be waterproof, and charge inductively.

There is no “how do I tell the time on my wrist” problem to be solved. There is no “how do I get a small music player for while I’m exercising” problem to be solved. There is no “I want to see my email but not take my phone out of my pocket” problem to solve, no actual people think like that. All the “problems” current smart watches “solve” were invented post-hoc purely to justify the concept of the “smart watch”.

Whatever it is, it won’t solve a glaring problem you, or anyone else thinks you have. It will solve problems that were so constant, so low level so much a part of the background friction of your life, that you never recognised them for what they were.

Update March 10th:

Here’s an article on an Apple patent for for doing one of the things I mentioned.

A productive week. Work has continued on Surfing The Deathline book 4, and I put a submission in to Allen & Unwin to publish a print version of The Metaning.

Unfortunately, the recycling company I was talking to about getting computer motherboards didn’t have any available, however my local computer repair shop does have some. So, I’m going to be able to pick a bunch up from him next week. I also hauled all my leftover boards up from the garage, and was shocked at the treasure trove I forgot I had. In addition to a bunch of dark green, I’ve got a couple of gold, some orangish-black with gold tracery, and 4 in iridescent pinkish-purple, as well as a whole bunch of little cards. I also managed to snag a couple of metres of heavy duty multi-strand solid core copper wire, which I’ll be able to use for the anchors at the base of the pipes making up the tree.

It’s like christmas. So, theres a bunch of cleaning to do on them, and I can start with arranging to figure out the basic shape for the work.

Progress made this week on the eWaste issue. I may have a line with a supplier who asked me to send them a list of what I needed, and they would see what was possible up the line. Hopefully that’ll yield something.

Most of the week has been spent on Surfing The Deathine cleanups on the large roughs, which has seen a lot of progress after laying fallow for ages.

I got most of the things done I had planned for this week, though sadly not with the results I’d hoped.

My source for eWaste has gotten out of that line of business, and it seems there are going to be some difficulties in finding a reliable supply for the UWS Sculpture exhibition piece. The national and state libraries turned out to be dead ends regarding exhibiting The Metaning, so I may have to start thinking of alternate options, which is problematic given the non-saleability of the works. I put in a request for a quote for a print version of The Metaning, and if it turns out to be manageable, there’s always the option of doing a short fine-art print run, and maybe thinking of doing SupaNova Sydney.

I didn’t get around to checking for sponsorships for SbtS, but to make up, I got a bunch of drawing done on Surfing The Deathline book 4. I’m going to put my nose to the grindstone on this, and concentrate on getting this done before losing sleep on publicising The Metaning.

Gear update, I bought a Copper Hill camera cleaning kit, to try to deal with the dust spots which have developed again on my Nikon D800 when I put the aperture up above f12.

It’s been a quiet week:

• my review for an iPad case went up online
• I started publicising The Metaning via twitter. The results were pretty good insofar as the Australia Council retweeted the announcement, and then it was retweeted again by another couple of organisations, with 20,000 odd followers in total. On the downside, there’s only been a couple of sales total, which has been a tad demoralising.

The plan for next week is to gear up for all the major events for 2014:

• Contact my e-waste provider, to source materials for the UWS exhibition.
• Contact steel and perspex providers to source materials for Sculpture By The Sea.
• Contact National Library and NSW State Library about exhibiting The Metaning.
• Obtain printing quotes for doing a short run of The Metaning as a large format premium print book.

Opening disclaimer: I was supplied with the test unit by MobileZap Australia, and allowed to keep it.

The Kit: Bluetooth Keyboard Case is a leather folio style tablet case designed to fit full sized tablets in the 9-10 inch range. It does so by having plastic clips which grip around the corners of the tablet, are connected to the case with elastic, and can therefore stretch outwards, accommodating larger form factors. In this case, I’m testing with an iPad Air, which unfortunately is too thin on its own for the clips to grip securely. You might want to look for a specific iPad Air case if you want to use that particular tablet. Alternatively, if you have one of Apple’s smart cases around your Air, I’m using the black leather one myself, it will bulk it out sufficiently for the clips to maintain a firm grip on the device, and the cover flap can close over your screen before you fold the keyboard against it.

The construction seems very sturdy, being stitched leather, with a soft suede-feel inside. The back of the case has a magnetically secured kickstand to prop the screen up while open, and the whole thing is kept closed by a leather flap and loop arrangement, which seems secure enough.

The keyboard itself is removable from the case, and held in with magnets, which makes it convenient to keep the single sheet instructions underneath. It can be removed and used without the folio, as the battery is within keyboard itself. It’s a reasonable keyboard, featuring about 5mm of travel and a full row of function keys. My only real criticism of it, coming from a Mac background, is that the right shift key is too small for the way I type (right pinkie finger used to activate shift). Given a perfect world, I would have preferred a smaller single line enter key, and a relocation & resizing of the End & right Control keys, respectively. That said, the keyboard is very usable, and I was able to comfortably code up a website while on the road. This is probably the biggest blessing of an external keyboard for someone like me, who actually really likes typing on the screen – the on-screen keyboard eats half the display, which is problematic when doing extended writing / coding sessions. I’m writing this review on the keyboard, and having the full screen to read back and ahead is so much better for keeping the context of the bit you’re writing at that moment in your head.

In terms of battery life, I haven’t been able to determine how long it lasts – though my habit with electronic devices is to charge them every night, I’ve been using this keyboard sporadically since December 18, and it’s still working on its initial charge. The manual lists 80 days standby, and 90 hours use. Charging is an area where I have a criticism of this product, however. Although the single sheet user manual states the product comes with a charger cable, my particular example didn’t include one. Thankfully I was able to find a charger for a bluetooth headset that happened to have the required micro-usb connector. Pairing and activating the keyboard is easy, with a built in key combo to wake the connection up after it’s been switched off.

All in all this is an effective and reasonably priced solution, which has a distinct advantage of not being tied to any particular model of tablet. If you’re in a situation where you want to provide standardised keyboard covers for multiple types of tablet, or have multiple tablets, but only want a single keyboard cover, this may be something to have a look at.

If this article was of use, a donation would help support my projects.

The week was mostly spent on the road trip from Brisbane to Sydney, however before leaving I put the iPad through its paces in building a small single page website for The Metaning. The app I used was Textastic, which has both HTML editing and FTP uploading built in. It’s a pretty nice piece of work. Having bought quite a few productivity apps for iPad of late, I have to say that the pricing structure of under $10 makes the “full fledged” mac apps seem vastly overpriced.