Interesting Musical Swing in Montreal

Neat swing in downtown Montreal where you make music, and get better tunes if you cooperate!

Musical Swing in Montreal

I am always on the lookout for tech that uses microcontrollers etc.
I'm generally down on techie art sculptures such as this.  This is not because I don't like art, but I want to see this kind of ingenuity aimed at more "practical" industrial/commercial enterprises with a dire human need. Hunger, the disabled, international diplomacy, education etc.
That said, this swing is pretty cool, and certainly seemed to attract a diverse group of people to use it.

Perhaps a our growing lack of empathy necessitates this kind of reconnection with one another and IS a dire human need!  Fountains, parks, and other public spaces are not necessarily vital, but they do provide a vital public service (just look at Central Park, Hyde Park, Golden Gate Park and other large urban planned green areas).  Have to noodle on this.

Commuting Optimizations and Learnings

Now that I've had some time to commute more in NYC, I've been trying to keep a list of observations that I'd categorize in three ways:

1. Those things that have evolved over time, and you have to get used to them before you can consider yourself "a New Yorker.
2. Things that people deal with, but perhaps could use a bit of design/redesign that maybe nobody has bothered to deal with because it isn't worth the time/money to do, but its still irritating and could/should be worked on.
3. Things I haven't figured out yet, but noticed and wanted to keep it noted for future reference.

In Praise of Buskers

Buskers are a varied bunch.  Sometimes you'll see on the side of the street or in central park.  More likely, however you'll see them down in the subway stations and platforms performing their craft.  Another group perform on the subway itself to a captive audience.  The best place I've seen underground buskers so far has to be outside the Electronics store at Times Square Station.  This one place has different buskers every day.  And they range from Opera to a dude doing rock didgeridoo.  If I can spare it, I alway give these guys money.  I feel less comfortable when they explicitly ask, but then again, those who ask tend to need it more.  i.e. They can't afford an expensive amplifier/obviously play for a Philharmonic Orchestra.  As long as they show some kind of willingness to perform a service, I'm game.  Speaking of Philharmonic, there's a guy who plays Cello on the Highline in one of the tunnels.  REALLY good, and he plays it all from memory. 

The 5th Floor Walkup

Not much to say here, except that it keeps you fit.  Always tip movers and the super who has to schlep up 4 flights to get to your place to deliver your groceries/fix stuff, move a couch.  They need it.  And on move day have LOTS of ice water available for the guys to drink, especially in summertime.

Doormen as Night Watchmen

Having doormen is wonderful.  They collect packages for you, you can leave the laundry with them for delivery, all kinds of things.  If you don't have a doorman, BUT you live in a neighborhood that DOES, then you get to have the added bonus of eyes on the street.  Its really reassuring late at night to know what SOMEBODY is looking out on the street every once in a while.  Even though NY is a very safe place these days, its still a good sign for newbies.

Busdriver Standup

This was awesome.  Took the cross town bus from Upper West Side to Upper East Side across Central Park.  We had originally walked across at around 9pm to a party. Everybody thought were nuts.  Not because it was unsafe (we passed like 20 joggers on the reservoir path even in low light), but because it was such a long way.  
After that we took the bus a number of times.  On the return trip of one, the driver was telling jokes all the way from 3rd Ave to Amsterdam.  The whole bus was rolling.  Awesome stuff.

Street Cleaning

I need to look into this more, but the city seems to stay the same level of gritty no matter what happens.  Its never clean which would probably be impossible, but when/where/how does it get clean?  I see street sweeper trucks and occasionally garbagemen.  There must be something more to it however...

[Subways] Ads on Subways

The ads on the subways. How often do they get updated?  Once a day? Once a week?  I read them all the time.  Without wireless access down in the subway, its either that or stare the walls!

[Subways] Optimizing path to work

The grid system would seem to not offer any opportunity to speed things up.  I need to get to the subway station fast, since I've already had that frustrating experience of getting to the platform JUST as the doors close.  Then I have to wait an entire 4 minutes for the next train to arrive.  A freakin' lifetime.  Then again, if you're waiting for an express (see below), you could be waiting several trains, so that might be 10 minutes.  

Anyway, I have to cross 2 streets, and walk 1 short block and 1.5 long blocks to get to the station.  So the question becomes when do you wait for the lights to change to cross the street, and when do you turn and walk the short block hoping that by the time you get there, you'll have a green walkie man so you don't have to break stride? I shall noodle on this further, but I'm sure there's an algorithm to be followed.

[Subways] To express or not to express

One day I was waiting for the Q train to take me downtown.  While waiting, there were 2 R trains in succession.  Many stops for the R, but only 3 for the Q.  So I'll have to time it to figure out at what point do you say "screw it", and just get on a local train vs waiting and hoping that an express will be the next train?  This might sound like an SAT question.

[Subways] Commuters as water: The bench wake

At the same station as the R/Q conundrum, I also noticed this; At rush hour, there are THOUSANDS of people making their way through various tunnels on their way to various destinations.  The best way to avoid them on a crowded platform is to think of the crowd as water in a river.  Get behind a bench, or snack bar, and you instantly get insulated from the crowd in a "bench wake" as I have named it.

[Subways] Etiquette for entering/exiting during rushhour

Everybody waits patiently outside a subway car before the doors open.  Everyone waits on each side of the car, so that the people inside can exit properly before we all pile in.  Occasionally there's a jerk who decides that he NEEDS to enter the car NOW or it might leave.  The young woman getting out and being practically run over by this guy was obviously mad.  Kind of like all those people who line up ages before a plane begins boarding.  Its not like the plane will take off without you if you're a bit late.  Then again, you might not get that overhead luggage compartment if you're just a couple of people behind..  Definitely something to design for here.

Learning Web Development Programming

So as part of my new job, I've been tasked with introducing a number of people in my office to "physical computing".  My previous experience has been programming iphones, and programming Microcontrollers such as Arduino.

This makes it sound like I completely know what's up when it comes to developing for the web.  So as soon as you say "HTML, Javascipt, PHP, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, JQuery" etc. etc. etc. I get confused really fast.  People who have been doing this for a while just seem to know, but I feel like there is a vast cavern between regular programmers and web programmers.. Perhaps its just me.

I shall therefore endeavor while I'm here to learn to link iphones, arduinos and the web into one lovely unified tech chain.  i.e An Arduino reads a temperature, sends this temperature to a server, and saves the number in a web based database.  An iPhone app, or webpage can then grab this database and display it.

I want to record my progress here to help anybody who might need it, and also so I can refer back to it when things start getting complicated.

At the moment, what I understand is this:
- HTML displays text and images to a webpage
- Javascript gives event based functionality to the HTML pages
- PHP dynamically CREATES HTML based on access to databases or some kind of information.   I think PHP is used to generate your Amazon recommendations and other stuff that changes very fast.

... ok that's all I've got for now.  Will learn more and post more as we go.  Right now my knowledge of JS (Javascript) variables and displaying text from those variables.  Eventually we will get into frameworks, functions, and all the insane number of frameworks that use Javascript (JQuery, Underscore I think etc.)

Using a Kinect for artificial sight

There's a lot of news in the hacker community regarding interesting toys that use Microsoft's Kinect, Arduinos, iPhones and the like.  I've been looking for really USEFUL applications that are beyond just interesting "coolness". Then I saw this:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/16/kinect-hack-head-mounted-kinect-makes-for-rudimentary-artificial-vision/

Its obviously a student project, but it really has some potential I think.  At the very least, I'm interested in where the Kinect can go, and this is one place I haven't seen yet.