Technology Thoughts

HomePod

9/2/2018

Woke up excited to receive my HomePod today. I have of course received many many Apple products over the years. I became quite blasé to the 'out of box' experience. But today was my first delivery directly home.
The first message came in about 7 last night to let me know HomePod was on the way. At 9.16am another message said it was on the truck heading out to me. Took a further 6 hours till the door bell rang… and there was an exhausted looking delivery guy…
I asked if he had had a busy day of deliveries for Apple.
300 of these so far he said. 300 for him to deliver in little old Adelaide. Not bad for our little old village. I headed inside to immerse myself in the device

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Retiring a Fitbit

6/1/2018

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I got my first Fitbit for Christmas 2013 and set it to work on Jan 6 2014.
That is exactly 4 years ago today. Since then I have amassed a wonderful array of statistics. The Fitbit has been an amazing addition to my quality of life. I retire it with some sense of sadness. It is only fitting that, if only for myself, I record some of my thoughts about 4 years of Fitbit.
I set my initial goal to 10,000 steps per day on Jan 6 2014. Since that day I have managed over 10,000 steps every day except for long haul flights and a month of illness. Otherwise not one single day has been less than 10,000.

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New Phone Time

4/12/2017

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I haven’t written much in a while.
There is a question that keeps dropping in front of me. So now is time to say a few things.
It is time to upgrade my phone, do I get an 8, an 8 Plus or a X?
I am not going to debate iOS vs Android. By now you have made a commitment to one environment or another. The only reason to change is because there is something you cant do in your current environment. It is not a reason to change because someone says their phone is better.
We call it a phone but it is more of a window or a portal into your selected environment. It is not easy to select a ‘phone’ because it is a good ‘phone’. My Nokia 6310 was the best phone ever. But I no longer want only a phone.

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Power to the people

22/11/2016

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I am excited.
I am not a notable tree hugging greenie. I am not the one leading the fight for global correctness. But I do care. When I have a practical opportunity to care, I am gonna jump right in.
In November 2016 I get the opportunity to jump right in.
AGL have a great idea. They may not have the only great idea. They have the idea that captured me.
AGL Virtual Power Plant
My twitter feed runs all day long in a corner of my screen. On August 5 I saw an announcement from AGL about this virtual power plant. This is a link to the press release.
I had recently installed AGL solar panels on my roof and was feeling eco self righteous. I liked what was on offer. AGL offered a well priced battery pack as long as I joined a groundbreaking electrical enterprise.
So… this is not just a battery pack. I do like the idea of moving some sunshine into my evenings. I know I make about 30kWh of power per day. In 20 days of November I have generated over 650kWh of power. And I have used less than 450kWh. But I am still paying for power. I cant get that daytime power into my nighttime living. Batteries will let me drag some of that sunshine into the evening. That is what I get and I will be happy.
But there is more.
AGL have want to lay batteries all across Adelaide. Perhaps as many as 1000 of them.
In summer, we all turn on our Air Con at 5.30 of an evening. Often the grid can't cope. AGL can draw on that stored power to assist the entire city. This sounds like a wonderful plan to me. Kind of crowd sourced energy. I am a fan of crowd sourcing.
I like the idea of Waze, the community based traffic map. And I am a big fan of Flight Radar 24 where aircraft fans can share what their equipment shows is in the air all across the planet. Now I can share a bit of the sunshine that falls on my roof with the rest of this city.
We have so much sunshine in Adelaide. It all slips off the end the of the Glenelg jetty and over the horizon to Perth and Mozambique. Such a waste. If we can keep 1000 batteries of sunshine here, I am all in.
I am quite proud to be the first to join this virtual power plant. Twitter has justified its existence for me.
My batteries arrive this week. I wanna share my excitement.
This is an innovative plan and I will continue to write about it over the next little while as I get used to what it offers.
I am not too worried about AGL using all my stored power but soon we will know.
I hope you find it interesting. Happy to respond to any questions and comments I manage to see.
As John Lennon once said… “Power to the people right on!”

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Investigation of a Flight Incident

21/9/2013

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We should know by now from watching air crash investigations that an airline incident is a product of many failures at once. I am pretty sure that a single breakdown does not cause hundreds of people to fall into the ocean.
I am also pretty sure from my readings of Aviation Herald that dozens of incidents happen every day. Few result in anything beyond a sensationalist headline and a few lines on twitter.
So yesterday September 20 2013 an incident occurred almost directly over my head. About 38,000 feet over my head actually. That is about eleven and a half kilometers - up!
I saw it happen not in the air but on Twitter a short while later. You have probably seen the headlines that 2 Qantas planes almost crashed over Adelaide.
I'd like to tell you how I followed up what had happened and the tools I used to discover the truth.

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Technology & Journalists

8/7/2013

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I despair of journalism. Not all journalists but certainly many I stumble over in the popular press.

I understand I am personally to blame for the entire failure of the fourth estate. I stopped buying newspapers. This has its implications. I do recall being excited to collect a free copy of the Sunday Mail from my local supermarket recently. I have stockpiled it. How else can I clean the bar-b-que.

I have yet to see a publication on line that I am ready to pay for. I do look at the on line press daily and shake my head at the trite rubbish that pervades the popular press. Nothing could convince me to pay for what I have seen so far in the areas I am keen to know more about.

So it is all my fault - I apologise.

Then I read a piece like I saw recently and I know I am right. The standard of journalism is simply abysmal. I will not link to the story but if you follow the popular press you will no doubt stumble over it.

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Talk Technology

28/6/2013

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TalkTechnology held its first seminar early this month. I was pleased to have been invited to host the evening and introduce the guests. It was a great night. There were teething difficulties mostly around staging and microphones. The projector had certainly seen better days. All of those things are easily remedied. The core stuff, the speakers, the content, the concept… all good.

TalkTechnology has a strong philosophical basis as outlined by Tania.

It is important that we know who is behind Talk Technology so we are transparent about where the funds go and to be sure there is no conflict of interest between the organisation and the presentations.
TalkTechnology has a social conscience and donates profits to an organisation that strives to make the world a better place and uses technology to deliver that message.
A team made up of Education, Business and Industry representatives builds the program and ensures that the needs of all sectors are covered in a fun learning environment to ensure the best possible outcomes.
Education delegates all receive a certificate for their continuing professional development.

It seemed to work. About 80 people filled the cabaret style layout of the Promethean as the musical intro, The Gunda Guys, began a little ahead of 5.00pm

15 minutes later Tania took the stage to welcome the crowd. She explained the theory behind TalkTechnology and introduced me as the host for the evening.

We were away.

I explained the format behind TalkTechnology: a major topic, in June we focussed on Mobility; addressed in 3 strand: personal, professional and industry.

I introduced our twitter hash tag - #TTJune and invited all our guests to take notes and to post the key points to twitter using this #. After the event we can relive the event through the hash tag.

Our first speaker was Gawain Duncan. You can see his CV at about.me/gawain_duncan.

He told wonderful stories about mobility impacting the learning across the state. He had great video to share with us. I noted many big points from Gawain including:

The success of the programs require three things - The Cloud, A Mobile Device and Willingness. Never forget willingness.
Gawain works for the Department of Education and Child Development - these projects surely show the commitment to child development.

Gawain’s bio concludes with “What a great time to be in education” His presentation shows why it is a great time.

Tristan Haines was the next speaker: about.me/tristan.haines. Tristan is a fringe technology specialist. He speaks from the industry point of view and introduced us to why the cloud is so important. He showed a wonderful analogy of cloud services being like electricity distribution during the industrial revolution.

It makes sense. Back then every factory needed its own power source. Today power is centralised. Now we all want our own storage. Cloud means we can move to centralised storage. We enjoyed Tristan’s view of the fringe, as the fringe encroaches on us day by day.

We had a special guest to this meeting. Alister Cameron works with World Vision and came to tell us how World Vision is meeting its goals in developing countries using mobile technology. Our Twitter feed showed delegates recognising what World Vision is doing towards a better world exactly like Tania wanted as she designed Talk Technology.

Our Final speaker for the evening was Viano Jaksa, about.me/viano_jaksa who addressed mobility from a personal perspective. Viano’s trip back in time entertained us all. His perspective on mobility for us in our work life as well as our personal life was a delight as shown through the twitter comments.

It was a good evening. I closed with words about the future of TalkTechnology. I mentioned that the certificates would be emailed to all teachers in the audience with reference to the Teacher Professional Standards.

Tania finished the evening with a few thank yous and an invitation to look out for the next Talk Technology later in the year.

Talk Technology number 1 was a big success. All involved enjoyed drawing it together. We look forward to the next topic for discussion in September.

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Explorer

7/5/2013

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I have said many times that if you are a teacher, you are never not a teacher. Everywhere I go I see teaching ideas. There are the obvious possibilities from a visit to a museum or and art gallery. There are less obvious ones like the daily walk on the beach.
Last week as I walked along the beach I found a huge jelly fish washed up dead at the waters edge. As I arrived there I met a teacher at the end of her cycle to the beach on her way into the water. She saw the Jelly Fish and dashed back to her bike to retrieve her camera. As I stood by she photographed it from every angle telling me it would go into a powerpoint and become a lesson for her class of 7 year olds. We chatted about a few teaching points and she was so excited to discover a new teaching point on her weekend excursion. If you are a teacher... you are never NOT a teacher.
What if she could have brought those 7 year olds to the beach right then, in the moment, for them to experience this dead jelly fish.
Take a look at this youtube clip of a teacher who tries to do that with his classes in the US. He does distance education across Michigan. He has a great teaching plan for using Google Glass.

I love his drive and his genuine excitement about learning. I love the idea of bringing the outside world into classes. This is serious higher order use of technology in learning. He is doing things of real educational benefit that are just not possible without technology.

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The New Stamp Album

3/5/2013

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Have been concentrating on my other selves for the past few months so been a while since I posted here. Please do check out my other selves, my music self and my professional self.
Today I want to write a more general post on social media.
My good mate Viano just showed me a site called about.me. It is a place to store your Bio and I am quite taken with it.

I am often asked to supply a Bio for a speaking gig and just hate it. I cant find the last one, then I don't like it and have to rewrite it... never comfortable with it. So when I was asked recently for one, Viano suggested to write it once into about.me.

Now if I need a Bio for any reason at all I just send the link
http://about.me/geoffperkins
I will keep developing it more yet and link it to other sites I maintain. Yes my digital footprint is growing.
I was amazed with the views that about me is getting. According to statistics I received over 100 hits in the 24 hours since I discovered it. I suspect about.me may be attractive to social media junkies but it meets a need for me right now.
I did follow links to people who had linked to me over the last 24 hours. One of the visitors was very keen to make connections in all ways possible. A quick look at that profile showed me 73 different ways to connect to him. I can't conceive of maintaining 73 friends social media sites. I cant cope with just Linked in, Twitter and Facebook as well as this blog and 2 other sites, but 73... that is a full time job. Well no... that is a stamp album.
I have always been amazed at the stamp album mentality that IT can provoke. I recall my days in the 80s playing with Commodore Amigas. I remember turning up to a user group meeting and seeing the guys who arrived with shoe boxes of disks by the hundreds of all the programs they had. They never used any of them, but they had them. It was a stamp album.
Perhaps being connected digitally is the new stamp album. I know teens often measure themselves in the number of Facebook friends they have.
Then again, maybe this kind of blogging is just my attempt to get a bigger stamp collection too.

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What about Dick - Selling and Branding with Tech

19/11/2012

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I don’t listen to the radio all that much. I can’t stand commercial radio. It means I am pretty out of touch with the current music scene. When I do turn on the radio it is in my car and it lasts as long as it can hold my interest. This morning was a good day for radio and it held my interest for the entire 30 minute trip.

I stumbled into an interview with Eric Idle. How could I not keep listening? Eric is a gem, a comedic oracle. So I was fascinated with what he had to say.

He was talking about his latest show called What About Dick.

The show sounds fun with British comedians like Billy Connolly and Eddie Izzard. What fascinated me most, however, was the discussion about sales, marketing and distribution.

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