A Claim Inerrant

My guide to being a gentleman in the 21st Century. It’s basically everything you’d expect to be here but with 21st instead of 20th in the title.

• A gentleman holds the door open for everyone, not just ladies. (A gentleman may however find entertainment in the passive-agressive door holding game, although not too often.)
• A gentleman treats everyone equally. Full stop. No conditionals.
• A gentleman stands up for the rights of others, even if they are not relevant to him personally. He recognises the wrong and seeks its correction.
• A gentleman never returns abuse (verbal or physical). He absorbs it, tries to understand why it exists at all and becomes a better man for doing so.
• If a gentleman sees someone in trouble or struggling, he does not walk by. He offers to help.
• If a gentleman is sitting and there are no seats available for others, he will stand and offer his seat. The standing part is important for being a gentleman, as the seat is more likely to be accepted.
• A gentleman never speaks ill of his better half and their exploits, only speaking of his luck and love.
• This list of guidelines is not exhaustive, simply a starting point.
• Finally, the Gentleman’s guide is timeless and never needs to be updated.

Are you already a gentleman? I try my best to follow The 21st Century Guide to Being a Gentleman, but sometimes I fail. I will update this list as I think of more guidelines and when people suggest additions.

I think it’s time I formally introduced Leaucate. I’ve talked a bit about this project on Twitter, more so indirectly referencing meetings or development work. So I guess I should take a few steps back and explain what I’m up to.

Well it starts with a group project for my broad curriculum module in college. Our brief was to come up with a project that represented the ‘future of water’, combining two of the following: art, commercial, culture. An art-meets-science project that should be thought provoking and force people to consider the future of a resource so many of us take for granted.

Six groups developed six projects ranging from a smartphone app to a kid’s educational card game to an exhibit at a music festival. The work was an interesting change from our usual courses. There was lots of group work and well-known, international speakers. At the time I was working on a water tap that tracked how much water you used and gave you real-time accessible feedback as well as detailed analytics. Later our work moved on a water purification tablet that contained vitamins and minerals and was pleasant to drink. The tablet had a range of uses in both developed and developing countries.

I should also mention that this ‘Idea Translation Lab’, originally started 4 years ago in Harvard, was being run for the first time in Ireland and in partnership with the Science Gallery. At the end of the course, those interested could continue working on selected projects at Le Laboratoire in Paris. Unfortunately the project I had worked on wasn’t chosen, but my skills (their words) were useful to another project and so I was offered the opportunity to go to Le Laboratoire.
So enough background, what’s the project I’m working on now? Leaucate, pronounced ‘locate’, is a smartphone app that finds the nearest source of free drinking water. The aim of the project is to reduce wasteful, inefficient and unnecessary bottled water consumption.

It turns out there is a lot more to the project than just a smartphone app and we have been busy working away at it in our free time for the last few weeks. Excitingly, we are off to Paris this coming Saturday! If you would like to read how I’m getting on making the app I refer you to yesterday’s post.

Anyway I’d love to hear your feedback and hope that Leaucate makes its way onto a phone near you soon.

I’ve been tasked with making a smartphone app. We have no budget (so we can’t hire someone to make it) and apparently I’m the most ‘technical’ person from our group, therefore the person most likely to be able to make it. So I got the job. Yay me! I’ve no idea what I’m doing. I’ve no experience with this at all. We decided to prototype in Android, which means the app is written in Java. I don’t know any Java. Objective-C of iOS wouldn’t have been much help either and crossplatform HTML/CSS-based tools were ruled out.

Did you know that for HDPI devices an Android app icon is 72px x 72px? Yep, I’m learning all sorts of things. The icon’s longest edge must be smaller than 60px, 58px if square. This is important cause if not your lovely rows of square shaped icons wouldn’t line up absolutely pixel perfect. Drop shadow can spill into the bordering 6 pixels. Oh and that shadow has to appear as if the icon is top-lit. And they’re just the guidelines for an app icon!

Once I understood what went where, things proceeded at a turtle’s pace rather than a snail’s pace. I’ve somewhat wrapped my head around activities, intents, views, strings, manifests, layouts and resources to come up with something does a little and that looks ok. That’s provided you hold the phone in a portrait orientation. Turn it landscape and you can’t see half the buttons. Still haven’t worked that one out yet.

Seriously though, I’m actually quite happy with what I’ve achieved so far. And I still don’t know any Java! Though I think that’s going to change if I want to achieve everything I have in mind functionality-wise. However, Eclipse and the Android SDK have been amazing in pointing out error as I go, even suggesting fixes, that usually work.

The moral here is that with a little reading of the documentation online, I really think that anyone can have a go at making an app and get some tangible results. Ok it’s not going to be winning any awards and if you want it done well and/or quick I’d certainly recommend a professional. But if I can do it (somewhat), pretty much everyone else has a pretty good chance.

If you’re curious it’s definitely worth a little of your time. You can get started here. I guess I can call myself an app developer now. Not a good one that you’d want to hire mind.

After tweeting:

Futurama and then I’ll start my day, ok? Dealsies.

Darren Ryan kindly suggested for me to read “Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time“. I obviously needed it! Of course being sceptical of all self-help books I pottered over to Amazon, downloaded the free sample chapter for my Kindle and started to read, not expecting much.

However about mid way through the sample I came across the passage:

Throughout my career, I have discovered and rediscovered a simple truth. The ability to concentrate singlemindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status and happiness in life. This key insight is the heart and soul of this book.

This is uncannily like what I said I wanted to achieve in two previous posts. I’m going to read the whole book and hopefully report back soon with a detailed review of how useful I found its tips.

So thanks Darren!

I’m a bit of a data fiend. I love information. Just to clarify I hate actually working out statistics but the end number is pretty awesome. Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to bioinformatics, with its lure of vast amounts of digital DNA to oogle over. Never has so much data been available to us with public APIs and open datasets and it’s there for any of us to use. To me, this is the true purpose of the internet and it’s time we took advantage of that.

Have you ever searched Twitter and looked at the results in realtime? View it now. You are watching tweets appear as they’re written. And lots of them. If only there was some handy way to access this data so you can use it… :scratches head: Oh wait! There’s the Twitter API! And many other APIs you can use to access other information that becomes valuable in the right context. Google even seems to be working on a universal API that will allow different services to connect easily, in an Android-manner. And when you get bored of APIs, you can move onto datasets like the Google NGram Datasets where you have GBs of data to play around with!

The data you want to use is actually there in most cases, the problem is knowing how to manipulate it and actually access it. Overcoming access is becoming easier with handy libraries for interfacing with say the Twitter API and hopefully the shortfalls here continue to be addressed. Manipulating the data and getting meaningful results is unfortunately still very much up to you and me. Maybe in this digital, data-filled era, this is the hardest part.

Further to my recent post about not being able to complete projects, I’m exploring the reasons behind my lack of focus.

As I was assuming my role as #TechSupportAl at the weekend fixing my aunty’s Time Machine backup, updating some of her programs and searching online, I kept jumping between all these checking their progress and making sure they were going ok. She commented on my capricious behaviour, asking why I didn’t stay on one task. In fairness, what I was doing was fairly pointless as all were proceeding without a hitch, and didn’t need my frequent supervision.

I suppose it’s just habit. Google Chrome opens with 11 tabs when launched. Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Plus, Facebook, Tweetdeck, College Email, Producteev Todo list, SpringPad, Personal Wiki and finally a Google Search page. I’m only at 101 words and I’ve already jumped around most of those tabs several times, had a cup of tea and gone for a walk. I’m a hyperactive, unstable multitasker. And as I sit here thinking of the next thing to write I’ve jumped to my Tweetdeck tab to read what’s happening. My focus lasts all of 15 seconds. How did I get like this?!

It occurred to me today that I know who to lay blame with. Mozilla Firefox. The browser that save me from Internet Explorer and brought about my wonderful multitasking downfall. The tab has made me and ruined me. At times it has aided me in being so much more productive and yet it has given me a new set of problems I need to overcome. Yet I don’t think I could ever go back to a single webpage in a window, tabbed browsing is just too powerful to give up. However I need to continue on my drive to get focused and maybe a reduction in general multitasking is where I need to look.

There’s something nice about doing a piece of research. You have the knowledge that what you are doing is unique, whether it’s the topic, angle, mindset or sources of data. If you follow me on Twitter I’m sure you’ve heard me vent about my small (tiny) research project I’m doing this summer. I’m currently assembling and annotating the mitochondrial genomes of some yeast species. I’m finding it wonderful actually making a contribution to the all-wonderful and holy Science. No one has seen the 20-45 thousand letters that makes up their mtDNA in one continuous string before. That’s my claim to fame. And hopefully when they are submitted to the European and American databases I can proudly direct people to them and say “I did that.”

While this project is considered fairly basic, I’m finding it anything but! I feel like I’m learning lots and trying to discipline myself to think about problems I encounter and try and find solutions, usually incorrect ones, before I run to my lecturer to ask for help. There are problems and errors and it’s frustrating when it doesn’t work out or worse when I do something wrong and have to fix it. While it has been a great experience and I’ve always considered research to be something I want to do after my degree, I’m not entirely certain that it is for me now. I think you can’t get by with being just ok at something, you need to be brilliant at it and cunning. You encounter different problems on a daily basis, which is a wonderful challenge but you need to be smart and really tackle those problems. If someone who’s done a decent bit of research says they are a good problem-solver they are most definitely not lying.

While I get good results, I don’t think I’m that sort of person. I’ve found doing this small project very enjoyable and satisfying but it’s had some awfully frustrating days were I’ve tried to find a way around one single problem, with most attempts failing miserably. At least I’ve learned that I’m probably better suited to something else.

Today I watched an Ignite talk given by Matt Cutts on 30 day challenges. So on my road to self-improvement I’m going to start some 30 day challenges myself. Basically I’m going to commit, for a month, to do something new or change something I already do. This seems like a very nice way to introduce myself to new things and hopefully bring about some (much needed) self-improvement.

So as it’s the first day of August, I’ve decided that for the rest of the month I will write a blog post each and every day. I very rarely write and this seems like a good first challenge to set myself as it’s most certainly achievable provided I put in a little bit of effort.
It is at this point that I should warn you that the standard of the following posts will not be high and with a trip to Paris in the middle of the month, I worry that not every day will see a new piece. However I will try my hardest to make sure I have 31 posts to cover each day of August.

What other challenges am I hoping to set myself? September is earmarked as a month of taking a photo a day. October is a little extra study time for when I return to college. And November is writing a 50,000 word novel coinciding with National Novel Writing Month. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with these and I’ll keep posting my progress on here.

A.

Sometimes I feel like I have a disease. The symptoms present as obsessiveness with some new idea or project or shiny thing and then at some point in the not too distant future, mood reversal, where all interest in said idea/project/shiny thing is lost. I’m sick. Of it.

I have about 20 half finished projects/ideas. Not one is near fully finished yet I’ve already lost interest in most. They range from things I was learning to half finished side projects I thought might be fun. Maybe the problem is that they were no good to begin with? Or maybe I’m conditioned for multitasking that I can only spend a little while at each and nothing actually gets completed because I’ve allocated my free time to something new. Maybe I’m not good enough to finish any properly and escape before hitting that wall. Or maybe I’m just lazy?

I need to change. I need to focus on one thing. And not only that, but do it really well. Not some half-assed nonsense that anyone could come up with. It’s time for change. The serial project starter needs to see one of those projects out. To the very end. Before he even loses interest in starting projects.

It’s often said that PowerPoint is the death of the presentation and let’s face it we’ve all sat through some God awful slides in our time! Your mind wanders from the content of the talk and you begin to think “Would it have killed you to put an image here?! Anything, ANYTHING, to help me listen to you!” It doesn’t matter how ground breaking your topic is, or how passionate you are about it, if you can’t present your ideas to your audience, it’s over. If they don’t take in what you’re trying to say, engagement is lost and they’ll walk away from your presentation with no greater understanding or insight. Sometimes it takes more than a title and a bullet point list to convey meaning and deliver your point.

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In recent days it has come to light that the News of the World has, through an external source, accessed the voicemail records of not only a missing girl but also relatives of those killed in the 7/7 bombings in London, perhaps even before their families were informed. This is not only a gross invasion of privacy but just plain wrong and extremely distressing for those involved.

This “hack” involved in getting access to a person’s voicemail is not new, already in the public domain and has been used previously by other newspapers to pry into the affairs of celebrities. It is simply achieved by calling a person’s phone with a 5 after the 087 or 086 part, pressing # and entering their passcode to hear their messages.
The problem is the negligence of the mobile networks.

All customers are assigned the same passcode ’0000′ and never prompted to change it to something more personal. Even when setting up their voicemail for the first time! The user has to navigate through menus in order to change a passcode they don’t even know exists!

My main concern is the heightened publicity this breach of privacy has received and the lack of a quick, widespread solution which means that others may start using it for malicious purposes. In this era of identity theft, how can the mobile networks possibly think that this system is acceptable?

I call on all mobile networks to prompt new customers to set their own passcode and issue new randomized passcodes to users who haven’t changed from the default.

Update: Meteor replied with ”Hi Alan, protecting our user’s info is something we take very seriously. Thanks for the post,I’ve passed this on internally.”

Update 2: O2 replied: “Hi Alan, I will pass this this feedback on”.

Update 3: Vodafone’s turn to comment: “Hi Alan, its something we take very seriously, I’ve passed this to the relevant team here & I’ll come back to you with any update.”

So yesterday I got an invite to Google+, the newest social network, sorry, social sharing layer to vie for access to our social interactions. Google’s latest venture into the social space, which previously has been rather unsuccessful, is creating waves among tech sites and has set my Twitter feed on fire. The latter in particular with invite exchanges, the only way to access the limited ‘Field Trial’. While many of those who actively seek an invite on Twitter are soon rewarded, some are ridiculously parting with cash to gain early access, with some invites selling for up to $75 on eBay.

The sign up was extremely simple (as I already have a Google account), consisting of confirming my name and uploading a profile picture. There was one or two small messages about changes to existing Google services like Picasa Web Albums which changes to serve as the let’s say ‘Facebook Photos’ of Google+. Once I had agreed to these that was it! Almost as simple as Twitter’s three box sign up! The interface is sleek, intuitive and distinctly Google. Lots of whitespace, mostly monochrome with a splash of colour.

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