James Gallagher

So everyone is tablet obsessed at the moment, in the sense that they’re either loving or hating all the hype on the topic at the moment. Sitting on the plane waiting the other day I got to thinking about what I’d like in a tablet. I will admit that I’m an Apple fanboy but this isn’t about their rumoured device.

I guess we’re coming from the notion of previous tablet computers that were really just variants on laptops and the inspiration of e-reader devices like the Kindle and so on. The e-readers have changed the usage landscape and we’ve seen the functional capabilities of netbook devices so the natural progression is how the compact processing power of the netbook can combine with the convenient form-factor of the e-reader that is ‘just-so’ functionally. We’re not looking for a complete computing device replacement but we probably do want a bit more than an e-reader offers. So this is what I came up with for my ideal device: I want a 10 inch touch screen – I know this makes it less portable but when I think of what I would want to display I can’t see a smaller screen doing the job. I want to be able to view technical manuals on this so that I can have the feel of flipping through a reference manual while I’m working on something. I also want to be able to ’scribble’ notes though I say scribble quite loosely – I really don’t want a stylus. Why bother? Dragon Dictation on the iPhone has shown that we have the technology in the right form factor for dictation. I want to be able to think aloud while I read and get that noted down in a meaningful way. Of course you’re probably going to want a secondary input method when dictation doesn’t quite work or doesn’t suit what you’re trying to record and this is where I think the predictive texting soft keyboard you see on the iPhone and similar devices would suit. Except I don’t want it docked to the bottom of the screen, let me bring it up over the screen area where I want the note. In a way I guess that replicates pencilled in notes in the margin of schoolbooks. Page turning/flipping has to be easy – again we already have the tech there to detect motion so how about letting me easily flip a page with a gesture and flip many with a more vigourous gesture? Maybe this pushes a little too far – I’m not convinced it does.

Of course, all this comes at a price and I don’t think the above is going to be in the bargain section for quite awhile. Still, it’s nice to think about a device you could use and for which the tech is mainstream enough.

DSC_2272

Originally uploaded by JamesGallagher (ciotog)

I don’t know why I really like this photo (not a technically good photo) , I just do.

Borne out of trying to get a meaningful view of Galway City Council meeting minutes (see Council Meetings) is a pet project of mine to parse those minutes. The idea being to extract contextual information like the councillors and officials present, the agenda items, the chronology & outcome of motions and similar information. I haven’t fully considered the end presentation – since I’ve been inspired by KildareStreet.com I may look at the open source software used there. Of course, the document is written for people to read so this presents a challenge to automate. I’ve opted to use Perl and so far have opted to split the document (after converting to plain text) based on a list of pre-defined section headings i.e. agenda items:

Consideration of Minutes
Reports of Committee Meetings
Consideration of Reports of Officials
Consideration of Reports of Mayor
Business Prescribed by Statute
Notice of Motions
Conferences
Questions
Correspondence
Any Other Business

Anything prior to the first occurrence of one of these section headings will be treated as preamble i.e. a clump of text that I’m not sure what to do with yet. So far it seems to be ad-hoc and may contain information about things like presentations to the councillors.

I’m looking to split out proposals by the delimiters ‘proposed’ and ’seconded’ (i.e. the sentences with these words form the beginning and the end). That’s the next task for the time being. Trying to relate these to a motion reference will then be a fun task. Here’s an example:

Cllr. T. Costello proposed that:

“A Special Meeting be held in two weeks time i.e. 26th January to discuss Lead Contamination in the Public Watersupply.”

This was seconded by Cllr. Brolcháin N.Ó.

I’ve opted to use Perl for this, while I’m not proficient in Perl it’s certainly made things a lot easier. Easy string handling and accessible use of regular expressions are key here I think.

Since I’m not too bright, I’d really appreciate any thoughts people have on this – it may be a fools errand but I see no point keeping it to myself and easily giving up.

This was my big cycling project of the year and truly was fun. I’m debating putting an internal gear hub on it in 2010 but currently being advised against it. Well worth reading the set of posts I did recently on it:

Part 1: http://www.jamesgallagher.ie/new-bicycle-fun-part-1/
Part 2: http://www.jamesgallagher.ie/new-bicycle-fun-part-2/
Part 3: http://www.jamesgallagher.ie/new-bicycle-fun-part-3/

So, this is the final part of the three-parted on my new Xtracycle setup and covers out-and-about with the bike. I’ve been cycling it for about three weeks now I guess and so far the only problems I’ve had are two punctures and the chain coming off the front cog a couple of times. The chain problems may have been due to leaving the chain a bit loose – I’ve remedied that and just had one ‘off’ recently.The punctures are due to broken glass on the road which just haven’t been cleaned up by the council.

The bike has gotten a lot of attention. At work, one of my colleagues snapped this photo of it to show to someone else

I’ve also been stopped along the road for a chat about the bike with the reaction always being positive and enthusiastic. What is interesting is that the road-racer cyclists I encounter ask ‘why?’ with their main concern being the weight and maneuverability. Surprisingly neither is an issue for me – the combination is not actually as heavy as one would expect given almost all of it is aluminium. While it took a little time to get used to, I don’t notice that it’s any more difficult to handle than the Raleigh Metro hybrid that I used before. Take off when I have a backpack and/or shopping in the sidebags is slower but once you get some momentum you actually don’t notice that you’re carrying extra weight. That said, I went for a 7 speed which is a change from the 21 speed hybrid but actually suits the pace you end up cycling and allows for a convenient chain guard. Commuting cyclists are overwhelmingly positive about it particularly when you note how comfortable sitting upright is and how great it is being able to easily carry my day backpack (laptop, change of clothes, notepads, gadgets and toiletries) in one sidebag and a bag or two of groceries in the other. This is exactly what I wanted and the joy of being able to pop into town and grab groceries or what not without worrying how I’ll get them home is awesome. My back also thanks me for it as I no longer suffer pins and needles in my shoulder! One last photo is one from today that will also be going into the office newsletter promoting the Cycle To Work scheme which I’m glad to report now has a few more people taking it up!

In a follow up to my first post; this one talks about assembling the bike. Now, I said it before, I’ve never assembled a bike before so this is going to be a laugh to read. Lots of mistakes and I’m still fine-tuning. First thing was to take the Electra Townie frame (I’d love to link directly to the ‘Original 7D’ model page but the site is flash …):

I removed the rear derailleur as you can see, so that I had clear access to the dropouts. Already, I’ve made my first mistake (well it’s the second really and I’ll explain that later) by not noting how the derailleur was situated before taking removing it. This caused me a lot of trouble when it came to replacing it later and to be honest is still a problem I think.

Anyway, the next part of the assembly was to get the FreeRadical kit mounted on the dropouts and aligned with the kickstand plate.

This is pretty straightforward getting the ‘Dropout Bosses’ aligned and with a little bit of jiggling and ‘oh yeah, that’s what I should have done’ the Tongue and Front Access Plate to line up with the kickstand plate (the plate with the centre hole in the middle of the picture above). Because the FreeRadical kit is really light you don’t have any problems here and it unfortunately makes you start to think ‘this is going to be easy’. Ah yes, ‘false dawn’ is the appropriate phrase I believe.

The wheels on the Townie are of the quick release variety so, again, you can drop this in quite quickly. The manual with the Townie notes:

WARNING: Securely clamping the wheel takes considerable force. If you can fully close the quick release without wrapping your fingers around the fork blade for leverage, and the lever does not leave a clear imprint in the palm of you hand, the tension is insufficient.

It is handy to know!

So, there we have the promising form of a bike emerging!

Now we have a fun bit. The next job was to install the brakes on the rear wheel. If you look at the photo above, you’ll see the ‘nubs’ where the brakes should go. I spent about ten minutes scratching my head looking at them trying to figure out how to get the brakes to fit. Yes, I was looking at these going ‘the brakes are never going to fit’. Eventually, I realised that these are plastic covers as you can see right and when you slide them off they reveal the stems you’re hunting for and off you go again!

All good, the next thing to work on is the rear derailleur, gear cabling and setting the gears. This is where things got really frustrating and painful. I spent ages on this next bit and it’s definitely the hardest part. This took me hours over several days (Thursday and Friday) trying to figure out what the right way of angling the derailleur is. Looked at lots and lots of pictures on the net trying to figure it out, using the stops on the frame as a guide.

This is when my knees and back ended up killing me. If ever I regretted my gut and consequential weak back this was it! It made me feel old and quite frankly clueless. Once I got the derailleur on and finally settled on where I was going to leave it I threaded the gear cable through (moving the shifter seems obvious in retrospect, it wasn’t at the time). I managed to thread the cable through quickly and managed to forget things like outer cables and various bits of plastic. The end result that was that the formerly tightly wound wire cable unfurled and ended up being nasty to handle (plenty of little cuts) as well as near impossible to pass through the groove in the derailleur which the nut tightens down on. In the end I wrapped the cable around the nut and tightened it down. This is something I have to go back and work on as I think it’s one of the sources of my gear setting and consequentially shifting problems.

In the end though, I just decided to go with it and start using the bike. So here it is finally completed

In the next post I’m out and about with the bike.

I was home in Roscommon over the weekend and was reminded about just how great it is to visit my parents. I grew up in Roscommon but feel no affinity to the county. Except for this place that my parents have made a fantastic home and place of safe contentment. My parents are big fans of nature and several years ago started putting out nuts for the various birds that used to perch themselves on the washing line at the side of the house. They’ll watch the comings and goings of the various varieties of birds and recognise those that return and their little habits.

Always looking at gadgetry, I sometimes manage to find something non-tech related that I want. The Xtracycle kit is something that held appeal for quite sometime and I finally decided to go for it. I’ve used a pannier in the past (excellent but not roomy enough while being easily transportable off bike) and I’ve recently gone to a backpack for carting the commute gear but found that even with a well fitting one I was getting some back pain. I suspect that most of that is due to posture while cycling and felt that going back to letting the bike bear the load was the best option. Having seen Eolai’s setup I was envious and intrigued. So, with the aid of the Cycle to Work scheme I settled on a FreeRadicalised Townie from ReallyUsefulBikes. Rob there was very helpful and co-operative working with HR and Finance where I work to sort everything out and clearly knows his bikes. I’d imagine a visit to his store would be a great experience. There aren’t any stockists in Ireland if Xtracycle kit which is why I went with ordering from the UK. I suspect it might be possible to get a retailer here to order the kit for you and so on but the level of complication this might introduce did concern me.

Anyway, I finally got my grubby paws on the kit. The next post will be about me assembling a bike for the first time.

Before getting torn open :)

I’ll say upfront – there’s loads that I did wrong and I’ll be replacing/re-doing a few bits as time goes by. However, I’ve learned lots about my bike and so I’d happily recommend it. You may want to find a friend who can assist now and again.

This is probably ignorance on my part more than anything. I’m finding my RSS stream a little overloaded from tech news which is interesting but not necessarily impacting me in the context of being Ireland based and focussed. For this post ‘tech news’ should be treated as shorthand for Irish tech news. At the moment I pick up most of this tech news from a combination of blogs and the sites like Gadget Republic or Silicon Republic (coalesced via Yahoo Pipes). However I live in the constant fear of missing something should I start to prune back some of the international tech feeds. So I’m wondering who/what should I be reading? What does everyone else like to read? Is there a gap out there for putting together or contributing to a properly edited aggregate?

I’m somewhat reluctant to write this post as I’m not much of a fan of calling people out in blog posts. However this is something which seems stuck in my craw and so I have to get it off my chest. Last Friday SimplyZesty published a post exhorting us (Twitter folk, that is) to stop the #FollowFriday convention:

I mean am I really going to look through 10 different @names and see if they are interesting or not? The campaign to ban #followfriday should start immediately as nobody gives a toss what people you follow and we are never going to follow them in return anyway.

I really don’t want to see any more tweets like the one below so please just stop this pathetic waste of time people will you

It’s the obnoxious tone that particularly irked me. Considering SimplyZesty pitch themselves as an ‘Online PR & Social Media’ outfit, the notion that such an agency should dictate to the people they derive their business from the way in which they should use the medium struck me as hypocritical. This was only reinforced by the campaign they’ve launched for their client Ruby Card ; Ruby Tuesday which is a competition:

We’re pleased to announce the launch of our weekly Ruby Tuesday competition, starting today. We’re giving away a Ruby prepaid card loaded with €100 cash on Facebook, Bebo and Twitter. All you have to do to enter is become our friend or follow us, then include the words ‘Ruby Card’ on your status update on Facebook or Bebo and tweet the message on Twitter with the hashtag #rubycard.

Hang on a second, it’s a weekly hashtag posting event by a mass of Twitter users? Oh but that’s different of course? This makes me wonder, are we putting ‘game-changers’ on a pedestal and not questioning them once they reach a certain height? Niall’s certainly a smart and successful bloke with a lost of online visibility. Though this seems a misadventure, I’m not seeing anyone question him up on it.  In a way it reminds me of the response to Techludd when it first kicked off and how some of the social-celebs responded in the form of condescending and dismissive diatribes of how Techludd should stop before it starts. When change start to overtake those we label the game-changers what then?