Bye Bye Tumblr
Tumblr is a great place to start blogging, but I decided I wanted my own little place on the internet to call home.
So All future blog posts will be at bringtherainbow.com
Implanting Memories in Museums.
I have a lot of stupid ideas, i’m the first to admit that. This is probably one of the more stupid but does have some grounding in reality so thought I would share with you.
Keen to find out more about wearable technology I’ve started reading Wearing embodied emotions: A Practice Based Design Research on WearableTechnology I’ve got a feeling that I’m probably the only person that has bought this book. I am glad I did buy it. It is really fascinating, covering past and present Research in how wearable technology can be used as a Human Computer interface and how the sensors and actuators can alter the way we perceive and interact with the environment around us. I actually bought this book almost by accident. After searching Amazon for books on wearable technology really to see what was available, I was going to buy Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology but £149 would buy me a lot of conductive thread and LEDs so gave that one a miss.
Because wearables are physical devices and objects that we interact with through their physicality rather than a screen the book is also really interesting from a museum point of view. A lot of my work at the museum is around connecting people with objects, many of which they have never seen or used before so visitors can understand better how or why an object is significant,what it does or how it works.
Any way back to what I was saying. There is one sentence in the book that I was reading on my way home from work on last Friday Evening.
“Although an emotion is derived by social interaction or memory , a physical object can also trigger emotions due to its form,colour,efficiency or behaviour towards its user.”
I’m not sure if I was not exactly concentrating fully, if it was because I was tired or my mind was wandering but on reading that sentence three thoughts that flashed into my head in quick succession.
The first thought was that the most important thing to do when working with wearable technology or in my Museum New media role is to think of how the objects can trigger emotions.
The next thought that followed that was well thats achievable for the the wearable stuff. I am already working with a project designed to encourage some form of social interaction. But how would I be able to the same in the museum?
The third thought that entered my head was the really stupid one. “Wouldn’t it be great if I could just implant memories into people’s heads of them interacting with objects”. Being able to do that would be brilliant, visitors to museums would have memories of using objects. They could remember what it would be like to work in an 18th Century factory or be at CERN when the Higgs Boson was discovered.
If I thought it was totally impossible I would have left it there but I vaguely remembered reading something recently about implanting memories recently. I was right, Scientists have implanted memory into mouse brains (Yay for Science).
I know what you are thinking. Implanting memories into peoples brains in a museum is a stupid idea (We agree on that, good), what the Scientists have done is nothing like what you are proposing. I know that and I also know the Scientists aren’t just screwing around with the mice for shits and giggles. What they are doing is proper research that may one day lead to a better understanding of the human brain.
I’m also aware that if New media Engineers were allowed to mess around with people’s brains things could go horribly wrong. Hopefully if it did become possible there would be good laws against it or it would be controlled to ensure it was done properly.
Another thing you might be thinking is that the mouse experiment is nothing like making people think they were an egyptian queen or survived the sinking of the Titanic so there is nothing to worry about. I’m not a gambling person but I wouldn’t bet against something like that being possible one day, I know if I can think this up other people can and actually already have .
Eventually the Science and technology will catch up with the ideas,the time will come that you will have to ask yourself did you actually read this blog post or was the memory of reading it implanted?
Research,Art,Hinges and bus driving
My dad’s job was a bus driver, from that its quite easy to work out that he drove buses. A lot of jobs are like that. Its easy to tell what the job involves from its title. So a builder builds things, a designer designs things and a accountant accounts for things, but what does a scientist do all day?
I work in an environment surrounded by objects all connected to science, engineering, medicine and technology. Not a day goes by where I am not amazed by the objects themselves or the discoveries and achievements that they represent. However Its not always easy to understand the work that goes into making scientific discoveries.
So when I found out about the Opening of the Research as Art at The Royal Institution I was keen to go along and see if it would provide an insight into the working life of scientists.
Another reason I wanted to visit the exhibition was after a recent visit to a evening event at the Natural History Museum I was a little bit jealous of them. They just seemed to be able to show amazing pictures of fossils and exotic and rare species that simply look amazing. 
By comparison we have grey hinges,
No one looks at one of those and thinks Wow, a grey hinge thats amazing. These hinges feature in the 3D Printing the future exhibition at the Science museum, They illustrate how 3D printing is being used in Aerospace engineering to produce lighter and stronger components. We have to put in a lot of work with animation and lighting in the gallery to highlight the story of the development of these hinges to our visitors.
So any visual ideas I could take away for future projects I knew could be useful.
The Exhibition is organised and curated by Dr Richard Johnson of Swansea University from where all the works on display originate.
It was really interesting to speak to Rich and find out that the artworks were selected not to show the most beautiful image but to illustrate the work of the scientists that created the images.
I really liked the wide variety of work on show, a selection of the images are on the flickr page . Sadly it doesn’t have my favourite one which is a X-Ray image of a tooth from a crew member of the Mary Rose.
The X-Ray was taken to see if it would be possible to extract DNA from the void in the tooth that is known to preserve DNA well. Sadly the X-Ray shows a tiny crack in the tooth meaning the chance of extracting good DNA are reduced.
I think I like it because of the connections between the Imaging, the genetics DNA stuff and the history.
I was going to write a full review of the Exhibition but there is one already on the London City Nights blog and I would only be repeating it. I would go and have a read of that if I was you.
The exhibition is on at the Royal Institution until 15th November
Please wear gloves - a review of Adhocracy exhibition.
A Saturday morning in Hackney, A Warehouse unit with a broken roller door. That could be the start of a really bad crime thriller but fortunately for me it was a visit to a really interesting exhibition.
After visiting the Design museum’s The future is here exhibition in the summer and working for the past few months on the 3D:Printing the future I was both curious to have a look at another exhibition that explored new ways of manufacturing but also feeling fatigued from all the stories that have been in the press and all over the internet about 3D printing covering everything from hands to toothbrushes by way of 3D printed fabrics I was curious if the exhibition would feel a bit ‘me too’ or if there would be a genuine fresh insight into the modern manufacturing revolution..
When I heard of the Adhocracy exhibition at Lime Wharf I was interested to find out how it would compare with both the Design museum and Science museum exhibitions.
Down a quiet side street and past a garage servicing and cleaning taxis I found the main Lime Wharf building easy enough but was directed a little further along the street to a building along the street with a Roller shutter jammed half open. I was shown around to a side door and into the exhibition. This was a little unfortunate as it meant that I didn’t enter at the start of the exhibition and missed the introductory text until I had been around most of the exhibits.
For an exhibition looking at industry and manufacturing the rough edges of the building and the simple build of the frames and tables that housed the exhibits worked well together. Nothing faux or pretentious, a similar thing in traditional art gallery or museum could come across as fake but this building looked like it could easily have been making products using conventional methods for the last fifty years.
The first of the exhibits that really caught my eye was an example of what has become one of the most well known and controversial 3D printed designs of 2013 the Defense distributed 3D printed gun. The Science Museum have had one on display since July this year, the V & A have recently put on display the first gun designed and developed by Cody Wilson.
Displaying all the component parts of the gun, having it in different colours and not making any claims about the provenance of the object illustrates that anyone actually can print a 3D gun.
I was glad that the rest of the exhibits felt less threatening and dangerous and there was some interesting and ingenious products and devices.
Straight on to what was probably my favourite item The Gloves project sensor equipped gloves for the musician Imogen heap. This clip of Imogen on BBC Science Club which was shown in the exhibit explains the gloves,what they do and how they work so well that i watched it three times. So many technologies are combined to produce something sophisticated and yet quite ‘hacky’
Moving on from the gloves I noticed Little People just like at the Science museum, there had been opportunities to be scanned using a Kinect and printed on a 3D printer.
Along with the gun this really proved the point that it doesn’t matter if you are a National museum in South Kensington or a new gallery in Hackney with these open technologies the same things can be achieved.
After a further look around at a lot more of the exhibits demonstrating the open source,the innovative and the new there were three item that drew my attention as they made a counter point to the majority of exhibits.
The first one was the DRM chair. DRM or digital rights management has existed in the digital world for a long time as a method of attempting to prevent unauthorised copying of software, music and books.
The DRM chair detects every time a person sits on it and will eventually self destruct.
The chair an art project explores the idea that DRM that has only existed in the digital realm up till now could be applied to physical objects. How long will this new found freedom of manufacturing last before limitations are imposed by creators, patent holders and traditional manufacturers slowly seeing their old ways of working being taken away from them?
The second object wasn’t the actual object but one particular sentence in the information accompanying the Heineken Secondary use beer bottle’s
“The Secondary Use Experiment project ultimately proved incompatible with the company’s corporate culture”
What was it of Heinekens corporate culture that killed this project? I would love to know. Oddly I don’t remember these bottles getting a mention in the official Heineken museum that I visited at the start of the year. Maybe its something they are now a little embarrassed about.
And that brings me on to the last of the three exhibits and the title of this post. Again not one of the actual exhibition objects but the white cotton gloves that were provided and asked to be worn before handling the books that were on display.
Quite oddly these excited me more than a little. I’m not trained in object handling at work so don’t go too close to the actual objects. So to have chance to put the gloves on and carefully turn the pages of a book felt a privilege.
The gloves are a reminder that sometimes objects can’t simply be replaced by downloading the data and 3D printing replacements. They are a reminder that it is important to take care of objects, not just in museums and galleries but in our ordinary lives as well. It might be possible to 3D print an infinite amount of different objects but are we just going to end up drowning in a sea of highly individualised, highly customised gadgets and widgets that are nothing more than junk?
Overall I would recommend a visit to Adhocracy, there are some innovative products and ideas on display. Alongside others that will make you reflect and think on what the changes and possibilities in future manufacturing could lead to.
The Adhocracy exhibition is on until 6th November at Lime Wharf Annex Hackney. A visit is recommended
Am I an Engineer, yes,no, maybe?
Last week my Colleague at the Science Museum Corrinne Burns wrote an article for the Guardian Website, Are you an Engineer? then don’t be shy about it.
I talked to Corrinne about some of the ideas that she was thinking about and contributed a quote to the article.
We talked about how people who are tackling interesting and very worthwhile problems, creating useful products and services don’t necessarily identify as engineers. A lot are coming from design and creative backgrounds.
We talked about how the movements of hackers, makers, entrepeneurs are taking over the space and vocabulary traditionally taken by engineers and engineering.
Early on in my career I did look at going down the route of becoming a professional engineer of some sort. I considered returning to either full time or part time education and aiming to become a Chartered engineer. I considered using my HND to fulfil the requirements of becoming a Incorporated Engineer.
But after spending a University Work experience year at a badly run company that went out of business while I was there. Followed by working nearly two years at another company that was continuously struggling,made me redundant and eventually went out of business. Both of those experiences left me with bad feelings towards the engineering industry, so I decided that engineering wasn’t for me and went into computers and I.T. work.
My current job is New Media Engineer. Its definitely an odd job title. Whenever I tell anybody my what I do I always have to follow it with a brief explanation of what the job involves. I work alongside and collaborate with artists, curators,designers,developers,museologists, scientists and technicians. I’m not any of those things but at the same time need to have an appreciation of what all of them do.
New Media Engineer isn’t formally defined anywhere. If you Google it most likely you will come across my job description or now Corrinne’s article. A twitter response from the article asked me what I did and wondered if I developed websites.
I’ve just had a look at the requirements at becoming a chartered engineer or Incorporated engineer again, and I still don’t see how either would benefit me. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not continuously studying,learning and wanting to improve my work, I am and I do. I love learning new things but don’t want to be constrained to the those requirements.
Its as important for me to visit art exhibitions, keep up with current science and technology news, follow trends in the media and advertising, understand how digital technologies are used in museums and galleries. All of these things are important alongside developing my purely technical skills.
So am I an engineer? Yes I am but I’m so much more. I’m a New Media Engineer and if you don’t like it. Tough
Pens,Pencils and Computers
When I was at school I really struggled with my handwriting. I’m not Dyslexic, had no problems reading or spelling but somewhere between my head and my fingertips something goes wrong. The letters,numbers or lines don’t come out as intended.
Initially this was blamed on being left handed, but my left handed friends had no problems. When we swapped our pencils of infant school for the pens of junior school they were able to contort their arms and hands in such a way that they didn’t smear across the wet ink and still write beautifully. When I tried to copy their action, it made my writing even worse,slower and more uncomfortable. Eventually I learnt to buy pens that dried quickly so as not to smudge.
At Senior school, my parents asked my teachers to try and find out was wrong with my writing. Several times they intently watched me copy out passages of text, trying to write naturally but at the same time feeling self conscious and wanting to do my best. Every time the teachers came to the same conclusion, I couldn’t write. They gave me tips on how to hold my pen, how to angle the paper, but nothing seemed to help I just couldn’t write.
Slowly I transitioned to doing as much of my homework as possible on computer and printing it out. There was still a lot of writing in class but just had to grin and bear this. Having laptops in class hadn’t even been thought of, yet alone a realistic possibility.
At College after struggling with a term of technical drawing on old fashioned drawing boards we moved on to CAD, that was a revelation. I could draw lines between two points just by typing in their co-ordinates, it was impossible to draw wobbly lines (Which even with a ruler I had somehow always managed) and could make a line end exactly where I wanted at the touch of a key.
My lack of handwriting ability seemed to bother my parents more than me, they were worried that it would affect me at work, that I wouldn’t be able to communicate with my colleagues and peers. Me, I wasn’t planning on entering any Calligraphy contests.
I have considered using special pens like the Pen Again, but didn’t want the frustration of trying to learn to write again and couldn’t find the motivation for something I didn’t really consider important. I think also I didn’t want to be seen using something like that,I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.
Looking at the reviews on Amazon today for the Pen Again it doesn’t get great reviews especially for left handed people.
Even back in my School and College days I was hopeful and pretty confident I would be able to work on computers and my lack of ability with a pen wouldn’t matter, luckily I was right. I have never handed in a piece of handwritten work to a manager or colleague. 90% of everything I produce is sent as an email, or ends up on a computer screen, never even being printed out or having any physical form. Having crappy handwriting wasn’t the only thing that attracted me to working with computers but it was certainly a big factor.
One Year On.
As i’m writing this it is one year almost to the day since I started my new job as New Media Engineer at the Science Museum. I am in a Theatre in Brighton at The Improving Reality Conference listening, to innovators, writers, researchers and thinkers discuss ideas on what the future will be like, how we will fit into it and where it could go right or wrong. This time last year I couldn’t have imagined that this is where I would be.
Prior my move to the Science Museum I had a mind numbing job on the end of a telephone and computer terminal sorting out what seemed like a never endless stream of empty toner and paper jams for the printers of a big bank. Daily I could feel my brain turning to mush. I would deliberately stay awake as late as possible at night so I would be tired during the day,to be a half awake zombie was the only way I face the day. Hourly walks to the toilet or the coffee machine were the only way I could escape the monotony.
Twitter was the only release valve I had. It was my place to go to rant and moan and bitch about my job. A few weeks ago I thought for a laugh I would retweet my old tweets from that time. I downloaded the file,had a read of the tweets from that time and thought Whoaah not even going there, I was a lot more bitchy,ranty and negative than I remembered.
I had spent the last ten years or so working in some form of technical support from digital measuring systems, early broadband, CCTV systems and eventually printers. I really liked the idea of working in service and support. Taking something broken, using logical reasoning and understanding of how the equipment or system works to fix it was something I was good at.
As someone who is not naturally outgoing or extrovert I recognised early on it was healthy to have a job that gave me a connection to other people on a daily basis or I could easily end up cut off and my not brilliant social skills could wither.
But ultimately every time you have fixed something the next project you work on will always be another broken widget and most of the time it can be fixed by turning off and back on again,reloading the software or just a good hard hit with a hammer (And yes I have fixed a computer by hitting it with a hammer, but that is another story). Its the interesting and unusual faults that need the working out and the occasional appreciative customer that make the job worthwhile.
Technical support is not glamorous or sexy. Its picking up the pieces of other people’s mistakes, designers and developers tend not to be interested in a bug in their software when you discover it at 10pm on a Saturday Evening and the system won’t restart. Customers don’t admit to testing their emergency generator system when you are wondering why all the power supplies have that strange burnt smell at 6am on a Sunday morning. After a while this gets very frustrating.
Recently I’ve been kicking myself a lot for not moving to London and making this change years ago, but i think that is because i’m remembering the negatives more than the positives. I have to keep reminding myself I have worked with some interesting technology, been interesting places and met some good people.
Fixing things is something i’m good at, career planning is a definite weakness, despite good intentions I always seemed to take the wrong turn. The last straw was when talking to a recruitment agency, and being told that I had the skills to be ‘taken to market’ , that made me feel like a piece of meat and I knew then it was time for a big change.
My last job was a two year contract. I could have left earlier but I realised that I would probably just move to some other mundane job for some other big faceless company so I stuck it out, used the time to take stock of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do.
When I first moved to the Science Museum every day I was overwhelmed by the amazing building I was working in, We have planes hanging from ceilings, a piece of Moon Rock, Cars fixed to the walls, countless unique and historically significant objects that sit alongside examples of the newest cutting edge technology and scientific research.
I am still amazed by these things but the real eye opener has been all the wonderful people I have met, both in the Science Museum, other museums and in and around London. There are people studying and researching things I didn’t even knew existed, yet alone could be studied and researched.
If I had come to this conference last year, It would have been too much,too overwhelming, too many ideas new and alien to me. I would have felt a fake and a fraud not deserving to be here. But now I’ve been here a year and started to find my niche in this city and with the people around me. I’m starting to understand where I fit in and what my future will be, its not fully formed yet but things are starting to take shape and i’m liking it.
How do you agree if you can’t agree (Part 1)
This isn’t a post about solving arguments between family,friends or co-workers or any one else who might be annoyed by your habit of dunking Chocolate digestives in you tea.
Its actually about something quite different but something that could get as easily annoying in the future. A lot of people now have smartphones that can connect to the internet. A lot of the time people will connect using a 3G or maybe 4G data connection but when no data connection is available its often possible to use a wi-fi connection provided by the company or institution that you are in. That might be a office building,railway station,restaurant or museum.
If you open the browser on you phone while using a free wi-fi service more often than not you will be re-directed from your normal homepage to a screen that at its simplest requires a click of a button to agree to the terms and conditions (Of course you will have fully read them before clicking that button, right?) or and it always seem to be train companies that do this creating an account which asks more questions than Jeremy Paxman quizzing some sleezy politician caught with their hand in the till again.
Its never as easy as they make it look
Thats straight forward enough, it gets a bit more annoying if you are using an app that requires an internet connection. Apps generally aren’t bright enough to realise although you have a live network connection the connection to the internet is being blocked until you say the magic words and sprinkle the fairy dust. I’m fairly tech savy and understand how the connection works but it isn’t obvious and I can easily understand how it could become frustrating.
So with a browser and an app it usually possible to get connected even if it takes a bit of knowledge and jumping through hoops. But what if the device you have doesn’t have a screen that lets you get to a browser with the magical ‘agree’ button.
This is something I have been thinking about recently for my Adafruit Element14 Flora challenge entry. I have prepared a storyboard goes step by step through how my design will be used. Near the end where I think about uploading the experience to the internet it got a bit fuzzy as I realised it could get quite complicated. For the challenge Its about the wearable computing element and using the Flora board so I wasn’t too concerned but I would like to explore my project further and this is one of the real challenges that I will have to overcome.
I’ve decided to split this up into another may be more parts. I’m going to go away and see how other people who are working on internet of things devices are tackling this challenge and also come up with a few 'what if’ ideas of my own to see If i can improve on what is currently out there.
I might also do some research into which biscuits are the best for dunking in tea.
Looking at the Fos. Wearable LED display.
The Wearable project I’m working on is entirely a one off, a prototype, a what if? sort of project. Its an idea to show what can be possible,to learn and test out the technology and to gauge people’s reaction to it.
Recently I discovered the Fos project on Kickstarter .This is a project that uses an array of LEDs to display information sent from a mobile phone.
The Kickstarter page shows an example of an exercise statistics app but there are more ideas in the video and as it comes with an API for Android with an IOS one to follow the possibilities are much wider.
I really like the idea of this. I think it would be even more awesome if it could connect to an Arduino board based board like the Adafruit Flora to enable a more direct connection of other devices such as switches, light sensors and gps but can see that would add a lot of complexity to an already ambitious project.
Another thing that impressed me about this is the dedication that Anders the developer of the Fos has had to the project. This isn’t a fly by night operation, he has been working on similar projects as bespoke designs for since 2005.
I don’t know if Fos will reach a massive consumer audience. The big players Apple, Google and Samsung are more likely to achieve that. I can see it finding a niche and hopefully other developers will come up with ideas that use the Fos in interesting ways and lead to other projects and devices.
New MacPro will ship soon in new Colour: iBlack
Insider sources close to Apple have confirmed that the new MacPro will be shipping in a brand new shade of black.
Until now it was assumed that the of black was the same as the black that previously used in both models of the iPhone and the earlier black Macbooks.
it is thought the iBlack has been in development for several years but it is only now that the Chinese factories have been able to reliably produce the iBlack in volume.
No further details are known about iBlack at this time but it is rumoured to make Mac Pro owners at least 10% more cool yet only 3% more smug.
Apple declined to comment at this time.
OK, got to admit it. the first part of this post is entirely made up.
I have no idea if there is anything special about the colour the new Mac Pro will be available in, I seriously doubt it.
I wanted to write this blog post to illustrate something that has been bugging me for a while now, that a lot of so called technology news stories on blogs and news sites are just fluff.
My entirely fictitious Mac Pro story is not too dissimilar to this story about the colours of the upcoming Samsung Watch or the possibility that the next iPhone will be available in Graphite
Many stories that a posted as technology are really business or politics, entertainment or fashion or just plain general interest. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be reported but don’t pretend they are about the technology.
Technology is all around us and plays a large part in all our lives. There are a lot of people developing genuinely innovative products and solving problems in interesting and creative ways. Its these stories I want to see posted mainstream technology websites to bring them to a wider audience not how many followers Justin Bieber has