The End Of The Smartphone

I recently stumbled upon a headline on-line that proclaimed "The End of the Smartphone Era Is Coming".  This immediately caught my interest, because smartphones are a pet peeve of mine.  I think we've become far too engrossed by them. 

Seems that no matter where you go these days, and no matter what you do, you're surrounded by people whose noses are buried in their smartphones.  A world full of people, and none of them are actually "there".  When poet Hughes Mearns wrote:

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...

...I`m sure he was talking about a guy with a smartphone, which was pretty forward-thinking of him considering that he wrote those lines in 1899, when smartphones were still in the very early stages of development.  How has a communications device managed to become such a barrier to communication? 

In case you're wondering about my hypocrisy level, I'll say for the record that I don't own a smartphone.  I have a cell phone, and even that doesn't follow me around everywhere.  It stays in my car in case I need assistance while on the road, or in case I come across a fellow motorist who needs assistance and doesn't happen to have a phone of their own (which is practically unheard of these days) or in case my wife needs me to pick up something from the grocery store, or perhaps pick up dinner, on my way home from work (which is heard of practically every other day these days). 

So I was eager to learn more about anything that might finally break this obsession with smartphones and get people actually talking to each other again.  You can imagine my disappointment when I read the prediction that, if smartphones are indeed to become less ubiquitous, it will only be when they're replaced by some other, even more grotesque, distraction, such as computerized eyeglasses.

Seems both Google and Microsoft are working on eyeglasses whose lenses are augmented with computer displays that will have the ability to overlay information on top of whatever you're looking at, sort of like the "Heads Up Displays" or HUDs used by fighter pilots.  For instance, you might be watching a hockey game, and your glasses could display a little computerized tag next to each of the players, showing their names, plus/minus ratings, annual salaries and favourite brand of underarm deodorant, because you just know that the marketers are going to harness this as just another medium through which to constantly bombard people with non-stop advertising pitches.

I have to admit, I can imagine some interesting uses for this type of technology.  When mingling at boring cocktail parties, the glasses could use facial recognition technology to superimpose names over everybody in the room, eliminating the possible embarrassment of being cornered by people to whom we've previously been introduced, but whose names we proceeded to forget almost before they left our peripheral field of vision.  "Bob!" we could say, as we warmly extended our hand for the obligatory greeting, "Bob Finster!  It's great to see you again!"  This could even be augmented with a small database of key factoids about the person such as their age, where and when we met them, and personal interests, allowing us to impress them by continuing with "It's been, what, three months?  I remember you from our encounter at the clinic.  How's that hemorrhoidal swelling of yours?  Any better?"

Maybe those of us who, when verbally insulted or otherwise mistreated, lack the ability to quickly think up clever responses could be presented with a list of witty, snappy comebacks from which to choose, Terminator style.

I can see potential problems too.  Just as smartphones have a way of causing people to stand right in front of you without actually talking to you, these computerized glasses could allow them to stare right at you without actually seeing you.  And if these glasses are really going to replace smartphones, then they have to enable you to talk to people remotely, but how would you hear what's being said, and could any built-in microphone pick up your voice when it`s situated no-where near your mouth?  I suppose the glasses could communicate with one of those bluetooth earpieces.  Then again, that gives rise to another potential problem...

It's ALIVE!

"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."

-- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal

Last weekend, I had a little "computer incident" that immediately reminded me of Mr. Raskin's observation. I climbed the stairs to my attic, as I usually do, pressed the power switch on my Dell Dimension 9200's console, and was rewarded with nothing but a blank text screen with a blinking cursor at the top left-hand corner. This is not abnormal, except that it normally lasts for only a second or so before the computer proceeds on to the usual BIOS startup blurb, memory test, etc. This time, this did not occur. The blank screen just sat there, impudently blinking its cursor at me.

I wasn't concerned. This sort of thing happens once in a while. Some part of the boot sequence doesn't quite kick in at the right time or in the right way and the whole thing just hangs. I call it a "hiccup". The normal solution is to just kill the power and try again, and that's just what I did. I pressed the power button, held it until the power was cut, waited about 30 seconds, then pressed the power button again.

The console lights came on, the hard disk indicator blinked briefly, I could hear the whirr of the cooling fan, but the monitor stayed black. This time, there wasn't even a cursor. You know how most monitors go into a sort of low-power "sleep" mode when they don't detect any signal coming from the computer? Mine does that. You can tell when it's in that mode because its power indicator light changes from green to orange. Well, the monitor's power indicator light stayed orange, which told me that the computer wasn't talking to it at all, in spite of the fact that it was running. Hmmm... curious.

I tried cycling the power again, with the same result. Now I was becoming concerned and just a bit frustrated as, without any kind of monitor display, diagnostic options become very limited...

...but not non-existent. The Dell Dimension 9200, like most desktop computers, has an array of diagnostic lights on its front console for when something is really out of whack with the hardware. In the case of the 9200, these lights consist of the numbers "1" through "4". When all is well, all four numbers are dark. When a problem is detected, different number combinations light up, depending on the problem of course.

That's why it's a very good idea to keep that owner's manual, folks! Oh, sure you could call Dell Support, but we all know what that's like, don't we? First of all, Dell usually publishes their call center number either on-line (to which one hardly has access if one's computer isn't working) or somewhere in the owner's manual which all too many people discard or lose.

Even if you do have the call center number, then you're going to "talk" to an automated attendant, press 113 buttons on your touch tone number pad before the automated attendant finally understands that you want tech support, then sit there on hold for at least 68 minutes listening to Mantovani's instrumental rendition of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" while periodically being told (again by the automated attendant) that "we are experiencing a higher than usual volume of calls" (Really? You mean half of North America's Dells have decided not to boot this morning? Maybe it's sun spots or a big solar flare) and being assured that "your call is important to us" and heaven help you if you hang up in frustration because the next time you call back you're gonna have to do this all over again, bucko!

If and when you finally get a live tech on the line (most likely with an accent that convinces you that Mahatma Gandhi is alive and working at a Dell call center) and you explain to him that your computer won't boot and there's nothing on the monitor, he'll ask you probing questions that would never in a million years have occurred to a lay person such as yourself, such as "Is the computer turned on?" and "Is the power cord plugged into an electrical outlet?" Eventually, he'll finally get around to having you look at those diagnostic lights on the console and, if your lucky, he'll know what they mean (only because he still has his copy of the manual there in his cubicle). Trust me, it's a whole lot faster and easier to just keep that owner's manual and look it up yourself!

I don't mean to denigrate Dell's support staff. I'm sure that most of them are knowledgeable professionals with a sincere desire to help and a voracious appetite for curry. To be fair, being a computer-literate techie myself, I probably know at least as much as most of the people I'd get on the other end of that phone line. For those of you out there who think that a POST is something that holds up a fence, maybe you'll find it helpful to talk to these people. I'm usually better off looking into it myself.

Anyway, sure enough, two of the diagnostic numbers on my console were lit up; "3" and "4" to be precise, and I did happen to keep my Dell owner's manual. Unlike all too many owners' manuals, whose idea of in-depth technical information is to tell you where the power switch is, my Dell manual actually has a lot of good, useful information in it, including a trouble-shooting section that covers those diagnostic lights, what they mean, and even what to do about it when they light up. The "3,4" combination, as it turns out, means "Memory modules are detected, but a memory failure has occurred". Damn! It looked like one of my memory chips had died on me.

The manual went on to suggest, very sensibly in my opinion, that I should remove all the memory and then re-insert the modules, one by one, until I found the bad one. My PC has only two memory modules; each with a capacity of 1 gigabyte. So I shut down the computer, opened the case and pulled the second memory module, leaving only the first.

Here's where those less technically-adept and adventurous than myself might get a bit skittish and, indeed, I would not recommend ripping things out of your computer's motherboard without at least a rudimentary knowledge of how things are put together. It should go without saying that, if you're going to try this sort of thing, always kill the computer's power first. In fact, you may want to unplug the electrical cord, just to be safe. Unplugging and plugging componets into a powered circuit board may well fry the component, the circuit board or, in a worst-case scenario, you. Always remember the Seventh Commandment for Technicians:

Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in other ways.

That having been said, removing and inserting memory modules on a motherboard is a relatively simple affair. They tend to be held in place by two plastic clips; one at each end. Just gently bend back the clips, firmly grasp the chip, either in the center or at both ends, and pull it straight out. To re-insert it, line it up carefully with its slot (there should be a notch that prevents you from accidentally inserting it "backwards") and, applying even pressure at both ends, press it straight down into the slot. The locking tabs should click into place on their own.

You should also know that memory slots need to be populated in a certain order and memory modules need to be paired in certain ways. I won't go into all that here. My owner's manual explained that very nicely. Hopefully yours does too, or you can look it up online. Again, if you're not sure what you're doing, it might be better to spend some quality time with Sandeep and the automated attendant after all.

Having removed my second memory module, I restarted my computer. The "3,4" diagnostic code remained and the computer still didn't boot. Okay, it looked as though the first module was the bad one. I'd have to replace it. Bummer. For now, though, a gigabyte of RAM should hopefully be sufficient to check my e-mail.

I shut down the computer again, pulled the first memory module and replaced it with the one that had occupied the second slot. Then I powered up the computer again ... and watched in dismay as the numbers "3" and "4" lit up yet again. This would suggest that the second memory module was also bad but I "knew" that the situation was actually much worse than it seemed. It's extremely unlikely that both memory modules would die at the same time. And there was this nagging question about why the computer wouldn't talk to my monitor. Even if the memory was bad, there's no reason why the BIOS shouldn't at least display an error or something to the screen. I concluded that the worst-case scenario had come to pass. The memory was probably fine. It was the motherboard that had fried. That's why it was unable to properly communicate with either memory module or the monitor. My computer was dead.

At this point, I could have acquiesced and called Dell support after all but I figured they'd just take me through the process of doing exactly what I had already done and reach the same conclusion in the end. My computer is well out of warranty. They might be able to refer me to a service depot but, if the motherboard is gone, you may as well just buy a new computer.

That's what I decided to do. I was happy enough with my Dell that I decided I'd order another one. I like ordering computers from Dell. You can configure them with exactly the hardware and options that you want and they custom-build your machine especially for you, only after you've ordered it. They're like the Harveys of computer retailers. The only problem is the inherent wait while Dell custom-builds and then delivers your system. It looked as though I was computer-less for at least a couple of weeks.

If you don't see how that's a big problem, then you obviously don't know me. I live on my computer! It's how I spend most of my leisure time. I seriously wondered what I would do with myself for the next couple of weeks. Pathetic, isn't it?

Then I got to thinking, maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Maybe "unplugging" for a while might actually do me good. Maybe I could, I don't know, go outside or something. Maybe I might wind up like the Springfield kids in that video that I put in a recent post. I wondered if anyone in my neighborhood would know who I was, or realized that I lived among them. Maybe they knew exactly who I was. Maybe I had become a local legend, like Boo Radley in "To Kill A Mockingbird". Maybe they'd all point at me and speak in hushed whispers as I walked by.

The next day I was trying to think of something to do, but apparently really thinking about my computer, because the thought occurred to me, for no apparent reason, that I hadn't tried booting my PC with no memory modules at all. Now, I realize that this concept may seem a bit daft at first. Even if it boots, a computer "sans memory" is hardly going to do anything useful. It would be sort of like trying to drive a car whose engine runs perfectly but that has no wheels. However, it occurred to me that doing this might at least persuade the diagnostic console to display something other than "3,4". And so, because I had nothing to lose, and because, apparently, even tinkering with a dead computer is more enjoyable for me than, you know, getting a life or something, I went back into my attic, opened the computer, pulled both memory modules, and turned it on.

Sure enough, the diagnostic console had changed. Now, only the number "1" was lit up. Going back to my owner's manual, I looked up the code and, unsurprisingly, learned that "1" means "No memory modules are detected". Well. It had that one right, anyway. Now I began to second-guess my earlier conclusion that my motherboard must be dead. I mean, it remained "lucid" enough to know when it had no memory.

For no logical reason, I plugged one of my memory modules back into the first slot. I know, I know ... at this point even the not-so-computer-literate out there are thinking to yourselves "Well, wouldn't that just make the '3,4' code come back?" Yep. You'd think that, wouldn't you? But I tried it anyway, turned on the computer ... and it booted. The monitor came up, the computer went through its POST routine (which means "Power On Self Test", by the way; no, I didn't throw it through a fence) and then beeped a couple of times and displayed a message something to the effect of "Oh my! The amount of memory appears to have changed!". That's two it had got right. This machine was getting smarter by the minute. I, on the other hand, just stood there with my arms outstretched, shouting maniacally, "It's alive! It's ALIVE!!!"

I could have just pressed "Enter" at this point and let it boot with half of its former memory, but now a sort of inkling was growing in the back of my brain, like some kind of alien parasite, ready to burst through my skull like in that movie. Instead of continuing, I shut down the computer again and inserted the second memory module. I turned the computer back on, and now the code "3,4" returned. Normally, this would suggest to me that my second memory module was bad. However, my earlier diagnostic work had suggested that both memory modules were bad, and I now knew this to be untrue.

Growing ever more suspicious, I once again pulled both memory modules, rebooted the computer back to the "1" code, then shut down again and this time inserted the second memory module (the one that had caused the "3,4" code to reappear) in the first slot, leaving out the other module for now, and turned on the computer again. By this time, I wasn't even all that surprised when it booted.

Now it appeared that both memory modules were fine on their own, but caused problems together for some reason. Perhaps the second memory slot was faulty? That would actually be a reasonable hypothesis at this point, but I had another idea. I booted "sans memory" one last time, then shut down the computer and reinserted both memory modules before powering up again. Sure enough, the computer booted, and has been running completely normally ever since. I even ran a full hardware diagnostic scan on both the memory and the motherboard, using Dell's built-in diagnostic tools, and both checked out 100% error free. Go figure.

I don't know what caused the original failure. I suspect that my PC may have temporarily overheated, as it was warm up in my attic last weekend and I did notice, when opening my computer's case, that the air intakes had gotten clogged with dust (a situation which I quickly remedied, but which did not, in itself, revive the computer). Whatever the cause of the failure, it seems that the computer needed to be started without any memory in order to clear the problem before it would boot normally again. This makes very little sense but, then again, neither do shoes that explode every Thursday when you tie them in the usual way. Like Jeff Raskin says, computers are just like that.

One last thought; I don't want to seem blasphemous or anything, but I find some significance in the fact that my computer died, and then came back to life, over the Easter weekend.

Hallelujah!

Social Networking ... Old School

"We had social networking when I was a kid. I think it was called 'Outside'".

This witty comment, which I came across recently, has inspired this week's post. Ironically, the term "Social Networking", meaning FaceBook, MySpace and any number of other internet chat forums is, in a sense, an oxymoron. It might be argued that those who spend a significant amount of time "networking" with others via this medium are actually losing the ability to network in person. Put some of these people in a room with other flesh-and-blood human beings and it becomes painfully apparent that they have no idea how to interact with others who are standing right in front of them. Perhaps a more appropriate term might be "Anti-social Networking".

I once saw an episode of "60 Minutes" which examined why young children nowadays seem to have lost the ability to create their own fun. To be fair, the feature wasn't talking about FaceBook or even computers in general. It was talking more about modern parenting styles. Many parents enroll their children in any number of recreational programs; anything from pee-wee sports to dance to general fitness to French immersion to computer camp. These programs, while well-meaning, are so structured and controlled by adults that the kids who participate in them need not exercise any kind of spontaneity. They simply follow the schedules and participate in the routines. Put one of these kids outside by themselves and simply say to them "Go play" (you know, the way parents used to do back in the seventies and earlier) and they (the kids) are at a complete loss. They have no idea how to begin.

Admittedly, this is slightly beside my original point, but electronic media only exacerbates the situation. Many kids have gotten to the point where they're practically incapable of amusing themselves without the aid of some type of electronic gadget. There was an episode of "The Simpsons" (a television show which is widely acclaimed for its thought-provoking social commentary) in which Marge Simpson managed to eliminate all violence from "The Itchy and Scratchy" cartoon show. The result was a cartoon that was so bland and boring that the kids didn't enjoy it any longer and, consequently, they stopped enjoying television in general. Without the medium of TV, they suddenly had to find an alternate form of entertainment, and this happened...

(c) Twentieth Century Fox, 2001

Hard though it may be for the younger generation to believe, this is what childhood used to be like (although I admit that the May Pole may have been a bit over the top). I lived in a neighborhood with lots of other kids when I was a boy, and most of those kids played together outdoors. Of course, there were the usual matches of sandlot baseball and street hockey, but I was never much of an athlete even in my tender (and thinner) years.

I recall one of the rare times that a few of the older boys let me join in a game of street hockey with them. There was one particularly stocky kid by the name of Nicky who had a notoriously wicked slap shot (for his age, at least). Every goalie within a six block perimeter knew and feared Nicky. He happened to be playing on this particular occasion. At one point, I happened to be standing between Nicky and my team's hapless goaltender when he (Nicky) wound up and let loose one of his infamous canons. I was unable to move out of the line of fire in time and so the Indian rubber ball smacked the blade of my stick with full force and ricocheted off to Scranton, PA or some equally obscure location.

You'd think I'd have been fine, having blocked the shot with my stick the way one is supposed to, albeit completely by accident, but the impact sent a tremor up the shaft of my stick and through my forearms that made me feel like Warner Brothers' Wile E. Coyote after whacking a petrified rock (that was meant to be a Road Runner) with a club. In the cartoon, I believe he disappeared down the road, still vibrating as he went. That's how I felt.

Because of experiences like this one, I preferred to participate in less sports-oriented games; the kind of games that kids used to invent on their own back in the old days. Games like "Mother May I", "Red Light/Green Light" and "Red Rover". Remember those?

For the benefit of the under-forty crowd who may not, in fact, remember those, let me give you some idea of what I'm talking about. "Red Rover" was always a favorite in my neighborhood. You needed a minimum of six kids to play it; ten or more was better. The kids would form two teams with the same number of kids on each side (if there was an odd number of kids participating, it was okay for one side to have an extra member). Both teams would form a line abreast, each facing the other, join hands and take turns calling a member from the other team with a sing-song chant that went, for example, "Red Rover, Red Rover we call Johnny over!" The kid whom the other team had summoned would then have to run full-speed at what he perceived to be the weakest link in the chain of joined hands and try to break through it. The calling team, on the other hand, would try to stop the summoned kid without him breaking the chain. If the runner managed to break the chain, he could return to his or her team. If not, he had to join the other team. The game ended when one team had acquired all but one player (yes, you could have a "chain" consisting of only two kids).

Needless to say, the smallest, slowest, lightest kids tended to be called first but, eventually, there was no choice but to call the "canonball" kids; you know, the big, burly kids who looked like the Tasmanian Devil as they approached; nothing more than a whirling dust-cloud with the occasional arm or leg appearing and disappearing around the perimeter, while each kid in the chain hoped that he wasn't heading for one of their hands.

These were the types of games that kids used to invent when they had no electronic gadgets to keep them entertained. Don't get me wrong. I'm not vilifying electronic amusements. I enjoy a good computer game as much as the next person, and I realize that criticizing social networking may come off as a tad hypocritical coming from someone who's busily posting on his blog. However, it's hard to deny that all this technology has robbed kids of the opportunity to create their own fun through sheer imagination, and it has greatly reduced face-to-face social interaction. The sad result, I think, is that kids have lost one of the real joys of childhood without even realizing it.

Your Plastic Maid Who's Fun To Be With

No, this isn't about an inflatable sex toy. It's about a robot. I'm paraphrasing Douglas Adams who wrote, in his seminal work, "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy",

"The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."

For Christmas, I got my wife (according to the late Mr. Adams) a "plastic pal who's fun to be with". Gee, now it sounds as though I got her a sex toy, doesn't it? Seriously, though, I got her a robotic floor cleaner, also known as a "Roomba". I suspect that this thing must actually have been created by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, because it sometimes really does seem endowed with their infamous GPP (Genuine People Personality) feature. Since Roomba's purpose is slanted more toward cleaning than friendship (it's hard to foster a meaningful relationship with a talking Frisbee^®), it's more of a plastic "maid" than a plastic "pal", but it is still fun to be with (at least it is for lonely, friendless geeks like me).

Roomba has become popular enough that, by now, most people need no explanation as to what it is but, in case you do, Roomba is, as I said, a robotic floor cleaner. It's a plastic disc on wheels, approximately 12 inches in diameter and 3 inches high. It cleans all types of floors including hardwood, laminate, vinyl and also carpeted, even adjusting itself for pile height. It can be programmed to clean at specified times, up to seven times per week. When it does its stuff, so to speak, it cruises the floor, looking for dirt and navigating around obstacles, before returning to its base to recharge.

Roomba derives its name from the words "Room", which it navigates and cleans (at least the floor part) and "ba", which is a sound that sheep make. Hey, it makes sense - at least, to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation¹.

Before continuing, I should point out that Roomba, like most technological contraptions, comes in various models. Ours is a model 550, which is one of the newer 3rd Generation (3G) models. Features and behavior of other models may vary.

Roomba's cleaning tools include a vacuum, a rotating brush, a rotating squeegee wheel (you know, with the rubber fins as opposed to brushes) and a sideways-rotating brush for cleaning along walls or base molding. The vacuum isn't very powerful, somewhat comparable to that of a hand-held DustBuster ^®, but it's augmented by the brushes, which act to loosen dirt from the floor and carpets and also to sweep it under Roomba, into the vacuum's suction range.

Watching Roomba navigate the floor is almost worth the price of admission in itself. It starts with a criss-cross pattern designed both for covering the maximum possible area in its search of dirt and also discovering walls and obstacles. When it hits an obstacle, or "sees" it with its infra-red (IR) sensor, it backs away, pivots, and heads off in a different direction. When it finds a wall, which I assume it recognizes as a straight-line obstacle that seems to go on in the same direction for a ways, it turns itself so that its side-rotating brush is facing the wall, and then runs along it in order to clean the floor perimeter. It "sees" when the floor suddenly disappears in front of it, and therefore will not go tumbling down the first set of stairs that it encounters. Most amusingly, its dirt sensor, aside from simply looking for dirt, also detects especially heavy concentrations of dirt. When such a concentration is detected, a little blue Filthometer² light comes on, and Roomba spirals over the spot in two or three tight circles in order to give it a specially thorough scouring.

Roomba does take considerably longer to clean a floor than one would take doing it manually with a vacuum cleaner or mop, owing to its having to navigate the room and find all the dirt but, since it's relieving my wife and myself of that chore, it can take all the time it needs, especially if programmed to clean the floors during the day, when everyone is away at work and/or school. The only one whom it might annoy is the cat, and we don't much care what she thinks. Besides, as the video below demonstrates, the cat might not mind it as much as one might think either.




The above video also demonstrates one of the many ways in which you can "yank Roomba's chain" so to speak. I can just picture its robotic brain thinking "There's some cat hair on the floor. Got it! Better go back to check. Hey, I missed some! Got it that time. One more pass... D'OH! More cat hair? What gives???"

Roomba's instruction manual (yes, I actually do read those) recommends that it be confined to a single room, but it will do multiple rooms on the same floor if given free range. Of course, on its maiden voyage, I decided to really put it to the test and gave it free access to most of our main floor, including a carpeted living room, a vinyl kitchen floor and hardwood hallways and dining room. I kept it out of the bedrooms, or it would still be working. If it got into my daughter's room, it would probably disappear, never to be seen again.

Roomba admirably, navigated its way around table and chair legs (no, we didn't bother to do it the courtesy of putting the chairs up on the table) as well as other obstacles. A number of times, it temporarily got "trapped" between a myriad of legs, but it always eventually found its way back out again. It did tend to revisit areas where it had already been. I'm not sure whether it was simply double-checking for missed dirt, got disoriented, or simply liked certain areas for whatever reason. Only once did I ever see Roomba get so completely stuck that it needed help. That was when it blundered under our Christmas tree and got hopelessly tangled in the tree skirt. After four or five unsuccessful attempts to extricate itself, it finally emitted a plaintiff "Error! One left." (yes, Roomba talks too) and simply stopped. I'm still somewhat mystified at the meaning of "One left". One what? One more error? Was it warning me that if I let that happen one more time, it would go on robotic strike and stop cleaning our floors? (This is where the GPP feature comes into play!) My wife and I have agreed to leave Roomba off until after the Christmas tree is down, just to be safe.

One of these days, I intend to unleash both Roomba and my voice-command R2-D2 simultaneously, and let them "duke it out" for floor supremacy. Of course, Roomba is at something of a disadvantage, since it lacks Artoo's "electro-arm" for zapping its antagonists.

Roomba has a base to which it returns when its job is finished or when its battery is in need of recharging. The base plugs into a standard electrical outlet, of course, and emits an IR signal to help Roomba to find its way "home". Finding an appropriate place for the base was a little problematic for us. It needs to be in a fairly open, accessible area. If you wedge it into a cubbyhole somewhere, Roomba may have trouble docking with it, even if it does find it. Of course, it needs to be within reach of an available electrical socket. Finally, it needs to be placed against a wall or other heavy object, because it's very light. Without some sort of brace, Roomba tends to just push it away when it tries to dock.

Somehow, we had some trouble finding a spot that satisfied all of the above criteria. I also added an extra criterion of my own. I would have preferred the base to be in some inconspicuous spot, rather than having Roomba sitting out, as if on display. Unfortunately, "inconspicuous" and "easily accessible" seem to be mutually exclusive terms. At one point, I hit upon the "bright" idea of placing it under the couch. I figured that, at the designated time, Roomba could come out from under the couch, clean the floors, and then quietly disappear back underneath the couch, out of sight and out of mind. Aside from the fact that our couch has legs so short that Roomba didn't actually fit underneath it, the other problem with this idea is what happens if Roomba fails to dock properly for whatever reason. Its battery would eventually die and there it would sit, under the couch, gathering dust (but not in the intended manner), forcing someone to crawl under the couch to rescue it. Even if it unerringly found its dock every time, its dust bin, which is fairly small, needs regular emptying and its brushes need regular cleaning as well. Again, one would have to crawl under the couch in order to retrieve it for maintenance and cleaning. No, hiding Roomba under furniture is not recommended.

Should you be considering getting a Roomba for yourself, the final, and most important, question is, of course, "Does it work?" or, rather, "How well does it work?" My conclusion is this: Roomba is a good maintenance cleaner. It's designed to pick up light dirt before it develops into heavy dirt. Can you throw out your vacuum cleaner after getting a Roomba? No. You'll still want to clean your floors manually every so often, but those cleanings will be fewer and father-between, not to mention easier.

Here's a more serious video of Roomba in action:




¹ There is no such organization as the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Roomba is produced and marketed by iRobot Corporation. But if they don't sue me for misappropriating the credit for their product to a fictional robotics company, I won't tell Arthur C. Clarke that they stole his book title for their company name.

² Filthometer is not an official term used by the iRobot company that produces and markets Roomba. I made that up myself, but it does seem appropriate!

Someone Else's Final Frontier

Cartoonist Johnny Hart, creator of the popular B.C. comic strip, once quipped "Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery and self-annihilation."

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama announced that he is scrapping the Constellation program, which was supposed to replace the aging space shuttle with a new orbital vehicle and return men to the moon by 2020, from which they might venture further out into the solar system. This move has caused some to speculate that the future of space exploration will not belong to America but to some other nation, very likely the Chinese.

In response, Neil Armstrong, the first human being to walk on the moon, Eugene Cernan, the last human being to walk on the moon, and Jim Lovell, one of three human beings who almost didn't make it back from the moon, wrote an open letter to the white house expressing their dismay. These are men who risked their lives in pursuit of a dream, only to see that dream shelved during their lifetimes.

We all understand that times are tough at the moment and the space program is expensive. Some might argue that the U.S. government, already mired in trillions of dollars in debt, can't afford to support a space program. Yet the Pentagon spends the estimated $108 billion that it would cost to return men to the moon by 2020 every three months or so. Obama has earmarked $600 million per year for the next five years for the design and manufacture of heavy-lift rockets required to send spacecrafts to Mars or the asteroids. Sounds good at first, until one realizes that that's about the same amount of money that it costs to purchase just four F-22 fighters. I suspect that the U.S. Air Force will likely be purchasing more than four F-22's per year over the next five years.

America never shone so brightly as she did during the Apollo years. The space program has given science invaluable new insights into the origin of the Earth, her moon and the solar system itself. It introduced new technologies and disciplines that have found useful applications outside the field of space exploration. It has subjugated no peoples and hardly killed anyone, with the exception of three unfortunate accidents. Unlike the shameful Abu Graib prison scandal and Wall Street's more recent financial implosion, the space program has done nothing to undermine America's international reputation. Quite to the contrary, the space program has been one of those American undertakings that the rest of the world has looked on with admiration. What a shame that, as Johnny Hart previously observed, America is once again forsaking her loftier dreams in favor of war, greed and short-sighted self-interest.

I'd suggest that Canada step forward, except that we'd probably just scrap the entire program and destroy all related materials after building the first five rockets.

Artoo Detoo It Is You! It Is You!

I was thinking of calling this post "Toy Story 3" as it's about a particularly cool toy, and two earlier posts about another of my favorite toys were imaginatively entitled Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Of course, the other two titles doubled as references to the two animated Disney movies whose respective names they stole (I mean "borrowed") but there never was a Toy Story 3, which would make that title inconsistent. On the other hand, I suppose I could have gone with that title and, should Disney ever actually release a Toy Story 3, I could have sued them for copyright or trademark infringement or some such thing and been set for life. Keep your banner ads. That's how to make money blogging!

But, no. One of the prime directives of this blog is to keep things fresh and innovative (which is why I'm writing about a toy for the third time now) so I decided to break with precedent and come up with a new, fresh, clever title for this post. For those of you who are not quite so nerdy as myself, I should explain that the title of today's post is, in fact, a reference to the very first Star Wars movie (appropriately known as "Episode IV"). It's the line spoken by See Threepio when he and Artoo Detoo are reunited in the bowels of the Jawa sandcrawler, after having been separated in the Tatooine desert.

Artoo Detoo (or R2-D2 for the more technically inclined) is one of my top three favorite robots of all time, right up there with Forbidden Planet's Robbie and the generically named "Robot" from Lost In Space. For one thing, I prefer robots that are designed not to look like mechanical people. Of my three favorite robots, Robbie is most guilty of this faux-pas. He's a biped with arms, kind of looks like an astronaut in some kind of weird space suit, but at least he doesn't have anything resembling a human face. In fact, above the arms, he looks a bit like an old Wurlitzer jukebox. I've always been a sucker for colorful blinking lights.

The Robinson family's Robot is a little better. He still has sort of a bipedal form, but at least he doesn't have articulated legs and instead rolls around on what I presume are treads. That to me seems far more likely. His "head" looks even less human than Robbie's, and also features those seductive blinking lights, and you have to laugh at the comical way in which he waves his accordion arms around, crying "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!"

Then there's R2-D2, who looks nothing at all like we humanoids. If anything, he looks like some sort of electronic trash can or fire hydrant, and he doesn't even talk - well, okay, he does, but not in any manner that movie-goers can decipher. He beeps, he whistles, he hoots and sometimes emits what sounds suspiciously like electronic farts and, surprisingly, he manages to do so with expression. You may not understand exactly what he's saying, but you can definitely tell whether he's pleased, excited, annoyed or scared dischargeless.

Imagine my joy when I learned, one day, that the Hasbro toy company had created a toy R2-D2. "Big deal" you say, "there are lots of toy Artoos out there". Very true, but this is the toy Artoo. Hasbro officially calls it the "Star Wars R2-D2 Interactive Astromech Droid" and the key word here is "Interactive". This thing is almost a miniature clone of the beloved droid from the movies. He understands and obeys voice commands. He answers back. He can see and navigate around obstacles. He plays games. He guards your room. Heck, he can even bring you a cold one!

The moment I learned about this toy, I got a serious case of the "I Wants". Trouble is, I was approximately 42 years old at the time and, as neat as Hasbro's toy is, it's still a toy - as in "designed for kids". Of course, there are adult collectors of toys, but I'm not really a collector. I just have a weakness for certain things that push my inner "cool" button. This is one of those. As toys go, it's also kind of expensive. It retailed for $US 120 when I first learned of it, and the price has climbed since then - mostly, I suspect, because Hasbro no longer makes them. As usual, practicality beat my inner geek into submission and I contented myself with simply drooling over magazine and internet ads.

Fortunately, I also happen to be married to a woman who knows me all too well (and stays married to me anyway) and it was this same woman who decided to get me Hasbro's interactive R2-D2 for Father's Day that year (and, no, the irony is not lost on me).

My interactive Artoo stands about 18 inches tall; a pretty good size for a toy. The electronic "eye" on his dome lights up and blinks red and blue. His dome projector also lights up. The dome rotates almost all the way around. He beeps, chirps, hoots, whistles (and farts) just like his movie counterpart, and he rolls along on the floor with the ability to turn left or right and even back up. All this takes power, and no miserly amount at that. Artoo uses two sets of batteries; four D cells for motor control and movement, and four AA batteries to control the lights and the logic boards. At least the batteries do last a good long time before needing replacement. With all the batteries installed, he's a fairly hefty little dude, weighing in at about five pounds.

Artoo comes equipped with navigational sensors that allow him to see where he's going, and an infrared sensor for distinguishing people and pets (i.e. warm bodies) from inanimate objects. He has a microphone (the better to hear you with, my dear) and pressure or resistance sensors that allow him to detect if something is impeding his movement.

Artoo's voice recognition software is truly impressive. He recognizes speech right out of the box without any need of training, regardless of whether the speaker is a five-year-old girl, a forty-two-year-old man, or a five-year-old girl in a forty-two-year-old man's body ... but perhaps I've said too much. He recognizes over fifty spoken commands, names and phrases. You can tell him to move or to stay put. When he's moving, you can tell him to go in specific directions or just have him "patrol" the room. You can tell him to talk or to be quiet. Tell him to play the message (the one that he's carrying in his rusty innards) and he'll light up his projector and play Princess Leia's message to Obi-Wan Kenobi (sound only - no holographics). You can ask him if he remembers various Star Wars characters and he will indicate that he does, indeed, remember them as well as what he thinks of them, by his reactions. Ask him about See Threepio and he'll chirp happily. Ask him about Darth Vader and he'll scream and shudder.

Speaking of emotional responses, Artoo's software emulates his sometimes stubborn and rebellious personality as seen in the movies. He can get temperamental and sometimes intentionally ignores you. You can tell when he's sulking because his sensor eye goes from blue to red. Once I let him roll off a small ledge, only about 3 inches high but enough that he fell over onto his side, and he let out a plaintiff electronic whine. If he gets too uncooperative, you can tell him to behave himself.

Watching Artoo explore a room is truly fascinating. He won't run into walls or large obstacles, stopping as he nears them and then turning and heading off in a new direction. He can't see low objects like the edges of carpets and he sometimes misses narrow objects like chair legs. If he does miss something and bumps into it, he senses the obstruction and backs away, again heading off in some other direction.

His inability to see ground-level objects also makes him susceptible to rolling down stairways or off table edges, a practice which shortens his useful life considerably and definitely voids his warranty, so he comes with a button that prevents him from rolling when you want him to stay put. This is not a mechanical inhibitor. It's a software inhibitor. Artoo's programming tells him not to move under any circumstances when his movement inhibitor button is set to "engaged", not unlike the restraining bolt used in the movies, and this is one command he always obeys. In fact, if you tell him to go somewhere or to patrol the room with the movement inhibitor engaged, he'll simply shake his head at you, as if to say "I can't, stupid!"

Artoo's sensors, motors and software also give him the ability to perform certain semi-useful functions. For example, he can act as a room sentry, standing soundless and motionless, looking for all the world as though he were powered off. The moment he detects any sound or movement, however, he comes alive, shines his projector light on the intruder and sounds a shrill alarm.

He can also play games such as "Light Tag" or "Spin the Droid". When playing Light Tag, Artoo will count to ten, giving all the people in the room time to go and stand somewhere. He will then patrol the room, specifically looking for warm bodies with his I/R sensor. When he finds someone, he stops and shines his projector light on them as if to say, "Hah! Gotcha!" He can also sing and dance, chirping out well-known Star Wars music, such as the Cantina Band theme, and shuffling back and forth to the beat.

I'm amazed at the technology that's gone into Hasbro's "plaything". I've read several anecdotes about the many problems that George Lucas and crew had with the R2-D2 prop whilst filming the original Star Wars trilogy. The thing was constantly falling over, banging into walls and just plain malfunctioning. Lucas probably would have given his eye teeth for a prop that was capable of just a fraction of the things that Hasbro's toy can do.

For my fellow techno-geeks that want to know more about the firmware that powers this little guy and just what it can do, you can find out much more at this link: http://rebornspirit.com/R2D2.html

If you'd like to see one disassembled in order to find out what makes it tick, try this link: http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-13636_11-177912-1.html?tag=content;leftCol

As for the rest of you, if you'd just like to see the little guy in action, try the video below. If you're impressed and want to see more, YouTube has many more like it.

So you see, coming back full-circle to the title of this post, I think it more than appropriate. From the moment you switch on Hasbro's Interactive R2-D2 and watch it come to life, you almost forget that it's a toy and might just find yourself exclaiming "Artoo Detoo, it is you! It is you!"

Easily Amused

Recently, I reminisced about how, during my boyhood, I would sometimes spend time watching raindrops splashing into puddles on rainy days. This may not seem like the sort of pastime that would hold most peoples' attentions for very long. Although I never timed myself, I daresay that this activity probably held my attention for far longer than most people would deem reasonable. Apparently I was already sorely in need of a life, even during my tender years.

It was always thus with me. My mother sometimes reminisces about my toddler years. Anyone who has ever parented a little boy between the ages of two and five years will agree that raising such a child is very much a "hands-on" activity. They tend to be full of energy, and they're into everything. You can't turn your back on them for a moment. Not so with me. According to mom, all I needed was a handful of Matchbox cars and I would sit quietly in some corner, playing with them for hours. Sometimes, she barely knew that I was there.

In fact, I've heard her recount, on a number of occasions, an anecdote about the time that our family moved to a new apartment. Mom set me down with my collection of Matchbox cars and left me to play while she went about the business of unpacking and arranging our new home. After several hours, as the sun began to set outside, I finally put down my cars, walked up to my mother and asked, "When are we going back home?" I spoiled my mother during my early years but, that's okay; I'm making up for it in my adulthood.

Things didn't change as I aged. During my schoolboy years, I would often pass the time when it wasn't raining playing bizarre solitary games which I had invented and whose appeal was apparent only to myself. One involved sitting in the backyard with plastic ships (essentially, bathtub or beach toys), dropping ants which I had caught onto their decks and watching as they clambered around. I was particularly satisfied when one of them would move between decks in the proper manner, by scurrying up or down a staircase or ladder, rather than straight up or down the wall, which I of course regarded as "cheating". I could never quite make the ants understand the rules of the game.

Another favorite game involved squeezing drops of water onto the north pole of a model globe, then turning the globe slowly and watching the droplets run down the northern hemisphere, toward the equator. If one of the mountain ranges, which were slightly raised, obstructed a droplet's path, I watched in fascination as it detoured around the perimeter or, more rarely, as it actually crested the summits and rolled down the other side, a giant tsunami besting even the mountains themselves. Once past the equator (i.e. the underside of the globe) I would muse as to how long the droplet could cling to the globe's surface before gravity overcame its adherence and it dropped off the face of the world. Antarctica was by far the driest continent on my globe.

If I happened to have inflated balloons handy (usually after a birthday or some such festivity), I would while away the hours with a game of "Battling Balloons". This involved dropping the balloons, which were filled with plain old carbon dioxide rather than helium and were therefore heavier than air, onto a heating vent on the floor. The rising warm air would toss the balloons around and, whichever one was the highest, was deemed to be "winning". I should point out that said heating vent was positioned near a corner of the room at the foot of a bed. The two walls that formed the room's corner and the foot of the bed served to corral the balloons over the heating vent, so that they couldn't easily escape the warm air current. Hence, they would jostle around, rising and sinking, jockeying for the coveted high ground while I watched. Good times!

Not all of the odd games that I invented were solitary. My neighbour and best friend, Mart, and I came up with a number of unusual two-player games. One was called "Hide-On-Each-Other". It's like Hide-And-Go-Seek, except that all players are both hider and seeker concurrently. The game involved skulking around our homes, trying to find and watch the other guy without being spotted ourselves.

Then there was the classic "Comeback Wheels". This involved the use of small plastic colored discs from some board game or other. We would set the discs on their edges on the floor, with the edge facing ourselves, then press our index fingers diagonally against the discs, exerting a simultaneous downward and forward pressure. Friction would hold the discs in place until the pressure caused them to spring free, in effect "flicking" the discs away from ourselves but spinning them in the opposite direction from their movement. The result was that the discs would skid away from us at first but then, as they lost momentum and gained traction from the counter-spin, come rolling back toward us. This game had no obvious object or conditions for winning. It was just fun to do.

You would probably think that, having reached adulthood, I've matured to the point where I no longer pass my time with such mindless pursuits. You would be mistaken. I've mentioned before, in this blog, that I enjoy computer games. What I didn't mention is that I don't always play games in the intended manner. (Well, come to think of it, I sort of did, didn't I? But that's not what I mean in this case). Even in the virtual world of the computer, I seem to have retained my youthful fascination with simply watching things unfold.

I'm an avid fan of Microsoft's Flight Simulator series. Their latest release provides a camera view that focuses on A.I. aircraft; that is, air traffic controlled by the computer rather than myself. I'd be embarrassed to admit how many hours I've spent, not actually flying, but just watching the A.I. aircraft while my simulated aircraft sat idle at an airport. In my own defense, or at least in the way of explanation, I'm intrigued by the behavior of the computer's A.I. (artificial intelligence). I find it fascinating to watch an A.I. aircraft taxi to a runway, take off, follow its flight path, enter a pattern, land, and then taxi to parking, all without any input from me. Sometimes, at busy airports, I've even seen A.I. aircraft abort an approach and go around because of traffic on the runway. The thought of a machine handling all that while (for normal people, at least) simultaneously modeling the flight characteristics of the player's aircraft and rendering the world realistically, not to mention weather, air traffic communications and even ground traffic, never loses its awe for me.

I've also spent a fair bit of time with The Sims, one of the more popular games available for the PC. For those unfamiliar with The Sims, the game is a sort of virtual doll house. You create a family, move it into a house, and control every aspect of their lives; their careers, their friends, their jobs, how they spend their leisure time and how the furnish and decorate their homes. I say that "you" do all of this. I do not. When I run The Sims on my computer, I often refrain from giving any of my characters any sort of guidance or instruction whatsoever. Instead, I simply watch them, curious to see what they will do when left to their own devices, much like the ants on the deck of my ship so many years ago. If they're tired and don't know enough to get some sleep, so be it. Watching them return from work the next day, only to pass out from exhaustion and crumple to the pavement before they can even enter their homes, much less reach their beds, only amuses me. Watching other passer-by Sims come across their dormant forms, stop to examine them, shrug their shoulders and go on their way amuses me even more.

I suppose that people like myself (and I do hope that there are others, else I'm worse than I thought) are so easily amused because we live largely inside of our own heads. Our own imaginations are our chief forms of entertainment. This has its advantages. If I ever become a quadriplegic, I'll wager I adjust to it much more easily than most would. Not that I'm suggesting anything.

U2 Bono?

I read this past week that U2 has partnered up with Research In Motion, makers of the Blackberry. RIM is apparently sponsoring U2's current tour. This has raised eyebrows around the world, particularly because U2 most recently endorsed Apple's iPod. Apple even produced a U2 Special Edition version of its ubiquitous MP3 player. It would be understandable to assume, then, that if U2 was going to endorse a hand-held communications gadget, it would be Apple's iPhone.

One has to ask oneself why the sudden shift in the group's corporate loyalties. Bono is, of course, well known, not only as U2's front man and lead singer but as a staunch activist, having carried the banner for such causes as AIDS and poverty relief, international trade reform, Greenpeace and nuclear disarmament, to name but a few. So perhaps the affiliation shift from Apple to RIM was driven by a closer sharing of principles between Bono and Mike Lazarides' Waterloo Ontario-based tech giant.

Alas, the likelihood seems to be that it had more to do with money. Analyst Rob Enderle speculates that Bono probably simply played the two smart-phone makers off each other and awarded his and his group's support to the highest bidder. "RIM was able to come up with the cash, and Apple didn't" says Enderle. It's as simple as that.

I personally own neither a Blackberry nor an iPhone. I do carry a Blackberry when on call, but it belongs to my employer, not to me, and I'm happier when I'm without it, so be it known that mine is not the voice of an iPhone lover crying "Foul!" in outrage. I do wonder about Bono's motivations.

Surely Bono has more than enough personal wealth, so it seems curious to me that he would lend his support to the highest bidder in any engagement. His reputation as an activist and as a champion of the underdog, on the other hand, is likely much more important to him. That being the case, it behooves him to consider the optics of decisions such as this one. A man like him aught to be careful about being perceived as going to the highest bidder.

Heaven forbid that the world should learn, tomorrow, that RIM employs child labour in the manufacture or distribution of its product ("I hear that even some of their programmers are ten-year-old whiz kids!") or that they are financed by the drug cartels (perhaps the moniker "Crackberry" is more appropriate than anyone realizes!) Understand that both of these allegations are nothing more than the product of my own over-active imagination, but wouldn't Bono et al have egg on their collective faces if they happened to be true?

All I can say is, if Bono and Jim Balsillie become joint owners of any NHL franchise in the near future, I'm gonna have some hard questions.