Kevin McGuire

Germanium

Pronunciation: \(ˌ)jər-ˈmān, -nyəm\
Function: noun
Date: just made it up today

1. A plant having regular usually white, pink, or purple flowers, being at once relevant and appropriate as a gift.

After all this writing about direct input and control, I figure I really aught to buy a tablet PC and see what the experience is like.  OK I’d still love to get a SmartBoard but lets start small and practical.

Has anybody had experiences using or owning a tablet PC?

There’s some sexy ones by Fujitsu and Toshiba. There’s one HP.  Lenovo is now selling them but I have no idea if they are any good and am somewhat concerned since they are new to  this area.  There’s also some pen based Mac clones out there but of that I am even less knowledgeable.

Many seem oriented primarily towards document creation and are thus thin, light, but underpowered.  I’d like something with good horsepower for music creation, good screen real estate (1400×1050 ideal but rare), while mobility is less of a priority.  A small number provide touch input in addition to pen, that seems cool, although perhaps the finger prints would drive me crazy!

For OS on the PC, the choices are XP Tablet or Vista.  I’ve read that the tablet support for Vista is quite good but that not all flavours have it.

Any thoughts?

I’ve been using the following chair for a number of years now. It seemed good on paper and I ordered it up from the states but without the opportunity to try it first. I knew that was taking a chance. You really need to try a chair for a few days, preferably a week, to see if its for you.

The old chair, being a full back, provided ironically too much support in the shoulders and encouraged them to roll forward. This then causes forward head carriage. The combination has been causing lots mid, upper back, and neck problems.

I found one that seemed right, brought it home for the weekened and after a few (ahem) hours of playing World of Warcraft and waking the next morning without back problems I can declare it a winner! I’ve noticed already a change in what the chiropractor needs to do, so that’s a good external measure.

(not a very useful view of it)

A lesson learned is the difference between comfort and ergonomics. If you look at the picture of the old full back chair, you’ll notice that the top curves forward. The new one doesn’t go as high, and the top sort of curves back a bit to allow the should blades to sit further back, more upright really. That lines the neck up too. The old one seems more comfortable when you first sit in it because but what you need to do is watch what your body is doing after an hour (or week, or year).

From speaking with the salesman, it seems that full back chairs are really better for reading documents, talking on the phone etc., with midback being superior for working on a computer.

The old one was great for quite some time. I wonder also if we just accomodate and need to change  up our seating once in a while.

I’ve started reading Al Gore’s “the Assault on Reason” (Gore for Prime Minister!) and its reminded me of the importance of peer to peer discussion on matters of politics. Thus in breaking with my usual music/ergonomics/technology/zombies themes, I felt it my duty to comment on a recent municipal council decision.

Last week Ottawa city council decided to stop the funding of a crack pipe exchange program. It wasn’t the cost, at a trivial $7,500 per year to the city. They said they didn’t want to give the impression that they were condoning the use of the drug and encouraging its use.

Eh?!

They clearly don’t understand addiction. If you’re addicted to anything, be it crack or something else, the availability of apparatus to consume your drug is not going to encourage its use, nor the lack discourage. You’ll always find a way of using, such is the nature of addiction, making itself a priority over everything else. “Hmm, I was going to smoke crack today but dang I can’t find my pipe so instead I think I’ll just go for a stroll along the river”. No, you’ll just find unhealthier ways of using.

Mayor O’Brian didn’t feel the program was working. This, despite our chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Salisbury, repeatedly telling council that it was. Apparently Larry O’Brian knows best and our chief public health doctor isn’t qualified to determine whether a public health program is working.

Perhaps the most infuriating comment came from councillor Rick Chiarelli who was quoted as saying that “it doesn’t even pass the laugh test”. I don’t even understand that statement nor know where to start with it.

I suppose its unrealistic to expect that our politicians will behave in any way other than politically, and this issue is not a terribly sexy one. Who amongst us high bread-winning and influential people really care about crack users? Surely they’re just a scourge.

I live in the market and I can tell you that yes addiction is everywhere and a large number of people pan handling for money for food in fact don’t want it for food. However, even if you feel no pity towards these poor people because you believe they are weak or have chosen to be where they are, you still have to look at the numbers around prevention v.s. the tremendous cost of treatment, not to mention the risk of wider spread of disease to the “general public”, to recognize that facing the reality of addiction is as they say the first step in conquering it.

And I recognize for residents here and in Sandy Hill that the increased and more open use of the drug is deteriorating the quality of life for the neighbourhoods. But what I think people are confusing is correlation v.s. causation: yes there’s more drug use but the pipe program isn’t causing it, its a response to the same underlying illness.

To their credit council said they instead think we should be focusing our efforts on getting better rehab/recovery centers in Ottawa. That is definitely true, and in my mini-med course I was quite surprised to learn that we essentially have no long term treatment facility in Ottawa, that people must go out of town to find such care. However, both are needed. In fact one benefit of needle and pipe programs is that it puts addicts in direct contact with health professionals who are dispensing, providing a critical path to treatment.

I’m just so dismayed that we have as representatives people who can be so ignorant (in the “not knowing and not wishing to know” sense).

Recently, Mcq and I were working on a track together.  Its been a while since we’ve done this together and for my part I’ve not been making a ton of music on my own so I’m a bit rusty.

We use Reason, which I used to use a lot but haven’t in a long time and am not up to date with the latest release.  Reason is a very good music production software and is known for being one of the easier to learn and quicker to do work in.

But boy, its amazing how much farfin’ around goes into making a track.  After spending the better part of an afternoon at it we have but the start of a track.  OK maybe if I was better, more versant in Reason, etc., it would’ve gone faster, but still there’s just something wrong with music software.  There was just so much micro tweaking of pixels, driving of the UI, to make what little we did.  I’d estimate only about 20% of our time was actually “making music” proper.  Our mean time to music just wasn’t very equitable.

Lets contrast this with say playing the cello (for Mike) or the djembe (for me).  You just pick it up and start making sound.  Its immediate.  True, there’ll be post-recording editing required, and one must count in the time having learned the instrument and vs. time spent learning the software.

I don’t have a lot of time to spend making music and I want it to be as effective as possible.  I’m not sure if its that the software isn’t there (ok that’s part of it, Reason has some real quirks that hurt usability) or if the way in which we are interacting is poor.

By contrast, check this out this guy using a Lemur multi-touch panel and a Max/MSP patch to his sequencer.  Look at how he just glides along the UI.  He really did an excellent job at designing the interface, there’s some nice touches beyond the typical pattern sequencer.  Watch how handy it is to be able to use both hands to point to things.

What I find particularly interesting is that although he’s using a Lemur which supports multi-touch, he’s rarely if ever using more than one finger at a time.  Rather, he’s making use of the fact that its a touch panel, and that he has this great library of visual interaction shapes which the Lemur gives you in its SDK.  In theory, you could reproduce the experience with a regular touch panel (a lot cheaper!) and some other library of shapes that then trigger midi events (hmm, could be a nice SWT or processing project).   His video reminded me of Nash and I using the Smartboard and Ableton Live, fluid, immediate, and immersive.  It reminds me that to achieve that, you need both the right software and the right input devices.

If you were wondering what the heck those last two posts were about, you didn’t follow the links.  For similar posts, check technorati for “zombie” tags, there’s some good stuff out there.  I only regret I didn’t have more time to blog, we’ve left poor Kim a raving zombie locked in her office with Paul on his way to Zombiedome.  It was tough working the shoe business in but she started with that on hers and I had to figure out how to fit into mine.  Having recently watched Sean of the Dead I quite enjoyed the whole Zombie affair.

What brainless people I work with! Kim was muttering something about CNN reporting people were rising from their raves. Wow, that’s some late party. I used to love going to raves and thought they were out of fashion, so I guess that makes them newsworthy, but so what? I don’t get it, some joke I guess. I’m always on the outside of these things.

She just stood there, hunched over staring at her feet, hands gripped at her sides, and muttered something further about the loss of her … shoe soles? Something? Poor dear I guess her feet must be killing her, she hasn’t stopped shuffling about from the moment she got in. Oh and that wretched smell! She really ought to have cleaned up after that munch fest she was on earlier. My god I’ve never seen a girl eat so much raw looking beef in one sitting.

I went to ask Tod his opinion, since he knows her better, but he’s nowhere to be found. Eric is missing too. The peace is glorious.

Paul and I chatted and it was then that wedecided action had to be taken. She’s just not right and I don’t like the way she staring at her feet. She needs to be confined until we can figure out what to do. I’d seen many TV shows about prisoners hanging themselves with their shoe laces, so we wrestled hers off her and managed to barricade her into her office. The b*tch bit Paul! Mind you, I’m not sure they ever really got along anyway.

This morning started pleasant enough with very little traffic, quite unusual really, but I guess with the nice weather more people are biking or on vacation. I even got a primo parking spot at work. We’re near the end of the release so things are quite here, but this sunny day seems exceptional.

Now, by way of full disclosure, Kim, a lady who works with me on my team, has always been a bit unusual. I like unusual. Well, normally, but this morning Kim (who always gets in before me) was sitting in her chair chewing, somewhat ravenously I might add, on what looked like an entire leg of lamb or something. Maybe bigger than a lamb. Anyway, I just chalked it up to low iron as I know sometimes those of the fairer sex do suffer this deficiency now and then.

When I asked her if she was feeling ok she reacted in what could only be described as a ferile hissing cat! Poor thing she really didn’t look so well, all gaunt and pasty white.  I don’t know why people let themselves get so run down.

Being the type to respect another’s privacy I just went on to my office to do some work. A little while later I went to ask Tod about something and was somewhat shocked to find Kim in his office nibbling on his neck! I think you all know me to be a pretty liberal person but really. First off, Tod is married, and second, well I didn’t think he was her type, and third my god this is an office people! So I did what every normal person would; I excused myself and quietly shut the door to give them some privacy. Tod looked to me somewhat pleadingly but I know its because he asked me to do some screen shots for our doc which I still haven’t gotten to yet. Geez get off my back already!

The big buzz is Microsoft’s announcement of “Surface” (aka Milan), a 30″ LCD/computer/furniture that you can interact with directly without the need of a keyboard or mouse. As discussed in my previous post, while there are lots of digitizing and touch screen technologies around, with the exception of the Lemur, they’re all one pen/finger at a time. Surface on the other hand allows multiple fingers at the same time, permitting a huge range of possible interaction gestures. Plus, all those fingers don’t need to belong to the same person!

It seems Surface accomplishes this multi-touch interactivity via an embedded camera. Not only can it track many fingers but it can read a credit card number and scan other every day objects. It features a custom OS “based on Vista”. While it makes sense that you’d want a specialty OS since the interactivity is so different, its yet to be seen how open this will be as a platform for third party applications. There’s some cool possibilities in there by combining the detecting of the position and ID of transparent tiles then projecting images onto them.

I was quite excited when I first heard about it and couldn’t wait until the “winter 2007″ release to get my hands on one, until I read that in its current form it costs $15,000-$20,000. It’ll be years before its price gets to the consumer level.

For further reading, Tom’s Hardware has a good writeup on it, including an interesting analysis of it vs. the media center platform (now defunct). The consistent comment from the bloggers is that this isn’t a new idea. True, but what’s exciting is that its real and you’re going to be able to buy one (eventually). That’s typical Microsoft, grab an existing good idea and actually ship it. Well good for them, I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Their “Origins” page however gives the impression that they dreamt this up themselves.

Many years back I was on loan from OTI at the University of Toronto working on their Telepresence project. I remember at the time that Bill Buxton and the gang had this cool work surface with a camera underneath it that could track multiple objects interacting on it (fingers, bricks, etc). Hmm, sounds familiar? Check out the following references:

• Multi-Touch Systems that I Have Known and Loved, an excellent comprehensive history writeup by Bill Buxton
• Bricks: Laying the Foundations for Graspable User Interfaces
• A GUI paradigm using tablets, two-hands and transparency

Earlier today I connected the dots: Bill Buxton is now at Microsoft Research. The Surface site shows different people involved in the project but I don’t see his name anywhere. Hard to believe he wasn’t involved in this.

More recently there was the rather infamous Jeff Han TED talk (re: infamous - try typing in “ted talks” into google search bar and “ted talks jeff han” is one of the first suggestions). Again people thought this was revolutionary but its more evolutionary. Mind you, the Jeff Han talk is slick and the device is clearly more refined than the old UofT work, thanks certainly in part to the added computational power now available for image analysis.

Lets forget about the “credit where due” part, the big news is that some big company actually went out and built one of these, technology plus OS, and we’re going to start seeing their use in every day applications. This, in combination with the iPhone, encourages me to believe that there is momentum building in the industry behind touch and multitouch input. Keep ‘em coming!

The keyboard/mouse combination is fine for primarily typing tasks, but the depth of interaction and expression they offer is pretty poor. The places where we see the most innovation are in music and gaming. Musicians are pushing this because they are coming from a tactile world (keyboards, guitar strings, etc). Gamers are pushing it because it increases the depth of immersion (especially force feedback) and perhaps gives you an edge of your competition.

In the music world, the coolest solution I’ve seen is the Lemur/Dexter by Jazz Mutant, a multi-touch (can use more than one finger at same time) sensitive display with dedicated software for creating virtual input devices (sliders, dials, etc.), outputting midi. The physics model allows for the creation of some unusual input paradigms such as bouncing balls and elastic bands. I’d love to give one of these a spin but the 2,100 € price tag is pretty serious.

But what about the poor graphic artist? They’re coming from a tactile world too where the finess of how you hold a nd manipulate a brush is intrinsic in your artistic expression. We’re starting to see more pen based laptops but most have a relatively low resolution (typically 1024×768) and require you to sacrifice processing power for the convenience of a pen based input. And besides, what if I already have a computer such as a desktop and just want to swap how I interact?

Enter the Wacom Cintiq, a 21″ 1600×1200 LCD screen with pressure sensitive pen for use with any computer. This looks like a lot of fun. The touch bars provide additional direct input allowing zooming/panning/etc. At $2500US it doesn’t come cheap, but if your world is about doing computer based graphics then it could make sense. One fun bonus is that there is no raised bezel so you can use real world objects (such as french curves) to trace on top of it.

If you want to go big though, you could consider the Smart Board line. They offer integrated back projected, front projected, or my personal favorite, overlay over existing LCD/plasma screen. An advantage of the Smart Board line is that you can either use one of their digitizing pens or your finger. We’ve played with the front projected version of this, programming music with Ableton Live and found the experience to be extremely fluid and interactive, to the point where we were using the software differently. That’s the true measure of the power of a change in interaction device. The only downside was the rather interesting contortions required to interact without blocking the projector. A close+high mounted projector with wide angle and good keystone control starts to overcome this. To this end, Smart Board has an integrated solution with a boom and projector. Notable mention should go to 3M which has a similar product although I’ve never tried it. Clearly the better solution is the more expensive overlay, although in combination with an 1080p LCD tv could be quite nice.

The ergonomic advantage of all these is clear. The tablet devices require wider motions of the hands and arms, using larger muscle sets in a variety of patterns. That’s a great RSI buster. The most intriguing though is the wall board approach because it forces you to get up out of those crappy chairs and move around! What a wonderful combination when making music.

Its great to see the products coming out but the prices need to become more approachable for us to see any kind of revolution in how we interact with our computers. Eventually though we want to see more and richer multi-touch input devices. Because, after all, we humans have more than one finger!