Life thrash!

I feel that just as computers suffer from disk thrash when asked to do too much and spend all the time just swapping things in from disk and back again, I am suffering from Life Thrash – switching attention from one thing to another and not completing tasks.

Having recognised this I want to do something about it! I have a Computer Science background and in the past lectured on operating systems and how computers behave and algorithms and tools that made things work better, matched things to memory and resources and gave everything appropriate priority.  I used to like teaching about the Unix (BSD) way to do things and how it assigned what should happen next. 

So this short post (not least as it is past 1am) is a marker that I am going to work on Life Thrash a bit more, play with the tools that help (again!) and see where I go. I said to Will today I needed to post a declaration to get past this and stop “post about Life Thrash” adding to the  multi-tasking load. So I have.

Let down by Flickr!

I am at a conference making some blog entries across at my OCHRE OpenLearn blog. I was taking pictures to illustrate by blog about Marsha Lovett’s presentation and it was not working. Strange error messages resulted asking me to “checktickets”. Looking at the Flickr blog they know about it as their “farm1″ is down. I am sure they will fix it soon but it does seem strange to have one of the major Web2.0 sites not working. I could of course find other solutions but for the moment I will wait it out and add the pictures a bit later.

DigiLab as a model for how to work

DigiLab discussionOriginally uploaded by openpadThe Open University Library has developed an area known as the DigiLab as a drop in space to look at and use new technology. Recently we have used this area for a couple of discussions and I feel it could offer a model for how people could work in the future. There is comfy area where you can hook up to large screens or just plug in laptops, behind that a small table and chairs plus two small work areas and a more powerful media area. Finally there is a coffee machine. In one of our sessions other people came in and had a separate chat – without either group disturbing the other too much.Can this map on to out new building? I am not sure. Trying to do it at a small scale may well not work as it means that we have to sacrifice individual space to create shared space and if only a few people do that the result is just their loss!

Open space as a good working environment: 9 possible principles

I wrote earlier about the mixed feelings that I had about moving from old office oriented space to a new open plan building. At the time it looked like we might end up moving across into rows of desks with not enough space to get us all in. Well things have moved on a bit and it looks like IET will have a less complete move into the new building, which will lower pressure on the space and we also have a little bit longer to plan. Another change is that in the new management structure I am working with Grainne Conole and Martin Weller to oversee part of IET the “Technology Enhanced Learning” (TEL) group. Chatting to Grainne earlier this week we found that while we are not sure exactly what we want we felt like there were some principles that ought to allow good working space. Here is my attempt to list some of those principles:

1. Space that a visitor would envy – the it looks great to work here (even if it isn’t!)
2. That the building works with different levels of capacity – everyone there to almost no-one there
3. A choice of place and styles of work e.g:
   • Easy chairs plus display plus whiteboard (we have some really nice Smartboard 600is)
   • Tables and chairs to chat or work with a laptop
   • Desks with good screens and keyboards (not necessarily cpus though)
4. Expect everyone to have a laptop/notebook (could be Asus eee PC or Apple Touch)
5. Flexible space where people can change location and cope with areas of overload (everybody in)
6. Not planned around a desk space for everyone
7. An area of ownership for each person – where your files are and paper can be found from day to day 
8. Joint responsibility for tidyness and impression on visitors – care for the environment
9. Space for hard work and continuity when it is needed – but not all the time for everyone

Well that is my first pass – there is perhaps a bit of conflict in there and I know from talking to colleagues that ownership matters but I think we need to trade some of that for flexibility and space. We need to go from fantasy to furniture order in less than a month but I am a lot more hopeful than I was in October!

email must go!

I was just nodding with agreement at one of Martin Weller’s posts  about the trouble with eMail and especially limited institution supplied email – then I realised the last thing that I had thought I sent had generated the dreaded over the limit message for me! And as a Firefox user that is it – the message is lost. I had just received an 11Mb attachment (Martin might guess which one) and what is more I cannot even download it for some obscure reason. Given the document is related to Web2.0 ways of learning there is a certain irony.

This cannot be the way to carry on – it is not as if I even want to read the content of most of the messages. Earlier this week Iain Stinson talked about a Computing Service view of developments. In the notes I blogged at the time I didn’t really cover one aspect he touched on which is how students no longer use their email and switch to facebook etc. He said that this meant that computing services in universities needed to plan around students finding other provision, but he added as an aside that this did not apply to staff as organisational rules meant that their activity needed to be tracked and assured. Well the reality is that staff are also finding the better alternatives – like many I also have my ISP and gmail accounts as alternative emails. But more than that there the complete email alternatives such repositories and social networks offering different ways to get the message across. A few posts back I wondered if we were heading towards the end of email. Now I think it is more like a campaign – email most go!

The CETIS conference

Asus eee on trainOriginally uploaded by openpadJust a brief note about going to the JISC CETIS conference. I decided to carry on the live blogging that I started at the OpenLearn2007 conference by blogging during the CETIS conference. I did that using my other account across at http://ochre.wordpress.com, but thought I would note here that the little Asus proved a great tool for the job. While other people balanced their Macs and laptops on their knees the Asus eee was a much neater solution and I also felt it helped my typing even though the keyboard is a bit small and with a slightly strange layout. A better battery life would be great but I managed to grab just enough access to a power socket. The picture shows the Asus eee sitting on the silly little pull down shelf on the Virgin train. If fits! The PC is a great design and I am getting more and more enthusiastic about them.

asus eee pc meets iPhone

I took my Asus in to work for a meeting today – it was an item of interest though Grainne had not brought the white one from her project Grainne had brought the white one but didn’t show off by bringing it out of her bag, though she had also put its picture on her blog. Anyway Hardin Tibbs was in the meeting with his iPhone and so there is a chance to determine the question – which is the current cooler product iPhone or Asus?I took the chance to take a picture of the two together – see below. In the pictures you will also see some other pieces of kit, a WD Passport 250Gb USB drive – which is a neat solution to the storage limitations of the little Asus, the Mac that I hope to stop having to carry so much and a JVC MG575 HD camera that has also proved to be a useful device. The camera also is a good partner for the Asus – its MPEG2 files are a pain to play back on the Mac but the Asus happily decodes and played them back. The Mac is there as after 3 hours (of a 4 hour meeting) the Asus battery gave out – which is a bit disappointing but not too bad.

Asus eee is girl’s toy!

Asus eee pc being used for homework

Originally uploaded by openpad

Well I was wondering what role the little Asus would have. When my daughter came home the answer was easy – it is her machine. She happily played the typing tutor, looked through the games and used the free wordprocessor to do her spelling homework. Not too sure how to get it to print to our Canon printer – I had to admit defeat with our last Linux machine.

Asus eee arrival

The Asus eee PC that I ordered yesterday arrrived almost exactly 24 hours later – so I now have it. It seems a very neat device with a lot of useful software installed. It looks like it could be an ideal child’s computer or as Marc has suggested perhaps a ‘third computer’ to go along with desktop and laptop. The only problem is in my case I think it is probably my seventh computer so I am not too sure why I bought it – maybe I got caught up in the launch fever and spotting that they were not so hard to buy after all. It has a built in camera so here is a picture of it taken with it.

Linux meltdown

Waiting for the Asus eee (ordered a couple of hours ago) makes me realise that edging towards Linux has been a background activity for me over the last year or so. However my first attempt took a bit of a set back. I checked out an old laptop from the cupboard of abandoned machines at work and install Fedora Core on it (I think it was when Core 5 was just released). After that I spent quite a lot of time getting my obscure wireless card to work. (That card was actually a prize from the AusWeb 2004 conference for guessing that I was mean to be Steve Irwin in a line-up – so some excuses for being obscure.) So I spent a happy time getting and compiling source code, installing apache, php etc. Got to the point where I had quite a nice set up with everything working… and then the computer melted! You can see the result in the picture – is this revenge of Microsoft for daring to remove their OS?

Not sure about that – maybe there is something needed to keep the fan working properly that I had removed in the process. I did persist after that and got another old laptop out of stock. This time (about April 2007) I found that the distributions had really moved on – PCLinux installed amazingly quickly but I settled on Ubuntu as a combination of slickness and facilities. The laptop is up and running – but I never did get the wireless card working again. In contrast to my first attempt when I knew that I would have to mess around tracking down drivers and modifying the kernel to get it to work, I felt that the plug and play interface should just work. I have found the same feeling when working with Macs – they are great when they work but can be hard to probe when they don’t. Here is hoping that the Asus both works straight away and lets me mess around under its bonnet and do a bit of tinkering!