No more wrestling matches with a two-point plug

No more need to wrestle two point plugs into these 3-point adaptors – they just give way to your two-pin plugs, nice!

What I’m really waiting for, is of course, MacBook Air-inspired Min-Kyu Choi’s Folding Plug (April 2009) – it was ‘the show-stopper at the The Royal College of Art’s graduate show’ and featured in Icon Magazine in June 2009:

Etherpad acquired by Google (Wave), open-sourced; alternatives available!

The right tool for the right job
There are a spectrum of collaborative writing needs and a diversity of online tools that mirror those needs somewhat. Finding the right tool is extremely helpful and last November, I wrote enthusiastically about Etherpad, a no-login, collaborative realtime text editor that Kevin Lim had delicious-ed. I liked EtherPad’s utility, as you could set it up in seconds, begin working with multiple users immediately without the need for them to login or to be trained about its use. Perfect for some of my needs.

Acquisition by Google Wave
Like all good things (e.g. Writely before), the inevitable happened – earlier this month, the makers of EtherPad announced that “…AppJet Inc. has been acquired by Google. The EtherPad team will continue its work on realtime collaboration by joining the Google Wave team.” They also said that they would “discontinue the hosted service completely by March 31st, 2010.”

Google Wave isn’t a substitute, lacking simplicity and requiring a Google userid to login. While powerful and useful for other needs, Wave (or Docs) is unsuitable for my simple and transitionary collaborative needs.

Open Source!
Happily, the AppJet team (who will work on Google Wave) say they both ‘get Open Source’ and released the code and instructions last Thursday, in the hope that “the world run their own etherpad servers so that the functionality can live on even after we shut down etherpad.com.”

User Ted’s response summed it up well – “Fellas, you rock. You wrote a great product, got rewarded with a sale to Google, and managed to open source it. I can’t think of a better exit for you. Congratulations”

Geeks to the rescue
Yesterday, the Swedish Pirate Party announced it is hosting EtherPad at http://piratepad.net/. Long-time EtherPad user, Prasanna, followed up not long after to say he is hosting it at http://www.ietherpad.com.

Prasanna, whose comment alerted me about the transition, duplicated the the look and feel of the original webpage so there should be no separation anxiety!

ietherpad.com

Back on the saddle for 50km

I was finally back on the saddle last Saturday after a hiatus of more than half a year. I rendezvoused with the girl from Jurong (TKX) at Holland Village at 6.15am and we headed off along my usual route to Changi Village, with the boy from Bishan (Lekowala) intercepting us at Jalan Pemimpin.

After a couple of sleep-deprived weeks and a return to cycling after almost a year, I took it easy and enjoyed an easy pace. At the edge of Pasir Ris, we met Ladybug along the Loyang PCN. Feeling under the weather, she had driven to Changi to join us for a short ride. By then I was feeling fine enough to sprint off down Loyang Avenue. The lights were favourable and the slope enables a 50km/h ride, with the momentum staying with you just about until Changi Village!

We chatted over breakfast in the lovely ambience of Changi Village in the morning, with the bonus of the sound and sight of the hornbills.

Riding through Serangoon Gardens as the sun rises; photo by Lekowala

Jurong girl, who had sprinted for 40 mins in the morning to RV with me, had begun to fade during the morning ride in Tampines. So it was agreed she would hitch her ride with Ladybug, back to the near west. There she would saddle up for her final hour of cycling back to the far west.

Lekowala and I were to ride back – however, once I stood up, severe thigh muscle cramps hit me! Not the garden variety sort, these was of much sterner stuff. I tried 100 plus and Deep Heat but was unable to shake it out of my system. But no joy, even when accompanied by stretching on the bike and off it. All the thigh muscles kept seizing at every minor slope!

By the time we reached Hougang, the traffic getting heavier and I was being hampered by the increasingly frequent cramps. This was now a serious liability, so we pulled off under a tree at Hougang Ave 3 and chatted while Ladybug came to rescue me.

Ignominious, but at least I can look forward to improving the performance. So this one was: Holland Village (6.15am) to Changi Village (8.20am) and return to Hougang Ave 3 (ride aborted): DST 33.52km, TMS: 1.52.26, AVS 17.8km.h, MXS 50.0km/h. Butt hurt and thighs are tender!

Is THIS the sweet Mangosteen shop? (Google Street View)

A friend passes me three mangosteens, the sweetest I ever ate, from a place she rarely ventures to – Ghim Moh. In an exchange over IM, she was unable to pin-point the shop, although she was clear about everything else (“the $3.50/kg ones from Thailand, not the $2.50 Malaysian ones).

So I tried Google Street View and she confirmed it was indeed the fruit shop at the edge of the market, next to the car park, opposite the 7-11 and run by two men.

I had imagined using Street View for something loftier, but this has its merits too!

Tiger the cat rubs it in

Tiger the cat slouches around my second year ecology papers, from earlier this week. During exam paper marking season, I eye the slouching cats with considerable envy. 

This pose of Tiger is actually a request for a back massage – he got used to massages as a kitten and will easily look even more sheepish to eke out a 10-minute session from me. Since I am a kindred spirit, I invariably give in, marking or no marking.

Company during marking

Mr Bats the cat likes to snooze on my table when I am on an over-night lecture preparation or exam marking session, It's really nice to have the company of a warm purring cat and he here is snoozing an old jacket which a friend passed me before my trip to South Africa in 1993; it came in really useful on Table Mountain. 

The jacket has been in the office for ages and I finally had that washed. The pile of papers Mr Bats  is resting on is part of the 3rd-year zoology exam scripts, which are quite enjoyable to read. He shifts every now during the night and invariably crosses his paws As you can see the pile was reduced by then – I have two more modules to go!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009

You can participate in the Viewer’s Chice by voting for photos. The editor’s picks each week are listed here.

Meanwhile, Alan Taylor has picked out 25 photos for “The Big Picture” at a width of 990 pixels. Breathtaking stuff, go see! Thanks Ping!

Aaron Feinberg says, “When the wave conditions are right a wave appears, infrequently, as a result of the splash back off the cliff connecting with an incoming wave. This causes the incoming wave to pop up, creating fan-like shapes. On this particular day, over the two hours I spent on the rocks, this wave only appeared once. This is that shot.

Organising the Sungei Buloh Anniversary Walk with Google Forms

I’ve organised a guided walk at Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve close to the 6th of December annually since 1997 in celebration of the reserve’s anniversary (SBAW). To do this I recruit guides, decide on and arrange for specimens, plan transport for guides and participants, advertise and process registration and queries.

This year I finally started on Monday and now we have about 100 people to be guided by 8 route guides and 4 station guides on Saturday. We are also throwing in a short slide talk and a guided exhibition of specimens from the Raffles Museum.

This is in the midst of my heaviest exam-marking period, so this SBAW event is quite the nightmare. I want to throw in the towel every year thinking about it and drag my feet. I do realise that when it finally happens, it’s a lovely experience for all. People meet and connect with each other and nature and some of our NUS students get deeper into biodiversity studies through this.

The life savers who hep me carry this off are the Raffles Museum Toddycats, all volunteers who chip in and smoothen the edges. They are part of the guiding team recruited for the event 0 and they all respond quickly to the invitation. They are either veterans or honours students who are already amply prepared by their modules and research and sometimes by their previous attendance at this event. So training is skipped unlike the late 90’s when I worked this with freshly trained guides only..

A lot more people are able to attend these days and so the team is larger. And the biggest pre-event help to handle this amplification is Google Forms!

Google Forms collect registration data which is deposited into Google Spreadsheets – the image above is the first page and summary sheet, so contact data is hidden. Spreadsheet functions help track registration, transport requests and registration capacity. This year’s summary form is not pretty, but critical.

I update an SOP document as I go along, in Google Docs, as well as debrief points in preparation for next year’s walk.

So I finally got myself started on Monday by setting up the webpage and registration form. Emails were then sent out and the university community are always quick to respond to the email adverts, somehow.

I then hunt down additional guides – honours students in their post-exam stupor. Then I tend to the registration form every 3-6 hours.

In between I mark and mark and mark and tend to all the other things that usually crop up.

But Saturday will be so nice, I will decide to do it again next year.

From the SBAW webpage: Who are your guides? – Airani S, Kok Oi Yee, Marcus Ng, Adrian Loo, Anand Balan, Ivan Khong, Anne Devan, Trina Chua, Xu Weiting, Siti Aisyah Bte Jamal, Joanne Khew, Teo Kah Ming, Grace Lo and N. Sivasothi (a.k.a. Otterman).

Google Street View Singapore is here!

My Twitter window blinked repeatedly with tweets from @SinGeo (“Google streetview is now live in Singapore”), @benkoe, @acroamatic, @keropokman and @brainopera. Everyone (okay, google and map geeks) have been waiting for this since the Google Street View Cars were spotted in Singapore in October. With these multiple references, I simply had to wrench myself from my marking and go see the orange man for myself!

So what is the significance of the Orange Man? Well, in Google Maps, at your favourite location, drag the orange man icon to a road on the map view. If the road lights up in blue, then a street view exists. For example, our small roads in the National University of Singapore are not included, so I examined the carpark at Lorong Bekukong in Changi Village instead. This is where the chartered buses drop-off and pick up 2nd year ecology students for their practical in the nearby island, Pulau Ubin.

Clicking the thumbnail presents this view below. Interesting, eh? You can navigate through the streets and clicking the icon at the top right corner of the photo presents you with a desktop-wide view – nice!

Car license plates, like faces of people, have been blurred. Still, you can see images of people in various places. Street View will certainly invoke the enthusiasm that greeted Google Earth over finding gems scattered in the many images – I am looking forward to tweets about the subject!

Meanwhile, Street View came in useful within hours of the first tweet – I was asked (not unusually), by a participant of this Saturday’s Sungei Buloh Anniversary Walk (SBAW), “which part of Kranji MRT to meet at?” I grabbed an image of the street view, annotated the image and sent this link over: http://tinyurl.com/sbaw2009-bus

Click for larger view

@acroamatic immediately asked, somewhat jokingly, “Wonder how many directionally challenged participants will cross the road to get a similar view…” Yeah, I wonder too!

This was an indulgence for a simple arrangement, of course. There is no need to provide pinpoint accuracy for every meeting point we setup. A bit of effort invested in coming early and figuring things out is good mental exercise for all of us. Tools like Street View should be enhancing our abilities to navigate and explore, not make us highly dependent on being spoonfed information.

For field researchers, Google Street View Singapore can be helpful. I will certainly use it to provide specific information about obscure meeting points at the edge of a mangrove or forest study plot. No more need to rummage my flickr albums and wish I had taken more photos of landmarks!

***Update:

• Xu Weiting, my honours student studying civets in Siglap, has already examined the placement of fruit trees there! Urban ecologists will are going to have a field day!
• Another honours student, Chua Yi Teng, found an elusive (but numbered) lamp post which marks the entrance of a forest trail.
• I’ve used to to verify the identity of some wayside trees for a flowering project

Enjoying the view (Mr Bats)

Mr Bats likes to settle down onto my lap to enjoy the view in the late mornings. I like the way his arms cross when he is completely relaxed.