Alfred's musings

This video has been hitting the headlines about a strong static electric field at Google... and there are many rumours about what it might be. I'll tell you what it is: Even if some long-term Googlers might get jaded and accustomed to this effect to the point where they might not notice it, but I still get it every day I walk into Google... (just like 0xA1F days ago on my first visit while I was still working at Microsoft!). And ask anyone who have been visiting the office... the electric vibe in the office is strong and very much alive. It's not really just a bit of magic in the air: It's a spirit of optimism, energy, fun, surprise, expectation to make the world a better place... all things that I love about working at Google. And if you watch closely at the video... I suspect enough Googlers where on the balcony that the vibe just spilled over the edge onto passers by. If you are sceptical, just swing by for one of Mo's legendary breakfasts... and you'll feel t

Tada! I've got my Raspberry Pi measuring and storing temperature data in Google Cloud SQL. And I'm pretty excited that it was possible (even simple) for a simple soul like myself. For context: I've been working on automating my home with home-grown technology, mostly Arduino (or Atmega328) based, but got more and more frustrated with the pain to connect these different Arduinos to get it anything close to "smart". So, I recently turned my attention to Raspberry Pi: The cost and complexity of Arduino + networking (of any sort) quickly exceeded the price of a Pi. In moving to Pi, I decided to also build my stuff around OpenHab because it gives me the abstraction I'm looking for to deal with the many different things I want to control. It also gives, for free, Android and Web UIs to help control things. But the action above does not leverage OpenHab yet. BTW - My electricity bill is extortionately high (because of poor home insulation and design), so

I bought myself a beautiful quadcopter. The Hubsan 4x . Well, I say "myself", but that is one of the perks of being a dad. I could buy it as a present to my son, and "we" can enjoy it together, right? But of course, before letting him loose on it, I'd need to understand how it works, right? So, last night I took it out of the box, and had a quick flight inside, then outside our home. First impressions are filled with awe. It's super quick and responsive, so flying it requires a very high degree of concentration (compared to for example flying the RC helicopter ). After calibrating the copter and seeing how quick it could fly way over the tree tops, I thought a better place to experiment would be a big open space. And so I took it to our local sport field after a good charge. 3 minutes into the first flight, I could hardly see a speck high above the field. Wanting to carefully bring it down, I started to realise that I've got a problem brewing.

I'm privileged to have all the toys. (It's been said that I'd be happy working, even if it'd just be paid in gadgets... but I suspect the bank manager would disagree.) Over the last 24 hours, I've used my Nexus 5 phone & Nexus 10 tablet, Google Glass, a Pixel and Macbook. (And, there are a few more gadgets at home, just ask my wife!) I've come into the rhythm of using my Pixel at work, exclusively, now for many years. It's beautiful. And at home, I frequently use the Macbook pro, primarily as I need a BIG screen and code sometimes. My train journeys therefore see me using my phone or Nexus 10 a lot, but recently I rediscovered my old Samsung Chromebook 550c with 3G . And... it's currently the best way to do a lot of productive work on the train. It's got fantastic battery life, it's small, light weight, durable and the 3G connection is just incredibly reliable and stable. So (at least until I put Glass on my face again) the Sa

24 hours over the weekend, I've been wrestled with installing Windows 7 on a new machine for my wife. (Her business has "gone cloud" also with their business management system, but the system requires IE (exclusively) for formatting the thermal printer receipts. Doh! If only they used Cloud Printing...) The install was slightly complicated by the fact that the desktop machine is not super fast (but decent), it came with Linux, and it did not have an optical drive. Also, after the first install, I updated the BIOS to try and solve a driver problem, which eventually caused a blue screen of death, and I had to start all over again. Not fun. But, even when ignoring all of these issues, the process of installing Windows was so painful (even for someone who has done this a lot of times), that I decided to extract and publish some metrics around this. Just for context: these stats all came from the Windows Event log it excludes the first failed attempt to install it I

I'm developing a passion for helping kids discover and develop their skill (and first, love) for technology, and as I can't find excellent resources online about this (I'm sure these exist, but I can't find it yet! Let me know if you do know of some...), I decided to start to capture some of my thinking around this. Caveats: I'm a Google employee, and biased towards our technology. I truly think it's great, and will shamelessly promote it. (But, other than being a shareholder and employee, I'm not compensated on any of the things I'm talking about here.) Also - I have no First up: What should be taught? Programming. I think the most critical thing to teach kids, is how to use technology creatively (rather than just consuming via technology). More music making, than music listening. More poetry writing than just reading. And for the science/maths orientated kids, how to *create* computers, how to code. One key and interesting hurdle is that tec

It can't be any surprise to any of my friends that I love the point where electronics and the physical world collide. And robotics is part of this. Hence my Arduino controlled heating at home , my banana clicker , my HTTP light bulbs ,  CAT6 Christmas lights  and cyborg stories . So, you can't imagine how excited I am to see some public rumours (I don't have more Google Internal information *yet*) on what Andy Rubin is up to now. Automation. So - as a tribute to Andy and an early "Merry CHRISTmas" to you all, here's another Biehler invention... just for fun, inspired by a singing dog in a shop window nearby. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVVr-anPES0 For those interested (really?) in the tech behind it... it's deadly simple. Now I can formally claimed that I've shared some of my (not so) dirty laundry on YouTube :) If only I can get that robot to sort out the socks, find the missing ones and put them away...