New Florence. New Renaissance.

Guest Column: Technology and Guitar Rock

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – fishing, basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is Devan Sabaratnam from Darwin in Australia, who by day develops web services for many of today’s leading ERP products, and jams at night. I knew he had good taste when he commented on Dire Straits in on of my posts. Little did I know he could just about have played for them!

“Almost every youngster dreams of being a rock and roll star, and I must admit I was fortunate to play guitar in several bands from my high school days back in the early eighties up until I turned 30, got married and settled down, thus effectively ending my days of playing rock and blues riffs in smoky bars and clubs.

As it turns out now, our eldest son who is 9 (in the photo), is showing the same passion for being a rock guitarist, and this has allowed me to relive my past vicariously through him (every aging guitarists dream really!).

In this process, I have been had to re-outfit him with gear (no way is he going to play my precious guitars - at least not until he is as good as Eddie Van Halen).  But in the process of scouring the local shops and the web for equipment, I have been astounded by the technological changes that have taken place in this industry over the past 20 or so years.  Let me explain.

1. Cable Nightmare

THEN: I used to dread unpacking my gig bag before every show, as I would be confronted with a mass of cables and leads looking like Medusa's hair after a particular bad night on the town.  Not to mention that my effective range from my amp would be limited to whichever of the longest leads I had managed to untangle that evening.  Also, I used to get tired of tripping up the lead singer and pulling everyone else's mike stands over as I duck walked across the stage.

NOW: Wireless transmitters mean that the guitarist can meander right into the audience and prance around the stage like a right prat in utter safety.  I wish the associated battery pack would be a bit lighter though.

2. Tuning

THEN: Between just about every song, I would unplug my guitar from the main rig and end up hunched over my tiny tuning device to prevent my guitar from sounding like a discordant banshee.  This used to severely restrict my time that I could have spent getting free drinks from the band's groupies.

NOW: The latest guitars from major manufacturers now tune themselves!  I came across these recently whilst jamming at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and they certainly saved time, although I think the jury is still out on the real practicalities of such systems.

You can even tune your guitar using your iPhone these days!

3. Learning Chops

THEN: In order to learn a particular riff or solo, you had to wear out your cassette tape playing the sequence over and over again and try to figure out what position on the neck and the correct fingering sequence - most of the time you would be way off until some other, more experienced colleague actually showed you the 'proper' way after a particular embarrassing performance.

NOW: You can go to YouTube or any other number of web video sites and type in the name of the song or guitarist, and you will get a plethora of instructional videos showing you how to play from several camera angles, including slowed down, note for note analysis.  In addition, you can also download tablature or sheet music for just about any song ever written and released.

4. Jamming

THEN: If you wanted to have a casual jam session, you would have to contact all the other band members, ascertain if they were not too lazy/sleepy/drunk/stoned to get together to make music, then load all your heavy gear into the car and head to the designated garage, set up, play, argue, play, then tear it all down again.

NOW: The latest line of amplifiers now have built in jam track loops, complete with drums and rhythm backings, so you can select the type of music you want (from Friday night grunge metal to Sunday afternoon cabaret jazz), and simply play over the top.  The digital drummer ALWAYS keeps in time, and you are never subject to his fits and tantrums (sorry Ricky!).

5. It's All About Tone

THEN: You would work three jobs to save enough money to buy the same type of guitar and amplifier as your hero(Not Guitar Hero, though – the household has a no-TV and no-game console policy while the kids are young)  You would scour through guitar magazines with a magnifying glass to see if you could see the positions of the various knobs on their rig.  You would buy and throw out several distortion pedals because they didn't have quite enough fuzz for your liking.

NOW: You can buy ONE effects pedal that duplicates all the tone and nuances of your favorite rock star.  With the press of a footswitch, you can sound exactly like Hendrix did on 'Foxy Lady'.  Another press, and you can sound just like Brian May from Queen.

You can also get software that runs on your PC, on which you can build a sound to emulate virtually any brand of amp on the market today.

6. Recording

THEN: I would drool over TASCAM catalogues showing their multi track mixing consoles and huge 8 inch tape to tape reels.  The floor space required for the recording equipment took up a whole room in it's own right.  We did go into a studio once and put down a few tracks, but it was a week long exercise in frustration (see (3) above) to get everyone there at the same time and the cost was quite high.

NOW: You can purchase a device no bigger than your laptop which allows you to mix multiple tracks directly onto your iPod, from the comfort of your own bedroom.

Conclusion

Yes, the new technology is great, and my son is getting right into it, but for me, I will always be happy with my 30 year old guitars (I have 9, and have held on to every one purchased since I started playing, except for #1).  I play them all through my 20 year old Mesa Boogie valve amplifier, and I will keep on playing Chuck Berry blues licks and reminiscing about the 'old days' long after the sun sets.”

"Unlikely (Guitar) Hero"

Forbes on Bobby Kotick and his string of video game hits

"Somehow, a chief executive blind to the beauty of videogames developed an unmatched eye for spotting hits. Activision Blizzard, as the company is now called, owns a peerless collection of widely beloved and extremely profitable games. They include the bestselling family entertainment videogame (Guitar Hero), the bestselling massively multiplayer game (World of Warcraft), the bestselling war simulation (Call of Duty) and many others."

Technology and Home Made OJ

With due respect to Tropicana, whose technology I have praised here, there is NOTHING like fresh, home squeezed orange juice.

Two products have really made this year's squeezing so much more efficient:

First a True Temper Fruit Harvester - the telescopic rods extend to 10 feet, the claws help grab the fruit and the sponge cradles it to reduce bruising. These wonderful fruit deserve the softest beds!  

Then my wife kindly bought me a Breville Die Cast Citrus Press. 

Allows me to squeeze 120 orange halves in little more than an hour.

Notice how "bald" the orange peel looks in the garbage can?

The Press yields way more juice than previous presses I have used.

It's messy business, though:)

Guest Column: Technology and Youth Science Mentoring

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – fishing, basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is Charlie Bess, one of the smartest fellows at EDS (now part of HP). In fact, they call him a Fellow :)

His hobby is helping our youth get excited about science and engineering.

“Vinnie asked about how technology is changing leisure and I thought I’d take it a bit further into the intersection of leisure and community services. I grew up before the personal computer came on the scene. I had an interest in electronics and had a Ham radio license by the 6^th grade. Growing up on a farm, a solitary activity like this allowed me to connect with the rest of the world and create a lifelong passion for technical discovery.

Now to quench that thirst for technology, I participate in the FIRST competitions as a judge and help with the kickoff of the North Texas activities. Through this effort, I’ve seen the passion and creativity of the participants developing their relationships with others and delivering on team goals – gracious professionalism. They’re developing skills they’ll use for the rest of their life, even if they do not go into engineering.

Recently I was a judge for the FIRST Lego League competition in Dallas (pictured to the left). A pair of 7^th grade competitors described how they spent most of the previous summer learning new development tools and tackling projects so they would be ready for the winter competition. This is the same kind of dedication and goal setting that we expect in the sports, but rarely see at this level dealing with technology.

Next we’ll have the First Robotics Competition (aimed at high school age teams) in mid March at SMU. This event will involve almost 50 teams from at least 2 countries and 5 states. Hopefully I’ll still be able to hear afterwards, since screaming seems to be part of the whole experience. “

Update: Charlie's note from recent FRC competition

Good Housekeeping's VIP - Very Innovative Products

Several technology products make its first, annual list of innovative products

Kindle
Wii Fit
UConnect from Chrysler
Spot GPS rescue device (pictured)
Eye-Fi

ITIF Country Innovation Ratings

 "ITIF ( a Washington DC based think tank) uses 16 indicators to assess the global innovation-based competitiveness of 36 countries and 4 regions. This report finds that while the U.S. still leads the EU in innovation-based competitiveness, it ranks sixth overall. Moreover, the U.S. ranks last in progress toward the new knowledge-based innovation economy over the last decade."

The graph below shows the top 10 in each case - for complete list of 40 check out their site

Guest Column: Technology and Side-Tripping

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – fishing, basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is my dear friend Kimberly McDonald Baker, an Oracle veteran who relocated from the Bay area to Michigan to provide a better quality of life for the family. She now works for Project Partners. By definition, that means work plans and structure. No wonder her hobby is about unstructured side-trips. Read about her detours… 

“My favorite form of travel has always been road trips, as they offer maximum flexibility and freedom. There are virtually no luggage restrictions; I don’t have to narrow down my shoe selections (always a problem!), I can take every bathing suit I own, and my down pillow goes everywhere with me. Departure times are always “between” as in “we’ll be leaving between eight and nine.” Arrival times are even broader: “we’ll be in Grayling in time for dinner, unless we go side-tripping.”

The US Interstate system may be what enabled Americans to see the USA in their Chevrolet, but unless you get off the interstates and freeways, you’re not going to find road trips to be energizing. Think of an interstate highway as core code in software. It will manage the flow in a rational and predictable manner, and it will definitely get you from Point A to Point Z in a reasonable amount of time. The trip will be smooth and uneventful, and there’s the problem. If you want to have fun, that interstate software code needs to support “user exits.”

In software, many vendors won’t even discuss user exits, saying they’re customizations that violate support contracts. The best software packages, however, do allow for user exits that enable code extensions. It’s the extensions that tailor enterprise applications to a perfect fit, and side trips that make auto travel a joyful experience.

Side-tripping used to be a risky undertaking, however, as the same aspect that makes it interesting is what makes it dangerous: you never know what you’ll encounter. You might get lost. The road you turn down might be unpaved and you could get a flat tire. How will you find lodging for the night? What if you encounter a wild animal? What if all the stores in the little town you’re heading toward are closed?

But in recent years, technology in the car has allowed me to become a fearless side-tripper.  The tech that helps includes:

- GPS Navigation System. It even maps “roads” in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that you have to look at closely to notice that “the grass does seem a little thinner down that stretch.” Without the GPS system I would likely get lost going to my cousin’s house even though I’d been there two months earlier. With the GPS system my mantra is “let’s see what’s down that street.” 

- SBS, ESC, ABS: All the 3 letter safety acronyms the auto industry borrows from Gartner.  If an elk charges into my car or steps in front of it, I’m okay.

- Backup sensors that beep as I get too close to an object. It really makes a moose mad if your vehicle gets too close, especially at night with those bright lights. These technology features are an integrated system that ERP vendors would envy: avoiding scaring the moose enables you to avoid deploying the aforementioned airbags.

- Tire pressure monitoring and run-flat tires. Depending on how far off I’ve wandered down side roads, the tire pressure monitor may give me plenty of warning to avoid a flat tire. Otherwise, the run-flat tires give me a fighting chance against an over-zealous moose.

- USB connection – because singing in the car along with my MP3 player is one of the guilty pleasures of road trips. I have enough songs that I could sing from Ann Arbor to Copper Harbor and back, twice. I am told Google Maps has an undocumented feature which would allow you to calculate how many GB of storage that takes, if you are curious.

- Bluetooth cell phone connection – because if I don’t find a cute B&B or interesting shops on my side trip, there’s always someone on the phone who can tell me where to go! By the way, the picture is with my husband Brinton in the lakeside town of Munising, MI. No Four Seasons there :)

Since technology has enabled me to embrace the creative glee of side-tripping, I have had many wonderful experiences. I’ve seen bald eagles, bears and Northern Lights. I’ve splashed in waterfalls and canoed down rivers. I’ve eaten fresh Lake Superior whitefish in Paradise and creamy sorbet in Hell (both towns in Michigan, and I will let you guess which is closer to Detroit. The previously mentioned Google Maps has documented features which would confirm that). And I’ve also found that antique shops in villages have better prices and more unique items than those near larger towns. We’re talking real Art Deco, people! Now you know why a large collection of shoes joins me on my trips.

Side-tripping is refreshing, re-energizing and creative; the best of all “user exits.” Toss a cooler in your back seat and go.”

AT&T Disaster Recovery Trailers

Disaster recovery - yawn, right?

But packing so much into trailers is what was innovative about AT&T's recent network disaster recovery exercise in Houston

"All of the telecommunications equipment required to recover a destroyed AT&T Central Office is transported to a recovery site in specially-designed technology trailers. Each trailer has self-contained or dedicated power and environmental capabilities and each houses a component of the network technology that would normally be part of a permanent office. Once on site, the individual components are interconnected to match the unique configuration of a heavily damaged or destroyed central office."

Read more here about the large amount of equipment in the trailers

Software to facilitate Tampa emergency management

My little town gets some big crowds. The weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, and the big event itself. A week later our annual Gasparilla parade. Now the Yankees are in town for spring training, as are several other MLB teams in nearby towns. Soon we will be into hurricane seasons. We are home to MacDill Air Force Base and US CENTCOM.

All these require a constant level of emergency preparedness and management.

During the recent Super Bowl, three primary geographic branches reported into the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), along with multiple city, state and federal agencies that helped the EOC. SAP BusinessObjects was the core of its information-sharing infrastructure. This, along with video conferencing and NC4’s E Team application for situational readiness, connected team members and ensured they had access to the information needed to help address potential emergencies in a more coordinated, centralized way.

Xcelsius (part of the SAP BI solution) dashboards helped teams visualize information like incidents in chronological order, logistics requests, local hospital statuses and local hospital bed counts. These interactive dashboards also allow the EOC staff to perform important “what if” analysis , to pose hypothetical scenarios and practice appropriate responses.

Picture credit Civic Heraldry.com

Guest Column: Technology and Home Brewmasters

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – fishing, basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is our good friend from Spain, Dennis Howlett, whose ZDNet and other blogs you see linked very frequently on my other Deal Architect blog.

Here he is on his thirst for fine, home made beer.

"From the tender age of 17 right through to the time we moved to Spain, the production of beer held a fascination at all sorts of levels.

At its most fundamental, brewing is cooking although these days it seems to have been turned into something more akin to an exercise in chemical engineering. As a long time member of the UK's CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) I wanted to preserve a craft that goes back thousands of years. That's because there is something intensely satisfying about taking the most basic of ingredients and turning them into something that is always socially acceptable.

The technology may have advanced but the basics remain the same. Soak malted grains in hot water to extract fermentable sugars, add hops for bitterness and keeping, boil, cool down, pitch in yeast to turn sugar into alcohol, bottle or cask up, wait a few days and and then drink. Of course if it was that simple then we'd all be doing it and here's where the technology kicks in.

It's surprising just how much you can change the character of a beer by raising or lowering the extraction stage temperature (mashing in brew terms) a few degrees. Similarly, pitching different strains of yeast will radically change the characteristics of a brew. Throwing in a handful of the choicest hops at the end of the boil can add a wonderful aroma to an otherwise unremarkable brew. Is this science? I'd prefer to think of brewing as an art with scientific overtones. I can't for instance begin to recount the number of times I'd reproduce a recipe only to find that something 'changed' to produce a different result to the one I expected. It all drank well.

Over the years, equipment that was once the purview of the big brewers came within the range of the amateur. When once we slopped plastic buckets, we eventually gained access to stainless steel, fabricated contraptions capable of turning out high quality beer. In some senses, it took a bit of the 'hit and miss' fun out of the game. But then there really is nothing much more satisfying than reproducing a Fullers' ESB or Guinness clone. To do that, you need good equipment, capable of faithfully getting the right amount of fermentable sugars out of the right quantities of grain. HomeBrewMart has something for starters and more experienced brewers.

We had invested in a fairly expensive kit aimed at micro-breweries from Mossbrew that we ran out of a huge garage at our house in France. Brasserie de la Varenne produced three regular beers. A straw colored quaffing ale for summer. It looked like a lager, had hints of honey and drank like a bitter. A darker, more full bodied potion that would have been at home alongside anything Marston's produce was second up and finally a dark, full bodied creamy stout.

All the ingredients were imported form the UK, a relatively expensive exercise but one which made best use of the SUV on cross channel visits. We'd go to the Salisbury Plains to buy the best malted barley and up to Nottingham for yeast and hops.It was nothing for us to return with a quarter ton of grain.

The best beers were always made in the winter when it was a lot easier to control fermentation temperatures which should ideally be around 75 degrees and when conditioning temperatures of around 40 degrees were near perfect. Long hot summers were not so great for brewing, which was why we made plenty in 750 ml bottles and finished casking around the beginning of June, hoping we could keep the beer cool enough to last through September. The rig made around 90 liters a time and after a while we found the locals really taking to it. Our farming neighbor really liked that we made beer because it meant he could get 20-30lb of free grain to feed his flock of poultry. We got eggs in return plus the occasional chicken.

The rig was an ingenious contraption that combined a variable pressure pump with precise heat control for both the mash and boil phases along with a clever cooling system that allowed us to 'drop out' all the gunk at the point when we needed to pitch the yeast. Beer making is a leisurely pursuit but dropping the temperature from boil to 75 degrees as fast as possible is one of the best ways to ensure a clean, clear finished product. Pro heat exchangers are fine if you've got the money. We didn't so employed a series of copper coils that took cold water on one side and discharged warm on the other side. In order to conserve water, we transferred the warm water to butts for later use in the garden.

People came from far and wide to sample the stuff. What better way to build up a social circle in the middle of nowhere. We even set up a bar with English hand pull engines. I was really proud of those as a hand pulled pint that delivers is the epitome of the brewers' craft.

I didn't go as far as full chemical analysis though I was always keen to ensure we had a great strain of yeast on hand and that the ingredients were in the best condition possible. In an effort to maintain consistency, I used a commercial brew recipe calculation engine - today you can get some on the web such as TastyBrew.com . It helped considerably but nothing beats the 'rack of eye' approach to working a great brew. Man in tune with nature's gifts is how I like to think of it.

We were just at the point of truly commercializing the stuff when we departed for Spain. That ended my brewing escapades - at least for the time being. We live in Jaen province where the summer temperatures regularly hit the high 90's. Brewing beer in those conditions is almost impossible without a cold room or underground bodega. Winters here are ideal but priorities dictate that the home office gets sorted out first.

Another day? We'll see. My brewing days are not entirely over. Just on hold."