I have learnt several new things over the weekend:

1. If ones removes the fairings, fuel tank, nose cone, mirrors, headlight, and speedometer from one’s motorcycle it looks like a Soviet manufactured pile of rubbish.  One is also left with vast quantities of bolts, most of which require different tools to fasten / unfasten them.
2. ScottOilers are very clever bits of technology, and are the way forward.
3. If one replaces the fuel tank on one’s motorcycle and forgets to re-connect the fuel pump, it doesn’t start.  This causes one to worry, scratch one’s head, realise one’s mistake, utter many profanities, and then take it all apart again.
4. If one tries to start one’s motorcycle without the fuel pump connected, one ends up with a lot of fault codes logged in the ECU, and a very annoying service light which stays illuminated on the dashboard even when the problem has been corrected.
5. When one takes one’s motorcycle to the dealership to have the aforementioned fault codes removed, one is asked (in a very sympathetic and friendly way) whether the message “IOB” appeared on the digital display.  This, apparently, is an abbreviation for “idiot on bike”.
6. If one had not been so conscientious by going to the dealer and had ignored the service indicator altogether, one would have gotten away with it.  Apparently fault codes for “IOB” errors clear themselves after the bike has reached full operating temperature having been run from cold on three successive fault-free occasions.
7. It’s really very hot this Summer.  Especially after removing one’s rather heavy fuel tank for the third time, trying to figure out why it won’t start.

I have just been rendered completely speechless.

Apple have released a completely new product, the iPhone 4, and yet it has no more storage space than the last one. What on earth were they thinking? The only reason that I have not bought an iPhone so far is that my iPod Touch (32GB) is already full and I need not only a new phone, but also an iPod with more storage. I was hoping to solve both problems at once, and if there had been a 64GB iPhone 3GS I would own one by now.

I am phenomenally disappointed. I desperately wanted to like their new product but now I have been forced to think again.

Today I have discovered a product which is nothing short of astounding.  It works like an ordinary SD card which can be used in most digital cameras, but is fitted with a wi-fi radio.  Why?  Well because the moment you get home the card will automatically connect to your home wi-fi and transfer your photos directly to your PC or Mac.  Better still, when you’re out and about the card will monitor your local surroundings for any available wi-fi hotspots, and then use them to automatically geo-tag your photos using Skyhook wireless technology (the same technology that the iPod Touch uses to determine its position without needing a GPS module).

I’m gob-smacked -  I absolutely love this as an idea, because I hate having to manually transfer photos to my Mac.  Further research has revealed that a range of  products are available from the same company, some of which allow you to transfer photos home from worldwide hotspots as you travel.  Brilliant.  Just brilliant!

Do you want one?  Well why are you still reading this?  Go to the eye-fi site immediately.  http://uk.eye.fi/

The world is changing.  When I was a child there were two options for powering an electrical device; you either plugged it into the wall socket, or put batteries in it.  It worked, life was simple, and I knew where I was with it all.   However it seems that we humans are starting to get bored with these two simple energy options, and we now want to power our gizmos by other means.

Back then it would have been laughable, and people would mockingly say “oh, so you just want to pluck energy out of thin air do you?”.  But remarkably, it seems that we are now genuinely seeing the beginnings of some alternative solutions, which actually can pluck their power source out of thin air.  This new area of technology is generally known as “Energy Harvesting”.  Now you could of course argue that this is nothing new.  For example, upon my wrist I have a mechanical watch which winds itself as I move around.  So in that sense I suppose we have been making use of wasted energy for years.  What’s more interesting is that now the world of electronics seems to be catching up.  Portable solar panels are becoming more and more efficient, and now entering the arena we have something called the “RCA Airnergy”.  It’s a small box about the size of a mobile phone, which uses wi-fi signals to gradually charge its internal battery.  When you need to charge one of your gadgets, you simply plug them in to the Airnergy and the battery delivers the required power.  Even better; the manufacturers tell us that it will cost around $40 when it is released on to the market.  Bargain!

And it’s not just in the commercial world either.  In industry there are now readily available solutions to harvest the energy from any piece of machinery that generates even the slightest vibration.  You mount a small component to the chassis of the equipment, connect up your power leads, and hey presto you get a DC voltage to power an electronic circuit.  One supplier of this technology is a company called “Perpetuum” (http://www.perpetuum.com/).

We can now even engineer clothing, made from materials which generate usable electricity as we move around during the day.

Watch out everyone, this stuff is going to change the world.

I have just three words of introduction for this post.   I WANT ONE!

Sadly, there are also three words to describe why I can’t have one.  CAN’T AFFORD IT.

Yes, much to my lasting regret I shall need to find the £3,500 to get my grubby paws on one, which sadly is not likely to happen any time soon.  Bugger.

http://www.yikebike.com/

Geek Warning: This post contains subject matter of an extreme geeky and techie nature.  Persons with no interest in matters of advanced technology should look away now.  Symptoms displayed by affected persons may include yawning, glazing over, confused facial expressions, and a strange desire to hurl yourself off a cliff.

Still reading?  Oh you sad git.  OK, well you asked for it – we’ll start with a question.  What’s this …

Not sure?  You’ve probably got quite a few of them in your house right now.  It’s not a crystal ball, no, but in fairness I’ve been a bit unkind to you because although it looks quite big in the photo, it’s actually very small indeed.  Let’s zoom out a bit and try again …

Got it now?  Yes, it’s the Infra-Red (IR) emitter on the end of a remote control.  This one is for my TV as it happens, but you’ll find them adorning the end of most wireless remote controls in the world these days.  So why am I bothering to tell you about all of this drivel?  Well because the days of IR remotes are numbered, and they’ll probably be out of date faster than you might think.  The replacement, dear reader, is likely to be something called “RF4CE”, or “Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics” to use its full name.  Remote controls will no longer use Infra-Red signals, which are adversely affected by bright sunlight, and have a habit of being blocked by anything that gets in the way.  Instead they will use short range radio links, so that all of the usual interference problems will magically vanish and you won’t even have to point your remote in the right direction any more.

But there’s more to it than that.  RF4CE is really quite clever, and the best thing about it is that it’s bi-directional.  We’ll start simple, and if we stick with the example of the television for a minute it’ll give us the basis to explore some possibilities.  Using RF4CE, not only can the remote control to send commands to the TV, but the TV could also send data back to the remote.  “So what?” I hear you say.  Well imagine the possibilities!  You’re sitting on your sofa watching your TV, and you wonder what’s on another channel.  You pick up the remote control, and you browse through the TV viewing guide.  But not on the TV screen, no no, on the remote.  You could have a full graphics touch-screen on the remote which could provide you with all of the information that you require, and the information would be sent to the remote by the TV without interrupting the program that you were watching at the time.  So then you decide to change channel using the set of virtual buttons which have been displayed on the remote by the TV, and you find yourself watching David Attenborough talking about the latest cool creature that he’s discovered in the wild.  But what did he just say?  Did he really just suggest that you could look at your remote control and see lots of extra information about this fantastic new creature?  Surely not.  But intrigued, you glance down and sure enough your TV has sent a fact-sheet for the ‘weird-o-saurus’ to the remote control in your hand.  Wow!

Now here’s where things start to get seriously interesting.  The remote control in your hand isn’t necessarily the one that was supplied with the TV.  It could be the one for the CD player, or perhaps it was one of those One-4-All type of remotes that you bought because you got fed up with having seven of the damn things on your sofa.  The bi-directional data communication allows the appliance to send information to the remote, so when you bought your new TV you simply told your remote control to download the appropriate user interface from the TV, and from that point onwards you had a fully compatible remote control.  It’s a weird concept, but a very clever one.

It’s at this point that you realise that you ought to put the oven on for dinner, so once again you flick to the set of controls that were downloaded to the remote from your cooker, and select the temperature that you need.  Ahhh automation, isn’t it great?

Anyway, enough of the couch-potato possibilities – how is all of this possible?  Well for the ultra geeky amongst you I should explain that RF4CE uses something called IEEE 802.15.4.  Now if you’re really sad you might be saying “oh, you mean Zigbee.  Cool!”  For the slightly less nerdy reader I should perhaps explain that Zigbee is a short range wireless mesh RF communications protocol.  Were those just words?  Simpler still?  OK, it’s kind of like Bluetooth, but smarter.

Bluetooth has been in our lives for some years now, and it’s something that we all know and accept as a useful technology.  There are one or two limitations with Bluetooth though, and strangely enough they are the ones that Zigbee was designed to solve.  The first annoying limitation is that Bluetooth only allows a point-to-point link, meaning that you can only use devices in pairs, for example one Bluetooth headset with one phone.  OK, admittedly some headsets allow you to pair two phones, but the end result is often a bit ropey, and you can never actually use more than a pair of devices at any one time.  Zigbee allows each device to maintain a connection with a large number of other devices, all at the same time, and even in cases where the two devices in question would never actually need to talk to one another.  This may seem odd, but the reasons for this will become apparent in a few moments.

The second limitation with Bluetooth is that the rather limited range of the connection can be a bit of a nuisance.  If you move the two devices more than about 10 metres apart, frankly you’re really starting to push your luck.  Mesh networking is different because it allows the connection to hop from one device to another, rather than maintaining a point-to-point link.  So if you want to control the TV in a different room, the signal might actually be starting at the remote control in your lounge, bouncing off your microwave oven in the kitchen, then bouncing once again off your mobile phone which is sitting on the desk in the study, before being re-transmitted to the TV in the bedroom.  All of this happens in the blink of an eye, and you wouldn’t know any different.  Your microwave oven doesn’t have any clue what a TV is, of course.  It just receives the signal and passes it on to the next node in the mesh network.  The mesh of devices could actually extend over great distances if there were enough compatible bits of technology in between.  So you want to control the lights in your living room from your friend’s house in the next town?  Well theoretically you could, and the signal would be passed from device to device, using products belonging to other people along the way!  If you’re worried about security then relax, because the data in encrypted at the two end points and so it can’t be influenced by someone in the middle.

But even if we keep the example as down to earth as possible, a mesh network would realistically allow all of the appliances in your house to talk to one another.  Your TV could talk to your video recorder, telling it when to record your favourite programme.  Your alarm clock could talk to your kettle, telling it when you’d woken up and you might want a brew.  Your car could talk to your garage lights, telling them when you were home.  The list of possibilities are endless, and it all happens without any wires.

If this all sounds like technology for the next century then think again because it’s already here.  Zigbee mesh networks have been up and running for some years now (mainly used in toy projects by the geeky nerds), but the big manufacturers are just starting to catch on.  Philips, Samsung Electronics, Sony and Panasonic announced a co-operation in mid 2008, and in 2009 Sony released a TV which used this new technology in their remote controls.

So keep an eye on the world, because RF4CE is here and it’s very very cool!

Incidentally; if you are a complete nerd of the highest order and you want to play with Zigbee for your own geeky projects, then I can recommend the “XBee” series of modules.  They’re available from many on-line stores, including here, here, and here.

It will soon be Spring.  OK, perhaps that’s a bit of a premature statement, but I’ve realised that the rain will eventually stop and I shall soon need to plant things.  My first season of vegetable gardening went well in 2009 and I shall be having another go in 2010.

I did however find the continual effort of watering things rather tiresome, so for the coming year I have a plan.  The plan involves a water tank, some hose, a float valve, some cunningly drilled holes, some plastic trays, and strict adherence to the laws of physics. Yes, I’m going for automation!

It’s all in my head at the moment, but provided that gravity doesn’t do something unconventional in the next few months, I think I should have a working solution by April.  Now then, where’s my Two Wests and Elliott catalogue?

A little something for all iPod users out there who are lucky enough to own more than one iPod / iPhone. Finally someone has produced a cable with two iPod connectors which will allow two devices to be charged and sync’d from just one USB socket. The “extreme clever clogs” award therefore goes to CableJive!

http://www.cablejive.com/products/duaLink.html

I have in my pocket a train ticket.  “Yes, well so what?” I hear you say.  Well I only mention it because this one has “DB” written on it in large red letters which means that it’s German and it was printed by the Deutsche Bahn railway company.  It also has “ICE” written on it which means that it’s a ticket for the Inter-City Express.   I’m reliably informed this means that the train should be quiet, efficient, and rather fast.  Well we shall see.

I’m currently in Leipzig where I have been working for the last couple of days and this particular train is bound for Frankfurt, where I shall hopefully change and get on another one for Brussels, and then change again for Antwerp.

Admittedly a train may not immediately seem like the best way to get from Eastern Germany to Western Belgium, but given that the equivalent flight would cost around eight times the price it seemed like a sensible decision.  Besides, I’m always flying when travelling on business and it gets boring after a while, whereas I’ve never used the train before and so it’ll be a new experience for me.  This particular train is one of the tilting trains; the “ICE-T” variant.

So far I’ve been pleasantly surprised.  The train is modern and well equipped, the seats are comfortable, we left precisely on time at 09:15, and the very nice lady in my section of the train bought me a mug of tea at my seat shortly after departure.  So all that remains is to see whether the standards remain this high for the rest of the journey.

10:11 – Weimar – Our first stop.  I’ve so far not seen any evidence of the rumoured phenomenal speed out of this thing, but in fairness we’ve not yet made our way out of the urban areas.

10:30 – Erfurt – A nice place, surrounded by beautiful countryside and well kept farm-land.   The carriage is getting busier now, but everyone is still quiet and considerate.  Frankly, the British have much to learn about public transport.

10:43 – Gotha – Worrying; according to the timetable that was left on my table, we now appear to be running late.   How can this be?   I’m in Germany, and surely this constitutes a lack of efficiency.  I’m confused; maybe I’ve misunderstood something.

10:58 – Eisenach – The view from the window is now starting to get seriously pretty.  I can see old hill-top forts, winding rivers, picturesque little villages, and it’s generally all rather pleasant.

11:51 – Fulda – Yep, there’s no denying it; we are definitely running late.  I’m not sure what to make of this because from my experience it is so un-German that I’m nervously beginning to wonder how the locals are going to take it.  Some of the people in the seats near me are starting to check their watches quite frequently so I know it’s not just my imagination. I’ve never seen a German revolt before but I suspect that I may witness one before the day is out.

12:41 – Frankfurt (Main) Station – Errr… we’ve arrived precisely on time.  This is obviously superb and I’m delighted, but I simply don’t know how it has happened. We were definitely running late, absolutely without question, but DB have apparently pulled a little white German rabbit out of their metaphorical hat.   I can only assume that at the front of the train our driver must have glanced down at his watch, panicked, exclaimed something along the lines of “ziss vill not do!”, then taken hold of one of his precisely-engineered controls and turned the wick up a bit.  Well no matter what happened, I’m impressed.  Why on earth can’t we do this sort of thing in England?

12:55 – The DB business lounge – Peace, comfort, a drink, a sandwich, a tree, no bill.  Nice.

13:29 – Seat 41 aboard my second train; the ICE 14 to Brussels – It just gets better and better.  This train is newer than the last one, if that’s actually possible.  There is much more space, it’s quieter than before (which again is something that I’d have previously considered implausible), and of course it left precisely on time.

13:55 – Somewhere blurred – WAAAAAH!!  Warp speed Mr. Sulu!  OK, this thing can shift.   We’re travelling parallel with an autobahn and there are Porsches on it which appear to be moving rather slowly.   Now I’ve previously driven on an autobahn and I know just how fast people drive.  The on-board speed sign shows 270 km/h in this photo, but I saw it go up to 299 km/h during the journey.  This train is seriously quick!

14:45 – Koln – I think that half of Europe has just boarded the train.  Why is Koln so popular, I wonder?  Or are they perhaps all just trying to get out?  Either way the peace has been shattered by rucksack-carrying student types, which is a pity.

15:16 – Aachen – We’re still going well but now it’s raining.  Not that it matters when one is inside, of course, but it spoils the view somewhat.  I bought a car from Aachen once, which was fun too.

15:44 – Liege – Umm, well I don’t want be be unfair to the place but Liege doesn’t really look very interesting.   It probably doesn’t benefit from the fact that it’s grey, wet, and horrible outside.  I’m probably wrong and I’m probably doing the place a huge injustice.   Sorry Liege, but you really would benefit from sprucing your station up a bit.

16:26 – Brussels Nord – Right then, I’ve come to a conclusion.  German ICE trains are absolutely marvellous, and I shall definitely use them again if the opportunity arises.  The service is superb, the facilities are excellent, and if you don’t mind your journey taking a bit longer then it’s considerably more comfortable than flying.  It’s also quite a bit more civilised; for example nobody has asked to see my passport and not once has a security official made any attempt to find out how much metal I might have about my person.  Furthermore I have not been separated from my luggage at any point, and my belt and shoes have stayed fastened around my anatomy in the accepted fashion at all times.  Well done Germany, you get today’s travel prize.

16:37 – Somewhere between Brussels and Antwerp – Ah… Sorry Belgium, you DON’T get today’s travel prize.

I am now sitting aboard one of your trains and it kind of reminds me of driving a Vauxhall Vectra.   Why?  Well because if we look at the situation logically then we find that both of the aforementioned vehicles are perfectly functional forms of transport that do their job in an adequate fashion.   But that’s about as far as it goes – adequate.   I’m struggling to be kind when I use that word because I’m looking around at the scratchy plastic, and at some styling that makes me suspect that it was done by a Romanian pig farmer wielding a club hammer.  I’m just overwhelmed by disappointment! If you compare it to the German experience then frankly it’s a bit dull.  Just like the Vauxhall Vectra.

17:15 – Antwerp – Hooray, we’ve arrived!  A disappointing final leg of an otherwise utterly superb journey.  However credit where credit is due; Antwerp station is actually rather impressive, and the architecture in the original part of the station is stunning.

If you want to travel across Europe and you are not in a huge rush – take the train!

Two hundred and seventy four pounds? Good grief, that’s just obscene!

What am I talking about? I’m talking about how much money Orange want to provide me with a shiny new iPhone 3GS – that’s what. Now I shall not deny it – I am indeed a bit of an Apple fan-boy and therefore I went weak at the knees when Orange started to offer the new iPhone. But prices like these are just silly. £274 is simply not a reasonable amount of money to pay for a new mobile phone, even if it is the coolest gadget on the face of the planet to be manufactured in living memory.

What particularly wounds me is that I’m told that I spend quite a lot on mobile phones. Usually when I walk into the shop to upgrade, the sales staff suck air through their teeth when I point out my latest choice of technological pornography and they utter the words “oooh, that’ll be very expensive”. Then they tap a few keys on their computer, view my account details, their eyes widen, and they say “oh, I see you spend quite a lot with us Sir, so your upgrade will be free today”. “Thank you” I think to myself, “that’s much better”.

So how on earth can Orange expect me to pay over two hundred pounds this time around? Well I wont, so there. Sorry Orange, you’ll have to do better. I have a price in mind, and it certainly doesn’t contain three digits. Well, not unless you include the pence anyway.

iPhone? iThink not.