ruk.ca from peter rukavina

How to Make Maps of Surveillance Camera Locations

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:24:07 -300

From Surveillance Camera Players: How to Make Maps of Camera Locations. See also How to Stage Your Own Surveillance Camera Theater.

Bio Mapping

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:13:16 -300

Bio Mapping:

The central notion of Bio Mapping is that we can make better sense of our own body data than a disinterested observer. By recording our own body's bio data along with our geographic location we can review the information and make meaningful decisions about our life.

Is

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:54:14 -300

All over Copenhagen I saw signs for Is. For example, here at Boys Shawarma og Isbar on N�rrebrogade:

Is, it seems, is the Danish short-hand for "ice cream," although it technically translates simply to "ice." Which is fine, until you come to Iceland. Where, in Icelandic, a language with the same roots as Danish, the name of the country is �sland. Which, to English eyes, looks a lot like Island.

Suffice to say that when arriving jetlagged in Keflavik and trying to navigate the currency jungle enough to buy a coffee, having currency that doesn't say "Iceland" on it anywhere, but rather �sland, is very confusing.

Something even more confusing: the Danish word for "Island" is simply �. Weird.

Mask Tourism

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:51:07 -300

Over the weekend I descended into the heart of "tourist Copenhagen" -- the area that radiates out from Tivoli. The main shopping street, Str�get, was stuffed full of tourists doddering along with their maps out and daypacks bulging, and the Metro station's ticket machines had line-ups 10 deep of confused looking visitors unable to parse the local transit system.

Tourists are annoying, and my trip into their enclave was the least pleasant part of my time in the city. The irony of writing this as a tourist myself is not lost on me. But man did I ever breath easier once I got back out of the melee.

Which got me thinking: the least interesting parts of any city are those that are frequented by tourists. Think of the Halifax Historic Properties, or Peakes Quay in Charlottetown, or Quincy Market in Boston: worldwide these tourist ghettos are increasingly morphing into one giant mass of Beanie Baby and homemade soap shops, "authentic" pubs, faux heritage pageants, and souvenir stalls.

Every city has its official "tourist zone" -- in Copenhagen, for example, it's essentially the the city bike zone (the area where you're allowed to take free city bicycles), and here's the tourist map of Charlottetown.

So here's my idea: in the same way you can now buy a DVD player that strips out profanity, why not publish "masks" that can be applied over city maps that filter out the naughty tourist bits -- cartographic "here be boredom" devices. Take it to the next level and you could integrate the masks with mobile devices so that they would vibrate and flash when in danger of veering out of the interesting parts of a city.

Copenhagen SIM Redux

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:19:44 -300

Like last year, I used a Telia pre-paid SIM card in my mobile phone this year in Denmark. The SIM costs 100 DKK, which includes 100 DKK of credit. I used the phone mostly for data access, both also sent some SMS and made a few calls. I checked my balance on the way onto the airplane yesterday, and it seems that, for me, 100 DKK is exactly the right amount of credit to have, as my balance on leaving Denamrk was 0,02 DKK:

Here's how my usage broke down over the two weeks:

Sending 16 SMS: 32,10 DKK
Data (email, web): 55,32 DKK
Received 6 calls: 0 DKK
Placed 4 calls: 12,56 DKK

The big sinkholes were the ten SMS I sent to "overseas" numbers -- friends in Sweden and Germany who happened to be also in Denmark at the time -- at 3,00 DKK each.

The 55,32 DKK (about $11 Canadian) got me 2766 KB (or 2.7 MB) of data, which I used mostly to check email when out and about, and to surf TinyPlazer.com and Jaiku. The same usage on my pre-paid plan on Rogers Wireless in Canada would have cost me $138 (where the rate is 5 cents/KB).

Currency Mnemonics

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:30:23 -300

In Britain I think of the pound as "twice a dollar" (which it is, almost exactly) and I think of the Euro as "a dollar and a half." But a Danish kroner is worth 21 cents Canadian, which makes for more on-the-flay mathematics than my mind can handle. So I settle on everyday mnemonics. Here's the ones I came up with:

Cost of a flat: 1,000,000 DKK.
Monthly mortgage payment on a flat: 10,000 DKK.
Cost to have a cat's ball joint repaired: 5,000 DKK.
Return ticket to Sweden on the train: 175 DKK.
Cost for a few days worth of groceries: 100 DKK.
Film ticket (afternoon): 60 DKK.
A large cappuccino: 30 DKK.
A good machiatto: 22 DKK.
A croissant: 12 DKK.

Since I learned it from Peter Livingstone, my main unit of mnemonic currency for large items is the cat ball joint repair: I see a new car advertised in a magazine and I think "oh, that's 100 cat ball joints worth," or a two-week flat rental (1 ball joint job).

Closing Down the Copenhagen Operation

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:16:45 -300

Tomorrow afternoon I'm booked on an Icelandair flight to Halifax by way of Iceland. Schedules being what they are, I'll overnight in Halifax before flying back to Charlottetown on Tuesday morning.

On either side of my lovely dinner with friends last night I've been spending a little tourist time in Copenhagen.

When I arrived yesterday morning in the centre of the city it was raining, with signs of raining more. So I diverted to the Grand Teatret movie house to see The Band's Visit. This was a minor miscalculation: although English-language films are, as a rule, shown in their original version here with Danish subtitles, much of The Band's Visit is in Hebrew and Arabic. Which the subtitles translated into Danish. It's a testament to the other qualities of the film that my inability to understand most of the dialogue didn't stand in the way of enjoying the film.

Just as the film was letting out I got an SMS from Til, my Plazes colleague, who had managed to find a way to inject juice into his powerless mobile phone with a one-time-use power pack after leaving his power supply at home. We met up at Europa, a caf� in the heart of the very, very crowded main shopping street. Despite the claustrophic journey and cramped quarters inside, I had an absolutely amazing sandwich with smoked salmon, smoked cream cheese and pears.

Til and I then headed down to Christiania, a neighbourhood I'd never visited in my four years of coming to Copenhagen. I was a nice way to spend the afternoon: we wandered around the alleys, grabbed an orange juice, listened to some music (and avoided some other music) and drank all the "partially self-governing" in.

Around supper time I left Til to his own devices and headed off to Peter and Nina's for dinner.

This morning I cycled down to Riccos for one last coffee, and then continued downtown to the Danish Design Center where I took in the exhibitions on Living Wood and New Nordic Cuisine, did some shopping in the shop, and had a snack.

I had lunch at Chili -- a burger place with an 8-item condiment caddy delivered with each burger -- and then wandered about the edges of downtown for a while before walking to Gloria Biograf, a tiny one-screen repertory theatre near City Hall where I saw the 2:00 p.m. showing of En fri verden -- the Ken Loach film It's a Free World.

When the film let out I caught the bus home and began the process of closing down the operation here -- washing the dishes, packing up my things, and getting ready for tomorrow's travels.

It's been a wonderful trip: the many kindnesses shown me by Olle and Luisa and Henriette and Thomas and Peter and Nina and Mark and Claus and Tobias and the rest of the Copenhagen crew have made me feel truly at home; reboot was great, with the added twist of being audience and presenter both this year, and the simple fact of working and living in the middle of everyday Copenhagen has been a welcome change.

Cafe

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:21:56 -300

Yellow Bicycle. And Door.

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:15:55 -300

Those of us who Sleep

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:08:37 -300

On my last trip to Copenhagen, in the spring of 2007, Olle and Luisa took me along to see a performance of Herr Schreber by Livingstones Kabinet. I was extremely, extremely tired -- the combined effects of jetlag and reboot having caught up with me.

By despite my fatigue -- and the fact that the show was almost entirely in Danish -- it poked me in the eye in a very pleasant way. To the point where, once I returned home to Canada, I emailed Peter and Nina -- the Kabinet -- to order a copy of their CD Those of us who Sleep in Other Peoples Houses. Peter emailed back, in part:

I'll mail you a copy of "Those of us who sleep" and let's say you can buy me a beer if we meet again in Copenhagen or elsewhere.

I was touched by his generosity and resolved that, indeed, I would buy beer when next in Copenhagen. Which is now. And so last night, with the matchmaking of Luisa to thank, Olle, Luisa and I were treated to a wonderful evening at Peter and Nina's house. I did bring beer -- bottles of Czech beer from Česk� Budějovice secured from the corner kiosk -- and enjoyed a meal and conversation well into the night. Peter and Nina have two daughters, both delightful and entertaining in their own way. There was Scotch, and fantastic ice cream, and unicycle riding, and the gentle singing of hymns in Danish by daughter and friend at the grand piano.

It was a wonderful finish to my two weeks in Denmark.

Annals of Asymmetry

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:33:06 -300

Here's the result of a "speed test" of the Internet connection at my apartment in Copenhagen:

My "down" speed is 18 times faster than my "up" speed. Which means that my ability to consume Internet content is more than satisfactory, every time I try to produce content -- upload Flickr photos, add large attachments to blog posts and so on -- my connection (and indeed my computer) grinds to a halt.

Working for Free

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:48:40 -300

I was quite happy with the way my Working for Free talk went this morning: there was a good 15 minutes of discussion afterwards, and several good conversations after the fact. You can see my slides as a PDF.

I opened the talk with Raise the Dead of Wintertime by Allan Rankin. I dare say it was probably the first use of an Allan Rankin song in a conference of European technologists.

Removing annoying 'jump to last slide' behaviour with Salling Clicker and Keynote

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:07:27 -300

The default behaviour in the (otherwise excellent) Salling Clicker application for the Mac, when used with Keynote, is to jump to the last slide if you click and hold the down or right arrow key.

This caused no end of problems for me because I found that, about 10% of the time, my standard "click" to advance to the next slide was being interpreted as a "go to last slide" click. And going to the last slide, in the middle of your presentation is, well, somewhat disruptive. So here's what I did to cure Clicker of this problem:

Open the Salling Clicker Preferences.
In the right-hand 'Scripts' menu under the 'Clicker Items' tab, open Keynote, and select the 'Keynote Remote' item.
Click on the 'gear' icon at the bottom of the Scripts menu, and select 'Edit in Script Editor' and when Script Editor opens find the following three lines:

else if keyCode is in forwardKeys then
    tell application "Keynote" to activate
    tell application "SEC Helper" to simulate keyboard virtual keycode 119

comment out the lines by adding two dashes to the beginning of each:

else if keyCode is in forwardKeys then
--    tell application "Keynote" to activate
--    tell application "SEC Helper" to simulate keyboard virtual keycode 119

Save the script (File | Save).
Test in Salling Clicker.

preboot

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:36:20 -300

Ilkka Halso

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:32:04 -300

I also liked the work of Finnish artist Ilkka Halso at Arken -- there were several images from the Luontomuseo ("Museum of Nature") series, including this one, which I found very compelling.

Also a couple privately...

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:26:10 -300

Some of the art I saw at Arken this afternoon was by Tim Noble and Sue Webster. On the card describing one of their pieces it refered to them as an "the artist couple," but then later it was written, parenthetically, that they are "also a couple privately." I'd never heard that turn of phrase before, and I quite like it -- a few words that succinctly fill in the relationship blanks.

Orange Ford Cortina

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:29:49 -300

39 Minutes to Art

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:17:48 -300

I took a trip out to Arken this afternoon -- it's a modern art gallery on the coast, just south of Copenhagen. I had my GPS running for the whole trip, and you can see the trip in Nokia Sports Tracker. The trip was 23km from door to door, and took just over 39 minutes. Here's how the speed and altitude look on the Sports Tracker graph:

Here's a bigger version of the same graph. The first 9 km of the trip were on the "F" line of the S-train from Bispebjerg to Ny Ellebjerg; I then got on the "E" line, which was express all the way to Ish�j (it reached 123 km/h at its fastest). At 21 km I got to Ish�j where I wandered around for a bit looking for the bus station, and then took Bus #128 out to Arken.

The altitude-measuring feature of the GPS on my Nokia N95 obviously aren't bang-on all the time: there's no way you could run a train on altitude hills like that.

Here's what came at the end of the trip:

ruk wordle

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:46:39 -300

Okay, so I'm a little wordled now. Here's the last 500 posts from this weblog as a Wordle:

Here'a a bigger JPEG of the same image.

Anne of Green Gables Wordle

peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:37:33 -300

From Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino comes a pointer to a typophile's dream toy: Wordle. Give Wordle some text, and it creates a "word cloud," sizing the words based on their frequency. I fed it the entire text of Anne of Green Gables, and here's what it came up with:

You can see a larger JPEG, or visit the Wordle itself (and make your own).