Thoughts, early 21st century - Filed under 'in_english'

Substance too strong
- 13 Feb 2012
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- abstract art finland in_english organism photo
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While doing one of the circuit boards something really cool happened. The liquids we used were too concentrated, and the board was submerged for too long. This caused the whole wiring to detach from the board. It floated in the liquid like some kind of sea organism. It was very strange, because this is something that normally is completely rigid, that looks inflexible and mechanical. Ours moved like a living being made of black wires.
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Hacklab Helsinki
- 13 Feb 2012
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- electronics finland hacking hacklab in_english photo
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I spent last Saturday building a Noiser 1.0 at Hacklab Helsinki. It was a long process:
1. A software called Eagle was used to design a circuit board. All the components were laid out in this design program.
2. Later the components were moved around optimizing the board shape.
3. When the design was good enough we printed a black and white image on a transparency using a laser printer.
4. Shining ultraviolet light for 125 seconds through the transparency, the shape was transferred to a board.
5. The board was put into some liquid for 15 seconds. We wore protective glasses and gloves.
6. The board was rinsed with water, and submerged in another liquid for half hour. You can see the result in the bottom left photo.
7. We then drilled lots of holes through the board.
8. We placed all the components on the board, with the legs going through those little holes.
9. The components were soldered onto the board.
10. We finally connected the battery and you can see what happened on this video.
It was really special to hold in my hand something that used to be a bunch of pixels on a computer. Something with a beautiful design and a shiny golden color.

I will definitely create more boards. And I'm really looking forward to using the 3D printer to create some interesting shapes.
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Runkeeper's poor privacy settings
- 4 Feb 2012
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- fail in_english privacy text
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I decided to Google my own name a few weeks ago. Most of what I found was expected, but one thing called my attention. I found my own profile at Runkeeper.com. It was a surprise because I had no intention of sharing that information with anyone except one friend. But there it was: my name, exercise times, distances, even the exact route in a map. I'm usually very aware of privacy issues and think before sharing, so I found this extremely annoying.

I immediately went and changed my name. I tried to change my photo but it didn't work. There is no button to delete my photo either. After many attempts I tried using Firefox. It allowed me to replace the photo in my profile, but not in their forums.

It came to my mind that if my profile was there, others' were too. I went to Google and restricted my search to their domain: google.com/search?q=site:runkeeper.com. Have a look at it yourself: over a million profiles waiting to be downloaded. Most of them with name, last name, city, sometimes weight, and often a very detailed map of where exactly this person was running or cycling. I would say most users do not know this information is there for everybody to see. I think there is more than one way this information can be abused. Maybe by health insurance companies or by someone wanting to enter your home. Just as an experiment, I searched in Google+ some of the names on that list. I felt tempted to write them a message and ask if they knew their details are online, but decided to write this post first.

There is a discussion in their forums about this issue. I made a copy here in case it's taken down. In comment #22 someone from support claims they can not do anything about Google indexing their page, which is not true. He even says we should contact Google about this, which is ridiculous.

If you use Runkeeper, watch out and let your friends know about this.
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Gravity acceleration
- 3 Dec 2011
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- education in_english text
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I remember discussing with my math and physics teacher. I was about sixteen years old. She argued that the attraction the Earth exerts on any bodies around it increases as we get closer to the center. My intuition was telling me that if gravity acceleration is caused by mass, the point of maximum gravity should be the surface of the planet, not the center. At the center of the earth we would be surrounded by mass, so nothing would be pulling us towards the center of the Earth anymore. I believe she probably had this formula in her head: F = G*m1*m2/r*r. That's Newton's law of universal gravitation. In that formula, as the distance between the two masses decreases, the force gets stronger. If the distance (r) would approach 0, the force (F) would increase towards infinite. This formula is useful if we consider the two masses (m1 and m2) to be points. But the Earth is not a point. Points have no inside and outside, but this planet does.

Somehow a few days ago, twenty years after that discussion, these ideas came back to me. So I went and asked Mr. Internet. It turns out we were both partially right. The gravity acceleration does not immediately decrease as we move towards the center of the Earth, as my intuition had told me. In fact, it first increases a little as we go down. There are at least two reasons. One, the effect of the planet rotation, which tries to throw us up into space, is stronger on the surface than down below. And two, density of the matter inside the planet is not always the same: it changes depending on the depth.

That means that as we start digging towards the center of the planet, the gravity acceleration initially increases, reaching the maximum at about half way through our trip to the center of the Earth. But after that it decreases down to zero, as I had suspected.

My teacher did not appreciate so much my ability to get the right answers without knowing or remembering all the theorems and rules. At least publicly she didn't, I don't know what she thought about it. In any case I believe it was an ability to be promoted, not something to get rid of. My feeling is that teachers wanted students who were able to memorize things, not understand them. That's why I find this video important: Changing Education Paradigms, why I enjoyed the book Hackers and Painters. And maybe one reason why I'm interested in the Khan Academy and recorded almost 100 episodes of Fun Programming.

The two images are Creative Commons material. You can find the license and author information here and here.
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Beautiful words
- 16 Jun 2011
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- creation in_english photo
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I photographed a page of a book, then experimented with filters in Gimp.
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Android phones used as a computer interface
- 14 Jun 2011
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- idea in_english tech text
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As far as I know, there isn't much interaction between smart phones and computers today. They are mostly used as two independent devices. I can access the files in my phone from my PC, sync contacts and music, but not much more.
When I'm in front of my computer I usually have my phone plugged into it. This phone can detect acceleration and has a hi-res touch screen. Why not use the phone to augment the computer?
It would be great if my laptop could read all phone sensors in real time. Then it could be used as a game controller. A mouse in one hand, and my phone in the other. I could tilt it, touch the screen and even see information about the game in my phone's display. Maybe it would be even possible to use the phone for aiming, using the phone camera to track objects in my computer's screen (registration points).

But as I don't play much, I'm more interested in productivity than in games. I'd like to use the phone's display as an external display for my laptop. For instance the Gimp's toolbar or a color selector could be shown in my phone, leaving more free pixels in my laptops display. As I'm working with my Wacom tablet on my right hand, I'd like to use my left hand tilting the phone to control color, opacity or brush width. If I'm creating music, I'd like to tilt the phone to control the filter frequency or the amount of effect in a certain audio track. If latency is low enough it would be a much better interface than a mouse and a keyboard, something that could complement other MIDI controllers.

I think there are some experiments in this direction, but if Google (or someone else) added the required APIs and libraries to Android it would become much easier to experiment in this field. Hopefully some developers and artists find this concept interesting enough to work on it.
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Processing bezier fish
- 20 May 2011
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- creation in_english processing programming
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I've been playing with processing.js today. It's been months since the last time I did any programming. This is a new version of the Bezier Matrix found in my home page hamoid.com, but this time using no Flash. I only tested it on Chromium, hopefully it works on other browsers. Please let me know on the comments :)
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Texting monk
- 17 May 2011
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- asia cambodia in_english photo
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When I see a Buddhist monk drinking cola or using a cell phone there is a syntax error in my brain.
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Angkor Wat
- 17 May 2011
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- asia cambodia in_english photo
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Big trees pour over old stones.
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Anonymous
- 15 May 2011
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- asia in_english photo text vietnam
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People cover their skin for various reasons in different parts of the world. In Vietnam and other Asian countries many women do not want the sun to make their skin darker, so you see them dressed as in the picture even when it's 35ºC outside. It's funny when you think that people in Europe spend their money in tanning beds because white skin looks ugly, then people in Asia pay for creams that make their skin whiter. Come one people! There's nothing wrong on the way you look! :)
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About

Hello. This is the blog of Abe Pazos. Here I share my creations and ideas. You can find more about me at http://gplus.to/hamoid I recommend watching the photos in full screen mode: press F11 (Firefox or Chrome) and click the photo.

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