Rolandt

“Code is a language, but a very special kind of language. Code is the only language that is executable […] code is the first language that actually does what it says.”

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Wendy Chun, Programmed Visions

“The painful reality is that America is stuck in a broken and dysfunctional Middle East, trapped by its own lofty rhetoric and illusions, and tied up and befriended or opposed by tiny tribes and larger powers whose interests are not its own.”

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Aaron David Miller, Obama Is Right: America Can’t Fix the Middle East

Like London, Paris is now building fast bike lanes free of motorized vehicles, as mentioned in this article from City Lab. Last year the first part of this network opened along the Bassin de l’Arsenal, part of the Reseau express velo (REVe).  “Reve” means “dream” in French, and such a separated bike system in a city known for its traffic and complexity will be welcomed. The Mayor Anne Hidalgo has stressed the importance of an active and pollution free city in her bid for the 2024 Olympic Games. The intent is to have 45 kilometers of bike lanes free of motorized vehicles in place across Paris by 2020. Remember this is Paris-with lots of traffic, and a pretty dense urban form.

Paris has just been awarded the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Earth Hour Capital 2016 for their leadership in banning older polluting cars, extending public transportation and implementing a review process through a centralized Climate Agency to ensure goals of sustainability are met for current and future citizens.

If we were to create the same separated bicycle highways in Vancouver outside of the downtown and Seaside Greenway, what streets should they be located on, and how would they be prioritized? Would we use the existing bikeway network, remove some parking and install barriers? Would the first priority be strengthening dedicated fast bike lane connections to and from SkyTrain and Canada Line stations? Or do we look at Greenways,  that network of 140 kilometers of street that are for pedestrian and bicycle users ahead of motorized traffic as the dedicated fast bike streets of the future?

Yesterday I rode my bike from Arlington to Falmouth, Massachusetts, to support my nonprofit. I’m very sore, of course, but I wanted to share some of what I saw. Bicycling is a unique way to experience the countryside — you see, hear, and smell things at a pace that allows you to drink in the … Continue reading Views from an 88-mile ride through Massachusetts →

The post Views from an 88-mile ride through Massachusetts appeared first on without bullshit.

What surely is the lowest-cost-ever political ad — found on a phone pole near 4th and Fir in Vancouver.

BlackBerry is rolling out the monthly Android Security Patch a day early. With some OEMs you are lucky to get it at all.

It’s been an insane couple of weeks on all fronts, so as usual I thought I’d jot down a few notes on what’s been happening before the next Monday rolls in and I’m awash in work again.

Brexit

Oh, my. Looking at the demographics and fallout, a lot of the young folk are now quite justifiably angry – both at their elders for mortgaging their future and at their peers for not voting – and a lot of damage is quite evident already.

My original thoughts on the matter still stand, and I’m keeping tabs on what Vodafone and Sky are doing (or, rather, actively not discussing) because I have friends working at both, but it will be a fairly drawn out affair. I expect I’ll be able to better gauge the impact on the tech industry when the Web Summit rolls in, but, again, I really hope this means Lisbon will become even more attractive to startups.

Maker Faire Lisbon 2016

For the third year running, I helped out with the Maker Faire. Things were a little trickier since most of us are now working at different companies, but at least on my end the mix of Slack for streamlining information flow, Waffle for keeping tabs on GitHub issues and GitHub Pages for actually hosting the site is still a winning combination.

Thanks to one of my usual Makefiles for bringing up a Jekyll environment anywhere and some Automator workflows for herding media assets, spending quite a few late evenings in the past couple of months putting online copy together was actually quite enjoyable, but the actual weekend of the Faire was markedly more fun.

Besides taking roughly 600 photos (which I’ve since trimmed into a 150-odd shot Flickr album), I walked 12Km in a single day putting up signs and moving things around with a bunch of old friends, and it was awesome. Except where my feet were concerned – got a few science-fair grade blisters out of the whole thing, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Foregoing a weekend’s rest does take its toll, though, so I’ve been trying to catch up as best as I can during another highlight of this period which is somewhat new to me.

New Fiscal

Work at Microsoft (at least in my neck of the woods) is all about the fiscal year, which begins on July 1st. This being my first round at things there, and still reeling from all the above, I’ve been trying to appreciate the changes it brings and musing about my progress there so far.

Nothing much has changed since I last wrote about it: the people there and parts of my role are still awesome and I still don’t like the fact that working in (post-)sales, even in a technology transfer/guidance role, isn’t very engrossing work, but I’ve found a good enough parallel, which is teaching – I’ve always enjoyed teaching and mentoring, and focusing on those facets of the job has been increasingly gratifying.

It’s not enough just yet to shake off an overall feeling of lack of accomplishment due to my deeply ingrained habit of designing, building and delivering stuff rather than just discussing it and putting together a few choice bits here and there, but it’s a positive aspect that I can play off against that.

Same goes for my constantly moving around – I seldom stay more than a few hours at a single location and my schedule can be pretty challenging at times, but on the other hand it’s very nice to be able to take advantage of gaps to pick up the kids from school, and with good planning I can have a few unfettered stints of quality working time at my home office. Work/life balance is always a hot topic (and my personal ratio has always been somewhat skewed), but I like the (illusion of?) control I have right now.

And speaking of control, like most interesting companies, Microsoft actually gives you a chance to fix things when you point out likely solutions. I’m going to have a chance at working with a number of different partners and industry verticals this fiscal year, so that promises to be fun.

There’s still a fair amount of adjusting to do regarding bits of the technology, though – I am still trying to muster time to get to grips with C# but, like my stints doing enterprise Java, still find the IDEs, tooling and overall ecosystem bafflingly overwrought. Good thing there’s a healthy amount of Python among the Open Source stacks I deal with.

But, alas, the physical angle can be grueling, and the past couple of weeks highlighted that in spades.

Thanks to the poorly coordinated renovation works all over Lisbon these days, my commute to (or from) the office or a couple of customer locations takes me well over an hour, so I’m finding my ThinkPad (and charger) increasingly loathsome to carry around in the sweltering (and increasingly humid) heat that Portugal enjoys this time of year – unlike most of my colleagues, I refuse to drive in Lisbon, so I have to lug the thing around for two to three hours a day, and every gram weighs literally against it.

And no, it isn’t helping me lose weight, either. Got to work on that.

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First fatality underlines how long this is really going to take. 

• A fatal accident in Florida involving a Tesla Model S that had Tesla’s Autopilot feature activated, serves to highlight that it is going to be many years before the market is ready to adopt fully autonomous driving.
• The accident happened in May and involved a tractor trailer which appears to have failed to give way when crossing the highway causing the Tesla to pass under the trailer with tragic results.
• The trailer was painted white and was highlighted against a brightly light sky and neither the Mobileye sensor nor the driver saw the obstacle before the collision as the brakes were not applied.
• Both Tesla and Mobileye have been quick to highlight that this incident was both a very rare occurrence and that Autopilot can only be activated by the driver after accepting all liability.
• Mobileye also pointed out that its sensor system is not designed to deal with a laterally crossing vehicle but that this is on its roadmap for 2018.
• I think that although both Tesla and Mobileye are blameless in this incident, the automotive safety regulators will come down hard on what it is likely to perceive as untested features being made available in production units.
• Fortunately for Tesla and Mobileye, this incident did not involve the fatality or serious injury of a third party, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is likely to consider this as a real risk.
• Every component that goes into an automobile needs to be rigorously tested to ensure that it is reliable enough not to cause fatal accidents and I can see this being extended to software.
• Many automakers have set a deadline of 2020 (Baidu 2018) by when they expect to have fully autonomous functionality in commercial vehicles but I can’t see the regulator letting them leave the factory.
• The end result is that while the technology might be ready, it is clear that the market is almost certainly not going to be ready resulting in this technology sitting on the shelf for a while.
• The issue of liability alone will keep the regulator and the insurance companies busy for years (see here).
• The default position today is that the driver of the vehicle is liable for any accidents that were the fault of the software.
• This is an easy solution but it completely obviates the point of an autonomous system as no one wants to go to prison due to software bugs.
• Consequently, I continue to believe that the auto makers much more time than the current hype would suggest to get their autonomous systems to work properly.
• This gives them the luxury of not being forced to go with Google (see here) which I continue to believe remains a threat to any automaker hoping to differentiate based on digital services or data.
• The net result is that the market will take much longer than expected to develop and those that are now rushing to get to market are likely to arrive way too early.
• I still do not expect to hire an autonomous vehicle in Silicon Valley much before my retirement.

Jonathan Goldsbie @goldsbie
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Darius Kazemi in NYC @tinysubversions
With alarming speed Run DMC tore up the charts and cemented their place in hip hop history. twitter.com/goronhugs/stat…

Virtual reality is, once again, being heralded as a technology poised to transform education. I say “once again” because virtual reality has long been associated with such promises. VR appeared in some of the earliest Horizon Reports for example, with the 2007 report positing that virtual worlds would be adopted by higher ed institutions within two to three years’ time; funnily enough, the 2016 report offers the same outlook: we’re still two to three years out from widespread adoption of VR.

The history of VR goes back much farther than this – the phrase “virtual reality” was coined in 1987 by Jaron Lanier, but attempts to create the illusion of being somewhere else – through art and/or technology – date back farther still.

“But this time it’s different.” That’s the common response from some quarters to my (repeated) assertion that there’s a substantial history to education technologies – to both the technologies themselves and to the educational purposes for which they’re designed or utilized – that is consistently ignored.

This much is true: augmented reality and virtual reality startups have seen record-setting levels of venture capital in recent years predicated on advancements in the tech (although much of that investment has gone to just a handful of companies, such as Magic Leap). In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR, Google released its Cardboard viewer, and Playstation announced it was working on a VR gaming headset – these have all been interpreted in turn as signs that virtual reality will soon be mainstream.

“Soon.” As the New Media Consortium’s annual reports should serve to remind us, VR has always been “on the horizon.”

(The Sword of Damocles, built in 1968 by Ivan Sutherland)

Today’s ed-tech entrepreneurs are wont to claim that they’ll be the “first” to bring virtual reality to schools, and that today’s ed-tech journalists rarely fact-check or dispute these statements underscores how little either seems to know or care about ed-tech history. But the problem, as some long-time VR developers insist, isn’t simply that these folks don’t know much about technology’s past: it’s that they don’t know their research (also a huge problem); and quite arguably, they seem unfamiliar with any of the debates about design or definitions. I mean, what is virtual reality?

Educational Stereoscopy

There’s a hint as to an answer to that question – or at least to the question “what isn’t virtual reality?” – in this Wired headline from late last year: “Stop Calling Google Cardboard’s 360-Degree Videos ‘VR’.” But in many ways, I fear, the answer (and the definition) might not matter. If the product label says it’s VR, then it’s VR; if the pundits and press say it’s innovation, then it’s innovation; if they say it’s disruption, then it’s disruption.

Even with new, consumer-oriented VR devices coming (soon! right?) to market, the bar for “what counts” as virtual reality might be getting lower, particularly for schools – who, in fairness, would be unlikely to afford the high-end machinery VR requires, something that was also a stumbling block a decade ago when the promises of “virtual worlds” in education mostly involved Second Life. Nowadays the adjective “virtual” is applied to all sorts of digital media, games, and simulations with such frequency that the phrase “virtual reality” might have lost almost all meaning or specificity.

Virtual reality, at least in its “purest” or strictest sense, does still require some very expensive and cumbersome hardware in order to create something more than an “immersive” viewing experience. Headsets. Gloves. Sensors. Projectors. Processors. To truly provide a virtual reality, the technology must achieve “sensory immersion in a virtual environment, including a sense of presence,” game developer and VR scholar Brenda Laurel recently argued, listing a series of requisite characteristics almost entirely absent from the multimedia products marketed to schools as VR.

The focus of many these products remains a visual learning experience, and as such, the slideshows and videos peddled by today’s ed-tech companies offer about as much “VR” as the Victorian stereoscope. (The technique of creating an illusion of three-dimensionality is almost identical: a combination of lenses and imagery that trick the brain into interpreting depth.)

But just as striking as the parallel between the old and new stereoscopy technology is the similarity of their marketing messages: why should schools adopt this technology? The rationale for these latest “View-Masters” is almost unchanged from that offered by new media proponents almost a century ago.

(Image credits: Educational Screen, 1924)

“Learn about other cultures.” “Visit faraway lands without leaving the classroom.” “Guided tours of places school buses cannot go.” “Modern pedagogical methods require modern media.” “Pictures speak a universal language.” “This is science.”

Google has been among the loudest lately at trumpeting the potential for “virtual field trips” with its Expeditions product. But as I’ve argued previously, it’s not remotely clear that the positive benefits of going on actual field trips extend to the experience of watching a 360 degree video via a device strapped to your face. (Okay okay, these new VR products certainly sound a lot less exciting when I describe them that way.) We don’t believe that field trips are the equivalent of watching educational films in class, do we? So why is VR any different?

According to the marketing hype – offered with very little recognition of any media research or media history – VR will be a new and unique “empathy machine.” A century after Thomas Edison’s famous assertion that “books will soon be obsolete in schools” thanks to the wonders of film, watching movies in class is re-presented as progressive pedagogy, as technological innovation.

Educational Simulations

There’s a different thread that one can trace to tell the history of VR in education – not merely watching educational films, in other words – and that’s the history of training simulations, which, if it includes modern war games, dates back at least to the early 19th century. (The military’s contributions to education technology are often overlooked, in a quest perhaps to position ed-tech as pedagogically, if not politically progressive. Or perhaps, again, it’s simply that folks don’t give a damn about history.)

The pedagogical structure and implications of simulations are quite different than those of “virtual field trips.” Rather than emphasizing learn-by-seeing, that is, educational simulations tout learn-by-doing. Or ideally, they do – a recent list of “The Top 10 Companies Working on Education in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality” described this gem: “Lecture VR is a VR app … which simulates a lecture hall in virtual reality.” (There are echoes of Second Life here, no doubt, when universities carefully reconstructed their campuses and classrooms in a virtual setting.)

(Image credits: Virtual Reality Society, Teach Creativity, Technology to Enhance Learning)

Many ed-tech products like to tout their constructivist principles, but sometimes these reduce “learn-by-doing” to “learn-by-clicking.” Many simulations are just that: click on the scalpel in the frog dissection simulation app; touch the screen in the surgery simulation app; click on the airplane controls in the flight simulation app.

Virtual simulations promise that learning experiences can be undertaken more safely (and sometimes more cost-effectively). That’s certainly the appeal of virtual frog dissection, virtual surgery, virtual flight training, and the like.

One of the earliest flight simulators – and yes, this predates the Microsoft software by over fifty years, but postdates the Wright Brothers by only about twenty – was developed by Edwin Link. He received the patent for his device in 1931, a machine that replicated the cockpit and its instruments. The trainer would pitch and roll and dive and climb, powered by a motor and organ bellows. (Link’s family owned an organ factory.)

Although Link’s first customers were amusement parks – and you can see on the patent title that the machine was called a “Combination training device for student aviators and entertainment apparatus” – the military bought six in June of 1934, following a series of plane crashes earlier that year immediately following the US Army Air Corps’ takeover of US Air Mail service. These accidents served to underscore the lack of pilots’ lack of training, particularly under night-time or inclement weather conditions.

By the end of World War II, some 500,000 pilots had used the “Link Trainer,” and flight simulators have since become an integral part of pilot (and subsequently, astronaut) training.

(Image credits)

There’s a materiality, by design, to the flight simulator. Obviously, it’s meant to closely replicate the experience of flying an airplane. In the safety of training facility, you can get a “feel” for the controls; you can get a “feel” for how to react to turbulence. That “feel” is physical; it isn’t just visual and it isn’t virtual. It isn’t about having “empathy” for a pilot or the plane. The simulation provides an embodied experience as a pilot.

The body matters to learning.

VR, Mind, and Body-less-ness

(Image credits)

Despite the promise of "immersion" in another reality, many of today’s VR products aimed at schools (often invoking specious scientific claims as the “case study” above demonstrates) don’t seem to think much about education and embodiment – that is, the materiality of our lived and learning experiences – despite, again from the example above, of an invocation of constructionism. (Actually, I’m pretty sure the company above meant “constructivism” here, since “constructionism” builds upon the learn-by-doing of constructivism by stressing the importance of the tangible not just the abstract.)

I’m reminded here of N. Katherine Hayles’ work in How We Became Posthuman:

one could argue that the erasure of embodiment is a feature common to both the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman. Identified with the rational mind, the liberal subject possessed a body but was not usually represented as being a body. Only because the body is not identified with the self is it possible to claim for the liberal subject its notorious universality, a claim that depends on erasing markers of bodily difference, including sex, race, and ethnicity.

This erasure of bodies and identities and difference runs throughout today’s education technologies (built, as they still overwhelmingly are, by white men). Even without a VR headset, there’s a disembodied-ness with most digital learning. The imagined student using these new technologies is a “roaming autodidact,” as Tressie McMillan Cottom has argued.

And the imagined subject matter?

I’ve been playing pretty steadily with my C128 setup, and I’m finding it’s a really consuming diversion. I’m working through some ideas for another exhibit along the lines of the UMW Console, and the C64 games are keeping my retro play quota filled. And while Cogdog is speculating about the future aesthetic of Reclaim Hosting‘s cPanel, I can assure you it has not gotten that bad….yet

Sneak peek… @jimgroom is doing more than playing Commodore 64 games in his basement… pic.twitter.com/H2O0IWrxvJ

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) June 30, 2016

In my last post about the C128 I talked about the ZoomFloppy device which bridges your Commodore computer with a contemporary computer via USB. This device is great for copying .d64 files (or disk images) to and from 5 and 1/4″ floppy disks. In this post I want to discuss the other piece of hardware I bought from RETRO Innovations alongside the ZoomFloppy called the uIEC/SD drive.* The uIEC/SD drive is similar to the ZoomFloppy in that it allows you to transfer files from your 2016 laptop to your 1985 C128. But rather than being a bridging device connecting your machine to the C128 to transfer files, this acts like an actual drive that you plug into the IEC serial port and use the cassette port for power.

The drive has two IEC Serial ports so you can connect another disk drive if you want, and the idea of having 32 GBs of space on a C64 (the mode it most often runs in) is pretty wild. There are presently 65,535 blocks free on that card! 

In fact, the above image captures a break-through for me with one of the conceptual problems I had with the uIEC/SD. After working with the ZoomFloppy I was thinking this drive would load .d64 files, but I was wrong (and confused). The .d64 files are disk images you write on a floppy that already have the program files set. But the uIEC/SD is a disk drive, so  you don’t burn images to it, rather  you copy and load program (.PRG) files. I was banging my head against the wall on this for a little bit trying to load .d64 files off the drive until I finally realized the flaw in my understanding. Slouching towards enlightenment.

One of the programs folks were recommending you run on the uIEC/SD drive is the CBM File Browser. What is it, well an O.G. file browser just like the name says. You copy it on your SD card then load and run it. After that you’ll get the above interface that you can navigate around with your joystick or mouse (I love how the joystick is interchangeable with the mouse here). It let’s you choose between drives, sort files, and quit. You can also create directories on the SD card on your contemporary computer, and use this application to manage the potentially thousands and thousands of programs you could load on a single SD card. This made me realize that the d64 files were not files but disk images, why that hit me then I am not sure—that is something I am wondering because going through all this is like learning to compute again. It’s also an interesting lesson in just how much more receptive my mind is  to computational thinking than it was 30 years ago. What was utterly alien and bizarre 30 years ago seems totally logical, almost naturalized, for me now.

After this the power of the UIEC/SD drive was clear, virtually unlimited storage space for programs you can organize and load using a fairly intuitive browser. Modern computing in the making My next question was now that I understand the difference between a disk image (.d64 files) and program files (.PRG), can I copy files to and from the uIEC/SD drive from my internal 1571 disk drive. This is the drive I insert floppies to write the d64 image from my computer to a disk via the ZoomFloppy device. So, can I copy program files (PRG files) from the uIEC/SD onto a floppy disk? From what I understand (granted I have already demonstrated the limits of my understanding here), I don’t think you can copy individual program files to and from your computer with the ZoomFloppy, it seems limited to copying only .d64 files. Anyone know otherwise?

Anyway, I can now confirm that the uIEC/SD drive does indeed copy program files to and from another the internal disk drive using a disk utility program like CBM-COMMAND.  This tool enables you to copy files between disks, delete films, rename files, create disk images, copy entire disks, etc. It is pretty powerful. In the screenshot below I am using shift + D to select the drive I want to access.

Here you can see drive 8 (internal 1571 disk drive) and the drive 10 (uIEC/SD), and by selecting various files with the spacebar you can then write them to a floppy disk by selecting F5.

Below you get a now common warning dialogue box about deleting a file, you have to love this aesthetic!

After this extensive playing with the uIEC/SD the last two days I have to say I am pretty sold on this hardware, and it has helped me understand the Commodore environment a lot better. My next goal is to start playing around with JiffyDos because I am hearing that helps speed things up a bit, which may not be a totally bad thing around here

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* Some of you who are in the know may be asking yourself why the hell I bought both? The simple answer is I was hedging my bets in the event one of them didn’t do what I thought it would. Italy is a long way from South Dakota, and shipping costs are as much as both pieces of  hardware combined—so I decided to bite the bullet and get both. I figured I’ll probably be using at least one of them for some kind of installation over the next year, so it won’t be a total waste.

 

Just a quick note today about this video over at the Raspberry Pi blog in which Eben Upton talks about the history of the Raspberry Pi. Yes, we are at this stage with the Raspberry Pi now, it’s iconic and it has a story for the history books.

An amazing project and I have stopped counting how many Pis I’m using myself (8 when I stopped counting in 2014), have configured for other people or given away as a present to get others hooked on computing.

Brett O'Lognner @logoninternet
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One of the themes that has risen to the top following the churning soul-searching on the heels of the Brexit vote is the notion that cosmopolitans – the global elite that are pro-EU, pro-free trade, pro-free movement of people (within the EU, at least), and anti-populist – have fumbled the future, that this was their vote to lose.

Ross Douthat tears a hole in the discussion:

[…] it’s a problem that our tribe of self-styled cosmopolitans doesn’t see itself clearly as a tribe: because that means our leaders can’t see themselves the way the Brexiteers and Trumpistas and Marine Le Pen voters see them.

They can’t see that what feels diverse on the inside can still seem like an aristocracy to the excluded, who look at cities like London and see, as Peter Mandler wrote for Dissent after the Brexit vote, “a nearly hereditary professional caste of lawyers, journalists, publicists, and intellectuals, an increasingly hereditary caste of politicians, tight coteries of cultural movers-and-shakers richly sponsored by multinational corporations.”

They can’t see that paeans to multicultural openness can sound like self-serving cant coming from open-borders Londoners who love Afghan restaurants but would never live near an immigrant housing project, or American liberals who hail the end of whiteness while doing everything possible to keep their kids out of majority-minority schools.

They can’t see that their vision of history’s arc bending inexorably away from tribe and creed and nation-state looks to outsiders like something familiar from eras past: A powerful caste’s self-serving explanation for why it alone deserves to rule the world.

Douthat sounds more like a populist than a Republican, in this piece. But maybe he’s going for a double whammy: is he using Brexit as a foil to justify Trumpist populism? Is he hoping that the Make-America-Great-Again movement will grow, and Hillary and the liberal elite will be identified as that caste that thinks it deserves to rule the country?

Civilis Brutus has posted a comment:

Great shot!

Peter Wilby, The Guardian, Jul 05, 2016

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The Guardian has not had a good few weeks, and this article continues the trend. The thesis is simple: Sugata Mitra "brushes aside all established thinking about education." Why, "Even Jean Piaget’ s supposedly immutable stages of child development – familiar to every trained teacher – now need a rethink, according to Mitra." But there is no research supporting his position. "His claims need to be tested by properly controlled experiments that allow for the galvanising effects temporarily created by any new idea, which will lead to papers published in reputable, peer-reviewed academic journals." So, "to convince us of that, I fear, he needs far better evidence than he has or seems likely to get."

So I ask: why should Mitra be concerned about convincing an editorialist for the Guardian, particularly one that still believes Piaget? Why is Mitra right only if published in certain journals? He's right if the evidence says he's right, no matter who writes it, who it convinces or where it's published. As for the suggestion that "he needs fully independent evaluation, including a means of measuring long-term results after the novelty effects wear off," I say "Fine. You pay for it. You conduct it. It's not up to Mitra to do this, and not a failing of his that he hasn't."

[Link] [Comment]

More opinion on the Massey Tunnel replacement project, involving a really expensive, really big bridge.  Dermod Travis writes in the Straight.

Here’s Mr. Travis’ reason #7 to hit “pause” on the project.  The reference to Bellringer concerns a planned audit “to evaluate the quality of evidence to support the decision to replace the George Massey Tunnel”.

7. Stakeholder buy-in

With Metro Vancouver mayors giving thumbs down to the project, there’s not much public buy-in for it.

It’s why Bellringer’s performance audit could prove invaluable. If the government’s numbers are all on the up and up, what could it possibly fear from taking a few months to let the auditor general do her thing and report back?

Now that would really debunk myths, if they are indeed myths.

Dermod Travis is the executive director of Integrity B.C.

Ariana López Di Rocco, teachlr blog, Jul 05, 2016

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Good post on the basics of gamification that begins (as it should) by distinguishing between game-based learning and gamification. "Gamification  isn't new, it is based on the nature of human learning. Since the beginning of our species, challenges and threats have propelled us to learn. These are the basis of gamification, just to create an environment in which realism and motivation are used to engage and empower a student." Note that the  Spanish language version probably reads more smoothly.

[Link] [Comment]

Dan Colman, Open Culture, Jul 05, 2016

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The rise of free thinking (and free love) in the United States the 1960s came as a surprise to many people. In retrospect, it shouldn't have. After the second world war the American government unleashed a propaganda effort to make sure it didn't happen again. This video is one part of that effort. But even more pervasive were the radio advertisements that defended 'the American way' (you can listen to one here; or another; read more about the campaign here) and fueled the demand for an education. These campaigns influenced an entire generation (who also smoked, loved cars, were obsessive about fresh breath, and believed in better living through chemistry). The  content of the radio programs reinforced these values. This campaign was for the most part beneficial. But we know that the effect works both ways, that media can promote  hate and racism and  incite populations to genocide. So it's relevant to ask what media are saying to people today, and more importantly, how society can resist the relentless pull of propaganda. It's hard - the messages get you while you're you and listening to Superman serials, waiting with a willing mind to follow examples and meet expectations.

[Link] [Comment]

Dean Jackson on the WebKit blog:

"The past few years have seen a dramatic improvement in display technology. First it was the upgrade to higher-resolution screens, starting with mobile devices and then desktops and laptops. Web developers had to understand high-DPI and know how to implement page designs that used this extra resolution. The next revolutionary improvement in displays is happening now: better color reproduction. Here I’ll explain what that means, and how you, the Web developer, can detect such displays and provide a better experience for your users."

This writeup is an incredibly great explanation of wide gamut issues with a touch on deep color as well. If you are a developer who uses color in any way, you're going to want to read this. Wide gamut displays are already here.

And of course, Acorn has had support for displaying both wide gamut and deep color images since last fall with the release of OS X 10.11 (I'm pretty sure Acorn was the first 3rd party Mac app to do so).

Do you have a late 2014 iMac (Retina 5K)? Then you've got deep color support. And if you have a late 2015 iMac (Retina 5K) you've got both deep color and wide gamut (via Display P3) support.

Runners everywhere have figured it out.

They know that the best exercise doesn’t come from expensive equipment or impossible diet plans, but from simply letting your body do the work while taking in the world around you. Unless you get lost.

Craig Slagel is a mobile app developer based in Vancouver and the founder of RunGo. By using this app, runners can map out voice-guided running tours for themselves through which they can explore a new city or better get to know their own.

“I used to travel a lot for business. I started running marathons 16 years ago and I wanted to maintain my training. I’ve been lost all over the world,” said Slagel.

Users can either choose from pre-approved routes uploaded by other runners or select from the pre-mapped routes available in the world’s major cities. If a user has specific landmarks they’d like to hit or a path they’d like to follow, they can also create a customized route and upload it for other runners to follow later.

The voice activated app serves almost as a tour guide. Runners are directed through their planned route by a guide that also points out notable sights and attractions.  The app was developed in late 2013 and was originally released in early 2o14. RunGo underwent a more official launch June 2015.

If a runner should veer off course, the voice will notify them, and allow the user to retrace their steps. Slagel is an avid runner himself having completed over 30 marathons and 90 ultra marathons and speaks from his experience running through Vancouver’s mountainous trails.

“One of my goals was to keep a lot of runners safe from getting lost in the mountains.”

With a wide variety of user generated routes as well as the ability to get creative, RunGo makes for the perfect “virtual running partner” no matter where you are.

RunGo is available for free on both iOS and Android.