Bear in mind, that the scheduled times are typically those when I am not working – yes I am a little stressed, and incredibly unsympathetic to people who tell me they don’t have time to do things because they are “too busy”.
I’ve had to start scheduling gym time, because otherwise there’s a good chance that I won’t be able to make it. Which has set me thinking, because normally there are a couple of classes I could go to and I pick the one that works in my schedule. What would be good, though, is if I could put all the possible times in and my calendar could work out the ones that are possible, and then remind me an hour before.
In fact, you could suggest degrees of aggression for the reminder, i.e. I would like to set a goal, say for 5 workouts in a week, and it would harass me accordingly, i.e. if it’s Wednesday and I haven’t trained yet, it should start getting really pushy. But if it’s Thursday and I’ve already been 3 times, it could be a little nicer and say, you can have today off if you like – provided that I can make two more training times on Friday/Saturday/Sunday.
It’s not just workouts, either, I’ve blocked out four hours on Friday afternoon to do “inbox processing” (very GTD of me), but realistically that can happen any time of day. So I’d like my calendar to be a little flexible in appointment scheduling around that, provided there’s a four hour block between, say, 10am and 10pm for me to have that time.
I think there’s a lot that could be done with location awareness, too. What do you think?
The other day, I blogged about how technology education had to better prepare students for the future, but I didn’t come up with many ideas for how. Ultimately, it’s hard to prepare for the unknown and I evade predictions about the details. It’s really hard to educate for the future, if you don’t know what it will be like. However I think there are some things that we do know – mostly because they’ve already started happening.
But what can we say about the future?
Being able to find stuff will be more important than knowing stuff.
Not being comfortable with technology will be a huge disadvantage.
Need to be adaptable due to the fast changing nature of life and work.
Everything will be customizable.
We will need to be smart about our privacy.
Context and location awareness will become more prevalent (you can already see this with your todo list on Remember the Milk)
Never lose touch with friends because of services like Facebook.
I think informatics education makes students better prepared for the future. Informatics is becoming increasingly prevalent – especially in biology, geography (GIS) and physics. So I think we’ll see a rise in joint degrees, and a good grounding in technology will be as necessary as basic math.
Should I switch to mac? Is it hard to get used to?
Yes, switching to Mac was the best thing I ever did and does wonders for my productivity. I have found it much easier to develop on Macs than on Windows.
Are there places children shouldn’t go on the internet?
I think this question is answered really well in Don Tapscott‘s Grown Up Digital. The short answer is – yes, but adding blocks is not the way to stop them. They’ll find a way around it! There are risks to restricting their access too much, too.
What do I think about the idea of the Semantic web.
I’m sure we will see the improvements the semantic web is supposed to offer, but I make no prediction as to whether they will come as a result of the semantic web, or something else (like improved NLP).
What are your predictions for new technologies?
The only prediction I will make here is that we will be surprised.
What programming languages do you think will be big in the future, and how do I prepare?
Prepare yourself for change – learn an OO language, a scripting language, and a functional one. This will make it easier for you to learn the new languages that will come along.
(If you’re interested in learning Java, I will be running more workshops in the new year – contact me or note in the comments if you want to hear about them as they arise. I may also run something on the basics of Haskell, if there’s demand. If you’re interested in learning Ruby, check out Ruby Tuesdays at the Code Factory).
Why is it so hard to access BASIC on Windows 98?
Because few people use it and Microsoft has opted to make it difficult for your average users to get to the few development tools that are available as standard.
I think this is one of the reasons why I see more and more developers using Macs, because it comes with many programming language compilers (Java, Python, C etc) as standard and to get to them, the developer just need to fire up a terminal.
Quantum computing.
I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about this! Try Wikipedia.
What’s Java?
Java is a programming language, taught widely and used in many applications due to it’s system independence (i.e the same code should work on a Mac, a Windows machine, or on Unix).
It is also possible to use Java code in web applications. For example, Processing is built on Java and makes it easy to create applets which are embeddable in your web-browser (see mine).
On Monday, I’m giving my “Art, Life and Programming” presentation. I’m a little burnt out after a crazy semester and frankly terrified, because I’m presenting in French.
So since I got back to Canada, I’ve been working on revising my slides and thinking about what I’m going to talk about. It’s turned out, that there’s a lot more work to do on them than I thought. So I’ve been getting panicky and stressed, which makes me less inspired, so it all seems harder than it should.
This morning, though, something clicked. 1. I have a hard time believing that I have something of value to say to that number of people, and 2. the university promotion of my talk has several errors in it (this was a little upsetting – I would have been happy to correct it, had it been sent to me). However, let’s combine these things – clearly, what I’m talking about is not obvious. Not everyone knows about it. So hopefully there will be something of value that I share with all these people.
And, if I’m not happy with my slides (which I spent a lot of time on back in August or December), that just goes to show that my presentation skills have improved.
If I’m not happy with my content, if I feel like there are things missing – that just shows how much more I know now than I did 3 months ago.
At the highest level, my talk is about how technology has changed the world, and how it will continue to. At the highest level, what’s my goal? To inspire people with and about technology, to make it seem accessible as a career, a choice for university.
On Monday, I’m going to be terrified. No point denying that as if you see me you will almost certainly know. But also on Monday I’m going to be doing my tiny bit to make a difference. I’m going to be jumping up and down and hard and as high as I can, because we need to make a tidal wave to make a change.
We can recycle all our plastic bottles. And we can cut down on international flights. We can walk to the corner store instead of drive, but our world has more problems than global warming. We can shop sustainably, we can encourage development through services like Kiva, but globally, there are many problems other than poverty. Governments can borrow money and spend it on services to create jobs, but how well that works is variable.
Here’s what I believe – technology will help us save the planet – it will provide viable alternatives to flying, and smart solutions to reduce our global footprint. Technology will make the world smaller and provide more options to people in developing countries, lifting them out of poverty. It will make it easier to force corrupt governments to be accountable, and provide means for citizens under oppressive regimes to communicate with the outside world. Innovation, not just in the financial sector, will be how the west recovers from this latest collapse.
This, I think, is bigger than my fear. So that’s what I’m going to focus on. Because I think in order to make this reality, we need nations of technologists and innovators, not bankers and traffic wardens. What better way to start than with a big group of 7-10 year olds and their families?
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