who do you think you are?

If you thought Deja-vu was weird, chech out this story. It looks as though your perception of physical "self" can be over-ridden by the application of a simple video VR style helmet, which replaces what you see with what another entity sees while wearing a stereoscopic camera.

This adds to a whole host of strange but simple tricks one can do with the human body and a few minutes with some volunteers. Go and check out the story!

On a related note, have you ever done the levitation trick? Get together yourself and 4 friends and ask someone (anyone) to sit in a chair. Gather around the person in the following configuration - two stood by the knees, two stood by the arm pits. To test your strength (as a control), each of you clasp your hands together to make a finger gun, with both index fingers touching together and pointing outwards. Now, put the fingers under both armpits and both knees, and try to lift the person. Can't do it, right? 

Now, each of you remove your hands. Now, you all have to stand around behind the person sitting in the chair. One person needs to place their hand floating above the subjects head, then another person place their hand, then another etc. Until all eight hands are stacked in a column above the subjects head. The hands should not be touching, and no one person's two hands should be adjacent (i.e. someone else's hand must be in between). Stand here for between 1 or two minutes, and whenever I've done this we've always hummed while the hands were stacked. I don't know if it actually helps this work any better, but it certainly adds to the atmosphere!

Once the time is nearly up, someone should count down the last 5 seconds, and on "one" everyone should unstack their hands, make the finger gun, shove the "barrell" into the arm pit/knee crook and LIFT! You'll be amazed how strong you've become....

Another weird effect is to do the following experiment. Facing someone you know, ask them to put their hand against yours, palms touching. Then, fold down and interlink all of your fingers together, except for the index fingers, which should remain pointing. Now (weird bit), take your opposite hand and stroke the two fingers between the index finger and thumb of your free hand. This should feel weird, and if you do it long enough, you'll start to feel yourself touching the underside of your finger (even though it is pressed against the inside of you compatriots finger).

What are you doing now?

Hands up if you use sites like twitter and facebook? Just like me, you've seen these services/sub-features that let you create a micro-blog - a series of 1 liner anecdotes about what you are currently doing. You've also used them. So how useful are they?

Well, it depends on how much information you can put into a single sentence. In this time of verbosity - where information is becoming more complex, and harder to put across - there is still an undercurrent of everyday life that can be represented at the short-end of the information spectrum.

It also depends on your language skills, and here there's a tough dichotomy of sorts.

The syntax and nomencalture used in text messaging - an offshoot of the fact that once-upon-a-time SMS messages could be no longer than 160 characters - evolved to be as short, precise and - well - universal as possible. So today's generation has some foreknowledge of succinct methods of communication.

But looking at the standards of english that students are coming out of school with nowadays, you could be forgiven for thinking that to-the-point could mean meaningless.

Fortunately, we aren't trying to teach physics or shakespear by the humble micro-blog. We might be OK then, so long as we stick to the facts we know best - our own lives, and the dealings we have around us.

Everyday happenings are simple, succinct and universal. If I have a toothache, and I want to tell my world of friends on Facebook, then I can say "Alex has a toothache, and jeez does it hurt", and then I can expect equally to-the-point messages of sympathy back.

Never before have we been in a position to give people realtime news about the minute humdrum goings-on of our day-to-day. In circles of family and friends, sometimes this can be a very powerful outlet that allows one to share how they are feeling, maybe about the passing of a loved one or the joy of a new baby.

By the every-day, normal nature of the "information current" contained in these live-fed sentences about our lives, one really needs a simple gadget that one could use at any time, at virtually no cost, to allow one to post information out into the ether. Has anyone got a new mobile phone I could borrow, my plant needs watering???

Microblogging is, to me, a good thing if the content is to be shared with those who are close to us.

Plants have feelings too....

If you feel like you need to get away for a while, but are concerned about your little plant friend and its state of moistness, you can use this Twitter Plant Watering reminder kit.

I guess I might be cynical, but is this really that useful? If I am away long enough that my plants are going to dry out, I'm probably on holiday and

1. don't care
2. probably have someone (a relative) coming into the house to water my plants and feed the animals.

If I'm not away long, then the plants will get watered regularly by me, or start to look a bit brown, at which point I'll notice and water them.

Do you really want to be harangued by the very lack of moisture in a small bit of soil around your plant while dining on the veranda of an expensive hotel?

For those who just bumble around waiting for technology to warn them of every little thing that is happening, then this is another gadget for you. It will detach you from the love and care you give to your beloved pot plants (if you're the green fingered type), or it will nag you wherever you are about your dead plant (even if you don't really give a monkey's).

Nice.

UK government bans "complicated technology"

In a somewhat interesting twist, the UK government is seeking a ban on the use of what they loosely describe as "complicated technology" in their provision of services, especially where they may be used by the elderly.

In the Queen's state opening of parliament today, a new equality bill will make simplicity a requirement for any service that employs technology as its main method of interaction with the public.

Novel use for text messaging 1

I found the following article, which makes for some sobering reading: Surgeon Carries out amputation by text. The bit that fascinates me is the fact that something like this couldn't really be done by you or I - we haven't the requisite set of skills to base the procedure on - but that something so simple as SMS enabled the inductive small step to allow that surgeon to save the boy's life. Had SMS not been available, that boy would have died....

What's this blog about? Simple, really....

Hi. I work in the technology industry, and I'm fascinated by the novel uses of technology. So, this blog is about the novel uses of technology. Here, I will post discussions, links etc. on the uses of technology that I've found on the net, or that I have seen elsewhere on my day to day travels.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog!