making mscape analogue

Part of the quest to find out what might make mscape interesting, a continuation from here.

I think the keys to interesting mscape projects (as far as my practice is concerned) are either in some seriously nifty programming, or in the interface. I currently lack the programming skills, however I did save a load of cardboard boxes from when I moved house…

The Anticipator wraps a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) in a new housing and uses locational information from the GPS (Global Positioning System) to light some, none or all of a series of LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes).

The Anticipator will be used on the first day of a project involving 60 year 3 pupils in a Leicester school: working in teams of 5 for about 10 minutes, all the pupils will be required to help a Special Agent (me) use The Anticipator to sweep the school grounds looking for whatever it is that The Anticipator detects. (At this stage all the pupils will know is that something unusual is brewing, we’ll use this contact time to get them to speculate on what they think is about to happen and what The Anticipator is measuring.)

The Anticipator will indicate 2 large areas of high Anticipatory activity: one is where we will put the investigation shed, and the other is where… well, who knows what could happen in the other location…

Anyway, that’s the background, here’s how it’s done…

Except for a few lengths of dowel and some bolts, all the structural stuff is made from supermarket fruit boxes. I love this stuff – I don’t have a studio or workshop so it’s great for layering up and using as pseudo wood.

The main block holds the PDA mounted on top of an array of 6 LDRs (Light Dependent Resistors: when light hits their top surface their electrical resistance falls allowing current to pass more easily around the circuit). Each LDR is wired in series with an LED and all the LDR/LED pairs are wired in parallel in a circuit with a 9V battery and a rather nice switch I got from a chandlery (it’s got a very satisfying feel to the switch action!). The LEDs are housed about a metre away in a smaller block.

In the video below you can see how the amount of light hitting the LDRs controls the brightness of the LEDs. I’m using a really simple mscape consisting of concentric regions that show one of 6 .gifs with between 1 and 6 small white squares on a black background. When there is a white square above a LDR it lights the corresponding LED. It turns out that there’s enough light coming from the black background that LDRs without a square above them still make their LEDs glow a little. Placing a few layers of tissue paper between the screen and the LDRs cuts out enough of the ambient glow that the contrast between “on” and “off” LEDs is adequate for use outside in daylight.

The Anticipator from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

And that’s it really; it’s not rocket science. Well, it might be, but that’s up to the imagination of the kids interacting with it.

There will be one child either side, carrying the main block (thereby stopping their bodies from getting too close to the PDA and affecting the GPS signal) and a third carrying the LED block. The LEDs will need shading from direct sunlight (it’s a project about light and shadow – can’t hurt to get them thinking about stuff like that right from the start!) and there will need to be people noting down how many LEDs are lit and whereabouts in the school grounds we are.

I’ve deliberately not labelled anything so there’s enough space for it to be whatever each child wants it to be. This is part of a very deliberate strategy to try and leave as many gaps as possible where there are no right or wrong answers. Using the principle that “the pictures are better on radio”, leaving details to the imagination makes for a vivid experience. Each child can have their own interpretation of what’s going on and that’s what makes it powerful: it’s theirs.

Working with the children and The Anticipator on day one will allow me to plant whatever seeds are necessary and see what direction they’re growing in. It also gives the children a space in which they can meet my character and ask any questions they have. I’m not saying I’ll be able to answer them though… that’s for them to do by the end of the week!

First steps in circuit-bending

I’ve been trying my hand at hacking some kids’ toys ahead of the “noobs attempt circuit bending” event I’m holding at my place next weekend.

A quick trawl of the charity shops in King’s Heath gave me 3 things to work on: a cow, a stereo and a keyboardy thing. 2 days in and I’ve already killed the cow and the stereo.

The cow was the first to go due to careless random shorting of points on the circuit-board upstream of (or possibly across) resistors. Even without a voice though, the cow is all sorts of awesome, so I’m sure it will house some sort of project in the near future.

2nd-up was a little orange boombox with the usual assortment of play and fast-forward buttons, but also a neat little contrivance where putting different plastic ‘CDs’ in the tray would push different combinations of switches and change the playlist of songs. (Is it wrong to get excited about a switch?!)

Noodling around on the circuit-board was quite disappointing until I tried the lick’n’press method. Behold! Wibbling a damp finger over R1 gives a nice Theremin style distortion of your nursery rhymes! That’ll do.

I soldered a couple of wires to each end of the resistor and then connected the other ends of these to some split pins mounted on the top of the plastic casing.

I could now control the degree of distortion by varying how far apart the contacts with my body were (the body acts as a resistor: one thumb bridging the contacts < two fingers on same hand bridging the contacts < a finger from each hand bridging the contacts). Using a wet thumb would not provide enough resistance and the chip would short out and stop playing music - so I added a push-to-break reset switch between the batteries and the circuit board so I didn't have to keep taking the batteries out each time I needed to restart.

I also added 3 slide switches so I could change the track selection without having to change CDs.

After reassembling the stereo and finally figuring out where the left-over piece went, I spent a long time exploring different combinations and effects. ***bliss!*** [and coming from someone who considers themself to have negligible musical ability, that’s some pretty powerful bleeping to hold my attention for long enough that it was probably starting to really annoy the neighbours!]

So anyway, all was good until I noticed the demo button wasn’t working because one of the wires I’d added was running between it and the circuit board. In moving the wire I managed to detach it from the board and then in trying to reattach it I managed to ping the resistor off the board too.

R1 is a tiny-beyond-description surface mount jobby located right next to the black dot where all the magic happens. Needless to say I managed to bork everything in trying to make the simple repair. Cue much frustration and swearing!

Oh well, I’ve learned a lot in the process, made some sweet, sweet, music …and also become hopelessly addicted to circuit-bending. Guess I’m off to the car boot sale tomorrow morning to pick up some more things to break!

Digital documentation of creative projects in schools

As indicated in this post I’m often thwarted in my desire to share fantastic projects that I’ve worked on in schools because issues around online documentation are not clarified, discussed and agreed upon right at the start of the project, much less built into the time and financial planning.

I think we can – and should – do better.

The sorts of projects I’m talking about are typically – but not exclusively – those that come about through Creative Partnerships (CP) programmes that link artists and other creative practitioners with schools. I started working in schools about a year ago, and am about to embark on my 5th such project. There are obviously important child-protection issues that need to be taken into account when working with young people, however for this to be the only online documentation of the preceding 4 projects that I can officially and confidently link to is very frustrating for a number of reasons:

1. Fabulous stuff has happened and I want to share it.
2. Sharing fabulous stuff helps inspire more fabulous stuff to happen, where successive layers of fabulous stuff can build on what’s gone before it, rather than continuously having to re-invent the wheel.
3. As a freelancer, my career development relies on my being able to evidence the projects I have worked on to potential future collaborators. Absence of public documentation leaves something of a black-hole that’s bad for me on a variety of different levels. (NB Part of the CP remit is to contribute to the professional development of the artists they work with.)
4. Documentation and discussion of projects as they are in progress allows for valuable conversations that can shape the direction of the project in unpredictable, serendipitous ways.
5. Whilst CP is pretty good at stipulating OK daily rates for artists, I always find that I spend more time on projects that what I am getting paid for. Utilising documentation to at least help secure the next chunk of income is a way of gaining more value from the project.
6. When you’re pitching to a school that they should do something they wouldn’t normally do, it helps to be able to a) show them images/videos of something similar and b) some sort of evaluation of what the benefits were so that they have a reassuring frame of reference for your ideas.

There are various tactics that can be employed to ensure that images of vulnerable children are not circulated online. At a fundamental level, these often hinge upon a release signed by parents/guardians giving permission for images of their child to be used. Sometimes these are on a project-by-project basis, but increasingly I’m coming across schools that organises for blanket releases to be pursued for every child either at the start of their time at the school, or at the beginning of each academic year.

Working on CP-style projects though brings new things into the equation, so, even in schools that have acquired release permissions for all of their pupils, there is still a place for a document that outlines the implications of having different forms of online documentation and how the school wishes to address them. Not least because I am probably used to using the Internet and various online tools in a way unfamiliar to many teachers. I can’t assume that they are aware of blogging, video-streaming and discursive spaces in the same way that I am. Best to make sure everything is spelled out, right from the beginning.

There are a few things I always try and flag up in the first meetings I have with school staff, however there are often gaps or grey areas that prevent me from actively using online spaces to share projects that I’m involved in a similar way to that which I take for granted with my other work. I want to produce a document that outlines the different ways I might want to talk about the project online, what the implications of these might be and to allow the school to say “no, please don’t do that” to all or selected parts of that.

A standard, succinct, plain English guide that let’s everyone know where they stand and ensures that the documentation gathered (and there’s always lots that could potentially be used) isn’t left gathering dust afterwards.

After the response to the braindump of practicalities of using blogs in schools I’m sure this is a document that others would find invaluable too, so let’s crowdsource the process to get input from a range of viewpoints.

Creative practitioners, creative agents, agencies, schools and social media types: what do you think should be included in this document?

My initial thoughts of what could be included:

• Making it absolutely clear that once stuff is online it can be linked to, embedded and remixed by others.
• Reiterating that the internet has a memory, so you have to be sure before you put things online.
• Including discussion of work in progress, as well as showcasing completed projects.
• Gently reminding people that this all takes time and should be worked into the planning, rather than cobbled together as an afterthought.
• Getting explicit person-by-person confirmation (or otherwise) of permission status.
• Getting permission to write about projects on my blog, to link to this documentation from other places and to have permission to circulate links/documentation amongst my mailing lists etc

How about you? What challenges do you encounter and how can we work to lessen these? Please add your thoughts to the comments so I can begin to compile them into a useful tool for people working in this area.

Blogging in schools: some practicalities

I recently completed a project in a school as part of the Ignition programme. Although I’ve suggested to other schools that I’ve worked with that blogs may be a useful tool, this is the first time we’ve had permission to go ahead with one so I wanted to share something of the process. I’m always a bit reticent to blog much about school projects on this site because of various issues with working with schools and young people, but there’s important learning to be done here from all directions, so here are some notes brain-dumping the main points.

Why blog?

• In general terms they’re great for documenting the trials and tribulations of a project, as the project evolves, allowing you to potentially share the process and get feedback from classmates, other teachers, parents and other creative practitioners.
• Not this project so much, but I’m getting asked to do ‘wow!’ projects that completely take over the timetable for one or more year-groups for a week – it would help everyone involved in these if we could see examples of work like this that has happened before so we can a) reassure those that need to be reassured and b) build on the work of others.
• If the pupils are writing content for the blog, it’s a great way to check on their perceptions of what’s working well and what isn’t. Also to get a feel for what motivates them.
• Someone once described it to me as “writing your evaluation report as you go along”.
• Celebration! I’ve only been working in education settings for the last couple of years, but it’s my feeling that the documentation for what might be genuinely fantastic projects is pretty much comprehensively rubbish. We can do better. Documentation should not be an afterthought.

Permissions:

• Questions I always ask at the first meeting: “What’s the situation with permissions for photos etc?” and “I usually blog my practice, how do you feel about me blogging this project?”
• Check at every opportunity that permissions are in place. Ask, ask and ask again.
• In this case consent had already been given for all the pupils to have their photos used via a generic permission request.
• Ask again, just to make sure.
• (Some artists have described how, if there are one or two pupils in a class who cannot have their photo published, they get them to wear an armband. If the armband shows up in any photo, don’t use that photo.)
• I think there’s scope for being even more black and white about permissions: I’m contemplating producing a document that outlines how I might want to blog about a project (both here and/or on a project-dedicated blog) and the implications of this in terms of images/videos potentially being linked to and embedded elsewhere etc. Also including space for a signature saying: “yes you have permission to do this”. Any thoughts?
• Surnames were removed from posts before publishing.

Platform:

• Schools often have their own websites, but these are usually shockingly bad and nowhere near the point of being able to incorporate blog posts.
• Some schools have options for using the intranet – check in advance if these have the PHP/MySQL resources you’d need for a self-hosted install. Also ask about what ftp access you could get.
• This school has a platform (Frog) we could have used, but our delivery days were Thursday and Fridays and response times from the IT department during initial communications indicated we wouldn’t be able to get material online within realistic time-frames.
• I’ve lots of experience with WordPress, so we went for a free WordPress.com account. You’re not being paid to figure out a new system – stick with what you know so it can get done fast and not detract from contact time with the pupils.

This particular context:

• A secondary school in what’s probably best described as a ‘socially disadvantaged’ part area of a large city.
• Working with 20 Year 8 girls identified as being non-enthused with school in general and likely not to raise their attainment above the Level 4 they start with.
• Our original brief: to spark a bit of enthusiasm for learning, particularly with respect to Science.
• A lot of our efforts turned out to be focused towards building self-confidence in the girls and managing behavioural issues.
• Project duration: about 8 contact days spread over a month or two. (Two creative practitioners for 75% of the time, the remainder being one creative practitioner with a Science teacher present.
• Feedback from the initial sessions was overwhelmingly “we don’t like writing reports!”.
• The blog allowed pupils to document their work in a variety of different media: we used video, text, photo and audio.

Access:

• WordPress.com allows for a variety different privacy settings: we negotiated a trial period where the blog was accessible only to people with an authorised log-on, and then once we could demonstrate the content was OK, we were allowed to make it freely accessible.
• We’ve yet to hear back from the school about how they feel about us actively publicising the blog, so that’s a) why I’m not linking to it here and b) another thing I’d want to include in the permission document so it’s clear right from the start.

Account management:

• The pupils we were working with were moderately disruptive and rarely bought anything like pen or paper to class with them. It was not feasible to give each pupil their own log-on details.
• We used two log-ons: the admin level one for myself and a contributor role for the pupils to use.
• The contributor role allowed pupils to write their own posts, but not to publish them. Admin could moderate posts, edit if necessary, and then publish.
• After publishing, the author of the post was switched to belonging to the admin account so pupils could no longer edit the post. (Either ones they had written, or ones other pupils had written).
• Pupils did their best to get the admin password – don’t write it down and consider changing the password every so often!

Editorial decisions:

• The standard of writing amongst the pupils we worked with was generally very poor. We had neither the resources nor the desire to spend our time correcting grammar and spelling and it was important to the project that we put as few barriers in the way of the pupils communicating as possible. The school were understandably reluctant to have writing of this quality published, but we reached a compromise whereby we would correct the basics such as use of capital letters and full stops before publishing each post.
• It was originally our intention to have only the pupils writing for the blog, but as the project progressed and gaps started to appear, it became necessary to provide some sort of commentary from the point of view of the creative practitioners to bind it together.
• Post were written in non-chronological order, so it became necessary to tweak the publishing dates to relate to the events the posts described.
• All the above were outlined in a statement about editorial policy on the blog. I feel this was an important thing to do.

Tags, categories and comments:

• Since we couldn’t use individual accounts to keep track of who was writing what, we tried using tags to store this information. Pupils were asked to add a tage of AuthorXX where XX were their initials. This mostly worked.
• We also asked them to add initial tags for other pupils involved in the activity they were posting about, however this turned out to not be very practical.
• Two different categories were used: one to hold post written by the pupils and another for commentary from the creative practitioners.
• The creative practitioners made an effort to give positive and constructive comments on each post. It would have been nice for the teachers to have done likewise and it would also have been good to have had the time and resources to encourage the pupils to leave comments too so as to build in some peer review. (This would have had to have been very carefully managed though, because there were some serious clashes going on between several of the pupils.)
• All comments are moderated before being published.

Random thoughts and observations:

• We initially made a variety of recording devices (digital cameras, video camera, voice recorder) freely available to the students so they could document things from their point of view. This began to be used by some of the pupils as an excuse not to get involved (by hiding behind the camera), so we reduced it down to just one camera that could do photos and video and controlled the access to it.
• Lots of documentation is great, but it all takes time to process and there’s only a limited amount you can use on the blog.
• Check what formats school-owned devices record in. The video camera we were using turned out to be quite old and recorded in a format we couldn’t edit. When it was uploaded to Vimeo the aspect ratio was a bit squished.
• Build in a system for recharging batteries and taking data off the devices at the end of each day – cameras get used whilst you’re not there and you can’t guarantee your files won’t get deleted.
• The classrooms were were working in had one computer (at the front, attached to a video projector). We would direct selected students to write about a particular activity and give them a time limit of about 10 minutes to ensure that other people got a chance to write too.
• Sometimes it’s great to display the blogging process on the projector. Other times it’s very distracting to the other pupils.
• It’s difficult to manage use of other media – photos need uploading and video needs editing and uploading before they can be used. This makes it difficult for ‘real time’ blogging so some of the authorship decisions about what media is used to accompany text got taken away from the pupils. Not ideal, but part of the practicalities of the situation.
• Instigating the contributor role and distributing this log-on to the pupils allowed them to write posts between sessions. We initially did this in response to requests from many of the pupils. A couple of the pupils did write several posts away from our sessions, which was great!
• Sometimes the girls would use their posts to manipulate us into letting them change groups and work with different people. Although we had no control over the groupings, we did have to make some tricky editorial decisions about what to edit out.
• Occasionally, writing for the blog was used as a tactic for pupils to not engage with the activities in class. Conversely, we could also use it as a tactic for dealing with unruly pupils, or to re-engage pupils who had lost focus.
• The pupils were very internet-savvy, but do not underestimate the computer illiteracy of other members of staff. You will probably have to walk them through processes of setting up accounts and the differences between control panel admin screens and the actual front-facing website itself.
• The pupils were very internet-savvy, but their Internet was a different one to the one I use. Different networks, different search engines…
• Seeing images of themselves in various slouching and sulking poses going online helped to raise the levels of professionalism we were seeing from the girls, although we also had to be careful with those with fragile self-esteem.

Sounds like a huge behavioural management and logistical nightmare, would you ever consider doing it again?

• Yes,
• Absolutely.
• No doubt about it.
• Running a blog alongside a project needs to be planned as an integral part of activities. It takes a lot of time and needs very careful planning in advance, but the rewards in terms of documenting the project, giving the pupils a space to air their responses and having something to show to people and say “look what we did!” are well worth the effort.
• It actually turns out that our girls loved to write!

hack meeting and seeing the light

Yesterday Jonty and Russ, founders of the recently founded Hackspace Foundation, made the journey up to Brum to check out what was going on with the start-up of an organisation for hackers around here.

Antonio Roberts (aka hellocatfood) is marshalling our efforts to gather a community of people interested in tinkering with code, electronics or any other manner of stuff for the sake of innovation, problem solving or just finding out what “happens if you do this…?”.

If you think this community might include you, please join the google group and make yourself known.

The group is currently in a very protozoic stage: we’re discussing various models for structuring the group and also looking into different spaces to work in. As well as a few discussions in pubs there has also been a bit of hacking at my place. Our next session for getting stuck into some hacking has been set for 11-6 on the 11th of April at the Linux Emporium in Sutton Coldfield.

If you don’t have a specific project to work on, then please feel free to come along anyway to meet some of the gang, find out what everyone is up to and potentially discover a collaborative project to work on or some new skills to learn!

I see a huge overlap in ethos and tools between the hackers and the BARGers, so stand by for what I am sure will be interesting interactions between the two groups in the near future.

Here are two photos I took of yesterday’s meeting with some nice surprise effects: the first is Antonio explaining how he plans to lead some of Birmingham’s artists and art organisations into the light and the second one is inspiration zipping around the room before lodging a stonking idea into my head.

An ARG in a school?

I’ve been asked to work with a primary school in Leicester to work on something that sounds remarkably like an Alternate Reality Game/cross media project/immersive experience to me. Here are a few excerpts from the brief:

…creating a memorable learning experience for Year 3 children… a real ‘Wow’ experience… allowing them to use a range of creative approaches to explore real science… memorable learning experience… a lively, enquiring mind and a love of learning… the ability to question, to argue rationally and to think for themselves… the ability to work hard and to succeed at tasks both independently and with other people… identify and solve problems, take risks… activities that are open ended- so that the children can shape the direction of the investigation… creating a fantastical narrative which is developed by pupils, staff and artists…

So, 56 Y3 (about 7 years old) pupils with a suspended timetable for a few days so they can work/play on the themes of ‘light and shadows’ and ‘rocks and materials’. I can’t wait!

No, really, I can’t wait! I’ve been exploring a few different candidates for special objects that different parts of the narrative/exploration might hang on. I’ve just finished assembling a solar-powered spider and yesterday afternoon was spent putting RFID technology into a toy bat.

solar-powered spider from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

hacked bat from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

The bat currently opens different images depending on whether the left or right wing is folded across the chest. This project was initially just for my own playtime, but in the middle of sewing up the bat I realised it could be used as a simple true/false answering device to respond to questions relating either to the narrative or to the curriculum.

I’d also like to use the touchatag RFID system to construct an array of objects that have to be placed in the correct position in order to demonstrate that a puzzle has been solved. For example this could be the correct arrangement of the Sun, Moon and Earth to show when an eclipse happens.

Ideally I’d like to be able to work with 2 separate events: when the tag is placed on the reader and when the tag is removed from the reader, however the touchatag system currently only supports a single tag-on-reader event to trigger an action.

There have been a couple of suggestions as to how to get around this: using a programme to monitor the touchatag application to see when there is an increase and decrease in activity corresponding to the two events (thanks Tom), or to work with the hardware API from the manufacturers of the electronics within the reader (thanks Ted).

Are there any programmers out there who fancy tackling the challenge to make a touchatag app that can distinguish between putting a tag on a reader, taking a tag off a reader, and which reader (out of at least 4) is having tags taken on or off it?

hacking at the interstice

The Birmingham hack space mailing list has been going for several weeks now and much of the current discussion is centred on premises, constitution and business plans.

I’ve seen a fair bit of this stuff before when it’s been artists wanting studio space rather than hackers and tinkerers wanting a warehouse with WiFi. Only once have I seen it come close to fruition (I believe progress is still being made) and that was with a group of artists with very established reputations/practices. Fair enough: there are large sums of money concerned (which really need an established group with demonstrable outputs first!) and there’s a particular balance needed for you to be prepared to off-set building management duties against the benefits of having a space.

Wait a minute! I already have a space that can be used for messing around with tech and interfaces!

The decision that I was going to use the lounge in my new flat as a pseudo venue was made a month or so ago (referred to as interstice as a riff off of this post) and, grabbing a small slot of available time, last Thursday night I set up a sign-up page for people wanting to come around and work on whatever projects took their fancy.

That’s it: no agenda was set, just a start and an approximate finish time. I would provide the WiFi and attendees were instructed to bring stuff and some food to share.

The format was part Jelly co-working:

We invite people to work from our home for the day. We provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of.

You bring a laptop (or whatever you need to get work done) and a friendly disposition.

and part Kissa Hanare (shared food used as a keystone for producing a social atmosphere, strategies put into place to ensure the regular event is sustainable without impinging too much on the host’s normal activities).

We had a small group of people, a great atmosphere (assisted by jam tarts!) and an unheard of amount of iguanas. Tinkering included fiddling with tints on Pindec’s Flatpack app; extracting code from Flash games past, in preparation for re-writing them in a newer language; and an infeasibly large amount of time spent trying to get some Python code from a Vista machine working on XP (thanks Ciarán!).

I now have 4 RFID readers interfacing between a crowd–sourced Officious Walrus and Twitter, so stand by for more gubbins that plays with that!

In the meantime, the discussion continues over on the Birmingham hack space mailing list and I do believe someone else off the list has offered his office space for use, so hopefully things will evolve into a weekly hack session alternating weekly between venues. Come join us and see what happens!

We are the Interstitials

Foreword:

This post has been brewing for several days now and has just been tipped into existence by the latest post on Museum 2.0 about deliberately unsustainable business models. Other kindling includes: this comment from 2007 where I suggest some metallurgical references for renaming structural holes; Pete Aston’s tweet about being comfortable with the idea that he’ll be doing something completely different come 2015; and the job titles I variously use to describe to people what I do which include “transdisciplinary independent person”, “investigator” and “interstitial”.

We are the Interstitials is a metaphor based on principles of interstitial solutes in metals.

We are the Interstitials:

We are smaller than the structures around us. We inhabit the gaps the host matrix cannot occupy itself.
Our small size gives us speed and responsiveness and though the sites we may occupy are ultimately determined by the host matrix, we are mobile and select which of the available positions we inhabit.

Our host is rigid; bound to the other similar entities around it in predictable patterns. We are independent; we may cluster around locations or other interstitials, but our interactions shift as required. We frequently move on, jumping between adjacent sites. There’s no problem, it’s just how we are.

Our host may regard us as defects, but though our numbers are small, our effects are wide-reaching and can drastically change the properties of the matrix we operate within. The energy-fields around us, induced by our presence, often make it easy for us to interact with other types of perceived ‘defect’, often impeding their motion or changing the way they in turn affect the matrix.

We are small, we are mobile, we affect. We are the interstitials.

exporting mscape traces to Google Earth

I’m not very familiar with either GPS or Google Earth so this took me a lot of trial and error – there’s probably room for some refinement!

Problem:

You have used mscape to log your GPS route, but the overlay trace function within mscape isn’t useful for comparing multiple traces or for sharing with others.

One possible solution:

Strip your log file

Open your log file and save a copy somewhere else to work with.

I’m generally working with coordinates in decimal degrees in Google Earth (Tools > Options… >3D view), so that’s the format I want my log data in.

Open the file in notepad (or other text editor) and check your data is in the right format. Here’s a sample line for Birmingham, UK (wrapped):
21:05:32,Place,centre_and_digbeth,E,OnLocationChange,
52.4545033333333,-1.892005

We need to strip out all the first part so we’re only left with the coordinates.

Open the text file (you did save a different copy to work with, right?) in Calc or alternative spreadsheet application. You’ll need to open it as text CSV so make sure you select that file type after selecting the file you want to work with:

The next window will give you some options. Check the box to select comma as a separator and double-check in the preview below that this splits your data up into the appropriate columns:

After the file has opened, select columns A-E and delete them:

This will leave you with just your longitude and latitude data in columns F and G. They’re the wrong way around though so we need to select column G and cut and paste it into column A, and then cut and paste F into B:

For me, calc defaults to showing numbers to 2 decimal places, so I right click and format cells to bring it up to 14 decimal places which is how accurate my log data is:

(You may need to increase the column width to display the full number rather than ###.)

We now have data that we can insert into a .kml file for Google Earth. Nearly.

Save your spreadsheet as a .csv file, making sure to check the “edit filter settings” box at the bottom:

In the next window make sure you’re using a comma as your field delimiter and then save.

You can now open up your .csv file in notepad. It should look something like this:


-1.89200500000000,52.45450333333330
-1.89200500000000,52.45450333333330
-1.89200500000000,52.45450333333330
-1.89213000000000,52.45448500000000
-1.89213000000000,52.45448500000000
-1.89213000000000,52.45448500000000
-1.89210666666667,52.45450333333330


This is what you will carry over into your .kml file.

Note for UTM data:

Some of my logs are in UTM format, (I think it’s something to do with importing a pre-existing maplib file, this may help) in which case they look more like this to start off with:

20:32:17,Place,centre_and_digbeth,E,OnLocationChange,
575850.093317163,5814462.83102075

(You can check what you’re aiming for by hovering the mouse over your location in Google Earth and reading off the coordinates at the bottom of the window.)

To convert from UTM to decimal lat/long I used the batch convert sheet of this spreadsheet from Steven Dutch. In the case of Birmingham (and most of the UK) set column D cells to all have a value of “N” and column E (aka UTM zone) to “30”. You’ll then have to copy your data into F and G and extend the formulae down on either side to the appropriate length.

I then had problems trying to copy and paste the results into a different file because the cells were still trying to reference cells in the first spreadsheet for the formulae. My eventual work-around was to save as a .csv file and then open it again before copying into a different file, switching the column positions and then taking it into notepad.

The .kml file

Working from the examples here, I got my basic .kml structure down to this.

Save that file and then you can open it up in your text editor.

Copy and paste your coordinates into the gap between the tags near the bottom and then fill in the titles and descriptions as appropriate.

Save and then cross your fingers as you open the .kml file in Google Earth!

tikitag to twitter

My tikitag stuff arrived in the post today and I’ve spent the last several hours making something almost entirely useless.

what sat on the mat? from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

Tikitag application – .bat file – command line – Bmail – posterous – rss – twitterfeed – twitter

There’s probably a better way of doing this (ie without the time delay) with the twitter API, but I don’t know how to do that. Yet.

Thanks to @Bookmore, @bounder and @karmadillo for their input.