But my very late (or very early) New Year’s resolution is to write every single day, even if it’s only a “blog post”. I have never considered myself a “blogger”, even though I’ve used blogging sytems to run the MavArt site for I think over six years (first Greymatter, then MovableType, now WordPress). I use these blogging systems because they allow me to change the look of the site without changing its content, and visaversa. But being a “blogger” implies a certain dedication to regular updates and posts - a dedication I’ve never had.

But, my New Year’s resolution is to write every day, so I’m going to write every day, even if it’s just a little blog post or review on my website - like this one.

This post, as well as qualifying as my writing for today, is also a test of the idea of using my Palm Treo 650 phone to type and upload blog posts. I’ve owned several Palm handheld computers and loved all of them, even the crappy plastic one that fell apart, but when I first got the Palm Treo I disliked the weeny little keyboard it had. I ‘d gotten quite good at the stylus-based Graffiti system for entering text on my other Palms, and clicking on the tiny little qwerty keyboard on the Treo seemed a lot slower.

But I recently discovered that I’d been pressing the keys the wrong way - using the tips of my index fingers, fingernails, or even the stylus pen in an effort to only press one key at a time. Now I realise that by pressing the keys with the end of my whole finger/thumbs, it may press more than one key, sometimes as many as four, but the PalmOS almost always guesses correctly which key I meant.

And if you’re reading this then I guess I figured out a way to upload it…

Some of the results are quite goofy and Goonish/Pythonesque. Some recent ones were:

• Eight R. Straggles
• Stratagem B. Shipyard
• Fatalist H. Faraway
• Grunt P. Foreclose
• Beards T. Lively
• Gamma F. Transfusion
• Constance V. Barrage
• Swooned H. Stimson
• Resettle D. Outrigger
• Dogcatchers G. Abbess
• Checker G. Canards
• Balminess Q. Crawl
• Threatenings L. Chortle
• Sandy L. Gasping
• Flap C. Kerouac
• Nonfiction H. Miraculously
• Shrieking P. Delano
• Superficial I. Incumbent
• Dillydallied H. Yevtushenko
• Heliport S. Persecuting
• Handgun H. Deficient
• Churlishness H. Folk
• Striker M. Vistas
• Denver G. Commonwealth
• Discotheque H. Artificer
• Appeasement E. Percolated
• Injection V. Brenda
• Projectile S. Scuzzier
• Feting U. Deleterious
• Stereo Q. Sectarianism
• Infringement R. Swampiest
• Hesiod A. Probationer

The ones in bold are the ones I like so much I’m going to try and use them in a script or even in conversation. Such as “Wasn’t that written by the poet Grunt P. Foreclose?”, or “Wasn’t he killed by the gangster Shrieking P. Delano?”.

Multi-Touch Interaction Research at their NYU home page (its downloadable there), or:

Streaming version at YouTube.

The future of computing? Maybe - It would breathe new life into the tablet PC market I bet. Especially if they can get the system to be able to determine which finger you are using at any time, so that commands/modes can be mapped to certain fingers. I can see this one day making the computer mouse look as cumbersome as punched paper cards.

UPDATE: But not everyone agrees that it is a useful technology - see the discussion on the demo here. Personally, as a Wacom tablet user/lover, the uses for this are quite obvious to me,and there will doubtless be less obvious uses and improvements over time (the computer mouse did not always have a scroll wheel).

A foldable, electric model aeroplane that can both fly around under direct remote control or fly itself guided by it’s own GPS, while filming its surroundings using two colour video cameras, all fed back to a toughened tablet-based computer.

I want one!

Note, the first image on the page, despite its size on the page, is actually a very large image and will take time to download on some connections.

Searching for Australian cities and areas seems broken, but manually dragging the map around can find some interesting (to me) locations. Such as my old school, where I live now, where I teach, my favourite Brisbane park, and, just for kicks, some pyramids. If this sort of information is available for free to the general public, what must the military and secret services have access to?

UPDATE: Please note - the link above leads to an external website. I have nothing to do with that site and I did not create the South Park Character maker flash program. I just thought it was cool, so I linked to it.
To be able to save images of your south park creation

• press the “PrtSc” key on your keyboard. This takes a screen shot of your screen and places it in memory.
• Then paste the screen shot into your favourite image editor (photoshop, Gimp, etc), or even into your favourite word processor (Word, Open Office Writer, etc).
• Then crop/trim it till you just have your character.
• Then save it to your hard drive.

There does not appear to be any built-in saving feature on the site.

1 September 2005: Link updated.

22 April 2006: Update added.

19 September 2007 : Link updated again.

Here’s an idea - anyone with an identical twin sibling could have some fun. One of you show up ot the time travel convention looking normal and sane, but complaining about how few people there are attending. Then your twin rushes in wearing a futuristic suit and tells there other self “You fool, the convention is in another parallel universe, not this one, they are waiting for me… us!”, and then rush out.