RFID and Beat the Street

Originally published on my OU study blog

Learned about RFID (radio frequency identification) tagging as part of TU100 last year. Recently tried this out by activating a Beat the Street card for the scheme running in Milton Keynes from 1 February to 22 March.

The cards, which are free, have a unique number and an activation code. You enter both while registering on the website at https://www.beatthestreet.me/miltonkeynes and it sets you up an account. The cards are used to ‘tap’ on Beat Boxes, which have been attached e.g. to lamp posts along footpaths across the town. The idea is that if you tap two within a certain time period, it gets registered as a journey and you get points. You can walk, run or cycle between Beat Boxes (I gather driving between them isn’t considered quite the thing).

A Beat the Street card

The scheme is about encouraging physical activity. The company behind Beat the Street is a Reading-based company Intelligent Health (who appear to be based on the Earley Gate side of the University of Reading's campus, near Temporary Office Building 1 where I used to work). They claim to make physical activity a way of life "through expertly delivered, measurable campaigns with long-term, community-wide benefits".

A number of my colleagues were doing this, so I decided I'd have a go. The downside has proved to be that, though it sounds a great idea, I've had very patchy success in getting the Beat Boxes to register my card. Taps on four different beat boxes one day last week only resulted in one actually lighting up, with the result that I didn't get any points. It's been reported that the MK scheme is unfortunately experiencing both technical issues and vandalism. Shame.

A Beat Box

Second Life: part 2

Aha! After a bit of research via encyclopedia Google, I downloaded the beta version of the viewer, and I’m in.

[Caveat: may have had a glass of wine]

Gave up trying to think of an imaginative username that hadn’t already been taken. Eventually settled on ‘Annonny’.

On accessing the site, was faced with the following somewhat disconcerting message:

Luckily my clothes downloaded fairly quickly.

First dilemma: how on earth do you move around? I’m just standing in the middle of the street here.

OK, just narrowly missed being run over by a bus.

Figured out how to walk, with the help of the ‘How to’ facility.

Incidentally haven’t yet met anybody else.

Just got a message saying “You have been logged out of Second Life”.

Logged back in, and teleported to the OU’s ‘Deep Think’ island. It’s lovely. There’s sea and everything.

There’s absolutely no one else here though.

Incidentally my avatar is much slimmer than I am. Perhaps I should make her more authentic by adding a couple of stone?

Second Life

Probably as a displacement activity when I should be studying MST124, I’m going to have another foray into Second Life this evening. Studied ‘Virtual worlds’ in Block 4 Part 4 of TU100 last year (ah, I miss TU100).

I first heard of Second Life in around 2007-2008, when rumours were going around that my then-boss, who was on long-term sick leave, had become so addicted to the virtual world that she was spending all night on it, which wasn’t helping her already dodgy work attendance and performance.  So it’s been around for a good while – and has quite probably had its heyday by now.

Here’s what I wrote last year when starting to study this part. The instruction was: “take some time (up to 20 minutes should be about right) to jot down some of your own thoughts about virtual worlds.” As often with TU100, about 1 minute sufficed, but this is what I wrote in response to the prompt questions:

Part of me thinks I’m the type of personality who could really have enjoyed and got into this stuff if I’d been exposed to it. Part of me thinks my personality type doesn’t need any encouragement and I should just get out more.

Section 2 of this part asks the question “What do you think the average game world user looks like?” Well, I’d probably give a stereotypical answer like: Hairy; has their own tankard at the pub with runes carved on it; slightly over-intense in everyday conversation.

Section 2 notes that a survey (Yee, 2006) “concluded that players in virtual game worlds enjoy meaningful relationships and significant emotional experiences, as well as developing skills such as leadership that translate into the physical world.” Well, who wouldn’t want some of that.

Second Life began in 2003, apparently. At the time the TU100 module materials were written, the OU evidently owned several virtual islands within Second Life. An embedded video in this part says that “The Open University is a trailblazer in Second Life”. The video features (former) OU Director of Learning Innovation Niall Sclater talking about the OU’s Second Life activities.

When I first had a go at Second Life while I was actually studying TU100, I only had mobile WiFi, and though I managed to set up an account and get access, it was pretty much a no go – endless buffering and moving in an extremely jerky fashion down a virtual street. I gave up pretty quickly. Now that I’ve actually got a proper broadband connection, let’s see if it works any better.

First off: I had to download the Second Life Viewer, as I’ve bought a new (Windows 10) laptop since I last attempted this. Downloaded it from https://secondlife.com/support/downloads/. Tried to install it and got the following message:

My virtual world attempts seem destined to failure at the moment. Back to calculus.

Bases other than 10

Originally published on my OU study blog while studying module TU100 'My digital life'

Working through Block 1 Part 2 Session 6 triggered a memory from school from when I was 10 or so, when my parents wrote a letter to the teacher to say that “Emma has not quite grasped the concept of base six numerals”. Indeed I hadn't, and I'm not sure I ever did - I think possibly we just moved on to a different topic.

It did make me wonder what bases other than base 10 are used for. Block 1 explains that binary numbers are used in computing, so OK, I get that. Session 6 notes that base 16 (hexadecimal) is useful in some branches of computing. But what about other bases, such as base eight or indeed my old nemesis, base six?

I briefly Googled the base six numeral system. According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senary it’s also known as ‘senary’. Interesting section on languages believed to use senary numerals.

I worked through the various conversion activities in Session 6 but I can’t say this stuff is intuitive. Especially converting from decimal to binary – what a faff. Nightmare keeping track of the columns and the 1s and 0s. The Sense activity (Activity 39) was quite fun though.

Image of Sense interface showing activity 39b

Charmed to learn that a set of four bits – half a byte – is called a ‘nibble’. Apparently the term is rarely used …

A conversation with ELIZA

Originally published on my OU study blog while studying module TU100 'My digital life'

In Block 1 Part 2 we learned about ELIZA, a computer program whose DOCTOR script simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist. Apparently ELIZA was one of the first chatterbots, though I’m not too sure what this means.

As suggested in the course materials, I tried having a conversation with the OU's version of ELIZA. My input is introduced by asterisks (*). I found her abilities somewhat limited.

The first computer I remember using

Originally published on my OU study blog while studying module TU100 'My digital life'

Relates to Activity 1 in Block 1 Part 2.

The first computer I remember using was an Amstrad computer that my father bought when he set up his own business in the late 1980s. It ran a word processing program called LocoScript, and had a daisy-wheel printer attached.

The clip of the screen shown on the Wikipedia entry on LocoScript here takes me back. To do things, e.g. create and edit files, you entered keyboard commands – e.g. ‘C’ for create a new document. There was no pointing and clicking with a mouse – you went up and down with the cursor. Also, the screen didn’t display what you typed in the way it would actually look, as they do now – you got the same green type on a black background whatever you did.

I was around 18 by the time I used my dad’s Amstrad. We never had a computer at home before that, though I know some people did have home computers earlier in the 1980s. At school, there was a computer room, but it wasn’t very accessible to most pupils. There was a computer club that another girl and I once went along to, but we felt sneered at by the computing enthusiasts there (all boys) and never went back. Thank God computers are much more accessible to everyone these days.

When I started work shortly after that as a secretary, I used a variety of word processing packages. Temping in the late 1980s/early 1990s meant having to learn a whole variety of packages depending on the job you went to – I used WordStar, WordPerfect and DisplayWrite 4, and probably others that I’ve forgotten. Whatever you think about Microsoft, the advent of Word must have made temping a whole lot easier!

A search for Emma Thomas

Originally published on my OU study blog while studying module TU100 'My digital life'

Tried out the 'Google yourself' Activity 13 in Part 1 section 4.5.

What was revealed about me?

Expectations before doing this: I’m expecting to have some difficulty finding references to myself, as I imagine there may be a lot of other Emma Thomases out there.

How far down did I have to go before finding a reference to myself?

I scrolled down the first 20 pages of Google hits and couldn’t find a single reference to myself. I gave up after that. I suppose I can at least conclude that I’m reasonably anonymous.

Adding the keyword ‘Essex’ (I did my postgrad degrees at the University of Essex) did bring up my LinkedIn profile page on the first page of hits. Adding the keyword ‘Open’ (I work at The Open University) again brought up my LinkedIn profile page, as the first hit.

What was revealed about other people with the same name as me?

Mainly, that there are a lot of them.

Of the top 10 hits on ‘Emma Thomas’:

• Eight – including the first four – relate to Emma Thomas the British film producer
• One is a link to Facebook profiles of people called Emma Thomas, though it only lists five. Mine isn’t among them (I'm fairly sure I've set it as private).
• One seems to be the website of an Emma Thomas who’s Interiors Editor of Homes and Gardens magazine.

Other Emma Thomases seemingly more famous than me

• Emma Thomas, Muay Thai Fighter
• Emma Thomas, a PCSO for Pembroke (https://www.police.uk/dyfed-powys/136/team/pcso-emma-thomas/)
• Emma Thomas, an injury lawyer at Sacca Law Group in Canada http://www.saccalawgroup.com/staff/emma-thomas/
• a Mrs Emma Thomas on the staff at UWE Bristol
• Emma Thomas, a Welsh netball player

I used to wish I had a less common name (and still do sometimes), but I suppose my name has some advantages.

The telephone

Originally published on my OU study blog while studying module TU100 'My digital life'

Relates to Part 1: 1.1 The telephone.

I found this comparison of the development of the computer to the earlier development of the telephone, really interesting. I've often thought about this when encountering people who seem really opposed to social media such as Facebook. How must the telephone have seemed when it first started to become widespread? Did some people pronounce that it would have terrible consequences for human relationships? Was it dismissed as a new-fangled piece of nonsense that would never last?

Also I thought about how the switch to STD must presumably have put a lot of operators out of work. This Lady article refers to the work of telephonists in the days when calls were manually connected. This book apparently describes working as a GPO telephonist. This Sunday Express article is interesting and notes that 'The job of operator became a popular choice of career for women in the early and mid-20th century.' It concludes: 'In an age when it is so easy to contact anyone, anywhere, something of the magic of the early years of telephony has been lost.' Over-nostalgic? I don't know as I don't remember the time when you had to go through an operator to make calls. Do older people feel nostalgic for the age of the operator? I can see how a human element in the process of making a telephone call has been lost - though the flip side of that is that it's presumably a lot quicker and easier now to reach the person you're actually trying to speak to.

(Why were long-distance calls called 'trunk' calls?)

What was the job of a ‘telephonist’? This job is referred to in The Best of Girl, published in 2006, a collection of extracts from the 1950s Girl comic, as part of 'Girl's Special Series on Careers'. It begins: 'Vivien has a pleasant voice and a good memory and hopes to become a telephonist when she leaves school', and goes on to outline the training that Vivien undergoes and the duties of the job. It also shows a male friend greeting Vivien with "I hear you're one of the 'Hello Girls' now". To which Vivien responds yes, she is, and she's "awfully thrilled".