INTERMITTENT  Blog  february - june 2003 

note, images and video are hidden in the main body of the text. Just mouse-over it and you'll see links appearing. Alternatively, skip to the end of the day where they are all listed in sequence.

Fleur's Place
Saturday 25th January 2003

Status at the beginning of this intermittent blog. We have got all the footage we think we needed in SF so that's great. We both, that is Fleur & I have very little cash so that ain't so great. The invisiblerevolution.net web site is shaping up all right though. Some articles and sections are still all over the place and it's a serious effort getting it into one coherent whole. It's got an OK beginning and some video clips so we are happy to start showing it to people.

The stress is to get a tight edit with new voice over for the DVD and shop it around to get funding for the documentary. So far so nothing.

LiSA still hasn't gotten the versiontracker ad as PayPal keep jerking us around.

...

Came to see Fleur today. Had a quick sandwich downstairs. We tried a script idea for the pitch: INTRO Doug talking about his epiphany (with moving stills). - Flying over SF. - Fleur Intro. RECOMMENDATION Howard. MEET & SEE New section: 'meet the people who were there' Jeff; 'Doug was hard to work with', go where it all happened; Bruce 'this is where we programed the original Mac'. DRAMA Fleur & Doug working together. Voice over, Fleur; explaining tough time to get going. MOST CELEB & RECREATION Come and see history recreated and meet the largest collection of computer industry pioneers ever gathered for a documentary. -

So we played around and edited a version. Changed it quite a lot. Will have to record some voice over. Went to a Great Vietnamese place by Fleur's. Tried to get to Tottenham Court Road to see D and get the videoing completed and put the fake 3D of Doug at the workstation in color together. But when we got to Liverpool street the tube was closed. A train had derailed. Very strange and a bit shocking. No-one seriously hurt though. Got to Starbucks, plugged in and had some fun in Premiere to get that edit cleaned. Fleur went to see Nick. Went home. Edited some more, compressed it in Cleaner, talked with Doug, he seems happy. And to bed.
Video: video1   video2

Home
Sunday 26th January 2003

Not a lot done today. Just played with the blog and added a couple of sideshows, Fleur's room from yesterday which has a few views out of her room on Hoxton street but more amusingly to me, two pictures of her hanging coats and such, a mini-portrait of sorts. There is also a river walk with Therese after I got back from home to the shops and a couple of pictures from Starbucks since I got back as well, starting out with a strange one of Janine but I had to leave it in   :-)
Slides1   Slides2   Slides3

UCLIC & HS
Monday 27th January 2003

The river was beautiful this morning. I have not really gotten over the jet lag so having slept a lot yesterday and gone to bed at around nine I woke at 2am. And stayed awake. Trust I'll be tired enough by tonight to fall into the right rhythm again. I got going to Starbucks. Got there by around 8. Will have to go in to college today. Not very motivated. Not really feeling like I'm learning a lot.

Fleur is in Greece until Thursday so I'll be working on the web site but trying to get LiSA v 2.4 together. It's basically just new audio, which I can do without Mikhail doing much programing. Need it to make some money.

But you know, I just went through the recordings Janine and I did right before Christmas. They're crap. What were we thinking! Time to get a good mike and do it again...

Went to UCLIC to say hi and talk to Harold about the poster. Talked with Sue and the kids walked in to talk with her, escorted by Paul. No hello's so I felt a bit odd, not having seen them since the beginning of the year. But I walked into the class room after and all said hello and made good conversation. Why did I even notice? Why do I care? I guess I like these guys.

Jeff is in charge of SUN's research on creating a super, super, super computer, faster beyond anyone's wildest dreams. So when Emily asked me what you can do with such a machine I was both annoyed and happy. Here is a research issue I want to propose to Jeff; 'When you have a computer beyond your wildest dreams, what can you do with it? Apart from the obvious of course, such as simulations for the military and weather. I suggest we don't know'. And here's someone, one of the few people I respect in HCI, bringing it up. And we haven't talked at all this year yet!

So here's the deal. I think I can do a great HyperScope. So I mocked one up. Tried only to do the Viewspec side of things. Had to look into the pro's and con's of pop-up menu vs control frame on the bottom. It was interesting. I think both will ultimately be necessary. The pop-up method allows direct action of words or selections but it is hidden. The control frame version is visible and seems logical to apply global settings with but is obtrusive. This is turning out to be a very interesting exercise.

Ian and me had a great debate on the value of hyperscopian Viewspec. He argued that the buttons at the bottom of the screen are of limited usefulness. I argued that you have Google and co to navigate between documents, maybe you should have similar functionality to navigate within them. For example, we use this to day when we use the search within a page functionality to skip to passages of interest. Why not extend it? But it was a hard sell. Ian made the case that the author should present the info better and that the reader should be dedicated enough to read the whole thing or profess ignorance - that the helping of partial knowledge is the same as partial ignorance. Or, you should be aware of the limits of your knowledge. Hmmm. I kind of agree but the work at hand has no control over the author nor the reader.

And then it struck me. I am really emphasizing discussion group views and I, very subjectively, consider all documents in my liquid world here to be dynamic, which includes compound. That is to say, no document is one big entity. It is either by design made of different parts or can be treated as though it has many parts. Therefore the user, that is to say the reader, should have the capability to re-arrange these components any way they want.

A good example of this would be this blog. I personally write with the philosophy of one thought per paragraph. If I am discussing Fleur chances are her name is in the paragraph. If Doug, ditto. However, if LiSA, then it could be LiSA, Mikhail, Steve or such so I added the ability to save sets of Viewspec in a separate menu. Cool.

David came by. Showed NY LIVE on his phone. Wow! We had a good look and was just amazed. Then he played Doom. What is the world coming to?! To top it of, he used Bluetooth to send me pictures from his phone, mostly from Starbucks, the last one a portrait of David. Connected. I like living in the future. We also managed to get some Bluetooth video from my laptop to his phone. Talked about using custom recorded ring-tones matched to caller ID's. Tried with a transferred LiSA file. It worked! How cool is that! We'll have to record some mobile phone specific LiSA sounds and see where we can take it from there. LiSA was Also in MacFormat magazine, but unfortunately only the OS 9 version and no covering material. I'll have to email them a downloadable folder with correct names, versions and read me's.

An engineer came to have a look at the Titanium but needed more parts, so no blog for a few days!
[] []
Slides1   Slides2   Slides3   Slides4

...........

Spent some time at Starbucks trying to get by without the Titanium. D was not well. We had to carry her upstairs and firmly plant he in a comfy chair to get her to rest for a minute. Not easy living without a laptop. Paper is frustrating! Took some video clips of people there and shot a sequence of people walking in the rain. Wet, cold, miserable London. But I love it. Also captured some more normal people on the tube type shots.
Slides1   Slides2   Slides3   Slides4

...........

Titanium & Fleur back
Thursday 30th January 2003

Titanium's back!!! Oh, and so is Fleur. Went to see her at Cafe Rouge in Sloane Square, through a real snow storm. In London! Fleur looked fantastic as usual. Lost her wallet though so we had to get her a new one. Accessorize. Then Starbucks. Surprised?

We went through our strategy and decided on an overall flow for the DVD. It will have three logical, but not visually obvious chapters: Teaser Section/Intro(15 seconds or so). Main Section. Previews Section.

Teaser/Intro:
Main: What we have now, plus more visuals over Doug talk to the camera. Add Fleur intro's to some of the section where we currently have only black and type, plus Fleur also at the end;
VO, end: "Putting a radar screen a computer together resulted in the mouse, hypertext, that is, linking pages together
visual: me holding mouse
like we do on the web, windows - as well as many more inventions and innovations we use every day."
Previews Section: Which will feature an interview clip with Doug, Howard, Jeff & Bruce as well as location shots.
VO: "You will meet one of the most influential people of the 20th century.
visual: silicon valley from plane
VO: Even though he is still relatively unknown, he has had a larger impact on our lives than most people realize." Howard: 'finally met someone who made a difference' Jeff: 'working w/ Doug was....' - VO: Doug's impact on the industry Bruce: 'this is where we programed the Macintosh".
today: see web/info/war/eco/ UN/ in 3sec, give a hint of why it might be relevant.....????does Howard say anything about this??

Fleur thought the Doug section was way too long for a preview and I agreed so I cut it down to 40 seconds or so.
Video: video1

Script etc.
Friday 31th January 2003

Very cold this morning. Snow actually on the ground, not just melting.

New script: Intro beach & SRI- Doug - introducing the other people: "You will meet the people who were there, like Jeff Rulifson" "Doug was really difficult to work with" - "and visionaries and writers who will explain Doug's work and influence, including Howard Rheingold" "I remember when I first met..." - "You will visit the places where it all happened." "This is where we programed the Mac"

Then we realized the points to get across were questions and drama.

After all that, we decided not to continue this direction, which is basically the preview of the documentary, but to build an advert, a teaser. We spent some quality time and Starbucks in Hammersmith and then Pret A Manger going over a few teaser script ideas.

......
Think you know how PC's came about? Apple, Microsoft, maybe XEROX PARC?
......
The inside, untold story of the history of the PC. Why is there a mouse? How did the windows come about? What about those links on web pages? one man is responsible for much of this. he asked himself a simple question over fifty years ago, when he was 25 What work can I do for the greatest benefit for mankind? this is the story of invisible revolution which has changed all our lives.
.......
Have we reached the end of the line of development? A hundred years ago, the commissioner of the US Office of Patents thought that "Everything that can be invented has been invented." - is that where we are with computers? is it only a matter of making faster and faster computers? Not according to the original revolutionaries. You ain't seen nothing yet.
....
This is the story of a man who asked himself a unique question way back in 1951, when he was 26 years old; What work can I do for the greatest benefit for mankind? His answer: I can work to augment mankind's intellect in the pursuit of collectively solving urgent, complex problems. Not your average kid's dream.
.............
the mouse - windows - links on web pages. one man is responsible for much of this. he asked himself a simple question over fifty years ago, when he was 25 What work can I do for the greatest benefit for mankind? this is the story of invisible revolution which has changed all our lives. Howard I finally met someone who made a difference Jeff hard to work with Doug: something somber meet the real revolutionaries.
-
And we are happy with this one:
Fleur: "The largest collection of computer revolutionaries ever assembled for a TV documentary have come together for one man"
Visual: list of names & titles zooming in.
Howard: "I finally met someone who made a difference"
Jeff: "Doug was very hard to work with"
Fleur: "He changed our world - how we work, how we communicate. and it all started..."
Doug: "...52 years ago, in a few months"
Fleur: "Welcome to the invisible revolution"
-
Fleur was supposed to go to a casting but it was not on so we could go back to the house and do some head shots of her. Which may be useful for the UCLIC poster as well.

We will film the head shots Saturday. We will also need to script the insertions of Fleur in the Pilot. Did a rough voice over with some text and a semi-random video clip. Looks OK. Really got to find some good music though.
Video: Video1

Chinese New Year
Saturday 1st February 2003

D started work at Starbucks early this morning. First time she had ever opened so I promised to be there for moral support. Only got there at 11 though. But she was cool. And tired.

Nick pointed out how all over the place we are so we had a good evening going through it all.

.............

Met at Starbucks and went through the script for the teaser. Edited it. Done.

Met at Starbucks and home to go through the script for the long trailer which we sometimes refer to as the trailer. Got the script done.

.............

Edit Trailer
Wednesday 5th February 2003

Captured some footage this morning. It was more blog like than trailer like to I edited it together to see how much work it would be. Turned out not to be that bad. We can definitively do a video diary for the future blogs. Even on a daily basis. The videos are Intro To Doug Interview and Alcatraz. I am also playing around with the formatting of the blog. It's got a lot of tiny but interesting issues, such as how to label the videos at the end of the day   :-) Yes, geeky...

Fleur came over and we just went straight to work on laying out the text for the long trailer. Decided to have it all in 3 second segments. Added some video and stills. Had a bit of an issue of what to do with visuals at one point and a serious misunderstanding. All got cleared up. We just could not communicate for a few minutes. Which is to say I could not, I was the one trying to make a point.
Videos: Intro To Doug Interview   Alcatraz.

Trailer Done!
Friday 7th February 2003

We finished the trailer last night. It was good fun, stressful in parts, but it built up nice, we found relevant visuals to fill it all up and some nice music. It's available in the main section of the web site. It is too big to play in the margin here.

Had some real issues with Final Cut Express this week so we did it all in Premiere. The issues are posted on AppleBlunders.com:

"When I double click on a clip in the timeline, to bring it in to the viewer and want to animate it, it doesn't behave as I would expect. I am trying to do simple key framed zooms on text (from a layered, imported Photoshop file). When I change the settings (size) at the start of the clip and then click on the 'next edit' button in the canvas it takes me one frame after the clip has ended! Not on the last frame, which would be useful. Is there maybe another button I should click? I cannot see simple key frames in the timeline and the viewer, canvas and timeline all have their own time scrubber, which do not seem to update each other. Animations seem only possible to set in the canvas so when I double click on a clip to view it in the viewer, then click on the motions tab, nothing happens. I expect to set key frames change behavior at them and for it all to be consistent. As it has been with all the motion based software I have ever used since way back. Like infini-D (yes, that old one), most other 3d apps, Premiere (1-6.5) and such."

"The other problem is that I cannot find a way to have my imported Photoshop file automatically update when I change it. Which makes the whole feature of importing a layered Photoshop file useless in my opinion. Of course I may change some of the text in the file in the future. Why can I not just make that change in Photoshop and see it update in Express without having to re-import it and change all the settings? For some reason, dragging Photoshop files into the browser works sometimes, but not consistently."

Premiere does not do slowdowns very well, so I used Final Cut Express for that. It's funny though, Premiere used to be flaky so I got Express. But now Premiere doesn't crash at all and just works well.

Talked to Doug about the trailer and he's happy with the script. I did tell him it's only to get funding and that the phrase 'sent the first email' is a bit odd, but he's cool with it. They did have very, very early email in the lab.

Put together a small slide show of Fleur and I working on the trailer over the last week. Nice to look back on.

Trailer Done!
Friday 7th February 2003

We I got a cute little sequence of F &T in the living room. Nick came over for dinner and we had a good quiet evening. Until we started playing with the trailer. Nick had some comments and it kind of got fragmented from there on in.

Starting from scratch...
Monday 10th February 2003

OK, not completely from scratch.

Went to Starbucks to meet Fleur. Udy came by. Ian was there. They both commented on a few things in the trailer. Most significantly they said it was too long. Now there is a criticism! But they were right.

We thought we'd only really have to deal with the 1951 section (the story bit - there is no real story or drama in it now) and the 'war bit'.

But how can we project the story and the drama? Fleur came by with some comments from friends. Similar to the too long and the lack of story. But liked the blog. Hmmm.... How can we TV-ize the blog?

Nick came by. We viewed some of the old pictures. Chatted. Tried to not thing about the documentary. Made a drink of milk and whole coffee beans. I added some chocolate syrup. Told Fleur to look as I twirled the milk with the beans floating on it so she could see the coffee darken. Silly stuff! But nice evening at that point. Fleur and I had had to cover a few issues on how we work together. Good communication. I felt that sometimes I cannot communicate visual ideas to her and need some time and the opportunity to show rather than tell. That was cool. We also need do be a bit better at communicating shifting priorities.

We have to think through the structure of the documentary. Should it be history based? Biography based? Theme based? Idea based?

Walking home from Starbucks where D has just been an amazing angel taking care of me, I had a head spinning of what ways to kick this thing. I push it there, here, all over the place. And it seems to gel on chapters based on time and themes. And as Fleur suggested, a TV series of 6 episodes:

    Chapters:
1) 50's Early years.
2) 60's The Engelbart Revolution.   
3) 70's XEROX PARC & The Internet.   
4) 80's & 90's Apple, IBM, Microsoft.
5) 90's part II, the Web.   
6) Today OpenSource, today and beyond.

Should it be bio, time or idea based? Well, we could outline the main time events per chapter, the main people and the main ideas. We could then make the documentary the travel within these chapters covering the times and ideas with in-depth interviews. I like this. Another problem I have had was the mixing the blog and the main project. This way it can become one and the same...

I'll be editing the trailer a bit more tonight, taking out stuff and soon adding Fleur on the beach to the intro. And more on Bruce plus maybe a few aerial stills.

Stbx
Thursday 13th February 2003

Thought Pauline would be in London today. Turned out she's coming tomorrow. Got a whole bundle of work done though. And had a nice time with everyone at Starbucks. Seems the whole world came by. David brought his new laptop, a 12" PowerBook. Very nice machine! D brought her charms along to 101. Very nice charms. Sue came by, Bill was there in a meeting and the rest of the gang was of course there as well. Got the cover for LiSA pretty much finished. Ian helped me with the main page of Invisible Revolution. And Fleur was ill. Poor kitten. Took the tube home, via Hammersmith. Very, very cold indeed. Saw that Cafe Fleur (yes, that's the name!) on Fulham Palace Road had tons of red roses. It is Valentines tomorrow. They were open, at midnight, so I got T a rose.

In case you haven't noticed, still images and slide shows are no longer listed at the end of each day. Though video will be. Just a test.

Images: Starbucks  |  David  |  101  |  tube

Pauline & Steve & Starbucks Video
Friday 14th February 2003

Picked up the camcorder today.

Filmed a bit going from my room to the Titanium in the living room. Then in to see Therese and on to the river and caught the train. Why? Practice for tomorrow's demo recordings. Why? To practice techniques for video blogging. What a great excuse to play around. The sounds on the tube was a bit of an eye opener. Ever since California when we started using radio mikes for interviews and presentations, I have started to listen to things more. Doing the trailer with music and interviews have helped too. The tube sounds different in different tunnels. Pretty cool.

Left the station, went to Starbucks. Filmed the counter at Starbucks. Tatiana was amazing with the java.

Video: Video1 Video2 Video3 Video4 Video5 Video6

Demo
Saturday 15th February 2003

The day of the big demo. Got going a bit late. Steve played us some of his new new music. Copied some stuff to Pauline's computer. And put on some warm clothing. Which would not be quite warm enough. Filmed all through the day. Posted a few clips here. A general one. One of the feet before and after as well as a tumultous, cold and packed walk as well as a late evening scene with some fires burning and the police trying to be a bit juvenile.
Video: General March  |  Feet  |  Evening Walk

Discussion Forum
Tuesday 18th February 2003

Woke up with a bit of a cold. Started playing with the discussion forum for this site though. A familiar problem soon smiled at me though; hierarchical threading of discussions. Articles can be posted in response to the starting article, in response to responses and of course, to responses to responses and so on. As illustrated here:

So how can we deal with the threading? I thought about listing it all as one big chronological list, with indicators as to which post points directly to another one, if they are not pointing to the start of the discussion. Here is an article posted by Tony on the 19th of January 2003 which has had two articles posted in direct reply to it. One by silverpest and one by Nathan Mates. Clicking on one of these names would take the reader to the post made by that person which is in reference to this article.

And doing so, clicking on silverpest in this example, shows silverpests article with 'in response to Tony's article: "hello its in the black box"'

It also shows that Tony has replied to this article again.

Now, the original listing of the contents was very long and detailed. I did have some long thoughts about about whether the individual articles listed should be light on features and 'padding' for quick skimming or if they should be heavy with controls.

One version of this is shown here. It's not exactly skimable nor is it easy to read necessarily. It's a compromise, and not a good one.

So I showed David my old email service Liquid Information whcih had a first sentence preview of messages, dynamic views and a newsgroup service. It inspired me. I love pop-up reveals. So why not do this here?...

In the screen shot below you see the first article, by Ken Iversen, with the full contents next to it. The replies (no threading here, all replies are just listed chronologically).

The replies are listed in two columns, with the authors name eright justified and the start of the post (maybe a bit small here, but this could be user set) right justified next to it.

Clicking on an author or the article preview opens that article as showsn here when the Julien Lecomte article is clicked on. This can be with a server refresh or some other mechanism. Each article has it's own anchor so it would not be so hard to reload with the article expanded and at the top say.

s

David suggested using no subject and having the start of the post be the title of the thread. I like that. This way the authors will have have an incentivve to start all articles with a good intro/description.

We would also still need to have a more complete viewspec mechanism for people to decide what articles to see and how to see them. The ones shown here are only some current suggestions. This will all have to be expandable anyway.

This would be augmented by a categorization the user would have to enter when posting.

Full Lenght Interviews & Safari Tabs
Tuesday 25th February 2003

? Not sure what I was planning to write for today...

New Trailer Idea
Wednesday 26th February 2003

Think I got the cover for LiSA sorted. Really like this version.

Mom & Dad & Janine
Saturday 15th March 2003

Fleur and I was supposed to have a breakfast meeting with Vint Cerf this morning. 8:20. So we get there. 5 mins late, the map on the hotel web site was wrong. Wrong day. It's Thursday..... It's times like these I really respect Fleur. She did not fly of the handle.

Mom and Dad left for Switzerland. They'll be gone just til Wednesday. Decided to film[] them leaving.

Met with Janine for a really nice lunch. We had a lot of catching up to do and sorting out of things and issues. Went well.

War
Thursday 20th March 2003

It's 1 AM GMT.

I am against the war but for the UK going in so that the US will not be completely alienated. A saner ally after the battle can only be a good thing. Baghdad on TV.

How bad will the battle be? What will the reconstruction be like? We'll see.

Seeing Vint Cerf in the morning. One of the main founding fathers of the net. War. Soon closeness. Maybe peace.

...........

This blog has been disruptes as I had my PowerBook stolen. It has been replaced.

We are also building a new email to Blog (RSS) service which is pretty great. I must be working on the templates to get it all ready. You can have a look at http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/email-2-rss-initial-spec/page-template.html to see what you think.

The users will get an admin page at some point, to change the layout and appearance. But this is the initial version, unless you can help by pointing out a blunder or adding a cool feature! Email me with any comments at frode@liquidinformation.org

Update
Tuesday 9th of April 2003

Sorry there hasn't been much in the way of updates for a while. This is partly due to the fact that we're trying to develop an automatic email to blog (RSS & HTML) system, as mentioned above. I had hoped it would take less time and that I could use it a long time ago, but the project has been growing and other work has come in the way.

http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/email-2-rss-initial-spec has been fleshed out and is coming together quite nicely. Mikhail expects something by early next week.

Other work like the trailer. We FINALLY have a trailer we're happy with. It was completed today and it's compressing in iDVD as I type this. You can see it online already, it's in the video section. I'm personally very happy with it. It really does capture what we're trying to do here. It's very casual.

Now, here is a bit of excitement, Mikhail has figured out how to generate a pop-up menu from any wordd on a web page. This is ground breaking for two reasons; one, have a look at my old, old, old, article on http://www.liquidinformation.org on Dynamic HyperText, in the 'OS Implementations' section. Then cast your eye to the HyperScope spec on cynapse.org and look at what were working on now at http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/hyperscope-inrev.html Boy, oh boy!

Janine, Guy & V came over for dinner on Fiday, and Fleur & Michael on Sunday. I have listed them below to open on this page, as the email to Blog system would handle an attachment. So this is a bit of a manual test :-) Please click on a day in the menu on the left to get back here.

Attached: elm lodge dinner april janine guy    elm lodge dinner april fleur michael

Norway
Thursday 9th of April 2003

Off to Norway for Easter. Just me. No Therese, no Fleur, just home to the Mom & Dad & cousins and aunts and good friends. Therese is working through the holiday and wants too go to Trinidad this summer so decided to stay.

Fleur is beavering away and will be thinking of production companies and such while I think only about the web site and how to get sponsors for it. I think it's time to get in touch with just about everyone. We have been blogged by Russell Beattie at russellbeattie.com/notebook/, something which David pointed out. It's time to get noticed. We may even pay for some banner ads to get the word out. The making of this thing is definitively be the most exciting and informative part of the whole process, with the TV documentary almost being a bit of icing on the cake in a way.

The timeline is growing and I got this new gizmo to record phone conversations today. It's a mike on the outside of a headphone (one of those tiny ones) which allows me to listen to a phone conversation and record it. Really neat. Only tested it briefly with Doug while sitting here at the airport. Seemed OK, though there was quite a bit of background sound and I'm only on my mobile. I really hope I can record my conversations with Doug for inclusion into the timeline itself. It's be so cool to read the main points, click so see a bit deeper and then actually listen to Doug discuss events and points himself.

Guy's birthday was yesterday and we went to Giraffe where many old friends were, including Christopher, Luca & Stefan, plus Millie. It was such a great time. Just relaxed and fun. Quite simple really!

But I forgot my camera... Played with Guy's DV Cam though, great little thing. Hope to get his video on the web soon.

Attached: drive   trip   scenery   water

Geilo
Saturday 12th of April 2003

Yesterday was one long drive. Went from Bergen to the mountains, to Geilo, via a ferry, tunnels and a convoy in the snow. In the parents new SAAB. Impressive little beast, 93 I think the model name is.

Went skiing today. Downhill. The weather was overcast and it snowed a bit, so not too many people. I hardly had to queue for any of the lifts. It was a bit boring though, I am a pretty good skier and even though I have only skied once last year and then it was quite a few years ago. No, I'm not blowing my own horn here, all my contemporaries are much, much better, but skill kinda has to creep in after some serious youthful practice.

So this makes me think about motor memory. We all know that once you learn to ride a bike or swim you never forget. Same with skiing and to an extent, typing. Or driving. Most of these we learn for pleasure or obvious freedom (driving). My point? Doug's chorded keyset. What other opportunities are there?

Hyper layers. Oi. Here's an issue. All the cool things we are trying to build HyperScope wise. They will conflict if not done right. I always wanted a lightweight solution to most of the hyperscopian things I was dealing with. You know, having a pop-up menu inserted with a footprint as small as possible to make it less likely to break the HTML of the original. But when we add the sentence level addressability and all the other goodies, where do they go? The sentence level addressability will have to work no matter what pop-up commend is issued. So We will definitively needs a solid iFile. Glad some solid work has been done on that by Dorai & Co. It is waaay above my level. Or below, as it's a lot deeper than I can look on this thing.

Still email problems. I have no dial account settings up here. Not needed it for months and months on the PowerBook. So I tried using my Dad's thinkpad. No luck. And it's all just a mess on that server sometimes. 1/2 of it not up. Called tech support. They doubled the amount of process allowed. As they say in LA land; 'whatever'.

Went with Mom & Dad to friend's house for a lovely dinner. As always, there was some reminiscence. And the booooooring 'lets' remember the date of that inconsequential event' going in circles and circles. This made me remember Jeff Rulifson going through some geeky details which made Fleur's head roll. And Vint. Movie buffs are the same, they love showing of what they know about a movie, be it dialog or whatever. Concluding, remembering, especially things just outside easy access, 'tickles' the brain as all those neurons have to get into gear and search nooks and crannies. Remembering is pleasurable. What does that say for the future of entertainment and augmentation?....

Blogging. There is an issue which needs to be resolves for the email blogging system. Can previous entries be edited? Can an entry be emailed to stick in an earlier slot, like 'yesterday'? These are social issues. Bit like cropping of old photographs. The more editing is possible, the less archival value the blog will have. I will probably keep going in circles on this one for a while yet so please email if you have any thoughts. Most likely the user will be able to make changes, but there will always be a link to the original, unless the original gets deleted. Adding more to other days will probably also be allowed, with the 'yesterday:' subject prefix etc. But they will be added at the end of that day, with a real time stamp attached.

Attached: dinner    

Ski Trip
Sunday 13th of April 2003

Today was cross country ski day. Lovely day. Crap skis and boots. Imagine wrapping cotton wool on your feet and sticking Q-Tips under them. Just worse. No control. These skis have kept me from enjoying cross country skiing for years. Time for retirement.

Paaskene came to visit us whcih was real nice. Dad hit his head which was not so nice.

The amazing landscape, snow covered, sunny and simple, offers time for contemplation and it generally serves to let me glide into a simplicity which other environments don't afford.

Wonderful family dinner. Vegitarian as the guests are very healthy. Spinach pie & (unbelieveably) light and yummy risotto.

Been thinking about blogging. Yes, belive it. Big pictures are better. So that's the way it's gonna be. On this page, not in the menu.

Time to sleep now, a day of cross country skiing after a day of downhill. Yes, tired.

But one more thing. It's not about tradition. It's not about being old fashioned or 'conservative'. Fashions change. Hairstyles change. Clothing maybe even more so. But when you go skiing cross country in Norway. It could be today, like I wasa lucky enough to enjoy with my parents. Or it could have been when I was 15. Visually nothing's changed. It's peaceful like nothing else I know. It's comoing home. It's a space without surface. You meet friends and strangers, rich, poor, healthy, unhealthy. We all look the same. This makes me understand the need for cultures to carry on wearing silly headscarves or strange ski get-up. It all stands still for a while. And we're all together and just there. Can we figure out a gloabal way to do this? Of course, you don't need to be Norwegian to be there. But you do need ot know how to ski. Maybe wearing jeans is close. I don't know. Just grateful for a relaxed, safe day.

Attached: paaskene    skiing    dinner

Back to Speed
Sunday 15th of April 2003

Woke up to the sight of deer outside the house. Beautiful. Got some pictures of them having breakfast.

Had this very interesting email conversation today and yesterday with Vint Cerf, regarding the HyperScope:

...................

I wrote this yesterday:

Here's a big one. Doug did a lot of great things. Then for 30 years he was pretty much forgotten and somehow couldn't get his act together to continue his work.

A couple of years ago, Doug was getting increasingly frustrated with the inflexible way the Web presents information to surfers. So he designed a HyperScope, as you are aware. Let me just go through the basics of what that is, as I feel it's been communicated in much to fragmented a form before.

A HyperScope is a web based intermediary which gives the user more flexibility in how they interact with web pages.

The user would type in a regular URL (as that's all we have now :-) ) after the address to the HyperScope. This way the browser knows it should go to the HyperScope and the HyperScope knows that it in turn should fetch the document at the end of the URL and serve it to the user.

The HyperScope adds a few features such as paragraph/sentence level addressability, so that when referring to the document, users can refer to specific parts. This also allows for such advanced features as implicit linking to re-evolve. And example would be to have an address book where the email addresses point to the individual persons Bio page, at the email entry, so that if the email is changed, the implicit link will automatically point to the new one and so on.

Crucially, it also adds a facility to ad View Specifications; the user will be able to view the document in outline form, with certain words highlighted etc.

The HyperScope will need some form of an intermediary file format and this has recieved some attention.

It seems Doug has received some seed funding for the development of the HyperScope, but nothing is 100%. But the project has stretched for many years. So the question, on which I have not consulted Doug, but of which I am sure he'd be delighted: Would you like to be a part of the design team for the HyperScope? In many ways it's Doug's second coming. It is a hugely exciting project, with some serious possible repercussions; giving the web back to the user.

To which Vint replied:

this is a very sensible idea - it goes beyond semantic web in some dimensions since it assigns addressability to components of documents. I dunno if I have time to be much of a contributor but the ideas are really intriguing.

And I follwed with:

Why don't we just start by cc'ing you on some email and you kind of become a director of the board for the project, the person who screams when we do something obviously silly?

To which the great man replied:

works for me

...................

Wonderful dinner with friends of the family. Amazing chocolate cake!

Attached: deer   dinner    

Ski Trip & hyper thoughts
Wednesday 16th of April 2003

Went on a long and invigorating ski trip today. Thought a lot about blogging and discussion forums. Came to the conclusion that when people email me at a new email address about Invisible Revolution issues, they will use my new email address for this reason only, comments@invisiblerevolution.net This email will got to two places, my regular email account and to a blog with the account name 'viewer comments' or some such. This way it will all be blogged and interleaved with my blog if a visitor sets the right view criteria or uses one we have set.

As far as the hyper pop-up is concerned: The menu will have a delay of (initially, I guess we will need to try it and see) 1/2 a second. This way everything doesn't have a menu pop-up when you move the mouse across the document.

Just a thing to highlight, the blog XML used internally and the XML used for the pages on invisible revolution.net (in the future) should be identical.

It may be useful to label the future internal XML files with where they came from as in <blog> or <HTML> so that we can automatically add features like 'show this blog and another all inline' etc only to blogs, not to HTML files etc.

Gosh I'm tired. My face is just warm from a day of sun and cold wind. Looking forward to dinner at some friends house this evening.

Attached: ski trip   dinner

Back to Bergen
Frode Hegland

Notice the format changed? I am trying out a new layout for the automated system, where the date is only above the first post of the day, with specific dates added to pop-ups for the subsequent posts of the day.

Left Geilo this morning. Nice, but rushed breakfast. Actually a little sad. It has been a refreshing experience to stay with my parents for a couple of days, get a bit of talking and skiing and listening to them talking to their friends. Sitting on the train to Bergen with a beautiful and pleasant Norwegian girl reminds me of yesterday's ski trip; we were on our way down the mountain and having been born with a good sense of balance (ain't I great?) I had to wait for Dad & Henning as they took their time. I just zoomed and really enjoyed myself. So these two girls come down the hill with tight white T-Shirts. OK, more like one and a half girls as one was just a bit young. But anyway, I shout to Dad to get him moving 'Dad, Titts! Hurry up!' which of course he did not hear. I think they did though, as they stopped just a few meters down the hill. Embarrassing? Not yet. Henning and Dad promptly stopped where the girls were to ask for directions. What can I do?!

Bergen blogging
Frode Hegland

I am so much looking forward to the automated email to blog system! Sure, it has been an incredibly useful exercise since last summer to do it by hand, but it'll be nice not to have to manually add the dates and the links and all that.

Amongst the things I learnt by doing it by hand. Bit pictures are better. It's no big deal to have images and such attached to the end of a post and not have it inline.

Maybe even more importantly though, I have learnt that yes, I do write one thought per paragraph, but sometimes there is a series of thoughts which are connected, as with this one and the last. Therefore, when we allow users to use view specs to change the layout of a blog, deciding what keywords they are interested in any which they are not, paragraphs with no specific keywords should by default be on. It's just safer.

LiSA
Frode Hegland

On the LiSA front, a new campaign is live, at http://www.macsurfer.com It is costing us $400 a month and we have signed up for three months so I hope it pays at least a sale a day, which is what we'll need to break even.

All I need from Mikhail now is the server side work to automatically send out emails to people who download LiSA etc. as described on http://www.speakingassistant.com/lisa-dev-march-03.html That page also refers to 2.4.2 which is not imminent. I have made some small changes on that page:

2.4.2 out very soon.
Features a new screen which the user sees after clicking 'Import Address Book". This screen explains the method and format of address imports.
LiSA only cycles through POP protocols when user clicks the 'enter' button on the 'email settings page': POP3, IMAP, Secure POP3, Secure IMAP.
Button to launch window to give user access to change proxy server settings.

Sent this update to Mikhail: "I have a note things to the http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/hyperscope-inrev.html document which I think you should be aware of: he menu will have a delay of (initally, I guess we will need to try it and see) 1/2 a second. This way everything doesn't have a menu pop-up when you move the mouse across the document. Just a thing to highlight, the blog XML used internally and the XML used for the pages on invisible revolution.net (in the future) should be identical. It may be useful to label the future internal XML files with where they came from as in <blog> or <HTML> so that we can automatically add features like 'show this blog and another all inline' etc only to blogs, not to HTML files etc."

Attached: leaving

Bergen
Frode Hegland

Woke up a bit late this morning, which was a real treat. Saw the princesses yesterday, took tons of pictures, as did they. Ulrikke is 5 1/2 and Frida is 7 1/2 and both are an amazing joy. Real refreshers!

Asle served up a great steak dinner with Bernaise sauce, then we went for a walk over the city on 'Fjellveien', the mountain road.

LiSA Advertising
Frode Hegland

Embarrassingly the ad we are running on Macsurfer didn't specify that LiSA is available as a free download so I got that added and emailed to Greg. LiSA is paying for quite a bit of the development here of HyperScopian work so I got to pay some real attention to not only the development work but the marketing as well. And to think my college education (Syracuse, NY) is in advertising design... I have never studied computer stuff not history. But that's where I live. + philosophy.

Blogging views advancements
Frode Hegland

Blogs will have to have one important early view settings; which blogs are to be displayed in the window. This will have to be part of the URL so I can easily make a link to a blog which includes, fx. my Invisible Revolution blog and Fleur's at the same time, but not my other ones etc.

Which leads on to a minor point, it should be relatively easy to have several blogs, ie. email addresses to email blogs to, such as for me, one for LiSA, one for Invisible Revolution and and a personal one.

And the internal XML description will need to have spaces for future use (I know, kind of automatic) but starting with the name of the poster etc. so that I can do this: I go to slashdot.org and tall all about the documentary. I use the new email address comments@invisiblerevolution.net Any messages to this account gets split three ways; to me, Fleur & a blog with the name 'comments'. However, as we are aware of the senders email address and name, we can filter by this in the ViewSpec later. Cool? Takes care of a lot of issues as far as I'm concerned!

I was thinking (hope I haven't emailed this before) that blog addresses should include not just the username but also a random number (set once, but changeable in the future, when we add the functionality) so that people can't guess someone's blog address, OR do you think we should authenticate by senders email address?

I also managed to put together a web layout for the blog which features multi-blog support and general ViewSpec in general. I'm pretty happy with it. All notes are on http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/HyperScope-inrev.html Basically all I have done is to put a small frame lower left for the controls, including a multiple-selection option where the user can select relevant blogs ot have shown, something which will have to become more sophisticated later, but it shows how useful this little bit of real estate is.

Press Release
Frode Hegland

There you go. I trying to get the word out on InRev. We have send out press releases... We introduce the production of a truly interactive (message board/multi-blog) history of the personal computing, based around Doug Engelbart who not only invented the mouse, but word processing, hypertext (weblinks) flexible view control, multiple windows, integrated hypermedia email, document version control, shared-screen teleconferencing, computer-aided meetings and more. In the sixties. This is the history about the pioneers, by the pioneers.

And then we announce, in the press release that the project kicks of on the Monday, week after that, highlighting the interactivity and live updates part of the shebang. Should be good!

We gotta invent a start date basically I think. Press Releases about ongoing projects obviously get less attention. I say the email2blog system signals start.

This is obviously in addition to going on http://www.slash.org where I just set up our account and will post news of this wonderful work of ours. I just love us!

Added a slideshow from Sharon and Sandy's place. What a wonderful view!

Attached: gunnvorsveg   kråkenes   dinner   fjellveien   sharon

Hyper Blog work
Frode Hegland

Happy yellow-chick easter!

Here is the recent conversation of how to proceed with the email to blog system, with the last email below sent just now. It is a straight cut and paste job, I have not re-formated it as I did with ome earlier email transcripts. This is to get a feel for how it's going to be when I do this via email, and do it without too much time-consuming fuss! This was in response to the bottom email, which is already pretty much in the blog above.

From: Frode Hegland <frode@liquidinformation.org>
Date: Sat Apr 19, 2003 10:50:31 am Europe/Oslo
To: "Steve Schmidt" <steve@ejobshop.com>
Cc: "Mikhail Seliverstov" <tech@speakingassistant.com>, Femke Fleur Klijnsma.......
Subject: Re: import and blog note

Fleur, Dorai & Vint, sorry I didn't copy you in at the start. I guess you'll want to read this bottom to top! We're just doing the usual where I try to drag the prototype as far as possible to impress visitors to the site to get some funding as well as actually getting something which will be useful for the general HypeScope effort. And Steve, whom I'm not sure all of you know, is my project manager in California and has a penchant for rubbing my face in the dirty grit of reality...

Also, to clarify an important point. What Mikhail is working on is a great email to blog system with some limited ViewSpec functionality (the rest of the http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ site may also be able to use some of this, but it will not likely be able to directly work on any site, to put it mildly) which Dorai will hopefully be able to use pieces of. Dorai is the man with the plan for the real deal HyperScope.

The perspective here is to scope down and then build on early successes. At least this is what I'm trying to do.

......

I see the development timeline being quite segmented. I feel this is doable. And for the first time we have all worked together, I'm going to suggest a timeline as well! Please tell me how badly I'm doing here Mikhail...

1) Straight email to HTML & RSS with the internal XML being designed with the future features in mind. Ready by next Friday. Testing over the week-end.
2) Limited viewspec functionality with automatic insertion of pop-up menus for sentence links, trackback (on the subject). This one and the next ones will be up to you to decide exactly how and when to implement, but I can see less than a week for each component. As long as you can put in the time, we can be quite aggressive here. At least LiSA is selling OK to be able to pay for some of this!
3) More ViewSpec functionality through the use of a glossary which lists what words will automatically have a pop-up with options, the single initial one being 'Show Glossary Entry'.
4) And then further ViewSpec functionality by allowing the option of seeing multiple views simultaneously.

I'll be sending out press releases in one week (Monday) about the start of the project to generate some buzz. I'll also start posting on slashdot about this. So the sooner we have a way to handle the dialogue & can show of quite simply how 'neat' this is the better.

BTW, the spec has been updated, it is at http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/email-2-rss-initial-spec/index.html and the sample HTML layout is at http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/email-2-rss-initial-spec/page-template.html The real, current blog, which is trying to mimic the layout of the automated one, is still at http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/index-inside-blog-int.html

Mikhail, as far as LiSA is concerned, just finish the server job and then she can wait a while. When we run low on funding, if we haven't gotten external funds yet, I guess it's time to build and release 2.4.2 as per http://www.speakingassistant.com/lisa-dev-march-03.html for some more money through http://www.versiontracker.com It's quite a small release...

On Saturday, April 19, 2003, at 06:10 am, Steve Schmidt wrote:

I assume Frode understood that my reaction would be:

1. This is great info to keep in mind during the design of the prototype...
2. But we should keep the initial prototype as simple as possible and not try to handle things like viewing multiple blogs.

Did you guess right, Frode?

-Entirely_too_Predicable_Steve

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frode Hegland" <frode@liquidinformation.org>
To: "Mikhail Seliverstov" <tech@speakingassistant.com>
Cc: <accounts@speakingassistant.com>
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 4:47 AM
Subject: import and blog note

Blogs will have to have one important early view settings; which blogs are to be displayed in the window. This will have to be part of the URL so I can easily make a link to a blog which includes, fx. my Invisible Revolution blog and Fleur's at the same time, but not my other ones etc.

Which leads on to a minor point, it should be relatively easy to have several blogs, ie. email addresses to email blogs to, such as for me, one for LiSA, one for InvisibleRevolution and and a personal one.

And the internal XML description will need to have spaces for future use (I know, kind of automatic) but starting with the name of the poster etc. so that I can do this:

I go to slashdot.org and tall all about the documentary. I use the new email address comments@invisiblerevolution.net

Any messages to this account gets split three ways; to me, Fleur & a blog with the name 'comments'. However, as we are aware of the senders email address and name, we can filter by this in the viewspec later. Cool?

Takes care of a lot of issues as far as I'm concerned!

What do you think Mikhail (Steve, I know what you think...)

HyperBlog WWW frozen
Frode Hegland

Added information to the HyperScope to the main site. Commented on /. about the Engelbart interview in Switch magazine. Tried to announce this web site through the submit article feature. Rejected.

But I did freeze the blog to email spec today...

Argued with Mikhail & Steve this week-end. Well, that may be too strong a word. They were worried about to much hyper creeping in to the email 2 blog. So let's see what happens. But I need to take some time of to deal with my paper for the Masters which is due in Thursday. And I'm still in Norway. Staying another week :-)

Been adding a lot of slidehows to the Blog. I think I should look into Keynote to see what kind of exports there are. Maybe I can easily add slides and such and sequences just a tad better than with iPhoto... Added a slide sequence for Therese about architectural aspects of the trip, a sideshow of the move and Easter Dinner at Inger's as well as of the puppy. Also shot a sequence from the car driving back to Asle's place from Mr Bean, the premier coffee house in Bergen. The attached first supper slideshow contains ambient audio from roughly the same time. It's an interesting experiment.

Attached: archi   |   move   |   rest   |   easter dinner at Inger's   | puppy   |   road in bergen  |   first supper

Weekend
Frode Hegland

This weekend I relazed. Didn't think about work. Didn't stress much either. Hang out with mom and dad just like in the old days. Had dinner with their frineds. Listened a lot. Saw a new face of my parents, the relaxed with their friends side. Not the with-the-kids side.

Friday mom and Camilla and I walked through the underground of the bus station in Bergen where I saw a poster for an 'Ugress' gig. I had walked into a Bergen music shop last week with Asle asking for Norwegian music like Royksop - in other words, modern monotonous with few lyrics - good music to work with/by. I got Ralp Meyers and Ugress (weed). Damn fine tunes. Bit like 1970's easy listening with a beat. We walked on to have a sandwich for lunch. Right next to the concert hall. So I got Camilla and I tickets. Called Asle and he said he'd go too. Cool. Great music, great show. These guys and Therese will become massive. I expect them on Top of the Pops in a year in the UK.

Flight
Frode Hegland

The flight back from Bergen was nice enough. Not so nice to leave Mom at the airport, but it never is. Amsterdam airport, that is Schiphol(?) was alright. Back in London though, when I was waiting for my bags a Heathrow I had my usual 5*sneezing fit. An elderly gentleman on my left fumlbed with his pockets as his two fellow ladies looked on. Out came a 'SARS' (can't believe I called it that) mask which he covered himself with, not really tying it on just holding it in front of his mouth. "Unclean!" he said, in a perfect Monty Python accent, never really looking at me or acknowledging me. Quite amusing.

Class presentation
Frode Hegland

I had gotten the stern sounding email from Jacky: "Tue 29 10.00 am all day
Project Talks (all students to attend)". So I went along. Didn't quite get that I was to present too. Went OK. People's heads went a bit sideways when I tried to explain how the documentary project fit with my MSc thesis. it was decided that the HyperScope for Blogs would become my thesis. Cool

London
Frode Hegland

Woke up comfortably early today. Went through tons of paperwork including a few bills glowing red hot. Called Thames water promising to pay my water bill. It's liquid god darn it, should be free for the liquid evangelist! Such is life on the verge of breaking through and getting things done. Lot's of things don't get done. You know, just like we have health insurance, why not have artist insurance? Anyone with an artistic temprament gets a manager? Sounds fair I think.

Got iTunes 4 yet? It's neat. Though I did prefer the original buttons. Too flat now. Maybe I'll get used to them. Got Keynote today. Hope it can help spice up the slideshows Not sure if the slideshow export is a proper QuickTime export yet. Will report. OK, I'm back. The report is not so great: A slideshow from iphoto is 1/2MB from keynote the same slideshow is 17MB. So it does not export as an 'intelligent' quicktime movie which saves whole images and uses commands for fades, it all becomes a flattened movie. OK. I can deal with that, now that I know.

Had problems with my DSL connection today. Therese has been complaining for a week. Called up BT after trying to get to my server via the IP address that worked. So it's gotta be a DNS thing. The help lady gave me a new set of numbers and LiSA instantly announced 'online'. How I love that!

Meeting Fleur at Starbucks High Street Ken at 3:15 (2:57 now and I'm happily spending a few minutes waiting and blogging away). Janine later for dinner. I decided to get 6 minutes of tan to build on my slight Easter tan so after checking with the guys who are trying to figure out what's wrong with the Panasonic camera (it's been a month!) I head over the bridge to Putney, wearing my fancy new light beige corduroy jacket, to radiate myself. As is often the case, a hot young body with not too much clothes is sitting behind the counter at the tanning place. I spell my name out. She asks if she's seen me before. She looked vaguely familiar so I said yes, a long time ago. "Did I meet you with Harsha?" she asks. ! WOW! Damn! We talk and she says Abigail is coming by. I get my tan and I see someone on the couch. Could it be Abigail? Hadn't seen her in 9 years... It is! We talk. So is so lovely and soft and gentle and loving. A QVC presenter now! So we must BBQ. Exchange numbers.   :-)

Fleur Move
Frode Hegland

Fleur moved today. To Drury Lane in Covent Garden. How cool is that?!

Pancakes HyperBlog!
Frode Hegland

Mom had one of her looooong lunches today, somewhere in Kensington. Therese and I met up with her after a great veggie burger at Black & Red (?) at Gloucster Road. We walked down Kings Road as the ladies wanted to see 'How to loose a guy in 10 days'. ZZZzzzz... Never got that far. Pretty grateful. Went to look for some shoes and Fleur joined us. Went to Waitrose for dinner stuff. Fleur left. Went to 'My Old Dutch' for pancakes for dinnner where Fleur joined us. Therese and I checked out Sainsbury's Market at Bluebird which just reminds me of how nice living is. How sumptous it is. How tasty. How friendly. How expensive.

Talked with Doug. Says he feels the fatigue is not as bad as recently which is great. He then mentioned the planetworkers.org conference in early June. We both think Fleur and I should go out for it. If we can get some funding. We are on our way with talking to peeps who can make this show a reality, but it takes time.

Mikhail has promised a testable version of the email to blog system today. I am VERY excited. Hopefully this will be one of the last manually done blogs on this site.

Just got this:

From: "Mikhail Seliverstov" <smike@penza.net>
Date: Sat May 10, 2003 11:11:06 pm Europe/London
To: "Frode Hegland" <frode@liquidinformation.org>
Cc: <accounts@speakingassistant.com>
Subject: Re: email blog

Huh, I've finally deployed the Email-to-Blog web-app.
You may see it at
http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ir_svr/page/blog.jsp

Currently only two users (Frode and Fleur) are allowed to post messages to
the Blog. I didn't implemented the admin page yet, so I'll have to add new
users into database manually so far. Post your blog messages to
mailto:comments@invisiblerevolution.net

It's on baby!

HyperBlog
Frode Hegland

Today is by far one of the best ever: D comes to dinner and Doug likes what I have written about HyperScopes and Bloggggging. + The email to blog system actually works now! It's amazing. Mikhail actually added the multiblog feature!!!!!

Attached: d udy

Weekend
Frode Hegland

This week end saw the Norwegian national on Saturday. We had some friends over and really enjoyed ourselves with lots of Norwegian food. It was a really relaxed day with friends. Michael and Fleur came in the evening after most had left. Everyone brought flowers so Therese was very impressed.

Last week Thursday William introduced us to Anthony who has done productions for the Beeb among others. Serious guy. And seriously nice. He's not a computer geek by any means, so selling him on the concept was a bit of a struggle. But when he saw the depth of this story he asked us to write up a 6 part series instead of a one-off. He felt that maybe with some more history, and not just Doug, it could make more sense.

Monday Fleur and I worked all day on getting the 6 episode treatment done. Paul went trough the whole thing and provided in-depth comment. David helped. Ed re-wrote the intro. Great help at really short notice.

We also finally got the press release together and sent that out.

I have attached two slide shows of the weather at my parents (cadogan) and at home over the last week. It's been beautiful. A single picture of Fleur and Michael at Cafe Nero of Kings road needed to be added as well, I think I took it last Tuesday. A series of the view at home with a rainbow is here as well and a bit sad series of Fleur moving house.

Attached: 17 mai   |   17 mai 2   |   william anthony   |   cadogan   |   elm lodge storm   |   fleur michael nero   |   rainbow sun   |   fleur move

Press Release
Frode Hegland

I sent out the press release we had worked on. Here is an annoying new bug with MacOS X Mail: I dragged a clipping into the Subject and Body of the email, but only the Body was included! How embarrasing. So I sent out a few copies twice and one trhrice. The only way I got around the drag-and-dropp into the Subject not working was to paste it in. Anyway, here it is:

From: Frode Hegland <frode@invisiblerevolution.net>
Date: Tue May 20, 2003 12:47:20 am Europe/London
Subject: PRESS RELEASE: Invisible Revolution

London May 19th 2003: Production starts for a TV series and Web site on the history of personal computing featuring the inventor of the mouse, Doug Engelbart, titled; "Invisible Revolution".

~//~
One man, Doug Engelbart, invented the mouse, word processing, hypertext (links on web pages), moving windows, email, teleconferencing, and much more, like computer-aided meetings. In 1968.

Have you ever used a mouse? Have you followed a link on a web page? Sent an email? Used a window on a computer? Used video teleconferencing? Then you live in Doug's world.

The personal computer has changed our lives forever, yet few know how or why it came about - or who was behind it all. Steve Jobs' Apple & Bill Gates' Microsoft didn't invent the personal computer.

Doug Engelbart changed our world and no-one noticed.

He feels that computers back in the sixties were actually more powerful for the user than they are today.

This is the story of the invisible revolution.
~//~

Doug Engelbart is the key figure in the development of personal computing. Almost know one knows his name. We are proud to have unique, exclusive access to Doug Engelbart to make this documentary. He has finally agreed to tell his story.

As well as being the story about Doug Engelbart, it naturally also encompasses the history of interactive computing & the internet in six episodes.

The documentary is about the pioneers, by the pioneers - the documentary will have participation from more pioneers than any other documentary.

Interviewee's (many who are active participants in the production of the documentary) already confirmed include: Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple. Ted Nelson who coined the term HyperText. Alan Kay, XEROX PARC & Apple pioneer. Richard Stallman, founder of the gnu project (OpenSource & free software). Noam Chomsky Professor of Linguistics at MIT. Howard Rheingold, technology author. Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, co-creators of the TCP/IP protocol (fathers of the internet). And many more.

The associated web site will feature all the interviews (web video & streaming video for mobile phones) in full on the day they are recorded, with behind the scenes footage. The site will also continue a production blog, which has been running since January. Further resources on the site include components of the HyperScope (client-server system built to radically enhance Web browsing), the next step in Doug Engelbart's invisible revolution.

The production team behind Invisible Revolution is Fleur and Frode. We are based in London.

Please visit http://www.invisiblerevolution.net for more information. Do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, we're glad to help.

Best regards,
Fleur Klijnsma
Frode Hegland

Press Release Part Deux
Frode Hegland

There are three reasons for this press release: To get some good exposure for the project, to get funding and to get early inolvement from those who know. I got this email this morning:

From: Clive_Akass@vnu.co.uk
Date: Tue May 20, 2003 12:09:20 pm Europe/London
To: frode@liquidinformation.org
Subject: Personal Computer World

Frode
Dylan Armbrust passed your letter to me as I have written a several
historical pieces for PCW. Just one observation: I hope you won't make your
production too US-centric. It detracts nothing from the considerable
acheivements of Doug Englelbart to recognise that his ideas did not come
out of a vacuum and that the basic movement of the mouse was in use at
least a decade before his first model. See my piece here:
http://images.vnunet.com/v6_image/pcw/pcw_images/history/Mouse.pdf

What is interesting here is that it shows the crossover between wartime
radar and computing: radar confronted engineers with the first graphical
interface, although they did not think of it as such. The mouse mechanism
was invented simply to overcome a problem. Wartime radar also of course
gave engineers knowledge of the pulse circuits that drive all computing.

The first recognisable computer was built at wartime Bletchley Park, and
the first modern working general purpose digital computer - as opposed to
a proof of concept - was built at Cambridge (see my recent interview with
Sir Maurice Wilkes, which is among the links listed here:
http://www.pcw.co.uk/news/1131917). Incidentally what appears to have been
the first interactive computer game (noughts and crosses) using a
quasi-graphical interface was written for that machine in 1952.

It is true that development of the computer from World War Two on (and
indeed during it) was driven largely by the US, but Acorn and Sinclair had
a considerable influence in the UK and Psion was a world leader in
handhelds. Acorn in particular, and many other European pioneers, suffered
from the fact that the industry needed standards and coalesced around the
dominant IBM and its little-known partner Microsoft. You will put a lot of
people's backs up if you present computing as purely a US phonomenon

Clive Akass

Associate Editor
Personal Computer World

To which I replied:
 

From: Frode Hegland <frode@liquidinformation.org>
Date: Tue May 20, 2003 12:51:27 pm Europe/London
To: Clive_Akass@vnu.co.uk
Subject: Re: Personal Computer World

Thank you for this extra information, I really appreciate it. Doug doesn't claim that the mouse is a big deal and thought the trackpad was neat so this fits in the story nicely.

As far as British ideas go, we will have to integrate them properly. Donald Davies will have to be mentioned as well as what you point out here.

As is in the blurb, we aim to make this a documentary about the pioneers, by the pioneers. That is why your effort is so important and appreciated. Your email has already been blogged at http://www.invisiblerevolution.net and I'll work to add the information to the timeline on the site. If you have any more specific dates for these events I'd really appreciate it.

Blog Frames
Frode Hegland

We have been discussing the issues frames present over the last week. For some reason Safari chooses to reload the frameset to empty every time any control is used so we are only using Explorer now. I hate this, but want to get the blog system up and then worry about specific browser compatibility:

From: Frode Hegland <frode@liquidinformation.org>
To: Mikhail Seliverstov <tech@speakingassistant.com>
Cc: Steve Schmidt <steve@ejobshop.com>
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 6:25 PM
Subject: frames

I am having a bit of a concern about blog and frames. Is it a problem?
Or is it cool with us as the RSS is kept separate? Can we have a URL
with a framest include a paragraph?

I just checked. Yes. For instance, if the following is in a frameset,
it opens properly with the right frame scrolled right.

<FRAMESET FRAMEBORDER=0 BORDER=0 FRAMESPACING=0 COLS="205,100%">
<FRAME SRC="plain.html" NAME="frame85827" NORESIZE>
<FRAME SRC="main.html#anchor25feb03" NAME="frame85829" NORESIZE>

However, there can not be an external frameset to this, it re-sets the
right frame to the top.

Should we maybe discard frames all together? And have the
navigation/dates which are on the left in a table? What do you think?

From: "Mikhail Seliverstov" <smike@penza.net>
Date: Sat May 10, 2003 12:17:45 am Europe/London
To: "Frode Hegland" <frode@liquidinformation.org>
Cc: "Steve Schmidt" <steve@ejobshop.com>
Subject: Re: frames

Hm, it's very important issue. Do you plan to embed the email-to-blog frame
into some other frame? If so, then we should get rid of the frames in the
email-to-blog web-app. Some web-designers argue that the frames are the pure
EVIL and that the frames should never be used.
Unfortunately, you've told about this issue too late, the current
implementation of email-to-blog is completely depends on frames. However I
think it wouldn't be difficult to change the web-app architecture so that we
will be able to get rid of frames.

- Mikhail

From: Frode Hegland <frode@liquidinformation.org>
To: Mikhail Seliverstov <smike@penza.net>
Cc: Steve Schmidt <steve@ejobshop.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2003 5:10 AM
Subject: Re: frames

we have to leave it as it is for now.

After playing with it for a while we'll see :-)

From: "Mikhail Seliverstov" <smike@penza.net>
Date: Sat May 10, 2003 11:02:12 pm Europe/London
To: "Frode Hegland" <frode@liquidinformation.org>
Cc: "Steve Schmidt" <steve@ejobshop.com>
Subject: Re: frames

Ok.

-Mikhail

.........

From: Frode Hegland <frode@liquidinformation.org>
To: Mikhail Seliverstov <smike@penza.net>
Cc: <accounts@speakingassistant.com>; Femke Fleur Klijnsma
<fleur@ukscreen.com>; <comments@invisiblerevolution.net>
Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2003 3:43 AM
Subject: Re: email blog

I started with Safari: What happens is this: I load the page. It says
'Author not selected' I then select an author, or both. Click 'reload'
and I see my name on the top, or MultiBlog but no entries in the left
hand frame and it immediately reloads the page back to 'Author not
selected' and the lower left frame not showing, so maybe it's a refresh
error?

I tried it in Explorer, which crashed. Tried again a bit later then it
worked, showing one post. Well, actually, it showed some text on the
right, but nothing in the menu.

From: "Mikhail Seliverstov" <smike@penza.net>
Date: Sun May 11, 2003 11:09:20 pm Europe/London
To: "Frode Hegland" <frode@liquidinformation.org>
Cc: <accounts@speakingassistant.com>
Subject: Re: email blog

I've developed a frameless implementation of Email-to-Blog web app.
So, you'll be able to test it at
http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ir_svr/page/blog-noframes.jsp
soon.

Sorry, I got some problem with Email-to-Blog database on Liquid server and
didn't find out why it happened yet. I hope to fix it soon.

- Mikhail

Blog Progress
Frode Hegland

I have since asked Mikhail to remove the heading of 'Author Not Selected' and discovered a bigger deal:

From: Frode Hegland <frode@liquidinformation.org>
To: Mikhail Seliverstov <tech@speakingassistant.com>
Cc: <accounts@speakingassistant.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 12:40 AM
Subject: Blog URL

Here is an important criteria which has fallen through the cracks
(read: I didn't really mention it in the spec).

View settings need to be in the URL maybe as a means for the browser to
communicate with the server when doing page -refresh, but definitively
for users to be able to email a URL to someone with a full view
seetting; what blogs are shown and what paragraph is pointed to etc.

Is that a big deal?...

From: "Mikhail Seliverstov" <smike@penza.net>
Date: Wed May 14, 2003 12:39:39 pm Europe/London
To: "Frode Hegland" <frode@liquidinformation.org>
Cc: <accounts@speakingassistant.com>
Subject: Re: Blog URL

It's not a big deal but it would take some time (2-3 hours I think).

I have asked Mikhail about not having the system run on one account but unique accounts. It's annoying. Mail and other modern email apps use a method for indicating what is new and what is a quote in a message whcih does not copy and paste. So I am not sure hwo to best indcate it here. I have tried in this instance to just add old > marks. For the hyper blog though, all these will be copied in as their own posts I think.

From: Frode Hegland <frode@invisiblerevolution.net>
Date: Fri May 16, 2003 6:04:34 pm Europe/London
To: Mikhail Seliverstov <tech@speakingassistant.com>
Cc: accounts@speakingassistant.com
Subject: Blog

What is the soonest I can expect to see the next version of the blog, with the issues emailed solved?

Also, are we ready to have one account per user soon? So that Fleur would email fleur-blog-323@invisiblerevolution.net and such, and the comments@invisiblerevolution.net becomes an account to show comment blogs from 'outsiders'?

From: "Mikhail Seliverstov" <smike@penza.net>
Date: Fri May 16, 2003 8:47:27 pm Europe/London
To: "Frode Hegland" <frode@invisiblerevolution.net>
Cc: <accounts@speakingassistant.com>
Subject: Re: Blog

>What is the soonest I can expect to see the next version of the blog,
>with the issues emailed solved?

I hope to get it done by Monday.

>Also, are we ready to have one account per user soon? So that Fleur
>would email fleur-blog-323@invisiblerevolution.net and such, and the
>comments@invisiblerevolution.net becomes an account to show comment
>blogs from 'outsiders'?

This would require some changes in the current code but fortunately they
will be rather simple.

I had asked Mikhail to make sure it was up and running well on Monday (week) after a crash and some issues, which he did):

From: Frode Hegland <frode@invisiblerevolution.net>
Date: Mon May 12, 2003 8:42:32 am Europe/London
To: Mikhail Seliverstov <tech@speakingassistant.com>
Cc: accounts@speakingassistant.com
Subject: Blog - semi-urgent

Mikhail,
I know you're busy, but if it would be possible, having the db problem for the Blog fixed today would be very useful for me, as I am seeing my professors for the last time in a while today, and the hyper blog has become large part of my thesis.

And lo-and-behold, if compiling this little list of emails didn't show that I had missed something. I am so sure I have emailed this, but there are not records so I type it up and email it again, this one's pretty important:

From: Frode Hegland <frode@liquidinformation.org>
Date: Tue May 20, 2003 2:33:20 pm Europe/London
To: Mikhail Seliverstov <tech@speakingassistant.com>
Cc: accounts@speakingassistant.com
Subject: MultiBlog

I am so sure I have emailed this, but I cannot find it in my outbox so I am sending it to you now:

The threading of the multiblog needs to be on a per-post basis, not on a daily basis. The posts should be listed chronologically ignoring who posts them. Is that easy to fix?

Blog Slideshow
Frode Hegland

I have put together a slideshow of the Blog as it is now, for comparison with later versions. It shows the basic page layout, then a single blog is chosen, followed by looking at a single blog entry and then multi-blogs.

Attached: blog v1 slides

Blog Beta2 bug fix list frozen
Frode Hegland

I have frozen the list of bugs for the next beta, as I emailed Mikhail, Steve, Vint, Doug and Fleur:

Hi Mikhail,
I am getting worried about the project slipping. It is very important for me to be able to demo the email to blog system soon. Therefore, in the same way as I froze the spec a while ago, I would like to freeze the bug fix list in the hope of having beta 2 ready ASAP. You should have most of these, I just thought I'd put it together in a single list so it's all less messy :-) BTW, by bug I don't mean everything which doesn't work right, including what I have asked you to do which you have done but turned out to be wrong. And a couple of new issues. But it is frozen with this email.

The bugs are (listed in semi-order or importance):

Messages threaded by date only: The threading of the multiblog needs to be on a per-post basis, not on a daily basis. The posts should be listed chronologically ignoring who posts them.

One account per user: So that Fleur would email blog-fleur@invisiblerevolution.net and such, and the comments@invisiblerevolution.net becomes an account to show comment blogs from 'outsiders'. The comments@invisiblerevolution.net will now be called 'Comments' in the list of names.

You will notice we have two different kinds of authentication here; wither by emailing to an address with a secret string of numbers or by only accepting emails from special, pre-set accounts. I prefer the last optionl, which is the new one I propose. Implement what you think is best.

And the following accounts: works from any of our accounts (Mikhail, Steve, Fleur, Doug, Vint, Frode), but sent to blog-dev@invisiblerevolution.net with the name 'Blog Dev' in the list. Also a similar account lisa-dev@invisiblerevolution.net called 'LiSA Dev' in the names selection menu and which works for these accounts only: Mikhail, Steve, Fleur, Frode.

This means there will be three kinds of accounts supported:
- Regular accounts which are posted to an email address on the server (so to speak) which only accept emails from a single (or multiple, as long as they're know to us) email accounts.
- Open accounts, like the 'Comments' which accept emails from any account.
- Group accounts, like the 'Blog Dev' which accept emails from a set of specified account.

HTML clean up, as in less space between posts in the menu and no grey background. Also, please copy the sizes etc. of text from the sample layout or the current regular blog. And make sure the days are linkable as well.

The URL to posts themselves need to have a complete date and time in them, as in the regular blog. And unlike the regular blog or the sample, please also put the name of the author in there, it will make it a lot easier to read the URL to see what it leads to.

The URL should contain all user settings, what person is seen and every other setting the reader has control over: View settings need to be in the URL maybe as a means for the browser to communicate with the server when doing page -refresh, but definitively for users to be able to email a URL to someone with a full view setting; what blogs are shown and what paragraph is pointed to etc.

'First sentence only doesn't work. Please fix or delete.

URL copy & paste frameset issue. And if possible, the problem of copying a URL to a post and using it provides only the main page, without the menu. Therefore we need to either generate a whole frameset when making this URL or at the server when it is requested. Or simply adding a 'spawn menu' link to the top of the blog. Now, if this link could sense if it has a menu next to it, ie. if it's in a frameset, so much the better. If it does, it should not be there. BUT there should be a link in the menu (under date) saying 'hide menu'.

Behavior change; no info page by default. When Not lead the intro page: "Steve's Blog, steve@ejobshop.com' and all that when blog is first accessed. It works ok for the regular blog, but in multiblog mode it gets a little annoying when changing the amount of people shown. So please just go to the blog itself. An 'about this blog' link should therefore be added under the 'reload' button.

Use a cookie so that the browser remembers what authors were looked at last. This is a completely new feature of course, so only implement this if you have time and it's easy.

Blog Beta2 & Exam
Frode Hegland

Blog Beta2 was delivered this morning, and it looks great, but doesn't work quite perfectly well yet. I have included the email back to Mikhail.

From: Frode Hegland <frode@invisiblerevolution.net>
Date: Tue May 27, 2003 6:32:54 am Europe/London
To: tech@speakingassistant.com, accounts@speakingassistant.com
Subject: Re: Blog update

Looks good. I am a little confused about the admin page. And I cannot see the messages in the main window, but it's clearly getting there.

So, one by one the issues are:

___Reading Blogs:__

I can get the messages to appear in the menu, but they don't load in the main window when clicked.

Sometimes after clicking 'reload' the page gets stuck on continuous reloading.

___Admin Page:___

On the 'Blog Management' page, the email address means the address the blog is to be sent to right? If I have understood that correctly, please label it the less elegant but easier to get "Email Goes To This Address".

On the 'Blog Member Management', the email addresses are the ones the messages are coming from right? If so, please label them "Senders Email Address".

Yes, I am well aware that I created the complexity here myself, so thanks for making these things possible, I'm just trying to visualize the flow a bit!

In terms of the page names:
- On the admin page, please change 'Create/Update/Delete Blogs ' to 'Edit Blogs'.
- One page is called 'Blog Member Management' on the page itself, but 'Manage member accounts' on the main page. Please make it 'Edit Members' on both.
- Instead of the page named 'Manage member groups' on the main page and 'Blog Groups Management' can you please call this 'Assign Members to Blogs' in both places.
- The last page is called 'Blog Message Management' on the page and 'View/Delete Messages' in the menu. Please call this 'Posts Management'.

So the menu becomes:
Edit Blogs
Edit Members
Assign Members to Blogs
Posts Management

I think I crashed it. A 'restart blog display system' might be useful.

Looking forward to seeing the posts!!! :-)

This was in response to:

On Tuesday, May 27, 2003, at 12:48 am, Mikhail Seliverstov wrote:

Hi Frode.

I've updated Email-to-Blog service on Liquid server.
You can try it at

http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ir_svr/page/blog.jsp

However before you'll start to use the Email-to-Blog system you should
administer it first. You can do it using the admin page:

http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ir_svr/admin/page/admin.jsp
user: admin
pw: XXXX

Now you can create/update/delete Blogs, members, groups of members. I've
created "Comments" blog but didn't create any members. There is a
special system account "PUBLIC" that represents guest users of the
system. If you want to allow guests to post messages to a blog, you
should "check" the appropriate checkbox on "Manage groups" page.

I hope that admin interface is rather comprehensive, so you wouldn't
have any troubles with it.

- Mikhail

Had my first exam today as well. It went well. Got some new thoughts on it. I'm sure I'll find time. Sure was a strain writing with a pen for hours though!

rebirth
Frode Hegland

This week saw the completion of two exams for my masters in HCI. On Monday I turn 35. Monday is also promising to be the day I finally switch over to the automated blog system for good. Fleur and me did another take for the pieces she is presenting in the video trailer, yesterday. I am not satisfied with it, but believe we are close and have learnt enough to do it properly on Tuesday morning and mail it Tuesday evening - as we were originally scheduled to do.

Got some gardening done this morning. Cleared out the drains and scrubbed the brickwork a bit. It's not a big garden, well its really just a terrace, but it sure feels good to have it tidied up before friends come over tonight. Therese was organizing a surprise party for me tomorrow, but being the ditz that I am, I had not thought about the fact I am turning 35 on Monday - my horizon did not stretch further than the exams this week. I decided to do something and invited a few friends over for a BBQ for today, Saturday. Short notice so I didn't expect many to be able to make it. Not many were, but some said they could. Janine had an arrangement to go see her aunt, a family outing which had been planned a long time ago and which was quite rare. A few, like Udy and my brother could not do Sunday- Henning is flying to New York to be in Shakespeare In The Park and Udy's working. So Fleur and I walked in to see Therese a work and organize it with her. Wow, hold on, re-wind...:

I finished the exam on Thursday. Walked with a couple of guys afterwards and decided to have a BBQ. Michael called. Fleur had missed her flight to Holland for the week-end and asked me if I could call her, her phone didn't work. We met up at Bluebird on Kings Road. Hatched the plan for the Saturday BBQ which she could not make, as her and Michael were now going to the country. We got some picnic lunch at Sainsburys Market at Bluebird and dropped by Therese at work. Nice to see her, all elegant walking around the shop. She was not too happy though; she had to admit that she was organizing a surprise party on Sunday!

I can still remember being in the store hearing this. Nice sunny day. I was very, very surprised. But then Therese's kiss that morning should have at least hinted that something nice was up. And Janine's auntie. Good story!

The long and short of of it is; some could make Sunday, some Saturday. So we are having two chilled out BBQ's this week-end. Therese and I just went by the Spanish butcher on Kings road and picked up some amazing beef and some chicken and some ribs and some sausages (complimentary!) and this and that and many nice little things. I am such a snob when it comes to food. I love that place. I love the pride and knowledge of their work. Also love Sainsbury's Market at Bluebird. Makes me happy being there. Last week I went there and bought two tomatoes. Yummy. I only had a pound.

About that garden. We'll be adding some soil. Plants are about to line the fence. These things are important. I spend so much time in that parallel universe of software and networks. Manipulating the very abstract. Feels good to polish my shoes. Tend to the garden. And then go online for a furious Ghost Recon battle. There are many worlds. I am learning from Sarah. I am learning from Fleur. To chill a little.

It's taking stock time. And what a nice place it is to do it at Starbucks on New Kings Road, by Worlds End. I just had one of those new drinks: Starbucks doubleshot Iced Shaken Espresso - with (of course, a shot of mocha). Not tried one yet? It's basically my double espresso con-panna (whipped cream) with mocha which I stir and pour over ice. They have finally done it! I should have taken the idea to them years ago. Next they will introduce a mocha version. Then I will be unique in coffee circles no longer!

I didn't I would make it to 35 you know. A few years ago I had a realization that I'd be dead before I reached 35. Now I know this is true. My world is completely different now. I am leaving a footprint.

birthday weekend
Frode Hegland

I made it. I am 35! Had two amazingly chilled evenings with friends bbq'ing. Going to sleep. Just added a slideshow. And a short video clip.

Attached: birthday   |   birthday (short video)

birthday
Frode Hegland

Fleur came over today. We worked a bit, planned a bit. I jumped in the Thames. Good day really!

Attached: swim slideshow   |   swim video