At the recent BayCon Science Fiction & Fantasy convention held in San Mateo California I had the pleasure of being moderator on several panels, one of these, which took place on Sunday afternoon, was "The Top Ten Gadgets That Changed The World."

I captured notes on my laptop and recorded audio with my Olympus DS-40 voice recorder. I apologise but the batteries ran down on my DS-40 ran down about 10 minutes before the end of the panel so we are missing the final debate

The debate was lively and at times, loud with full audience participation.

The notes below are direct from the ones I took at the panel with no editing, so it includes spelling mistakes and poor grammar.

If you want to sweat about your typing and spelling, try writing live on to a video display projected in front of 200 people whilst holding down a conversation too.

Download the audio of the panel. (22.6MB)

Philip Gust – CEO of software co. Inventor/Gadgeteer
Lee Felsenstein – Designer of lost computers.
Jay Freeman – Scientist and player
Justin Lloyd (moderator) – video game developer.

The "aye, "no" and "on the fence" at the end of each entry were added in the last few minutes using a democratic process of getting the audience to shout out whether they thought the gadget was worthy of being in the top ten list. Unfortunately we ran out of time to actually sort the list into a top ten.

1. Transistor – aye (Jay Freeman)
2. Wright Flyer – aye (Jay Freeman)
3. Apple II – on the fence (Jay Freeman)
4. Portable Phone – yes (Jay Freeman)
5. AK47 – on the fence (Jay Freeman)
6. Credit Card – no (Jay Freeman)
7. Television – yes
8. Movies -on the fence
9. Model T – yes
10. Meteorological Satellites – yes
11. Liquid Fueled Rocket Motor – on the fence (Jay Freeman)
12. Flip-flop – on the fence (Lee Felsenstein)
13. Cell phone/Mobile Phone – yes (Justin Lloyd/Lee Felsenstein)
14. Bloody PC – on the fence (Lee Felsenstein)
15. Raster Scan CRT – huh? (Lee Felsenstein)
16. Electronic Hand Calculator yes (Philip Gust)
17. VCR/Tivo – yes (Philip Gust)
18. Answering Machine – on the fence (Philip Gust)
19. Car Radio – no (Philip Gust)
20. Univac 1 – no (Philip Gust)
21. GPS – yes (Philip Gust)
22. GPS – yes (Justin Lloyd)
23. iPod – no (Justin Lloyd)
24. Air Conditioner – yes (Justin Lloyd)
25. Candidate- "Aluminium based anti-perspirant", aerosal can – on the fence
26. Candidate – photocopier – yes
27. Candidate – Post-It notes on the fence
28. Candidate – RADAR – yes
29. Candidate – Search engine "Altavista" – no
30. Candidate – White out/Tippex/Liquid paper – no
31. Candidate – Super glue – no

Lee Felsenstein – What is a classic design?
Where is the gee whiz factor?

Definition of PC/Univac/Apple II

Candidate – Scanning Tunneling Microscope, precursor to molecular microscope – on the fence
Candidate – Apollo programme – no
Candidate – Atomic bomb – yes

Is a transistor a gadget? But the transistor radio?
Pentode tube – huh
Candidate – Heterodyne Receiver – on the fence

Model T – First breakout automobile product, like the iPod.
Car Radio – made family road trips practical and tolerable, radio was their entertainment, larger captive advertising audience.
Liquid Fueled Rocket Motor – It lead to the Apollo programme.
GPS – changing the future, guided bombs, UAV, cell phone location spam

Candidate – Microwave oven, LCD, LED – yes
Candidate – Nylons, synthetic fabrics, "ropes" – on the fence
Candidate – LASER – yes
Explanation – AK47 – enabling tech for revolution

Is 100 years enough?
Candidate – Portable PC – yes
Candidate – CNC – yes
Candidate – Carbonless copy paper – no
Candidate – Autonomous and industrial robots – yes

What will be the future gadgets?
Digital paper
Batteries that never discharge

Audio recording & notes will be available at http://www.otakunozoku.com/

Suggestions
What ten gadgets changed the fannish world?
What are the best ten gadgets of all time?

Download the audio of the panel. (22.6MB)

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A couple of weeks ago I was invited by Westwood College to speak at this year’s commencement ceremony for their graduating class. I have to say, this will not only be my first commencement speech I give but also the first commencement address I’ve ever attended. It will certainly be interesting.

So why ask me to give a commencement speech? It is not like I’m particularly noted for my speaking skills, or my dazzlingly public life. What I am is someone who didn’t do at all well academically but figured out my way in life enough to get to a point where I’m running my own reasonably successful business.

The hardest part for me so far has been deciding on a focused topic. In my research over the past couple of weeks since I was asked by Westwood College, I’ve read a lot of commencement speeches. Some fun, some poignant, many self-indulgent, but very few of the speeches have any kind of overall theme or structure.

The best way I have decided to approach this problem is treat it like any other talk I’ve ever given and take away all of those lessons I’ve learned with my time being a Toastmasters member.

1. Pick a topic of focus. I’m reasonably well known for my work on video games so that is going to be my focus.
2. Keep myself to two or three major points. I’m going to talk about failure, educational adversity and finally, success through repeatedly trying again and again.
3. Find my style. Do I want to be humorous or profound or controversial?
4. Write my outline with topic of focus and main points at the top of the page.
5. Flesh out the speech with anecdotes or quotes from my life that will make the speech uniquely mine. Make the writing as tight or loose as I deem necessary depending on how comfortable I am with the topic.
6. Make sure I have a conclusion and definite closing remark to indicate to the audience that I am done.
7. Timing is everything. I need to get the delivery just right, practicing the timing until I feel comfortable with the pacing of the talk. This is especially important if the speech has humour to it.
8. Time my speech, make sure that I’m not running over time or worse, running out of things to say and have only "dear air."
9. Keep practicing the speech until I have the timing and phrasing just how it should be.
10. Determine what "props" I will need to carry out my speech. This can be a printout of the speech, note cards with the main points I wish to make, or actual props if I am attempting to illustrate a point.
11. Prepare for the speech by ensuring I have everything I need long before I set out from the house. This includes not just writing the speech out and practicing it but all of those secondary items like directions to location, contact numbers of people in case things go awry, etc.

Because of my neurological makeup before I even thought about the subject I would speak on, I wrote out my checklist of things to ensure everything went smoothly on the day. The big things in life generally don’t stress me out, but the small things like being late, or something out of place, cause me no end of mental anguish.

1. Do I have my speech and speech notes with me?
2. Do I have directions to the college?
3. Do I have the correct start time?
4. Do I have my Dictaphone and lapel microphone with me to record my speech?
5. Do I have my wallet & drivers license with me?
6. Do I have the cell phone number of the two people I should call in case there is a problem en route?
7. Is my cell phone in vibrate mode?

Which is really point #11 in the list above, be prepared. It lets me relax knowing that I have everything under control and there won’t be any surprises I could have prevented. There will of course still be surprises, but like backing up my computer and financial planning, I hope for the best and plan for the worst.

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Do you have multiple computer monitors on your desktop?

I never would have thought it but I now believe that there is an upper size limitation with regard to the human interface factor when it comes to computer monitors when applied to every day desktop usage.

Ever since Microsoft Windows 98, I’ve been using dual monitors and I hate going back to a desktop system with a single monitor. The miniscule single screens available on laptops I can tolerate, for the most part, so long as they offer a reasonably decent resolution, e.g. 1440×1050 or 1600×1200, but I don’t use laptops for the kind of work I do at my desk anyway, so it isn’t an issue. A lot of studies show that higher resolution monitors and multiple monitors increase productivity significantly.

I’ve been using my dual Viewsonic VP201b 20.1" LCD panels, both running at 1600×1200 resolution, almost exclusively in portrait mode — which is ideal for editing code and writing articles though not so good for playing games, I always thought Dwarfs and Gnomes in World of Warcraft were at least five feet tall as I ran around playing my Night Elf Hunter until I switched my monitor to landscape mode one evening and then I was all like "You’re so short!" — Since mid-2004.

I decided in February that I would like to upgrade to a pair of Dell 24" panels capable of handling 1920×1200.

After a little thought and research I decided to move to a single Dell or Apple 30" panel, capable of running at 2560×1600 resolution. Equivalent in resolution to my two Viewsonic monitors plus a little bit more.

But there was a snag…

My ATI X850 graphics card maxed out at 2048×1600 so I would have to upgrade the graphics card.

And if I was going to plunk money down for a new card, I might as well make it a PCI-Express card rather than just an AGP card…

Which would also entail a whole new motherboard?

So I might as well get a CPU…

And hard drives…

And a RAM upgrade…

All at the same time.

O.K.

All this extra stuff is besides the point I’m trying to make, which is that I did my research and decided on an EVGA (nVidia) 8800GTX Dual DVI graphics card, which is capable of driving two LCD monitors at resolutions up to 2560×1600.

Because the graphics card is capable of driving two enormous LCD panels, why not purchase two of them?

So a new workstation and two brand new Dell WPF3007HC 30" LCD panels later…

This is equivalent of having four of the Viewsonic VP201b 20.1" LCD panels on my desk all configured in portrait mode.

Great! Wow! They’re absolutely fantastic too look at.

With just a few niggles.

The first is that I have to actually turn my head to see the far right corner of the right-hand screen. I know, poor me. Sympathy, please.

But the other problem is that because the monitors offer so much real-estate there is no delineation between one window and the next.

I cannot just maximise my browser window most of the time because it then fills the entirety of a very large desktop and most applications just don’t make good use of that much space with their user interface.

Though it is dashed handy for those shockingly bad web pages that have text that runs all the way across to the far right of the screen and requires monitor three feet wide to read.

Imagine living in an utterly enormous loft/studio that is completely open plan. There’s no delineation between the bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, the home office. Some of you probably do, but for me, I need boundaries, I need places for things.

No matter where you go, you are always, in some way, still part of that other room. You can’t just close the door and shut out the mental processing of that other space.

And that’s exactly what it is like with a really large monitor.

I can’t turn away from the other screen to concentrate on what’s in front of me.

I can’t shut out the clutter and noise requiring mental bandwidth that is right in front of me in another window.

I can’t maximize my browser to read a blog or website, because nobody ever thought we would want a screen two feet wide. (Except for people who create badly formatted Geocities and MySpace pages that seem to go off to infinity in the horizontal plane.)

I can understand if this sounds like someone who is looking a gift horse in the mouth but… a huge single monitor is not the ideal arrangement for working with a computer. I would honestly prefer to have four 21" monitors side by side. I’d still have to turn my head to look at all of them, but when I maximize a window, it won’t take up my entire field of vision.

They totally rock for dual boxing on World of Warcraft though when I’m healing on my dual priests in UBRS.

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