Life in Pixels

haud ignota loquor

  • Bikes, Trains and Busses: The Key to our Future Cities

    Sustainability. It’s a word that’s been bandied about by many futurists, urbanists and thinkers. Yet it’s a concept that, for some reason, is seemingly difficult and time-consuming to implement. Granted, transitioning toward a sustainable urban environment is a challenge in infrastructure design, but it must remain a clear focus and a high-priority goal if we are to move our civilisation forward.

    The planners of our future will need to stop talking about a “sustainable future”, and rather begin the implementation of it. I think that the biggest impedance comes from political pressure: the unfortunate reality is that it is the politicians that dictate the design of our environments, and the engineers and designers are merely the technicians that carry-out these ideals. If we truly want to progress toward that green light of our imagined future, we’ll need to move beyond political chatter and instigate real, determined thinking that can influence the change needed.

    And the road to sustainable cities lies in our transportation grid. A sustainable city is one where there is a careful management of resources; a sensitive attitude toward the natural environment. Carbon is a key factor in this; it’s quite simple – reduction of carbon means a greener urban space. Thus the implementation of bikes, trains and busses through managed systems and programmes is a way that can improve the kinetic scope of cities, and thus lead to a sustainable growth in the urban fabric. It reduces the exponential growth of individual vehicles, streamlines traffic networks and allows for the creation of a more structured, organised city – a future urban space that can promote the thinking and ideas needed in a society that’s increasingly looking forward.

    Technologically, by having regulated transportation programmes, there exists the possibility of computerised control that allows a far better managed, integrated transportation system. It means safer, more reliable public vehicles running on regulated schedules, increasing reliance on these systems and thus better adoption of them. Let’s face it: public transport isn’t a very attractive means of getting about. But if we were to design and engineer a system that fully integrates these key components, and make them an integral part of the city, we a sure to be on-track to attaining that “sustainable” future we’re so craving right now.

  • 3 Tips for New Mac Users

    I’ve been a Mac user for about three years now. I’ve become quite “integrated” with the Apple ecosystem, and recently, I’ve encountered many new (or prospective) Mac users who’ve had a few questions about their new system.

    The Macintosh is certainly a different environment than Windows. Apart from the obvious graphical dissimilarities, there are certain aspects of the Mac that leave many befuddled by it – and thus, for this reason, some might be turned away from what could be a pleasant computing experience. In this post, I aim to provide you, the new or prospective Mac user, with 3 simple tips concerning my computing platform of choice.

    1. You Can Run Windows on Your Mac

    Most people think that Macs can only run OS X-exclusive software – and nothing else. However, since Apple transitioned to Intel processors, they’ve included a nifty, free tool with every new Mac called BootCamp. Using BootCamp Assistant and a copy of Windows (preferably the latest edition), you can have the best of both worlds, being able to dual-boot your Mac into either OS X, or Windows. Running Windows in the BootCamp environment means you’re effectively running a native version of Microsoft’s operating system on your computer, thus ensuring the full Windows experience. You can use “virtualisation” software such as VMware Fusion or Parallels, and this will allow you to run Windows-native apps side-by-side with your Mac apps, but the downside is that there may be some performance glitches. However, the message here: yes, you can run Windows on a Mac.

    2. Microsoft has a version of Office for Mac

    Microsoft has two versions of the industry-standard productivity suite we’ve all come to love (and possibly hate). Microsoft Office is the staple diet of the Windows world, but did you know that there’s a version made to run natively for Mac? It’s called Microsoft Office:Mac 2011 (that’s the latest version). So before you go out and get a copy of Windows, install it through BootCamp, and then get a copy of Office 2010 to install in that partition, wait! Rather get the native version of Office made specifically for your Mac. It ensures compatibility with the Windows version of Office, so your projects and assignments can be created safe in the knowledge that they can be read exactly as they were intended to on other systems. And if you don’t want to splurge on a copy of Office:Mac, you can always get Apple’s alternative, iWork. Whilst it hasn’t been updated in a long time (the last version came out in 2009), it is still quite powerful. It includes three apps: Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Whilst Numbers isn’t exactly an Excel killer, Pages allows you to create beautiful documents and Keynote is certainly far superior to PowerPoint. Apple is now selling the iWork suite as separate apps available through the Mac App Store.

    3. Safari doesn’t have to be your default browser

    Safari is Apple’s own web browser. It’s a great app, and it has some nifty features. However, you don’t have to settle with using Safari as your default browser. In fact, apart from Internet Exploder Explorer (which is, thankfully, only for the Windows OS), you have a wide choice of windows into the WWW: there’s Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. And if you browse the Mac App Store, you’re sure to find even more alternatives that are designed for specific tasks, such as turning your favourite social apps and email systems into apps of their own, complete with their own icons.

    The Mac is a great platform in my opinion. And the fact that it’s gaining traction – rapidly – throughout the world is testament to the design and engineering prowess of 1 Infinite Loop in being able to create an integrated system that works effortlessly to allow you to do more.

    If you have any other tips for Mac users, be sure to drop them in the comments below.

  • Words Befitting of our Times

    War Is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength: George Orwell – Nineteen Eighty-Four

  • SpaceX: Boldly Going into the Future

    Yesterday, South African-born billionaire entrepreneur, inventor and engineer, and founder of eBay, PayPal and SpaceX, Elon Musk, launched the first private attempt to dock with the International Space Station. This bold move goes down in history as the beginnings of a new frontier in space exploration – the age of private spaceflight.

    I’ve been following the private sector’s developments in space technology for some time now. You may be wondering why the big cable news networks and blogs are making such a fuss over the Falcon 9 rocket’s launch. The gist is this: before President Obama came into power, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (known as NASA to non-space geeks) had this brilliant, yet exceptionally expensive plan for a programme that would take-over from the aging space shuttle fleet (the STS, or space transportation system programme that’s been a large part of NASA’s recent history). It was called the Constellation Programme, and the idea was to return to the moon by around 2017, and from there, move to a human landing on Mars or an asteroid. They’d even begun testing new rocket-engine technology and had developed three concept vehicles based on an engine called the Ares. Things were looking good for NASA, until Obama came into the White House, and, inheriting a poor-administered political landscape and having to begin a term of office in what was probably the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, he effectively cut all funding for the Constellation Programme. Just like that, the excitement at returning to our cosmological neighbor was brought to a standstill.

    NASA thus decided to outsource its rocket building activities to the private sector, so that they could focus on astronomical research, and at the same time, give themselves more time to work on a new rocket system that could fulfill at least some of the objectives of the scrapped Constellation programme. SpaceX is one such private company that has shown significant potential in developing and successfully launching a vehicle that, it is expected, by 2014 will be able to allow the United States to launch their own astronauts to the ISS and not rely on their partners at ROSCOSMOS (the Russian Federal Space Agency).

    SpaceX has proved that it is possible to engineer a space vehicle at a fraction of the cost of what governmental agencies spend on this type of design work. Yet it also opens up the skies to a myriad number of designers, engineers and future thinkers who are willing and ready to contribute to the advancement of our civilisation, a future that is certainly embedded firmly in the realm of the stars.

  • Could We Really Have a “Web 3.0”?

    The buzzword of the past few years, used to describe the type of web that we know today – a web dominated by social websites and user-generated content – was “Web 2.0”. It seemed adequate in distinguishing this “iteration” of the web, encompassing the technologies, web standards and philosophies guiding a more connected web.

    But the question remains: could we have a “Web 3.0”? And if so, what exactly would this type of web be?

    It seems at present that what we have is working rather well for us. This generation of the web has connected our society in unparalleled ways. We can look to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and we see this happening on a constant basis. We see a constant stream of thought blasting through cyberspace from millions of voices across our planet. We see a web built not of websites, but of platforms: systems of communication that are far from what existed a mere ten or twenty years ago.

    So would a Web 3.0 be something that builds upon the platforms created in this generation, or is it going to be something more radical? Perhaps a “3D” web for a generation that most tech companies and film studios think can only be sated by eye-sore pseudo-holographic imagery?

    Or is this next version of our web going to be something a lot more subtle, a quiet transcendence of the web as we know it into a web that connects not only people with each other, but technology with the physical world?

    In some ways I don’t think we can even classify the web using numerical iterators. The web is really becoming a lot more organic in its nature, a lot more flexible to the changing tides of our volatile civlisation. However, I am still curious and excited to see what the web of tomorrow will bring.