JPHiggs

So I’m nearing the end of the 2 hour documentary film entitled “GasLand” earlier today and I make a post to my Facebook page about it . I notice that only 3 minutes ago a friend of mine had posted, based on the same movie, similar thoughts of rage and disgust over the Natural Gas industry’s appalling practices and denials. This spawned a conversation via the posts about the energy industries’ greed based actions and lack of concern for the environment and the general public. As our requirements for energy rise and our need to cut the pollution caused by energy also rises, we should, rather, redirect our energies and funds. Such project resources as “Clean Coal”, Natural Gas, and “more efficient” and “better” means to harvest and burn Oil should actually be used to push the use of far cleaner energy productions like hydro, solar, and wind powers. Though they may be less profitable to big tycoons, there are many other ways to make boat-loads of money besides destroying everyone else’s natural born rights. Clean air, land and water is it’s own wealth, far greater than money.  I, myself, have been looking at solar products for quite some time now. It’s not quite as efficient as hydro, but it’s the best resource I have available to me.  As a matter of fact an item I’m currently looking at as a starter Solar Panel installation is on Amazon HERE and I am debating on doing no AC inversion, just a direct 12v DC battery set to a separately wired home lighting system. Automotive 12v LED lights are bright, efficient, and CHEAP. One of the sets I’m looking at is HERE, granted it’s not the equivalent of a 60-watt bulb, but just a couple in a room would be more than enough light to compete, and with a much cleaner color light as well. To my best estimates, each only uses about 3 watts, say you have 2 to replace your standard 60 watt bulb, you only use about 1/10th of the power (which is also 1/2 of what today’s fluorescent equivalents use) and with almost no loss due to power conversion. Normally there would be loss of energy due adapting the generated DC to AC power (for standard house current) and back from AC to DC (for use in the LED’s, computer, chargers, etc.) I think running a separate 12v system in the home should be a standard anyway… then you have electronics that will work both in homes AND in cars, and that gives you still more efficiency in the fact that you wouldn’t need 2 different adapters for your portables anymore.  I digress… It seems the energy industries have us… I mean the US… in a strangle hold, we depend on them for our way of life, they make tons of money, and our laws hardly apply to them.

Recent events of a ‘major oil company’ destroying the environment due to their own negligence, then having the government bail them out and let it go so far out of control that it will take years for the environment to bounce back… I think I need to make some friends in the EPA and get them on the ball, and pool some more resources on getting the public on to cleaner and more efficient energy usage. I think a free workshop is in order here. We could get a few alternative energy companies together to educate people along with some local government types and community leaders to show the locals just what incentives they have to work with. That’s what I think the public needs to get moving: Hands on, easy, no-brainer options laid out in front of them that they can afford… and especially some education as to what’s going on around them.

I have to say, Discovery Channel has always been one of my favorite stations of all time. Being a tinkerer and a person who loves to know how things work, the programming is, and pretty much always has been, right up my alley. The additional networks they’ve put out have been wonderful just as well, including Animal Planet, TLC, Discovery Health, I’m sure a few others… and now Planet Green. As some of you MAY be aware, I do love me some GREEN. Whether it’s green meaning clean power technology, biodegradable products, renewable resources and foods, or just the view of some refreshing outdoorsy vegetation, I do embrace the greener side of things. I spend a lot of my free time researching ways to make differences in my world around me and then trying to make the difference. It seems that Planet Green may just give me the ability to do both at the same time. Lets face it, it’s hard to DO anything while ‘researching’ at a computer (though I am a fan of looking things up on the net and all), having a station that feeds me the information I want gives me the ability to get things DONE while I’m getting said information. If you’re one of those that leaves the TV on for ‘noise’ in an empty house (shame on you for wasting electricity!), this is what you should be listening to. Get some information that’s not only useful, but entertaining as well.

Useful information that’s entertaining as well brings me to my topic: Future Food. I had the privilege a couple of days ago at a joint SMCDC and Discovery Networks event to meet Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche, the chefs and hosts of the Future Food show on Planet Green. They are molecular gastronomers, entrepreneurs, and inventors as well, try fitting all of that on to one plate… Well, in a way -they do. Concoctions which most would never dare to put together, try, or even think of, these guys do it, and they do it on TV.  Obviously everyone wants to watch, I know I do.  Learning how to make something new, especially in an interesting way, is always a pleasure for me. They basically said during their talk that it’s not about being disheartened by the possible hundreds of failures, it’s about finding the one thing that works and blows everyone away. These guys are about creative foods and alternative ways to eat what’s around us. I know I get bored of the same ‘ol same ‘ol, most people do.  By nature we’re supposed to eat our environment… right? Well there’s a lot of environment around us that can be seen from many perspectives, and one of those perspectives is hungry.

I had the honor today of being invited to an Apple technology discussion, a small group of about 30 or so people were to attend. I’ve never been much of an Apple person myself, not that I’m a fan of Microsoft either, or that I can even claim to be a Unix/Linux guru. I just never succumbed to the glitz and shine of Apple‘s polished and seemingly snobbish ways. Knowing that OS X owed a lot of it’s power and stability,  and not to mention security, to Linux – which is typically free, I have always felt “why pay so much more, when you can get something fully functional cheaper or even for free?”  The only problem is that the relatively cheap MS pc’s and open source/no cost ‘free’-dom of Linux is only a small part of it. After sitting through several presentations by various speakers, some of which included Cisco and other company representatives, I found that there really is more behind Apple than the yuppie crowd of designer logos screaming silently at the public. The technology within the products is so much more than they make it out to be. The software may make everything you do on their devices practically idiot-proof, and the candy-glossed shells make the devices look like toys in a CGI movie, but the truth is on the inside, they’re powerful devices with security and stability built right in.

There are a few graphics card manufacturers that have made their processors available for other tasks when the card’s potential is not in use, those of us that use BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) may have noticed that it’s a selectable option when letting others make use of our computer, and now video, processor’s idle time. Well Apple is implementing Open CL, no I don’t mean Open GL. Open CL opens up the ability to use (from what I understand) any graphics card’s processing abilities to use for computation on other tasks. More processor power over all being utilized and therefore being more efficient over all. I also learned that Apple‘s computers have virtually no memory limit, though hardware limitations do apply eventually, though I forget the theoretical limit, the software is built to handle it all. Another thing, I can’t say how long I’ve been waiting for this, that they are doing… they are creating Net Boot capable devices in which there is no hard drive at all, in fact the system only requires sufficient RAM and a decent connection to a network and it can load directly from a server and pull information from a cloud. No residual information left behind while all of a user’s data is safe in the cloud, able to be accessed from any terminal. I know others have talked and even implemented some version of this, but this is a purely clean loaded OS, every time, straight from RAM. Very secure and moving towards what I’ve been dreaming of for a long time… Devices that need no significant memory and very little processing power, just user interfaces really, to communicate with a fully functional cloud where data is kept secured and backed up, easily accessed from anywhere in the world. Apple‘s on the right path, and they may have just made a new customer.

I did thoroughly enjoy myself in Austin, TX for SXSW Interactive. I was among many first timers there and as I was informed, it was %140 of last year’s attendance… That’s a lot of newbs. I saw many interesting seminars and panels while I was at “SouthBy”. Of course one of my favorite panels was a Zero Waste discussion put together by one of my own friends, Steven Mandzik, or as some of you may know him on Twitter as RobotChampion or by his website ACleanLife.org.  His was a talk on how to further reduce your footprint, of course I don’t mean reducing your shoe size, though for myself that would make shoes easier to find, I do, however, mean to make less of an impact on our environment. I’ve been a personal advocate for greener and healthier living since I was a youngster. I could give most of the credit for my way of thinking to my parents and quite obviously a large amount to my grandfather Stuart Higgs who, since I can remember, has had his very own hydro-electric power plant on his property that he designed and built that currently fully powers 3 of the family houses on the property. I came across this article on my grandfather in Home Power Magazine from 1991 to show to Steve, and now you as well. Everywhere I’ve lived I’ve always pushed for more efficiency and reusing, recycling and composting, even designing and building my own electronics and sensor-relays to automatically trigger devices so as to take the work and thought out of being efficient at times. As I ramble on, I again state my case on why Steve’s was a favorite topic.

Of the many booths on the floor showcasing new technologies and goods, I found myself at the Glass table. WriteOnGlass.com sparked an interest in me as I am also an advocate of interactivity, and that’s just what Glass is all about. This tool is “a virtual canvas over the entire web where you can literally place notes on top of any website”. You can share to specific people and decide where and what to highlight, pinpoint, etc. I see even more potential for such a tool, but I’ll keep that to myself and to their beta feedback team *It’s this kind of interactivity that we’re moving towards on the internet that makes each computer more of synapse in the nervous system the web is becoming*

I would like to say that more booths sparked such an interest, but honestly, I was drawn in by the LEGOs for far too long, a bit of Rock-Band, and some time at the 3D TV experience that Panasonic had provided… interesting enough, but I don’t think I’m sold until they come up with a 3D experience that either has no glasses necessary, cheaper glasses, or the ability to see 3D with glasses and NO DOUBLE IMAGE for those that don’t have a pair on. Because no matter how many pairs you have, you’ll have some point where there’s a person left out and can’t watch, or everyone has to do without the experience.

There were, of course, more than enough after-parties to go to, and I did my fair share. Free drinks and food were everywhere as well, but I’ll get in to those details at another date… or in another forum… maybe

FOSE at the Washington Convention Center in DC was a good one for the little bit I was able to attend, due to scheduling and appointment conflicts. The showroom floor was full of cloud computing as well as security companies, video distribution and content management companies, services and many others on down the line. The only talk I was able to attend was the GSA Administrator, Martha Johnson’s. She put it well when she said “Work is what you do, not where you are”. I believe this whole-heartedly, especially when thinking GREEN. Less time in traffic, especially Rush-Hour traffic, means less fuel used, less wear-and-tear on vehicles AND roadways, all adding up to a whole lot less pollution and resources wasted. She spoke of making the push for customer feedback using collaborative technologies calling it “collective intelligence” and media tools to gather ideas and information to converge on solutions which help with transparency and consolidate information causing ease of access for those who need it. This gave me a few things to think about in my own line of work… ‘gotta pitch things to the boss now’ – but it’s a good thing

I’ve been going to many conferences and talks lately and I have plenty more that are upcoming.  I went to CEA‘s post CES discussion and learned about a lot of the exciting gadgets and technology that were at the show, that kind of thing is right up my alley. I would love to attend next year’s CES for certain. I also recently went to the WIRe conference at the National Harbor in MD and was a bit disappointed.  The speakers and topics were what I expected and all, but there was a general lack of new and useful content.  Nothing made me take a second look or change my perspective at all except for a small workshop held by Andrea Baker that got people working together and thinking in an irregular fashion. People separated in to teams and were given topics to draw in colors and use post-its, a bit similar to Mind-Mapping and just as useful. It made me think about what I would do differently and why. I now have a large hand-full of great ideas that I can’t wait to exercise at a future conference. -Patience is key here-

I’m definitely looking forward to attending this year’s SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX. Maybe they’ll have something along the lines of what I’ve been thinking of there. If not, I’ll absorb what is offered and go on just as happy, after all… its SXSW! I truly don’t think I’ve been this excited about going somewhere for a long time. Find me if you’re there, I’d love to chat – especially if you have some new tech to talk about! -see my list of networking sites to the right-

I’ll also be heading to FOSE, a Government & Business Tech convention, in March and of course DCWEEK, A.K.A. Digital Capital Week, as I was at the planning meeting for that over this past weekend. If you have an event or workshop you’d like to host, have any ideas to put forth, or just learn a whole heck-of-a-lot go to the site and register!

I may be heading to Boston for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference as well, but that would mean missing some of DCWEEK… Decisions, Decisions. There’s also the possibility of heading out to L.A. this year as well, but that’s in the works.

I have a busy year ahead of me, and it’s filling up quickly. If you’d like to stay in my loop, follow me as JPHiggs on Twitter!

I, Joe Higgs, started JPHiggs LLC as a Home Automation, Networking, and Theater design and install company in Southern MD. The company was run successfully for some time and eventually closed so that I may return to attending school. I couldn’t stay out of the technology world for very long and so I eventually got back in to the DC area Business and Government technology and innovation circles. I’ve met high impact people in the community and have attended many conferences and conventions and as I see more push for innovation, the more I see that I can make it happen.

I chose to re-open my site in the hopes that I can help make change ACTUALLY happen. By utilizing open source products, more efficient practices, and putting minds to work together, I plan on changing things for the better and getting others to do the same.