Hang on, I'll just print one up for you

Simple and cheap 3D printing is here

Oh Lord, another  technological genie is out of the bottle and its the usual mixture of good bad and ignorance in Australia.  
Let me explain--we have an opportunity right now of rebuilding our manufacturing industry. Personal additive manufacturing: a process that allows many common consumer good parts to be made on demand is spreading like wildfire elsewhere in the world but here it seems to be treated as a mere curiousity.
Take this case for a moment: Breaking a handle on your prized Gogomobile? No problem, instead of trying to find the part at some exorbitant cost from an importer or a wrecker, print it up on your home 3D printer. Here is a website in Australia that will sell you one for around $2000. Connect it to the net, download a few plans and you are away.
Already the US Army has such devices, setup in fabrication plants about the size of a shipping container, in its forward deployment units. They are used to "print up" what they need when any equipment breaks down. It is faster and less dangerous than a resupply.

US Army fabrication on forward bases

I first heard that such printing were close to reality eight years ago during a trip to an American Midwest university.  Now they are here and like the arrival of the microcomputer and the internet  they are set to create chaos: a truly disruptive technology that will change how we live.
Consider for a moment the enormous investment we have in selling aftermarket parts for all kinds of mass produced goods.  It isn't just Goggomobils that need parts and a complex infrastructure and thousands of Australian jobs are tied up in supplying accessories to the vehicles on the road. 

No, no, not the Dart

It is nothing less than a revolution in manufacturing economics. Economies of scale go out the window and talk of labour units could go out the window. Firms like Apple that design in Silicon Valley and then farm out their products for manufacture in sweatshops on the other side of the world where labour is cheaper may have to radically rethink their processes because the race will tend to go to those who have a close relationship between research and manufacture.  Rapid prototyping will become hypersonic, faults could be corrected overnight with the issue of a new set of plans for a part.  

Robots can sew too

Just now most of the products being manufactured are plastic or metal but don't expect this to last long. Consider the effect of a cheap robotic clothes maker...not just a sewing machine but a cutter and assembly.  Impossible?  Don't bet your booties on it. Yes, in the words of Dr. Scott in the Rocky Horror Show "We have been working on such an idea for some time".  In fact the US military has been investing in making it happen for the last decade.  Ill fitting clothing cheaply manufactured in coarse rack size may disappear as precision engineering at the back of the retail shop works off personal body measurements, your chosen design and chosen fabric.
China has also been beavering away at adapting to this new way of doing business.  They have even opened a museum of 3D Printing to remind their citizens of how much they have already contributed to this revolution

The good News

The good news is that this could see an end to much of what we now call the global economy.  Raw materials will still have to be finished but the days when it was economic to ship those Goggomobils around the world for sale may be ending. Why buy an expensive import, when you can get something better and more suited to your exact requirements at much less cost run up in a machine shop down the road? 
Suddenly, Australian manufacturers, if they accept the challenge can be cost competitive because so much of the raw materials used in overseas plants that now create our goods come from Australia. Not only could we have our items quicker but cheaper and more customised to what we need rather than having to put up with what we put up with now from the Asian sweatshop manufacturers.

The bad news

The bad news is that this kind of instant product could have serious ramifications for how we live.  For example, in the light of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary, the US lawmakers are considering tightening up US gun laws and are homing in on the high capacity ammunition clips for assault rifles.

The freedom loving Americans paranoid that their government is trying to reduce them to slavery by taking deadly weapons out of circulation have rebelled.  The crazies are looked for ways of home manufacturing lethal weapons.  And they have scored their first big success in making those high capacity clips. Now they are moving on to producing home-made assault rifles using the cheap 3D printers.  It doesn't take much of a leap in imagination to the stockpiling of anti-tank guns, rocket launchers, armed drones, and DIY minefields. All in the name of Liberty.
But that's American.  The question is what will we be do with our three wishes from the 3D Printer Genie here in Australia. Griffith University has been working on what could be done. In fact it is already running courses in how to design for the new technology at its Queensland College of Art Campus on South Bank.  Oh brave new world.

The wrap

Too much to put into a simple blog--for instance I havent touched on the endeavours now underway to make self-replicating 3D printers. Consider watching or reading the TED address by Ned Gershenfeld of MIT in 2006 where he outlined what was coming.  Like Cassandra he warned but no one listened:

"In DC, I go to every agency that wants to talk, you know; ... they all want to talk about it, but it breaks their organizational boundaries. In fact, it's illegal for them, in many cases, to equip ordinary people to create rather than consume technology. And that problem is so severe that the ultimate invention coming from this community surprised me: it's the social engineering". 

Wouldn't want social engineering now would we? 

A sense of proportion

While the  clean up from the storms continue and State. And council workers struggle to deal with the hundreds who are asking for help on the Bay Islands the news media have already moved on to issues that are of more concern to the mainlanders:  the crash of a train commuter train into the barrier aat Cleveland Station It was serious the newly built station facilities were hheavily damaged at least one carriage is going to be difficult 

To repair and ten were taken off to hospital with minor injuries.

By you will be able to see hear and read all about this because every media was there. Lots of journalists scribbling or waving hands as they explained the details .

Meanwhile on the Bay Islands State Disaster Recovery workers shared their cut lunches withthose whose food had gone bad in the three day blackout.

 The storm is old news now...and besides this makes better TV.

BayJournal dies

I have been running an on line newspaper for my local area--the Southern Moreton Bay Islands for a little over eight years.  The BayJournal does not pay well, what is received in advertising barely covered the operating expenses but I saw it as a public duty in an area that had little coverage and even less opportunity for public debate.
The site has a good following, hundreds have tuned in each week to find what was happening.  I have published over 3000 articles and almost as many photos on local issues--almost one a day. It broke the news on a lot of matters that no one else wanted to talk about.
But the world has changed since then. Now we have two island print newspapers competing for attention and the big social networking sites allow and encourage more debate than is healthy. Wild assertions that go unpunished on the social media have to be stopped and this became a significant part of my day.
Over the last three months I have had problems with my internet provider and the underlying Joomla software.  More and more time was being taken up in servicing the 150mb database of previous articles. These issues along with escalating costs of running the set up had moved me to the point of shutting it all down.
Well, the decision has been made for me with yet another crash and I have decided that it is time that I moved on. For anyone who is interested the archive of the BayJournal covering a tempestuous period in the history of the Bay Islands, is available from the Redland City Council Library.
RIP BayJournal.

What is wrong with this picture: even Wide Bay is in the grips of climate change

As the smell of seasonal bushfires hang heavy in the air and the politicians are again supporting and denying that the Australian climate is changing.
Probably the most extreme denial was from Warren Truss standing in for the Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott who is off fighting bushfires.  He is the Member for Wide Bay, 

Leader of The Nationals, and 

Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. He s

coffed any suggestion of the records being set this week were significant : "It's too simplistic to link one hot spell to climate change."
But he did say record temperatures the prime cause of the fires.  What he ignored was the slow ramp up of temperatures over the last century, a fact affirmed this week by the US Government and Australian weather authorities.  Here is the world wide graph from the US EPA site

But perhaps the third generation farmer out of Kingaroy, Warren Truss is thinking about his own little patch of the world, the Wide Bay Electorate around Maryborough. I decided to do a little mathematics of my own on easily available data.
It was so simple:

1. Went to the Australian Weather Bureau and hunted down the weather statistics for the Maryborough Electorate.  That turned out to be a station in Maryborough only three kilometres from Truss's electoral office.
2. As it happens Maryborough has been keeping records for the last century so I was able to cut and paste the data for the last 100 years of maximum temperatures for each month into a spreadsheet.
3. Displayed as a graph I noticed immediately that all the monthly series were trending up.
4. But it was to messy so I cut it down to January and added a linear trend line to show the upward trend within the yearly variation. See at top.

And it is not the end of the month so this year's extraordinary record breaking maximums that Truss was so quick to dismiss have not been taken into account.

Why do so many people continue to disregard the predictions by the scientists? The change is real, its here and it is now.  It is simple really.

Towards using a smart camera: three weeks on

Paper Artist rendering of a sunset

I thought this was going to be simple:  learn how to use the Samsung Galaxy Camera's basic shooting modes and take a few good photos for sharing.
Of course it wasn't.  I found myself pondering how Samsung managed to produce such a great design and yet failed  to exploit its full potential.
Don't get me wrong, I love this camera because it allows me to shoot, edit and publish to the web in minutes rather than hours.
Unfortunately, Samsung's internal politics and timidity appear to have got in the way of this simple and powerful philosophy.
Let me count the faults:

Inadequate battery

The key to modern photography is to shoot lots and select.  Professional photographers now regularly take 3000 photos at a sporting event.  Why risk missing that perfect moment?  On my mobile phone I had become very used to this tactic and thought with the features of the Galaxy camera I would be able to continue.
Sadly the weak battery limits what is possible.  A solid two hour session using the x21 zoom and all the wonderful smart shooting modes will have you running through batteries like lollies on Halloween.  I now carry two fully charged bigger capacity spares. The only saving grace is that it takes only moments to change.  You learn fast to turn off  the wifi and strip out the SIM until you really need them.

Inadequate app space 

Simple effects with Photo Wizard

Brilliant colours of a city building in the late afternoon
sun are caught with precision.

No matter how big and fast the microSD storage card you buy, most of the in camera memory is already taken up by the native Samsung apps, Samsung choice of editing apps and InstaGram.  Many of Samsung apps are unnecessary frippery (I definitely don't need S-Planner,S-voice and S-suggest, Group Cast, Talkback, Gamehub, Mobile print.  These should have been dowload choices and not burnt into the precious camera flash memory.  The specs say 4Gb but the available space once you get rocking is somewhere between 300 and 400Mb.
If you try to load a file manager and anti-virus, you will find that the symbol warning insufficient memory for some functions starts to cut in. This means for example that Google+ can refuse to do its Instant Upload and loading supplementary packages becomes questionable.

Gotchas in popular available apps

Some of my favourite third party apps are incapable of using the full power of the Galaxy Camera.
For example the beautifully intuitive Snapseed now owned by Google cannot handle the full resolution sizes of the Galaxy Camera. It reduces them to 2304x1296 before allowing any editing. This reduces my jpg file from 3.52Mb down to 742.39kb. I would much prefer it if the resizing was done further downstream.
Thus time and again I am forced back onto the supplied Photo Wizard and Gallery.
Streamzoo cannot engage the Galaxy Camera's manual or the smart modes. These areas where the Galaxy Camera really shines and should be easily locked in to any one of the major editing and sharing apps.  
If Samsung wants this camera to succeed, it needs to cooperate with the app suppliers and make it the platform of choice for their work to. Just as in the DSLR world the competition between Adobe and a number of competitors have created some marvellous advances so to Samsung needs to develop its new camera.

Slow start-up and imprecise controls

Quick shots aren't that ease to squeeze off.  This shot fails
because it needed to be zoomed in and catching the kid
leaping into the wake moments later. 

I have missed several good shots already because the start-up time is so slow.  Keeping the camera on warm boot is infinitely better than trying to save battery by turning the camera completely off--but that comes with a penalty.
The zoom is touchy.  Over-zooming in or out is a constant dangers so I have found it can be better to rely on the size of a wide angle shot and then crop. And don't forget that on full zoom, even the best stabilizer has to fight hard to make up for your involuntary body movement.  A mono-pod is worth considering.
Likewise the two step focus and snap button is a little soft so I am getting a lot of unfocussed shots through my haste or no shot because I didn't push hard enough.  In theory the sound is supposed to indicate but if you are trying to take photos without disturbing the subjects, it is either off or very low.

So do I still recommend it?

You betcha!
Oliver Lang writing for the Digital Photography Review penetrated to the heart of how you should approach the Galaxy Camera--it is not a Smartphone, it is not a heavy-duty at any cost DSLR capable of magazine quality shooting--it is instead, the first of a new breed that allows reasonably good quality shooting, editing and fast sharing.
I am sure, like the Galaxy Note we will see a Galaxy Camera II in about a year that will have a better battery life, take advantage of Android 4.2 and be faster. Meanwhile, other hardware companies may see the opportunity and build their own versions of smart cameras that improve on the concept. Already Polaroid is promising an Android with interchangeable lenses.
In the meantime, I will learn to work within the limitations and run hard with the strengths.  As +Chase Jarvis puts it in his seminal work on mobile photography "the best camera is the one that's with you". The Galaxy Camera, is small enough and light enough to fit into my trouser pocket, it is nearly always with me and I delight that it is.

Mixed messages about Stradbroke bridge from the Queensland Government

One of three planning strategies doing the rounds between 1977 and 1986. It proposed five new urban centres and a peak holiday population of 80,000 people. The plan included building a bridge and the continuation of sand mining.  The natural environment would not have been restored and instead the land used by the mines reshaped to suit residential development. Of the new centres, Clayton would be a series of hectare blocks along Clayton Road, Amity. Karboora will be halfway along the Dunwich 18 mile swamp road and Mllbool will be at the end of the road. Canaipa Point  would have been be south of Dunwich near where the bridge joins the Island and Canaipa Waters was planned as a canal estate south of Canaipa Point. The suggested tourist development included a casino at Karboora and a country club at Dunwich.

Queensland Ministers are disagreeing on the future of North Stradbroke.

John
Paul-Langb
roek

In the Courier Mail yesterday Education Minister John Paul-Langbroek said a North Stradbroke Island bridge might have to be reconsidered to ensure the island community remained viable.
"We do have to plan for people to be able to maintain their lives over there," Mr Langbroek said.
At the same time Planning Minister Jeff Seeney said the project was currently "not on the Government's radar" and a spokes person for Transport Minister and Main Roads Minister Craig Emerson flatly told Brisbane Times that trying to bridge in North Stradbroke Island was uneconomic.
The spokesperson said that the southern Moreton Bay islands will come into the Translink network, allowing them cheaper ferry trips, from mid-2013.
The reason for the sudden flurry of comment was the release of the 1982 Queensland Government Cabinet Papers which revealed for the first time the extent of the carve up of North Stradbroke Island Crown land that was to bankroll bridging from the mainland 20 years ago.
In May 1982, Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen told his cabinet:
"Early this year I received a deputation representing a consortium of private developers which expressed interest in submitting a proposal to the government for private financing of a bridge in return for development rights to certain Crown lands on North Stradbroke Island"
"I am now in receipt of a proposal from the consortium ... including Keneba Pty Ltd, a company incorporated in Western Australia, and Seo Il Construction Company Limited from Korea."
A route across Russell Island had been investigated by the Department of Main Roads in March 1978.
The Cabinet papers showed that a toll would not be enough to cover the expenses of the bridging so, in order for the plan to work, the Government was considering giving freehold title for the 800 hectares of crown land near Point Lookout to the companies that they could then sell off to "reputable developers".

Joh
Bjelke-Petersen

Estimates at the time said this was enough for 8,000 houses and a permanent population of 20,000.and a permanent population of 20,000 on North Stradbroke.

About 50 hectares of "prime beachfront land" would have been set aside for commercial and high-density development.
What is more the developers would have exclusive rights to develop land on North Stradbroke Island.
It wasn't until 1986 that a $81 million final proposal was revealed. It would have taken the route across Pannikin and Russell islands and overshot the budget
The developers wanted the Government to bear part of the cost of the bridging and the State Government canned the project as "economically unviable".
Two years later Redland Shire Chairman Merv Genrich said that as the Shire’s plans to pipe water from the sands of Stradbroke Island to the mainland via Russell in order to support residential development in the south of the Shire.  95% of the North Stradbroke was declared a water catchment reserve and thus insufficient crown land was left on Stradbroke to excite developers today.

Karen
Williams

Commenting on the feasibility of the current State Government revisiting the issue, Redland City Council Mayor Karen Williams  said North Stradbroke Island faced challenges as mining operations wound down but she believed there was neither funding nor community support for bridging.
She told Andrew MacDonald of the Courier Mail that it could also risk damaging North Stradbroke's reputation as a pristine and relatively secluded tourism asset.
"My position currently would be that we need to take a long-term view of the transition plans for North Stradbroke Island and I don't know that the bridge is the solution," she said.
"When you do build that kind of infrastructure, there is then pressure to find ways to keep up with costs and find ways of maintaining it which could ultimately mean developing parts of the island we wouldn't be considering today."
Taking a similar line to Craig Emerson she said a bigger issue facing council was providing additional services to the southern Moreton Bay Islands.

Craig
Ogilvie

Councillor for North Stradbroke's Division Craig Ogilvie said the proposal in 1982 reflected "a type of thinking that belonged back in that generation. It certainly isn't the type of thinking that belongs in this generation.
"Any move to reconsider the issue could inflame residents".