One of my longtime interests has been “personal telemetry,” or, in the current vogue, “the quantified self.” Since my early involvement with the Plazes project I’ve had a particular interest in “geopresence” – the record of where I’ve been, when. My breadcrumbs, in other words.

Over the years I’ve been dropping digital breadcrumbs in a variety of ways that I hope to aggregate, archive and develop tools for the exploration of:

• 10,973 Plazes check-ins from 2004 to 2012.
• 2,176 Foursquare check-ins from 2009 to present.
• 6,245 Google Latitude records from 2010 to present.
• Some proportion of the 20,010 tweets I’ve posted to Twitter (tweets where my Twitter client has added geolocation data).
• Some proportion of the 34,839 photos in my iPhoto library (photos with geolocation in the EXIF data).
• Some proportion of 60 months worth of Metro Credit Union bank statements (transactions that I can attach to a specific place).
• Some proportion of 48 months worth of personal MasterCard statements (transactions that I can attach to a specific place).
• Some proportion of 60 months worth of corporate Visa statements (transactions that I can attach to a specific place).

As a starting point, I’d like to work to convert all of these streams into KML Placemarks, which seems like a nice widely-adopted XML standard that can capture both the time and location of a “geopresence.” Here’s my first Foursquare checkin, for example, as a Placemark:

    Reinvented HQ
    
      Not sure that I completely understand
      Foursquare - seems like Plazes,
      but harder to use
    
    Mon, 26 Oct 09 18:12:56 +0000
    Mon, 26 Oct 09 18:12:56 +0000
    1
    
        1
        relativeToGround
        
            -63.12968790933351,46.236265592340494
        
    

This was easy to grab because Foursquare has a handy page that will export all your checkins directly into a KML file. Twitter appears poised to release the entire back-catalog of tweets for each user any day now – there were tests of this in the wild in late 2012. When Nokia shut down Plazes they allowed Plazes users to export their complete history as delimited ASCII. Google Latitude provides for of history as KML (albeit via a little URL hacking to get the date range right). The other streams will require some PDF file parsing and some intellligence to convert credit card and bank statement description lines into georeferenced locations.

When it came time to choose a location for my office in Robertson Library I had two options: joining Peter Lux in a relatively cavernous sunlight space formerly occupied by various technicians and programmers, and, around the corner and down a hall, a decidedly uncavernous, non-sunlit 50 square foot research cubicle. I choose the tiny cubicle because, despite the obvious advantages of proximity to Peter, to say nothing of the advantages of sunlight, I wanted to ensure that I could establish a “sense of place” for my base of operations, and that’s something that’s hard to do in an open-plan “bullpen”.

Given that my focus as Hacker in Residence is going to be primarily digital, you might very well ask why I need an office in the library at all. I’ve certainly asked myself this question, as the logistics of slogging myself up to campus, laptop in tow, from my already-rather-comfortable perch in my day-job Reinventorium are, given that my life is otherwise restricted to a small 3-block area downtown, somewhat onerous.

But I decided that it was important to be as much physically embedded as digitally embedded: I want to be able to work among the librarians, technicians, researchers, staff and students, and to be able to listen to and observe what they do, I want to understand more about what value having a physical library brings in a digital age, and I don’t want to limit myself only to the digital realm in my various experiments and enlivenings.

And so I’m set up in Room 322, tiny and, to my mind, perfect.

The office is just down the hall from the stacks, specifically the shelves that hold books from Library of Congress classification LB “Theory and practice of education” to ML “Literature on music.” Which is not a bad intersection at which to carve out a niche.

One of the other great benefits of being physically embedded is daily exposure to the eccentric collection of physical artifacts adorning the walls of the library. There are maps and plaques and new book displays and, around a corner here and a corner there, unusual bits of art like this uncredited work installed in a break in the concrete.

Taking a page from my father’s book – he is a great maker of maps and diagrams – one of my first acts, upon getting settled in my new office, was to borrow a measuring tape and take measurements, and then to use these to make a Sketchup model of the office. You can see a rendering below, or grab the Sketchup file itself if you want to walk around it yourself.

Former Director of Computer Services at the University of PEI, Jim Hancock, appeared on Island Morning today to talk about the 25th anniversary of the upei.ca domain.

IslandNewspapers.ca, and particularly its digitizing of archival issues of The Charlottetown Guardian, is one of my favourite projects of Robertson Library, partly because I find it incredibly useful (especially in the about-to-be-released version that contains many more issues of the newspaper), and partly because the project first took root in a conversation I had with Mark Leggott, University Librarian, back in 1994 (an event memorialized in my Working for Free talk).

As proof-positive that projects like this take a long time to germinate, here’s a post from November 17, 1994 – 19 years ago! – where I asked the readers of the comp.text Usenet group for the lay of the digitization land:

I’m interested in hearing from anyone who knows anything about converting microfilmed archival newspapers and converting them to digital information through some sort of optical character recognition process.

All these years later, thanks to the hard work and dedication of many people who aren’t me, this project has come to fruition, and it will soon be possible to browse almost any historical issue of The Guardian from the comfort of your couch (to say nothing of the myriad research possibilities afforded by the ability to search the archive).

It’s interesting to look at the headers of the original source of that comp.text posting:

Path: nntp.gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!torn! \
news.unb.ca!upei.ca!peinet.pe.ca!peinet.pe.ca!not-for-mail
From: peicr...@bud.peinet.pe.ca (PEI Crafts Council)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: OCR from microfilm: how?
Date: 17 Nov 1994 12:01:42 -0400
Organization: PEINet Inc, Charlottetown, PEI Canada
Lines: 9
Message-ID: <3afup6$2ah@bud.peinet.pe.ca>
Reply-To: i...@crafts-council.pe.ca
NNTP-Posting-Host: bud.peinet.pe.ca
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]

From there we can learn some interesting historical tidbits:

• My email address at the time was peicraft@bud.peinet.pe.ca, as the PEI Crafts Council, where I was working, used PEINet’s email service at the time. The machine name “bud” was one I knew well, as it later went on to be the home of the first iterations of the www.gov.pe.ca website.
• Usenet was a “store and forward” network: you sent a message to your local network, which sent it “upstream,” in this case from PEINet to the University of Prince Edward Island, to the University of New Brunswick, to the University of Toronto (torn), to Marquette University in Milwaukee, through ans.net and xlink.net to nntp.gmd.de, a host at an institution that, apparently, no longer exists.
• I was using the Usenet “newsreader” software called “tin” (which is still around today; indeed you can download an archive of the same version 1.2 PL2 that I was using).

After a good afternoon on campus yesterday afternoon, I’ve been doing a little work around the edges from my downtown office.

• I got my authorization from IT Support & Services for VPN access to my virtual server. The instructions they provided for setup on Mac OS X were clear and concise, and worked without issues: connecting is now as simple as setting up a VPN tunnel via Tunnelblick and then SSHing in as I normally would to a remote host.
• I did a little aesthetic finessing on this site, installing the Premium Responsive theme to experiment with and throwing together a preliminary visual identity for the Hacker in Residence project (aided by the Integrated Communications Visual Identity Download Centre).
• Used Integrated Communications’ business card ordering site to order some Hacker in Residence business cards; then asked for permission to order business cards (and offered to pay the $60 cost myself if permission wasn’t granted; fortunately, it was).
• Ran into some issues with the virtual server and permissions: I wasn’t able to create files in my home directory (/home/prukavina), which meant that I couldn’t set up passwordless SSH authentication. Contacted Peter Lux at Robertson Library Systems and he corrected some issues with mounts to make it work.
• In response to my query to Chartwells about the lack of espresso on campus received a helpful reply: Currently there is no espresso machine on campus, but we have one on order with Vanhoutte, it will be put in Samuels sometime next month. I hope against hope that they’re talking about a bona fide coffee machine, and not a “cappuccino in a box” Irving gas station-style instant coffee maker.
• Finally, last night I went out to Staples and bought another trusty Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 for my UPEI office: I couldn’t handle another day of typing on my tiny MacBook Air keyboard.  Also picked up a 32GB Lexar USB stick (on sale for $19.99) to let me use the various USB-stick-requiring devices in the library.

My second afternoon on campus.

• Picked up a key to room 322 from the Facilities Management across campus; very friendly and efficient service there.
• Tried out my campus card on the Shipping & Receiving door at the back of Robertson Library and confirmed that it works, so I can get 24/7 access to the library now.
• Found that the Ethernet jack on room 322 (labelled B-2-28) isn’t working; sent in a request to have this looked at. Will use the wifi, which just barely stretches in here, for the time-being.
• Got myself a PIN so that I could using the Campus Login system to change my campus network password.
• Talked to Peter Lux about getting a virtual server set up and he sprang into action and got me set up with a nice Drupal 7 installation (which is where I am typing now).
• Walked around campus handing out and posting cards marking the 25th anniversary of UPEI.ca’s registration. Met Blair Vessey for the first time face-to-face, and dropped in on Integrated Communications.
• Did a tiny bit of configuration on this Drupal installation, which I’ve pegged to hack.ruk.ca while awaiting an official upei.ca subdomain.

One of the unsung aspects of the University of Prince Edward Island is its pioneering involvement in the early Internet: under the leadership of Jim Hancock (Director of Computer Services from 1972 to 1997), UPEI, among other things, participated in the NetNorth, CA*Net and CANARIE initiatives, hosted Prince Edward Island’s first connection to the Internet, and registered the country’s first “.ca” domain, upei.ca, in 1988.

The upei.ca domain name registration’s anniversary is coming up on Sunday: 25 years ago, on January 12, 1988, the domain was registered with John Demco at the University of BC, a name well-known to any of us involved in the early Internet in Canada, as he was the go-to guy for all .ca domain name registrations for many years (back when they were free, but encumbered by many restrictions; that’s how I ended up, for a time, with the domain name digitalisland.kingston.pe.ca).

While the university’s work in this regard had tremendous benefits for the institution itself, it benefited Prince Edward Island as a whole in many other ways. In my case it made for my first contact with PEI when I was applying for a job here – an email from Morley Pinsent using the CA*Net email system hosted by UPEI that was free to any Islander who asked – and, once I relocated here, it was my conduit to the greater world through my email address caprukav@atlas.cs.upei.ca (I still remember the day in 1993 when, as a meek 27 year old, Earlene Gallant handled the paperwork to sign me up for this).

UPEI’s work led to PEINet, which became (via a 14.4 kbps leased line connection) the conduit for the first webserver on PEI, at the PEI Crafts Council, to join the network; later, it was on PEINet’s web host that I created the first versions of www.gov.pe.ca. Through this all, the counsel of Jim’s successor as Director of Computer Services, Dave Cairns, was extremely valuable (the best piece of advice Dave ever gave me: hard drives will always fail, eventually, and maybe tomorrow).

All Islanders owe a great debt to the University of PEI for its vision in this regard; to help mark the occasion, I printed up a ceremonial poster on the letterpress this afternoon, and I’ll stick them up around town and campus over the next few days:

I began a new appointment today, as Hacker in Residence at Robertson Library, University of Prince Edward Island. Under the aegis of the university’s “visiting scholar” program, I’ll be a part-time member of the library community for the next year, with a mandate:

To bring the spirit and application of the ‘hacker ethic’ to the Robertson Library where the hacker ethic is defined as “access, freedom of information, and improvement to quality of life.”

That’s intentionally open-ended: while I have a grasp of the terrain I’d like to wander, what I’ll be doing specifically is to be seen. In general, I’ll be seeking to take the infrastructure, facilities, systems and special projects of the library apart and shed light on them by remixing, mashing-up, communicating and enlivening. I will be a “user in residence,” “patron in residence,” and “developer in residence” by times (and no, I will have nothing to do with “testing the library’s security systems,” which reflects a different (mis)use of the term “hacker”).

The appointment has its roots in conversations that University Librarian Mark Leggott and I started having when he was first appointed 6 years ago: I’ve long sought a way of becoming more deeply engaged with the work the library is doing, and it took 6 years for us to hack together a model that worked. In innumerable ways, it’s a dream position for me.

My role isn’t operational – which is good, because I’m not getting paid! – and has no specific research goals. If that sounds an awful lot like “hanging out around the library and doing stuff I find interesting,” that’s good, because that’s what I’m planning on doing. Beyond scratching my personal interests and  and curiousities, I’m a strong believer that a hacker presence inside any organization can be a force for good, and this is a good opportunity to put that belief to the test.

I’ll be on the University of PEI campus two or three times a week, working out of tiny room 322 of Robertson Library on the second floor beside the stacks, 50 square feet of highly-concentrated hackerspace that, right now, has a desk chair and an Ethernet jack waiting for me. Some time later this week there will be a website attached to me, where various reports of my exploits will begin to flow.

A brief summary of day one’s activities:

• Sampled the cinnamon-raisin bagels of the in-library café, a facility that, alas, does not serve espresso-based beverages (a coffee drought that afflicts the entire campus, it seems) and met the friendly café staff (man does that place get busy between classes!).
• Got a tour of the library, and introductions to most of the staff, from the ever-helpful and efficient Pauline MacPherson, library administrator.
• Met briefly with Peter Lux, a colleague from many projects in the past, to get a general lay of the systems and to talk about getting a virtual server set up for me.
• Met briefly with Don Moses, another longtime colleague and now Digitization Initiatives & Systems head at the library, about the general lay of his land.
• Took the measurements of my office (92” x 80” with a 92” x 25” counter/desk, a bookshelf, a single electrical outlet, a single Ethernet port, a wastepaper basket and a bulletin board).
• Make a request from Special Collections Librarian Simon Lloyd for blueprints of the library building (not currently in the collection, but perhaps available from the facilities branch of the university); figured a good way to start my term was to get a handle on the physical plant at the same time as I’m checking out the digital plant.
• Got myself hooked up to the wifi (only the barest dribble of a signal in my office, which I’ll have to fix somehow).
• Tracked down the history of Robertson Library.
• Bought a 10-pack of bus tickets to get me to and from the library.

Various bits of paperwork and bureaucracy are still in the works: security needs to cut me a key to my office and arrange for 24/7 access via the back door (so I can host raves, etc.), computer services needs to rejig my campus account so I can do things like print and access server resources. But, otherwise, I’m ready to roll.

A brief summary of day one’s activities:

• Sampled the cinnamon-raisin bagels of the in-library café, a facility that, alas, does not serve espresso-based beverages (a coffee drought that afflicts the entire campus, it seems) and met the friendly café staff (man does that place get busy between classes!).
• Got a tour of the library, and introductions to most of the staff, from the ever-helpful and efficient Pauline MacPherson, library administrator.
• Met briefly with Peter Lux, a colleague from many projects in the past, to get a general lay of the systems and to talk about getting a virtual server set up for me.
• Met briefly with Don Moses, another longtime colleague and now Digitization Initiatives & Systems head at the library, about the general lay of his land.
• Took the measurements of my office (92” x 80” with a 92” x 25” counter/desk, a bookshelf, a single electrical outlet, a single Ethernet port, a wastepaper basket and a bulletin board).
• Made a request from Special Collections Librarian Simon Lloyd for blueprints of the library building (not currently in the collection, but perhaps available from the facilities branch of the university); figured a good way to start my term was to get a handle on the physical plant at the same time as I’m checking out the digital plant.
• Got myself hooked up to the wifi (only the barest dribble of a signal in my office, which I’ll have to fix somehow).
• Tracked down the history of Robertson Library.
• Bought a 10-pack of bus tickets to get me to and from the library.

I am one of those “never quite got the hang of electronics” kids. Sure, I built myself a crystal radio. Got that drugstore prescription printer to work with my TRS-80 Model I. And I’ve wired up my share of connectors and cables. But soldering was always a roadblock. And don’t get me started on decrypting the coloured bands on resistors. It’s not that any of this was particularly impenetrable; it’s just that I never took the time, perhaps because sticking to software allowed me to do much more delightful things. But, now I’ve got a Raspberry Pi, and we’re in the Internet of Things era, so the least I can do is get some LEDs turning on and off with Python.

I used this tutorial as the basis for my coding – I just stripped out the IMAP-checking bits; the code looks like this:

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GREEN_LED = 18
RED_LED = 23
GPIO.setup(GREEN_LED, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(RED_LED, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.output(GREEN_LED, True)
GPIO.output(RED_LED, True)

Can a “are we getting more than 100% of our electricity from the wind” alert system be too far behind?