I plan to use this blog to write more about my thoughts on technology, including discussion of detail that may not be interesting to my readers on this personal blog.

I’m still working on the overall look and feel of the blog, but I will figure that out over time.

Subscribe or bookmark What’s on your desktop? or follow @psaulnier on Twitter!

Although I didn’t expect any actual activity (read: non-spam e-mails) in this account, it turns out that the powers and randomness of the internet proved otherwise. By reading through my emails for the past few years in this long-forgotten account, you would think I’m a master of many identities, balancing myself as a poker addict, an avid church goer, professional photographer, world traveler, among other personas, each with its own unique name, such as Paul, Peter, Patti and Patricia.

Let’s begin looking through the e-mail excerpts, shall we?

Trustees,

This year we have three nominations for Citizen of the Year. Other potential nominees from the last meeting were dropped due to lack of profile information. The nominees are:

[list of names redacted]

Please make your selection and return your vote via reply e-mail.

Wow, I get to choose a citizen of the year? I nominate myself!

Happy halloween, patti! Hope you’re having fun….    ken

Oh trust me, I am.

Welcome paul saulnier to the Smugglers’ Wireless Internet Network!

The account you just registered for was issued the following username and password.
Username:  [redacted]
Password:   [redacted]

I will use this smuggle iBeer on my iPhone across the border.

Hi Patricia,

It was great seeing you at the [location redacted] Bridal Show yesterday! [names redacted], and I really enjoyed chatting with you about your upcoming wedding at [redacted] Hotel. [other details about some photo product]

Warmly,

[some photo company]

I really enjoyed chatting with you as well… wait, Bridal Show? What?!

Dear Paul,

This e-mail confirms that a Security Code has been issued for your account at Poker Heaven (PIN: [redacted]) and sent by regular mail to the postal address you registered when you opened your account.

Good thing they sent this via regular mail. I wouldn’t want to be holding some poker addict back from his fix.

Friends:

Just as a matter of courtesy, I wanted to let everyone know that I have resigned from the [redacted] Committee.  This was a very difficult and disappointing decision for me, and I certainly did not make it lightly.  While I deeply regret that I will not be able to fulfill my obligation to [location redacted]’s residents and employees, I do take some comfort in knowing that our town is amply blessed with very intelligent, talented and community-minded individuals, any one of whom would be able to quickly and seamlessly fill the vacant position.

Let’s hope the best qualified person wasn’t the one who was supposed to receive my copy of the e-mail.

Finance Committee:

I have attached a preliminary 2010 budget which I will hand out to Session this evening.

Disturbing. The budget for a church was actually attached to this e-mail (well, actually the next one right after since the sender forgot to attach it the first time, oops!). This church had a yearly income of $488k, and expenses of $582k, leading to a whopping $101k deficit. Out of this, $5k is being spent on Telephones & Internet. It must be on gold plated phones because they certainly aren’t talking much to each other.

I thought you might like to see pictures from last night.

[name redacted]

These pictures of a business meeting weren’t nearly as scandalous as you’re hoping. Get your mind out of the gutter!

Peter,

Please add our newest Trustee, [redacted], to the roster for distribution at the Jan 4 meeting.

[contact details redacted].

As well, you can delete [names redacted] – I have official resignations from each.

Thank you,

[redacted]

Please remove me from the roster. I don’t care.

Hi [someone else] and Peter,
I was just wondering if you received my note regarding the wall in the basement closet. We were wondering if it was going to be repaired before school starts.
Hope you are both having a great summer!
Thanks,
[redacted]

Sure, I’ll get right on that.

And the list of e-mail goes on. All in all, I took the liberty of replying to the most confused groups of people to tell them I’m not the person that they are looking for. I didn’t get many responses, presumably because the senders are too embarassed to acknowledge they’ve been furiously e-mailing the wrong person for months. In the case of the church, they thanked me for telling them, and continue to cheerfully send me a copy of their monthly newsletter. Oh well.

I hope you like it. Enjoy!

iPhone

After months of singing the praises of my BlackBerry, I got rid of it and moved to an iPhone. This was an expensive procedure because I am still on a contract with Telus, but selling my old phone and iPod touch helped offset the cost. For me, it’s a much better device that I am happy with. I really wish I could be happy with a BlackBerry for the wide variety of uses I get out of my iPhone, but the manufacturer just doesn’t want to put enough effort into developing the software properly.

Saint John Politics

I am back in Saint John visiting my family for a couple weeks. A few things have changed, but not much, as always. City debates continue to spur over the new Peel Plaza complex, which currently includes a plan to ruin a historic Carnegie Arts Centre building by burying the lower windows so that a tunnel for transporting prisoners can be built. Umm, what?

Academia & Robots

The main reason for my lack of time lately is the amount of work I’ve been putting into my school work. I’m working on a new robot that interacts with people in different ways, though not quite on the level of reading emotions as I previously explored. I did extensive development with my robot, now named PAUL-E, and am now working on a couple submissions to two upcoming conferences, so more travel may not be far away.

New Cell Phone Network

Say what you want about the Canadian cellphone industry, something done right has seemingly accomplished by 2 of the big 3, Telus and Bell. They have launched a new 3rd generation high-speed cellular network which enables them to offer phones that don’t suck, like the iPhone. Rogers offers a similar, compatible network, but it’s only fast in the main cities, whereas Bell and Telus created their network to be the same speed across pretty much most of the country. So far, my experience has been decent, with a few bugs that I hope they work out soon. This network was actually launched several months in advance ahead of the Olympics.

In the United States, people regularly complain about AT&T’s cell service which is the only company officially offering the iPhone in that country. Dropped calls and defaulting to the slower speed network is a regular occurrence in many large cities. Hopefully our networks will continue to be expansive with prices falling more due to increased competition.

That’s all for now. I hope to update my blog more often.

Last week, my interview with Dr. Saul Greenberg (who coordinated with my supervisor and myself on this project) was broadcast nationwide on CBC Spark.

Various news sites from around the world spread the word in other languages.

In German!

In Japanese!

In Dutch! And a few more.

I was also contacted for individual interviews for the web sites of Wired and Wired UK.

In British English!

The Telegraph-Journal from my hometown also ran a story on the front page of their weekly Innovate section, with a very large colour photo.

My colleagues in the lab were quite amused as they saw me on the floor for this shot. The carpet, thankfully, was very clean. The Roomba in this photo actually has had its vacuum parts removed, so it’s not responsible for the cleanliness. Is a Roomba still a Roomba if it cannot vacuum?

Overall, this media attention has been a wild ride beyond my craziest expectations. I am very happy for the support this idea has received. You can view my complete project page on my web site.

Sure enough, there was my face on The Raw Feed. This was my project. It gets better, because there was more!

A link from this article lead me to MIT’s Information Review blog, which published a review of my project last Friday.

How did this happen? Last week, I attended the HRI 2009 Conference in San Diego, California where I presented my previously blogged first academic publication as a poster. Things went well at the conference! Don’t worry, pictures are coming soon from San Francisco, where I went for a few days before San Diego.

Now I was curious if there was any other coverage of my little Roomba project, so I searched around. I found myself on the front page of BotJunkie as well, a robot blog, with an amusing headline.

Later in the day, my project made its way onto Gizmodo, a rather popular blog that I read from time to time, with another rather amusing headline. The comments are also quite good.

As you can imagine, I’m quite excited at the response that my project received. Now I realize it might actually be my mood which causes my Roomba to develop an attitude and refuse to return to its home base, instead hiding out in the most remote place it can find.

UPDATE: My project has now also appeared on Ubergizmo, this time with a bit more mellow headline.

Based on Alexa and Technorati ratings, both Gizmodo and Ubergizmo are two of the most popular gadget blogs around.

UPDATE 2: My project has just appeared on Engadget. Woohoo! This article sheds light on my little comic.

Almost two months ago, my cell phone broke, so I was in the market for a new one. I decided to take the leap and sprung for a BlackBerry after researching them online. I already have an iPod touch, so an iPhone is unnecessary.

Now that I’ve been using it for a while, I’m very impressed with the design of the device and its level of features. An interesting feature is that it uses magnets to detect when it is in its holster so it can disable the keyboard and turn off the screen. Even more interesting is how there’s many features of the BlackBerry that aren’t really promoted at all because so many people trust the brand for quality anyway. When Apple revises its iPods and iPhones, it usually adds 1 or 2 new features and markets them like crazy.

I also switched from Bell Mobility to Telus Mobility. I was very unimpressed with Bell’s lack of professionalism with store clerks that know nothing and have no power to help me, and a web site that’s forever malfunctioning.

At any rate, I sent my Samsung M500 back to Saint John so my parents could send it in for repairs and use it for themselves. It’s almost two months after I moved my number to Telus, and Bell still won’t release control of the old phone so my parents can activate it on their own Bell plan. Idiots. I wasn’t on a contract, either.

Just today, I also bought an Acer Aspire One netbook. This is one of those tiny laptops, which I plan to use when travelling and at school.

I got a good deal on a model nearly identical to this stock picture from a local classified listing. It features a 120 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM, 2 SD card slots, 2 hour battery, and integrated webcam/mic. So far, I’m pretty impressed with how well it runs Windows XP. It also only weighs 2 pounds and is smaller than most textbooks.

For me, technology is fun, a hobby and also a necessity. It’s very convenient to be in a grocery store, see something, and be able to Google a recipe from my BlackBerry so I get all the things I need. I also like to travel with a computer so I can update my blog and post pictures, but my regular laptop is a bit overqualified for that job, and adds unnecessary weight.

Not a pretty sight. There’s three sets of images coming together and only the greener section in the top right is actually high resolution when you zoom in. Harbour Station is barely visible at all!

Until today, I have just given up and assumed there are no higher resolution images available for Saint John. This was until I tried out Microsoft’s Live Search Maps:

The imagery in this similar view from Microsoft’s service is much better, so much better in fact that I was able to zoom in on my own neighbourhood and discern my father’s trailer parked in the driveway outside my house, whereas I can barely see anything at all on Google Maps. Microsoft’s system also seemed a bit faster and more responsive, without any ugly copyright watermarks splashed across the maps. This is saying a lot for Microsoft since I was using a non-Microsoft web browser in a non-US location, circumstances that usually lead to a better experience with Google’s services.This puts my respect for Google down a peg since they, as the supposedly hip and fast moving innovators, are always too quick to attack Microsoft for being the slow-moving dinosaur, when the roles actually seem reversed somewhat here.

Here is my design:

This project was different for me in many ways. This was the first time I used a larger fixed-width design with large photographs everywhere. This can often be a nightmare, but I feel it really added value to this site in promoting the beautiful imagery surrounding this development.

You can view more information about this project in my Portfolio or you can visit the web site itself.