About Quentin on Quentin Stafford-Fraser

Self Esteem

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Telemarq

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Telemarq

Telemarq is a five-person consultancy business, with a focus on software development but also undertaking a variety of other projects.

Most of my current non-University work is done under the Telemarq umbrella.

For more information, please see telemarq.com.

Orville Wright didn't have a pilot's...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

from “Orbiting the Giant Hairball”

Camvine

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Camvine

formally Cambridge Visual Networks Ltd - was a company I started in 2007 to bring modern, internet-based management to the world of digital signage. Nowadays, it would be called an ‘Internet of Things’ company, but nobody had come up with that phrase at the time!

We created a system called CODA - the Content Delivery Architecture - which allows you simply to drag and drop your content onto network-connected displays using a browser, regardless of where you, or they, are in the world - and the content starts playing immediately.

The Smartest Person

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I love this one, and it has guided my career, or what passes for one, on numerous occasions.

DisplayLink

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

DisplayLink

I co-founded DisplayLink (formerly Newnham Research) with Martin King in 2003, and was the CEO for its first couple of years.

DisplayLink grew from a back-of-the-envelope calculation (quite literally) where we realised that general-purpose networks were getting fast enough that they could be the connection between your computer and your monitor. The company eventually focused on video-over-USB, but it had its origins in the ethernet-based ultra-thin-client hardware we developed for the Ndiyo project.

Face

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is the version I first heard and loved, but as with so many quotations, its history is a bit more complicated than that.

It's a sobering thought...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

From the intro to ‘Alma’.

Brandolini's Law

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, has a nice Wikipedia page.

Exbiblio

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Exbiblio

Exbiblio was a company I started with Martin King, with the aim of bringing some of the power of digital media to paper documents. I gave several talks about the ideas behind it; this one is from the GOVIS 2007 conference in New Zealand:

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Exbiblio developed some early-stage prototype products, some interesting underlying technology, and a very substantial patent portfolio. But, sadly, when Martin died in 2010, the company died with him. The patent portfolio was acquired by Google.

IMAPdedup

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

IMAPdedup

From time to time I end up with duplicate email messages in an IMAP mailbox, often as part of copying and archiving mail, or sometimes simply as a result of being on the recipient list for messages more than once.

Deleting these by hand is a nuisance, so I created a Python script that would do it for me.

You can get IMAPdedup from GitHub. The documentation is now there.

Never attribute to malice that which...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

So who was Hanlon? See my blog post for more info.

The elementary rules of logic...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The public interest

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Watt's the cost?

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

How much does a watt cost?

How much will a 1-watt device cost you if you leave it running 24x7?

You know you have reached perfection...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Are you being a fuel fool?

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

How far is it worth driving to save X pence per litre?

If you use a site like PetrolPrices.com, you might find out that the supermarket 8 miles away is selling petrol at 4p per litre less than the one just around the corner.

But is it actually worth driving that distance? Fill in the details below and we’ll tell you!

What's the capacity of your fuel tank in litres? litres

This site might help if you don't know.

Roughly how full is your tank at present? %

For example, put 33 if your tank is 1/3 full. We'll assume you want to fill it up.

How much does the closest fuel cost? £ per litre

How much does the more distant fuel cost? £ per litre

By filling up at the remote location...

A good programmer...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Higher-order Venn diagrams

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Higher-order Venn diagrams

Have you ever wondered how you can construct a Venn diagram with more than two or three sets?

Back in 1989, I was working as the Computer Officer for my Cambridge college, Gonville & Caius. One of the Fellows, Anthony Edwards, was working on the design of a stained-glass window to commemorate the work of John Venn, an earlier Fellow of the college, and in doing so became interested in the construction of larger Venn diagrams.

Ndiyo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ndiyo

The Ndiyo project was about taking very simple pixels-over-networks technology and using it to make IT more affordable and sustainable for the world.

For much of the world, a PC costs about a year’s income. Picture your own annual income, and imagine that your next PC was going to cost that much. Then think about how many your kids could have… or how easily you could have afforded one as a student…

Patents

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Patents

At the time of writing (Sept 2010), I’m listed as an inventor on the following patents & applications:

EP0777173, WO0103389, USD463389,WO2005098609, WO2005101193, WO2005106643, WO2005114380, US2006026140, US2006023945, US2006026078, WO2006014727, US2006036585, US2006036462, US2006041484, US2006041538, US2006041605, US2006041590, WO2006023937, WO2006023718, US2006047639, US2006053097, US2006050996, US2006061806, WO2006037011, US2006078207, US2006081714, US2006087683, US2006098900, US2006098899, US2006104515, US2006119900, US2006122983, WO2006061581, US2006136629, WO2006093971, US2006256371, WO2006124496, US2006294094, EP1741028, US2007011140, EP1743239, WO2007020408, EP1759282, EP1771784, KR20070043926, US2007162347, KR20070083841, KR20070092596, US2007279711, WO2007141020, US2007300142, GB2443437, US2008141117, US2008137971, US2008313172, US2009077658, US2010092095, US2010115139, US2010164838, US2010177970, US2010177964, US2010183246, US2010182631, US2010185538

PyGarmin

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

PyGarmin

Back in the day when GPS wasn’t something you had built into your phone, but something for which you had to buy a dedicated device and connect it to your PC using a serial port, I wrote PyGarmin, a set of Python classes implementing the Garmin serial protocols.

This lets you do things like downloading the tracks and waypoints stored on your device, and I’m pleased and surprised to find people are still using it: it was written in this millennium, but only just!

Qhue

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Qhue

Qhue is an ultra-lightweight Python wrapper for the Philips Hue API.

It aims to turn the API into convenient Python, with as little interference as possible. None of the methods are actually encoded locally in Qhue, which means it will automatically inherit most changes made by Philips at the server end.

You can get it from the Qhue GitHub project page.

Rules of normality

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

uwsgiapp

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

uwsgiapp

uWSGI is a somewhat eccentric but very useful framework for managing processes. It is typically used to run web apps behind a front-end server such as Apache or nginx.

If you’re running those apps in uWSGI’s emperor mode, it will start, stop and reload them as you edit their configuration files. This is handy, but adding and removing files is not always the most convenient way to manage something, so uwsgiapp is a little script which allows you to type, for example:

sshput

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

sshput

Configure password-free login for remote SSH servers.

Update: the standard command ssh-copy-id, available on some platforms, now does something similar, but you may still find some of the following usefule.

If you use SSH to log in to a remote machine, you normally need to enter a password. This also applies to any of the systems built on top of SSH, such as SFTP or SCP, and those which can use it as an optional underlying transport, such as Subversion.

An apostrophe is the difference...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A lovely example, if not always appropriate for polite company! See also this discussion.

Accomplish & credit

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is the most famous and pleasing version of the quotation, and is generally attributed to Harry Truman. However, Benjamin Jowett, about a century earlier, had said, “The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them”.

I suppose this rather nicely illustrates the point.

alfred_itp - iTerm 2 for Alfred 2

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

alfred_itp - iTerm 2 for Alfred 2

The very handy iTerm 2 utility is a terminal program with lots of great features beyond the standard OS X Terminal. Alfred is an amazing app launcher for OS X.

One of the features of iTerm 2 is the concept of ‘Profiles’. A profile can save a particular terminal configuration, including things like background colours, but most importantly, including an initial command to be run when the terminal is started. You can have a profile called ‘Production’, for example, which sets the background colour to bright red and does an ssh into your production webserver, and changes to your most commonly-used directory.

Notes for "Ansible - an absolute basic overview"

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ansible - an absolute basic overview

Despite being several years old, my YouTube video giving an introduction to Ansible seems to be rather popular, and it is still relevant despite the numerous version updates that Ansible has seen in the meantime.

There is one key change in the way Ansible playbooks are normally written which has changed over the years, partly to make them conform more to YAML conventions.

A line like

Trustworthy and useful tools for mobile phone extraction

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Enhanced Traffic Simulation for Improved Realism in Driving Simulators

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A short clip showing part of the system in use:

View on YouTube website

Analysis of yawning behaviour in spontaneous expressions of drowsy drivers

Tue, 01 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Human-like Guidance for Driving Navigation in an Urban Environment

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Intelligent scheduling for in-car notifications

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Demonstration of Jonathan’s simulator

View on YouTube website

Pico without public keys

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Password-Manager Friendly (PMF): Semantic Annotations to Improve the Effectiveness of Password Managers

Mon, 08 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

To Have and Have Not: Variations on Secret Sharing to Model User Presence

Sat, 13 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Bootstrapping Adoption of the Pico Password Replacement System

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Connecting to the Future

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Connecting to the Future

In July 2012, I wrote a set of three longish blog posts on the subject of IPv6.

The first, Banish Mavis and Connect to the Future, explains the basics of IPv6, and why I think this stuff is much more important than simply handing out new IP addresses.
The second, Tunnelling your way to the future, tells you how, if you have a Linux box on your network, you can give full IPv6 connectivity to all your machines, even if your ISP doesn’t support it yet.
The third, Protecting your IPv6 world, explains how to set up a simple firewall on the Linux machine so you can balance safety and flexibility.

Creating Drupal content using Python

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Creating Drupal content using Python

I wanted to import data into Drupal from elsewhere - in my case, from XML exported by another system.

Perhaps the easiest way to interface with Drupal at a simple level is to use the Services module. This lets you, for example, create applications in other languages which can create, list, or update Drupal content. There is a mix of documentation for it, some of which is a bit dated.

Building Debian/Ubuntu packages using SCons

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Building Debian/Ubuntu packages using SCons

Background

At CamVine we’ve been using the scons build utility as a replacement for our old make-based system. Sometimes it can be slightly non-intuitive, but we haven’t had anything like the depths of confusion that can occur in a big complex system using make. If you haven’t tried scons, I’d recommend it. I’d also recommend that you stop reading this and go and learn how to use it first, because this will assume some familiarity.

Locking down the GNOME desktop

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Locking down the GNOME desktop

I was setting up a multi-user Ndiyo system, which was based on the Ubuntu Linux distribution. But this was going into a public internet-cafe-type situation where I didn’t want users to be able to do things like reconfigure the network or delete items from the menus. I gather this is easier to manage under KDE, but we had gone far enough with the default Gnome configuration that it didn’t make sense to change.

The Patent Cold War

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The Patent Cold War

Quentin Stafford-Fraser

The current patent system is something of a farce. Almost everybody involved in it knows this, but it's a game we all have to keep playing because nobody can afford to be the first one to stop.

The patent system has been with us for nearly half a millennium, and it has always, I think, been rather a good idea. Anybody who came up with an invention and needed time to develop it into a business was granted a monopoly on the idea for a limited period, in exchange for writing it up and making it public. So there was an incentive to be inventive, less need for secrecy for fear of competition, and a constant flow of published new ideas to form the basis of technological and industrial progress.

If You Love Your Data, Set it Free

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000

How I survived the move from Palm to Windows CE

Wed, 01 May 2002 00:00:00 +0000

How I survived the move from Palm to Windows CE

Quentin Stafford-Fraser
July 2001
Update - epilogue, May 2002

Background

Having been an avid Palm V user for some time, and an equally enthusiastic Psion user before that, I had no real plans to change PDA again any time soon. I was familiar with the Compaq iPAQ because we had several of them in the lab - we would take them out of the box, immediately delete Windows CE, and replace it with Linux so that we could do interesting experiments. (We made an iPAQ with a Wi-Fi card into a cordless version of our Broadband Phone, for example. Very cute.). I had glanced at CE and decided that the apps weren’t a patch on the Palm or Psion equivalents, the iPAQ battery life was a joke compared to the rivals, and I certainly didn’t want to run Outlook on my desktop machine in place of the pleasantly simple Palm Desktop.

The Life and Times of the First Web Cam: When convenience was the mother of invention

Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Also available here.

The Importance of XML

Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000

The Importance of XML

Quentin Stafford-Fraser

Note: I wrote this in about 2001, when the world was a very different place - but I've kept it around for historical interest!

I suspect there may be a great deal of confusion amongst non-technical people about what it is, exactly, that the much-hyped XML gives you. There's no shortage of confusion amongst technical people, too. So here's my attempt to summarise why it is so important.

Integrating Synchronous and Asynchronous Collaboration with Virtual Network Computing

Thu, 01 Jun 2000 00:00:00 +0000

The Web - the Absolute Basics

Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

The Web - the Absolute Basics

Note: I’ve no idea when I first wrote this - some time just after the turn of the millennium, I think - but I’ve kept it around for historical interest! We used to have to explain this to people…

Note: If you are reading this on the web, this page is probably not for you! These are the very first things that people need to understand to get started on the web. It’s a one-page summary that I’ve used to help friends and relatives who have never seen a web browser before.

Virtual Network Computing

Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000

Where it all began: The Trojan Room Coffee Pot

Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 +0000

BrightBoard: A Video-Augmented Environment

Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 +0000

Brightboard demo:

View on YouTube website

BBC 5 Live - The Web's 20th Anniversary

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:31 +0100

This was part of a set of features celebrating the (approximate) 20th anniversary of the start of the web. An MP3 file is attached.

Are you un-future-proofed?

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:30 +0100

Your browser does not support the video tag.

We apologise for the poor audio quality - it improves during the recording, and the downloadable versions may also have slightly better audio.

'Brunch with Brent' and 'Linux Unplugged'

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I enjoy much of the output of the Jupiter Broadcasting network, and one of their feeds, Jupiter Extras, has a range of programmes that don’t obviously fit into any of their other categories.

Brent Gervais, a very capable and thoughtful host, has a subset of interviews called ‘Brunch with Brent’, and was good enough to invite me on to ramble about all sorts of things. Very enjoyable, at least for me!

You can find the episode here, and there’s a shorter extract featured as part of the Linux Unplugged podcast episode 463, of which Brent is also a host.

A Free and Simple Computer Link, John Markoff, NYT

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

On 8 December 1993, the New York Times published an article by John Markoff about the new Mosaic web browser. Markoff included a reference to the Trojan Room Coffee Pot webcam (paragraph 7), as an example of one of the things you could now view using this new technology…

A Free and Simple Computer Link – John Markoff, New York Times, December 1993

Link to the NYT Archive

Think of it as a map to the buried treasures of the Information Age.

Augmented Vehicles

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Augmented Vehicles

One of our in-car computers

My last area of research at AT&T, in 2001-2, was on the Augmented Vehicles project, where we were designing more intelligent in-car systems to try and make time spent on the move more productive, safe, educational and enjoyable. Remember, this was before in-car computers and satnavs - we had to build our own - and it was long before smartphones.

BBC Breakfast TV

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I was interviewed twice on BBC’s Breakfast programme about the early days of the web, and about the first webcam.

Attached are the two interviews in downloadable MP4 and AVI format. I’d recommend the 360p MP4 versions, unless you have a machine running unadorned Windows.

There was a lead-in piece which I’ve included in the part 1 files, so I come in at about 3:20.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Changing the Face of the PC

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

‘Changing the Face of the PC’ tells the story of the creation of Ndiyo, DisplayLink, and Cambridge Visual Networks, the technologies and motivations behind them, and some thoughts about the future.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

As an alternative to the inline movie above, you can download higher-quality versions using the links below - you may need to right-click on them to save the files to your local disk.

Don't cry because it's over. Smile...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is often attributed to Dr. Seuss, but almost certainly incorrectly: it has its origins at the end of the nineteenth century, in a poem called Lechtende Tage by Ludwig Jacobowski.

Endeavour

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Endeavour

The Endeavour Project at the University of Cambridge (the project formerly known as VBRAD) was investigating the use of computer vision and related technologies in the automotive world, and in particular how we can develop a better understanding of the driver’s activities, emotions, and environment.

The aim was to allow cars and their related systems to make more intelligent decisions about how to keep the driver informed, comfortable, safe, and heading in the direction they want to be going! This involved several subprojects looking at, for example:

Financial happiness

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

From Concepts to Companies

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The talks are now online here - a copy of mine is below.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

You can right-click here to download the (smallish) MPEG4 (H.264) version.

I'd always supposed ... that curiosity...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

From Paul’s article “Great Hackers” in The Best Software Writing I, edited by Joel Spolsky.

If we knew what we were...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is very widely attributed to Einstein on the web, though there’s no real evidence to attribute it to him, or indeed to anyone else. There’s a nice reference on this page to a variant from an anonymous source: “If we knew what we were doing, we wouldn’t need research”.

Innovation and Re-Innovation: Building Technologies and Technology Companies

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Roughly speaking, the first half is about the evolution of a particular idea as it passed through various projects and companies, and the second half explores the evolution of ideas in a more general sense.

Including the questions, it’s just over an hour long.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Just say yes to sharing computer power

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The article is now available online here.

My Ph.D work

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ph.D - Video-augmented Environments

My Ph.D. thesis subject, back in the mid-90s, was Video-Augmented Environments, in which I looked at ways of using video input for the creation of novel human-computer interfaces. Video cameras cost little more now than keyboards and mice, and there are plenty of interesting things you can do with them, but at present (and especially back then) it often isn’t worth the programming effort.

I built an architecture which allowed you to create simple ’triggering’ circuits from basic components (sources, sinks, filters & sensors) using a scripting language.

Ndiyo in Africa: Beyond PCs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A conversation with Quentin Stafford-Fraser, Executive Director, Ndiyo; hosted by Tom Rabon, Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Red Hat Inc.

You can see the interview on YouTube here:

View on YouTube website

Or you can watch the copy below:

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Ndiyo interview - BBC World Service

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Ndiyo-related segment can also be found at the download link below.

BBC World Service Go Digital Ndiyo Segment MP3

Ndiyo: Towards Sustainable IT for the World...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

An audio version is available below.

[Ndiyo - Towards sustainable IT for the world….mp3]

Never criticise a man...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

On critics

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Usually attributed (but probably incorrectly) to Abraham Lincoln.

Photos

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Photos

I’m an enthusiastic, though not a great, photographer. But I’m slowly getting better.

I used to keep my photos here, but, increasingly, the best places to find them are:

In the galleries here.
In the ‘photos’ category of my blog posts
On my Flickr account
I keep a few favourites on 500px, though I’m migrating from there to the galleries mentioned above.

In the unlikely event you came to this link actually looking for photos of me, here’s one:

Software / Ansible-Webfaction

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ansible-Webfaction

Ansible is one of my favourite tools for configuring and managing servers and software deployments at present. (You might want to look at it if you’re familiar with Chef, Puppet, Salt or Fabric.)

Webfaction was a great and remarkably affordable hosting service, on which I’ve run a large number of websites for many years, at very little cost (and with almost no down-time).

If you use both of these, then you might appreciate my modules for Ansible which can do many of the control panel operations under the control of Ansible scripts.

That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

From David Hume’s essay, “Of Miracles”.

He goes on to say that even in that case, you should subtract the two likelihoods to establish the level of assurance you can still have that the miracle took place.

The Broadband Phone

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Broadband Phone

I started the Broadband Phone project in early 1999, with Andy Fisher. That was great fun! It was fast-moving, became high-profile within AT&T, and got lots of attention. People like gadgets.

The Broadband Phone was a VOIP phone combined with a thin client - actually a VNC viewer with a touch screen built around a custom Linux ARM-based board. There was a server - an ordinary Dell PC also running Linux - which was the SIP proxy and also provided all the pixels for the user interface. It ran about 100 phones in the end, I think, and was the main internal phone system for the lab.

The First "Web" Cam

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

You can find the interview here if you’re curious. You have been warned – it’s just over an hour long, and it’s something of a monologue, for which I apologise, but Brian encourages that; he’s a great listener and many of the episodes have a similar format. That’s my excuse, anyway.

It’s also here:

The Invention of the Webcam

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

You can watch the 7-minute video and read the full details here.

The video is also on YouTube here.

Recorded by Collusion as part of their Cambridge Invents series.

The Paper Renaissance

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

View on YouTube website

There are also links below to versions you can download.

I’m intrigued by how much has changed since I gave that talk. The combination of better sheet-fed scanners, improved OCR, and widely-deployed search technology has revolutionised the way I deal with paper. Here’s a more recent video showing what I do with paper now.

Download the original video

The Pico Project

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Pico Project

The Pico project at the University of Cambridge was creating a system to replace passwords as a means of authentication. I was a part-time Research Associate on the project from 2013-2015.

The project was led by my friend Frank Stajano, and I made a video of him explaining it.

View on YouTube website

More information about Pico can be found on Frank’s copy of the original site, and a couple of my Publications refer to it.

The reasonable man adapts himself to...

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Sun Never Says

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I like this simple version, though it’s actually a misquotation.

Daniel Ladinsky’s ‘The Gift’, a book of translations of poems by Hafiz, includes the following:

THE SUN NEVER SAYS

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole Sky.

The Trojan Room Coffee Pot

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

There was an article the day before on the Technology section of the BBC Web site, by Rebecca Kesby, who interviewed us for the show.

You can find the programme’s page here or play or download the copy below. It’s just under 10 mins long.

BBC World Service Witness 20121123 - The Trojan Room Coffee Pot.mp3

The Trojan Room Coffee Pot images

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Coffee pot images

It seems strange now, but there are almost no photos of the Trojan Room Coffee Pot. This is partly because, even though we were connecting video cameras to computers back then, digital still cameras were not yet generally available.

The images here are therefore low-resolution, because I’ve captured them from VHS tapes of various news reports! But they’re better than nothing.

The beautiful Computer Lab building in which the coffee pot was located. The Trojan Room is, if I remember correctly, the set of glass windows almost in the centre, visible below the bridge.

The Trojan Room Coffee Pot: Bob Metcalfe's article

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Bob Metcalfe’s article

The first published reference to the world’s first webcam happened before it was a webcam!

On January 27, 1992, Bob Metcalfe’s column in Communications Week talked about our XCoffee system, which, the following year, would be connected to the web using a gateway created by Dan Gordon and Martyn Johnson. CommWeek is now long-gone, but I found a copy of the column in my emails from the period, and it’s reproduced here with Bob’s kind permission.

The Webcam

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A fun, lighthearted phone discussion, just over 10 mins long.

The Writing's on the Wall

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Writing’s on the Wall

This is a quick-fire presentation - just over three minutes long - given to the Cambridge Association of Architects at their summer gathering.

(The actual talk was not recorded, so I’ve re-recorded the narration here.)

CAA QFP talk.mp4

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Actually, he said ‘Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste.’, which is not quite the same thing, but the above version is the better known.

Unreasonable Progress

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t have a recording of the actual event, though I think a video may appear eventually. In the meantime, here’s a recording of my dry-run beforehand, which is pretty close to the final talk.

Van camgirls tot vogels kijken: de webcam bestaat 25 jaar

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Dutch RTL News programme interviewed me about webcams for just a few minutes, since, somewhat ironically, they had to spend about 45 mins getting their Skype working.

If, like me, you don’t speak any Dutch, you can hear me at about 0:16 and 1:24, and, in between the two, see some pictures of a much younger me!

View on YouTube website

Veinticinco años de la primera 'webcam': su creador solo quería "café recién hecho"

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A Spanish article based on an interview with José Manuel Blanco.

The title translates roughly as: “Twenty-five years after the first ‘webcam’: its creator just wanted ‘fresh coffee’”.

VNC

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

VNC

VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a system for sending graphics over networks, and it’s used mainly as a way to control one computer desktop from another one. The name comes from the fact that companies like Oracle were creating dedicated hardware web-browsing devices at the time, called Network Computers. Our system let you access remote servers with just a lightweight piece of software, so this was Virtual Network Computing.

Webcam interview

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This clip has camera appearances by both me and the coffee machine, on the same screen, which was on the far side of the world. Quite a novelty then.

For more information about this clip, please see one of my recent blog posts.

View on YouTube website

When the facts change

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

As a piece of incidental trivia, as a student in Cambridge, I lived in the room where Keynes is said to have been born.

Wir haben dem Web die Wuerze gegeben

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I was interviewed by Der Spiegel about the origins of the Trojan Room Coffee Pot as part of their ‘20 years on’ retrospective.

(My German is very limited… The interview was translated! Not my choice of title…)

World's First Webcam

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

View on YouTube website