Upon2020 (archive)

  • My Raspberry Pi Pool Timer — Why

    (There will be more parts.) Here’s my problem: The filter and the sweep of my pool need to be run every day for a few hours. The corresponding pumps are controlled by two electromechanical timers, one of which failed recently after probably more than 20 years of service. (Timer shown to the right.) Turns out…

  • Two Mega-Trends

    Salim Ismael, founding Executive Director and Global Ambassador of Singularity University, recently identified one of the mega-trends of our times as follows (I’m paraphrasing): There are those changes that are exponential, like Moore’s Law, the advancements in sequencing genomes, or global knowledge. And there are those changes that remain linear (or are so slow they…

  • In Memoriam Sr. Alberta Volz

    [This blog will stay English. This post is personal and an exception.] Am 29. Oktober starb Sr. Alberta Volz, die in meiner Schulzeit am St. Bonaventura-Gymnasium in Dillingen an der Donau für zwei Jahre meine Klavier- und später auch Musiklehrerin war. Die Hälfte der Welt ist on-line, aber Google findet auch überhaupt nichts über sie,…

  • Personal Cloud Architecture

    Updated 2012-11-01 based on discussion on the Personal Clouds mailing list. See also Phil Windley’s comments. Last week’s IIW, as usual, facilitated a lot of interesting discussions including on the subject of Personal Clouds. It was the prompt for me to sit down and draw an “architecture” for Personal Clouds, which is consistent with the…

  • Why Decentralized Software Is 10x Harder

    The Diaspora* guys announced today: Today, we are giving control of Diaspora to the community. which has widely been interpreted as giving up on the grand vision of decentralized social networking. The remaining Diaspora team apparently (I’d guess based on advice they got from YCombinator) will focus on a more standard “we run an ad-supported…