After getting excited about Mologogo, I broke down and bought a cell phone. Then, being a geek, I went out and started reading up on J2ME, the development system for it that would allow me to create my own applications to carry around with me. Then, still not having filled my nerd quota, I got to thinking about what sorts of interesting apps would be enabled by the combination of GPS and web access in a mobile device. By this morning, I had worked up the following application design (mostly in my subconscious while sleeping). I’m excited about the idea; if you’re interested, please feel free to chip in ideas. If I get around to coding, the current plan is to make it open-source so other people can help with the hard math. 🙂

Abstract:

Cacher’s Apprentice (working name) is a tool for geocaching from a mobile phone. It will provide facilities for locating nearby caches and for helping the user to find them. There will be an operating mode to support each of these tasks. (Note: geocaching.com doesn’t provide web services currently, but does have a lightweight interface that should ease working with their site a bit, though it still relies on session data more than would be ideal.) The ideal user is someone who enjoys geocaching and is traveling, finds herself with a bit of spare time, and wants to see if there are any caches nearby to seek out.

Location Screen:

• When started up, application will be in location mode.
• App will query the GPS receiver to get current location.
• App will then query geocaching.com with the current latitude and longitude to find the 10 caches nearest the user.
• Caches will be displayed in a list, with the closest at the top.
• User can scroll through the list and get a summary (size, distance, type) on each of the caches.
• Selecting a cache moves to the display screen for that cache.
• List can be refreshed with a “Refresh” command.
• App can be exited with “Exit” command.

Display Screen:

• Queries Geocaching.com for and shows all details (description,etc) for a particular cache.
• Commands are “Back” to move to Location Screen and “Track” to move to tracking mode.

Tracking Screen:

• Application will display the name/ID of the selected cache, and distance to it. The GPS will be queried and this information updated continuously.
• App will also display a “hotter/colder” designation based on whether the distance is increasing or decreasing.
• Hotter/colder may also have an audio cue — an ascending tone for hotter, descending for colder. (The absolute pitch might rise as you get closer, too.)
• “Found it” command will shut off audio notification and allow logging the find on geocaching.com.
• “Back” command will bring user back to location mode.
• “Hints” command will retrieve hints from Gecoaching.com and display them.

We’ve had a small group at Texas State exploring the educational potential of games and simulations for about a year now. A few months back, our director became very interested in Second Life, a virtual world with entirely user-created content. Emin, one of my coworkers, has since been building a lovely virtual space for use by the University populace within Second Life.

In preparation for a conference this weekend, Emin put together a tour of Texas State’s island. Behold, the Bobcat Village tour:

I’ve fallen woefully behind on posts here of late. Sorry about that — just lots of real life going on. Recent highlights:

• Watching 20 million bats come boiling out of Bracken Cave with the rest of the family. The critters form a vortex as they emerge, looking for all the world like a mammalian tornado. Especially striking were the occassional albinos spiraling upward, startling in their whiteness amid thousands of their brown fellows. Great experience.
• Saw Edward James Olmos speak. As a huge fan of Stand and Deliver and his more recent work in Battlestar Galactica, I had high expectations. Suffice it to say, however, than this was another proof of the maxim that expertise in one area does not imply expertise in another.
• Played at church and Cheatham Street Warehouse last Sunday. Good times, both.
• Liam and Maggie enjoyed a weekend at the beach with Mom McMains, who graciously offered to include them on a fishing/swimming/sandcastle building trip.
• Maggie caught her first fish at the San Marcos River while we celebrated Frisbee Dan‘s birthday with him.
• Had a super double-date with David and Elizabeth last Saturday. Also bumped into some old friends from my high school while we were out — what a great surprise!
• Closed out the season at Schlitterbahn. Abigail and I were the last people to ride the Family Blaster for the year.

I’m a long-time cell-phone hater. This stems partly from the fact that I don’t like phones in general, and partly from the dropped calls, intermittent signals, and latency that causes me to always feel like I’m tripping over and interrupting the person on the other end of the call. I have, however, thought for several years that there is one application that might pull me into the late-20th century cell-phone toting world: a GPS-enabled friend tracking service where you could see the location of your designated buddies on a map and get alerts if you happen to wander close to them.

I had seen an early research project along these lines a few years back where a grad student had hacked together a system to keep track of friends on ski trails. It showed good promise, but wasn’t really robust and friendly enough for wide use.

This morning while listening to NPR, I heard about Mologogo, a new effort that is much more polished and complete. It combines geolocation, chat, and social networking functions into what looks like a rapidly evolving, pretty feature-rich package — very interesting, indeed. I found myself for the first time this morning actually looking on cell phone providors’ sites to check out their service offerings. Mologogo, what have you wrought?

This morning I half-woke, needing to go to the bathroom badly. I’m not especially good at mornings, and always hate getting up out of a nice warm bed to hit the loo. After several minutes deliberation and increasingly urgent persuasion from my bladder, I eventually managed to lever myself upright and stumble blearily to the restroom to do my business. I came back to lie back down — only to wake up, still in bed, and still needing to go to the bathroom. Argh!

That was the most prosaic, and yet the most frustrating, dream I think I’ve ever had.

I took Liam to Cub Scout Camp for the day on Saturday. He had a great time running amok with other boys, practicing archery, shooting BB guns, fishing, etc.

Liam with his first catch

One of my favorite moments of the day:

Guide: (Holding up animal fur) Who can tell me what animal this comes from?

Scout: A Bear?

Guide:: No.

Scout: An Otter?

Guide: Good guess, but no.

Scout: A Webelo?

Guide: (Guffaws.)

The Sci-Fi Channel has a fun new show this season called Eureka which has quickly become some of our favorite family viewing. It was created by Andy Cosby, Ross’s production partner out in California. Further, the most recent episode was penned by our friend Johanna Stokes. It’s a great bit of writing, so go buy the episode and reward Andy and Jojo for their fine work.

As the Austin Game Conference kicked off, I took Tuesday night to run up to Austin and meet up with several of my old cronies from the days at Origin working on Ultima Online. They have all scattered to the four corners of the United States at this point, now working in California, Texas and Georgia for EA, Sony, and Cartoon Network, so it was a rare and delightful opportunity to get to catch up and spend the evening having dinner and a couple of beers. (More than a couple in some people’s cases…)

During the course of the evening, the question inevitably came up, “Do you ever think about getting back into the game industry?” Honestly, I’d have to say no. Though I probably had more fun working at Origin than I have had at any other job, it’s quite common to have to deal with “crunch time” in that industry, which means 60-80 hour work weeks, sometimes for months at a time. And even at the places that are good about maintaining a healthy balance between work and the rest of life, I’d have to endure a long commute or move away from the community where we’ve invested a lot of ourselves, which doesn’t feel worthwhile for a mere job. (For a job that furthered my life goals it would perhaps be worthwhile, but game industry jobs appeal to me for other reasons.)

Anyway, shout outs to Steve Henry, Mike Howard, Josh Kriegshauser, and Rob Knopf. I had a great time catching up with you guys! Thanks for the super evening.

We spent this past Labor Day weekend down on the shores of Lake Conroe with Mom McMains and Chris. It was a great little getaway, combining lots of relaxing with a hike through the nearby Sam Houston National Forest, picnics, lots of good conversation, some swimming, several games of Carcassonne, a good bit of reading, and ultimately a visit to Space Center Houston. (Chris had unfortunately departed before the last stop to go pick up Becky, who was regrettably unable to join in the frivolity.)

While the whole trip was a treat, Space Center was definitely a highlight for me. We filed into the Mission Control room that had been used for decades while a septuagenarian narrator, who doubtless remembered it himself, described the moon landing. I went momentarily teary-eyed as he intoned “Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.” Standing in the shadow of a massive Saturn V rocket was also a treat — it’s amazing how much vehicle and fuel it took to get that tiny little Apollo capsule where it was going. We also poked into a shuttle command cabin, saw the training facilities astronauts use, and heard about the Orion Crew Vehicles that will eventually replace the shuttle.

Houston, however, remains as hot, humid, and traffic-choked as ever. Liam enjoyed the Space Center so much that, upon noticing that season tickets would only cost an additional $2.00, asked if we could move down to Houston to take advantage of that. My response was so vehemently negative as to be nearly inappropriate for a family-friendly publication like this weblog.

Abby: I won.

Liam: No you didn’t.

Abby: I won!

Liam: No! You didn’t!

Abby: No, I-1! That’s my move!