Just short of a year ago in July of 2014, I created the BMW i3 Owners Map. This is a little project to help BMW i3 electric car owners see where other i3 owners are in the world. It has been exciting to see the community build to 1,300 listings in 38 countries on all continents except for Antarctica.
The BMW i3 Owners Map is 100% opt-in and does not track the cars actual location (like the VoltStats owner map which uses OnStar), but rather shows where in the world the owner resides. The accuracy is up to the person submitting their listing but I also show the model year of the car, if it is a BEV (only electric) or a REX (has a gasoline range extender), and if the owner has owned a plug-in EV prior to getting the BMW i3. I calculate that the Map is a representative sample of around 7-8 percent of global sales.
You can view the Map on my website along with the form to add a new listing or update / delete an existing one. I also have a few charts and a link to open the actual data file in case you want to make a heatmap or filter for specific data.
Today I added a script that posts submissions in real time, so you do not have to wait to see your listing represented on the map. This also makes the process simpler for me as I no longer need to do a weekly batch update. Yay!
If you have an i3, list your location today to show the i3 global impact!
This is a great "concrete" poem. Notice in the shorter lines, the length echoes the sense of the words. And of course the whole shape of the poem echoes the theme. Happy Easter!
I am sharing some of my poetry for National Poetry Month. It is dark on Holy Saturday.
One of the Twelve
I couldn't help myself
It all happened so quickly and I did what I thought I
Was supposed to.
He was marvelous!
I remember his soft brown hair and his hard words.
“Sell everything you have!”
Who could follow that?
He knew me. He knew what was in my thought,
In my eyes, in my purse.
I thought it was the right thing to do.
How the rabbis glared at me over the Torah stand
In the Temple stick with incense smoke
And hate.
Thirty silvers for you Judas,
Thirty! You, son of a no one, could be rich.
Oh, I am just like them!
I have killed my God!
That night,
I remember the room. Those narrow black stairs
That led to our door, our room.
I never intended to do it. That night
He passed the bread, was so peaceful,
The rough, quiet table
And carved oak cup, filled with friendship.
I felt at rest for the first time in my life.
All of us, the Beloved, James, even Thaddeus asked in wonder.
Only I got the answer.
“Go and do what you must.”
I had to do it,
He said I had to do it.
Those sinister coins tricked me,
The black pouch felt so heavy on my belt,
It was cool and smelled of myrrh.
So many times we had given coins away.
Oh I hate Him! With his stories and images
And ways of life and his Father!
They ruined me!
I have no glory, no kingdom, no friend,
Only a broken, lonely field.
I am sharing some of my poetry for National Poetry Month. This one, in a villanelle form is a very different tone from yesterday.
The Victim
The emptiness rings behind her back,
The tilted street shines black and wet with rain,
She waits and waits and waits for attack.
Fear seeps into her mind through every crack,
And soaks her every thought and move with pain,
The emptiness rings behind her back.
She wonders what she has that he lacks,
And what on earth he hopes to gain,
She waits and waits and waits for attack.
She knows she hears the heavy footsteps clack
That always echo monotonous, loud and plain.
The emptiness rings behind her back.
She thinks of good and warmth and tries to black
Out the frozen memory that has stained
Her mind and heart and soul and face and back.
Any moment she'll feel the familiar whack,
Sprawling her on the floor or street again,
The emptiness rings behind her back.
She waits and waits for the typical attack.
I am sharing some of my poetry for National Poetry Month. Enjoy!
Forever Eleven
What a fabulous love is this love that we love,
What a thunderous tabulation of kisses and songs,
What a trick: a canonization of tumultuous times that
We had, are having, and will ever on have
'Til the end of all time, all strife, and separation.
I will love you & you will love me, until gravity ends
And gravity bends to a positive sensation -
We are friends, we are lovers, we are perfectly matched,
And I hold on to you, and move into you, and sing by your side.
You're my guide, and my light, and my forever elation:
What a fabulous love is this love that we love.
When I ordered my BMW i3 one year ago in March 2014 I and others on the BMW i3 Facebook Group were curious to connect with other owners. A simple post began by asking others where they lived. After a dozen people responded, that gave me the idea to allow the owners to list themselves on a map. So I started the BMW i3 Owner’s Map and began taking submissions in June 2014.
I simply wanted to know where on earth were the other owners of i3s so I collected a name/ID and the address (specific or general). I also wanted to ‘evangelize’ this revolutionary EV that has captured my respect and (dare I say?) love! Since June, the Map has grown to have over 1,000 listings and I have added a simple chart and table showing the distribution by country of owners on the Map. All of the listings are voluntary and do not represent all i3s made, but by my rough calculations the listing represent 7-8% of the total sold worldwide.
Now, 10 months later and with new 2015 BMW i3 model year beginning, I feel it is time to enhance the Map and add other data points. While there are a lot of things one could know about an owner’s car, my purpose is to get some glimpse into how the car is spreading in the world. Do people in big cities favor the BEV? Do people in colder climates favor the REX since cold shortens the effective range? How many people who do not control their parking space at home (possibly apartment or condo dwellers) own an i3 compared to those that do? I am not sure exactly what to capture that would provide the most interest and value so I am asking YOU to help me decide. Please fill in this form with a lot of choices and I will get to work to update the map.
Well, this is cool . . . Tom over at the blog for BMW i3 posted about my i3 owner's map and was able to get it cross posted on the BMWBLOG for all things BMW. This little map is getting around and it is exciting to see that we are close to getting 500 owner's submitting there location. The i3, in less than a year is now one of the most global EVs around. Excellent!
I was commuting in my BMW i3 the other day and thought Id' try to share the experience of driving with Active Cruise Control (ACC) on. This is the "tractor beam" like feature in the car that allow you to turn over the acceleration and deceleration to the computer in the car. All of these videos were recorded live with Google Glass on the 101 North.
The images are a bit hard to read on the i3 displays, but hopefully they give you a feel for what it is like. After I learned to trust it a bit, it is a liberating and actually safer way to drive, especially in stop and go traffic. While these three videos only represent 6 or 7 minutes, I used it in heavy stop and go for over an hour with no incident. I hope you enjoy!
I was privileged to be asked to write about my experience with the BMW i3 since I got my car on August 11, 2014. We crazy owners call that being "born electric" and are enthusiastic about our experience. Check out my post over on Tom's blog and let me know what you think.
There is a quote I like from the movie, "Amadeus" where Mozart is trying on wig after wig and after seeing three of the samples on he exclaims "Why don't I have three heads!". The technology subject of the scene was the 'wearables' of the 18th century and that advanced wig design was all about fashion and prestige. Not too different from our jeweled device cases or electric cars. On this last point, I am susceptible and in love!
I have wanted an 100% electric car for 20 years, since the EV1 from GM was heralded as the first of many. I remember test driving it and lamenting that the lease was wholly out of range on my salary . . . with kids and a sizable mortgage. Fast forward to 2011 and the 100% electric Nissan LEAF arrives on the scene, but its a wig I just don't like. Designed for the family and looking like a weird creature, I just did not have the desire for that technology. I have been a BMW owner since 2000 (with a brief gap in an old Mitsubishi Eclipse while buying a house!) and I needed a car to peak my desire before jumping into the all-electric technology. I knew hybrids were abundant, but to my mind, unless you switch over to an entirely new way of powering your mobility, its just not that interesting.
I equate that to personal cloud computing. I write this post on a Chromebook, using no MS software, no local storage, and no save button. When you can't install old technology (like gas in the BMW i3) and you force yourself to save content to the cloud, you work differently and think differently. So my i3 BMW battery electric vehicle (BEV) is on its way from Germany and I have followed the making and shipping of it all the way. Yesterday it made its way through the Panama Canal and with cloud technology I can track the ship real-time on maps and webcams has it threads through that 19th century technological wonder.
I know webcams and GPS is not new, but my use of them is purely voyeuristic and born of desire. Since ordering this car, I have communicated with people all over the world via my own little mapping project; learned a great deal about amps, volts, and resistance; and forced myself to use cloud-based image editing tools discovering that they are now quite capable and can replace all of my need for those old ones I have installed on my old Windows laptop.
As evidence of that, and evidence of my 21st century impatience, I have followed the car for weeks and it slowly made its way out of the English Channel, across the open Atlantic and pulled into the Panama Canal on the vehicle carrier ship the Metis Leader.
I am not normally a stalker, but the combination of 20 years of desire and the ubiquity of information urged me to make screen captures of the various webcams online in the Canal. I made a short video out of them as the ship with my engineering wonder of a car went through the engineering marvel of a transportation route.
In the end this is all about transport: electricity moving me on the road, water moving cargo around the world, and technology transporting me to heights of geeky desire I have previously not known!
I have been compiling an opt-in map for BMW i3 owners and owners-to-be I have "met" on various online forums. I have recently updated the map to include almost 150 people! I created more accuracy by adding specific postal codes so there is a unique dot for everyone. I also thought it might be simpler to have a form to collect new people for the map, so check that out below. If you need a correction, feel free to use the form for that, too.
I have not posted here in a while because I have been busy buying an i3! We ordered this one which is currently sitting on a dock in Germany waiting to board a ship to the West Coast!
Yep, its true, adopting new technology at the $50k scale is almost a full-time job. That's because serious research is involved and getting to know a whole new community of people online who are in the same cult. After absorbing all kinds of pros and cons and experiences of the very early adopters, I thought I'd give back to the growing community by making a map of BMW i3 owners and owners to be.
These are folks I have "met" and interacted with on the BMW i3 Facebook group and the My BMW i3 Forum. I have mapped about 120 people to date! Click around and explore. In big cities, where there are more the one owner, clicking on the dot will only show the first one. If you are an i3 owner, let me know your name, city, & state and I'd be happy to add you! Check it out with a direct link or embedded below.
I attended the memorial for Hillary Gravendyk today at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. I met her only briefly at a poetry reading called the Fourth Sundays: Poetry at the Claremont Library. Of the day's poets, her reading was best and I bought her book called "Harm". Although she was obviously in failing health her spirit soared, Full of light and humor and purpose. I only had time enough to tell her that I was touched by her poems.
Today, just several weeks later, I am sitting in a garden at Pomona College listening to her family, colleagues, and friends extoll the very light of which I caught a glimpse. You will be touched, too, if you pick up her book, Harm, from this website or from Amazon. Here are some poems and readings I found of Hillary on the web.
Ahead the sky is winnowed to its smallest feature. Starred with damage,
the body. What was promised, what was revealed. A long staircase of
wounds. Behind: unseen error. Or accident. Harm winking on, a neon
sign that says closed. Pain glued to each window. The rooms shadowed with
harm. You offered anxiety, a harness made from care. Curved handle, in-
tention. Harm a kind of adhesive. Skin clusters around the opening,
ridged and thick. There are lighter and darker marks. They disclose. Pa-
per echo, gesture. Bleakness along the spine of narrative. Harm flat as a
swept floor. As a drawn planet. A bright story is requested. What will be
touched? Machines, that flashing support, a threaded needle. And the
body, sutured to harm.
My article, Use Google Glass to Create Enterprise Video: Here's How, has just been published for the May 2014 issue of Streaming Media Magazine. I provide step-by-step instructions and screenshots for creating quick videos with Google Glass and sharing them inside your company on various video management platforms.
It is online now and will be in print in a few weeks. Check it out and let me know what you think!
After a pause in posting, I find myself at Sonic Foundry's customer conference, Unleash 2014. I have attended for the last 5 years and the conference is a great place to connect with old friends and make new ones. This year, I am nominated for the Enterprise Video Awards in the "Video Maverick" category. It sounds loftier than it is, since one nominates oneself, but it is fun never-the-less! Check out my entry on the World of Webcast blog below.
Earlier in the week I got the opportunity to test drive the new all-electric BMW i3 car. Being a Google Glass Explorer, I thought I'd give it a spin via Glass. And hey, driving with Glass in California is OK!
I love the BMW 3 series having owned three of them and currently I drive a 2012 328i. So I am partial to BMW's driving machines, but I must admit the i3 takes a little getting used to one first sight. The hood/bonnet is all but gone and the i3 is taller and shorter than the 3 series. It looks stubby!
But when I read about the total redesign, that is is not just a standard BMW powered by electricity but an entirely new platform where nothing is added unless it makes sense, I warmed to the car. There is no hood because there is no engine! It is shorter to reduce weight, but the inside is roomier because they can use space freed up from the transmission and other components needed by a gas-powered car. The seats do not have power adjust because that just draws too much energy. And how often do you adjust your seat anyway?
The body is carbon fiber with the fibers coming from actual plants (Kenaf) so the body parts are "glued" together to make for a stronger frame that's light. The tires are skinny, akin to a motorcycle for less drag and friction. The famous BMW "kidney grill" is there, but it is no longer a grill because there is no engine to air cool.
While the sales guy was driving us out of the lot, I took this short video using Glass. The most interesting part of the video is the sound, or lack of it. This is one quiet car!
Looks and design aside, I was convinced that this was a car of the future when I sat in it and drove. It has a BMW feel, handling well on curves, allowing you to feel the road, and gives a pleasurable driving experience familiar to all BMWs. Since it is electric there are no gears so acceleration is smoother than my 328i and the car can zip around streets and other cars nimbly.
The regenerative breaking is aggressive, so you almost never have to use the brake to stop. In fact, I only used it once and that was to test! Pulling into a parking space or up to a stop sign you just decelerate and the car will gracefully come to a standstill. This aspect takes a bit of getting used to as the car feels "sticky" because there is a lot less coasting. On thinking about that, at first is is "odd", but I feel it makes for a better over all driving experience. The change is like the change between old computer applications where you had to save files on purpose or click "OK" to confirm something where as most modern apps just auto save for you and check box settings are simply applied. With the i3 driving is simpler and you can communicate with the road directly.
I like the i3 and am considering getting one. For me, the range is fine and the driving is fun. Will it replace my 328i? Well, we are keeping that but getting rid of the older SUV in favor of a car that can carry some home improvement supplies, save some cash on gas, and help be kinder to our Mother Earth.
In my previous post, I described ordering the new Google Glass frames for prescription lenses and what the doctor experience was like. This is a follow up to that . . . actually getting and using the frames. I had a lot less questions in just picking up my frames with my new bifocal lenses. The doctor's staff was helpful and curious about them and fitted them to my face just like non-Glass frames.
The technicians had to adjust the nose piece/bridge so the prism was properly positioned just above my eye. I am fussy, so they let me attach my Glass to the new frames because I wanted to, but they were fully schooled in how to do it. I have to say, if you are in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles county you should check out Dr. Bettelheim, he and his colleagues at Arrow Vision Center run a great shop for non-Glass and non-Glass vision health.
I got the new frames last week, but wanted to use them a bit before I posted again, to see how I liked them. As with all new glasses I have received in my life (glasses wearer since 3rd grade!), it took a few hours to get used to the slight difference in prescription and frame size, but after that they "disappeared" from my conscious mind like all good glasses should. Having Glass with lenses was great because now they felt more natural and I have worn Glass more as a result.
On the US President's Day holiday, I went beer-tasting and had a good time shooting photos and keeping informed without feeling I had this device on my head. It is just my regular glasses, enhanced!
Another benefit is the more comfortable fit while bike-riding. I need a helmet riding and being able to wear regular frames + Glass is more natural. If you want to see what it is like, check out the video I made of the Claremont Thompson Creek Trail with Glass. I can ride and see and record with ease. All-in-all the prescriptions frames are the best accessory for Glass and will allow me to use it much more often.
1. Limiting Governments’ Authority to Collect Users’ Information
Governments should codify sensible limitations on their ability to compel service providers to disclose user data that balance their need for the data in limited circumstances, users’ reasonable privacy interests, and the impact on trust in the Internet. In addition, governments should limit surveillance to specific, known users for lawful purposes, and should not undertake bulk data collection of Internet communications.
2. Oversight and Accountability
Intelligence agencies seeking to collect or compel the production of information should do so under a clear legal framework in which executive powers are subject to strong checks and balances. Reviewing courts should be independent and include an adversarial process, and governments should allow important rulings of law to be made public in a timely manner so that the courts are accountable to an informed citizenry.
3. Transparency About Government Demands
Transparency is essential to a debate over governments’ surveillance powers and the scope of programs that are administered under those powers. Governments should allow companies to publish the number and nature of government demands for user information. In addition, governments should also promptly disclose this data publicly.
4. Respecting the Free Flow of Information
The ability of data to flow or be accessed across borders is essential to a robust 21st century global economy. Governments should permit the transfer of data and should not inhibit access by companies or individuals to lawfully available information that is stored outside of the country. Governments should not require service providers to locate infrastructure within a country’s borders or operate locally.
5. Avoiding Conflicts Among Governments
In order to avoid conflicting laws, there should be a robust, principled, and transparent framework to govern lawful requests for data across jurisdictions, such as improved mutual legal assistance treaty — or “MLAT” — processes. Where the laws of one jurisdiction conflict with the laws of another, it is incumbent upon governments to work together to resolve the conflict.
Last Tuesday, just hours after Google stocked the Glass store with the four choices of prescription frames, I ordered the "Split" style in Charcoal to match my V2 Glass I got from the swap out. Three working days (six real days) and $245.25 later ($225 + tax) I received my new frames with free shipping via UPS. The process to remove Glass (the computer) from the default band was simple with the included Torx screwdriver. The screw is attached to Glass and will not fall out. Notice that the new frames have one temple arm shorter than the other so they cannot be used without Glass attached. While simple, I doubt you'd want to switch frames to band and back again very often.
I think that Google does a great job with packaging of Glass. The case is roomy and hold the specialty screwdriver in case you need it. There are instructions for YOU and your Eye Care Provider (ECP).
Today I had an appointment with Dr. Eric A. Bettleheim, O.D. at his Arrow Vision Center practice to get my eyes checked out and get a prescription for Glass. As a Glass "preferred" ECP he and his staff have been educated about Glass. My prescription checked out and except for not being able to see clearly without glasses, my eyes are in perfect health!
The good doctor answered my questions and expressed his professional option that using a device on a single eye only poses no known risks. The parallel he gave to prove this was the fact that people who are farsighted and nearsighted have been prescribed monovision contacts with one eye for close vision and the other for distance vision. Conclusion: Glass is safe for your eyes!
After the checkup, the doctor's assistant removed my Glass from the band and fitted it into the new frame. I helped a bit since I had done it once before. It is a bit tricky to get it on and off of the frames. A best practice to to cover the prism with a cloth to prevent any damage. She measured and checked the fit and marked on the plain lenses where the progressive lens would change from far to near. After some insurance confusion, my prescription was ordered and my Glass and band were back together. Now it is just waiting for the frames and lenses to get back from the VSP lab and I can switch my Glass to the frames for good.
For me, I believe this will be a key to allowing me to wear Glass more often and enjoying the many benefits it provides. Biking will be better without two frames on my head (and a helmet!) and I will try wearing them when I work in the garden.
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