Getting Prescription Lenses for Google Glass

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.

Evolving - Analog to Digital

It started with re-organizing the garage. Over the Christmas break, I happened to sell my 1904 Beckwith Reed Organ to a couple of young musicians who are going to put it into a historic house in L.A. along with a lot of other instruments to make a funky space for musicians to gather and play. That happy event opened quite a bit of room in the garage, and so the organizing began.

As part of that, I came across a couple of boxes of old cassette tapes I have been carting around. Occasionally I'd play Pieces of Eight by Styx or whatnot while in the garage since I have a portable radio / tape player on my workbench. But most of these I have not listened to in 2 decades since getting a state-of-the-art JVC CD player in 1982. What to do?

My First CD Player!

I realize digitizing analog is not a new venture, but I had never done it, being a huge fan of vinyl I had not seen the need to convert my records. And I have hundreds of those, so the task was daunting . . . a non-starter.

But the tapes! Sure I had some commercial stuff and a whole row of Windham Hill stuff, but the treasure was the personal recordings. My precocious daughter reading stories at 3, love recording of my playing my folk songs, some lecture I had given on Practical Project Management. This was the irreplaceable stuff that I wanted to save from the ravages of magnetic deterioration.

So I took down the old dusty Kenwood KX77-CW tape deck I got from my brother Greg (RIP - see the guy in the cap!) and set to work figuring out the best and most efficient process for turning lead (er, Chromium) into gold!

Connecting up is straightforward, just get the RCA out into the "line in" of the computer. Here is a lot more about that. Next, a clean tape player is essential so check out this extensive tutorial. Don't drink the isopropyl alcohol! The best software I found was Audacity. It is open source and has tons of features. I wanted to make MP3 files for upload into my Google Play account, so I also got the MP3 plug-in for Audacity which is called LAME. After the hardware is plugged in and the software is setup, I was ready to rip!

Audacity on Windows - Bob Seger Live Album, "Nine Tonight:

It all boils down to opening a new Audacity file, pressing play on your tape deck and clicking record in Audacity. After the tape is copied into the computer you can then make it ready for its digital life which involves a basic clean up, adding metadata, putting labels at the beginning of each song, and then saving the songs off as a batch. Below I have a list of what I did (on Microsoft Windows) for each tape to go from almost obsolete to all-digital awesome!

1. Start Audacity and press play on the tape deck. Turn on monitoring in Audacity so you can hear your cassette playing.
2. Set audio levels to peak just under -6 db so you get all the sound but no distortion.
3. To do a whole album from tape set the player to auto reverse.
4. Press play on tape player and then press record in Audacity.
5. You can listen along or go a do something else until the tape is fully played and recorded.
6. Save basic metadata of the artist name, album title, year, and genre.
7. Save your file as a Project (as an AUP file) to allow editing later. Remember to save the project as you go along!
8. Export the raw audio as a WAV file for an uncompressed backup just in case!
9. Select a few seconds of 'silence' at the beginning and choose Effect > Noise Removal
10. Click the Get Noise Sample button in the Noise Removal dialog box. The dialog will close.
11. Press CTRL + A to select all of the audio.
12. Choose Effect > Noise Removal, accept the defaults, and click OK.
13. Wait for the noise to be removed. This will take a few minutes
14. Press CTRL + A to select all of the audio again.
15. Click Effect > Normalize, accept the defaults and click OK.
16. Wait for the audio to be "normalized". This makes the sound as loud as possible so you don;t have to crank your volume when listening to your new digital file. Normalization will also take a few minutes.
17. Zoom out on timeline and delete and 'silence' you do not want in there. Carefully place you cursor at the beginning of each song, press CTRL + B to add a label.
18. Type in the name of the track. Repeat for each track. If you don't have the details, Wikipedia is great for getting the exact names of tracks and details your old tape might not have.
19. Once you have the file the way you want it, choose File > Export Multiple. This will step through your file and create individual MP3 files for each song, titled with your labels. Make sure you create a folder with the name of the artist first and the album under it (which is what iTunes and Google Music likes) to have you music neatly organized.
20. The final step is to add/upload the folder with your new digital files to your music player like iTunes or Windows Media Player or Google Play.

There can be a lot more you can do and read about, but for me, simply getting a "lost" tape into digital format is perfect. I use Google Play and after upload, I can get in my car, and use my android phone with 3G and Bluetooth connections pulling the music from Google Play I can listen to old "tapes" in my new car. 

And they sound groovy, man!

Talking Glass

Since being selected as a Google Glass Explorer in June, I have had a lot of fun learning about Glass, wearable technology, privacy, modern programming, security, rapid design iteration, and celebrity. Wait . . .  celebrity?!?

Glass gives back what you put in and when I have stepped out, evangelist-like, people's interest and enthusiasm has followed. From a 94-year old acquaintance telling his friends about me and my 'gadget glasses', to random people in public engaging me to ask questions and ask for a try, to the planned out events I have listed below, people are curious, engaged, and excited about the slice of the future which Google Glass displays.

As my journey continues (I get to swap my Glass out for the next version next week!), I can see that more and more people will come to understand that this is about getting technology out of the way so it can truly assist us be more in touch with the world and with those around us. Check out these presentations and interviews about Glass . . . enjoy!

Streaming Media West 2013 - Session C103 - Using Google Glass to Capture and Publish Videos

Interview with Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Almost LIVE

Mediasite Webcast - Consumer Video in the Enterprise

The Unexpected Uses of Technology

The other evening out tasting beer at a brewery with my 20-something kids one of them took out their iPhone and used the front-facing camera as a mirror. I had never thought of that, but then I am not prone to looking into a mirror whilst drinking a black ale.

On inquiry, I found that this was not a usual action but something spur of the moment, rarely done, if ever. We all acknowledged that there is an app (or several) for that, but the fresh thing was that it was spontaneous and almost like the device was not a phone with an embedded camera used as a mirror, but the device was a mirror. The action was simple and natural.

I spend a lot of time at work helping people use technology designed for the task they need to complete. When they do not fully understand how to use a software program, or collection of tools, I often cheerfully say: "try to think like the program!" Which means to adjust the user actions to match the what the application expects.

Is that an echo of Mr. Jobs? Should we have to adapt our actions to fit the expected use or could we adapt a tool for a completely different use the designer never thought of? If I had a hammer, could it be used as a catalyst of love? As with most things, both/and is most likely the answer.

Being in the Google Glass Explorers program has informed my view a bit. The Glass program is about finding the use case and discovering how the device might be used. Sure there were several applications released when the device was released, but if we look at the growing list of applications and even the uses Glass is put to everyday, it is clear that a well-designed tool can be useful in many contexts, even ones the designers did not consider.

What ways have you used a device, tool, or application in a way different from its intended use?