The electric car charging Station at IBM Campus begins to do some real work

There were two electric charging stations recently installed outside the place I work (the IBM Technology Campus on the outskirts of Dublin). Of course not many people have electric cars yet, so the charging station is not exactly overloaded. In fact until today I never saw a car plugged in.

Today the weather was scorching so I decided to go for a walk at lunch time. I was pleasantly surprised to see a car using the charging station for the first time ever.

Am I the real Brian O'Donovan or BOD?

If I ever travel to the Boston area, I am regularly asked "are you the Brian O'Donovan?". While I am tempted to answer yes, it seems that the questioner is normally thinking about the host of the Celtic Sojourn program on WGBH. In Ireland, the name Brian O'Donovan is actually quite common and if you search Facebook, you will find several hundred people with this name. However, when Irish people hear the name they will most often think of the news reader on TV3 with that name.

Part of my reason for writing this blog is to raise my profile on-line and occasionally I do a Google search on my name to see what the results will be. Before I started writing this blog, most of the top search results for the term "Brian O'Donovan" would relate to the radio presenter from Boston. However, I was delighted to see that when I now do this search (with Google Personalisation turned off), 6 of the top 10 results relate to me, 3 relate to my namesake in Boston and only one relates to the newsreader on TV3. So I suppose I can now confidently say "yes I am the real Brian O'Donovan"

The title of this blog is "Brian O'Donovan (aka BOD)" in order to clarify which Brian O'Donovan is responsible. In school I was known by the nickname BOD (based upon my initials). However, in recent times people have started using this same nickname for Brian O'Driscoll, the current captain of the Irish rugby team. So when I recently saw the headline in several papers "BOD invited to royal wedding", I was relieved to find I wouldn't need to splash out for a new suit. When I do a Google search for BOD I find no references to either me or the rugby player. There is quite a diverse set of links returned although the most popular understanding of the term seems to be "Biochemical Oxygen Demand".

The green shoots die off

Last month I planted some vegetables in pot noodle style tubs in my window sill. I did not have very high expectations that I would ever eat the produce grown like this, but I thought it was worth trying anyway. I got a very pleasant surprise at the start of this month, when I saw green shoots peeking out of the tub.

These small green shoots rapidly grew into large healthy plants and so last week I followed the instructions on the packet and separated each of the plants into their own pot so that they would have more growing room. It was immediately obvious that this was not a good idea because the plants never thrived in their new pots. At this stage they have completely died out.

In recent times the newspapers have started using headlines like "The green shoots of recovery have been spotted!" whenever the economic statistics look good. I hope the green shoots of Ireland's recovery will not suffer a similar fate to my vegetables.

Innovation, Invention and Inclubation

I blogged last May about my new job as a "Sametime Consumability Expert" and I wrote another update in October to let people know how I was getting on in this new role. However, eagle eyed readers of this blog will have noticed that the "about me" section was recently updated again and that my new job title is Incubation Team Leader.

The reason I didn't write a blog post about this new role when I found out about it a few months ago not because I was being secretive, but I needed to figure out what the job involved first before I could tell others. I am now settled into the job and my first project has kicked-off so I think I can confidently write a brief overview.

The first thing that you might ask is what do I mean by incubation. The term is quite ambiguous, but in this context incubation is helping newly invented technologies cross the chasm into innovations that are used within IBM's products. IBM is rightly proud of their record on invention since they have been the most prolific filers of patents each year for the last 19 years. However, the real goal is innovation that matters and while IBM does well at innovation, their leadership in innovation is not as clear as it is with innovation. I don't think that my small team will be able to solve all of IBM's innovation needs, but we do hope that we can make a small but significant growth in the amount of innovation in IBM's products that come from the Ireland lab.

In practice what I will be expected to do is to lead a series of teams who will be assembled to complete a proof-of-concept  integration of some promising new technology into IBM's Smarter Planet product set. Each project will be scheduled to last between 3 and 6 months.  The idea of limiting the projects to such short duration is to ensure that I can tackle a large volume of project ideas. In any case if the technology is really as promising as we thought at the start - then 6 months should be enough time to do enough work on the prototype to persuade at least one paying customer to buy it and/or persuade a product team within IBM to formally fund a permanent team.

In theory the team will be open to projects which use inventions from either inside or outside IBM. However, when I established an ideation blog to allow lab staff contribute ideas for the team to incubate I was pleasantly surprised to find that I quickly got enough ideas to keep me busy with a series of teams for the next year or two before we need to look outside for inspiration.

The first project team has just been formed. I can't say exactly what the project involves - partly for company confidentiality reasons, but mainly because the project definition is changing rapidly. All I can say at this stage is that it will enable our Smarter Cities customers get a dashboard with an overview of what the citizens of the city are saying on social media about what they think of the way the city is being administered. The project will be completed (successfully or otherwise) by August so I will be able to reveal all at that stage. :-)

I am confident that this is a job that I will really enjoy and hence be successful.

Updating my exercise technology

I am a big fan of technology and I also love spending time outdoors exercising. Some people think this is an unusual combination, because the stereotype of a geek is someone who spends time indoors staring at their computer. However, technology and exercise go very well together as this presentation by Ted Vickey explains in detail how technology can help with your exercise regime.



I normally use MyTracks from Google to track my running and cycling. Although I am quite happy with the way it works, watching Ted's talk convinced me that I should be more adventurous and try something new. Hence I signed up for an acocount on RunKeeper and installing the associated applications on my phone.

My initial impressions of RunKeeper are quite good. It seems to be very easy to use and it has a very active eco-system of gadgets and applications that can enable you to get an even better experience. It seems to really emphasise the social encouragement aspects, for example after I first used it to record details of a cycle it sent me a congratulatory email for achieving a personal best.

The first difference that I noticed between the MyTracks and RunKeeper is the way they handle the periodic announcement of statistics. The MyTracks software announces the statistics in a normal sounding voice, but sometimes towards the end of a run I am tired and my concentration fades so the statistical announcements don't register properly. In contrast RunKeeper reads announcements very clearly and slowly (as if speaking to someone who does not have a good grasp of English) and this is much easier for a tired runner to grasp. However, while MyTracks pauses any podcast or music that is playing when it has an announcement to make, RunKeeper doesn't and hence it tries to speak over the background noise. Perhaps there is a setting that I will need to tweak.

I will write a more comprehensive review when I have more experience.

The first green shoots appear

The Zucchini shoots

I wrote earlier about my attempt to grow vegetables in pot noodle type containers on my kitchen windows sill. At the time I held out some hope of being able to grow chives, but I was very sceptical about my chances of growing Zucchini in such a container.

The instructions say that the cover should be removed once the shoots start to appear above the soil, so every few days I have a look to check if this has happened. This morning, to my amazement I saw the Zucchini (Courgettes) beginning to appear.

There is still no sign of the Chives, but it is only a few weeks since I planted them so there is hope yet for some healthy home grown food.

Does everyone need to know how computers work?

I read an interesting article in today's Irish Times about how Irish schools need to do a better job of teaching children about Information and Communications Technology (ICT). I tend to agree with the author's point that his children are not getting a significantly better education about ICT than he did 30 years ago despite the fact that there are now many more computing devices in the classroom.

Naturally what matters most is how the computing devices are used for educational purposes rather than the fact that they have the latest versions of all devices. Indeed it could be argued that some of the most recent devices are not good for learning because they configure themselves and hide much of the complexity from the user.

However, when making policy, we need to keep in mind that computing devices in the classroom can be used for two distinctly different purposes:

1. Teaching pupils how computers work e.g. teaching programming skills.
2. Using computers to facilitate teaching a completely unrelated subject. For example, the Irish Times pointed out that foreign language learning can be enhanced by using Skype to converse with a native speaker of the language in question (this does not require much knowledge about how Skype works).

Even the most enthusiastic supporters of the ICT industry would admit that the majority of the school children will not end up working in ICT when they grow up and so the 2nd type of teaching is more important. While this is partly true, I do think that all children should be exposed to at least a minimal amount of the 1st type of teaching (the Coder Dojo movement is perhaps an excellent way to tackle that).

I think that this is equivalent to teaching children about cars. The majority of school children will grow up to become car drivers rather than mechanics. This means that they don't need a detailed understanding of car maintenance procedures, but at the same time potential drivers are required to show some elementary knowledge of car maintenance in order to  pass the the test to get a driving license - this is so that drivers will be able to deal with issues that may arise while they are driving. 

In a similar vein I think everyone who uses computers in their daily life needs a basic understanding of how computers work so that they can work around issues that occur when they sometimes don't work as expected.  Since everyone needs to use computers in the modern world, this is means that everyone needs to learn a little about how computers work. Primary schools are an ideal place to impart these skills.

Growing Vegtables in my windows sill

I have often heard of people growing herbs like chives and parsley etc. in their window sill, but on a recent visit to my local supermarket I was surprised to see that they were selling kits to allow people grow vegetables in their window sill.

I decided to purchase a pot that supposedly allows me to grow Courgettes (the local name for Zucchini). I must admit that I am sceptical about the chances of growing a large vegetable like this in my kitchen window, but the kit was cheap and so I thought that there was no harm in trying.

The kit looks surprisingly similar to a pot noodle container and the clear instructions on the side are equally easy to follow. The only problem is that while pot noodles are ready to consume after 3 minutes, the vegetables will probably take more than 3 months to grow. I will let you know later in the year how I get on.

Cycling with Laurence Roche

Laurence Roche is a former participant in the Tour de France and a brother of the Stephen Roche who won the event. Currently Laurence runs a company that help administer the bike to work scheme whereby employees can purchase a bike in a tax efficient manner. As part of the service he provides, he hosts regular training cycles to help the employees in the companies that he works with can get a chance to make more use of their new bikes.

This morning I joined in one of these training cycles that covered a 40 km route starting and ending in Clonee. I must say that this was a really enjoyable event. Laurence was very friendly and helpful to us novices. We had a great cycle in the unusually pleasant weather and Laurence kept checking with all of us to see that the pace was not too fast.

I definitely intend to attend more of these training cycles. Hopefully we can recruit more people to take part and maybe even form a new cycling club.

Here is the route as recorded by the My Tracks application on my phone.

View Cycle With Laurence Roche in a larger map

Let there be light

Many years ago relative of mine used to complain that he suffered from Seasonally Affective Disorder (SAD) due to lack of access to natural sunlight during the dark short days that are a feature of the Irish summer. As a result he had a special light box which supplied him with a light spectrum that mimicked the frequency spectrum of natural light. I think we all  appreciate having plenty of access to natural light and so I briefly considered purchasing a similar device myself - but at the time the cost of the device was prohibitive and they consumed a huge amount of electricity.

NuLight beside an Old blub

Recently a friend of mine told me about a UK based company called Nulight which sells a modern energy efficient version of the same thing that they call the Daylight Bulb. It is essentially a replacement for a normal light bulb and it fits into a normal light fixture. I bought the 65 watt version which cost me just over £10stg (plus P&P). Although it is called a 65 watt bulb, my current cost meter tells me that it only consumes about 56 watts of power.

My home office has a north facing windows and although it is not really dark, it is noticeably less bright than the south facing rooms in the house. When I installed the new light in it I could immediately notice the difference even in the middle of the day. I would estimate that the amount of light coming from this new bulb is even stronger than a floodlight which I have installed out the back of the house - however the floodlight consumes about 250 watts of power.