A question I have been asking myself over the weekend is whether or not you’d ever see products shared across the web in the same way as MP3s. If so, what sort of file format would you need? I have come to the conclusion (and it might because I have typed ‘make’, ‘make install’ once to many times) that a product file will probably look a lot like a software application - rather than being a single file it will be a directory structure that contains a package of things that you would need. A product needs a bunch of info. For example:
Design files
Bill of Materials (x N)
Assembly docs
Instruction manuals
So for any sensible product description you’re looking at a range of files - it doesn’t make too much sense to try and jam that into one file.
So as a first cut I think a product package might be a tar.gz file containing:
Product Name/bin An optional translation of the design files into CNC code such as G-Code or SBP code. Some CNC type code is more efficient than others - so there is value in being able to distribute ‘binary’ versions of the cutting or disposition instructions.
Product Name/bom A set of structures (like yaml or xml) that list the materials required for the product. This would include both the materials from which the product was cut or deposited and other items like electronics.
Product Name/src The design files for the product.
Product Name/tmp A temp directory that is used by parsing software - included to keep things tidy. The contents aren’t guaranteed to exist over time.
Product Name/usr/assembly Assembly instructions for the product.
Product Name/usr/make Other manufacturing instructions for the product.
Product Name/usr/use Usage instructions for the product.
The next few posts are me just getting ideas out in the open before I forget them. I promise they won’t be as crazy as my lawn mowing tales, but you’ll need to grin a bear things for a little while.
Design files really tire me. They consume a vast amount of my time. But like some sort high-maintenance relationship I stick with them because the reward is great. The big issues are around interrogation. Technically - the vast majority of my job is looking at a file and asking two seemingly simple questions:
How long are the lines?
What and where are the areas?
The amount of effort you need to go to to get that information is mind boggling - but pretty valuable once you have it. Once you’ve asked and answered those questions you are able to start asking and answering some interesting business questions.
Having spent two years doing this I have come to the conclusion that this situation suffers from a HIFI/LOFI problem. A good design file needs to be a HIgh FIdelity store of information and it needs to handle some pretty hard-core issues - like lines tangent to a circle:
Looks simple, but it ain’t and it’s important. That sort of stuff that guarantees the hand-gasms you get when using an iPod. So this is a necessary evil of the space - the file formats need to be hardcore (created by monkeys smarter than me)… but that hardcore nature really gets in the way of creating vital and valuable business systems. That’s why Sequoia and SAP are sinking cash into Right Hemisphere - there is gold in them thar’ files. But the thing is business systems really only need a LOw FIdelity version of the data. As I see it the fidelity requirements of a design file look like this:
The above process is a gross simplification of the product design-manufacturing lifecycle. A product gets designed, business stuff happens and the product gets made. Pragmatically the hifi requirements (in fetching blue) are at the ends of the process - when you’re creating the design and when the final product gets made. The other stuff you can get away with having a lofi version of the data.
“So what! Stop you’re whinging,” I hear you say. Fair cop. The ’so what’ lies in the potential of “what next”. Creating a solution to this LOFI/HIFI dichotomy has a real potential to unlock some really interesting innovation in the manufacturing and product spaces.
You can try and tackle the problem by saying ‘one file format only’ but culturally, that doesn’t fly too well and you then need to get onto the treadmill of file format support, which given the plethora of closed file formats is very very painful. It would be really powerful if there was a way of recognizing the separate requirements…
For a while now I have been watching the Long Now foundation… post 2000 I have been looking for a new horizon. I like the Long Now because they do a number of things to change your perspective. Simple stuff like writing years with a leading 0 - 02008… or seriously hardcore things like the Rosetta disk. For the first time in years the future unfolded with the story of where the first disk was sent:
But it was not the very first disk. That one is in space. In 2004 the Rosetta Space Probe was launched by the European Space Agency. This small craft was created to land on a comet in 2014. Before it blasted off, the ESA contacted us because we share names. They asked if we’d like to mount a version of the disk on their probe. Of course we would! We had manufactured a pure nickel disc with a subset of 6,000 pages of language translations, which was mounted on the payload section of the probe.
So assuming the mission continues well, in 2014 the Rosetta Probe will land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, where it will measure the comet’s molecular composition. Then it will remain at rest as the comet orbits the sun for hundreds of millions of years. So somewhere in the solar system, where it is safe but hard to reach, a backup sample of human languages is stored, in case we need one.
Ever since I took residence in Casa del Cinco (yes, it is also number ‘5′ on the street) it has been a “no mans land” that is fought over constantly by the cats in the neighborhood. This battle manifests itself as curly little piles of crap on the lawn. I always thought cats only did their biz in the garden - turns out that the rule is a little more general. They do their biz where the results can be hidden - ie. long grass does the trick.
One of the little lies I tell myself is that that my one and only ‘neurosis’ is the fact that I am never settled until the lawn is mowed. This is a lie because it’s a Neurosis, not a ‘neurosis’ and it’s not the only one (the same things goes for getting my hair cut - but that’s a story for another day). As the weather has been atrocious the lawns have haven’t been mown for a while. The weekend has delivered two days of dry weather and so I was able to get out there with gusto. The cats had beaten me to it and so it was a regular old cat-scat-fest.
There is something very galling about having to deal with some one else’s cat’s crap. While The Missus won’t be pleased with this - I hope Pi grows up to big and mean like Mandu so at least I will only have to deal my own cat’s deposits.
