Very tempted to buy a Google Android development board, to realise one of my geek dreams:
“Creating my own mobile phone”
Pretty sure it would be illegal to use it in Australia though…
So after years of looking for a place to use technology in development, I think I’ve found a very broad area to start looking. I am investigating possibilities around disability and the new generation controllers from video games to do weird and wonderful things. The idea being to make something that is innovative, useful, easy to use and cheap. Still no idea what it will do, but I think I’ll do some research on my India/Nepal trip in January.
The project is going to be a number of years before it is even in a real prototype, but that gives the technology I am using time to become cheap enough for use in development..
It’s now over a week since I’ve worn a hat I think. It’s funny when you do something like wear a hat almost every day for over a year, it becomes part of you. Interestingly though I am pretty sure it became part of a defence/mask I don’t really need. I think I’ll still wear one sometimes but I am happy for now without.
Tonight, in light of some big dollar decisions I am making at work I started reflecting back on who it is our work benefits outside of ourself and trying to work out if we should spend $$$ on systems. I was drawn, as I often am back to my times in India.
I looked back through the images rapid fire, and I was reminded of asking the same questions in India around computer systems in Nagaland, and in the other hospitals I worked at. Is money better spent on basic services, rather then IT?
I never came to any really good answer, except that IT enables those helping to do so more effectively.
Anyway it was in reflecting back, that I remembered the passage in the Bible where Jesus says, “You will always have the poor with you, but not always me.” I have always found that statement haunting, and today I found it more haunting. I realised that burnt into my retina are images I will never forget, and in my memory bank are memories I should never forget. No matter how far from extreme poverty I go, I will always have the poor with me for the memories of them are a part of me.
I guess though the second part is where I have made some internal justification to myself around lifestyle. I figure I won’t always have my friends, and the joys of Australia with me and so I often indulge on the idea that I am only here for a while, before I return to the field. I guess I need to work out sometime if I am still going back, and in what capacity. The job I have now kind of gets in the way of that side of work, and is too comfortable and easy to stay in long past when I should perhaps go.
But enough of that. I saw Harry Potter today, it had the most deliciously awkward and amusing romance, and also had a decent simplified plot from the book and was good fun..
