Whereabouts clock

In the Harry Potter stories, Ron Weasley's family has a magic clock with hands assigned to each family member, indicating their location.

Now a prototype device from Microsoft Research Cambridge does a similar thing. The Whereabouts Clock allows family members to see where others are in four broad categories -- "home," "work," "school" and "elsewhere."

Creators hope the general nature of the clock's locations overcomes some of the privacy problems that the researchers think have impeded other location-based services from becoming more prevalent in the marketplace. For example, Sprint's Family Locator shows precise position on a Google Map.

"You can buy a service on your phone to keep track of your kids. There is even talk about putting electronic chips into kids, which is not what we want to do at all," said Abigail Sellen, senior researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Read the rest of the article here.

Whereabouts Clock

Paper report

I asked for and got permission to get tomorrow afternoon off. With that extra time, I think I'll be able to finish it.

I still don't think it's very good. I probably should cut it: I have another couple of sections to write, and it's already 4200 words.

I am not sure which days I'll be attending. Saturday, certainly, but other than that I'm not sure.

Belt testing coming up for both girls

Fiona is doing her third black belt pre-screening this coming Friday night. This is the one she didn't pass last time. If she passes it, she'll test for her black belt in December. I'm not sure whether I will be there--the conference starts Friday afternoon.

Delia passed the pre-test today and will test for her double black stripe. This is the last belt she'll earn at our dojo. She's actually rather grumpy about it--she says she doesn't feel ready, but she always says that. That test will take place Saturday morning--again, while I'm at the conference, actually. Since I can't be there to take pictures of the belt tests, Rob is going to do it.