The official Electronic Tour Guide project blog

Why our screens make us less happy

How GPS works

Find out how GPS works, some of the roles things such as our own atmosphere has in reducing the accuracy of GPS and also how general relativity effects GPS accuracy too.

Taken from excelent sciBRIGHT Youtube channel.

Creaky Begins

“What a wonderful new day,” said the Creator, and he was absolutely right. Although it was cold, the sun was shining. A perfect winter day! “Now it’s time to take a little rest,” he said and started to stretch oneself.

“No, no, no,” he unexpectedly uttered, “I’m not lazy, don’t even think that way! I had a lot of work to do! And now it’s time to introduce you someone you will love.”

“Oh, Mother of Code, I’m so excited about it”, the Creator closed his eyes, took a breath and made a pause. The pause seemed like an eternity to him.

“He was designed,” he continued, “especially to help us introduce our offers, promotions and all brand-new inventions that our ingenious team (and he’s a part of it now) will come up with. He’s great specialist and reliable friend. We trust him 110 percent and wanna see him as our company’s symbol.”

“Hey, buddy, show yourself to such a lovely audience!” said the Creator.

[The creature is shyly looking out of the curtain]

“Don’t be shy! Come on!”

[The creature appears]

“Gooood boy! But where are your good manners?!” asked the Creator, “Say hi and present yourself!”

“[bzzzzt] I am enthusiastic and curious creature,” said Creaky lowly, “I’m delighted to be a part of the team feeling alike me.”

“I took him from the planet far far away. A good planet. A planet with the best tour guides!” – said the Creator proudly, “Right, my friend?”

“Right, Creator! [bzzzzt] Being new on this planet, I am curious about everything that happens around me and always find myself in the middle of embarrassing situations. One day I’ll tell you some of these stories if I find and untwine a cord to download them from my memory block.”

“Oh, we would love to hear all these amazing stories, but not now. I have to go,” interrupted the Creator. “There is no time to explain, but remember: I will be far and close at the same time.” He pulled out the cord and disappeared, leaving behind a note lying on the ground.

Creaky picked it up and started to read. It said:

Now, it won’t be surprise for all of you to see on our front page a cute creature with a wide charming smile (electronictourguide.com).

“At your service my dear new friends!” said Creaky and cracked a smile.

Desktop Silicon Valley. The story of creating an electronic device and business project from the scratch.

Today looking back, I catch myself thinking that all that experience and knowledge, which I obtained while developing, are of greater value than the immediate result of my efforts. Having a coherent idea of the process and numerous pitfalls accompanying such ventures, I’m seriously thinking of more ambitious project, about which I’ll write maybe a bit later.

As for now, I’ll tell you how the current project was developing step by step…

Katya Klubnikina as a happy tourist with the first prototype of the device.

Part 1. Backstory.

So, some time ago, five years ago to be precise, I decided to completely switch to Linux OS and use it for absolutely all applications that I need for my work. On the one hand, this decision was a result of my thoughts about evolution of electronics and media, on the other hand, it comes from my understanding of a dead end track for “consumer” paradigm. It was also a desire to demonstrate capabilities of open, community-built software tools for work on professional projects, which cover not only software development, but also all sides of a complete audio-visual product development.

It has to be said, that before this project I was engaged in so-called “visual communication” for 13 years, particularly I drew graphic design, shot commercials and made motion design. Later, using bundle of programming knowledge kept from school and student years, I became interested in interactive software development including widening web-industry.

And it would be ok, when all of a sudden…