Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Plans for a zonal fare structure on Greater Manchester's tram network are set to be approved next week. The aim is to create a simpler fare structure for passengers, instead of the existing point-to-point system. There'd be a city centre zone and three orbital rings. pic.twitter.com/CL5Mmqxo5D
— BBC Radio Manchester (@BBCRadioManc) May 20, 2018
As I thought Manchester Metrolink saw sense and are looking into a zonal structure for charges.
Today Moss Side Volleyball was informed that the heart of Moss Side Paula Vettori had died of a brain tumour.
I’ve know Paula for a long while and shes always been such a delight to play volleyball alongside and spend time with. Its been a shock but can’t even imagine the shock to her kids and husband.
She was always smiling and laughing. Especially when I accidentally thought she was Portuguese not realising she was actually Brazilian. To be honest, there was a lot we could all learn from her…
Rest in peace Paula x
If you know Paula or just want to help out the family and kids, please do add funds to the gofundme which was setup by the team.
I was at the excellent thinking digital conference yesterday when Paul Irwin from trylife took to the stage. Ironically he followed a excellent talk from Tatiana Simonian who made a clear call for more diversity and inclusion within the digital sector.
Sat in the 2nd row with my Nikon camera I was enjoying the story of his life and trylife (I was planning on talking to him afterwards) but I was caught in a state of flux. The words (ones which were not swear words) coming out of his mouth and seemed mismatched with his tshirt or choice of tshirt.
From my view it was a young female adult with a breast on show. Ok from my point of view quite tasteless but certainly something I can’t really imagine someone wearing at a professional conference. And I say that haven given talks about dating, love, sex and hookup culture. I was always sure to make my slides acceptable for a general audience. There is no way, even if I owned such clothes would I wear them on stage. This is all before I even looked at the conference code of conduct.
The last few conferences I have spoke at, I had needed to sign or least explicitly agree to the code of conduct in some way. I hadn’t really considered exactly why the speakers would need to do this, as the speakers should be onboard with this anyway? But now I totally get it.
I hasn’t noticed Thayer had already left for reasons I was still juggling in my mind.
Things got really concrete in my mind as Paul started talking about how he was helping young girls in trylife. I kept thinking how are you helping by wearing that tshirt? Did you not look in the mirror and think? Don’t you see the paradox which you have created?
This is when I started looking at the hashtag #tdc18 to see what others thought. This is when I saw Thayer’s tweets then I saw Christian’s one.
@herbkim I love you, I love your conference, but this was not ok. I've left, and an really upset. Please read the thread. I also feel strongly this is against the code of conduct for #tdc18. It is not ok for speakers to wear sexualised photos of women at a tech conference.
— Thayer Prime (@Thayer) May 17, 2018
I was struck because she was right and I was a fool to sit there wondering about this paradox which was opening up in front of me. Heck I even gave Paul a token finger clap (indicating how I was feeling at the time) while others cheered around me.
Cheers Andy & Sarah! FUCK IT gif attached. Procrastination graph coming when I get to work! x pic.twitter.com/01gbcvKqQM
— Mr Bingo (@Mr_Bingo) May 18, 2018
Some people will argue that Mr Bingo’s talk was even more sexualised and he did use the words “fuck it” but the context was very different. The actions, words and clothes of Mr Bingo were not mismatched, like Paul.
The message he delivered was truly soiled by his choice of t-shirt. The swearing I could put up with as it wasn’t aggressive (although also against the code of conduct) and but I couldn’t take him serious, and I know thats on me. But his choice of a sexualised t-shirt reflected badly on him and a great conference; and thats not good!
After the break Herb Kim apologized to everyone on stage and later on twitter.
apols for delayed reply. Made a public apology onstage immediately after it happened which I know @toodlepip @cubicgarden had mentioned. I thought that was enough but got a DM from @ggdworldwide suggesting I was ignoring the problem so just restating my apology again now
— Herb Kim (@herbkim) May 18, 2018
Someone close to me described it something like this…
People actions should equal what they say, especially on a stage.
What happened next is difficult to say as I wasn’t witness to any of it. But I heard clearly aggressive threatening behaviour from one of Paul’s friends at Thayer when she approached him to talk through things. The best thing he could have done was be understanding about things but judging by his twitter this was the last thing on his mind…
So controversial 😂 pic.twitter.com/nvKYGzPmt0
— Paul Irwin (@PaulRIrwin) May 17, 2018
Thayer you have my total support and I’m sorry I didn’t join you when you stood up and left.
I kickstarted Clubbed a while ago, and a few days ago I got my copy in the post. Now its got a proud spot on my bookshelf.
Of course its not just about the Hacienda but lots of famous UK clubs and dance nights. Its a beautifully designed booked which reflects the graphic design of the era.
Very happy to be a backer along so many others.
What happens when you put a firestarter in the middle of a load of fuel? Only good things right?
The thing about FUEL which surprised me was how massive the conference was. The production values were huge too. It makes sense from Belgium’s biggest commercial broadcaster. Usually when conferences say 1000 people I expect it might be closer to 700 but FUEL was either 1000 or very close to that. The conference in its 2nd year was a mix of their clients, invited guests from the broadcast industry and 200 broadcast students. All single track with Q&As broken out over 30mins during lunchtime allowing for deeper questions and answers without using up valuable time.
The speakers were great, really interesting talks and great people. There was a speakers dinner the day before the conference which really helps gel the speakers along with the rehearsals. I don’t usually like rehearsals but it was good to see the converted slide deck and also get the superstar dj walk through on the massively long stage. If only they had customised sound tracks, because prodigy’s firestarter would have been perfect.
Most of the event was captured in a live blog but heres a few pointers from the speakers
Dietmar Dahmen made some quite compelling points about creative disruption and getting too comfortable with the status quo. I liked the analogy to superman facing a new world with no grounding. The climax involved sawing a chair with pillows in half on stage with a chainsaw. This simply wouldn’t happen in the UK, I thought as I filmed from my phone…
Simon de la Rouvière confirmed my thoughts about using Blockchain & Smart contracts for music. Also made me consider the dating site/app I talked about in the past.
Cathy Hackl is a xR (VR/AR/Mixed reality) expert who taught herself how to code joined HTC vive as a evangelist. Now shes a xR Evangelist and is one of a few people who has seen Magic Leap but of course didn’t say a single word about it (I hear their NDA is deadly serious). Such a passionate woman and it was a joy spending sometime with her the day before talking about diversity.
Rana June talked about creating and generating emotional human data for better experiences. It was interesting especially with some of the quantified self work I’ve been involved in. Loved to have talked to her more and its a shame I will miss her while in London.
I can’t do justice to all the speakers who made Fuel 2018 incredible, all were great and the format is well thought out and executed. Like Futurefest 2016 I was pleasantly surprised by the pretty much everything. The only down side was Brussels traffic, which the organisers have no control over.
Facebook announces dating and some are surprised?
At F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new dating service, simply called “Dating,” that will exist right within the social network’s own app. It will allow Facebook users to create separate profiles from their main Facebook accounts to pursue romantic connections. The two profiles won’t interact, meaning your Facebook friends won’t be able to see what your Dating profile says. And it should make dating app incumbents like Tinder and Bumble anxious.
Hummmm, really… from previous posts I wrote
Of course I certainly wasn’t the only one writing about this, you only had to look at the way people were using Facebook. I guess you have to give Facebook credit for understanding what its users were doing. That or the amount of data the likes of Tinder & Bumble were using; convinced Facebook that screw Cambridge Analytica, this is a way to get in on the action before its too late? Just as they started to rethink things?
Is Matchgroup worried? They should be, because there attitude for their customers sucks big time and Facebook may scoop in and convince those customers easily. On top of that Bumble is suing them for 400 million. Not a trivial amount…
I’ve been working on the living room of the future and write about it quite a few other places including the BBC R&D blog.
Its part of the reason for the radio silence recently, but honestly the team of 3 universities and 2 arts organisations have been hard at work to create the live demonstrator of the living room of the future.
Exciting news! Living Room of the Future will be on from 4th – 8th May @FACT_Liverpool developed in partnership with@BBCRD @ImmersiveObject @cubicgarden and Western Balkan creatives @flatness @mladenrakonjac. For more information https://t.co/rclbqF3CL9 pic.twitter.com/d5eR4O7z44
— Creative Economy (@UK_CE) April 27, 2018
I won’t lie, its bloody exciting not only for the experience but what it enables and stands for. I highly recommend taking part in the research if you are able to come to Liverpool from Thursday 3rd – 8th May.
We invite individuals, couples, families, and friends to explore #TheLivingRoomofTheFuture @FACT 3 – 8 May https://t.co/PFrprPmanT pic.twitter.com/Tv55Ayxa3x
— FACT (@FACT_Liverpool) April 16, 2018
Of course I don’t want to reveal too much and although its hard to do much of a spoiler as its about a shared experience. Our twitter bot is doing a good job showing the inners of what going on if you are wondering.
Lots of activity in the Living Room of the Future discussing how data and algorithms will play their part pic.twitter.com/t2O5AUFPuR
— Objects of Immersion (@ImmersiveObject) April 16, 2018
The living Room of the Future starting to look awesome thanks to @adriangradinar pic.twitter.com/5noFidwWG0
— Objects of Immersion (@ImmersiveObject) April 11, 2018
There has been a question for a while which people always ask. Why the living room? To which I answer sensitive place, common private area for discussions, there are existing social hierarchies at play in the space and its place for small audiences. Its also a complex space which I’ve seen talked about a lot recently.
I found Millennials don’t need living rooms, piece from the Independent fascinating.
A prominent architect has argued millennials do not need living rooms and their housing prospects would be greatly improved if size regulations were overhauled.
Patrik Schumacher, who took over as head of Zaha Hadid Architects after the legendary founder died in early 2016, said “hotel room-sized” studio flats were ideal for young people who led busy lives.
In a paper published by the Adam Smith Institute, he suggested size rules should be reviewed to increase the number of studio flats available to those on lower incomes.
While a 25-square-metre flat is the minimum in Japan, in the UK the minimum is 37 square metres for a one-bed.
Although reading through the piece, it sounds like a land grab to change the regulation and fit even more property in smaller spaces. There is a slight point that the price of property is super high and this could help (IF) prices don’t increase they are currently.
Polly Neate, CEO of housing charity Shelter, hit back at the architect’s remarks. “Tiny homes don’t necessarily mean cheaper homes, and at Shelter we know that having a decent place to live is vital for people’s well-being. So compromising on space and quality isn’t going to do anyone any favours,” she told The Independent.
“Homes in the UK are not expensive because they are too large, they are too expensive because our housing market is broken. When big developers realise they can squeeze, for example, 20 tiny homes on the same patch of land that once fit just ten then the price of land will rise to reflect this.
“The solution to the housing crisis is not to build ever smaller homes but to bring down the price of land and build the type of genuinely affordable homes that people actually want to live in.”
My thoughts went back and forth while reading but I wondered if the living space is squeezed what will disappear? Maybe the living room or kitchen will be first to go, looking at Japanese flats for example.
There was a choice in building the living room of the future, that it should be big or small? What was it it and what wasn’t. We decided on small to reflect the trend on smaller shared spaces and the need for the 3rd space.
Looking at the other side of the living room project, it was also fascinating to read about the UK’s first smarthome with Apple home kit baked in. The obviously scares the life out of me but every buyer of smart homes should read the house which spied on me and also the follow up which explains how it worked.
In December, I converted my one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco into a “smart home.” I connected as many of my appliances and belongings as I could to the internet: an Amazon Echo, my lights, my coffee maker, my baby monitor, my kid’s toys, my vacuum, my TV, my toothbrush, a photo frame, a sex toy, and even my bed.
Its super revealing and a very good long read. It speaks volumes about the different data which flows around our homes and spaces like the living room.
So what you waiting for, get yourself a ticket now!
I recorded fuel on the burning fire, while on the plane back from FUEL 2018 in Brussels. Such a good time and lots of amazing people and upgraded to business class, giving me lots of room to stretch out and throw down another pacemaker device mix.
I’ve recently been including more and more rave/90’s dance music in my mix and this is no different. Enjoy from the sunny cabin of my flight back to Manchester.
Photo credit: Kartaba
Leaving Madrid, recorded on the plane back to Manchester
The heights of Lisbon, recorded during a great evening in Lisbon.
Raving in Albufeira, recorded on a long bus ride from Albuferia to Faro. Lots of classics mixed in with a roller coaster ride of tunes
What on earth am I still doing here?
10 years ago I made my way up to Manchester. I hadn’t really spent much time there. First time was staying in the Copthorne hotel in Salford Quays for a BBC Innovation lab and i wasn’t impressed. But I gave the city another chance deciding its going to be a new challenge, new place to discover and a better lifestyle than staying in London and moved. I was more or less right…
Time has gone by quickly and if I didn’t have blogs and calendar events going back that far I might have forgotten. To be fair a lot has happened in the 10 years, here’s just a few picked randomly.
I have visited both Manchester City & Manchester United stadiums, although not a football fan. Seen the Manchester riots and the same city come together to clean up. Likewise for the Manchester Arena attack and how the city rallied together.
The weather I have to admit is sometimes pretty dire sometimes. I tend to bring my windproof umbrella everywhere with sunglasses if there is a hint of sun. From what I can tell most Mancunians, refuse to take an umbrella which seems insane to me. Manchester sits in a bit of a bowl and so although the mountains are clearly viable but the rain does gather over the high land.
The people have been generally good, I was worried about diversity but weighted up everything and decided it wasn’t any worst than a lot of places in the UK. Ultimately I didn’t feel like I would be in danger due to my race, especially in the city centre. I was right.
When I was first introduced to Manchester and looking for somewhere to live Hayley from the BBC showed me around a place called Cholton and I remember asking her about the city centre, to which she laughed and said no one lives there. She was likely right at the time but I made the right decision at the right time. The city centre is so walkable, skateboard-able and crammed with so many bars and cafes. Weirdly I hardly drunk booze in London or Bristol but in Manchester I started to indulge my cocktail tastes. You could say Manchester drove me to drink, but in a comfortable relaxed way.
Public transport in Manchester still baffles me. The tram is great and living near Piccadilly station is a great location. But the lack of a viable Oyster card type system is frustrating to say the least. I still remember taking a bus down Oxford road for 80p then being charged £3.20 on the way back. Something about a magic bus although operated by the same company and the exact same route. The city centre free buses are good too but generally you can walk from one end to the other in 30mins. The scooter had been great for longer distances not easily covered by the tram or train. I also find it crazy you can get back from Leeds at 2am but the last train from Liverpool is 11pm!
Equally baffling is the amount of gravy put on anything from meat to chips and the Mancunians & Liverpudlian accents which even now still has me scratching my head, even now!
Like a friend, who told me to go back down south, soon after I moved up; I should stop moaning frankly life is good. There are always frustrations, but the city and people of Manchester have been good to me.
It was a good idea to move up really early instead of later; I know many who didn’t come and for many reasons but I was just at that moment in my life when it wasn’t difficult to up and leave London. Life has massively improved and I generally think some of that is down to new friends, the costs of living and being able to make choices which fit. I also seem to have a knack for picking places which get gentrified.
Will I be here another 10 years? Its hard to tell. Considering Cardiff, as the BBC is moving its base to the centre of the city. Its also closer to my parents which is a plus. But I certainly feel the effect of Brexit and unsure how long I can put up with the change of attitude. If an opportunity came up I’d certainly give it some consideration but it would have to be in another city for sure.
You might have noticed less blogging from me recently. Theres a number of reasons mainly to do with being on holiday in Portugal & Spain. But also I’m working on the living room of the future project. Something I highly recommend you should sign up to experience.
So over a year ago I had a chat with @cubicgarden and that chat grew to include more ppl and now this! Beyond excited abt stories & tech and brilliance from @flatness & @mladenrakonjac – free tickets here if you can get to @FACT_Liverpool next month! https://t.co/PfKgk2GJyZ
— Caroline Meaby (@carolinemeaby) April 7, 2018
I did about 6 pacemaker mixes while away on holiday but I would say only 3 maybe 4 are worth publishing. So look out for them on Mixcloud.com.
Leaving Madrid, recorded on the plane back to Manchester
The heights of Lisbon, recorded during on the evening nights in Lisbon.
Raving in Albufeira, recorded on a long bus ride from Albuferia to Faro
I finally took up the Gratitude habit and started publishing them here. Standardnotes has quite nice system to publish notes but also keep parts secret if you choose to. Its like I imagined for mydreamscape ages ago.
I have so many pieces saved in my wallabag archive about the faccebook/cambridge analytica data issues (it is not a breach!). As I read, more information comes to light.
But I am always reminded of what Zuckerberg said about its trusted users… and it sums up so much.
Dumb fucks…
The thing about the statement is although it might be throw away in nature it speaks volumes about the way Zuckerberg thinks about Facebook users. It also interesting to think how Facebook is makes users feel that way, taking the power and control out of their hands. The reactions to the reveals have been so-so like when Edward Snowdon revealed the mass surveillance of millions of citizens around the world.
But its super clear, no matter how powerless we all feel, its super important to not lose sight that these giant companies have weaponised data, algorithms and psychology against us all. Running from one service to another isn’t so helpful in the long run.
We need to be more conscious about our decisions physically, mentally and virtually or be the dumb fucks Zuckerberg talked about.
I had quite a bit of time to read and listen to podcasts during my holiday in Portugal and Spain. One of the posts I read was Adrian talking about current his tech stack.
But I thought it might be good to talk about how I finally sorted out my podcast setup as it includes many parts of my current tech stack.
I listen to podcasts and audiobooks quite a lot. If I was still using last.fm I could likely quantify exactly how much but through my setup I’ll reveal a rough number at the end.
I listen to podcasts in the morning via Xbian running on Raspberry Pi 2 (considering switching to rasplex but Yaste remote supports Plex and Xbian as a audio endpoint/upnp renderer) which I bought a long while ago. This is setup in my room via ethernet and connected to a small amp and stereo speakers, one in my bedroom and one wired into the bathroom. I decided to do this after trying Bluetooth and FM speakers but they were just too quiet or unclear. Nothing beats a dedicated non-battery device. The wiring could do with a clean up. The Raspberry Pi is also connected to a audio splitter with one going to a FM transmitter.
This broadcasts to my little micro-hifi in the kitchen which I got from ebay over 10 years ago; its handy for multi-room synced audio without messing around (although I considered using a Chromecast audio and other things). The small amp in my room is connected to a TpLink HS100 smart switch meaning I can turn it off when leaving easily and quickly. I have only set it up for local wifi access not remote access, because frankly why would I need to this?
When not at home I use Google Pixel 2, I decided to get the 128gig version because I had enough of dealing with space issues. I have plex client installed and I have a plex pass (life time subscription), so can sync podcasts and audiobooks with ease. I do have it on my Nexus 7 and 5x too, but don’t carry them around much. I find Plex client is pretty good and doesn’t eat too much battery. Syncing seems seamless but with offline support sync support and 12gig of mobile 4G data. Because its using Plex at the backend, plex will save position no matter what device, as I’m logged in using the same account.
I also have Chrome Plex client on my laptop, meaning I can keep on listening when at work. Yes I listen to podcasts and audiobooks while working. I know many find this unthinkable but it works for me.
I’ve had Plex mediaserver running for quite a long time now and the advantages of having a gigabit internet connection and decent vpn (zerotier) means I can stream, sync or download podcasts and audiobooks without any fuss to my own devices. Plex media server keeps the position and checks for updates to the server filesystem.
Plex indexes the podcasts and audiobooks as audio and with some tweaking works quite well, although it can get confused when podcasts numbering and dates. It would be great if it had a audiobook and podcast indexer to pull much more metadata.
Unfortunately Plex media server doesn’t actually support podcasts which would be great if it did but its a pain to get working and not worth it for me. Especially because I have a complete Ubuntu stack its running on.
Because of this I use to download the podcasts from the web using a native ubuntu app. I tried Gpodder and Rhythmbox but they were resource hungry when downloading 30+ podcasts. Then tried VLC but it seemed over kill just to download podcasts. So tried some command line programs including Podfox and podcatcher. In the end I used Podget then setup a cron to trigger it every 2-4 hours. I also have Podget clean up the podcasts every 3 months.
One of the biggest things which drove me nuts was adding and updating rss feeds. Someone says you listen to the guilty feminist podcast, and would have to update server configs, etc. But using my Tiny tiny RSS install, I now have all the podcasts added to the master subscription list and generate a custom RSS feed aggregated for podcasts. I add the generated feed to Podget and the next time its updated, it will automatically add new items.
Because its done via TTRSS, it means I can add & remove the feed via any TTRSS client including the one my phone or using the web interface via my VPN (I only expose the web interface that way).
It sounds like a lot of work but honestly it works well and means I can remove a part of it and it will still work. Remove Podget, could be replaced with anything including VLC, etc. Plex could be replaced with Emby or another mediaserver. TTRSS could be anything self-hosted. Using Plexpy to log is under my own terms and the data is only shared and useable by me.
I do wish I could get to this type of space with so much more of the services I use. Right now, I’m quite impressed with how smooth everything works.
I’m looking at a way to tag and generate a feed out of the tags in TTRSS, instead of adding it to a hierarchy. Sometimes a feed could fit between two or more places. I’d also like to improve plex’s indexing around podcasts and audiobooks. Podget generates a m3u playlist file but not found much use for these yet. I also wish the plex input for kodi was less heavy.
I just added the Recode podcast while writing this post and I looking at my plex client on my Pixel 2. Podget downloaded all the episodes over my gigabit connection in about 6mins flat, the podget won’t remove them till a few months old but I can easily remove them via plex or directly from the file system over the VPN.
As promised, looking at Tautulli (what use to be PlexPy). Over the last 3 weeks I had 83 plays or 22 hrs 14 mins of playback. The last podcast I listened to while on the Madrid Metro to the airport at 7:30am was Rob Reid’s Always on podcast – Episode 23: Rodney Brooks | Robotics & AI – Their Present & Future
If you are interested in any detail, just comment or tweet me for more info.