It was Valentines day a little while ago and while I was busy. I guess someone at the BBC thought it would be a good idea to put up the Horizon Dating Experiment again.
To be fair although its back on Telly again, the best example of where the Horizon dating experiment popped up has to be on a plane at 36000 feet. Found via my good friend Claire
Its super depressing and even with 39 days left till Brexit, we still don’t know what on earth is going to happen. Even Jon Oliver can’t express how painful it is to watch the news everyday and see the PM of the UK trying to act strong with a crappy deal and following the will of the UK people.
— Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden@mastodon.cloud (@cubicgarden) February 18, 2019
Its a crappy situation the PM stepped into but I’m far from forgiving as she could delay article 50 and delay this clusterf**k. There is no way we should be allowed to leave without clear plans and a proper deal, if thats what we must do (I of course don’t buy it, I want to stay in the European union and always have done).
Tried searching google for "migrate to europe from the UK". Certainly not enough information š#brexit
— Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden@mastodon.cloud (@cubicgarden) February 18, 2019
All I can do is put my head in my hands and think about how to escape the UK.
So in the same vein, I thought I’d share some of the ones I’m listening to at work, on the go or in the mornings when getting ready for work . I included the RSS feed because some of them have that frustrating apple podcast link and I need the RSS for my smarty pants podcast system.
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
Death, Sex and Money is highly produced American public radio and Anna Sale really has the non judgemental tone needed for some of the sensitive subjects which are covered. Great podcast material always
RISK! is a live show and podcast where people tell true stories they never thought theyād dare to share in public
Talking of death sex and money, imagine if there was podcast which was a cross between that and the Moth. That is pretty much RISK and its great listening, with lots of quite quiet laughing at work.
RSS – http://feeds.feedburner.com/risk-show/yWzy
Team Human is a manifestoāa fiery distillation of pre-eminent digital theorist Douglas Rushkoffās most urgent thoughts on civilization and human nature. In one hundred lean and incisive statements, he argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work togetherānot as individuals.
Team human is just a fantastic listen, real high level conversation with a grounding in common sense. Such great guests and well worth it to hear Rushkoff’s thoughts at the top of each podcast.
The After on podcast is described as series of unhurried conversations with thinkers, founders, and scientists. Like Teamhuman, its great to hear the conversations about the future. Not every episode is as interesting to me as others but when they are, its perfect.
RSS – http://afteron.libsyn.com/rss
Each week Deborah Frances-White and guests discuss topics “all 21st century feminists agree on” while confessing their insecurities, hypocrisies and fears that undermine their lofty principles.
This is essential listening for everyone, a combination of the live events cut together for the podcast. Its just perfect to hear the insecurities, hypocrisies and fears that undermine the sometimes lofty principles of a feminist in the 21st century. Funny but so insightful always.
Anything Gladwell is always full of insight and interesting. Even the most unlikely of subjects can be great. He’s gone of and started Broken record, which is ok but prefer Revisionist honestly.
If you know anything about TorrentFreak and Jamie King. Then you know filesharing, decentralised tech, copyright, etc are common themes. The guests are pretty incredible with the depth of the always on podcast but with a slight political insight of team human.
RSS – http://stealthisshow.com/feed/podcast
Darknet Diaries: True stories from the dark side of the Internet.
Following up from Steal this show, comes a format which is great to hear. Each episode is a single story told extremely well focusing on the hacking, cracking and related fields. Its actually very accessible without loosing the details which matter. Each episode is pretty compelling and you can feel the darkness as you listen.
RSS – https://feeds.megaphone.fm/darknetdiaries
Following Reni’s amazing book Why I’m not talking to white people about race. I found out she followed up with a series of podcasts. I haven’t had the chance to listen to them all yet but its well worth listening to and sounds a bit like the old guardian token series. I also find the nod podcast good but this is better, as its more focused.
RSS – https://audioboom.com/channels/4947699.rss
Because Online Life Is Real Life; Host Manoush Zomorodi shares real stories of life online and real talk about the future of the Web.
Excellent podcast from Mozilla, explaining different parts of the internet through a combination of stories, interviews and news stories. Really well put together and interesting to experts and novices on the internet.
Every once in a while delight of getting involved with something from near the start of its journey. These types of projects tend to have some very driven but cool people behind it.
LiviaĀ Filotico is the founder/creative director of the festival and been my main contact. She started the whole thing with a kickstarter. She didn’t get the money she requested but is pursuing the whole thing anyway, looking for other funding elsewhere.
So why the moon festival?
Celebrating peopleās relationship with the Moon across cultures, time and disciplines and coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing in July 2019.
This year it will be 50 years since we first landed on the moon! It feels like lifetimes ago but actually its 50 years this July. When Livia explained this to me, I was shocked there was more celebrations planned for a massive achievement of human engineering and spirit.
I have been in talks with Livia for the BBC to be involved in some way too, but more importantly helping her out by connecting her with different people I know. We tried a number of things including attempting to put on a TEDxMoon! How amazing would that have been?!
The whole festival has a human storytelling emphases, which fits well with some of my research. But I was very happy for Livia to take me on board as a digital advisor recently…
The whole thing is shaping up well but could be massively accelerated with a few more sponsors behind some of the planned events. Interestingly its not just happening in birth place of modern time (London greenwich/woolwich) but also a couple of other places in the world. Maybe if you are interested in running a part of the moon festival in your city/country, get in touch with Livia. Would be amazing to see more international connected events.
Its my first travel abroad trip of 2019 and of course that means anther pacemaker device mix while up in the air. unfortunately it was a round trip to Amsterdam in the same day. No real time to relax but it beat missing the last third of TedXManchester 2019.
Its pretty trancey mix with some modern classics, bit of weird one but its not a bad one and fitted the short hop from Manchester to Amsterdam.
I recently introduced a few friends to Mastodon and tried to explain why I think its a step forward. Others have hinted at this all too.
There are many issues they face and some are highlighted in a blog post I wrote a while ago when talking about mastodon. But recently I had a interesting discussion about a part of the decentralised web I’ve not had for a while. Lack of censorship of dangerous & in some places illegal content.
This might seem as quite a shock to a lot people use to the moderation/gatekeeping of centralised platforms, especially while browsing through the list of mastodon servers to join.
Generally a lot of the people in the Dweb (decentralised web) world understand the advantages and disadvantages of decentralised based systems including this. But it can come as a shock to others who have rarely come across anything like this. I would say this is like the red light district in Amsterdam. Its there if you want it, its better/safer for the those involved and its easier for law enforcement to do their job. Consider this happens regardless is important to note.
Of course it totally depends on the media, content, etc… Theres a sliding scale from stuff which is totally illegal to things which are more questionable depending on your culture, faith, etc. Mastdon has ways to not just filter but also block and ban things. The join an instance is ideal because it sets the tone and makes explicit the rules of whats tolerated and whats not. This gives transparency to the users and should stop things like the Facebook blocking breastfeeding policy.
I do understand its off putting to new Dweb users but like the Cloudflare daily stormer censorship or the British porn block, theres a serious lesson to be learned. Lets not kid ourselves, simply hiding it or pushing it underground will ultimately make things worst for everyone. Law enforcement works much better when there’s cultural and societal norm against the something. This is why the war on drugs has been and always will be a unwinnable war.
Some people believe that decentralization is the inevitable future of the web. They believe that internet users will start to demand more privacy and authenticity of information online and that theyāll look to decentralized platforms to get those things. But would decentralization be as utopian as advocates say it could be?
I haven’t been to a Manchester Futurists for a long while, But I saw the topic ofĀ The Future of Transportation with Nick King and Gary BarkerĀ and decided it would be a good one to attend with my petrol head partner. Now to be fair Nick and Gary did say it was going to be all about the car and it makes sense with them both coming from Autotrader. So will forgiven them for talking about cars and ownership not transport.
During the Nick and Garry talked about many things but one of their main points was about how selfish we are as a nation/culture. This is why ownership of cars is still going to be a large part of the future and things like car sharing, pooling, etc will still be a rarity.
I can’t remember the exact questions but generally they asked;
Who has used Airbnb? Quite a few yes were heard
Who has booked an Airbnb in the last year? Fewer people say yes
Who has booked a place with a stranger? People smile and giggle but theres about one or two yes’s.
Conclusion people value their privacy and the sharing economy will be mainly lost on Brits because of this. Now thats quite a step but lets go with it… They used Airbnb but also suggested similar for Uber, Zipcar and all the carpooling systems.
I don’t disagree with what was said or pointed out but its worrying. As populations move into cities, the very idea of sharing resources is critical.
Over the last year I’ve watched when people talk about their ideal homes, default to a physically detached house. Then watched the confusion when I talk about a duplex flat. Why would you want that? Surely you want your own garden, your own space, your own…. Well actually no. I like shared gardens, I like real public spaces. I like public transport and as a host of Airbnb a shared spare room.
I do like doing Airbnb in a similar fashion. Some of the best Airbnb’s I’ve been in are when there is one host and myself. For example when I went to Madrid and Copenhagen. I spent a bit of time in the company of the host but never too much time. We both understood, when to back off and give some room.
i know its just me but the difference is the planet is becoming over populated and resources are getting tighter and more costly. The ability to sharing is not just important but is becoming critical. In the future of transport there was a suggestion that autonomous cars will have their own lane. I shook my head thinking when is there going to be room to fit another lane in. Most of the lanes are being converted to bus and bike lanes.
In a world with limited resources, can we find ways to salvage what’s disappearing? Can we innovate our way out of a finite landscape? This hour, TED speakers explore ideas about living with less.
Rather than living with less, can we also share more and make our limited resources go further?
When rapper Professor Green was a kid, the word ‘mental’ was chucked about carelessly ā but the phrase ‘mental health’ was something he never heard mentioned. When he was 24, his dad took his own life ā and there began a course towards greater self-awareness about mental illness and understanding of the need to talk about mental suffering collectively. He speaks to journalist Stephen Armstrong about his work since then, and why things still aren’t getting better.
I found this really good and refreshing to hear. I know very little about Professor Green but its really good to hear his thoughts, in this short wired live interview.
Its a 36 hours hackathon around responsive/perceptive/adaptive media experiences. Participants work as a team to brainstorm ideas, create prototypes of their own storytelling experiences. They will compete against the clock, not against each other sharing knowledge and expertise as they go. They won’t be alone, as they will have some excellent mentored by industry experts sharing their knowledge and experiences. Its all part of BBC Academy’s Manchester Digital Cities week.
The hackjam is only part the story. On the late afternoon of Thursday 28th Feb there will be a mini-conference titled Storytelling in the Internet Age. Where promising prototypes will be demoed to the audience.
Ideal participants are from the creative sectors such as,
Freelancers, Sole-traders and SMEs working in new media fields combining data with media,, may have tried twine, eko, inkle, etc
Producers and Directors interested in adaptive and non-linear narratives, may have tried twine, eko, inkle, etc
Developers and Designers with an interest in audio & video combined with data and used javascript libs like the VideoContext.js, Seriously.js, etc
Students and Academics with a deep interest in object based media, adaptive narratives, interactive digital narrative
Artists exploring mixed media and non-linear narratives
Tickets are free but an expression of interest, with no guarantee entry.
Its been a difficult time recently. My scooter was damaged once again in a break in on the car park where I park. I say again because in April 2018 exactly the same thing happened. Less that a year!
In April 2018, the motorbikes were targetted but none were taken, if I remember some other things were broken and taken. However between the chains and locks broken, it was clear they tried to break my steering lock by forcing the handle bars. They slightly twisted but not at the fork level lucky, this still costed about Ā£150 to fix.
This time the motorbikes were targetted and looking at the CCTV images from the different cameras across the site its clear they were only after the motorbikes nothing else.
CCTV cover up in 2018
CCTV cover up in 2019
There was some other similarities between the break-ins. The CCTV over looking the motorbikes was covered up in both cases.
They also broke into the car park from the building site next door
Unlike last time however, I spotted 4 men acting very weirdly on the canal side on Monday 14th night/Tuesday 15th morning. They were dressed in black with hoods and scarfs across their mouths and noses. They seemed to be breaking into Islington Wharf Mews by jumping over a wall with a sleeping bag to protect themselves from the spikes on top.
23:49 – Calling the non-emergency number (101) I was put on hold for ages but finally by the time they picked up. The men jumped back over the wall to the canal side, they disappeared from my view.
00:09 – The police took some details and asked where they were now. I happened to catch them breaking into the building site from the road side. Telling the police, they originally said they were going to send someone out. However as I found out later they looked at the public CCTV, which obviously doesn’t point on to the building site plus they were dressed in complete black. Once they looked and saw nothing they closed the logged case
00:45 – Meanwhile I hadn’t noticed but saw later on the garage CCTV a 5th man dressed totally in Black was trying to get into the garage by sneaking in while the roller shutter was coming down after some left or entered the garage. He failed and even got shouted at by residents in a car.
00:48 – I get a short phone call from the police asking if I seen anything else new? I said no.
01:08 – Not long after my original call and 20mins after my call back, some men gain access to the car park via the ground floor car park by breaking the wood slats. I know this for sure because the CCTV confirms the moment they broke through and climbed through.
How they got into the carpark
They headed straight for the motorbikes ignoring all the cars and bicycles. Broke two locks of 2 motorbikes, and damaging my scooter. They are in the car park for 35mins (01:08 – 01:43), All their movements around the carpark are captured on our own CCTV, except the one right above the bikes
01:43 – Finally they leave heading out the car park pedestrian door with 2 motorbikes
Damage to my scooter
0941 – I only found out the next day when I was going to work and saw the damage and the missing motorbikes. This time to tried to get at the scooter ignition instead of trying to break the steering lock. As you can see the damage is pretty bad but the steering is actually fine. I checked all the other locks and chains and they are good.
However 2 other motorbikes are gone and I got lucky. I’ve beefed up my locks and now using my alarm more often now (not just the immobiliser). I also got a crime reference and asked about my early morning call. I’m told the case is on going but police were sent out.
1953 – Later in the evening when I call up again, I’m told the cases are not connected was closed and the police were not sent out because there was nothing on a CCTV (no idea which one they are referring to)
My problem I see is…
The police are not connecting the two cases. Now I understand there is a chance the 4 men dressed head to toe in black on a building site may not be the same 5 people who broke into the garage from the same building site stealing the bikes? Yes it happened with 60 mins of my call but who knows – right? What I don’t understand is why no one was sent out? Even a visit could have prevented a crime. They also lied to me on the phone
I don’t get how the building site isn’t partly to blame for it lack of security not just once but twice now. There is a good chance the men stole tools from the building site to break the locks. I certainly didn’t see them carrying anything when getting into Islington Wharf Mews.
The police still haven’t looked or requested the CCTV from Islington Wharf, The Mews or the building site next door. Yes they are dressed in black but it could be useful to see where they came from and got to with the stolen motorbikes?
Why was I told they will send out a police offer but later told they didn’t? I feel like I was lied to….
I’m doing what I can but its slow going and not being able to get actual CCTV (for good reasons) its kinda impossible to convince the police to follow up. This is partly why I decided to share my frustrations without too much details.
Updated – Evening of Tuesday 29th Jan 2019
I’ve had an update from a few sources and the timeline includes this..
Tuesday 15 January 2019
00:19 – While I see 4 men getting into Islington Wharf Mews, another man also dressed in black from head to toe is trying to gain entry to the Islington wharf car park by trying to sneak in when someone leaves or enters. Unsuccessfully he returns to his hiding position each time. This also explains why 1 of the 4 men I saw kept looking out from their 1st floor position.
00:45 – They tried to gain entry again but a resident closes the shutter too quickly. 3mins later I get my call from the police, but still no one shows up. On the building site they break a padlock on a tool box, giving them access to stronger tools
01:08 – They break into the car park via the ground floor through the fence using the builders tool.
01:18 – They send 2 of them for an initial scope out of the carpark and then after all 5 of them go into the car park. Breaking two locks of 2 motorbikes, and damaging my scooter. They are in the car park for 35mins
01:43 – One of the Residents tried to drive in to the car park and when the roller shutter goes up they run away pushing the motorcycles.
Updated – Morning of Wednesday 30th Jan 2019
At 8:30am I received a phone call from the special operations police. They had read my email and were slight shocked at how I’d be treated through this investigation. He massively apologized and agreed based on the research I had done, the cases are linked. Then finally at 1300 they did go and review the footage from the flats and are using it in their ongoing investigation along with other CCTV footage.
“…while building this attraction I also wanted to change the usual one-sided relation ā a situation where the body is overwhelmed by physical impressions but the machine itself remains indifferent, inattentive for what the body goes through. Neurotransmitter 3000 should therefore be more intimate, more reciprocal. Thatās why Iāve developed a system to control the machine with biometric data. Using sensors, attached to the body of the passenger ā measuring his heart rate, muscle tension, body temperature and orientation and gravity ā the data is translated into variations in motion. And so, man and machine intensify their bond. They re-meet in a shared interspace, where human responsiveness becomes the input for a bionic conversation.”
https://danieldebruin.com/neurotransmitter-3000
Its a good idea but unfortunately couldn’t work on a rollercoasters, which is my thing. Or could it? For example everyones hand up in the air means what? The ride goes faster? How on earth does work? How meaningful would this be if you could actually do this?
Its one of the research questions we attempted to explore in the living room of the future. How can you combine different peoples personal data to construct a experience which is meaningful and not simply a medium of it all.
Its been a long haul but finally Flickr is beyond use for me. I briefly tried Flickr pro for a while but theres so many other options now. Its a shame but Flickr went through a lot of trouble at the end but was saved from Yahoo craziness by snugmug. But even looking at the pro account prices, I decided that after…
It was time to leave Flickr and just let it start deleting my photos, which I mainly had backed up in multiple places anyway.
I was quite impressed with Flickr’s data portability option, for example the uploaded files are exactly the same. But it would have been great if they embedded the tags into the original EXIF data. However it seems they kept the tags in account data. So with some work, it would be possible to pull the whole lot together again? I’m actually surprised no ones already done this?
So many people are doing the Facebook 10 year challenge and I’m so happy to see the Wired’s piece asking the question of what Facebook could be doing with the photos.
Of course some people think its all blown out of proportion, cue Jeff Jarvis on Twit recently. As Leo says at the end of the clip, Facebook and others will lie and claim one thing, but from past experience we have caught them lying.
After about a hour and half fiddling with controls, moving the unit (I tried different heights and even the coffee table) and adjusting it a lot. At one point I tried putting the telephoto lens in front of the projector lens but the lens on the projector is so large I ended up with a quarter of the picture missing.
But finally I got a widescreen 16:9 picture at 1080p/60 resolution positioned on my screen/blind. Its clear that ideally the screen isn’t wide enough
Originally I had to set it to 4:3 stretching the picture vertically. I thought it was acceptable but then started thinking theres got to be way to fit a 16:9 picture on the screen.
Note the [2] at the top left is slightly cut off
Then finally I found a image shift and crop feature which allowed me to position the picture at its natural ratio of 16:9. Its not perfect but it works and means I’ll keep the projector.
So next thing to do is get a long HDMI cable and replace the VGA cable for the old projector with it in the room trunking. I also need a better more solid backstop to rest the projector on. Currently its resting on my headphone case and thats not ideal. The projector only really has one support at the front and gets unbalanced when the back is up off the ground.
