Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Quick reminder for everyone, its going to be a busy week.
I hear Molly is in town, so hopefully she can make the Geekdinner with Julie or even the Werewolf night.
Ok I actually flicked through the document linked and I'm officially very scared.
The Open Rights Group (ORG) believes that the problems observed at the English and Scottish elections in May 2007 raise serious concerns regarding the suitability of e-voting and e-counting technologies for statutory elections. E-voting is a ‘black box system’, where the mechanisms for recording and tabulating the vote are hidden from the voter. This makes public scrutiny impossible, and leaves statutory elections open to error and fraud.
The Government has prioritised the introduction of e-voting because of the perceived convenience of new technologies, ignoring other vital considerations such as confidence and trust in the electoral system. ORG considers that the problems observed and difficulties scrutinising results delivered by e-counting systems bring their suitability for statutory elections into question.
meta-technorati-tags=democracy, openrightsgroup, evoting, elections, pdf, org
I was catching up on some videocasts the today and came across a segment in the 1 upshow (gaming culture show) about a guy who dj's using wiimotes. I honestly took a double look and was thinking damm why didn't I think about that.
Its odd because it all made so much sense. I had,
I have had a good look around the setup there using and it looks like it could be adapted to VirtualDJ and one laptop if needed. So I'm going to try getting a Wiimote cheap on ebay this or next month and see what I can build. I actually think this kind of setup would suit music like trance a lot better (confirmed if you watch this video) that the stuff they were playing on the video. Virtual Dj has very assignable buttons and works with most of the things Tractor does, so hopefully that won't be a problem. Interestingly there is such a thing called wiij scratching, but is once again a clone of vinyl. I'm sure theres something else which can be done in this area but I was seriously impressed with Deckadance demo once again with dance music.
So tired I can't write a compete entry… Here's some classic pictures instead.
BBC Iplayer in Facebook
Aral playing with the Nabaztag
Euan with the Diet Coke rockets
Matthew talking about what just happened in the West Hall
Umbrellas up while the West Hall lets the rain in pour in. Hacker spirit
The scene as the West hall starts to slide open
Myself and Matt on stage
So at long last a update to Hackday.
Hackday was great. Very different from BarCampLondon which was a good thing. Highlights of the day included lightning hitting Alexandra Palace twice and the building going into protective mode by opening all the skylights and letting the rain come in.
Wireless was a problem on the first day but got solved after dinner on Saturday. Actually through out the night it was flawless. I personally don't think it was just load because Sunday morning everyone was hacking away trying to get stuff done before the deadline of 2pm. I think Wireless generally is a problem and we try to minimise that problem by creating pools of non conflicting wireless instead of flooding the room with wireless. Obviously something worked so this is good to remember for future events. Talking to the BT engineers was also interesting because they talked alot about 802.11a being the thing to solve all these problems. It will change channels automaticlly to stop conflicts. So yes anyone with the newer intel chipsets would have got a better experience if we had turned some of the wireless points to A only. We didn';t know the percentage of new vs old laptops so we went with the safe 802.11b/g
A negative comment comes in the form of food. There was food and snacks but generally we could really have done with a selection from Ocrdo or something. I generally got sick of eating dry as hell pizza after a while. When I got home on Sunday I ordered a nice curry because it was so dry all weekend. It was good there was a endless supply of coffee and tea but I really really wanted something different that a chocolate bar through-out the night.
The work of the developers was great, lots of hacks and plenty of variety. I won't list the winners because that will be on the backstage site one day soon. but yes good stuff from the 480 developers.
The event went pretty smoothly through-out Sunday and we were wrong about how long it would take to go through the hacks. I did think it was a shame that the time was then wasted playing flickrball on stage while the crowd watched for another 5mins. We should have ended earlier and gave more time for people to walk around not subject them to a un-inspiring game. Hey we could have desplayed the results of the hackday game which was created. Another thing we should have done is used the main screen more for infomration. A dedicated machine with yahoo widgets, 3 windows one for twitters to the hackday bot, one blank for quick messages and another refreshing the backnetwork. We should never have had Matthew's odd collection of music on through out the hacking period. Honestly people kept asking for it to be turned down or turned off. What would I have replaced it with? I don't know maybe nothing. I know it sounded dead but most hackers wanted that.
As always this whole thing sounds a little negative and its not meant to be. It was a great event but we need to learn for next time for sure. This further proves London and Europe is a great place for development and geek events like this. Even Yahoo didn't expect such a grand event
Picture from our recent holiday in New York
Sarah and I are both announcing today on our blogs that we are going to get divorced after four and a half years of marriage. This was a joint decision, and it wasn't made hastily. We have tried many different things to make it work, but have come to the conclusion that staying married will cause a lot of unhappiness for both of us. We would rather end it now while were still on good terms, and plan to stay friendly.
We know this is pretty public and quite shocking news for many people who know me. We hope that everyone will accept that we know what is best for us, and give us our privacy about the reasons. We are both sad and under a lot of stress, but are also somewhat relieved to have made the right decision.
A lot of people were also surprised about the speed at which we got married in the first place. We didn't take that step lightly, and neither of us regrets getting married. We did believe at the time we would be married forever, and we do still love each other. The problems we have do not have anything to do with the manner in which we met or the speed of our marriage.
We both admire and respect each other and hope that our mutual friends will never feel that they have to choose sides. At some point, we may even continue the podcast, but it is undecided at this time. We consider ourselves 'separated' now, but will continue to live in the same house until we can sell the property or make alternative arrangements.
Do I have to say anything more?
Every bloody person I know is on Facebook now. And since Facebook started opening up to 3rd party sites like Twitter, Del.icio.us, Upcoming, Flickr, Last.FM, etc there's even more of a reason to use it. The weird thing about facebook for me is how odd a mix it is of web 1.0 and web 2.0. For example its got the community and participation stuff down really well but its interface and experience is franky dirty and feels like it belongs in the internet archive.
I heard a interview a while back talking about how facebook was going to replace the operating system on your machine. Although I laughed, I can see what they mean now. I imagine its the starting destination for a lot of people, and with its mixture of chat, photos, groups, etc all blended together. I guess this what Yahoo tried to do with Yahoo 360 somewhat failed?
I believe this was one of the best episodes of Doctor Who ever written and filmed. Don't think so, everyone else thinks so…
I was actually watching this TED presentation on my xbox last night and had to watch it twice because the first time around I was so transfixed on what was being said. Its a raw emotional talk about climate change without all the jokes of Al Gore's presentation. Then Blip.TV's Twitter Bot recommended the exact same video a couple of hours later, so I had to blog it as 12mins of video that everyone should see.
The last geekdinner with Becky Hogge of the Open Rights Group was another good success. It was a much smaller affair that ever before but we certainly had a lot of fun. The new venue was good but I didn't know we were going to be at the very top of the pub. Some people after wards also told me they went to the Bear venue.
Anyway this time we had over 50% new people and a quite heated debate about digital rights. I really wished I'd recorded it video camera or at least Tom could have recorded it for the new podcast show.
Becky was great and I got a feeling we will have to have her back again.
