So as you may have seen, I bought a negative scanner which actually works on ubuntu. But it got me thinking, since I lost a ton of photos back when I screwed around with my server hard drives a while ago, its great that old photos came with negatives.
I didn’t even remember that photos came with negatives till a friend pointed it out to me one day while I was talking about how I use to take photos at school and sell them to friends (one of my long forgotten entrepreneur enterprises at school).
But now what happens?
You don’t get negatives with digital cameras of course.
I’ve done the research and finally I found a negative film scanner which works with gnu/Linux (ubuntu). Its the Maplins Film and Slide Digital Scanner. It works exactly how I would expect it to. You scan the slides into the memory of the machine or even on to a SD card then you connect the whole device to a pc via usb port to transfer the images out of the device.
The only issue I’ve seen is, you can’t scan while the device is connected to a pc, which is a pain because it charges/powers over USB (even ejecting the device doesn’t help). The device has a total of 30meg of on board storage is pretty shocking specially when your scanning photos at 5 mega pixel. Of course adding the SD card (it doesn’t support SDHC either) you can get loads more space.
The device is great, it did cost £50 but you can pretty much do most of the scanning while sitting on the sofa. Now if only there was a quicker way to scan through my long history of camera negatives. I got about 60 negatives to go.
I’m planning to put all the unread messages from while I was away in the DMZ folder and then pretty much dump them all in the trash bin once I go back to work. So if you’ve contacted me during the time I was off due to the bleed on my brain, then tough luck. I won’t be answering back sorry… There is no way I’m going to run through 24k of unread messages from May – October
Since I’ve been at home recovering from my brush with death. I’ve started watching a lot more TV. This has been a bit of shock for people that know me. He’s the ones I watch the most, weirdly there mainly Channel4.
I love this series, its very simple. Take 4/5 strangers then every night a guest cooks for the rest of the group in there home. At the end of the evening, the guests mark the food and dining experience out of 10. At the end of the week we see who has the highest score and that person gets the prize fund of £1000.
The concept is so simple and works for strangers, celebs, sports stars, almost anyone. I’ve even heard that some of my friends have done a personal come dine with me with other friends. Although I got to say thats got to be one of the quickest ways to loose friends and cause massive rows.
The best part of come dine with me has to be the voice over which points how nutty the guests are. Its cheap throw away television but cleverly put together
This is a brand new series from Channel4, its only on episode 3 but I got to say its had me in stitches, mainly because the characters are simply crazy and I also know people who actually talk and interact in the same way. The South London urban accent and setting makes the whole thing even more funny. Specially since I spent a good few years there myself.
I’ve included a clip at the very top of the post, if you don’t get the humor maybe its just not for you.
22 boxes, no one knows whats in the box. The player picks a box and picks off boxes till there is only two boxes left. Hopefully the player has picked a box with a quarter of million inside and opens it to find it. The external force is the banker which changes everything.
I first thought the banker would simply offer offers which were the average of whats left in the boxes, but thats not the case. In actual fact its a bit of a poker game, if the banker thinks the player will go on and believes in the box, the banker will offer higher amounts to put the player off. If the player seems shaky and a little nervous, the banker will put in slightly lower offers, hoping the player will go for it. So theres a bit of interaction from a far.
The game’s deceptively simple format has attracted attention from mathematicians, statisticians, and economists as a study of decision making under risk: It is an excellent instructive example of the application of utility theory.
In 2004, a team of economists played a scaled-down version of the game with 84 participants and compared the results with the expected utility hypothesis. The study received a great deal of media attention, appearing on the front page of The Wall Street Journal on January 12, 2006 as well as being featured on National Public Radio in the United States on March 3, 2006.
So its the game strategy which interest me about the gameshow.
I may also have a member of my family going on deal or no deal in the near future, so I’ll be filling them in on all the strategy behind the game.
Locale was recommended to me by my good friend Sheila. And within a moment of playing with it I started thinking wow this app can do so much for me.
Locale simply makes the android phone do (setting) something when a set condition is triggered (situation). And thats about it. But this is the clever part, there are loads of plugins to make locale work in different ways.
One of my current favorites is the speak Text and Email setting which does just that. When I’m at home, I usually have the phone next to me on the sofa or on the coffee table. Using "say my name" it will speak the email or text out loud to me, so I don’t even have to look or touch the phone. Of course it also says the person calling if thats the case.
The problem is I don’t want my phone to read out messages when I’m in a public place. But this is easily solved with Locale!
I have a situation setup to say if the phone spots my ssid for wireless and/or its pluged in via usb and charging. Then change the setting to allow speaking aloud and reading my messages.
Its that easy!
One of the most common situations I’ve seen and setup myself is to turn on wifi when at home (once again using the SSID) and turn it off when your not near wifi again. I also added a setting to change the ring volume if I’m at home and when I’m not.
There are tons of conditions and sensors which can be bought and setup. From Battery, Bluetooth and Cell stations to Time, Orientation and SSID for the conditions. Volume, Sync, Brightness, Gtalk, Lock, Ringtone, Wallpaper, Wifi are some of the settings which can be tweaked based on the condition (and these are just the free ones).
I said a long time ago, (maybe before I started blogging even) that controlling your profile on the phone would be the key to mastering it. Problem was that changing profiles required too much attention. I mean who has the time or can be bothered to change the profile each time they walk into a meeting or get on the bus? Instead Locale does all the hard work by turning your phone into a series of cleverly thought out sensors…
…and this is just the start. I keep coming up with interesting uses for locale like for example if I was on Foursquare, gowalla or facebook places. I could tell my phone to automatically send a http post to a url when I’m in the location (by gps, 3g, ssid, etc) to automatically sign me in to a location.
So why is this great application not available on the iphone platform?
Well the iphone doesn’t have profiles!? Why?! I have no idea… I guess Apple thought they were being clever or smart
And even if it did have profiles, would Apple allow you to screw around with the defaults? I doubt it…
Even if they would, the apps don’t seem to work together like on the android operating system. For example could you write a app which will turn on and turn off the wifi?
Oh and if that all works, would you be able to do real multitasking and backgrounding to allow locale monitor the conditions of the phone at all times?
The control of the operating system, is squeezing the innovation at the app level. Heck i’m not the only one saying this. And this level of control will ultimately be the downfall of the iOS platform (imho).
Islington wharf where I now live now has a fantastic communal garden (which I’ve been using to read my kindle and play with my pacemaker) and I thought it would be a grand idea to have a party in the garden for all the residences of islington wharf.
So the plan is to have the party and allow people to bring a couple of friends with them. I will lay on a bit of party snacks (I got plenty left over from my flat warming party back in September) and everyone will bring there own drinks. On top of that, there will be two contests, one for the best carved pumpkin and another for the best fancy dress on the day. I’ve roped ISIS’s hollie into supplying the pumpkins and maybe supplying some really nice prizes on the night to the winners.
Finally I thought it might be nice to have a organised trick or treat for the kids of islington wharf. Get everyone ready with treats and go around the flats with a couple of adults to supervise the whole thing. I’m not sure how many kids there are in the flats but I’ve seen a couple playing in the garden since I’ve been here. Its slightly ambitious but even if we get 10% of the residents down on Sunday night, thats still over 20 people.
So why am I doing this?
Well when I first saw the location the garden was certainly a selling point. I really wanted a balcony but I gladly gave it up for a communal garden which I could relax in and share with others. I’ve seen a few people using the garden but not nearly as many as I would have thought. The thing about flats is they have a rep for being impersonal and loney places where people tend to not talk to each other as they leave there flats. In actual fact Tracey Langford said it in her recent interview for east manchester.
Tracey, who runs her own business, says the idea of a community appealed to them too: “We didn’t want to live in an soulless place where nobody spoke in the lift.” She adds, “We also wanted a high proportion of owner occupiers so that people really cared about the building. There is a mix of properties here with houses that face on to the communal garden, which are ideal for younger families.”
And that communal aspect prevails. Says Tracey, “In fact, the first Islintgon Wharf baby was born here a couple of months ago and the whole building was invited to the first birthday party of one of our residents!”
Its all about Community
Community, yep the big C word. Its one of those things which is very hard to just do, it needs to be organic. But fear not, this is just one of the ideas I have to bring people together. ISIS haven’t done a bad job so far but theres certainly some room for improvement. The next logical step I think is to sort out the community forum which is currently hosted on a external site somewhere. I signed up to join the forum ages ago and my membership is still pending (even after months).
My neighbor across the hallway is talking about setting up another better supported forum but I’m wondering why we don’t just setup a facebook group? Although to be fair it seems I’m not the only one who thought about this. The tricky part in a community is getting everyone on the same page (or getting the word out about the site), this requires actual physical work like putting up posters and speaking to people, something which seems to be sadly missing it seems.
ISIS should be involved in the community process too, but not be the driver of the process. It needs to come from the community/residents its self.
So I’m hoping to improve on the community building which has already started. I can’t say it will translate into sales for ISIS but for me this isn’t about that. Its about building a lovely place to live. I already live in a amazing place with some great views and great architecture but in this case, theres nothing wrong with wanting more. A rich vibrant community of caring people who I can share a wine with in the garden? I’m working on it one step at a time…
Inception – Everyone knows I love this film. Actually the clip above came to me via the inspirational which is imran ali. The reason why I love the film is because frankly its amazing to watch and enjoy, but also I got the idea for mydreamscape.org after watching inception. Some people have said its the matrix of this generation, I’m not so sure but I can certainly see why people would say that. Its breath taking from start to finish and theres a healthy amount of background mythology to keep us all guessing. I can’t wait to own a copy of my own, so I can watch it at home with my home cinema.
4, 3, 2, 1 – This is the Urban version of Sliding doors and although I wanted to not like this film, I actually enjoyed it. Theres pace and a clever storyline which overlaps its self when it makes sense. Noel Clarke has really worked hard on this one, once again staring in it and co-directing it. All the stars from the Adulthood and kidulthood are in this one and its slightly weird to see them play a different role from there other films. The woman are the centre stage in this film and they play there parts to the maximum, but the killer role for me has to be Kevin Smith’s role as a American courier. What I can’t work out is if it was before or after the no fly incident.
Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut – When I first saw this version of Donnie Darko I turned my nose up at it. I felt it gave away too much. Now although I’m still glad I got the original version, I found this version in retrospect a interesting twist on the tail. It does spell out a lot more whats going on but then again, it brings a more informed discussion about the ethics of time travel.
Exit through the gift shop – This is a film very few people saw in the cinema but I did watch it with a friend. Its basically the story of Banksy and street art. I can’t really say much about the movie without giving away the plot but I will say its not about Banksy exactly, its more a story about street art which was never told. In actual fact its about a guy called Mr Brainwash or Thierry Guetta who started to film street artists doing there work and promised to make it into a documentary. He did but boy oh boy was it bad. He went on to do Madonna’s next album cover. Anyway, this must be watched specially because it seems so unreal but in actual fact its actually mainly true.
The social network – Just watched this one in the cinema in Digital projection and to be honest I didn’t really want to like it but I found myself warming to some of the characters in the film. I know its not the exact story of how facebook started but the general story is all there. Zuckerbergs (played by Jesse Elsenberg) clever wit shows through but you can’t help but feel sorry for Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield) who gets shafted on a share deal by Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) and Zuckerberg. To be fair he may have killed part of the idea with the advertising but hey we will never know. I guess at the end of the day, I do think the woman in the film are almost laughable and thats a big problem but Zuckerberg is a nerdy guy and the opposite sex is simply another lifeform for him.
There is something about Jon Stewart’s Rally to restore sanity which I kind of like. Sure it started off as a reply to the whole tea party movement but its certainly spun off into something much larger and actually quite smart.
Jon Stewart really draws together a huge audience of people who fit into the democratic/liberal stand point but not only that, he’s also somewhat respected by some of the middle ground of America. The genius thing is he has made the rally about something you can’t really argue with. It means you can easily have these diverse groups of people rallying together without a problem.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this rally to restore sanity becomes a major date in the calendar. I wouldn’t mind seeing a similar protest/rally in the uk, sanity would be great right now.
First, we’ve built an easy way to quickly download to your computer everything you’ve ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends: your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information.
If you want a copy of the information you’ve put on Facebook for any reason, you can click a link and easily get a copy of all of it in a single download. To protect your information, this feature is only available after confirming your password and answering appropriate security questions. We’ll begin rolling out this feature to people later today, and you’ll find it under your account settings.
Second, we’re launching a new dashboard to give you visibility into how applications use your data to personalize your experience. As you start having more social and personalized experiences across the web, it’s important that you can verify exactly how other sites are using your information to make your experience better.
As this rolls out, in your Facebook privacy settings, you will have a single view of all the applications you’ve authorized and what data they use. You can also see in detail when they last accessed your data. You can change the settings for an application to make less information available to it, or you can even remove it completely.
Its a total dump and although slightly impressive on the surface, other services such as 37signals Basecamp have had the ability to export your data for a long time. Interestingly there doesn’t seem to be a way to import your data, but then again I can’t see that coming anytime soon. It will be interesting to see what happens in this area when Diaspora comes along and gains traction. I’ll actually really like to add the ability to export to twitter right now, so I can see all the tweets mentioning me which were sent to me while I was in hospital.
