Month: December 2010

Online dating goes a little like this

Me on how to have more sex

According to Stephen Mount, online dating goes something a little like this.

Person A: Hi

Person B: Hi

Person A: What’s your financial circumstances?

Person B: I’m skint

Person A: Bye

In my experience this is certainly not true. It would be interesting to hear where Stephen is meeting these ladies? The only time I’ve ever had someone challenge me about how much I actually earn is when I went speed dating for the first time and it ended up on ITV 1 primetime.

The woman (who I won’t screen shot for her own sake, although I really would like to) who is person A in the following role-play and I’m person B.

Person A: So what do you do?

Person B: I work for the BBC on a special project which I love

Person A: Oh thats a shame, I heard the BBC don’t pay very well

After a slight delay (I was weighing up in my mind how this would play out)

Person B: Well that only matters if your a gold digging ******

Person A: **** ******* ******** ******

Lets say the next 2.5 mins were some of the most difficult conversation you could have with a stranger…

Luckily its only ever happened once and even more luckily it was not caught by the camera for the ITV viewing public, because that would be too embarrassing at the time but ever so funny now.

Discovering lovely workplaces

The old twitter offices

I had message on my flickr mail today. The subject read awesome workplaces. I though it may have been spam at first but I checked it out.

Dear Ian,

I found some great pictures of the Citizen Space workplace here: http://www.officedesigngallery.com/template_permalink.asp?id=154#comments

I would really like to add these pictures to my website: WOVOX.com.

WOVOX is a free and open platform for anyone to show and find workplaces. We want to help people find the workplace of their dreams more easily, but also learn from others and find inspiration for their own workplace.

There is room for credits and a link back to your website or social media profile. Your pictures will be available under an attribute & share alike creative commons license.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you,

Arjen Hoekstra

I totally forgot about the pictures I took of the CitizenSpace, the old twitter offices (see the photo above – yes that how twitter use to look back in 2006ish) and the creative commons office, all in San Francisco. I’ve lot loads more which I forgot about. Good thing about flickr keeping all these photos and of course the creative commons license which is a sign that I’m willing to share.

Wovox.com actually looks pretty sweet. The ethos seems pretty well thought out too. For example heres a bit from the user guideline page.

Authenticity! Better show a few things with spirit than a lot of stuff without depth. A mobile phone pic in the heat of the moment is worth much more than a non-descript €1000 pose shot.

Plus its really good seeing Creative Commons licenses being baked in from day one rather that being an after thought (i’m looking at you mixcloud.com crew).

Seeing all these work places in one place, has somewhat inspired me. I hope to add the BBC media city office to the mix in the near future, it will be interesting to see how it grows as we get more people too.

Kindle everywhere your ebooks everywhere…

Kindle everywhere

Amazon are really cornering the reader market. Not only do they have one of the best ebook readers, but its also one of the cheapest (using there ability to ship many of them). But what really smashed it for them has to be the app which pretty much runs on everything. From PC’s to Android phones. Windows phone 7 to the ipad. Now there launching a kindle for the web. This will optimise any browser into a ebook reader. Impressive stuff.

But I’m worried…

This all seems to be out of the same play book as Apple and there itunes music ecosystem. I can already imagine the special links being sent around social networks pointing into the kindle ecosystem. The only saving grace is the kindle for the web.

Hopefully Amazon will follow the Google approach with these things and leverage the web not fight against it.

If Amazon screw up, Google seem to be right behind with there own ebook store.

What does this mean for the Kindle device, well this is all good news for the Kindle. Kindle is a fantastic eink device but shouldn’t be the only place to see ebooks. Hopefully more people will make there way through ebooks on devices like their phones then make there way towards reading on a eink device. I use to read my ebooks on my PDA (compaq ipaq) and it was painful but I found myself getting use to it. Now I can’t imagine using a phone or anything LCD like to read large amounts of text. But thats just me…

Its great Kindle is everywhere, and people can choose how they want to view the ebooks, period. Choice is good!

Now if they can just sort out the ability to buy a book and ebook version at the same time that would be great.

Mixcloud, a service built for djs

In a quick follow up to my previous blog post about soundcloud… I’ve now spent some time with Mixcloud and to be fair its not bad. I’m considering switching over, not because I don’t like soundcloud but because its just not the greatest place to host mixes.

My only problems right now is the ability to upload a decent quality recording (the whole file has to be less that 100meg in total) and the ability to upload multiple types of files under the same mix.

The pledge of mixcloud

The playlist editor is great. It supports Serato playlists (which I’m hoping are in XML, so I can easily convert them from my nfo files I currently use.

Playlist control

Even better is the timestamp method which allows you to jump to any position in the mix and tie it to a point on the playlist. Excellent stuff
Complete timestamp control

Mixcloud doesn’t have the polish of soundcloud but its certainly a better fit for djs. As far as I can see the whole thing is free and it even has competitions you can enter (just like lets mix). Its also UK based which is great (soundcloud is Swedish). If I was speak to the guys behind mixcloud, I would say please please add,

  • The ability to license content including creative commons
  • Allow people to download the mixes if the dj allows it, like soundcloud do.
  • Allow alternative versions of the same mix (this could be a nice pro feature, pro users get access to the transcoder)
  • Add the ability to comment on sections of the mix and the whole mix if they want to
  • Groups are a good idea (they work well on flickr and soundcloud)
  • Spend a little more time on the design of the site if possible

Thats my list really…

Soundcloud from a dj point of view

I love soundcloud but it has a few issues if your a dj and are uploading mixes like I am.

Before I run through them, I want to make sure people understand this isn’t a startup assassination, soundcloud is a dream come true but its not perfect for people uploading mixes. Hopefully this will help improve there service after my tweet on Thursday. Its also worth mentioning that Alex Meyers recommended Mixcloud which seems to be a sound cloud knock off but aimed at djs and radio producers. I’ve yet to really try it out, but I’ll try and give it a shot before posting this blog entry.

Terminology and comments

Here is my latest mix, the geometry set. Soundcloud does a excellent job displaying the waveform, and allowing you to add comments to a part of the track but the terminology is wrong. This isn’t a track, its a mix or some would say a set. Which confuses things even further. Also adding comments to a 60mins mix is tricky at this level. Now before you tell me you can zoom in as such, the point is that comments on a 60-180min mix is kind of a bit of a joke when looking at the wave form like this.

Talking about termology again… What record label do you put the mix under? What catalogue number? What Key and even what BPM? I know there all optional pieces of metadata but it all adds up to a service not very friendly towards mixes.

There use to be an option under type for mixes but thats now gone. The best option I can use to put my mixes under a type is recording or live. Why did mix go away?

Sets and playlists?

Unless you were to upload all your tracks to soundcloud and add them one by one, it seems to be frankly impossible to add a playlist. I end up copying my playlist from a my *.nfo file to the comment field. Ideally Soundcloud would have support for the metadata which dcloud, mixccomes from systems like VirtualDj, Tractor, etc. If not allow me to specify when mixes start and finish. The Pacemaker software I use does actually do this but I want to transfer that metadata over to the web. This may be a problem which can be solved while were hacking the pacemaker.

What I see other people do is add comments to specify the areas of a mix, but to be frank its a bit of a hack and not a very good one at that. Here’s Mark Schouls latest and greatest as a example of how the comment area can be used to hack/divide the mix up.

Even the lets mix has this ability to define a playlist/tracklist by using the metadata of the software your using or allowing you to edit it yourself. Here’s me editing my own mix, one step beyond entropy.

It seems like a hassle but to be honest, if I’m uploading a mix roughly once a month, its going to be worth me doing the hardwork of filling this stuff in. And heck if soundcloud can automaticlly work this out by uploading a file of some kind, even better.

Interestingly Mixcloud does the time stamping straight after you upload a mix. I’ve yet to see how effective it is, but at least it has the option baked into its DNA.

Downloads

I love that Soundcloud supports Creative commons licenses but what bugs me is that you can only upload one type of item. So if for example I upload a Ogg Vorbis file, soundcloud will ask you if you would like to allow them to create a mp3 of that file for the flash player. Great but if you go to download that file (rights permitted, you have to enable this) it will only give the person the choice of the file you uploaded first time. Aka you upload a Ogg, you can only download a Ogg, not the Mpeg3. Even worst you can’t upload multiple files, say for example a low quality version for people to download and a high quality version for those on a better connection.

I usually upload a Mpeg3 because its the most universal, although my pacemaker generates Ogg Vorbis files. I would however like the ability for the Soundcloud to generate alternative versions or for me to upload alternative versions of the same mix.

I would really pay to see an option to dump files to Archive.org because although I like soundcloud, I don’t really trust them to host my files forever. Just like Blip.TV, if its a public or creative commons piece of media, the option should be there to send it to archive.org.

My other concerns are so very small and not really worthy airing in this blog post. But to give you an idea of what I mean, the flash uploader certainly winds me up sometimes. I know theres a html (old skool) uploader but its also a pain to use when uploading a massive mix. Tiny things, nothing major.

End of the day

Soundcloud is great but its really not a great place to put mixes, they could almost do another sound cloud site change a few things around including the business model and make it just for mixes. In actual fact when Alex Myers said about mixcloud, I did think it was soundcloud but setup for mixes.

The Geometry Set

The Geometry Set by cubicgarden

This is my latest mix on my pacemaker. Lots of new tunes and some classics returns.

Its known as just the geometry set, but why? Well most of the mix has something to do with geometry in some way. If you think you can work out the link in each tune, feel free to comment below.

You may have noticed this is also a much shorter mix that I usually do but it didn’t feel the need to be long and drawn out.

Ladies and Gentleman, I present The Geometry Set…

The Geometry Set by cubicgarden

  1. Endless Wave (albion remix) – Kamaya Painters
  2. Heal – Electrique Boutique
  3. Arctic Globe – DJ Governor Presents Orjan
  4. Strange Bends (Kyau Vs Albert) – Sebastian Sand
  5. Shadow World – Thomas Bronzwaer
  6. Call The Galaxy Taxi (Martin Roth Nu Style Remix) – Plastic Angel
  7. The Spring – Ernesto and Alex Fisher
  8. Ultra Curve – Cosmic Gate
  9. Exposure – Gareth Emery
  10. Perfect Wave – peter martin pres anthanasia
  11. The string that binds us (8 wonders remix) – Arnej
  12. Intution – Marninx Pres Ecco

The Joy of Data

Via infosthetics,

It was only a matter of time before the mind-changing talk of Hans Rosling would find its way to the television medium. A reincarnation of this talk will be part of "The Joy of Stats", a new television documentary that soon will appear at BBC. This documentary will explore various forms of data gathering and statistical analysis, such as a new application that mashes police department data with the city’s street map to show what crime is being reported street by street, house by house, in near real-time; and Google’s current efforts at the machine translation project

From what I seen of the programme, it should be called the joy of data not stats.

5 reasons why I can’t date muggles

Geek dating?

From Tara Hunt, 5 reasons why I can’t date muggles

  1. We speak a different language: just today I told a nice man who wants to meet me for coffee that I couldn’t because I had the Montreal Python meetup to go to. His response? “You are into snakes?!”
  2. The most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me is to use my avatar in the mockups of their web app. Flowers, poetry and the like just can’t quite measure up anymore.
  3. A list of some of the stuff that turns me on: hackathons, data, a vigorous debate on web standards, competing for the most badges on Foursquare, pushing to production from dev…see?
  4. Most men are uncomfortable with our arguments being resolved on Quora.
  5. I kinda want to use the Angry Birds theme as my first wedding dance someday.

Bonus: using the word muggle brings on puzzled looks in the first place!

Entertaining slight of words by Tara Hunt, glad she shared it with the world (outside of FB). I would suggest I have a list like this…

  1. We think about different things: I don’t care about xfactor or what the latest soap/pop sensation is going through on ITV2.
  2. One of the most romantic thing you can do for me is: Organize a candle lit game of werewolf with a bunch of friends in a park late one summer night.
  3. This is the list of things which attracts me: Intelligence, the ability to truly inspire, hacking and educating others to hack, sharing useful knowledge.
  4. Most woman I’ve met are uncomfortable with the transparency of my social life. (but maybe thats a good thing).
  5. I am a geek but not a stereotype, I certainly will be dancing well to snap rhythm is a dancer at my next wedding.

What is a Alternative Reality Game?

What is a ARG?

View more presentations from cubicgarden.

I gave this presentation at Social Media Cafe Manchester back in November and Salford University in December. Its a nice easy to follow over view of what a ARG is and leads nicely on to transmedia. It seems a lot of people don’t have a clue about Alternative reality games and get them confused with Argumentative gaming.

The bechdel movie test

Scott Pilgrim vs The world (2010)

Zoe Margolis sent me a link to her review of the new Tron Legacy on Screen Jabber. Although I was thankful for her review because Cristiano and Melinda had also seen it and said some pretty bad things about it, I saw a link to the Bechdel Test.

It’s also annoying that all the female characters in the film are wearing high-heels, as if all women in the digital future are – or should be – obsessed by looking as sexy as possible, rather than wearing something more practical and fitting for the dystopian environment. TRON: Legacy certainly doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.

So I had a look at the Bechdel Test, and found the rules.

  1. It has to have at least two women in it
  2. Who talk to each other
  3. About something besides a man

Wow this has got to go in future Geeks talk sexy conversations! I had no idea such a thing existed but boy oh boy are they interesting. Inception barely passes the test with a dubious mark.

Marina writes

Yeah, I think I’d go beyond "dubious" and say it fails–both because Marion Cotillard’s "character" is actually part of a male character’s subconscious and because the (<10-second) conversation she has with Ellen Page’s character is at least subtextually about the male character.

However Scott Pilgrim vs the World also bearly passes with a dubious mark too.

Danny writes:

I’d call it dubious. Knives and Tamara talk about how much Knives hates Ramona, and how Knives is dying her hair. It’s dubious because both conversations are really about Scott.

Knives does talk to Kim about the band, but it’s not really a "conversation" so much as three lines of dialouge ("Are you a drummer?" "…Yes" "That’s so cool!". I still think it counts, though.

This is fantastic but also its sad that so many films stereotype woman into stupid roles.