Month: March 2016

Undressed and 36 questions later…

Remember those 36 questions? The ones I referred to in the stop following stupid dating steps, get some advice blog post a while ago. Mandy Len Catron’s essay, has spun out a lot of takes but recently a friend pointed me towards a experiment involving the exact same 36 questions.

Here’s the complete list.

  1. If you could invite anyone in the world to dinner, who would it be?
  2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
  3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
  4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
  5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
  6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30 year old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
  7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
  8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
  9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
  10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
  11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
  12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
  13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
  14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
  15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
  16. What do you value most in a friendship?
  17. What is your most treasured memory?
  18. What is your most terrible memory?
  19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
  20. What does friendship mean to you?
  21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
  22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
  23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
  24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
  25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling … ”
  26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share … ”
  27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
  28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
  29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
  30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
  31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
  32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
  33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
  34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
  35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
  36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

Then…  you have to look into your partner’s eyes for four minutes. In silence, just like the eye contact experiment.

So I’m thinking especially since being involved in the eye contact experiment and a few other things. Maybe it could be fancinating to do, but all the stuff I’ve seen is more for giggles and jokes, hence my reludance about the whole thing. What it sounds like you need, is something on the line?

Enter… Undressed a new show idea by RDF media.

TLC, the pay TV entertainment channel has commissioned UNDRESSED, an innovative and experimental dating show that sees two perfect strangers undress each other and climb into bed on a first date in an exciting new series that accelerates intimacy and explores the accepted rules of attraction.

Guess who decided to sign up?!?

Following Lumbs law… “If there’s an opportunity to experience something which will make a great story and it won’t put you or somebody else in danger… you should do it”

Yeah I know!

To be fair when I applied, I thought about it long and hard, especially with my previous experiences. But didn’t really take into consideration the fact of being half naked on TV. I hadn’t looked it up till now. The Italian version is on youtube…

Its very intimate, but my worries about it being trashy is slightly relaxed at least. Althought the press have had a field day with it all.

The couple have 30 minutes alone together wearing nothing but their underwear, during which they will be given “probing” questions via a screen and tasks “designed to rapidly foster relationships”. Blimey – it makes First Dates look like the Antiques Roadshow

The Guardian

The unique dating show has already been a hit in Italy, where the contestants were often seen to be embarrassed when told to strip before throwing off their inhibitions along with their clothes.

Daily Mail

In my TedX Manchester orginal slide deck, I had a bit about accelerate intimacy. Well this is certainly accelarated! 30mins at Mach 1…

Peanut Allergies are killer, so are baked beans for me

This Video Explains Why Peanut Allergies Are So Dangerous (found via Lifehacker)

Great video and I’m now subscribed to their youtube channel, which has lots of food related tip bits. Love for them to do one about tuna chunks non fish allergy paradox I have.

But watching the video which i’m going to send to anybody who dobhts my allergy or claims i’m just fussy. I dont get that so much now a days, especially since the EU brough in this law, forcing food outlets to take things seriously or get sued!

Which reminded me what I was thinking while reading this thought catalog post, 12 Things People With Nut Allergies Can Relate To.

A hesitation to trust waiters/ waitresses. “Are you sure this doesn’t have nuts in this?” you’ll ask them skeptically (and even after you’ve gotten the green light on your order, you slant your eyes at them). They supply an assuring “I just double- checked with the kitchen and you’re good to go.” You un-tense, and smile, and proceed to inhale your food.

Too many times this has happened in the past, and you are literally on a knifes edge to throw the dice and hope or leave the restaurant. Now in the EU, if anything happens I can clearly state I told them and look what happened! I do feel very happy we

Of course the get out clause is the trace or they can’t count for the cross contamination in the kitchen. But at least its now not down to the waiter/waitress, which is a very good thing! You only have to look at the tragic death what happened in Manchester just as the EU law was coming into effect.

I still remember the story of eating out with friends in the Northern Quarter of Manchester at a recently opened spainish restaurant. I asked the waitress if the desert had nuts and she claimed to have checked. So it came and I believe I put my fork to the desert when the manager grabbed it away from me, saying it does contain nuts. Close shave!

However my lovely thoughtful friends decided to ask whats going to happen to the desert now? Manager says it will go in the bin. Of course they said they would find a home for it. And shared it between them selves, right in front of me, while I sat saying what lovely friends they were, and how I hated them all…

To be fair this is after the EU law as well but lucky the manager stepped in because nuts is certainly the worst of all my allegies. Luckily its been a long time since I’ve had a allergic reaction to nuts but following my last prick test (yes thats what they actually call it) with no less than 14 different pricks in my arm.

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But my reaction to peanut/satay sauce in Tokyo serves as a reminder of what could happen if I get too loose with my allegry. I’m usually ok with trace amounts but as the doctors have said its likely to get worst as I get older. No epi-pen yet, but one day soon…

Till then…

Benadryl is the bomb, and will always be there for you

There is another stellar piece about allergies on thought catalog, which I wanted to share. Some key points…

We are often uncomfortable trying new food.

Please don’t push us to try unfamiliar foods if we are noticeably uncomfortable. We can become especially nervous if the food is from an unknown source, if we aren’t sure of the ingredients, if we are traveling somewhere with much different food than we are accustomed to, or if allergens of concern could be in close proximity. Often times, you’ll find that we don’t have the same curiosity towards new, exotic food as you do.

We know that it sucks.

You know what makes it worse? Constant reminders.

“So, wait, you’re telling me that you’ve NEVER had lobster?! Oh man, that sucks!!!”

I am fully aware that it ‘sucks’. What are you trying to accomplish here? Feelings of guilt? Frustration? FOMO? It’s not as if I can use your remark as inspiration to seek solutions to my lobster-less life. There is no option for self-improvement here. Many of us have come to terms (reluctantly so) with the fact that we will never (ever) be able to eat lobster or oyster or Peanut Butter Cups or [insert allergen here], despite how much it ‘sucks’.

Although to be fair my body treats all my allergies as poisons, especially fish, hummus, smelly nuts such as peanut and the killer baked beans. So I’m actually feeling sorry you all have to eat that stuff. Yes I would like to have sushi but I can have it if I’m very very careful and at a vegan restaurant.

The allergy cards translated to Portuguese worked very well and I had no reaction from memory..

Shenanigator, moi?

internet changed my life

I hadn’t really thought about it till the discussion with Ryan, Tom and Ruth on Lovegrumps last Sunday night.

We were talking about the different types of love and I mentioned how much Philia I tend to have in my own life. Ryan mentioned shenanigans and how some people like myself enjoy the shenanigans over other life pleasures.

Shenanigator – A male instigator of shenanigans. See also Shenanigatrix.
The Shenanigatrix can be counted on to bring together numerous people who would never normally meet and to enhance their evening by instigationg all number of harmless but hilarious shenanigans.
Of course its a balance but I won’t lie its very fitting with my personality, especially if you read the typical ENTP.
The ENTP personality type is the ultimate devil’s advocate, thriving on the process of shredding arguments and beliefs and letting the ribbons drift in the wind for all to see. Unlike their more determined Judging (J) counterparts, ENTPs don’t do this because they are trying to achieve some deeper purpose or strategic goal, but for the simple reason that it’s fun.
Shenanigans is fun (at least for me and a number of people) and make the fabric of life, so much more fun and playful. The more you do it, the more fun it is to arrange or get involved in more. I could throw in some more thoughts including curiosity, discovery and serendipity into the same pot.
I can understand it must be draining for some, but I bearly give it a thought. Its only when things start to clash or I get cogative overload then I wonder, if I should give it a rest…for a day or so?
I am a shenanigator and always will be…
Expect it to pop up in profile descriptions soon…

Drink me? Said Mr.Basil

Drink me?

Straight out of Alice in Wonderland, I thought I’d give my work colleages a try of Mr.Basil’s Pomegranate basil seed drink. Which to be honest I thought was super weird and tasted like how I imagine drinking bubble tea is but weirder.

Of course social commentary was added before long…

Drink me?

Well done that person…

Wealth of networks with Erik Lehmann

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Yesterday the stage was set for the second Emerging Tech Manchester event (#etechmcr). After much bouncing emails back and forth with some skype calls inbetween. Erik Lehmann came to Manchester all the way from the states.

I can’t express how amazing this actually happened, especially since I was only introduced to Erik in a last few months.

His talk and the questions and answers went on for a while but everybody was super engaged and fascinated by such a passionate and heartfelt talk. Erik is such a warm and joyful person and I loved the little nuggets of thoughts he threw out as he talked. Luckily Ethar caught some of them.

Mentioned while Erik was talking about sponsorship and support from big business. Which led to the idea of a hypocrisy index… Radical transparancy?

I especially loved the idea of what would the occupy movement do with something like Graphene.

We did stream the whole thing over periscope thanks to Adam.

But the like most things, the best parts were the discussion which happened afterwards in the bar over food and drink which Erik very generously paid for. We had talked before about sponsorship options but we were both agreed that we wanted people there because they wanted to be there, even if it reduced the audience. This came up in the bar afterwards too, as someone else made the point about people expecting/wanting free drinks.

London Geekdinners was mainly a paid for event, meaning people paid to go! The same person afterwards said a similar thing about her event.

I don’t have a problem with sponsorship (as long as it makes sense and they don’t try and take over) but lets get real a lot of events are community/non-profit run events. If the reason you are going is because of the free pizza or drink… Its not fair on the people who work hard to make it happen and the speakers who are most likely not getting paid and giving up their time for the joy of it too.

Erik Lehmann at eTechmcr

Erik for example was not paid and came a long long way because he believes in the wealth of networks and wants to connect with people who may want to help…

The conversations were wide ranging and as Erik had said in his talk, the strength and ultimately the wealth of the network was why he was there and why the game-changer movement will be a success. In years to come, it will be great to look back and say we were able to connect him with more people who help.

Yes its a shame we got a smaller turn out but Rise Manchester was a great venue to host the event and we thank Rise for the loan of a great space. Its also a shame I couldn’t connect Erik with the Graphene institute, MadlabUK, Open Data Manchester and many others great people in the Manchester area.

Erik Lehmann at eTechmcr

Thank you again to everybody who came and Erik for travelling so far for the event.  I will be sure to send people Eriks way forever more.

Describe that movie?

https://twitter.com/adew/status/711565905134788608

I saw this retweet from Adrian and had to give it a try.

A website developed by a Finnish technology team claims to be the world’s “first ever descriptive movie search engine”, and promises to solve that problem we all face when we can’t remember the name of a film.

To be fair so far its not been great with the searches I have done. Yes its early days and yes they have a mechanism to improve it.

But for example looking for Kil Bill – Lots of blood shed involving swords

Inception works with Dream within a dream and dreams collapase but if you type dream you get inception. Addiction works actually gets Requiem for a Dream but film about addiction in all its forms fails to list it at all. Looking for Citizen four with Edward Snowdon with the search Edward Snowdon, fails to include Citizen four. Dark City search with dark film starts with scene in the bath tub doesn’t include dark city at all. Last search I did was for The Beach, with sandy beach.

Nice idea, I’ll check it out again once things get better.

FREE Volleyball taster – Sat 26th March

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To celebrate Manchester Community Games Day

Moss Side Volleyball club are hosting a FREE volleyball session. Its open to all Manchester residents this Easter Saturday.

ALL WELCOME (over 18’s only), male/female, young/old, experienced or total novice!
Moss side is a very friendly mixed club! proud of our inclusive culture with players from all corners of the world!

Here is a chance to see and play, all those friends who ask me about volleyball! (You know who you are)

See you on the court?

Moss Side Leisure Centre between 3pm – 5pm on Saturday 26th March.

#Etechmcr #2 with Erik Lehmann tomorrow

Its the second Etech Manchester event and as talked about previously, we have the pleasure of Erik Lehmann talking about the game changing movement. Not only will he talk about it but also the reasons why he set it up, how and what he has in the roadmap for the future.

eTech & future narrative #2 Erik Lehmann and the game changing movement

Monday, Mar 21, 2016, 7:00 PM

Rise
231 Deansgate Manchester M3 4EN Manchester, GB

25 People Went

This time we have the absolute pleasure of hosting Erik Lehmann, Founder of Dream Catalyst. As we look at games for good and serious games through the lens of the game changer movement.What is the game changer movementThe Game Changer Movement is a WITH movement that is here to create a community of at least 1,000,000 youth who are courageously w…

Check out this Meetup →

You can join us from 7pm at Rise Manchester, which is inside the Great Northern Warehouse on Deansgate, Manchester. The event is Free, and you can invite people along as we have plenty of space thanks to Rise Manchester for giving us the space for free.

Its also worth noting Erik Lehmann is interested in meeting key people in and around Manchester and London who are also setting up projects for good of community and society. Just tweet directly at him as he’s only in the country for a short while.

Hope to see you tomorrow… Its going to be a good one!

 

Find interesting people? Set up a second-degree dinner…

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Out of the blue I got a message from the mysterious Sam. I have known Sam for a while and sometimes we have chats in coffee shops while I work on Fridays. We are quite different characters and that always makes the discussions we have interesting, sometimes too interesting as I’m slightly distracted from my work.

The message read…

I was a bit busy when I got it, doing user testing on visual perceptive media (paper coming) but later in the day, I checked it out.

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Second degree dinners is a concept by Nat Eliason while getting to know interesting people in a new city.

Four months ago I moved to Austin knowing no one in the city but my 9 coworkers and a couple of acquaintances.

The problem I immediately needed to solve was:

“How do I find interesting new people?”

I tried Meetups, bars, events, all the typical places. But in almost every case, the return on investment in terms of “interesting people met” to “time spent” was terrible.

The best way to find people seemed to be to meet someone interesting, then try to meet as many of their close friends as possible.

But getting your friends (especially new ones) to throw parties or invite you out to things doesn’t scale and makes you feel needy, so how do you get looped into everyone’s friend network at once?

Ok the quantification of time vs effort in this case is a little awkward. But he does have a point. This is something I found when I moved from London to Manchester and in part when moving from Bristol to London.

I guess if you quantified the time, it would be pretty poor but I got to do crazy things like eat at every single Chinese restaurant in London’s China town over a period of a year. Good use of time, well I guess not but heck I enjoyed most of them. Quantification of enjoyment and experience is hard to do…

But back to the point!

What is a Second-Degree Dinner

A Second-Degree Dinner brings together 6 people who, mostly, don’t know each other.

There are two “hosts.” Both hosts invite someone who they enjoy spending time with and that they think is interesting.

Then, both of their invitees are expected to invite someone that they think is interesting and send them the invitation as well.

This way, the two hosts and the two initial invitees only know two other people at the dinner. They get to meet three new people.

The second-degree invitations will know only one person and get to meet four.

Best of all, you’re only meeting pre-vetted people. No weirdos, not some rando who’s trying to sell you on their social media consulting, only cool people.

Once the dinner starts, everyone goes around and says:

  • Who they are
  • Where they’re from
  • What they’re working on
  • Something they’re excited about. It could be a new book, app, relationship, anything that has them jazzed up.

The intros usually happen during ordering / getting drinks. It’s a good way to break the ice, make sure that everyone knows each others’ names, and give a bit of a background for the next portion.

Then the real fun begins. You go back around the circle, and each person talks about one thing that they’re struggling with or that’s a challenge in their life.

As soon as I read this, I thought of Me & Jodys dating idea where we have 8 strangers together for dinner with each other. It was similar an idea and we called it the starter, but romance was the core reason for them being put together. We did a test run with friends and it worked quite well, everybody seemed to have a good time and the feedback agreed with this. Yes its similar to Table8 but they are not the first to think of bring singles together in a group blind date type thing.

Unfortunately when we actually tried to run it at the Manchester flirty weekend, we failed to get enough men to sign up. We actually had 32 women! signed up and waiting and only one man (not including myself)! I’m actually suprised I haven’t wrote about this but I did spill the beans in a Lovegrumps podcast a while back. and my let down in mankind.

So I know this can work and I’ll actively be encouraging Sam to make it happen, even if I have to arrange most of it myself (ha!). Talking of which Nat has lot of tips on how to go about this. Lots are very much the social event stuff I’ve picked up running things like geekdinners, barcamps, etc.

I especially like…

Be Vulnerable First

As the host of the event, it’s your job to set the tone for how open everyone can be. You should share first during the workshop, and you should open yourself up through your challenge. Talk about an insecurity, weakness, fear, something that people wouldn’t expect a stranger to be comfortable talking about.

It’s scary, but people appreciate the openness and respond in kind. If you just talk about something very surface level, then no one else will open up either.

I’m not sure what Sam’s plans are but if he wants to make it a monthly thing, I wouldn’t say no. Thanks for highlighting this to me, I like it a lot and more I think about it, the more it makes me more excited and happy. I got a whole ton of people I could invite along but it all depends on the details.

Serendipity don’t you just love it?

Will you find more interesting people through this idea?

Most likely yes. Friends of friends is one of the best networks you have access to, this has been tested and proven to death. Add a level of serendipity and you are on to something. This why social networks are so popular and young people (use?) to find dates through friends of friends

Familar strangers from milgrams 1972 paper

Its important that the people are interesting in themselves (as in they are interesting, not in them-self). I have ideas about this which I wrote up in a follow up to Russell Davis’ original post. It was wonderful to talk about this at BarCampManchester6 and have katrina patel blog her thoughts afterwards.

Interesting people attract interesting people I’m sure… Its a attractor, like positive people tend to attract positive people?

Celibacy, Intimacy and iffy smells of religion

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I haven’t written on the Single Black Male blog for a long while, but I still read and keep thinking about adding a different viewpoint on the subject in hand. The guys behind it are a good bunch and its always interesting reading the emails back/forth.

One such post recently spiked my interest. Is Celibate The New Single?

To which I say no… and then;

Have you ever had one of those intimate conversations that just could go on forever? You don’t even realize the hours that have flown by, but your cheeks hurt from smiling and you can’t stop blushing? You share parts of yourself in ways you hadn’t expected, or maybe even experienced. You feel truly known, and you truly know the person across from you: dreams, goals, loves, everything. You are known intimately – not known physically just yet – and even though you’re ready, you’re not in a rush. Imagine if this were the core of your relationship; this love you always express, and this lust you haven’t tapped into. Imagine being intimately and truly seduced, before having sex.

Yes… this is what I call intimacy, and it doesn’t need to be tied to sex.

Unfortunately the rest of the post talks/links in a load of celebrity couples I’ve never heard of. I couldn’t really care less about them but I think its misguided to call it celibacy.

These things all exist on a spectrum, including intimacy.

You can have physical intimacy, cognitive intimacy, activity intimacy and emotional intimacy. I’m sure there are more… I have a feeling there is tangible link with the 6 different types of love.

Interestingly…

It’s 2016, and we may be in a new era of singledom. Actually, maybe it’s the old days of being single coming back around, full-circle. There’s something kind of poetic in knowing you have touched every part of a person’s soul before you’ve touched their body.

I get the cycle argument, I have even talked about the cycle back and forth within online dating between physical and mental. However, to the point of singletons, its always been there. People have found intimacy over the internet, via text, in the street, while at meetups, in many different ways. Its doesn’t sound sexy (pun intended) but it just happens.

Singletons are not subscribing to celibacy, they are doing what comes naturally by finding intimacy in different ways. Some find it through physical means, some through mental means. Little has changed, and if it has its certainly not because people have decided celibacy is the only option.

By knowing a person in every way but sexually, and saving that for last, the foundation of the relationship just seems stronger, more stable, almost even … sexier.

There is no right or wrong, its what works for you and the potential partner(s). If celibacy is that, then great. But to claim that the new celibacy is the new singletons is frankly ridiculous on so many levels.

There is a iffy smell of religion running through the single black male post. I know its American focus and it wouldn’t be the first time but I wanted to say, its great they highlighted things but the conclusion seems off the mark. Singletons are not

OkCupid founder on online dating…

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I almost choked on my coffee this morning at breakfast while reading what Christian Rudder – co-founder and former CEO of OkCupid, Harvard alumnus and author of Dataclysm. Wrote about the online dating industry…

Dating is rough. That’s why there are always so many dating startups: Because users of dating startups are always like, ‘God, this thing is broken, I’m going to fix it.’ What they don’t realize is that dating itself is the thing that’s kind of horrible and no app is ever going to fix that.

Interesting take on the problems related to online dating… although I still think the dating industry is endemiclily corrupt. Dating is very rough, I agree but I think its over shadowed by the lies and false promises of the industry which capitalise on this. Of course this is what I think but… I’d love to ask Christian directly what he thinks?

BBC RD ethics of data videos on youtube

The ethics of data videos we created a year ago are now finally on youtube for everybody to watch on the BBC R&D channel.

You might remember it was a project which I talked about last year.  I have personally refereed these videos many times and would still like to see the hours of footage we shot, be used in the future. I mean we had some great guests and a lot of what they said was gold dust.

These videos are also the first public videos to run through a new experimental R&D tool for automatically putting transcriptions into a existing video for subtitling.

If you haven’t seen the videos, this is the time to go check them out, very relevant even now, and enjoy the automated positioned subtitles.

Our listening project conversation on BBC Radio 4

The BBC Radio 4 Listening project

Its weird, I seem to be popping up in a few places in the coming months.

Seems there is a very good chance I’ll be in BBC horizon’s how to find love online, then theres my TedXManchester talk, first dates if I ever hear anything back from them.  But of course there’s the listening project which Kate was kind enough to join me on.

Today I learned, myself and Kate’s conversation for the listening project will be on BBC Radio 4 in the next month.

Friday April 8th at 23.55 and then repeated again on the Sunday omnibus on April 10th. They should make a good birthday present.

I have no idea which bit they will play but if its anything like BBC Manchester’s edit, it should make a good listen.

The next web peers around BBC R&D…

Perceptive Radio v2
The second-generation experimental Perceptive Radio hardware. Credit: Martin Bryant / TNW

Its always great to have some of the work in the press, and see which bits they pick up on. But even better is when it gets framed along with other work, such as the ones happening around the same lab or similar fields.

In recent times, Ian Forrester has turned his attention to ‘Visual Perceptive Media.’ As we first reported late last year, this applies the same principles to video-based content.

For the first experiment in Visual Perceptive Media, the BBC worked with a screenwriter who created a short drama with multiple starts and endings. In addition to the variable plot, a number of different soundtracks were prepared, and the video was treated with a range of color gradings to give it different moods, from cold and blue to warm and bright.

Good to see the next web picking up on the effort we put into making all this very open. This comes from before my time at BBC Backstage but it certainly makes things easier to justify with us being a public organisation haven done things like Backstage.

One thing that struck me when talking to the people working on all of these projects was that they were using the Web browser as their canvas and working with free-to-use, open technologies like OpenGL, Web Audio, Twitter Bootstrap and Facebook React.

And what better end than…

Some of the most interesting ideas for how that might happen are coming out of BBC R&D.