July 2016 – Page 2 – Cubicgarden.com…

Why Ade should be at Mozfest

https://twitter.com/cubicgarden/status/749985923597819904

I had a read of Adewale’s blog about Cargo cults and progressive web apps stores. While reading it, I thought this is perfect for the Mozfest space we are crurating this year. The tale of two cities: dilemmas in connected spaces.

What Ade is tackling is the notion that app stores or the walled gardens are bad and more native fuctionality is heading out on to the web. He ponders if this is a good thing or not?

I know the recent Web USB draft certainly got a few peoples noses out of joint; for good reason to be honest, especialy on security grounds. However I’m personally not convinced by the legacy background Adewale mentions.

It’s easy to forget that app stores emerged as a response to the difficulties of dealing with carriers to get your content ‘on deck’, getting your apps preinstalled and the extremely closed nature of that ecosystem.

Yes that was then and this is now. I clearly remember the pain of installing apps on my PocketPC devices. It was painful and clearly early adopter like myself were the only ones who would put up with it. However legacy isn’t a good reason to back an closed garden model? Its a call card for the open web right? I mean Adewale’s reasoning is good…

give an obvious place to find apps that have particular functionality (try searching for “games that don’t need wifi” in the Play Store)

give developers an obvious place to find large numbers of users.

give developers a structured mechanism for exposing the features of their app so that users can filter the set of available apps for apps that have those features.

give users an obvious place to review apps.

give developers an obvious place to accrue reputation for their apps.

give platform vendors a place to assert policies that drive developer behaviour.

give every app on a platform a canonical URL ( for example here are iOS and Android URLs for the same game).

But its merly a step in the right direction, and to be fair most these features are just merely cracks in a flaw model of the walled garden or the garden trying to emulate the web? However I do also think there are lessons which can be learned from them.

Instead of ‘cargo culting‘ the app stores we should be asking what web-centric solutions to the problem would look like. For me that means lots of competing and opinionated PWA directories rather than one central PWA Store or even a popular search engine.

This is the start of not only a good workshop at Mozfest, but also the start of a good exhibit/experience/dilemma. He (or someone) really needs to submit a proposal for Mozfest before August 1st.

https://twitter.com/ade_oshineye/status/749996138393112577

Films you may have missed 2016

Here’s some films which I watched recently, which seemed to sneak under the cover for what ever reason. All worth watching at least once… I kept the spoilers to a minimum but there might be slight light spoilers, which you can get by reading the description of each film pretty much.

The Escort

This film puts a spin on the pretty woman thing, it could be seen as the anti-pretty woman film. Our heroine/Natalie is smart, quick thinking and knows what needs to be done. Shes very practical about everything, which is kind of refreshing. You could draw parallels with the girlfriend experience but it’s much more fun and doesn’t take itself so seriously.

Interestingly all the men in this film seem to be a little dim, at least in comparrison to Natalie.

Eye in the sky

If you haven’t seen this film you are missing out on quite a intense film. The premise is simple, do they launch a targetted drone attack on a house in Kenya? One with a known terrorist that has been confirmed. But it’s complex and gets more complicated as time goes on, the exact thing you don’t have time! The pace and suspense in the film is great.

Everybody involved do a great job portraying the decision process and you can feel the tension in the air. It’s also one of Alan Rickman last films before he died.

The Lobster

I have no words to explain the Lobster except if you liked I heart Huckabees, you will be in good company here. It’s kinda crazy but being very into how people date find it hysterical. There’s also some deep rooted messages about societys push to bring people together and not being complete without someone else. You can never be happy alone, well if you are; you get turned into a animal.

Very weird film you have been warned!

Victoria

I saw this late one night and was kinda gripped. To be fair the first time I saw it, it was German language with no Engliah subtitles. The English parts had subtitles in German; it was quite unique from a outsiders point of view.

Victoria is a Engliah woman working in Berlin and goes out one night alone (as I have done many times). She understands a basic amount of German to get the basics done but she meets up with 3 men that night. They have an experience like no other. My instant thought was she was in danger of being attacked or worst. I kept saying “go home, leave, turn back.” What actually happens is on the verge of crazy, and makes me think hummmmm next time I go wondering the streets of Tokyo, San Diego, NewYork, Bucharest maybe I should be a little more careful?

Good film, highly recommend trying it first time without english subtitles to get the full effect of being in Victoria’s position. Being daze and confused about what they are saying; will add a lot, even if you know a bit of German.

Room

This film was quite popular so I won’t be surprised if you already seen it. Imagine living in a small room for you’re whole life! Not being able to leave ever and having a young child which has never known outside that room. Its quite a unbelieveable story but its the detail which drives the drama. Can’t really think of a film like it really except maybe 10 cloverfield lane.

Even lambs have teeth

I’m not a horror fan (not because I’m scared of them but I don’t jump at scary bits and find gore just boring) however, I found even lambs have teeth more thriller with horror elements. Its a basic plot but it kinda reminds me of kill bill and falling down in the second part. Revenge is certainly served and it’s vicious!

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Knock knock

Temptation is killer and a bit like Victoria, you are wondering where things are going. I guess unlike that film, most people (mainly men) will be saying keep going. What the hell, what difference does a night make? Well the results of that are shocking. Yes its drama but on another level.

Good reminder to keep you’re wits about you, not cave into temptation and bloody think! When you know its going to drop you into the deep end, just stop and think! This is the lambs have teeth type crazyness without the gore.

We are your friends

I won’t lie it’s hated by many but I just found the film great for focusing on dj and dance culture. It’s certainly no Kevin and Perry go large but it’s not going to be a classic like human traffic. Maybe it’s more like groove crossed with the drama of go.

The characters are a little wolly but it doesn’t matter as the music speaks for everybody in this movie.

Race

Such a great film and Jesse Owens story is so amazing. Facing the racism from the germans is one thing but also from your own nation and team mates is hard to take. Its crazy to remember even in 1936, there was such vicious racism in the states. If you are not outraged, sadden and uplifted by the end of the film, you need to check your human attributes (no spoilers). It is an incredible story and told extremely well in this film. Do not miss this, its one of my films for 2016.

Also don’t forget my beautiful broken brain, which I have wrote about previously…

Nostalgia is the enemy of progress?

I first heard this on the psytech podcast, as I’ve been thinking about the reasoning behind family members decision to leave the EU. As you’d expect its been said many times before and it seems Steve Jobs certainly wasn’t a fan.

Don’t get me wrong nostalgia has its place, but starting to wonder if its has a lot to blame for a lot of the ills of the world? Without saying so, I realise my argument following the study of how men prefer women who are not smarter than themselves; is entwined with this.

I understand, it’s very comfortable and it clearly makes people feel better in a forever changing world; conjuring up positive memory and providing that boost of positivity.

participants who were induced to feel nostalgic also expressed more optimism of the future. This optimism is related to two other factors. First, nostalgia makes people feel more socially connected to others. This social connection boosts people’s positive feelings about themselves. That increase in self-esteem then increases feelings of optimism.

This set of studies suggests that nostalgia can play a beneficial role in people’s lives. When times are tough, it may seem as though things may never get better. By focusing on positive times from the past, though, people may help themselves to be more connected to others, which can give them the resources to be more optimistic about the future.

Later on we go on to find the numbers not so great and context had a lot to play in this all.

But back to the question, is nostalgia getting in the way of progress? It seems maybe depending on too many factors.

My father likes watching old rerun shows. If it wasn’t for flicking between the news at 6pm and my mother’s enjoyment of soap operas, the TV might stay on ITV3 all the time (for those outside the UK, wikipedia describes ITV3 as a channel mainly aimed at the over-35 audience, and much of its output consists of reruns of older ITV drama series and sitcoms). It does wind and worry me a little. But I understand the nostalgia factor.

However I catch myself doing the same too. How many times have I watched Inception, Trance, Interstellar, etc? It’s not much different really, is it? or is it?

For all the films I do re watch, there’s a ton of films/tv I try to watch. Heck I have given some dog horrible films a try including sextape, tapped out, the do over, pressed, taking stock (although I did find it slightly funny and the stunning Kelly Brook stars in it)… I’ll have to check trakt.tv but the percentage of new to re-watches is quite high, from some rough and bad spreadsheet messing for 30mins on a train…

Out of a pool of 1540 films (going back to 2011!) I watched 1749 films. The average seems to be 0.6666666667? I very much realise my maths skills are pretty rubbish for this stuff, but if I was watching the same thing over and over again, it would be a much higher number. I was actually surprised at the high numbers of new vs re-watched.

Yes this is just media and I guess you could run the same thing with places I go to drink, work in the northern quarter, have brunch, etc, etc… Although most of us think of this as familiarity rather than nostalgia?

Nostalgia creeps in with culture of course. I already wrote about my feelings spending time in Japanese society and many thoughts Sherry Turkle has about the influence of technology in our lives. Its far too easy to say…

“Well we use to easier… to get a job for life in the past”

“You use to be able to… leave your front door open”

“I prefered it when… you could smoke while you worked”

Is this toxic? Its hard to say. But I certainly try to stop myself or caveat what I’m about to say, when I feel it coming up.

But I’m drawn because I’m also very aware we should also look to history to stop making the same mistakes again and again. Remember what a divided europe use to look like?