Harry and Meghan good for black culture?

Suits TV show backdrop

I’m anything but a royalist and rarely care what the royal family are up to, but I did hear the news that harry & meghan are going to get married. Yes even I saw that news, although I first heard about they were actually an item only few days earlier while listening to The Nod podcast from Gimletmedia,

In the podcast, the panel ask if Meghan & Harry getting married is good for black culture or not; This might sound weird to many people but let me give you a couple of scenarios.
Barack Obama, good for black culture or bad? I would say its a yes but I understand the debate. While, Bill Cosby is not good for black culture. You get the idea!

So is Harry & Meghan getting married forwarding black culture or doing damage?

Well worth a listen as I don’t think the announcement was made till way after the podcast?

BONUS: A Royal Good For The Blacks

BONUS: A Royal Good For The Blacks
Is the relationship between American actress Meghan Markle and the UK’s Prince Harry good or bad for Black culture?

Running the labyrinth mix

New mix recorded on the pacemaker device while on the plane back from Madeira. Big fan of the labyrinth (part one), even if I got a take down for it when uploading a mix to Soundcloud. I found the other mixes good too, especially the new paul keyen remix. Likewise I love jerome isma-ae’s remix of Placebo’s Running up the hill. Hence running the labyrinth mix.

Enjoy!

  1. Eternity – Ferry Corsten
  2. Running up the hill (jerome isma-ae bootleg) – Placebo
  3. Cuckoo – Jon Mangan
  4. Humming the lights – Armin van Buuren pres. Gaia
  5. Intution – Marninx Pres Ecco
  6. Running Up that Hill (Extended Mix) – Markus Schulz Presents Dakota Ft Bev Wild
  7. The labyrinth (part one) – Moogwai
  8. Stella – Jam & Spoon
  9. Labyrinth (paul keyen remix) – Lee Cassells
  10. Into the unknown – Yves Deruyter
  11. Super cool – Tempo Giusto, Jace Headland
  12. Megalodon – Dash Berlin
  13. Language (Santiago nino dub tech mix) – Hammer and Bennett
  14. Reflection (extended mix) – Ferry Corsten
  15. The labyrinth (part two) – moogwai
  16. Dissolve – Simon Patterson feat. Sarah Howells
  17. The Dark Knight – KhoMha
  18. Summer_Melodies (Frequence Remix) – Frequence
  19. Empty Cities, Dead Ghosts (Chronosapien Remix) – Fictitious Riceboy
  20. Daemoni Miserere – Dr. Clarke

photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zoxcleb/12708086944/

Airbnb: What should be declared upfront and is simply illegal

https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/935305053258125312

Shocking tweet about a Airbnb host which setup a IP camera in the visitor bedroom. It very much reminds me of the camera in Simple which was ultimately the downfall of the Manchester restaurant.

The whole thing is just wrong but to make things worst is Airbnb’s customer service (they call it customer experience) which seems to want to keep it all under-wraps. This is surely a criminal offence and suspended isn’t nearly enough!

Of course this isn’t the only case, heres another one.

Shocking stuff! Of course my Airbnb has no cameras, no listening devices and I don’t even have a Philips Hue light in the spare room. I was going to install the Google Home mini for the purpose of controlling the lights but decided it wasn’t going to work, as it refuses to stay local.

It does raise the question of what should be declared upfront on the site before the guest books.

Rethinking Podcasting

Reinventing podcasting
Ok maybe less reinvent and more rethink?

I hinted at Perceptive Podcasting previously in a post about being busy. I have finally come out of that busy period and am UK bound as my passport is due to expire.

Just before the busy period, I drafted a post about Perceptive Podcasting and why it’s not simply another unique project. It went up on the BBC R&D blog recently which is wonderful because I can point to that rather than the other way around.

Perceptive Radio v1

Since we first launched the Perceptive Radio v1 in 2013 as a concept of what Perceptive Media (implicit interaction from sensors & data, adapting media objects) could become; the radio’s have always been a framework to explore further into adaptive object based media experiences. But we have always acknowledged the growing power of the smartphone and how it could be the container for so much more.

Even when we created the Perceptive Radio v2 with Lancaster University and Mudlark, it was modeled around an android phone and extending the sensors. The possibilities of IOT Storytelling with object based media was deep in my mind, along with research questions.

As a person who saw the revolution of podcasting in 2000, I was always interested in the fact its downloaded audio and generally consumed/created in a personal way, unlike radio in my view. I’ve also been watching the rise in popularity of podcasting again; heck Techcrunch asks if it could save the world 🙂

Of course I’ve started a few podcasts myself (recently Techgrumps and Lovegrumps) and love the fact it’s quite easy to get started and it can feel quite personal. I also found the diversity of podcasting quite interesting for example I’ve been listening to the guilty feminist, friends like us and risk, for quite sometime and find them fascinating every time.

Why a client for podcasts?

In 2017, you are seeing more webservices hosting podcasts like stitcher, (heck even Spotify is hosting some). At the server-side there is a lot you can do like dynamically change adverts, geo-fence media, etc. 60db are one such service doing nice things with podcasts but they are limited in what they can do, as they said in a comment on a similar post. But doing this all server-side is a pain, and tends to break the podcast idea of download-able audio (even if you have 4g everywhere), it feels more like the radio model of tuning in.

Imagine if you could do the server-side type of processing but on the actual device and even unlock the pools of sensor/data with the users consent? And imagine if the creators could use this in storytelling too!

Its Personal, Dynamic and Responsive without being creepy or infringing personal liberties, It adaptives to changes in context in real time. It dances with Interactivity and we are also exploring the value and feasibility of object based media approaches for engaging with audience. We believe that this offers the key to creating increasingly Immersive media experiences as it gives more story possibilities to the writer/director/producer. But also provides levels of tailored accessibility we have yet to imagine.

So many possibilities and its made in a very open way to encourage others to try making content in a object based way too.

Keep an eye on bbc.co.uk/taster and the bbc.co.uk/rd/blog for details soon.

Life isn’t lived, through the end of a filter

Snapchat photos of author of the vice piece

Interesting piece from Vice about Snapchat camera shots, replacing standard photos. I tend to put snapchat in a similar category as Instagram which I’ve written about previously. I picked out some of the highlights…

Writer Arushi feels similarly, and has written about the way Snapchat has started to make people view themselves. “I’ve found myself becoming dependent on filters to validate my appearance in selfies on more occasions than one. Honestly, it scares me because that’s so screwed up,” she said over Twitter DMs. “We’d rather have a digitally obscured version of ourselves than our actual selves out there. It’s honestly sad, but it’s a bitter reality. I try to avoid using them as much as I can because they seriously cause an unhealthy dysphoria.”

“This behavior supports the vision that a social body—self objectified—is more relevant than the real felt body.”

Plus some questions about self-objectfication

New Girl

Dr. Giuseppe Riva, a professor of communication psychology at the Catholic University of Milan, told VICE that social media activity promotes self-objectification. “This is particularly true for Snapchat and Instagram, which provide a mirror-like vision of young women, which is also altered and shared,” he said. “This behavior supports the vision that a social body—self-objectified—is more relevant than the real felt body.”

Those taking Snapchat selfies aren’t just experiencing the effects themselves. Talullah, from Kent, described how men were starting to believe that Snapchat-filtered photos were accurate portrayals of the people in them. “Some guys I speak to say stuff like, ‘You don’t look like your Snaps,'” she explained. “It’s like, ‘Dude, I’m not walking around with a headband of sparkly stars around my head.'”

These apps are too new for any proper scientific studies to have been carried out on the potential long-term consequences for some users. But Dr. Riva flagged eating disorders, alongside body dysmorphic disorder, as possible effects. “Self-objectification—thinking about and monitoring the body’s appearance from an external observer’s perspective—is the largest contributor to both the onset of eating disorders and its maintenance. This is what we discovered in our research,” he told me.

I mentioned on a work slack how much I find people who use Snapchat and Instagram filters on dating profiles close to deplorable. It sounds harsh but I feel like they are deliberately trying to deceive (consciously or unconsciously).

Of course I find dating sites partly responsible for encouraging people to connect their instagram accounts, in the hope they can ram-raid another pool of personal data. The whole thing feels misguided and maybe irresponsible. Another thing I read shared from a colleague at work, might start to explain how these things are held up and thought to be a good idea.

…mathematics, engineering and computer science are wonderful disciplines – intellectually demanding and fulfilling. And they are economically vital for any advanced society. But mastering them teaches students very little about society or history – or indeed about human nature. As a consequence, the new masters of our universe are people who are essentially only half-educated. They have had no exposure to the humanities or the social sciences, the academic disciplines that aim to provide some understanding of how society works, of history and of the roles that beliefs, philosophies, laws, norms, religion and customs play in the evolution of human culture.

The problem is the rest of us are just ignoring the “disconcerting sociological phenomena that are embedded into the very nature of today’s social media platforms” or we can’t be bothered to think deeply about this all? Although as I’ve said before, there is a massive industry wanting to keep the thinking that way.

https://twitter.com/RealMoseby96/status/855165277985804289/

Suddendly the term “disconcerting sociological phenomena” seems a lot more apt…!

What is slide design really about?

Meme/idea transfer?

I first saw Melinda Seckington’s blog post about the art of slide design on her blog. I had meant to reply with a blog post but never quite finished the blog post. Luckily during the run up to Mozfest, Mel was due to redo her talk. Mel is lovely friend and it was great to see her and Cristiano again.

The talk gives practical tips, focusing on making it stick in an increasingly busy and complex ecosystem which Mel picks up in the cogative load slide. Basically how do you make people give a crap and not forget once the presentation is over? Something more people should think about but don’t.

Over the last few decades, its become clear one of the best ways is storytelling. Humans are attuned to storytelling from a very early age. This is something Nancy Duarte has down in practice and in many decades of experience. Duarte’s TED talk about storytelling is the key for me.

Love to hear/see where Mel goes next… I’m sure shes planning a follow up to this great talk..

On a side point… while talking about slides and meme transfer

It’s also interesting to see where people are sharing slides too. I’ve always used Slideshare.net which is part of linkedin group, mainly because I can reference one single slide, makes the whole deck available and it does automatic textual export. But I do find speakerdeck.com interesting and I quite like slides.com after a few speakers used it during Mozfest.

I would like to use something more web like but its a pain presenting using html5+js when not using your own laptop. Google Slides is good but not perfect. Like to see something better not just in decoration/aesthetics (looking at you Keynote) but more web native (do not say prezi) which can automatically adapt between presentations, web viewing and notes. It would also allow for a longer lifestyle than just the slides its self. For example sometimes I have added the youtube link of me talking to the end of a slideshares. Bit kludgy but it at least links the two together.

What does your circadian rhythm say?

It’s always been clear that sleep is a big deal and more and more research is coming out to show the massive effect sleep can have in our lives. Especially at critical times of our development.

I have been tracking (quantifying) my sleeping solidly for about 3-5 years and its surprising to see the effect of the things like different alcohol drink, cheese, coffee, milk and chocolate. I also been to many events, with the last one being Cafe Sci: Myth and Science of Sleep. I generally track my dreams now, which is quite different from previously when I use to track them with a lot more detail.

Tracking sleep can seem a but of nonsense; I mean leaving your phone on your bed while you sleep or using a wristband device to collect data can seem poor for data collection. However with some calibration and a few months data, it becomes clear through the patterns whats good quality and bad quality sleep; oppose to the length of sleep. The key being the cycles of sleep… Light sleep into REM into deep sleep into light sleep and over again.

Sleep as Android data

Here is me sleeping in a hotel for 5hrs 49mins after drinking cocktails in London during the week of Mozfest. You can see the alcohol puts me into deep sleep quickly but it takes a while for my body to get back into its normal sleep pattern. I also had a done a lot of walking that day.

graph_detail_20171019_1.11

This clearly shows although I had 7hrs 21mins of sleep when I woke up, I felt like crap. To be fair I had red wine, and was on cold meds to get rid of my long lingering cold. Once again I was in a hotel, this time in Sarajevo. No coffee this time.

graph_detail_20171119_1.30

This is from todays sleep, even with a few scoops of ice cream and coffee, I slept extremely well and woke up feeling pretty fresh and ready to take on the world.

I use Sleep as Android with my Pebble watch. I do sync everything to Google Fit, Google Drive and Dropbox to make a personal back up for myself.

Ultimately I would clearly say I have learned so much by looking at the patterns, especially over a longer period of time.

Muzzling the Google Home Mini?

Google Home Mini at home

When I bought my Google Pixel 2, I received a free Google Home Mini as part of the pre-order deal. While in Madeira it finally came and today I went to Irlam to go get it.

I’ve never liked the idea of the Amazon Alexia and all devices which are listening for an activation word. I get the convenance but it doesn’t equal the given up privacy in my view. I turn off on my phones unless my screen is unlocked and I’m on the home screen (actively using the phone). I’ve been watching and reading how The Google Home mini has already received a ton of privacy strikes and disabled the touch controls.

My justification for getting the Google Home mini was purely to connect it to my Philips Hue lights. They are great but only if you have the app as the controls on the wall are way too simplistic to change colours, brighten and dim.

Unboxing the Google Home mini and getting it online, was pretty straight forward. I currently have it set with the mic on mute and the touch controls seem pretty basic (volume only). I’m surprised its powered with a micro USB cable not USB C and if I had a choice of colours, would have picked a darker colour instead of Chalk. Out of the box the home mini’s top touch fuctionality is disabled, I assume the firmware was updated when I setup the wifi.

Google Home Mini

I’m dispointment that there seems to be no way to connect the google home mini to the hue lights without doing it via the Philips Hue web. I currently blocking external access at my router for hue lights, so theres no way to control them remotely, although everything is on the same network. Honestly find it annoying that it can’t talk locally, especially since there is a good API via the Hue Bridge. I understand it needs internet access to do some processing but to control the lights? Sure this can be done locally?

I’m keeping an eye on dev sites to see what might come up, but right now its little use and I’d like to see more ways to muzzle its use to keep things local unless essential.

Firefox 57, flipping fast!

Firefox 57: Flipping fast!

I have been a fan of Firefox for a long time and heck, I’ve given plenty of time to Mozilla through the Mozilla Festival over the years. I would regularly use Firefox & Chrome back to back on my Ubuntu laptop, but only firefox on my server (its been the default for Ubuntu for years). Tended to use Chrome for Google type operations like Docs, Spreadsheet, Mindmup, etc. But I started using the Firefox beta after the word got passed around that version 57 (Quantium) was a total rewrite.

Once I tried it, I was blown away! Tweeting…

I was so impressed that it picked up my profile, passwords, sync, everything; even when running it from a totally different location. It meant I could just run it and use it – and why not? Its that fast and smooth. There were some addons/extentions which didnt work but most of them I uninstalled when I switch Firefox 53 to multi-threaded mode, so I was already running it pretty lean.

It was all good…as I could switch to old firefox easily enough by just loading that one no problem, not that I did.

It was during Mozfest time, when I got a email asking if it would be ok for Mozilla to use my tweet in a special New York Times double page spread they were planning on launch day. Of course I said sure thinking not much more about it except remembering the moment when Firefox 1.0 launched with the name of all the backers.

Then today, I saw while in Maderia…

It had slipped my mind this was actually going to happen and frankly was quite proud to be one of only seven quoted. Its also not like it was misquoted! I’m acutally writing this blog from my hotel room on Firefox 57 right now. Its still not default yet (firefox 56 currently is), but expecting it will be very soon once Ubuntu update the distro.

Stellar work Mozilla and I love the catchy tagline – Fast for good…

firefox 57 quantum