Month: March 2019

We should all believe in better masculinity

I never got the chance to write about the Gillette advert and the absolutely insanity of the outcry by some men around it. Theres a ton of discussion, press and frankly shouting about it.

The best commentary/deconstruction I found of the debate is from Dr Nerdlove.

I released a video where I touched on the fact that Gillette released a new commercial that directly addressed toxic masculinity, asking men to do better and the reaction that a lot of people, mostly men, had to it.

As it turns out, I have a lot more to say about it because, well, it’s made people lose their goddamn monkey minds. This is an ad that is literally just saying “hey, men can do better” and people are acting as though this was the announcement that XY chromosomes have been made illegal and having chest hair means that you’re going to get rounded up to camps.

When I first saw the advert I felt impressed by the tone and expression.  Yes they must have known calling out toxic masculinity was going to have a big backlash but they did it anyway. Hopefully knowing how important it is.

The accusation that this is an attack on men and manhood is kind of absurd on its face. Because we see a lot of traditional positive masculinity in here. We see dads barbecuing over the weekend with their kids, dads propping up, teaching and encouraging their sons, nurturing their daughters. We see the guys calling out bad behavior and ending fights and showing respect for others. And we see fathers protecting other people and — importantly — teaching their sons to be brave.

It’s a little disingenuous to say that this is an attack on men when the point of the entire ad is all but literally spelled out for you:

We believe in the best in men.

If I was to add anything else to the advert it would be Tony Porter’s words.

My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman

Imagine if the Curve card supported all those transport and store cards?

The Curve CardI have been using Curve for a while now. I first came across it when Tom Cheesewright talked about it at a second degree dinner I hosted. I was still amazed by Monzo but it lost its shine once it became a current account for me. So I finally got a Curve card thanks to Tony Churnside for the referral.

Its been very good to me, and the trade off in sharing my transactions in return for not carrying around all my cards is good for me. I do generally carry around one more just in-case, but its been fine except a couple times, where I needed to tap again.

If I had a company credit card, a curve card would be essential, especially since the receipt feature works almost as I need it for my expenses.

Having used it for a few months, I started thinking it would be great if curve supported NFC travel cards like Oyster. Its something I’ve thought about previously. Of course the London Oyster system supports NFC payments directly, so maybe I should return my Oyster cards anyway.

But imagine if it supported other NFC cards? Yes you can use your phone to do this but I don’t want to use my expensive phone compared to a cheap piece of plastic which I can freeze in a instant? Store cards is more tricky as most are still swipe not NFC but could be very cool?

Update…

https://twitter.com/imaginecurve/status/1102500000020525056

Hooray, audacity files are XML

Plumbing for the next web, by ian forrester

I’ve been looking for a way to create SMIL files with an editor for a while. Main reason being to speed up the creation of creating podcasts for the Perceptive Podcast client and make it easier for those who don’t understand markup/code.

One of the techniques we deployed during the Visual Perceptive Media project was to export final cut xml out of final cut/premiere pro then transform the lot with XSL/Python/etc to something else more usable. Its something I’ve had in mind for a long time, as you can see with this paper/presentation I wrote 12 years ago.

There was a point when Wmas, could create an editor for our director/writer (Julius) or allow him to use tools he was familiar with (non-linear editor like Finalcut/Premiere). Of course we choose the latter and converted the final cut xml (which isn’t really an official spec) into json using python. We were able to use markers and zones to great effect, indicating the interactive intentions of the director in a non-linear editor. This meant the intentions can exist and run completely through to the very end, rather than tacking it on at the end.

So with all that in mind, I started thinking if I could turn Audacity into a editor in a similar way? Is there a final cut xml format for audio? Thats when I came across this article which made perfect sense – Audacity files are just XML documents, sooo…

Structure of a empty project

<?xml version=”1.0″ standalone=”no” ?>
<!DOCTYPE project PUBLIC “-//audacityproject-1.3.0//DTD//EN” “http://audacity.sourceforge.net/xml/audacityproject-1.3.0.dtd” >
<project xmlns=”http://audacity.sourceforge.net/xml/” projname=”blank-audacity_data” version=”1.3.0″ audacityversion=”2.2.1″ sel0=”0.0000000000″ sel1=”0.0000000000″ vpos=”0″ h=”0.0000000000″ zoom=”86.1328125000″ rate=”44100.0″ snapto=”off” selectionformat=”hh:mm:ss + milliseconds” frequencyformat=”Hz” bandwidthformat=”octaves”>
<tags/>
</project>

Just the title ignited my mind, the actual content of the blog is less interesting but I realised I may have a free & open-source editor which runs on every platform and with a bit of XSL magic could be the start of the editor I was looking for? The idea of it being a pipe, which leads on to more is something which fits in the bigger pipeline chain

I also found a GIT project to Parse audio track times from an audacity .aup projects. Its uses XSL to do the processing, so I may spend a bit of time playing with it to make something useful.

Just need to dust off my old XSL development skills… Which reminds me what happened to XPROC (XML pipeline language)?

56 Black men changing stereotypes

56 black men

I first heard about the 56 black men project through a podcast by the resource group’s Jonathan.

In the podcast Jonathan talks about archetypes and stereotypes, defining them very carefully.

Archetypes & Stereotypes are similar but not the same

“I find when people think of positive stereotypes, they are more likely to use the word archetype”

Humans find Archetypes And Stereotypes Useful

“Stereotypes are great examples of heuristics or mental shortcuts that we use to help us negotiate our day-to-day lives.”

Archetypes & Stereotypes Can and Should Evolve

“existing archetypes and stereotypes have led to the world we live in now, new archetypes and stereotypes could lead us to a new world”

This all leads nicely in to his role taking part in the 56 black men project.

Reading through the twitter feed and hashtag, there’s some really interesting comments from others. I personally have avoided wearing hoods slightly because of the stereotype and I don’t find them that comfortable to wear. I like seeing around me (being aware of my surroundings is important for me).

I’m super aware of my presence on people around me, especially females. Its been drummed into me from a very early age mainly media like films and tv. Anything to help change this stereotype especially around black males, is very welcomed!

Follow up from MyHeritage GDPR request

Shadow profile
I got this from MyHeritage today… after submitting my GDPR request to them to find out the history of my account.
We apologize for this breach and the fact that your email address might have been part of it. The email addresses were included in the breach along with a hashed password – not the actual password (which has been expired and can no longer be used to access the account on MyHeritage). Other than this, there has not been a violation of the data. See our official statement here and an updated statement here.

Please be advised that this incident does not affect the privacy of any sensitive information you have on your online family site, including DNA information and family trees. Only hashed versions of passwords were stolen, which means they cannot be used to log in to your private account on MyHeritage.

There has been no evidence that the stolen information was ever used by the perpetrators. Since Oct 26, 2017 (the date of the breach) and the present we have not seen any activity indicating that any MyHeritage accounts had been compromised.

The privacy and the security of your information is our highest priority and we continually assess our procedures and policies and seek the best methods to secure information. The work on adding two-factor authentication to MyHeritage is completed and you can read the full explanation about this feature here.

In addition to that, I have carried out a search within our system, and I was not able to locate an account using your email address: **********************************

If you had an account using this email address and the account was deleted, we currently do not retain any information from your registered account and therefore, I cannot provide you with any information regarding it as it no longer exists.

However, if you registered to MyHeritage using another email address, please let me know with which so I will be able to locate it. In addition to that, as an extra security measure, if you still have access to this email address would you please be so kind to send us an email using that address?

If you run into any further issues, by all means, please don’t hesitate to reply. I’m here for you.

MyHeritage Support team

Maybe I deleted my account too soon, unfortunately giving them a easy out. I should have done the GDPR request then deleted my account afterwards! I was looking forward seeing proof the account was a shadow profile