Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io

How I roll at work

I recently filled in a group of people at work about how I work, and I thought it might be interesting to readers of my blog…
I have the Thinkpad X220 which is a BBC R&D laptop and running Ubuntu 11.10 (as of this week, but its going back due to hardware problems).
I switch between the BBC R&D network and the BBC R&D wireless network when I want raw (un-proxyed) internet access. This actually works well because I don’t need to use my BBC desktop machine unless I need to accept a calendar request and send it to my gmail (which is pain, more details about this soon).
I’d hoped to get Gnome Evolution working with the socks5 proxy as it should be able to deal with my Calendar as it has Exchange support but currently no Socks5 support (why I have no bloody idea!). So I’m trying out sockisfy and Tsocks… But right now I’m using Mozilla Thunderbird 7.1 with the IMAP interface to get emails when I switch to the R&D network.
This also means it limits the time I’m in my email and means I get more done… (Something I know from using Rescuetime in the past and tracking my usage at work) I tend to switch to the R&D network about 3-5x a day for about 20mins each time but most of the time I’m on the non proxied wireless network.
This means I automatically get disconnected from IRC, Tweetdeck, Gtalk, etc when changing to the R&D network but I do have the essential things like Twitter and Gtalk on my mobile phone which is always connected to the Wireless network. I could change the proxy settings but I kind prefer it that way, although I did add foxyproxy to Firefox because it was a pain not being able to browse a site someone sent via a BBC email without digging around the preferences.
It does seem a bit of crazy way to do things but I quite like it and means I’m not watching and replying to emails all the time. Now I just have to wait for the Thinkpad X220 to be fixed…

Online Werewolf, the Manchester Chapter and the Thing

The Thing game

One of the sessions at BarCampBlackpool was the idea of playing werewolf, mafia or even the thing (which I will get into in a second) online. There’s been many attempts at this including the commercial ones. But every once in a while theres an attempt by someone to setup an open online version.

Werewolfapphb is one such example. Now to be honest I only walked in half way through the talk but from what I can see it was a lot like the IRC style werewolf games I’ve seen in the past. Seems perfectly fine but I started suggesting a whole bunch of things including status about players and leaderboards. All suggestions seemed to go down well.

I did also point out that there’s a trend towards playing werewolf using Google Plus Hangouts, which to be honest is a lot neater than doing it on IRC or even a Jabber/XMPP conference room.

I was introduced to a new style Werewolf game which seems to work well with a smaller number of people. Its called the Thing and has the advantage of people being involved through-out the whole game.

People also noted there was now a Leeds & Preston Werewolf Chapter which begs the question, what happened to the Manchester Chapter? Well fear not, it will be back and I’ve got ideas and scenarios… Watch this space…

 

Wunderlist instead of Google Tasks?

Wunderlist

I recently got fed up of waiting for someone to create a Google tasks application for Ubuntu/Linux and so when I read Wunderlist was available for Linux, I decided to switch.

Wunderlist I had heard about before but this was the tipping point. It already runs on most other platforms including the web, Android, iOS, Mac, PC and now Linux.

Everything was fine up till the point I switched over to using Ubuntu 11.10. Now I got a problem, but it looks like it won’t be long till its sorted.

I hoped Tomboynotes which comes as standard on Ubuntu would be apt for this all but it never quite got the traction and the Android app doesn’t let you make changes or edits which is almost useless for general use, I’m sorry to say… The ability to share the tasks is also a big plus… The only real shame is the size of the Linux installer (85meg!) as something lighter would be great.

Why you should go to the Mozilla Festival

mozilla festival poster

Just in-case you had any reasons why you shouldn’t be at the Mozilla Festival? Here’s a whole bunch of reasons why you should be there. As most of you already know, we’re running the Dj and Vj Challenges during the Mozilla Festival event in association with Future Everything, Mozilla and BBC R&D.

We’re going to explore possible futures in the fields of Dj and Vj cultures with a aim to go live with something next year at the Future Everything Festival.

The whole event is at my previous college (Ravensbourne) which moved to its new location next to the Dome in North Greenwich. I’ve never checked out the new look college but if its anything like the new Salford University in Media City UK it looks to be something special and a great place to do a challenge like this.

Of course you want to be part of this… So why not sign up now and I’ll see you there in just under a months time…

 

 

FLOSS software things which I wonder about…

“FLOSS” (Free/Libre/Open Source Software), and “FOSS” (or F/OSS, Free and Open Source Software).

I attended the Floss Unconference fest yesterday at Manchester Conference centre (a location I had planned to use for BarCampManchester2 due to their ability to do overnights and excellent warren like structure).
The event was reasonable but not well attended, which was a shame. It needed about another 30 people to feel more busy and active. Not quite sure why people never came out for it…? But to be honest I only spotted it by hearing a tweet from Teknoteacher. Anyhow, at the end of the day there were lightening talks and I jumped at the chance to talk about software which really needs to be developed on Linux. I’ve adopted this post to apply to most Floss type things…

First up…

  • What happened to Say my name desert? The developer moved to announcefy but frankly its a downgrade and I’m just about to uninstall it because they’ve been talking about plugins for yonks and they still don’t exist. Instead I just installed Call Announcer which seems to do what I want, but we’ll see…
  • In the same vein, locale what happened? I’ve switched to the hyper geeky Llama which operates based on radio cell towers so in theory it shouldn’t eat so much power as locale. But to be honest I’ve not really had time to mess with it and tweak it.
Now to the desktop…

I’m sure theres plenty more but these are my thoughts right now…

End of the zune, ipod and the pacemaker?

The Pacemaker in use

I think we can pretty much say its the end of the road for the Mpeg3 players.

Microsoft pretty much ported the zune software to their new Microsoft Phone 7 operating system, Apple have done the same and look to be killing the ipod range finally. The single purpose music player is pretty much out for the count.

So what about the Tonium Pacemaker?

Well Tonium went bust a while ago… and the thread is tonium alive? charts the disastrous mistakes which were made over time…

Now everyones trying to get the source code, so we can try and extend the life of such a great product…

Can’t believe I’ve owned the product for over 3 years now, I was one of the first to get it. A whole year before Engadget even. I really hope the community can get the source code because besides the poor battery life and dodgy recording of mixes on the device. There’s already people hacking in SSDs into the Pacemaker, so there’s plenty of people up for compiling and hacking around.

Interesting segway – we’re finally setting a challenge for the next evolution or even revolution in djing at the Mozilla festival later this year…

Eink demos

Sriram Peruvemba, vice president of marketing at Eink, gives us the latest news from Eink, they announced that they will ship between 25 million and 30 million Eink screens this year, just for the Eink e-readers like the Kindle 4 and Nook Touch. Yup you read right, 30 million of those devices to be sold this year.

Is it only me but does the device he’s playing with look exactly the same as the new touch screen Amazon Kindle? Can’t believe I didn’t spot it before really. Anyway its a interesting little interview, but still odd there not going for the bigger display areas?

 

Build tech city or go one better?

rain rain go away

Not wrote anything about London’s TechCity and Silicon Roundabout for quite sometime but I’ve been thinking about it… The recent talk from Matt Brittin at MediaCityUK reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while.

The Silicon Roundabout thing slightly bugs me and the Techcity thing winds me up but not for the reasons you would imagine. Silicon roundabout is frankly a silly name but I can live with that. The area is full of hopeful startups and internet powered companies. Its great and to be fair east London was always a cool place. I actually spent quite a lot of time in the last startup boom.

My problem is copying the states… Not only copying the concept but somewhat getting it seriously wrong or backwards. I’ll save the reasons for others but this is different times, different circumstances and a totally different country. Part of the solution is diversity of ideas and process, something the UK is very good at in one way or another.

Its no mistake Google’s Eric Schmitt mentions “you’re either a ‘luvvy’ or a ‘boffin’.”

A cultural thing which has got to stop, along with simply copying…

To coin an old phrase, think differently…?

The next few months are very busy

I knew September onwards was going to be busy but this is getting a little out of control…

As you can see a whole bunch of them take place within or close to Manchester, so luckily i won’t have to go too far… However I’m also looking to finally go to Le Web for the very first time and maybe the Media Festival again.

Its cranking up to be a hectic autumn but hopefully a decent one full of lots of great experiences and people…

New Services I’ve found interesting recently

I’ve been playing with a few services recently and I thought it might be worth blogging about…

  • Diigo.com
    while moving away from delicious I found diigo did everything I needed a whole lot more.
  • Ifttt.com
    also posted about if this then in a previous post too but I’m finding nice new ways to use it for example to get read items on my kindle back in a form I can blog about again.
  • DeskSMS
    Not quite installed this yet but I’m very tempted because I’ve always wanted a way to manage text messages from more than my phone and it looks like DeskSMS might be the best way to do so. Although a lot of people swear by Mighty text too
  • Glos.si
    I read about Glos.si in the Lifestreaming blog, and decided I’d give it a shot because its been quite some time since I’ve really played with a decent lifestreaming service. The one I host on my own blog is alright but is missing quite a few of the great stuff Glos.si or the old fav’s Sweetcron and Storytlr had. This also reminds me I should kill all the other lifestreaming services I’ve used in the past
  • Storify
    This has always interested me but its only now I’ve gotten around to looking at it with some time.