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

Heavy snow in the midnight city mix

Heavy snow in the midnight city mix by cubicgarden

  1. Tin There (edit) – Underworld
  2. The 7th Day (M.I.K.E Remix) – The Gift
  3. Sky Falls Down (Armin van Buuren Remix) – Oceanlab
  4. Bulgarian (Signum Remix) – Travel
  5. Beauty hides in the deep (john o'callaghan remix) – The Doppler effect
  6. The Pride in your eyes (Martin Roth mix) – Tillmann Uhrmacher
  7. Language (Santiago Nino Dub Tech Mix) – Hammer and Bennett
  8. Gamemaster (Matt Darey 2003 Club Remix) – Lost Tribe
  9. Attention (steve birch remix) – John 00 Fleming vs Christopher Lawrence
  10. She wants him – Moussa Clarke & Terrafunka
  11. Into the danger (M.I.K.E remix) – M.I.K.E vs Andrew Bennett
  12. Gouryella (extended version) – Gouryella
  13. Heal – Electrique Boutique
  14. In the dark (tiesto trance mix) – Tiesto

This mix was recorded during the snow storm hit the South East of the UK on Feb 2nd. The slips are where my cold hands would wipe snow or ice off the pacemaker, Enjoy!

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The benefits to sleeping late

Manchester at Night

This one comes from Wired magazine via Imran Ali again. 3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late. I have to agree with every single one of the points. It still kills me getting up early in the morning but whats worst is when i'm in the creative zone at 1:30am and then have to start heading to bed, knowing theres a bunch of things I could get done if I stayed up a little longer.

1 // You may need more sleep than you think.
Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were “well rested” actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours. That figures. Until the invention of the lightbulb (damn you, Edison!), the average person slumbered 10 hours a night.

2 // Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon. In one study, “evening people” almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.

3 // Rising early is stressful.
The stress hormone cortisol peaks in your blood around 7 am. So if you get up then, you may experience tension. Grab some extra Zs! You'll wake up feeling less like Bert, more like Ernie.

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RSS almost completely covered

I have Newsgator on almost every device I own, which is great because the syncing feature means I never end up reading the same news again and again. Except there's one problem, I have no offline version for my laptop. Yep crazy, my work pc (windows) is running FeedDemon, while my ipod touch runs Netwirenews and even my two windows mobile phones are running the newsgator go client. Usually when I'm connected I'll use the web site directly but when offline I have to use my ipod touch which is stupid when I got such a great display right in front of me. Anyway I'm not the only one.

I was thinking about this the other day now that I have an Eee PC. I'm liking it so far, but the keyboard is definitely maddeningly small. Still, I'm getting better at it. Anyway, one thing I'd really like on it is the ability to read feeds offline. I currently use Newsgator products to read feeds–both Feeddemon and Newsgator Mobile. I love the syncing capability.

But unfortunately, Newsgator doesn't have a Linux product. It does, however have an API into their syncing infrastructure. However, without a Linux product in the first place, most of the people I know that are using Newsgator are corporate types. Newsgator Go!, their mobile product, is for Blackberry and Win Mobile.

With no Linux client and no iPhone app, what are the chances that the developer community is going to care enough about their product in the first place to develop on top of their syncing api. Developers tend to build things to solve problems for themselves. Not surprisingly, NO ONE has built a Linux RSS desktop client on top of their API. Even a Thunderbird plugin would be nice, b/c Thunderbird can handle RSS feeds and it works in Linux. So far, nada, zilch.

Luckily Newsgator do have a POP3 service too, so its possible to get some kind of offline usage even if its nothing like the RSS service and I'm still unsure how/if the syncing works with it too.

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Good to know: The Scoville scale

Found via Imran Ali while we were chatting about late night working. I think we went from talking about Energy Drinks and Coffee into scales of measurements into the The Scoville scale.

The Scoville scale is a measure of the hotness or piquancy of a chili pepper, as defined by the amount of capsaicin, (a chemical compound which stimulates nerve endings in the skin) present.

Some hot sauces use their Scoville rating in advertising as a selling point.

The scale is named after its creator, American chemist Wilbur Scoville, who developed a test for rating the pungency of chili peppers. His method, which he devised in 1912,[1] is known as the Scoville Organoleptic Test. An alternative method for quantitative analysis uses high-performance liquid chromatography, making it possible to directly measure capsaicinoid content.

Nice to know.

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Roll on BarCampLondon6 on March 28th

Its really good to see a bunch of BarCamp Participations taking the future realms of BarCamp. Simon Wilison must have had a hand in the Guardian hosting the event at there new swanky offices near Kings Cross. Other people involve include Emma Persky, Caz Mockett, Tom Morris, Dirk Ginader, Leeky and others.

The London BarCamp is over the weekend of 28th and 29th March which is yes a overnight BarCamp (good to see because the temptation is to go with the easier route of split 2 days). BBC Backstage is one of the sponsors along with some company called Yahoo. The tickets are due to arrive mid month and be given out in waves to ensure they are given to many new people. From my understanding were talking about somewhere between 100-150 tickets, so its going to be a very hot ticket. There is a mailing list for people who want to know when the next lot of tickets will be, so sign up now if you don't want to miss out.

I love the new logo by the way… really well thought out…

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Lost is back…

Desmond

I'm loving Lost again (not that I really fell out of love with it unlike others), thank you Damon Lindelof and JJ Abrams for constructing a complex puzzle which you actually have to watch from the start to the end (although Lostpedia is useful) and requires brain power to follow. Thanks for not wimping out with some lame story to cover the complexity of Time Travel and the nature of the known universe. Thank you very much and I look forward to the next 31 episodes.

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Good Advice for Switchers

Ubuntu install

Via Technometria, I would suggest that if you swap Mac for Ubuntu, you've got some very solid advice.

Todd Ogasawara has some good advice for Mac Switchers that might keep you from lamenting your move. I switched in 2002 but had never really been a Windows user (Sun mostly) and I knew Unix cold, so switching wasn't such a big deal for me. But if you've been a long time Windows user and think a Mac might be fun, read Todd's advice first. I love number two:

2. If you do go cold turkey, don't drag your wife, girlfriend, significant other, parents, child, best friend along for the ride until you begin get comfortable with Mac OS X yourself.

From A Brief Guide for Mac Switchers/Try-ers
Referenced Wed Jan 07 2009 07:32:21 GMT-0700 (MST)

Wait until they ask. That's the best way. And they will ask if they see you having fun on your new Mac.

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Werewolf night: Werewolves 3 : Villagers 1

Not a great turn out for the first Manchester chapter of Werewolf, lots of people cancelled and the Gaza protest almost made the whole night a fruitless experience. However by 7:30pm (hour later that planned) we had enough people to play and we were off. Here's some pictures from the last game which also happen to be the only game the villagers won out of the four played. And only think that happened because we introduced the healer to give the werewolves more to worry about. I'm planning the next one for about 3 weeks time now, if your interested look out for announcements on twitter and upcoming. I also expect we may try setting up a game using multiple cameras, as all the video footage I've found for werewolf has been shaky hand stuff. I'm sure with a fish eye lens in the middle of the circle we could recording some amazing footage.

Werewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in Manchester

Werewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in Manchester

Werewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in Manchester

Werewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in Manchester

Werewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in ManchesterWerewolf in Manchester

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Protestors in BBC Manchester lobby

I twittered this about 6hours ago – bbc manchester attack from gaza protesters. very loud and won't leave. So here's some of what was going on during that tweet and the retweets. Some video but nothing seems to play the audio because the whole thing was captured on my work mobile phone. Then there's a few photos I snapped with the same phone. I did record a much high rez video but haven't uploaded it yet because I was in a rush trying to get everything sorted for Werewolf.

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