Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
The world’s fastest man Usain Bolt wins on the very eve of Jamaica’s 50th Anniversary of Independence from Great Britain. Seemed very fitting for Bolt to not just win the men’s 100 meters but for his running partner to Yohan “beast” Blake to come second for silver. It could only have gotten better if Asafa Powell had gotten bronze.
Every Jamaican I know must have been watching that race and must have been ever-so proud of Bolt and Blake.
The party started early… 50 years!
I’m finding the Olympics hypnotically watchable, partly because the BBC’s coverage is so crisp and comprehensive and informative and useable, and isn’t jammed full of brand names and commercials. And it’s partly because … well … look, I don’t know.
Like Charlie, I was hearing all these crazy stories about Locog wiping out anything which even smells like the Olympics. Then the London 2012 Olympics actually opened with that simply amazing opening ceremony which NBC screwed up for many of my American friends. I watched it the day afterwards in full using the BBC’s total coverage and I was blown away. There was something very British about this Olympics. From the opening to the music used in Beach Volleyball.
At the time of writing, the running-and-jumping stuff has begun in earnest; the sheer physical agony of which I can personally relate to thanks to hours spent playing Track and Field in the 80s. No reason to believe this won’t become another time sponge. So yes, thanks, Olympics, for confounding my inner cynic, and not being awful. And for, I suppose, on balance, I admit, I confess, in a whisper – actually being quite good.
Theres lots more I can say about the Olympics but generally its been impressive and I’m looking forward to seeing the woman’s semi-final of the football at Old Trafford tomorrow. Shame it doesn’t include Team GB but I’ve decided to back Canada over Team USA.
Really hope in 3-4 weeks time I’ll still be as impressed after the end of the Para-olympics. The lasting legacy is a big question but right now its looking pretty good…
One of the most under used parts of OkCupid.com is the journal part.
The journal is like a mini blog for each user on Okcupid, very few people use them but the ones which do generally receive more attention. So its handy to reveal more about yourself, if your not like me linking to there own blog etc.
I tend to use the journal to write about online dating, which is a kind of meta (writing on a dating site about dating sites) but its great for getting opinions from others OKC users. Of course you also great journals from other users too.
One such user published a journal post titled, is online dating passing its prime?
When it was new but past the stigma of being for losers I recall a lot of people going out on online dates and not hating them. I could be projecting but it seems most of my friends seemed to have a bit of fun from online. Now all the blogs and stories and journals are filled with either banality or dating misery. Bad dates, inflated expectations, laundry lists, a consumer mentality, the numbers game, cut and paste messages, perpetual disappointment, deception, no substance. All of these things seems to be the experience of many who online date. I’ve known people, good decent people, who try a couple of dates and remove their profile because it is a lot of work for little payoff.
OKC made a huge mistake by phasing out the journals because that was actually a really decent way to interact with other people. You got to know people, good and bad, over time and sometimes indirectly. It seems much more sophisticated than the typical online dating ritual.
The post goes on but I sent a message to the user sympathising with the thoughts about the online dating and Match.com’s plan to remove journals and other non core stuff from the site. I proposed the idea that social dating (which you could argue Okcupid is a part of) is growing and that kind of fly’s in the face of the old idea of online dating. That user then suggested it might be a generational thing.
I think there is a generational thing going on that is creating a gap for the 30-50 crowd. Those in their early 20s seem to be using Facebook for everything (dating included). But I don’t see too many in their 30s for contacting people who they don’t know well for dates. The other thing is that Facebook isn’t really geared for singles as its purpose isn’t meeting other singles.
Could be right… hopefully this is the kind of discussion we’ll have on Thursday 12th July at the next Relationship 2.0 event.
Everytime I hear or think about the state of online dating, I think about my lifestreaming dating idea, further expressed when reading this post about the mainstream acceptance of lifestreaming…
Who Pays On The First Date (Ian Forrester) from LSx on Vimeo.
Imran just uploaded the video from LSx’s ignite talks back in February.
In my memory it felt like years when I accidentally removed the VGA connection while demonstrating the dodge, but in reality it wasn’t so bad on camera. But it certainly did mean I went over my allocated 5mins.
Thanks to Imran for inviting me to do my slightly edgy who pays on the first date talk, which may be the starting point to a much bigger talk about digital relationships (or relationships 2.0) in the future.
When I read this article about the new breed of urban datasexuals I instantly thought maybe heck I might be one of them…?
The datasexual looks a lot like you and me, but what’s different is their preoccupation with personal data. They are relentlessly digital, they obsessively record everything about their personal lives, and they think that data is sexy. In fact, the bigger the data, the sexier it becomes. Their lives – from a data perspective, at least – are perfectly groomed.
Oh crap that sounds just like me… I find it very difficult to maintain things on paper and much prefer them in data because I can manage them much better. I assumed it was a dyslexia thing to be honest (it might still be).
The origin of the datasexual in all likelihood started with the humble infographic, which is a highly stylized and well-designed way to talk about all the data out there on Web. The infographic trend was followed by the data visualization trend, which made it even cooler to display data in innovative new ways. These data visualization tools eventually gave us cultural artifacts like Nicholas Felton’s annual Feltron Reports, which made the obsessive recording of everyday activities seem cool. From there, it was only a small evolutionary step to the whole quantified self (QS) movement, which promises “self knowledge through numbers.” QS proponents obsessively track every single bit of data about themselves throughout the day. The QS movement eventually led us to the embrace of data by consumer-facing companies Nike, who found a way for urban datasexuals to flaunt their obsessive data-grooming to the rest of us in a way that’s stylish and mod.
For me it stems back to my ideas of the information behind the graphics.
When I was in college, I got into XML because I loved the idea of creating graphics which are self describing and can alter depending on the data there based on. Hence my love of Scalable Vector Graphics (w3c’s SVG specification). I was also a major pusher of SVG at the BBC for graphics and informational graphics but at the time browser technology was way behind.
Maybe this also reflects why my love of the idea of online dating via numbers, maths, science also really intrigues me so deeply?
The link up between the Quantified Self, personal data and sharing is so tight and also asks many questions. Questions which the early adopters and hackers are answering for themselves right now.
I remember my previous manager Miles Metcalfe, talking about the intangible of the semantic web… Somethings can not be quantified, at least in the ways were going about it right now. I would agree but we’ll have a good old go trying to do so. And from doing so we’ll have lots of fun, its when it stops becoming fun is the problem…
I’ll say it now… Data is Sexy no two ways about it… but the term data sexual does worry me a little along with quite a few of the commenters. Its Data Love but under the understanding that not everything can be defined or captured yet.
Updated
After the debate on Techgrumps 60 yesterday (listen to the last 10mins to understand) with Tom Morris who compares Data sexuality to something else which is certainly not pretty or nice. But the point is taken, what has this got to do with sexuality? Spicing it up with sexuality just confuses the whole thing and maybe makes those who love data into something their not. Data love is much better as a overall idea.
This time we tackle the difficult subject of how to split up in the best way possible.
So how did the rules & the game one go?
It went well, we started a little later than expected and once again my partner in crime failed to turn up (I’m pretty much fed up of her, so I won’t be doing it with her ever again). We had about 18 people again and the gender split was actually towards the female this time around.
The difficult subject of the rules and the game was dissected by the crowd and there was a interesting debate starting to happen around multiplication and uneven relationships. Unfortunately some of the debate was over powered by certain people. I didn’t do a very good job giving everyone a go. But alas we learn and next time I’ll be more cutting with allowing other people to voice their own views.
There was criticism that everything was setup for straight relationships. Although the rules and the game applies to heterosexual and homosexual relationships. Of course the purpose of the night was to highlight how stupid both books are, and actually how much money is being made off the back of these generic rules and tactics.
We never got down to the more thoughtful stuff (such as Real Social Dynamics) but hey maybe thats for another month.
This time around instead of seeking inspiration (as such) from How to loose a man in 10 days and he’s just not that into you (has a fantastic opening which points to why lots of women love the guys who treat them bad?) It will be the breakup artist and must be seen in full a complete history of my sexual failures (going to have fun showing parts of that one for sure)..
Of course you can join us and have your say by signing up for a free ticket on Eventbrite. Theres also more information on Eventbrite, Facebook and Lanyrd
The Barbershop is the place men go for therapy. When I say therapy I don’t mean the traditional notion of therapy, its something much more subtle.
My barbershop called Barbers Boutique understand this very well. They aim to provide a place where men can be pampered in a way which is acceptable to the most alpha of males. Before I went to the crazy year of making love event on Saturday morning, I had my hair cut, a nail manicure and a neck & shoulder massage. Why? Because it was great to be treated like a king for a little while.
I actually added a review to Qype too.
The barbershop is a great place which is often overlooked in modern times.
It’s a great place to chew the fat with other men. When I went to hair stylists, I hardly ever talked to the woman who cut my hair. I’d chat about my family and theirs and that’s about it. The woman who cut my hair usually ended up chatting it with the other women in the salon, while I sat there awkwardly.
Barbers, on the other hand, are interesting guys with interesting stories to tell. On my visits to the barber shop, I’ve met a retried Army Ranger colonel, a musician who spent 13 years on the road in a jazz band, and a man who is the third generation in his family to take up the profession. Each of them had fascinating stories to share. And I in turn feel at ease to say what’s on my mind. There is conversation about politics, cars, sports, and family. Guys read the newspaper and comment on current events. In between the banter, jokes are told and laughs are had. And everyone is involved: the barbers, the customers getting their haircut, and the customers waiting to get their haircut. Adding to the enjoyment is that a variety of men take part in the conversation; young, old, and middle-aged join in the mix.
I think there’s a good argument that barbershops are among America’s last civic forums Where do people go today just to talk with others in the community? Coffee shops? Every time I go to a coffee shop, people are at their own tables minding their own business. The only other place that I can think of is a bar, but bars are now co-ed instead of being bastions of manliness. Graduate student, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, wrote an article about how discussions in traditionally black barbershops shape political ideas in the African-American community. She noted how political debate in barbershops can be vigorous and engages young and old alike. Unfortunately, white Americans are missing out on this experience. So, if you’re wanting to get your thumb on the pulse of civic life in your community, head over to the barbershop.
This very true for barbershops in the UK too. Theres no doubt about the conversations I’ve over heard in the barbershop are just great. I remember the first time I got involved in a discussion in Kellys of Bristol.
I was young and the discussion turned to computers. This is way back in the early 90’s when computers were still somewhat rare in most peoples lives. I had a PocketPC device and although I can’t remember the exact line of questioning or viewpoints I remember it was quite a lively debate.
Everyone my generation must remember Channel4’s Desmonds a classic barbershop and although it played up to stereotypes a bit, showed how vibrant the Barbershop can be. 10 years later, Barbershop once again tried to put across the unique nature of a barbershop for the world to see. Different characters rubbing shoulders, doing deals and push/urge/troll each other on. There is not doubt this is a man’s place for therapy… No matter how dysfunctional you may think this sounds… It might have something to do with Social proof, or the eyes of peers but I always feel better about myself after a good haircut.
Its also worth noting the people who setup the barbershops tend to be very entrepreneurial in nature, hence why its great to hear the future plans for Barbers Boutique.
I look forward to the new Barbers Boutique… Although goodness knows how hard its going to be to get an appointment in the future…! Will it be the return of getting up at 8:30am in the morning to get first in the chair ahead of the rest? (Haven’t done this since I was a child being taken to the Beedo’s Barbershop in St Pauls, Bristol)
Cory Doctorow’s agreements are usually pretty powerful but recently these two have had me reaching for the sky…
The Coming War on General Computation (the video is well worth watching… along with the transcript)
Techdirt breaks it down…
So today we have marketing departments who say things like “we don’t need computers, we need… appliances. Make me a computer that doesn’t run every program, just a program that does this specialized task, like streaming audio, or routing packets, or playing Xbox games, and make sure it doesn’t run programs that I haven’t authorized that might undermine our profits”. And on the surface, this seems like a reasonable idea — just a program that does one specialized task — after all, we can put an electric motor in a blender, and we can install a motor in a dishwasher, and we don’t worry if it’s still possible to run a dishwashing program in a blender. But that’s not what we do when we turn a computer into an appliance. We’re not making a computer that runs only the “appliance” app; we’re making a computer that can run every program, but which uses some combination of rootkits, spyware, and code-signing to prevent the user from knowing which processes are running, from installing her own software, and from terminating processes that she doesn’t want. In other words, an appliance is not a stripped-down computer — it is a fully functional computer with spyware on it out of the box.
Cory on “User uploads to YouTube hit one hour per second” (worth reading the whole thing)
A common tactic in discussions about the Internet as a free speech medium is to discount Internet discourse as inherently trivial. Who cares about cute pictures of kittens, inarticulate YouTube trolling, and blog posts about what you had for lunch or what your toddler said on the way to day-care? Do we really want to trade all the pleasure and economic activity generated by the entertainment industry for *that*? The usual rebuttal is to point out all the “worthy” ways that we communicate online: the scholarly discussions, the terminally ill comforting one another, the distance education that lifts poor and excluded people out of their limited straits, the dissidents who post videos of secret police murdering street protesters.
All that stuff is important, but when it comes to interpersonal communications, trivial should be enough.
The reason nearly everything we put on the Internet seems “trivial” is because, seen in isolation, nearly everything we say and do is also trivial. There is nothing of particular moment in the conversations I have with my wife over the breakfast table. There is nothing earthshaking in the stories I tell my daughter when we walk to daycare in the morning. This doesn’t mean that it’s sane, right, or even possible to regulate them
And yet, taken together, the collection of all these “meaningless” interactions comprise nearly the whole of our lives together. They are the invisible threads that bind us together as a family. When I am away from my family, it’s this that I miss. Our social intercourse is built on subtext as much as it is on text. When you ask your wife how she slept last night, you aren’t really interested in her sleep. You’re interested in her knowing that you care about her. When you ask after a friend’s kids, you don’t care about their potty-training progress — you and your friend are reinforcing your bond of mutual care.
If that’s not enough reason to defend the trivial, consider this: the momentous only arises from the trivial. When we rally around a friend with cancer, or celebrate the extraordinary achievements of a friend who does well, or commiserate over the death of a loved one, we do so only because we have an underlying layer of trivial interaction that makes it meaningful. Weddings are a big deal, but every wedding is preceded by a long period of small, individually unimportant interactions, and is also followed by them. But without these “unimportant” moments, there would be no marriages.
Geeky&Sexy just became Relationships 2.0…
Herb Kim suggested to me after the amazing geeky&sexy event last Thursday, than I should change the name of the event. It might be putting some people off and actually it might do a slight dis-service to a great event. So after much thought, I changed it to Relationship 2.0 (which was suggested by Herb over email)
Just the right time because I’m preparing for the next event also at the wonderful FYG Northern Quarter Deli.
This time we delve deep into the world of the rules, the game and well beyond…
Do these systems work or are they totally bull? What use are they? And whats else is out there? We discuss in geeky detail… with lots of wine and fantastic nibbles from FYG.
You won’t want to miss this one sign up now…
Last entry of my busy week. I took the day off and made the trip to Bradford for the very first time. I caught a direct train to and from Bradford from Victoria Station. One of the worst looking train stations I’ve ever been to and I’m pretty glad I don’t have to spend much time in most of the time. I could have changed at Leeds to Bradford but to be honest when I saw the off peak return for £10.50 I weighted up the price of changing and getting a taxi late night and decided its a deal.
Bradford is interesting city, and it seems I arrived at the very right time with the victory of George Galloway, the opening of a city centre square (although actually round) and the unveiling of the Bradford life online exhibition at the National media museum. I had always heard the National media museum was something special and although I didn’t really get a chance to walk around for a while, got a feeling it had tons of interesting things burred within it. Also impressed to see a full size IMAX rather than the knock off ones.
TedXBradford was for the most part a really nice TedX. All the speakers hinged around the idea of life online.
The whole thing kicked started in the usual style with a thank you from Chris Anderson followed by Tim Oreilly recorded a day ago in his hotel room in Washington.
The most interesting talks for me, came from….
Jane MacDonald, Tales of Things & Electronic Memory
I was familiar with Janes work before but hearing her talk about it live was great… Really interesting thinker
Maureen Pennock, Archiving the Web
Maureen’s talk was all about archiving the web… It reminded me of the work I had done with the Digital Preservation unit in Kew Gardens back when I was at Ravensbourne College. Sounds like things have limped forward but also reminded me to add cubicgarden.com to webarchive.org.uk.
Professor Paul Rogers, World Security in the Digital Age
This talk was like no other. Most of the talks were pretty neutral about the web. However Paul literally sucked the air out of the room with his talk about the political mess and security woes the internet has accelerated. Afterwards there was a level of what just happened in the cinema. It reminded me of a talk at heard in BarCampBrighton asking what would happen if things went dark. Pauls talk was much more sharper and I think I tweeted – “Everyone is wishing for the Energy Singularity…”
I also want to add…
Anna Farmery, How 3D printing is the next social revolution on the web
Gwyneth Sutherlin, Open Access or Silent Culture: ICT user experience
Dr Kieran Fenby-Hulse, The Modern Mixtape: The Evolution of the Digital Playlist
were also note worthy… Kieran’s talk drove me nuts because I so wanted to tell him he was wrong. The Digital playlist is not the modern mixtape and here’s a bunch of reasons why… Anna’s almost like pitch on why small businesses should embrace 3D printers was passionate and great but I kind of heard it all before, sure many others had not.
After TedxBradford was a special showing of the twitter documentary Twittamentary by director Siok Siok Tan.
Unfortunately the Q&A never happened because Siok wasn’t contactable on skype afterwards but whats interesting about the showing was having the twitter backchannel on the side of the screen as everyone watched. This was no Ben vs Mena thing, just a interesting way to watch a documentary. However quite a few people did tweet that it was very distracting to watch a doc with people chatting about it along side.
The documentary I felt was a little sloppy and if it wasn’t for the subject I would have gone elsewhere. It was worth watching and confirmed my believe that together we can do amazing things, maybe even over turn some of the doomsday scenarios Paul Rogers had mentioned earlier.
Generally TedXBradford was good and enjoyed the day… I’d certainly consider it again next year