I saw this on wired.com somewhere around the Steve Jobs page.
Made me laugh at least…
Satisfaction on your terms
Category: culture-and-politics
Who thinks this is a good idea?
One of the most stupidest things I’ve heard of late…
Finding the next steve jobs… Will i am and Simon Cowell cashing in on a dead man’s legacy more like it. Not only is it insulting to the intelligent working on new and cutting edge things but also a nasty thing to do on the 1 year anniversary of steve jobs death in my view.
To be frank its as dumb an idea as offline netflix… At least its not as offensive as Simon Cowell and Will i am jumping on a bandwagon.
Follow the money… or rather follow the naff ideas to eternity? Stupid…!
Gonna hurt like a sonofabitch
Someone shared this on Facebook and although George Takei is sharing it, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him who drew it. Certainly one of the problem with being a hapless romantic…
Ecstasy
My experience with Ecstasy is not like you would imagine.
I have never ever taken Ecstasy or for that fact taken any other illegal drugs. Even though I was surrounded by the ecstasy filled rave scene. Me personally I was very much into the music and the experience of dancing in time with people of all cultures and backgrounds. However I won’t be lie and say I never noticed the amount of drugs going around. In actual fact I have some interesting experiences off the back of ecstasy.
Channel4 are putting Ecstasy on trail in another one of their grand experiments.
Nearly half a million people are believed to take the Class A drug ecstasy every year in Britain and the country was dubbed the ‘drug-taking capital of Europe’ in a recent EU Drugs Agency report.
Now, in a UK television first, two live programmes will follow volunteers as they take MDMA, the pure form of ecstasy, as part of a ground-breaking scientific study.
Presented by Jon Snow and Dr Christian Jessen, the programmes aim to cut through the emotional debate surrounding the issue and accurately inform the public about the effects and potential risks of MDMA.
When I was in school, I had strongly held believes that Ecstasy should be decriminalised and even legalised for many reasons. Most of it is about getting drugs out of the drug dealers hands. But even more to get a base-level quality. Ecstasy use to be cut with all types of crap including brick dust, ketamine, asprin, sugar, etc, etc. So what your buying could be anything. In the past there was rumours of Ecstasy being sold with a coat of LSD. End of the day, you had no idea.
Ecstasy was new on the scene and was instantly demionised by the press. Then Leah Betts died and all hell broke loose. The notion that she had drunk 7-8 litres of water in 90mins was ignored or never came out till much later. After that the war on drugs went into overdrive and by the mid millennium ecstasy was being replaced by other drugs. The point I guess I’m making is it was never tested in lab conditions to see the full effect, who would be allergic to it and the long term effects.
You could say I’m a total hypocrite because I’ve never taken it and never will. But I’d suggest that I can have an opinion and I’ve seen more that enough use in my time.
In times when I rubbed up against ecstasy use. I’ve never seen anyone die, I have seen some admitted to hospital to have there stomach pumped however, I remember spending time in First Aid with a asthmatic attack talking with a girl who had eaten 11 ecstasy pills (of course who knows what were in them) but she was chatting away and hugging people while chewing her lips off. Not a good thing but certainly not what the war on drugs wants you to see and think.
I welcome the Channel4 trial but to be honest I don’t think it will be scientific enough. Ecstasy has been used for many things in the past including a tool for couples having relationship problems. Fact is street ecstasy is nothing like you see in the lab. This is why I was a massive fan of those people who went to raves and clubs and tested ecstasy in the wild. I was also part of the Drugs Awareness Campaign in Bristol and dj’ed for them in many different venues (good to hear it still exists)
Its all about cutting through the hype, crap and frankly bull. Giving people frank honest information. Something the war on drugs never learned…
It upsets me so many people are fed dis-information saying “Just say no…” Hopefully Channel4 can raise a light to this massive issue.
Coffee shop culture clash
I wrote a while ago about working most Fridays from coffee shops in the northern quarter of Manchester instead of working out of my home.
However someone at work pointed me to this blog post from a guy who is complaining about people treating coffee shops like there personal offices.
Dickheads with cups of coffee so dry they were probably ordered three hours ago. Dickheads reading the tea leaves in their empty glasses. Dickheads with just some free water.
Dickheads with absolutely no sign of having consumed anything except some three-week old canned tomato soup stains on their emo punk pop hip hop band t-shirts, the ones that proved they were at that concert nobody else gave a shit about.
One of them even had the pierced balls to get a banana out of this bag and proceeded to eat it as he scribed the novel he’s never going to publish, looking at his Samsung Galaxy III—iPhones are so passé—at the same time.
And here I was, (delicious) coffee in hand, waiting for my sandwich, with nowhere to eat it. And I wasn’t alone—there were two more people like me. While I waited, three more people came in, and, after looking around fruitlessly for five minutes, left without ever touching ass to chair. I didn’t need telepathic powers to read their minds. DICKHEADS.
To be honest I found the whole thing pretty funny but I do get what he sometimes means. I personally buy and spend too much money at coffee shops including FYG, North Tea Power and Vivid Lounge. So I would agree with all the points the writer makes…
- Buy at least a coffee. Don’t just go ahead and sit there with your computer. If you do the latter, I hope your genitals drop rotten into the toilet bowl one day.
- When you are done with your coffee—it’s ok, take your time, as long as you do it at some reasonable pace—you can stay around for five minutes. Perhaps ten. Then leave.
- If you want to stay longer, buy another coffee. A pastry would be fine too. Perhaps a sandwich. Anything. Whatever. But keep buying things. This is the rent you pay. It’s much less than getting your own office. Or a real apartment.
However I still don’t like places which go out of there way to restrict laptop users.
In Manchester when I first arrived, Teacup and Drip Coffee was a great place to enjoy a chat, read and catch up with some work. Now they both seemed to turn hostile on computer users by taping up plug sockets, messing with the wifi and general snobbery of laptop users. In Teacup you need to be shown a place which makes it too formal for my own liking. But fear not others have stepped in to fill the void.
Interestingly North Tea Power not only fills the void but takes customer service to another level, really encouraging laptop users… Love those guys!
Jamaica’s bolt wins gold on the eve of its 50th Anniversary
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!
London 2012 Olympics
I got to say I’m really surprised how good the London Olympics has turned out. Charlie Brooker wrote this up in the Guardian recently which I can understand.
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…
Is online dating passing its prime?
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 – LSx video
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.
Love of the Self or Data sexuality?
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.