Category: design-and-ideas

Pipeling our reality

Hadn’t really thought hard about how the internet of things and pipe-lining work together. But listening to John Kestner on ITConversations recently, I’ve been re-thinking about some of thoughts around pipe-lining.

Those way back might remember I have a massive thing about pipeling born from my love of using Apache Cocoon and XML. Theres actually a very cool XML syntax called Xproc which I’ve yet to really check out in any detail.

I thought about ways to extend Yahoo! Pipes and declared my love for if this then that. But reaching out into the physical world is something else all together…

“Twine is a wireless module tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. The module has WiFi, on-board temperature and vibration sensors, and an expansion connector for other sensors.” Developer John Kestner describes the device and its development. He reviews how it works, what decisions were made in its design, and how It allows you to connect things to the Internet. He also discusses the community that is working to make the product better.

I saw pachube.com a while ago but never really blogged it or thought hard about it. But you can certainly think about how ifttt and pachube could work together really nicely.

The ability to automate and manipulate the physical world is something very special. I’d certainly like to investigate a little deeper in the near future.

Teresa Valdez Klein – The Art of Subvertising on Facebook

Teresa Valdez Klein is simply amazing for what she did with subverting advertising to tell people actually they are great and don’t need to conform to be great. In this Seattle ignite talk, she outlines her story and what drove her to do it. This is a must watch…

All of us have been conditioned from birth by our families, our friends, and marketers to want (or not want) certain things. And while I’m a big fan of Facebook, I have this theory that it reinforces social conditioning in some pretty insidious ways.
In this talk, I’ll explain how I used Facebook’s self-serve advertising platform to combat the social pressure cooker.

Inspirational… and bloody marvellous…!

Shes so right, being previously on the path to the dream family setup. Its hard for people to understand why you wouldn’t want what they have. Each person puts a tiny piece of social pressure on you, without even knowing it. But what really hurts is the constant hammering that your not this, your not that which advertising can deliver with sometimes devastating effects.

It take a very strong person to reject all this… But even better is when you can inspire others that actually they are great and will become amazing in there own right.

This is also why I love iamido.info…

Working from the Northern Quarter

Three Amigos

Pretty much every week I tend to work away from the office. When I first started getting back to work from #mybrushwithdeath, I would work from home quite a bit but now I’m back full time (since early last year) I’ve found myself working out of the Northern Quarter every week. (for those outside Manchester, the Northern Quarter is like the East end of London. Its full of run down shops and a independent vibe)

Some would say, something like yeah yeah working from the Northern Quarter, yeah yeah really!

But to be honest I tend to get a ton of stuff done on those days when I’m in the Northern Quarter. Maybe even more than I get when I’m at work sometimes. How can that be? I have no idea, till I heard Paul Fenwick on ITConversations.

Situational effects

When I’m in my office, I’m much better at working.

When I’m in the cafe, I’m much better at thinking.

When I’m at home, I like to think I’m better at working on my talks but i’m much better at mindcraft…

It isn’t that I work more effectively out of a coffee shop like North Tea Power than Media City UK. I’m actually experiencing a different kind of workflow while in North Tea Power, a creative work flow. This explains why I wrote most of my techpaper for Perceptive Media while sitting drinking tea. So from my point of view lots of things getting done including adhoc meetings, lovely lunches and interesting discussions.

Of course I’m not saying I don’t get this at work but its certainly quite different…

I’d certainly like to get RescueTime installed (they claim to be creating a official x64 version for Linux very soon) so I can get a better grasp of what I am doing differently… But in the meantime, I’m certainly reaping the benefits of being able to work in different environments, I’d highly recommend more people do the same if ever possible

Talking at TEDxManchester

Geekdinners with Dave Shea

I’m humbled to announce I’ve been asked to talk at TedXManchester…

The first TEDxManchester took place in 2009 at the BBC’s New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road. We took over the historic Studio 7 and converted the BBC Philharmonic’s rehearsal space into a conference venue and created what was then Europe’s largest ever TEDx event.

This year we’re collaborating with our friends at Cornerhouse to bring you the long overdue second edition of TEDxManchester. We hope you find it a stimulating day of full of inspiring ideas, new connections and a lot of enjoyment. We look forward to hosting the growing community of Manchester TEDsters soon.

Its been 3 years since TEDxManchester at BBC Oxford Road which I masterminded. I did wonder why there hasn’t been another TEDxManchester since? Maybe because we really hit a high on the last one? Who knows?

Well the Cornerhouse has picked up the baton and seem to have a great line up of diverse speakers. Unfortunately its already sold out, so either you got a ticket or not. If you have then good on you and look forward to a very different kind of talk than I usually give.

I posted a slide above which might give you an idea (or not) of what I’m going to talk about. I’m pretty proud of my talk and hopefully it will really connect with people.

Chrissy Hammond said this on twitter which really humbled me…

Well last time I heard you speak it was riveting and your enthusiasm was infectious. I can’t believe this would be otherwise.

Leeds Ignite updated to Feb 2nd

Little update to Ignite Leeds…

Part of the LSx series, Ignite Leeds is fast-paced, fun, thought-provoking, social, local, global— a high-energy evening of talks by people who have an idea—and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd.

Check out video of our previous speakers at vimeo.com/channels/igniteleeds

Head on over to igniteleeds2012.eventbrite.co.uk for details of our awesome lineup of speakers! They’ll cover everything from dating etiquette and DIY biology to shooting a film in three days and the secret dreams of your mobile phone…

Mapping the creative industries

Mapping the creative industries

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino has drawn up her first thoughts on the creative industries and how they are connected. It comes from her experience at the V&A’s Power of Making symposium.

In her own words….

As I work my way through my notes on the event, I also wanted to start to unpick who was using the word “make” and what they were making. This is a first stab and not really about creating collaborative connections yet. I might also be missing some things, do let me know. In this, I think we can see where the “creative industries” overlap and therefore where skill sets overlap. This also proves perhaps that one should be quite careful with using any one term. Designer, artists, engineer…when you look close enough, can become one and the same.

I personally think its a great map and a very good stab at a difficult subject. Great to see Artist, Designer, Hacker, Developer, Engineer, Crafts person all given the footing as one another.

I specially like the fact Hacker is sandwiched right between designer and developer… Something I certainly like to class myself as.

Maybe if I was to change two things it would be the notion of 2D and Crafts person. Digital is maybe different from 2D and certainly from 3D. Crafts person strikes me as too descriptive and tied down to a format. However I don’t really have another name to suggest…

Imagine if you could remix books?

Cooking for Geeks cover

There is something about Simon Lumb, something that everytime we chat creative juices start flowing (wipe that smile off your smutty face, you know what I mean)…

Off the back of a conversation in Wagamama about Richard St John’s 8 Traits to be great, which I have a physical signed copy of after a TEDx. We got talking about how I tend to own a physical copy of most books although I also own the ebook version. Then we got talking about Instapaper and Readitlater, how they give you the ability to pull together elements from a range of sources…

Imagine if you could do the same thing as a published book? Remix books!

Books right now are like Albums, but imagine if they were more like singles and EP’s?

They could be like the Mixtape of the written word? Fits perfect with the self publishing trend.

  • Example 1: Custom cookbook. Pick a your favourite menu items and self publish your own cookbook. A bit of Jamie, dash of Heston and a lot of Nigella (yes please). Arrange them into a new type of cook book which is custom for you, or reflects your cooking style. It could be a cookbook for you or for someone else…
  • Example 2: The best of… Many times in the past, people have said the best way to learn about Z is to read chapters Y & X of book W and chapters A, B and C of book D… Want to know the best to learn how to skateboard or surf? I recommend reading my custom book which is made up of… you get the idea
  • Example 3: The best places in the world. Could be a nice mix of places you’ve never been to before, places you inspire to go or places you have been to before. Actually it kind of reminds me of off beat guides, but instead of building it from raw components its from previous decent reviews.
  • Sure there are many more including books for young children, books for different learning styles, etc, etc…

The remix methodology is actually very apt, because instead of building your own from the components, your remixing parts of others. Like a Dj remixing other peoples tunes.

The copyrights framework will be a nightmare to work out (we’re not kidding ourselves about that) but to be honest it could be something like the music rights framework for albums and singles? Might even increase the amount of readership for some books? It could be massive changes, or little changes like the art work in the book. Instead of lovely glossy pictures of food in a cook book, it could be technical diagrams for those more interested in seeing those? Maybe the remixes will cost more than the originals but to the person who gets it, its worth so much more. You get the idea…

Crazy idea? Tell me and Simon why? Maybe you love it and want to run with it? Well all we require is attribution… This idea is open to the world… Run with it and tell us when you get rich by changing the publishing industry. This is what places like Lulu have been crying out for right? Just like… My lifestreaming dating idea and my dreamscape idea. Go get them, change the world or go Lazy web make it so…!

Getting things done with Gnome!

Example of GTG

Why on earth have I never heard about Getting things Gnome?

I’ve been using Wunderlist because it ran on most platforms (more on this soon) and at the time Google Tasks client support was a mess (specially on Linux). Although I always knew it was always the wrong way to go about things, I went with it because I needed to Get things done (pun meant).

Anyway I’ve almost dropped Wunderlist because frankly it was exactly the same application across all platforms which meant it was heavy as hell on certain things (65meg! for a bloody task list?) and what drove me nuts was the fact it couldn’t be installed on 64bit Ubuntu without some serious messing. The only reason I started using it was because it was in the Ubuntu software centre, but after Ubuntu 11.04 it was removed.

Now I’m using Getting Things Gnome on my laptops and syncing to Remember the Milk. I’m also forced to use RTM type applications on my Android in the meanwhile. RTM is the weak link in the chain (it also does some weird things to nested tasks)  and I’m now investigating syncing with Google Tasks and the good old TomboyNotes sync with Ubuntu one again. Ideally I would use GTG on my laptops Tomboynotes to sync and something like Tasko on my Android devices.

Interesting to also see the integration with project hamster, actually thats how I first heard about it… Although its good to hear from Rescuetime they are working on there own linux uploader.

Wouldn’t it be great if Zeitgeist and Project Hamster had a love child?

Following my new years resolutions… I’ve been investigating other means to better track my time and effort.

I still love Rescuetime but getting it to work on Ubuntu has turned into a bit of a task in its self, it would seem. So while I investigate how to get it play nicely in Ubuntu and under Gnome 3. I’ve been looking at alternatives…

The big opensource one seems to be Project Hamster… which has its core in the right place.

But I started thinking why isn’t Gnome Zeitgeist/Activity Manager used instead of a dedicated piece of software? Seems I’m not the only one asking this question… Wonder what the Gnome Zeitgeist team say…

Although I like Project Hamsters ideals, being able to track multiple machines over different operating systems is very useful for someone like me who uses Windows, Android and of course Linux. So I’ve been looking at Time Doctor but the point of view is at odds with what I’m looking for I think. I imagine it would be something my manager could ask me to install.

I think I’ll try and get Rescuetime uploader working… for now…

A vision of Intrusive TV?

There is one sequence in the last episode of Black Mirror, which you got me really thinking (bear in mind there is tons of interesting subjects matters explored in the show)…

A long while ago I coined the term Intrusive TV for a technology which later got renamed to Perceptive Media. Without going into any detail, this is what I’m worried may happen if certain aspects of the technology behind Perceptive Media is taken to its extremes.

Without any details, you can still certainly get a feel for how scary a future were heading towards…

Hopefully YouTube/Google won’t take it down straight away… But if so, watch the whole thing and about 40mins in look out for the sequence when there’s not enough credit to skip or change anything. You will know which bit when you see it…

Oh no… within a few moments I got a email…

Dear cubicgarden,

Your video, Intrusive TV?, may have content that is owned or licensed by Channel 4.

No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.

Sincerely,
– The YouTube Team

Oh well so much for that…