Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Number 9 on the long list of new years resolutions included living a healthy lifestyle.
As part of this I’ve item, I ended up buying 3 new woks. The difference is being they are little mini 8 inch wok’s. There so sweet and mini! The other woks I owned ranged from a middle of the road 12 inch to a massive 15 inch. Hopefully with a smaller wok to cook in, i’ll cook a lot less and end up with smaller portions to eat.
Theres a strange divide in my friends, most won’t connect me with a skateboard but in actual fact in Bristol I was known as the kid with the skateboard.
Ross and Carly decided to buy me a skateboard for Christmas and I’ve finally had a little ride around my flat (the wooden floors make it perfect for doing so).
The next step is to take it out for a ride outdoors, and to be fair Central Manchester is great for skateboarding because its mainly quite flat and everythings not that far on a skateboard. I can also hop on and off the free buses (yes Manchester has a few free buses) if I get tired of skating.
Before you start thinking about ole kickflips and all that. I only really used the skateboard to get around town. I use to travel a total of about 4/5 miles a day going to work in showcase cinema. Then sometimes I would travel back up hill late at night on the skateboard.
Yeah I was pretty much tied to the skateboard and although hanging the skateboard off a wall in my flat was the original idea. I’m getting tempted to go for a quick spin and maybe use it to go to work on.
So after reviewing my 2010 resolutions its time for my 2011 resolutions
Its that time of the year, so first up the review of last year.
During Christmas I thought I’d do some maintenance to blog because I’ve been meaning to clean up a few things for a while. I’m hosting with GoDaddy.com mainly because there cheap and there pretty hassle free.
I had my /wordpress blog which you might have seen stuff like this at. Then I also had storytlr at the root of the cubicgarden domain and a couple other blogs which I was testing things on like mydreamscape. So I deleted the couple of test wordpress blogs and started putting a axe through storytlr (which is a real shame but I could never get the cron to work). Then I noticed there was no blog in the management option for /wordpress. Which meant yes it was either lost somewhere in the management interface or it was gone….
I was generally pissed off with Godaddy for not making it clear which blog I was deleting. Worst of all, its all happening on bloody Christmas day, when I should be relaxing not wondering what happen to my bloody blog. I almost canceled my contract with Godaddy right there and then, I got a message from the Godaddy twitter account with some somewhat useful information.
So anyway although I wasn’t able to recover everything back to how it was before, I now have a new blog and lifestream.
I had a backup of my blog from Mid December and I’ve been using Disqus for comments so pretty much everything up till then was safe. All the blog entries I usually write in Blogilo, and I had a backup of all the recent entries. So it was just a matter of digging them out and publishing them again with the correct date stamp.
The first thing you will notice is that the /wordpress is now gone (yeh!) and the lifestream is now finally working (double yeh!).
But….
There is still a lot of work to do. I still need to design the bloody thing and this time I’m hoping to do a proper job. On top of that I’m going to sort out all the external links to my life all over the web, so there all linked here in some logical fashion.
I also need to link up ianforrester.org to my lifestream and add in lots of lovely embedded goodness into my pages.
It was certainly quite hairy at one point but it kind of worked out… Happy Christmas everyone…
Doc Searls writes about intelligence on his blog. But he talks about sleep too…
Smart people SLEEP LATE yells the headline of this opinion piece in the Winnipeg Free Press. It begins,
Sleep is a fundamental component of animal biology. New evidence confirms that, in humans, its timing reflects intelligence. People with higher IQs (intelligence quotients) tend to be more active nocturnally, going to bed later, whereas those with lower IQs usually retire to bed sooner after nightfall.
After that Doc Searls launches into a discussion about what is IQ and how silly the whole notion of a IQ really is… But what got me was the idea of sleeping late and waking up late.
Since #mybrushwithdeath, back in May/June I’ve been changing my lifestyle around. One of those changes is to do with my time I go to bed. Before I would generally go to bed about 2-3am and wake up about 10am on a week day and on a weekend sometimes go to bed about 9am and wake up about 2pm. Yeah quite shocking… But now I’m going to bed about 12am and getting up about 9am everyday (even weekends).
However things are starting slip, not purposely. Although I’m sticking to the new routine, I’m finding once again that I’m much more productive late evening and at night. I don’t know why, I just am.
I got a feeling I’m fighting nature/biology on this one.
Islington wharf where I now live now has a fantastic communal garden (which I’ve been using to read my kindle and play with my pacemaker) and I thought it would be a grand idea to have a party in the garden for all the residences of islington wharf.
So the plan is to have the party and allow people to bring a couple of friends with them. I will lay on a bit of party snacks (I got plenty left over from my flat warming party back in September) and everyone will bring there own drinks. On top of that, there will be two contests, one for the best carved pumpkin and another for the best fancy dress on the day. I’ve roped ISIS’s hollie into supplying the pumpkins and maybe supplying some really nice prizes on the night to the winners.
Finally I thought it might be nice to have a organised trick or treat for the kids of islington wharf. Get everyone ready with treats and go around the flats with a couple of adults to supervise the whole thing. I’m not sure how many kids there are in the flats but I’ve seen a couple playing in the garden since I’ve been here. Its slightly ambitious but even if we get 10% of the residents down on Sunday night, thats still over 20 people.
So why am I doing this?
Well when I first saw the location the garden was certainly a selling point. I really wanted a balcony but I gladly gave it up for a communal garden which I could relax in and share with others. I’ve seen a few people using the garden but not nearly as many as I would have thought. The thing about flats is they have a rep for being impersonal and loney places where people tend to not talk to each other as they leave there flats. In actual fact Tracey Langford said it in her recent interview for east manchester.
Tracey, who runs her own business, says the idea of a community appealed to them too: “We didn’t want to live in an soulless place where nobody spoke in the lift.” She adds, “We also wanted a high proportion of owner occupiers so that people really cared about the building. There is a mix of properties here with houses that face on to the communal garden, which are ideal for younger families.”
And that communal aspect prevails. Says Tracey, “In fact, the first Islintgon Wharf baby was born here a couple of months ago and the whole building was invited to the first birthday party of one of our residents!”
Its all about Community
Community, yep the big C word. Its one of those things which is very hard to just do, it needs to be organic. But fear not, this is just one of the ideas I have to bring people together. ISIS haven’t done a bad job so far but theres certainly some room for improvement. The next logical step I think is to sort out the community forum which is currently hosted on a external site somewhere. I signed up to join the forum ages ago and my membership is still pending (even after months).
My neighbor across the hallway is talking about setting up another better supported forum but I’m wondering why we don’t just setup a facebook group? Although to be fair it seems I’m not the only one who thought about this. The tricky part in a community is getting everyone on the same page (or getting the word out about the site), this requires actual physical work like putting up posters and speaking to people, something which seems to be sadly missing it seems.
ISIS should be involved in the community process too, but not be the driver of the process. It needs to come from the community/residents its self.
So I’m hoping to improve on the community building which has already started. I can’t say it will translate into sales for ISIS but for me this isn’t about that. Its about building a lovely place to live. I already live in a amazing place with some great views and great architecture but in this case, theres nothing wrong with wanting more. A rich vibrant community of caring people who I can share a wine with in the garden? I’m working on it one step at a time…
When I left the hospital after my bleed on my brain (Subarachnoid haemorrhage). I tried to pick up where I left off in many things including ebay selling and got really ignited me when I found out that one of the sellers i was meant to send a pc to had given me negative feedback. That was ok but then ebay changed my 100% positive score to something like 75%. I tried to get them to change it in multiple ways but nothing worked. However have a talk with a friend who works at ebay/skype I was able to talk to someone who actually understood what i was saying.
It looks like it worked because I can’t seem to find the negative feedback and my general score on ebay is back to 100%.
I just sold my Sony Ereader for £100+ and there were 51 people watching the auction. While when I sold my phone just after I came out of hospital, I got all of 5 people watching it.
Not only that…
I booked tickets to see Malcolm Gladwell before I went into hospital (of course I never knew I was going to be in hospital) of course the day of Malcolm Gladwell was on the week I was lying in bed almost dying. I booked 5 tickets mainly for people at work. Anyway I missed it but my friend Emily did go even though I had the tickets (she bought a full ticket on the day).
Anyway I spoke to the Lowry box office afterwards and they said theres little they can do because the tickets were non-refundable. Anyhow I wrote to the Lowry and they sent me a letter back saying how sorry they were to hear about my bleed on the brain and here’s 5 tickets to any performance in the next year (as long as its not Saturday).
Amazing and Thanks to the Lowry…
They didn’t have to do this but they did. How’s that for customer service?!
Some of you know I have a couple of great fears in my life.
I’ve been bitten by dogs many times, the last time I was walking along a quiet street and a little yappy dog came out of the front garden where the owner was cutting the hedge. Walked across the road and came up behind me, then bite me on my lower right leg! Then ran off back inside. The owner instantly ran over and took me to hospital in a car.
But for my fear of dogs, living with one for over a year was one heck of a challenge. Yep after marrying my ex-wife, she brought her dog (jack) over to the UK. I got use to him after a while, and although I’m still fearful of them I’m not so bad now. However my fear of needles has never been damped in actual fact it maybe gotten worst over time.
So why the fear?
So yep I’m seriously terrified, and trust me I got more storys/experiences.
Hypnotherapy
I’ve been carrying this fear for ages and well frankly I was willing to try anything to get over it. I even considered taking drugs to numb the effects of the needle. So I decided before I go to such extremes I should try hypnotherapy.
I asked the team of physiotherapist at Manchester Hospital and they suggested I check out a portal site for hypnotherapy. Having found a couple in central Manchester, I sent out emails and Shannon douglas from Mind body balance studio, replied with a nice email suggesting I come in for a free session to discuss everything. So I did and thats where it all started.
Shannon is a interesting ex-pat Australian, shes relatively young, very thin, some would say attractive and quite charming. When I say charming, I don’t mean in a creepy, social engineering type of way. Actually shes more innocent and caring that I imagined. My natural barrier were very high when I first stepped in the room but I started to relax with everything that she said. What really got me was the fact that she was newly registered on the NHS referral index and that she could do it in 3 sessions (each session being 1 hour long).
After the first session, Shannon put me under for about 20mins. It seemed like 5mins. (when I say put me under, I really mean put me in a very relaxed state where I’m more receptive to external ideas, it not like how you imagine hypnosis to be (stage hypnosis for example) its quite relaxing and your mind won’t do anything you don’t want to do. Its like giving up smoking, you can only really do it if you REALLY want to) The great thing is that the sessions are recorded and Shannon puts them on Cd for you to listen to later in your own home. She recommends listening to them everyday between the sessions. Its works well because you can really relax in your own home and listen carefully to Shannons voice.
Funny enough Shannon uses a dj app (Virtual dj) to mix between tunes when your under as she reads aloud the pre-paired personalised script. Shannon’s great at what she does but shes not very technically savvy, We did talk about ways to improve her web profile but thats for another day. Back to the therapy and I’ll skip to the last session.
The last session
In the last session (the bridge session, as I’ll call it) Shannon asked me to look around the room afterwards. I noticed the sharps bin (yellow) behind her massive microscope. I also started wondering why she had the sharps bin and the massive microscope. Anyway she explained she does Blood analysis too and showed me what was in the bin. There were these little grey cartridges which Shannon showed me had a needle in it. They were small and very compact. I played with one for a while and Shannon showed me how it works by pushing the orange stick in and twisting it off. Then she pricked her finger by pressing the button and put the blood on a slide which went under the microscope.
It was amazing to see the blood cells so close up, I’ve never seen them like that before and Shannon pointed out certain things in her own blood. You could see tons of red blood cells, white blood cells and many more parts (I wasn’t that bothered what was there, just seeing them so close up, got me going). Anyway, I started wondering what my own blood looks like. My curiosity has just over taken my fear and I think Shannon knew this or at least identified this. The only thing was that I would need to give myself a blood test if I was going to find out.
So after a long long time, I plucked up enough courage to do it. I was almost crying before I did it but I did it!
The relief of doing it was almost unbearable, it was like something had been lifted off of me. Shannon was amazed and was close to tears herself, as she said,
"You’ve come such a long way, in such a short time. Carrying around all that fear for decades must have been debilitating… I’m so proud of you"
And honestly I believe she really meant it.
My Fear is gone?
So is it gone? Well not exactly… But I feel much more at ease with the idea of injections. I can now also watch a blood test on the TV without turning away like I use to. I still don’t like it but in my mind everything seems a lot clearer that before. Its like the grey cloud has been broken up into small manageable chunks. Its all very impressive and I’m sure the Cds will come in useful for future events.
The power of the mind is unmeasurable, this is part of the reason why I’m so interested in the flickr for dreams startup, mydreamscape. As Cob
b in inception says,
"planting a seed in someone’s mind could define a man; change him"
Shannon’s hyponotherapy certainly has helped me change my perspective on this fear I’ve been living with for decades. I wish I had it done it years ago. Thank you Shannon, I hope things pick up for you, but doing some of the things I suggested might help too. This is a giant step forward and my life will change for ever more because of this…
We got a note in our letter boxes on Thursday that the window cleaners would be doing our block on the weekend. I did wonder how they were going to do it because the top of Islington Wharf is not level or very friendly for window cleaners. Actually after a talk with the window cleaning team, they are actually using the penthouse gardens on the top floor to tie there ropes, hardly ideal. The building is also a weird shape, making cleaning it even more of a challenge that say something like Beetham Tower. Although they did point out that the over hang certainly makes things tricky. Islington Wharf has lots of overhangs and angles, so it requires many “drops” according to the window cleaners.
I took a load of shots with my new Nikon d40x. Nice guys and what a job, I certainly wouldn’t do it, my fear of heights would be a killer.
So I’ve finally got the new flat about right, there was plenty of unpacking and even more putting together of furniture thanks to my great parents and lovely friends Sheila and Glyn (who traveled all the way up from London to see me and help me move in, I will never forget that)
I just last Friday put up the last piece of Ikea furniture (the Lack coffee table) and shifted things around in the flat. I expect theres plenty more shifting needed for everything to fit and work in the spaces I have put them in. I still have a ton of flatten Cardboxes in my main bathroom because the recycling is totally filled up and there too large to take somewhere else for recycling.
One of the best parts about the new flat is the amazing view I have in the main room. There is 2 walls of double glazed glass so you really get a fantastic view of North East Manchester (including the New Islington area aka Ancoats). I can easily see the Manchester City stadium, Chips (the weird shaped urban splash flats), 3Towers (another urbansplash set of buildings), Tutti Furti (the self build scheme), Royal Mills flats, the new east Manchester tram line and lots more. On a clear day, you can see the mountains/hills which are the start of the pennines which split Leeds from Manchester. The clouds are also pretty amazing at this height. You can almost see the rain clouds coming in slowly and the thunder storm we recently had was pretty impressive. You could almost see the lightning hit the ground in some places. Wish I had found my camera earlier, as it was simply stunning.
So if you didn’t know already, I bought this place. So I’m now a home owner again. I won’t say how much I got the flat for but its a very reasonable deal with the old governments homebuy scheme. Unfortunately I can’t recommend it much because the new government got rid of it on the 1st August. Its a good scheme no wonder they killed it off. Either way, my monthly mortgage is well below my rent for the other place, I’m actually quite shocked how low it is. Of course its fixed for the next few years, which should give me plenty of time to re-morgage at a lower rate in the future.
All in all, I’m really enjoying the new pad at islington wharf and friends of me look out for the flatwarming party which will most likely take place in the secret garden instead of my flat. If the weather keeps up, I might turn it into a massive bbq instead….
The sad thing is although it was quite stressful getting the boxes neatly on to the 6 shopping carts (maximizes space otherwise I would need even more) I actually quite enjoyed it till I saw the bill at the end! By that point I was beyond caring…
All that shopping was just the big stuff that I couldn’t carry home on my scooter. Tomorrow i’ll get the stuff which I can easily fit in a car, such as rugs, bins etc. I don’t expect it to be anywhere near the amount I spent today
My friends keep asking why I don’t use facebook? And I always respond with some quite crushing comments about the walled garden of facebook and the mentality of facebook users. Anyway once we get past that they usually ask me whats so great about Twitter? I usually respond by saying its open and public which means there isn’t this closed walled garden to hide behind. Some of my friends who have been paying attention usually say, “well I don’t want everyone reading what I write.” Then I throw in an example where having the public discourse is actually a good thing.
That example is now famously called “the Japanese babe” example. Unfortunately with twitter making changes to the way things are archived it may get lost, so I thought I’d highlight it on my blog so others can also use it as a example of the open web vs the closed web and or even why twitter is very powerful compare to facebook.
So I was on a train heading back from London going to Manchester. The train was busy but not crammed. I think I was sitting next to a old lady most of the journey till we got to stoke on trent. At stoke on trent things cleared up and the lady left, leaving me a whole table with plug for my laptop to myself. Anyway, the next stop a woman came aboard and I couldn’t help but notice her, she was Japanese and very attractive.
She sat down at the seat opposite me and smiled briefly, asking if the seat was free then put her laptop down and put on some headphones. She shifted around a bit and her legs touched mine under the table. She said sorry then shifted her’s while in the meantime I shifted mine too. We collided again and again saying sorry each time. In the end she settled on a position between my feet, not quite touching but close enough.
We both laughed about the footsie situation we had landed ourselves in and she put her headphones back on. She was listening to something in Japanese. How did I know? She had plugged the headphones into the wrong port on her laptop or she had dual audio ports like mine. Anyway I ended up taking off my headphones and telling her that her audio was playing out loud so everyone could hear it.
Once again she smiled and shifted her feet, so we went through the footsie thing again.
Some of you are thinking what the hell has this got to do with twitter, well hold on I’m getting there.
So we traveling to Manchester, cute lady sitting opposite me and we’ve played footsie a little bit but not much else has happened. So I decide to twitter the situation I’m in.
Unfortunately Twitter.com no longer gives you access to old tweets you may have written so I can not link to any of them. Bad form twitter!
Anyway that tweet when out and lots of people saw it, much more that I expected. Because I received lots of replies with helpful information on how I should get the ladies attention without sounding like a cock.
End of the day a guy (wish I could remember his twitter name) suggested I write on the back of a business card…
hajimemashite watashinwa. Ian desu. dozo yoroshiku
which translates to,
How do you do? My name is Ian Nice to meet you (or please be good to me).
…and slide it across the table to her.
Obviously I had no idea what it translated to and was very skeptical of doing it in case it said hi i’m ian and I’m a cock or I want to shag the pants off you or something like that. Anyway after much going back and forth with people on twitter, there was a consensuses that the mystery reply was ok enough to do. Although some people were saying don’t do it, it reads something unsightly.
So I took out a business card and wrote on the back of it the phase. With one more twitter message and lots of people saying do it! I slid the card across the table and she took off her headphones and read it. We had already hit stockport which is just outside of Manchester so we getting ready to depart the train. But she giggled nervously when she read the card, and turned to me and said…
“This is very sweet of you but I got a boyfriend already and he’s coming to pick me up from Manchester station, sorry…”
By this point the train had pretty much arrived in Manchester Piccadilly, so I had to close down my laptop and cut off twitter which meant everyone who had been wait to hear what had happened, had to wait even longer (twitter on the mobile phone in the uk was rare, plus my data plan was weekend and evenings only). She smiled sweetly at my attempt but got up and left just before I did. Later on the platform, I saw her with a guy and another girl. I just did a little slow nod to say “take care” and she smiled back. That was the last I ever saw of her.
When I finally got back online, twitter was reaching fever pitch with people wanting to know what had happened. I explained what had happened over multiple tweets and there was a lot of people saying good on for me doing it.
I have to say that a lot of them came from people who either heard about it on the public timeline (a few), checked out the strange trending topics (a few more) or saw the re-tweets from others (many). For the rest of the day I was saying thanks to people for there comments and encouragement.
The open web almost helped with my love life. Now thats something a lot of people can’t say. Imagine if it was Facebook, I would have got all my friends advice but none of them can speak or at least write Japanese. So the opportunity would have gone up in smoke, plus having loads of strangers willing you to do it really gets you going. This is something which can only really happen on the open web.
So why now am I telling this tale? Well I’m moving flat and I found the business card with the writing on the back. It is a shame I can’t link to all the tweets made during that period of time on the train, but you can imagine what it was like. It certainly made me think a lot more about social media. In actual fact it was one of the drivers for my twitter dating service – tweet foxxy or tweethookup (as it was first called), which I later sold the concept of after my talk at ignite Leeds in 2009. I’m actually surprised this is the first time I wrote this down?
So this is the view I’ll be seeing a lot more of in the very near future. It is the view looking northward across the Ancoats, i mean new islington area which I learned on Saturday use to be the home of the italians who moved to Manchester in the early 20th century. Of course I’m nice and high in the islington wharf block of apartments. I would have like to have been on the other side but it was an extra £10k to be on the south side with a balcony. Hey at least I get to see the Manchester City stadium (sport city) and the rest of new islington including the planned beach which meant to be put in just next to Chips (the two tone block of apartments in the middle of the picture).
So to go with the floor to ceiling windows, is two bedrooms a nice large lounge with kitchen and two bathrooms. There’s also a huge community garden for everyone in the building. I took advantage of the governement scheme which is now ending this weekend. Basically its a interest free loan for 30% of the property while you put in 65% in a mortgage and 5% via a deposit. Its a good deal because the loan is interest free for 5 years then you can either pay it back via the sale of the flat or pay it back slowly at a low interest rate.
I get the keys on Thursday, so only a week now and everything seems to be swimming along nicely. Thanks in part to my sister (Sharon) and Billie Wilde (my estate agent and mortgage advisor). Billie kept trying to get hold of me on my mobile phone but couldn’t get through due to #mybrushwithdeath. So in the end my sister picked up the call and got back to Billie with the bad news about me being in hospital with the bleed on the brain. Billie informed everyone involved and held the mortgage for as long as she could.
When I was well enough to continue the flat buying process she came to my house with everything to sign before I went to Bristol. If Billie and Sharon had not done what they had, I would have lost the flat for sure or at least the mortgage which would have been a real lost. So thank you to both of them, I’m very happy to pay the small fee to Billie because she really did over and above what she needed, to make sure I got the mortgage and ultimately the flat. And of my sister for being my caring sister. I owe you one, hope you enjoy the flip camera I bought you.
Yes in Inkscape at full scale (1:1) using lots of layers (12 to be exact). Each square is a meter squared by the way and I got the chance to look around my flat earlier this week, so I got the measurements and photos then.
