Category: just-plain-life

Gatecrashing a party with confidence

Tim Dobson is on a roll recently, another recommendation sparks a quick blog post.

Not sure what the programme is but its fascinating to see the gatecrasher techniques being used on camera. This also plays on the ability for most people not wanting to see conflict. If you can push through the imposer syndrome somethingwhich was talked about at the recent BraCamp by Technancy. Gain some confidence I can certainly see it working.

The lack of conflict can lead to situations like compliance (which is a true story), I wonder how much further he could have gone with the gatecrash? Maybe order more drink, order more food, leave without paying? Who knows? Dare I say, its worth looking at The Psychology of Being Scammed.

Ok! The dark side left alone, this reminds me of the fun challenges Celeb and 40days does. I saw him at TedXManchester3 and thoughts about pushing yourself outside your comfort zone was fascinating.

Tim asked if I could do this?

I would give it a go, but to be fair I can’t imagine i’d get far because I don’t quite have the tolerance for ignoring things. The lady not buying anything would have me walking away, heck I would have bailed and said “oh my goodness wrong table, sorry guys…” with a cheeky grin of course… Although I have gatecrashed parties and leaving do’s before.

Interestingly Alan told me at BraCamp, the timeline of how the BBC CodeClub hoax got going and how Raspberry Jam and Hack to the Future grew and grew. It started by gatecrashing a leaving party for George Auckland in MMU.

It goes to show… gatecrash but do it for good!

Coma hallucinations and dreams

030423-N-6967M-090

Its almost 4 years since mybrushwithdeath. And about this time is when I tend to remember how lucky I am and of course remember what happened during that whole period. As I say in the TEDxManchester2 Talk, that whole period is pretty much blank but I do kind of remember some of the dreams I had.

From Mindhacks,

Intensive Care Medicine has published a wonderfully written and vivid account from a teenager who spent time brain injured and hallucinating in an intensive care unit.

The writer describes how he was admitted to intensive care at the age of 15 after suffering a head injury and had intense and bizarre hallucinations which are, as we know now, surprisingly common in critical care patients.

Have to agree, when I was in ICU, I had some crazy dreams and hallucinations. The weird part is looking back on what I can remember, some parts I starting to question they were actually real. I won’t talk about my dreams because they were disturbing and slightly worrying.

But a couple weird things which I assume were hallucinations include thinking how super clean the hospital was, in my head a cleaner would clean every hour regardless of the time or day. Somewhere along the line, I also thought the hospital was owned by Google (I assume the Google IO and Google Health must have been  more than just playing on my mind)

I remember having a real conversation about USB/HDMI power and the maximum load with Tim at some point? Heaven knows why…

I knew when something really nasty was going to happen. I could always hear the same alarm going off. It was a signal for the monsters to appear, for the centipede to attack, for bombs to be dropped, I would be sacrificed…I was very afraid.

I guess the scary part looking back is the blend from reality to mild hallucinations. I wasn’t seeing stuff coming out the wall or anything like that but I certainly had some odd thoughts about the world cup based on my curtain which surrounded my bed in ICU (a few weeks before it had even started). Maybe I was picking up on something being talked about or something?

Its interesting to hear how common hallucinations are in ICU, I assumed it was just the high powered drugs.

Ride out with the Autographer camera


View Larger Map

A while ago I went for a ride out across to Sheffield with the Autographer camera. I went over the Woodhead pass and back via Snakes pass. Some of the images are wonderful and it would be great to share them on a map using something like Flickr, Strava or elsewhere?

Photoblogging with the Autographer

However I found out that the autographer doesn’t actually add the geotags to the photos directly. Instead it creates a file which a desktop application reads and adds to the photos directly afterwards. Its a bit weird because almost all camera phones support geotagging directly so you would have thought the autographer would also do the same?

Photoblogging with the Autographer

I like the Autographer because it writes most things to the storage like you would expect a camera to do. Making it highly usable on Linux. However the lack of geotagging without the application is painful and seems a oversight. I can’t understand what they were thinking… Yes additional data might not work in the EXIF data stream but geotags are very common now.

If I was to do it again, I would do it with a GoPro and mount it somewhere better than around my neck. Seen quite a few riders with them strapped to the helmet, which makes the most sense.

Relating to dyslexia

Albert Einstein - Dyslexic and most recognized and well-known scientists

I was reading wired.com’s post about Dyslexia from a while ago and it almost had me in tears on the tube today. Why? Because I related to so much of it, it was freaky.

Interconnected reasoning is another kind of strength. These connections can be relationships of likeness — analogies for example — or causal relationships, or the ability to shift perspective and view an object or event from multiple perspectives, or the ability to see the “gist” or big-picture context surrounding an event or idea. Many dyslexics work in highly interdisciplinary fields or fields that require combining perspectives and techniques gained from different disciplines or backgrounds. Or they’re multiple specialists, or their work history is unusually varied. Often these individuals draw the comment that they can see connections that other people haven’t seen before.

This is one of my biggest things. I see the world in a connected way (for example the post about the singularity and diversity) and I find it hard to explain to others but in my head it makes sense. The tools I’m told to use limit me and drive me insane (don’t get me started on having to separate my life and manage two calendars, thankfully I opted out of that crap)

Here comes one of those connections… I have been looking for a way to do collaborative mindmapping. I love google docs but a document is sometimes limiting. I have looked around and found quite a few commercial mindmapping tools but then I found mindmup which is open source. And with some experimentation the other day, I got it working with Google Drive in a realtime collaborative way. Expect more mind maps in the future now.

But back to that post…

Wired: Would you want to be dyslexic if you could choose to be?
Brock: Absolutely! It’s a phenomenal kind of wiring.

This one really got me. For all the people telling me I’m doing it wrong, correcting my writing, etc, etc… Its made me a stronger person. A person with a super strong personality, self confident about my own ability and weaknesses. I have to admit even with the hard time I got at home and at school, I wouldn’t change a thing. Its part of who I am, and I can’t imagine not being dyslexic.

I luckily grew up in the technological revolution meaning I could cope through reliance on technology. If I was a generation earlier, it would be a different story.

I do wonder what difference it would have made if I had been correctly diagnosed in junior school? Rather that 10 years later while doing my dissertation at Ravensbourne. The test of half a day was intense but finally the results were posted to me later and as I always knew, I was pretty badly dyslexic.

I’ll be keeping an eye on dyslexicadvantage as I’d certainly like to improve on my already quite unique skillset.

I think I saw you on Tinder?

Tinder costume

To be honest its happened a few times, not just tinder but other virtual places like my experience with TV and dating.

It could be awkward for many. But to be honest for myself, as I’m deadly truthful its doesn’t come as a shock that it is.. really me.

The last time this happened was at FutureEverything’s opening party. Unfortunately I was rushing off, so the women in question said hi and pointed out our friend in common.

Other people have come up on dating sites and I have recognised them and learned a tiny bit more about them. Of course no names… But people from work and other places. The tricky part is pretending they didn’t come up and saying nothing?

Some of them have lied about different things like height, age, where they work, etc. A couple I have spoke to and asked them why they feel the need to tell little and not so little while lies? My thoughts is something to do with a mix of social pressures and self-esteem issues. Its a shame really.

Freemium dating gone horrifically wrong

Online Dating for Bears

Lunch time at work is a interesting experience. Somehow we got into a discussion about online dating and Elizabeth asked me what kind of sites I’m on, out of curiosity. I mentioned I only do free dating sites and before you knew it we were on to a discussion about freenium dating sites vs paid sites.

The logic seems to conclude that a paid for sites would attract a better match, however in my own experience this is not true. Actually the opposite seems to apply, with the tricks the paid for dating sites pull on you. But we started wondering… If you were really evil or lack in moral judgment, what kind of things would you do?

Here’s some suggestions,

  1. Default all profiles would be ugly (there was a suggestion of green on brown with comic sans) unless you pay for colour changes and font faces changes.
    There would be a charge for every character over 320 characters (it was suggested 140 actually). Bit like plenty of fish’s extended profile.
  2. Depending on the time of the month certain words would cost less and more. Of course there would be a algorithm working out the most likely used words in profiles. But the cost would be reversed, as to charge the most for those words in their prime like selfie. Likewise Phrases go down in price depending on over use of the word across the site.
  3. There would only be allowed one photo like eBay use to have. More photos can be added at a cost of course. Oh and the one photo would be restricted to 256 colours and a size of 640×480. If you need colour, you can choose a animal photo which best represents you. One photo to impress… make it a good one.
  4. Messages can only be accessed on the site or the application. There will be strict limits of 10 meg storages and of course all messages will be monitored and fiddled with. So there will be no swearing, rude or lude content (lots of dating sites do this to kill off email and phone number exchange in messages). It would also have the right to change words and sentences to aid with communication. Well I say aid but expect all type of nonsense and mucking around.
  5. All messages will start at 200 characters maximum and grow by 10 characters based on the messages exchange. You
  6. Matching algorithms will be switch depending on paid membership. If you want the super-dooper algorithm you got to pay. And remember you have no idea how good it is till you try it out, at which you are offered the mega search for another upgrade in membership… Of course this time it includes advance options, thankfully. Okcupid already has multiple methods/algorithms for search and some are only accessible to paid members.
  7. Conditions for using the site is allowing the site to have access to your Facebook account. Not just for authentication but so it can read and write to your friends. If you want to stop the spamming, you need to pay for the yearly membership. Remember when Plaxo and many others did this to convince your friends to join?
  8. Don’t even get me started on adverts, you never seen adverts like this before, well maybe. Not only will you see them on the site, but also in your facebook timeline because you allowed us to do so, duhhh stupid…! Of course we could hijacking your cookies for even more fun, unless you pay the subscription money but that would be so… wrong!
  9. Feeling the pitch when it comes to the matches, well don’t worry most of them will be automated bots sent to lure you into paying even more or at least another few months of subscription. Hummm where did I hear this before?
  10. Of course our starred profiles will be ranked highly and you will need to digg through those before you get to the cheapskates. As a free user, you will have to do this with no sort and no option of how many users per page. Good luck with that…
  11. Did I forget to say, how our search doesn’t work correctly for free users. You will have to search through male and female users from all over the world till we can find a way to fix it. Of course paid users get access to the beta server which does support these (some people say) essential things.
  12. Random username allocation. Don’t like your username which was randomly given to you? Well if you pay the money, you can change it. Don’t pay, and you will have to put up with snugglemuffin666 or even snddjoidjidb81.

I could go on but frankly you go the picture. Some sounds a little crazy while others you may recognise from being on paid for dating sites. Free dating sites are rarer than they should be, but the freemium sites are going to be the next big thing. Don’t believe me? Look at Tinder.

OkCupid protest for equal marrage rights…

Okcupid protest for equal gay rights

Good on OkCupid! Text reads…

Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.

Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.

Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.

If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.

However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid:

Rollercoasters the safest moment of impeding doom

On the eve of me riding the smiler at Alton Towers, I saw this video and thought absolutely! That massive rush of adrenaline I get when riding roller-coasters is so great. Its really makes you feel so alive,  because as they say… Nothing makes you feel more live that being so close to that moment of impeding doom but without over stepping the mark…

Can explicit big data replace implicit chemistry?

20130101 Experimenting with a Lott's Chemistry Set c.1956

I’m happy to say the BBC News business section has a piece which I found via Zoe,  Is big data dating the key to long-lasting romance? Of course I have many thoughts about this whole piece including the memory that I still need to read Love in the Time of Algorithms.

Dating agencies like OKCupid, Match.com – which acquired OKCupid in 2011 for $50m (£30m) – eHarmony and many others, amass this data by making users answer questions about themselves when they sign up.

Some agencies ask as many as 400 questions, and the answers are fed in to large data repositories. Match.com estimates that it has more than 70 terabytes (70,000 gigabytes) of data about its customers.

Applying big data analytics to these treasure troves of information is helping the agencies provide better matches for their customers. And more satisfied customers mean bigger profits.

US internet dating revenues top $2bn (£1.2bn) annually, according to research company IBISWorld. Just under one in 10 of all American adults have tried it.

Just look at those numbers! 1.2bn a year and 70 Terabytes of data plus its growing all the time! You can just imagine the shareholders hovering up the profits… However this is all explicit data, stuff you got to type in. Stuff that people tell porkies about, specially when having to fill in 400 questions…!

Dr Zhao’s algorithm can then suggest potential partners in the same way websites like Amazon or Netflix recommend products or movies, based on the behaviour of other customers who have bought the same products, or enjoyed the same films.

The facebook angle is good and recognised by the likes of Tindr and Grindr. Collaborative filtering of people implicit actions is good but its still not the missing element, aka chemistry.

We already know there is something to the theory that opposites attract. How does this work when your algorithm is based on matching? You almost need a inverse of that but you need to understand human needs and wants, and thats not as simple as copying what we do. Its the whole don’t do what I say and don’t do what I do problem? Imagine somewhere someone is looking at this thing in a totally different way, via a different lens. Because frankly I think all the explicit and implicit data in the world won’t describe why people get together. It looks to be unquantifiable and thats quite surprising from someone like me.