Rescue time meet Arya

Arya

Rescuetime are meant to be working on a Linux version of their plugin but while we wait others are eating into their area.

We’ve already seen how Zeitgiest and Project Hamster could work together really nice. But this time theres another contender with some interesting ambitions…

Arya…

Arya is a simple Gnome 3 Shell extension that adds up how much time you spend using each of your applications. It’s not very fully featured yet, but in the future it will hopefully be a useful extension.

Things to come

  • Pretty graphs to show app usage over time
  • Activity level monitoring to suggest when you should take a break

Sounds like something else I’ve heard before… right? Rescuetime…?

If I was rescuetime I would get my hooks into Ayra now and either support Rescuetime inside of Ayra or use the source code to create your own plugin…

I know its only Gnome3 but maybe like Unity App-indicators it can work across different linux shells?

Barber Boutique: Therapy for men

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)

Fan Art on everything…

I love movies and decided a long time ago to hang them in my living room instead of the usual pictures.

However recently I’ve grown tired of the movie posters. There always too brash in my mind or don’t include the parts which are movie defining.

I got the idea a while ago to blow up Fan Art using Rasterbator and then replace my crappy movie posters with them. It might seem slightly cheeky but if I’m not replacing any of the attribution and I’ll happily point to where I got the art. I know Deviantart do sell poster sizes of some of the art but I quite like the rugged non-descript way Rasterbator makes Fan art.

So for my first piece I did one for Inception…

I used PosteRazor which is one of the most ugly linux apps I’ve ever used (but it does the job) and created a A2 sized poster out of some excellent Fan Art. Then bought an Ikea frame.

The result is…

Inception poster

And this is only the start… Not bad for the first attempt, although the line up isn’t right and I’m not so happy with the framing…

Certainly like the idea of changing the art around every once in a while too…

Perceptive Media presentation at the EBU, Copenhagen

Copenhagen

I really enjoyed my time in Copenhagen… It kind of reminded me of a combination of Berlin, Amsterdam and Stockholm. I had wished I had more time there for many reasons.

Copenhagen Archtecture

So what was I doing there? Well me and Tony Churnside were asked a while after that presentation at SMC_MCR by the European Broadcasting Union (they run the Eurovision song contest I’ve heard) if we would offer a unique look at a possible future for broadcasting. Originally we said no because the idea wasn’t fully formed (hence the early thinking) but it became clear we might have a demo which we could maybe show. That demo of course is still under-wraps and we hope to reveal it to the world soon enough (keep an eye on the BBC R&D Blog for more details). It was well received and it certainly got people thinking, talking and wanting much more. And yes it is Perceptive Media…

EBU campfire reference

On top of doing the presentation and heading up a question and answer session with Tony, we got a good chance to see the rest of the summit and speak to many TV related people. Its amazing what our European public broadcaster friends are doing. Thanks to the always busy but super smart Nicoletta Iacobacci (who also uses troublemaker in her job title) from the EBU who was the one who invited us and made us feel very comfortable. Of course the amazing Mia Munck Bruns, who I had the joy of sharing my love for good cocktails with on the last night.

Cocktails in Copenhagen

We also got to see parts of Copenhagen but we were mainly in Ørestad. I could only see the one of the moutain dwellings  as talked about in the Channel4 documentary recently from a far, but it looked very impressive. And to be honest the architecture and design effort in Copenhagen was amazing… It was like walking through Stockholm or the pages of Inhabatit.

When we first arrived (our flight was 2 hours delayed) I had a massive headcold and couldn’t hear out of my right ear due to not flying well. But we walked straight into a session involving media study students and TV producers. It was run by Nicoletta and reminded me of when BBC Backstage invited the people behind UK Nova in to meet the BBC. The students explained there media habits and the TV producers tried to make sense of it all.

The thing which shocked me was the lack of twitter usage in Denmark. The students talked about using Facebook as we use Twitter. Google Plus never really came up ever. The 2/4 screens meme came up time and time again. And a few of the TV producers started getting irate why the students were treating TV like radio or as I prefer wallpaper.

They couldn’t understand why they have the screen on if there not watching it. Little disagreement broke out saying they should be watching what they broadcast. Well what followed was some ice words on both sides… As usual, as I’ve heard all my life. The students media habits were dismissed as early adopters. I asked if any of them created there own media rather than just consumed and shared? Very few did (maybe one) further indicating there not early adopters but just the norm.

Fantastic session along with

During the trip the EBU treated us to a series of lovely dinner including one at a amazing Opera Hall.

Opera House

Unfortunately the way to the opera hall was via boat which isn’t exactly great for me. But I made it even with Tonys teasing…

The rest of the conference was dominated by TV as you’d expect and there was some real interesting things from other public European partners including Äkta människor or Real Humans

In a parallel present the artificial human has come into its own. Robots no longer have anything robot-like about them. New technology and advancements in the field of science have made it possible to manufacture a product – a kind of mechanized servant – that is so similar to a real human that it can often be considered a perfectly good substitute. The Human Robot (HUBOT) have also given rise to new problems and dilemmas. Thorny legal questions have increasingly started to occupy people’s minds and are still waiting to be answered: Who is responsible for the actions of a hubot? Do hubots have some form of “hubot rights”? Should they be paid for their work? As an ever growing number of people form relationships with hubots, the boundaries between human and machine become blurred. When humans make copies of themselves, which are so close to the real thing they form emotional bonds, the questions arises – What does it really mean to be ‘human’?

Looks like one to watch for sure…

Great to experience Copenhagen and see that crazy bridge/tunnel to Sweden from the plane.

Islington wharf without water

GVA Islington Wharf sign in the lift

I have no words to explain what on earth is going on in Islington Wharf right now…

There was a problem with the water supply a while ago in April. GVA (the management agency) tried to fix it but something needed replacing which required the water to be turned off in Block B (125 apartments).  I was in Copenhagen when this happened so I came back and everything was the same as before, except when I turned on the tap to wash a glass – It blew out so quick it took the glass out of my hand and broke in the sink.

A few days goes by and its clear something is not right…

GVA Islington Wharf sign in the lift

I and others spotted and reported a massive pool of water in the ground floor stairwell. It seemed to be running down the inside of the stairwell. Anyway before long GVA posted notes saying they were having to turn off the water not during the day like before but during the whole day and night. This was about Thursday. then it was communicated things were still not right and that would mean another 24hours of no water. 2 days of no water!

And when I say no water I mean absolutely no water from any taps in the flat. Yes no washing up, no dishwasher and no loo flash water. Luckily I tend to have a jug of water in the fridge and my kettle was full.

Anyway by Friday (today) it was posted around that not only will the water be off but it will be off till Tuesday evening…!

I was moaning before, but till Tuesday? over the May bank holiday! Well thanks… What a wonderful bank holiday weekend most of the people in Islington wharf will have… Here’s what GVA left us all under our doors, on the forums and facebook.

Water for Islington Wharf

URGENT WATER SUPPLY WORKS

As you will be aware we have been working to try and resolve a problem with the mains water supply to the building. Following a review on site today and based on specialist advice we have received, we do not propose to undertake another temporary repair due to the risk of failure and health and safety implications if water should escape into the electrical intake room.

Contingency Plan

We have arranged for 3,000 bottles of fresh water to be delivered to site so there is 6 bottle of water by each apartment front door and there are spare bottles in the block B entrance. All other building systems will operate normally.  A full permanent repair has been authorised and this will be completed on Tuesday.  Our current information is that all residents will be able to return to their apartments on Tuesday evening.

Now bear in mind we’ve been told it will be fixed by a certain date a couple times before, I’m not feeling too confident about Tuesday evening.

To be frank I’m peeded off but I like many others haven’t really got anyone to blame or shout at. Yes we could shout at GVA or ISIS (the company who actually own the building and employee GVA as management agents) but its actually not there fault. They have been good (not perfect but good for once). Early in the week, we had a toilet in the caretaker office and a tap in the bin store to keep us fresh?

GVA and ISIS offered us the ability to stay in a hotel down the road near Piccadilly but for myself this is almost pointless. Instead I’m trying to get conformation about the costs, so I can head down to Bristol and just get away. And thats how I and maybe many others just feel like.

Its all the small things which you forget like water to brush your teeth, toilet water to flush, water to clean the dishes, water to clean our clothes. If the water doesn’t come back on Tuesday night, it will be almost a week without water. This is bad bad news and to be honest if you were in my position you would also be peed…!

Won’t even remind you about the state of our garden right now too…

The walls of our garden

The walls of our garden

Yes the wall fell down and there is now a massive 2 story drop into a carpark…

You can can’t help but feel like the whole place is falling apart…!

Update…

The water was turned back on Tuesday evening at about 5pm, and work has started to fix the 2 story drop down to the carpark. ISIS and GVA can count themselves very lucky they didn’t end up all over the BBC news site like this almost exact carbon copy event in Yorkshire. Although it was for about double the amount of people and they were much more organised and took advantage of the open web. No point in moaning about it on a closed Facebook group, nothing will change and your also playing into there hands because no one else can see the problem.

Art of writing dating profiles

Sad Staff Robot is sad.

There is a lot to be said about dating profiles… Some are much worst than others (and I’ve seen some very bad ones)

Just the other day I saw one where the question was, 6 things you couldn’t do without… She wrote (and I quote) $$, $$, $$, ££, ££ and ££. I mean really, no wonder she was 76% enemy!

Of course it really depends on what your after, but rather than point out some of the crazy profiles I’ve seen, Tom Morris has given a nice overview of the mistakes people make, beyond the usual spelling and grammar stuff. Actually on OKcupid you can make edits to peoples profiles, so I guess I’ve made a few edits to other peoples profiles which have been accepted. Anyway…

Although I’m not sure if Tom is actually suggesting I do this for my own OKCupid dating profile? Maybe he should rewrite mine…?

I’ve also helped copy edit people’s online dating profiles. And I’ve seen plenty of crap online dating profiles too. These hints are derived from some of the stupid shit I’ve seen.

  1. Basic spelling. You are a 36-year-old and you talk about how you want to go out for a “coughie”. What’s that sound? Oh yes, the sudden penile deflation of every man who actually finished primary school. Grab a dictionary, grab Google, grab Wikipedia, whatever. You aren’t writing a dissertation, you are writing a few paragraphs. There’s no reason not to get the spelling accurate.
  2. You aren’t a teenager anymore. I’m not one of these people who gets all huffy about teenagers writing “im” and “cu l8r” and all that in their texts. But if you are old enough to have an OKCupid profile, you are old enough to not write in textspeak. Do all that stuff your English teacher taught you: spaces after full stops, commas between items in lists, apostrophes, the capital “I” in “I’m” and “I’ll” etc.
  3. No LOL. “I like beer lol”: I saw that on a goddamn profile. You are laughing out loud about the fact that you enjoy drinking beer? LOL is fine in chat. It’s not fine in your profile. If you’ve written something that’s actually funny, you don’t need “lol”. And if you aren’t saying something funny, “lol” won’t make it funny.
  4. This one’s for the straight guys: yes, I get it. Saying that you are a “vagina inspector” or a “trainee gynecologist” is what you consider hilarious banter with the slack-jawed cretins you so affectionately call “mates”. Well, I consulted my friends with vaginas and they tell me that you probably won’t get any pussy if you put that crap on your profiles. In addition, you make all men—straight and gay—look like horrible, insufferable wankstains. Just sayin’. Don’t say sexist, racist or homophobic shit in your profile: ignorance isn’t attractive to anyone, it just makes you look insecure. There’s a time and place for moronic banter—actually, no, wait, no there isn’t. Grow the fuck up and read a book.
  5. You don’t need the abbreviations. Yes, you might be seeking some NSA S&M with a 24/M/UK GWM. (Aren’t we all?) There are circumstances where that kind of thing might be appropriate (hookup sites) but on a dating profile, you don’t need all this clutter. You are trying to find a human being, not a home cinema system, even if you are only going to, err, tweak their Dolby Digital Surround for one night only.
  6. You are from California, not “california” or “cali”. Proper names need capital letters. Go on, you can take the time to write out the full name of the city. “London” not “LDN”, “Atlanta” not “ATL”. See previous point about abbreviations. Abbreviations are bad enough, dumb abbreviations have no place in your profile.
  7. Cut the lists out. I saw a gay guy’s dating profile recently that had a section heading with a list of items, each suffixed with “= turn off”. On this list, he had smokers, heavy drinkers and sex addicts. Okay, there’s no problem with having preferences (although wanting men who aren’t sex addicts might limit the pool somewhat), but if he had written a paragraph instead of a list, it would come off much better: more like a human wrote it and less like it’s a warning sign next to a parking meter. When there are negatives you want to exclude, rather than making a list of turn offs or forbidden characteristics, write a short paragraph trying to turn that into a description of what you do want. Like “I want to meet people who don’t smoke, don’t drink to excess and can think about things other than sex.” It still comes off a bit weird, but a lot less harsh and checklist-ey than writing a list.
  8. Match your text to your picture. I saw a hilarious Grindr screenshot recently of a big ol’ dick pic (Grindr is not known for subtlety) with the words underneath “Not seeking NSA”. Sorry, what, you’ve got a picture of your dick as your profile but you don’t want no-strings attached hookups? Are you shitting me?! Work out what message you are sending with the pictures and then make sure that what you are writing doesn’t contradict that message.
  9. Don’t attempt poetry. You will probably suck at it. And because of the Dunning–Kruger effect, you’ll never know quite how much you suck at it.
  10. Don’t get over-romantic. Again, you will probably suck at it. Don’t talk about wanting a partner to “complete” you, unless perhaps you want an inflation fetishist who knows the Aristophanes passage from Plato’s Symposium off by heart.All the spiritual shit about wanting to live forever together with flowers and rainbows and ponies everywhere? Cut that right out. You’ll probably be telling me next that you want to tune into my fucking chakras. No, no, the point is showing that you are a nice, non-psychopathic, down to earth person, the sort of person who you’d like to share a drink or a meal with, not that you are desperately seeking a missing puzzle piece from your self-indulgent personal development plan.
  11. Show, don’t tell. I’ve helped people I know write personal statements for university applications. Dating profiles are more personal, obviously, but the rule applies. People go on about how they are “passionate” about something: opera, reading, fondue cookery. Whatever. Don’t tell them that, show them that. What do you do? How do you do it? Where do you do it? “I’m passionate about windsurfing” becomes “I’ve gone windsurfing at places X, Y and Z”. “I’m really into music”? Yeah, so is everyone. Talk about the bands and genres you like and talk about how you are really excited by this band’s new album or went to this other band’s show.
  12. Get someone else—preferably someone who can write—to read it before you post it. Yes, yes, you are embarrassed to tell your friends that you are using online dating… well, get the fuck over yourselves, 21% of Americans do it, it’s not like telling them you are gay (oh, wait, actually, if you are using the phrase “throbbing hot rod”, they might suspect something). Anyway, if the are going to judge you, at least you’ve given them a legitimate reason to judge you, namely your terrible grammar. If you can, get a friend of the gender it is aimed at to read it.

There is much more that can be said but maybe best left for another day’s Relationships 2.0.

Serendipity and the Creative Collision

Get Lucky the book

Listening to Thor Muller on Triangulation

Thor Muller is Co-founder of Get Satisfaction, a startup delivering “people-powered customer service for absolutely everything.”

Fascinating discussion well worth listening to…

Thor at one point talked about creative serendipity or as he described creative collision. Leo or Tom mention some place where all the directors have to spend a certain amount of time together in a space. Then Thor talks about co-working type spaces as great places for creative collision.

In agreement, this is what I identified a while ago with my decision to work out of the Northern Quarter every Friday. Not always but most of the time, I’m slightly inspired by listening or watching people go about their own lives. Its a lot like watching certain people’s twitter streams. As Thor says its not directly applicable to work but in the end it points towards ideas and solutions.

Get lucky which is the title of Thor’s book actually fits very nicely with Derren Brown’s experiment last year.

The funny part of this all is, this is all about applicable to dating…

At the very end Thor talks about attraction and projection, how do we draw chance events to ourselves… Or how we draw our intentions to the world.

Am I saying dating is a creative process?

No or maybe not… but exactly, but the same factors can really help your career and confidence which changes the way you look at the world and the way the world sees you…

Demand your data from Google and Facebook

Data Portability logo

Tim Dobson sent me this over twitter for my consideration…

Tim Berners-Lee says demand your data from Google and Facebook…

World wide web inventor says personal data held online could be used to usher in new era of personalised services

Absolutely…

Seems people have forgotten the work which took place during the late 00’s as one of the founders of the Data Portability group (which still exists by the way). The group was made up of quite a few people all over the world and we successfully convinced the likes of Yahoo, Plaxo, Myspace, Google, Facebook, etc to take data portability seriously.

The turning point was when Robert Scoble tried to take his contacts out of Facebook and into Plaxo. Interesting to see Tim Berners-Lee finally getting the point.

Although to be fair he goes much further thinking about a standard way to export data.

Right now both Google and Facebook have export features and each one is very different in structure. I personally regularly export my data from them every month along with my wordpress and others. I find Google’s Data Liberation centre the best because it gives you control across the board, but then again Google do have more data from me. But right now its all just for back up purposes.

The next step which Tim hints at is the ability to transform and import the data in a standardised way. To be honest its something we (data portability group) talked and thought about, but we were maybe a little too early. Now seems about right to think about the interchange of data more than ever.

There has always been space for startups to be brokers and transformers of the data. Someone like ifttt.com could make a killing in this space, specially if they start charging for use of their pipes (something I suggested while doing the xml pipeline stuff). Could make a nice sustainable business