Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
1st Rule after a party, don't sleep before everything is cleaned up. 2nd Rule after a party, check behind the sofa for left-overs. 3rd Rule after a party, check your fridge for weird ingredients. 4th Rule after a party, check your freezer for Beer cans because they tend to explode.
Forgot rule number 4 and a week later found yellow ice over most of the freezer. Worst thing is, I cleaned out the Freezer before the party.
So I'm at d.construct the community focused conference from the guys at Clearleft. BBC Backstage are official sponsors and all the mens's Tshirts have gone within a hour of opening. In the dome, the venue is large and cool enough. The wireless seems to be operating pretty well even with 600+ people. These are my notes from D.construct.
The Dawning of the Age of Experience by Jared Spool. Talks about how the ipod is technically inferear but the experience of owning a ipod blows the rest out of the water. Jarad points out that everyone is watching the rise of Apple's experience product. Blockbuster vs Netflix. 85% of new subscribers say an existing subscriber recommended them. 93% evangelise Netflix to friends and family. Its been their success and they have done little advertising. Boardrooms have taken noticed.
Changing the experience can be good and can be bad if it doesn't intergrate the user and the business. Jared, talks about the chicken sexing phenomena as an example of something people just do but can't really explain the process of. Just like Midwives estimating baby weight and sex. Sushi chef's also don't know how to make
No one mentions Netflix as a pioneer of social networking or information archeture. Good experience design is Invisible! Hard to show good design.
Experience design applies to everything, even the terms and conditions which people should read but often gets over looked.
Experience design is cultural, need to understand both the audience and business cultures. Need a culture of failure. celebrate failures because people learn from their mistakes. www.uie.com/brainsparks – blog and podcast
Experience Strategies by Peter Merholz. Its all about the experience, even Microsoft in Office 2007 started back at scratch. Tivo could have just done another video recorder but they decided to rethink the whole experience. The Wii decided not to do the technology and feature battle.
I didn't make notes during the rest of d.construct because I was in and out of the main conference quite a bit. But it was a great conference and I look forward to next year. Well done to Andy Budd and the rest of the clearleft team who put on d.construct with the community in the forefront of their minds. It was well attended, had some great speakers and some up and coming new speakers. For example Tom Coates was fantatstic as the last speaker of the conference. He's really pulled things together and will be showing up in more expensive conferences soon.
This year like last year d.construct had an after party. This time it was sponsored by BBC Backstage and Yahoo. And this time there was plenty of food and drink for everyone. At one point the venue (Above Audio) was so busy we had just over the limit of people. Lucky that was quickly sorted out and people still had an excellent time. The proper food meant few people left the bar till it was time to go home. I don't know when the Yahoo sponsored drinks ran out but it seemed to last about 3 hours which was great. The BBC Backstage sponsored food lasted long enough for about 95 percent of people to get a decent amount of food. Food, Drink, great venue and not bad music. Yep I think everyone had a great time. Fantastic end to a excellent day.
So after Edinburgh (which I still need to blog at some point soon) 2 weeks ago and this weekends BBQ party for my new flatmate we're into a new busy work week. Things are crazy because my travel across London is futher hampered by the 3 day tube strike. Now some of you may say, but Ian your on a scooter. Well trust me I tried to get through the Blackwall tunnell today at 10am and it was packed. Every street I turned down was full of cars, so in the end I took a different route through old street and clerkenwell because angel was so hell-ish. it took 25mins just to get from Kings Cross to the A40 fly over because of the amount of traffic. And what is it with car drivers who block the way so not even cyclist get through the narrow gaps? Does it make them feel better or what? Sometimes I feel like raising my legs up and kicking off their side mirrors, or rolling up next to them and shouting get off your mobile phone!
Anyway, tomorrow I'm off to York for a conference titled Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0 in which I'm talking at on Thursday afternoon. In the usual way, I'm tweaking slides to get the most impact for the different audience it will be.
Then on Friday I'm at D.Construct as one of the official sponsors of the conference, so make sure you come by and say hi at the backstage stand. Although I expect most of the time it will be used as a meeting point for interviews during the day. At night there is the d.construct party which is sponsored and run by BBC Backstage and Yahoo! We worked hard to get such a good venue and hopefully enough food to feed the very hungry conference going crowd. There will be free drinks via Yahoo of course. Its going to be a good night and a excellent end to the long day at d.construct, but for those who want to make it extra long the club will open till about 2:30am, so don't rush off back to London if you can help it.
I expect a lot of people to stay around because of course on the weekend is BarCampBrighton. I'm really excited because I'm hoping to chill out and go to sessions and not get involved in the arrangement at all. They also seem to have got it to a decent size of about 80 people and done the overnight. I'm getting a little tired of barcamp's which do one day or don't have sleep overs. I think its essential to the experience and yes I know how hard it can be to do sleepovers. But the thing is you just end up with a un-conferene which is cool but you miss the bonding part. Anyway, thankfully Brighton is a whole weekend, complete with sleepover.
After that weekend I'm going to need to take some time off to chill out, but otherwise I'm off again near the end of the month. This time I'm off to Boston for TTI Vanguard Wealth of Networks conference, thanks to work. No I won't be talking except to ask questions and maybe offer a slightly different view on things which come up. Have you seen the line up? Wow, this is type of thing I would pay for on IT Conversations. Not only is this a conference but they have lunches and dinners together so you get a full day of excellent mind filling conversation.
For the rest of the year, I got to take a couple of holidays one somewhere sunny (Stowe Boyd, suggested Portugal in October), although I may end up going to South of France. I've commited to going to Berlin in November for Web 2.0 open europe which looks good. I'm also helping out where possible with that event, Boagworld 100 and I expect we will run another Backstage Christmas Party (details are secret right now). The last thing to add is that I'm still trying for BarCampLondon3 and who knows what might happen…
I keep meaning to screenshot my dopplr map or using their new api apply a map to my blog. I did however make the brave move of making my calendar publicly available via Plaxo. Oh one last thing, did I say I won a competition recently?
I was listening to Technation on ITconverations today and Moira Gunn was talking to the guys behind booktour.com. It sounds fantastic, and really useful for getting guest for future geekdinners. But what suprised me was the fact Chris Anderson was behind it too. Hummm, I wonder if his experience of selling the Long Tail around the world might have convinced him that this would be a good idea? Also I wonder if last year when we had that geekdinner for him (within 7 days of him saying yes by the way) could still be good memory for him? That night we had about 140 people turn up and Chris was really looking forward to chilling out with Geeks after a quite aggressive book tour. He stayed pretty much till the end and signed books with a huge smile on his face.
Who knows maybe one day we will get the likes of Steven Levitt, Malcolm Gladwell, Stowe Boyd and Joi ito
I have a drink which I love a little too much when going out and drinking. Redbull is simply wrong but ever so right. We all know its bad for the human body but its so refreshing and enjoyable on a hot day. How most people enjoy a good beer is how I enjoy a redbull. Not too much, but I have been known to drink too much in one night.
Anyway as I started going to better clubs, I came across a drink called a TVR, yep Tequila, Vodka and Redbull. Drinking this will cause terriable headaches because it goes down pretty smoothly and contains the evil evil Tequila (yes I bet you all had flashbacks of that crazy night when you were dancing on a table holding a Tequila bottle or glass! We've all done it except of course moi).
Anyway, somewhere along my past, I decided to put Tabasco sauce in drinks with redbull to bring down the sweetness and slow down my drinking (when I was raving it wasn't unhear of for me to drink 8+ cans of redbull a night). This developed and I found removing the Vodka too also was good. So what I'm saying is – yes I made this lovely cocktail. Its a drink you either love or really hate. Out of a group of 6 guys in Edinburgh (yes I'm writing that Edinburgh post very soon) only one turned around and said he quite liked it. My BBC friends hated my drink too. I've had a few Barpeople look at me very strange when asking for the Tabasco and those willing to try have admitted its not that bad.
I put claim to creating this cocktail described, vodka and lime is optional but ask for it at the bar next time your out and see what you think. Oh my god, imagine redbull and Tabasco as shots instead of a drink. What do you say to that then Any
This quote from the Greatnews Forum sums up my feelings about RSS readers on Linux. I'm actually tempted to run a cut down version of Windows using VMwareplayer and just Greatnews.
Annoyed with some of Microsoft's policies regarding their users, and disgusted with the looks and ridiculous size of Windows Vista, I've been slowly working on the switch from MS' operating system to Linux (Ubuntu 6.06, to be more precise).
So far, the experience has been great but there is one application that keeps me going back to Windows, and it is not Adobe Photoshop. It turns out that not only there is no RSS reader even remotely alike GreatNews on the penguin, there doesn't seem to be any decent reader at all. I've been trying to make do with RSS Owl, but that 3-pane e-mail client GUI just won't do, and the fact that it doesn't archive posts is absolutely exasperating.
My first impulse, of course, would be to suggest a Linux version of GreatNews. But I don't think that's a reasonable idea, at least in the near future. So, the next best thing I can do is try to run it with something like Wine.
I'm currently using the preview version of RSSOwl 2.0 simply because it has the advance functionality, handles 400 feeds ok but geez how memory does it want to eat? Yes I know some of you will say what about AKagregator, Liferea, etc, etc. Trust me I've installed them all and tried them out. Most crash when I try and load in a 400 feed OPML file or take forever to jump feed to feed. I even went through this frustration with a couple of friends and they were lost for words. Even Mark Pilgrims list of essential software for Linux does not have a RSS reader on it! I'm sorry but this is bad and very sad. I got use to using Particls but can live without it for a while, till I find a way of getting the benefit of my APML file in another RSS reader, or they release a Linux version? Linux is also missing simple things like wheres the slick RSS screensaver? Windows and Mac have plenty, including some opensource versions which I'm sure could be ported if needed.
My plead to the Linux world is get clued up about RSS on the desktop, its not going away and actually for some like myself prefered to reading web pages. Now can someone tell me I'm very wrong and debunk what I'm saying? Please…
So the Apple iPhone has been well and truely software hacked by multiple people (credit to Engadget for the coverage).
Now if Apple are getting a percentage of the activations and monthly iPhone bills, they will start lossing money. Currently the soft mod is in the geek community but how long will it take for this to spread?
So if your Apple and AT&T's PR department what would you do? Would you ignore it and assume it won't reach the mainstream market or come out now with something? Also what would that something be? Would you attract more attention to the whole issue. Back to Apple, Would you consider some sneaky locking system via iTunes or the GSM network to over ride the current iPhone firmware, like Sony and Microsoft have done in the past?
Me, I would work hard on improving the service at AT&T and address some of the issues people have with their network. Then again, that 5 year contract means Apple are stuck to AT&T for the next few years. What does this mean for me? Well if it comes to the UK and its much cheaper, does 3g and could be used on Orange. I would be more likely to get it.
After a painful break up with his first girlfriend Suzy, Ben, an aspiring artist, develops insomnia. To take his mind off his problem he spends his nights working at a local supermarket, where he meets colourful characters. He falls in love with his colleague Sharon.
He lets his imagination run wild. In particular, he imagines that he can stop time for others, so that he can walk around in a world that is “frozen” like in pause mode of a film. He imagines female clients standing frozen in the supermarket, so that he can undress and draw them.
This film Cashback was reminded me of my earlier life working in Tesco over night, except the drawing them part. Anyway worth watching, as its a good well executed feel good British movie.
It took quite a long time but I finally got fed up with Windows XP when weird services started showing up plus it would take 1min to suspend. I could have reinstalled XP, upgraded to Vista or moved to Ubuntu 7.04. Although its not exactly the best time to do so, I moved to Ubuntu GNU/Linux and I'm slowly porting my settings and data over from the Windows drive. So far, Firefox, Thunderbird, Keepass, Hamachi are all up and running. I'll get the tricker stuff going tomorrow.
I'm finding ubuntuguide.org and TuxMobil useful by the way.
I was doing some late night shopping in Sainsbury's as you do and walked pass a new range of fruit juices. These fruit juices are sold as popular alcoholic drinks without the alcoholic ingredient. So for example I'm currently drinking a Cosmopolitan without the Vodka, and its honestly great. But you know whats better, the Mojito version! Spearmint leaves, Lime and Sugar together is amazing and there's been many a time I've wanted to order one without the Rum. Well now my wishes have been granted.
The Sugar content on these drinks are actually not that bad but yeah you don't want too many of these on a night. I did try the mojito juice with some rum yesterday but to be honest it needed soda as the rum was over powering.
Something about Freetards and the BBC, but it all started here, don't ask me – I'm not going to comment.
Oh here's some more details on the Register, Open rights group, Download Squad, Cory's piece in the
Guardian, some official response and podcast on the backstage blog and finally the last word from Defective by design.
People keep saying, I saw you in the London paper or I saw you at Minibar. Generally there asking hows the house mate search going?
Well I'm glad to say finally after a bunch of weirdos and some simply rude people, I found a house mate through a friend of a friend. She's geeky and Japanese which you have to agree is a ideal match for a house mate in my house. Shes also moving in next weekend, so its all going well.
Now for those who find themselves in a similar position, here's a couple of thoughts.
Being in the London paper did nothing on the house sharing end of things at all. I didn't get a single request from that at all. I did however get 15 of my friends texting and calling me saying I saw you in the paper today and yesterday. Timeout has great contracts and rendered a couple of enquirers but no viewings. Craigslist was almost pointless. While Spareroom.com and Gumtree did get a few viewings. There was a couple more places the ad went up like Facebook (1 viewing, also cost nothing) Moveflat,
etc.
So generally the best thing to do always is to tap your friends networks.
Now if I get my hands on a Wii now….
Ok I have to be honest and say when I first heard this story I laughed and said 7 double expresso's is nothing.
A teenager was taken to hospital after overdosing on espresso coffee.
Jasmine Willis, 17, developed a fever and began hyperventilating after drinking seven double espressos while working at her family's sandwich shop.
Now to be fair it was a teenage girl who 17 and shes maybe not use to drinking a lot of coffee anyway. But I got to say when I worked in Starbucks in Victoria. I use to drink about 4-5 double expresso's a shift. But then again I was also drinking about 4-6 cans of redbull on a weekend too.
I found this great site about caffeine via DL.TV a while back. Death by Caffeine allows you to put in your current weight and it will work out how much cups of coffee, tea, insert name of energy drink here it will take to kill you. This might sound all in bad taste following this teenagers near death experience but you got to look on the light side. Oh and drink less caffeine.
Some slighly shocking findings.
It would take over 200 cans of redbull to kill me by caffeine alone but only 150 expresso's. Actually a double shot of Starbucks Coffee has double the caffeine of Redbull when you look at it per ounce and a expresso 5 times more.
At the top end of the list is Fixx Energy which has 500mg (85ml per 100ml) of caffeine in a bottle, which just beats a Starbucks Grande Coffee which has 372mg but 79mg per 100ml. But if your deadly serious about your caffeine in take you need to look at the pills and mints. No-Doz, Maximum Strength and Dexatrim has 200mg per pill! No wonder I was still very wired at 8am in the morning after going out clubbing when I was younger. Luckly I never experienced what Jasmine did.
