Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
The theme for the July Quantified Self Manchester is What to do with all that QS data?
Talks are welcomed around this including.
• What do you do with the data?
• How do you import/export your data?
• What are data dashboards?
• Which data dashboard are worth using?
• What other uses of your data are there?
Be a great time to come along, meet other self trackers and discover whats possible with quantified data.
On reflection on this post and all the posts I did during my time in Tokyo starting with I’m dying to experience Tokyo by 2016.
Forever I have wanted to experience Tokyo. For me its always been a place of technological progress. I know its not for everyone, but the culture is so wildly different and technology is at the core.
I wasn’t wrong there.
So why have I not already been?
Well its bloody expensive and to be honest I have this vision of going bankrupt just searching through the market bins of Shibuya
I lived with a Japanese lady for a while and we would talk about me going to Tokyo. She always pleaded with me, please go with someone who can speak Japanese because my allergies will kill me.
Technology like Google translate really made the difference on this front.People have asked what my high and low points were in Tokyo/Japan?
Low point’s
The Airbnb for the first week was fine, it was quite nice having a place with Rebecca. But the second week when Rebecca went off to western Japan, I moved to a smaller shared airbnb apartment. What I didn’t know was how small it really was. There wasn’t enough room to get out the door as my suitcase blocked the very narrow walk way by the futon. I did wish I had taken photos but I was so worried about it ruining my whole holiday, I went looking for an alternative hotel straight away. Luckily I met Alexandra after Herb Kim told me she recently moved. And she was able to help me find a great room in Nippon. I did finally get a refund from Airbnb, although they thought I was in the wrong?
After reviewing the details of your situation, there is no clear violation of our host standards and we won’t be able to retract the payment from your host. However, because this was the first time you were experiencing Airbnb as a guest, I decided to refund you the amount you requested…
Trying to get to Nagashima Spa Land the first time and standing on the wrong bullet train between Nagoya and Yokohama for over a hour, was also a pretty low points too.
High point’s
There were so many…
Right from the flight on the Airbus 380 to Dubai with USB, mains power and wireless internet to each seat. Also nicely got the exit row at the very front with more than enough room for the tallest NBA player.
Meeting up with Andy Budd and Alice who happened to be in Tokyo too. Having sake in Shibuya with them and the rest of the UX workshop, then seeing the sights and sounds of Shibuya. It was exactly how I imagined Tokyo would be like and it didn’t disappoint at all. I couldn’t walk down the street without taking pictures every few steps.
Experiencing the insanity of the Japanese passion for the make believe in Anime and Cosplay in real life via the Robot Restaurant and Harajuku. The Robot restaurant was totally mind blowing. It was a real world anime with every move being better with a bigger and better come back. Honestly nuts and the audience were loving it. I kept saying only in Japan would this work.
Shibuya crossing I visited about 3 or 4 times at different days and times. Each time it was an experience. I didn’t bring my GoPro but I really could have done with it, to show how many people cross at the same time. I did shoot some stuff on my phone (uploaded to youtube 1st here, 2nd here, 3rd time and 4rd here.) but its not so great. Especially like my video from the mid point. I’m still working out what to do with all those pictures (I have about 120!)
The many theme parks I visited including Tokyo dome, Nagashima Spa Land and Fuji Q highlands. Thunder dolphin at Tokyo dome was frustrating due to the crazy following of every single safety rule but when I was on, it was surprisingly fast and the drops were pretty epic.
Steel dragon 2000 at Nagashima Spa Land was the winner of all, having me grab the rails on the first and second drop. After that one time I was back to my usual hands up when the G force wasn’t so great.
Fuji Q had some great rides but if I hadn’t been on Alton towers smiler I would have enjoyed Takabisha more (which is very similar, understandable knowing the maker)
Riding the bullet train (Shinkansen 新幹線) was quite an experience. At first I thought it wasn’t much faster than most of our trains at full speed. But then it got out of Tokyo and suddenly you can feel the gravity pushing you into the back of your chair. It really shifts!
The Olsen (Japanese Spa) I went to in Tokyo dome was great, yes it was very weird being naked and having to wear their clothes (which didn’t quite fit) when moving to the mix floor. But even with the weird looks from the also naked Japanese business men. I found the whole experience pretty good and I enjoyed it enough that I stayed from about 2230 till 0230! My experience was so rewarding that I’m going to seek out one in the Manchester area and visit at least once every 6 months.
Shopping and browsing in the electric district of Akihabara. I spent quite a few half days there and it blew me away how big the district really was. I explained it to friends as the size of Manchester’s shopping centre but all electronic markets and shops. I also went looking for Nikon lens (where else better than Japan?) for my aging Nikon D40X DSLR and ended up finding a basement the size of my apartment in Shinjuku, stocked full of second hand lens which ranged in price from cheap (£15) to stupidly insane (£3000+). It was called Chuuko Box, the tip was to go downstairs, this place is a treasure trove! I was so blown away, I decided to duck out and learn more about lens because I was obviously out of my depth – in a way I’ve not experienced in a long time!
I did Karaoke in Tokyo with Alex and Len after I moved out of my terrible Airbnb. I don’t usually like Karaoke because I don’t know most of the songs and never had much of a singing voice. But singing away while drinking sake after the nightmare I almost had, was such a great relief… It was of course also great being able to share experiences to date.
As I spent 2 weeks in Tokyo, I also quantified my walking and sleep. Here’s the numbers from my fitbit.
The sleep quantified data is under lock and key but generally I slept less and less over the holiday but I spent more time in deep sleep than REM sleep.
Talking of sleep, it was scary how many people I caught sleeping in public. I assume its something to do with the very work loaded culture.
In other fun quantified numbers…
I was wrong on many counts with Japan but I’m happy to see the techno-wonderland I thought it was going to be. There are scary tales of where the technology unchecked will take us.
I will go back to Japan because it is unique and theres so much left to try and do. The culture is insane, lovely and weird all in one massive gulp. I’ll be interested to see what effect the 2020 Olympics has on the Japanese culture, I’d like to check it out a few years beforehand and maybe afterwards. There are some frustrating things and some wonderful, wonderful things. I’m going to watch Lost in translation again real soon…
“We have two selves in the world at any given time now. We have the physical self, our flesh and blood, our voice, our presence in the world which extends beyond our bodies but lives in this physical space. There’s this other space, we started out calling cyberspace a long time ago, but it’s a real thing. It’s a data space.”
…Doc Searls
There is one charity I always give time and money to, the Open Rights Group. For me our human rights transcend (must/should) into the digital domain. Its the new battleground. Its also something lots of people are not really aware of or take for granted. But every week there’s another news story of our digital rights being taken for granted and abused on unimaginable scales.
Digital rights are your human rights in the digital age. They are one of the most important aspects of your human rights today: privacy and free expression online are among the most contested. The digital rights movement exists because we need people to understand how technology is shaping our rights, for good and for ill, and who it is who is seeking to employ and capture technology for their benefit rather than yours.
There are positive and negative sides which I have written about many times.
Its becoming clear that the services we use, connected objects and spaces we inhabit are collecting our personal data. What they are doing with that data is only one of the question asked in ethics of data documentaries.
The documentaries which were put together by BBC R&D, exploring the implications for digital right through the lens of the physical internet, personal data, data ownership and data management.
For many people the internet is still an entity which exists in a box, be it a desktop computer or laptop. This notion is pretty much broken by mobile devices and smart tvs. LG and Samsung have both been caught out using personal data in ways undesirable by most people were not expecting. But thats only the tip of the iceberg as Alex says…
“You could make a good case for technology to be imbedded in everything we know. What kind of technology it is and what does it do, and what purpose does it serve is always the next question“
Its time to consider a much wider context that most people think about when they hear internet of things. Think smart homes, cars, spaces and cities.
You’re personal data and privacy?
The comments made by the likes of Vint Serf about privacy being an anomaly and this being a digital dark age. It made sense to try and tackle the big issue of privacy in the digital age. There so much which could be explored as this is a very deep and complex subject. There is only so much you can explore in minutes, but I feel Jon highlights why this is more critical than ever before.
“We always make mistakes and we always want to forget them and the trouble with the internet is that we can’t forget them.”
Its about ownership and choice?
It all seems pretty scary and negative, and it never was meant to be. So to underline the choices people need/should make, we looked into ownership and choice. Something I have through a lot about especially with my history with dataportability. Early adopters are not only collecting their own data but also analysing it and quantifying it. As Adriana says…
“The quantified self is that, is the living, breathing part of the web or the technology scene where people genuinely care about data.”
The documentaries are made so you can comment directly on parts (thanks to reframed.tv), so please do. We look forward to the discussion and don’t forget to join our diigo group bookmarking related news stories.
I was thinking while writing the last blog post. What happened to the Xpointer standard?
XPointer (the XML Pointer language) allows hyperlinks to point to specific parts (fragments) of XML documents.
I guess in the rush to move away from XHTML in favour of HTML5, the whole idea of compound documents got shuffled into a back alley and stabbed to death by the XHTML haters. So even if browsers supported Xpointer, it simply wouldn’t parse and therefore work.
Interestingly HTML 5.0 has embed but its not the same solution as Xpointer was solving. For example here’s wordpress creating a iframe which twitter (the 3rd party) can choose to put what they link in. I think originally it was oembed but got changed
Jane Jacobs & Marshall #McLuhan made a movie that foreshadowed @Richard_Florida https://t.co/nftw98flGm
— Doug Hadden (@dalytics) March 29, 2015
I’m already slightly over the concern that one day my blog will be full of ads, spam, malware, tracking cookies and worst. The day that happens, I’ll be removing all iframes using XSL or a wordpress plugin.
Its a crying shame because attribution is the lifeblood of the creative industry and without it, were pretty much screwed. Its seems crazy that I can’t easily traceback my steps to how I found quotes, blog posts, etc. Right now this whole thing is broken, bookmarking isn’t the solution. It needs to be at the word level. Personal annotation style?
I have to favourite things on twitter, look through my play history and search my emails to find who actually recommended something to me. Maybe this can only be solved by the quantified self and lifestreams but I think there’s unexplored ways which xpointer was leaning towards.
Tony asks my view on pplkpr.
pplkpr is an app that tracks, analyzes, and auto-manages your relationships. Using a smartwatch, pplkpr monitors your physical and emotional response to the people around you, and optimizes your social life accordingly.
Its a interesting project/art project. I don’t think it would work so well but I seen it all before in QSEU13 with Fabio who records every single person he talks to.
Well at least its not a complete system, it works with other wearable devices.
pplkpr has been extensively tested with the Mio wristband, but any Bluetooth LE (also called Bluetooth Smart or Bluetooth 4.0) device that transmits heart rate in real time will work. This includes the Polar H7 chest band and the Zephyr HxM.
On International data privacy day, BBC R&D has posted a video asking a bunch of smart people what data is personal to them?
As I have been working on the project for quite sometime, I can happily say there is a lot more to come. Including ways to feedback. Go check have a look and see if you agree with the opinions of our industry experts?
You might have seen the theme of the work in the blog post ethics of data and what we setup at Mozilla Festival. Expect more in the future…
Its been quite a year for me, the odd google plus video above is just a tiny slice of my hectic but great year.
This year I thought I would do something a little different following metadating and another year of the quantified self. Following a bit of a twitter chat with Herb and Zoe, I thought I’d give Stephen Wolfram a run for his money (not!) Here’s some of what happened this year.
I spent 6 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes watching 213 episodes over the past year.
I spent 1 week, 2 days, 19 hours, 35 minutes watching 111 movies over the past year.
Top 10 artists I listen to this year…
So how did I do on last years resolutions?
As I believe in the hyper-connected world we’re moving into. My bets are against hierarchy and traditional. Maybe there is a word which sums this up?
My assumption would be something like dynamic linking. However Dave suggests that word I’m looking for is Heterarchy.
…enough i hear you cry, how did it go this year?
So this year I stuck to my principles and I believe are seeing signs which are fruitful. I reached out for better advice to better manage and use my dyslexia to further my own career. Also next year will be the 5 year anniversary of mybrushwithdeath.
A few weeks ago I was accepted for Newcastle Culture Lab’s Metadating research trail.
The research was more about our attitudes to sharing personal data than dating. However they did invite singles and included a number of events which included speed dating. I guess also meta-dating would be factually correct as we were talking about dating while dating.
There was homework which had to be done on the run up to the event. You were given a booklet which you could fill in as much as you were comfortable with. On top of that was some blank generic graphs which could be filled in with our own data. When I say our data, it could be any Quantified Self data, from how many coffee’s you had over the week to you’re more intimate data like you’re sleep cycle daily. Everything was up to you to declare, which gets around the problem of using Quantified Self data in research. But it also makes it difficult to compare. Luckily this wasn’t about the data metrics.
Once at the event (I rolled it into a wider visit to Newcastle’s Culture lab where I talked about ethics of data, a visit to Newcastle’s Makerspace and Campus North. Didn’t make it to the beach however). I was one of the first to turn up as I was heading home to Manchester on the last train. It became clear the problems I had with thestarter, were pretty much reversed as very few women turned up. (this is a issue I’d love to spend some time sorting out one day)
The PhD students lead by Christopher had bought some nibbles (olives, cheese sticks, etc) and lots of Cava. By the time we done the icebreaker it was down to the group discussions about our data with a Cava in full swing.
We were split into two groups and we started critiquing the anonymously data sheets. It was fascinating to hear other peoples views on data points, dread to think what people said about my sleep cycle and steps per day. It also became clear the data may have been fudged in parts by others. To be fair I did use real data but choose to leave off some of the measurements. Everything was recorded by camera and audio dictation, which I bet made for some very interesting insight into data sharing.
By the second half, the cava was certainly having a bit of an effect and peoples lips loosened. Just in time for the speed dating portion. Now to be fair Chris and the other students had never been speed dating, so it was a little odd but the imbalance in men, meant we had to do it in two parts. On the speed dating, we discussed each others data sheets and more (ooeerr!) We were given the opportunity to write something to each person later.
Another eye opener for me was at the very end when we constructed the perfect and worst dating profile for set people from data we made up. The eye opener for me was building a dating profile for a women who was career driven. All the guys around me seemed to not like her, while I was asking if she was real and where can I meet her? (Cava had certainly kicked in by then)
The event ended about 8:45pm so quite a bit over time but as people started shifting to the local pub, I had enough time to quickly have a drink then head to Newcastle Station for my long train ride home.
The metadating event was fun and to be honest the culture lab students may have gained a ton of insight from the frank and slightly loose lipped participations on the night. I imagine the Cava was bought expecting the full board of people but with the smaller number and the stand ins, there was plenty to go around.
I am surprise I didn’t fall a sleep on the train. However to be honest it was so busy down to York, theres no way I could fall a sleep. I’ll save my journey for another day…
Well getting the last train back from Newcastle was quite an experience. Wondering if the guy I gave love advice took it?
— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) December 7, 2014
The metadating event was great fun and from a research point of view I’m very interested in what comes out of it. Its a shame a bunch of women didn’t turn up but the students did a good job thinking on their feet and making it work. I suggested to Chris and Bettina that if they did it in Manchester or London it would be packed out, and I would certainly support them in the research.
Metadating… by Newcastle’s Culture Lab (I must declare I’m working with these guys in BBC R&D’s User eXperience Partnership, but this is nothing to do with me. I was told about it and went wow!)
Exploring the Romance of Personal Data, A singles dating event, hosted by researchers at Culture Lab
Ok you got my interest already… The Quantified Self and Dating?
#QuantifiedSelf + #Dating?
Sounds like my kind of thing, how about you? http://t.co/gzSC7mzY8e— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) November 5, 2014
We’re all creating more data about our lives, be it on social media or on our smartphones. Nowadays, people even use technology to track themselves and record how active they are, where they’ve been or how well they’ve slept. But how public should this data be? What would this look like on a dating profile? Would you like to know how late she works or whether he’s a night owl? Just how much does he workout? Where’s her favourite coffee shop?
Meta Dating is a free singles event for people interested in data and dating, hosted by researchers at Culture Lab, Newcastle University.
We’re looking for single people who have some experience of online dating to take part, meet other singles, have fun, and explore the romance of personal data!
Of course I signed up straight away… I am a little worried about how they are going to collect all my data but I’ll worry about that later. One of the questions asked was, why you? To which I roughly replied…
I’m a fan of the Quantified Self and use Online and Offline dating services all the time. I’m also working in the Quantified Self area in regards to the ethics of data and new storytelling experiences. I’ll be really interested to know if theres any link between the data about ourselves and data in whom we seek.
As most of you know, I tend to hold quite strong views about online dating and the process which services claim to use to match people. I pretty much damned most dating sites for doing nothing more than simply bringing people together like Facebook. Shuffled my feet at the idea of using algorithms to match people. And even made jokes about using things like smell to match people. But whats upset me the most is the lack of scientific methodology to solve the problem.
Well here’s my chance to see if there is something to it or its simply a joke like quantified toilets and premium dating. Be fascinating to see how they get over things like looks, interests and things which are just you like race, height, etc, etc… or will the results come back with something similar to the idea of the unquantifiable?
Aral Balkan – Free is a Lie – Thinking Digital 2014 from Thinking Digital on Vimeo.
Aral drives me a little crazy, I end up writing massive long blog posts about his talks. But I have to give it to him, the showmanship and underlying ideas are pretty much good. You can see for yourself in the talk which got me writing about the 5 stacks.
Don’t forget to check out my blog for BBC R&D connected what happened at the Quantified self and Thinking Digital. The panel discussion which I made reference to, is also up and Tom Scott’s video telling us its all going to be ok.
Maybe next time you should come to Thinking Digital and experience it for yourselves?
