Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Me and Sarah this time get to grips with the very difficult subject of religion in this 1 hour podcast. This might be a little shocking if your not aware of me and Sarah's position on the religion debate. And yes its not going to be as clean and as well thought out as Dave Slusher's podcast about the same subject but its just me and sarah talking like we usually do. Nothing more, nothing less.
In the vein of the cluetrain manfesto, Devanshu posted a great post with 95 points about geek activism. Honestly there pretty awesome, but here's my favorate…
My lecture notes from todays lecture at Ravensbourne College are now online for all to view and take apart. Enjoy!
I was listening to the excellent Pop!Tech live stream over the weekend and one of the things I heard which I need to blog at least was the thought by (i'm sure) Edward Castronova that Lost takes most of its queues and ideas from games? The example he gave was the trend setting Myst and Riven games. And honestly when he said that I instantly started thinking about screenshots like this type of thing. But Edward was more getting at the depth and interactivity (yes you heard me right) than anything else. One of the points included the numbers which keep appearing throughout the series, something which encorages extra thought and people to do things like this and this. This type of behavour tends to be more common with games. When IT Conversations puts the audio online I'll put a link to it and it will all make a hell lot more sense, than me trying to do it from memory.
Without indulging my Lost thoughts, I find this all pretty interesting when you read Lost Boy's blog post about Lost: the game. The linkage between games and lost is all there and when you think about it more it makes more and more sense.
I was listening to Barry Schwartz's Less is more presentation at poptech today on the train in to work. Oh my goodness this is great listening. And honestly sums up alot of what I've been thinking recently.
The [clip] idea of closing some doors to walk through others is a nightmare that I have alot. And dont even go there about working [clip]. Theres so much to do and I keep getting new ideas and projects to consider working on. And all while trying to balance equally or more important parts of my life. I would hate to be a mono person because theres so much to learn and be engergised by. But if the massive amount of choice is doing more damage than good, maybe I need to strike even more balance.
But lets not get too far ahead of ourselves here, some choice is good. Just not 500 ice cream's worth of choices. I learned recently that everything made in nature is made of 92 different types of atoms only. Yep from Whales to Humans to a single ant, all the same 92 atoms. And it gets better than that, the same 92 atoms are used across the whole universe. Whats this got to do with choice and having it all? well in constraints comes creativity and innovation. Stewart Butterfield did a great presentation along time ago explaining the almost endless possiblies there are in 5k. If that is mindboggling alone, over choice is a pain in the ass and does make for a difficult life.
I was reading a article in wired with Craig Newark from the Craigslist fame. Anyhow something got my head thinking…
You've also had a couple dozen buyout offers for craigslist. Aren't you tempted to cash out, move from your foggy neighborhood, and buy an island somewhere?
I admit that when I think of the money one could make from all this, I get a little twinge. But I'm pretty happy with nerd values: Get yourself a comfortable living, then do a little something to change the world.
And in last part of the quote, lies everything. In work I've been having this ongoing discussion about not wanting to be rich and famous just making the world a little bit better a place to live. Its easy to be singled minded and follow the money where it leads, but the harder thing is to live in your means and try and make the world a little better.
I was listening to Syndication Nation Panel at this years Supernova conference. Liz Lawley made the point not every single blogger wants a large audience, not every blogger wants to be ongoing or Scobleizer. And I totally agree, simple as cubicgarden is hosted on my single broadband line. I do not want a massive audience, couldnt cope with a huge audience. At the moment I get a lot of traffic but the traffic is mainly through RSS and search engines cutting through my blog hierachy (which i have no problem with at all). End of the day I am that of many millions of bloggers and to stay in the middle region is fine for me
After posting about Dissertation time again… and late night lectures. I have been offered the chance to try something out for the college. So if your one of my ex-students reading this, contact me via my ravensbourne email address and I will add you to the group. As it sounds, its a experimental online learning community which I will use not only for dissertation but for teaching and learning over the next year. Oh by the way this applies to 1st, 2nd and 3rd yrs mainly in interaction or subjects close to interaction.
Your answers I picked suggest I'm a Strategist…
Summary of Strategists
Quiet, easy-going and intellectually curious. Use logical, objective thinking to find original solutions to problems. Think of themselves as bright, logical and individualistic. May be impractical, forgetting practical issues, such as paying bills or doing the shopping
Dont usually follow these personality testers but Sarah sent me it and the guardian covered it today. But one question why does it not work in Opera but its fine in the Mozilla family?
I felt really honoured last year when Nick, Richard and others interviewed me for there dissertations. And once again I'm glad to help in my own way my ex-students on there dissertations. I encouraged them all this year to use the power of the internet and more specificly blogging to build up there dissertations. Well unfortually a couple of them have embrased the idea but none of them have used the blog format to build up sections.
Kelvin – kelchashock wins an award for the most un-google-friendly site to search for. Anyway Kelvins synopsis is actually quite good and sells it to me for sure, bearing in mind I've only read the first paragraph so far.
Ben – Bens design doesnt seem to be up at the moment but he's got quite a few comments to his ideas right from the start. Its just a crying shame he doesnt put up more content for people to get there teeth into.
Some credit has to go to Harry, Ben and JC for getting in touch via IM or/and Email to ask me questions about there subjects. Lets hope they get there blogs sorted soon…
Yeah its official were fcuked. Most of the power supply in England will come from northern europe or/and russia by 2010, says the BBC docu-drama. Been reading up about this anyway before the programme and I seriously thought we might be ok. However were not, wind power needs backup, which leads to gas. Coal burning is too much money because you need to put huge expensive filters on the pipes. To quote It would be like putting a level3 catylistic converter on a clapped out car.
. While Nuclear power stations are being shutdown more and more, and could take as long as 15 years to turn back on. More facts here. Once again, we need to do something about it now, but people are too focused on other issues, kind of reminds me of the lack of media coverage to the EUCD. Even though IF
was on BBC2, it was well advertised, on at primetime 9pm and had a good talk afterwards chaired by paxman. If only this was true of other issues…
Miles dropped a email about kandid . It sounds interesting and I may try it out later after some other things have been done on my giant to do list. But my reason for blogging has to with how this reminds me of apps on my old 16bit machine. At the time there was little way to get the real feel for maths in art. It took too long to do fractials for example. I remember playing with L-systems and it would take hours to build a highly populated L-system. However even then I enjoyed the results. If you remember the old cubicgarden background, that was built using L-systems.
I almost went online there and then to check if Amazon had the book cheaper than the WHSmiths in Gatwick Airport. So tempted to buy it at 16 pounds, good thing i never…as I would have been kicking myself now.
Ok I'm looking forward to watching this documentary on Channel 4. I'm hoping it will explain string theroy in a simple way, so I can show others it and have disscussion afterwards. It worked with Carl and time travel, i explained the theory and showed him the channel 4 documentary and he finally got it and we could then have a leveled discussion about time travel.
Didnt know the tv show was presentated by Brian Greene, the author of the book I was actually thinking of buying a while back
I was kind of happy with the documentary, but would have liked to see the others first. It wasnt as good as the Time travel one but good enough to follow and understand. Very interesting concept M-theory or Super String theory, will have to wait for cern to finish there project before I can say for sure i'm converted.
Seen this on the BBC. And ok things are getting stupid in the UK, more comments when I got time…
Been following the new Garry Kasparov chess match.
Rage Against the (Chess) Machine. Oh my goodness there is some seriously smart moves going down on both sides, even the super computer is pausing for thinking time. Even sarahs friend birch is watching it live but under the x3dchess url while i'm watching under the wired chess game url. Oh loving some of the comments Wow, is X3D Fritz forcing the draw? Can silicon know fear?
The game is over officially result of game one is a draw! The score after game one is .5-.5. The next game is Thursday November 13th 6pm GMT.
