cubicgarden.com...

You are irrelevant...

[ Science and Theory ]

I was talking to one of Emma's friend on a night out in London a while ago and we got talking about my theory of Steve Jobs control of Apple (still to be written I guess). Anyway we got around to the ipod and I suggested that before the ipod, Apple was all about Thinking Differently

Now its not about thinking anymore its about you being irrelevant now.

The more famous commercials and print advertising featured dark silhouetted characters against bright-colored backgrounds. The silhouettes are usually dancing, and in television commercials are backed by up-beat music. The silhouettes are also usually holding iPods and listening to them with Apple's supplied earphones. These distinctively appear in white, so that they stand out against the colored background and black silhouettes. Apple seems to change the style of these commercials quite often depending on the song's theme or genre.

Yes you can also be the dark silhouette, a mean-less thing to hang a ipod off? Well thats the way I see and Emma's friend did actually agree with me. Its not very suttle either... I mean what other adverts have you seen when they have blacked out the person? Imagine a wii advert with a black silhouette? Car advert with a silhouette driving the car, hell even a drinks company advert with silhouettes? Yes it might sound all wrong to some of you and maybe some will say its just good advertsing. But good advertising works by getting in deep and making you feel inadaquent or in other words irrelevant right? The ipod adverts are just less suttle.

Yep your irrelevant get use to it, or change it.

right shall I close the comments?)

Resume at any point

[ Science and Theory ]

Adrian Hon, talked about his dis-taste for choose your adventures books in his session. He described the 5 finger holding multiple pages and multiple routes which we choose to hold while playing those games. He even mentioned how he sometimes will start the game from the finish.

And it got me thinking, is it only geeks which do this kind of thing? Also is this a good or bad thing? I would say being able to hold multiple places of a complex script in your head at the same time and being able to move forward from any point and resume at anytime any of them has to be a good thing. This actually ties nicely back to the those geek qualities The 10 Real Reasons Why Geeks Make Better Lovers.

Geeks understand multi-dimensional relationships

Geeks connect with their online buddies in several guises, often getting to know the person behind the avatar as friendships deepen and move from adult communities to personal IM.

A geek can flow seamlessly between conversation about a friend's partner and kids in one window and an elaborate group sex scene in another, without feeling any discontinuity between the personas. Even if the friend is a 43-year-old father of two in IM, and a 22-year-old dominatrix in the group.

With all that going on, a geek has no problem accepting that sometimes you want mocha ripple cherry fudge chunk swirl with almonds and a waffle and sometimes you want vanilla lite.

Just a quick thought...

Althought I got to add when I put this past Kate, she did say "isn't the only people who read the choose your own adventure books geeks?" So everyone who read those books were doing the 5 finger resume? Maybe...

Technorati Tags: geek, brain, thoughts, multiple, discontinity, time, space

What is it with Newspapers on a Weekend?

[ Science and Theory ]

I can't put my finger on it but something about the British (i'm not so convinced its just the British now) and Newspapers which I'm observing, which I find interesting. There's something about going to places like coffee shops, bars, pubs and even parks with a Saturday or Sunday paper in hand. Then (usually in couples) sitting in silence reading the paper to themselves. Sometimes if they find something very witty or interesting, they will attract the attention of there partner and read it out aloud. What kills me is sometimes there reading the same paper! So one of them most of opted to buy the same paper instead of waiting a while to swap papers?

What this type of activity is called or does for relationships I don't know but its the opening scene in a new british movie - scenes of a sexual nature. So it got me thinking would the same effect be true if both persons were on a laptop or some kind of read/write device? For example if both couples were on a crackberry (blackberry) would that be radically different and why? How about if they were reading a ebook type device? What is the effect of this newspaper reading too? I've identified a lot of couples do this activity, so it can't be all that bad, can it? Maybe you can tell people are a couple by them reading silently to themselves in the park? Or maybe there's something extra low level going on like in this picture. In the movie, the guy actually angles his newspaper and body in a way to peer a look at some other woman sitting reading a book.

I was talking to Nicole about this today over dinner and she suggested that maybe that's ME time for most couples? But a strange way to have Me time, I would say. When I have Me time, I usually need to be shut away from everyone or something like that. Maybe its like a less intense version of Me time? I could buy that maybe. Hey, maybe me and Nicole were looking at this the wrong way? Maybe this is actually shared time?

There's a ton of research which I've yet to find about how the digital world effects notions of a modern relationship, but its certainly something I'm finding interesting.

Thinking Digital Conference

[ Science and Theory ]

The thinking digital conference was great. At one point I twittered that I felt like I was at TED. And seriously I wasn't joking. some of the speakers like Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurtzwell, Helen Fisher, Jonathan Harris, Tara Hunt, etc, were top notch speakers and worthy of the ticket price alone. But rather that go completely out there, the conference was unpinned by a lot of business type talks like for example Greg Dyke, Doug Richard and Casper Berry. There was also the usual what is the future of mobile, green technologies, the future of media and social networking. All the panels were interesting and included a bit of time for some good crowd questions.

So a quick time out for some of my favorate talks. Helen Fisher's talk was simply amazing. She deconstructed why woman are in the position there in now and what the future spells for woman. As Helen calls it woman are shedding 1000's years of a farming lifestyle in favor of something much natrual like in the stone age. Helen asked the question What is love? and pointed at 3 parts of the brain. 1st one being sex (drive, lust,etc), 2nd being romantic love (passion, obsession, etc) and 3rd being deep feelings of attachment (calm, monogahmy, security). Helen sees the first part as a way of getting out there looking for a partner, the 2nd part to keep you faithful and the 3rd part to able you and your partner sane enough to raise children. Pushing things along Helen asks the question if we know about these chemical reactions in the brain, can we have casual sex? Yes we can but the brain systems are stimulated and there is a 1/3 chance you will fall in love with your casual sex partner. Its also possible to have the brain parts act upon different people. Aka you have the drive to have sex with one person, feel loving to another person and feel safe and calm with another person. There not connected.

Female sexuality is growing - Woman are as sexual as men! Always have been. But on the other hand Men are as romantic as woman, Men always have been. Some world wide trends, Fact! When woman are better educated, or higher income theres more sexuality. People who divorce have more sexuality, people with access to conception are more likely to express there sexuality,

21st centery marriage, a marriage between equals is now commons. Divorce isn't a fail, its a positive things.

A few other things, picked up from Helens talk
1. Bad - Use of Anti-Depressions, the drugs kill the sex drive, performance and Fantasies. Helen believes it also effects your romantic love and attachment brain areas. Helen calls it the numbing of the world 2. We working harder on our relationships that ever before. 3. Divorice rate is flatting out, maybe because we're marrying later 4. Peer marriages / marriages of equals are here to stay, Marriages are also happier maybe for the same reason. 5. Middle age isn't the end, there are drugs which can help you keep the drive. While the romantic love and attachement comes natrually.

I had heard some people moan about the conference being not like your traditional Technology/New Media conference. Well maybe if you had only hear the title you might be mistaken for what the conference was about. But one look at the list of presenters and there would be no doubt what kind of conference this was going to be. I mean can you imagine Ray Kurtzwell at Future of Webapps? Xtech (maybe), Web 2.0 expo, etc. Nope theres always been a need for a high end conference in the UK for a while, yes it will be expensive but you don't get this kind of quality for cheap. It was a risk which did pay off, the codeworks team are already talking about thinking digital 2009 which I'm sure will be even better and even better attended.

The Venue for Thinking Digital was the Sage2 in Gateshead. I've never been inside of it before but it was a excellent venue for such a event except one thing. Power for the audience. I know there were quite a few people blogging and once they had run out of battery power they looked for anywhere to plug in and charge up. If the team had just spread some 6ways across the bottom and top of the seating, then chained them along a few meters then used black tape to keep them stuck down, it would have covered the problem. It was sad to hear too, because the speed of the network was blazing. I was uploading videos of about 100meg to blip.tv in less that 5mins flat. Flickr photos were painless too, I sometimes reduce the resolution on photos to flickr, so uploading is quicker. But there was no need. During uploading to Blip, I saw a peak of 891kbps. So total kudos to the best internet conference experience I've ever had next to Over the Air.

All the videos I shot are online already, but the quality is low, if I had knew what uploading would be like, I might have opted for VGA quality. There were other cameras shooting the whole thing, so I assume, one was for archiving and the other for the live screens inside the venue. I asked permission before and I think you'll agree, although the records are complete the quality of the sound and vision wasn't the best. Fear not there is a set of audio only podcasts which need to be edited by myself and uploaded to Blip.TV and IT Conversations.

The second day at the Thinking Digital conference

[ Science and Theory ]

Session 5: Mobile 2.0 panel debate
-- Gerard Grech
-- Vikesh Patel
-- Mark Selby
-- Bradley de Souza

Greg Dyke interviewed by Andy Allan

Session 6: Unconventional Wisdom
-- Aubrey de Grey
-- Carl Honore
-- Dan Lyons (a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs)

Session 7: Globalisation - Opportunity or Threat?
-- Jessica Flannery
-- Claire Nouvian

Session 8: Management & Leadership
-- Richard St John
-- Dan Pink
-- Doug Richard

Conference close - reflections

The first day at the Thinking Digital conference

[ Science and Theory ]

Backstage is supporting the Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead/Newcastle. Its a new conference along the lines of TED/Pop!Tech but based in the North of England and not exclusive to the in crowd.The conference has great wireless and so we're able to upload videos straight from the conference only a few moments after the speaker was on stage.

Day one

Session 1: The Future of Media
-- Matt Locke
-- Eric Lindstrom & Steve Jelley
-- Jeremy Silver

Session 2: United We Stand
-- Darren Thwaites
-- Ian Kennedy
-- Tara Hunt

An Entrepreneur's Story
-- Sean Phelan

Thinking Digital Tech Demo
-- Steve Clayton
-- Q&A

Session 3: Happiness
-- Helen Fisher
-- Caspar Berry
-- Jonathan Harris

Session 4: The Singularity
-- Ian Neild
-- Ray Kurzweil (via Teleportec)

Almost every talk is special but all the talks about happiness which I have to say were the best of the day.

Dopplr tracks your Carbon Footprint

[ Science and Theory ]

Wow what a difference.... I only just found out Dopplr now supports Carbon Footprint estimations via the AMEE. Very cool feature and good to see people doing worth while parnerships.

Technorati Tags: carbonfoorprint, carbon, backnetwork

The Trojan malware arms race

[ Science and Theory ]

So after the London Geekdinner with Doctor Richard Clayton from Cambridge University, (you can watch the videos here 1, 2, 3, q&a or listen to the audio in total here.) I had a little wonder around the net to see what I've been missing out on since I moved to GNU/Linux.

And as expected the battle over adware, spyware and trojans has grown into something extremely serious. A friend at work keeps talking about the problems she has with her windows machine. The things she describes sounds like trojan activity but I can never be sure, so I'm not quite at the point of saying to her reinstall Windows fresh again. (We actually rebuilt her machine over the Christmas period already, because things were so bad she couldn't login). However after hearing about this banking trojan on Security Now recently. I'm reconsidering my advice.

Not only does it Trojan.Silentbanker steal your passwords, but it can perform a man in the middle attack on SSL connections, rendering the secure nature of SSL totally useless. It can also modify HTTP and HTML, meaning when you log into your bank and try and pay your bills it will replace your bill details with ones of the trojans chooses. Yes click that button to transfer funds looks legitmate but it will go to a off shorebank you've never heard of. It can steal cookies, certificates, cache passwords and change your DNS settings on the fly. So type in your banks url and the browser gets sent to a site which looks like the banks site but actually its not. To finish off it automaticlly updates its self and for some reason can install it a midi driver which screws around with your sound. Maybe to play the sound "kuchhing" when you finish that hijacked transation?

Technorati Tags: trojan, windows, geekdinner, londongeekdinner, Trojan.Silentbanker, securitynow, security, privicy

Reading the Cluetrain by our PR lady

[ Science and Theory ]

Our PR lady started reading the Cluetrain Manfesto after I gave her a copy to read. She seems to be reading through it slowly but at the same time its brought up more questions that I'd expected. So I suggested to her that she should blog internally or even externally about reading through the book. So I was kinda of shocked when she agreed... And now reading the cluetrain is born.

I think its really good to see our PR lady blogging, shes quite strange in a nice way. Kind of person who would forgive you at that moment but would never forget what you did. Anyway, shes been willing to learn about the changes online markets make to PR and thats a really good thing. Please check out her blog, as she really wants comments and constructive ideas around what she reads and blogs.

Two conferences in one hour and one presentation

[ Science and Theory ] | Tags: presentation  bbc  thewalthofnetworks  ttivanguard  fowaexpo  fowa  conference  slideshare 

I gave a presentation at work yesterday summing up the two conferences I went to recently. There's nothing secret in the presentation so I posted it to slideshare for sharing. Hopfully it will be useful to others.

Over doing the caffeine

[ Science and Theory ] | Tags: caffeine  coffee  redbull  wired 

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.

Disruption, participation and the attention economy

[ Science and Theory ] | Tags: disruption  participation  attention  longtail  rocketboom  digg  diggnation  creative commons  flickr  web2  internet  lecture  notes  presentation 

My lecture notes from todays lecture at Ravensbourne College are now online for all to view and take apart. Enjoy!

The game: Lost

[ Science and Theory ] | Tags: games  lost  tv  gaming  poptech  riven  myst 

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.

The Conceptual Age?

[ Science and Theory ]

I started reading the wired magazine article titled Revenge of the Right Brain and it all made quite a bit of sense. I'm not so sure about the division of Left and Right brain, its all subjective in my mind but the fact is the examples Daniel gives are pretty crediable. I will quote the Asia example.

Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America and Europe. According to Forrester Research, 1 in 9 jobs in the US information technology industry will move overseas by 2010. And it's not just tech work. Visit India's office parks and you'll see chartered accountants preparing American tax returns, lawyers researching American lawsuits, and radiologists reading CAT scans for US hospitals. The reality behind the alarm is this: Outsourcing to Asia is overhyped in the short term, but underhyped in the long term. We're not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow. (The total number of jobs lost to offshoring so far represents less than 1 percent of the US labor force.) But as the cost of communicating with the other side of the globe falls essentially to zero, as India becomes (by 2010) the country with the most English speakers in the world, and as developing nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge workers, the professional lives of people in the West will change dramatically. If number crunching, chart reading, and code writing can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber-optic cable, that's where the work will go. But these gusts of comparative advantage are blowing away only certain kinds of white-collar jobs - those that can be reduced to a set of rules, routines, and instructions. That's why narrow left-brain work such as basic computer coding, accounting, legal research, and financial analysis is migrating across the oceans. But that's also why plenty of opportunities remain for people and companies doing less routine work - programmers who can design entire systems, accountants who serve as life planners, and bankers expert less in the intricacies of Excel than in the art of the deal. Now that foreigners can do left-brain work cheaper, we in the US must do right-brain work better. Last century, machines proved they could replace human muscle. This century, technologies are proving they can outperform human left brains - they can execute sequential, reductive, computational work better, faster, and more accurately than even those with the highest IQs. (Just ask chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.)

And while reading the article I started thinking about a conversation I had the other day with a Imperial software engineering student and Stefan Magdalinski who wrote http://theyworkforyou.com (which I love and use everyday to see what my MP is up to). Anyhow this student was talking about the fact that he optimised some code to use the smallest amount of memory needed for the application he was building. Stefan kept interupting and pointing out that he was unemployable. The only place where such skills are important is on the SIM card of phones. Everything else has tons of memory, hard drive space and processing power. So why bother? The details are not important anymore as such. I added a section of talk around web2.0, webservices and how open API's allow you to delegate processing to 3rd parties. Why build a TV listings system when you could use someone elses? By the way the event I was actually at Openknowledge forum was great. It also illustrates the fact that we are moving from a information age to a conceptual age. On the Tube home the guys behind Public Whip and Stefan talked about the fact all the information was now available to them and the public its where we go from here. From information to conceptual? Maybe? Back to the article for another quote.

Even computer programmers may feel the pinch. "In the old days," legendary computer scientist Vernor Vinge has said, "anybody with even routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn't true anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to machines." The result: As the scut work gets offloaded, engineers will have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than competence. Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a $500-a-month accountant in India doesn't swipe your accounting job, TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, we'll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres.

And in the change over - comes people like me. My background is from design not programming but tools like xml, webservices, etc make creating applications for the web a conceptual challenge rather than a programatic one. If I want to add internal search to my site I would just download Lucene and the rest would be just details which I could pay someone else to do or work it out over time with the huge resource of the web at hand. Anyhow Daniel leaves the article with good reminder of the main points.

Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right.

Ok I spoke to Miles today on IM and actually he makes some very good points about the outlook and underline issues of this article. I had to share it with everyone as it makes you think about the article in a different way.

[17:12:02] miles> I see you're posting that racist left/right brain crap on your blog [17:12:37] myself> well i dont really believe it myself which i thought I'd made clear, but maybe not. but you know your going to have to explain now [17:14:29] miles> You seemed ambivalent about the biology (which is just wrong - left/right brain is a biological fact), but offered no comment on the suggestion that asians could only do left-brain logical work, whilst creative work was still the province of the white man. As we see creativity as having higher value than logical work, this is tantamount to a racist statement, it seems to me [17:15:17] myself> not really thought about it that way, but yes i do see what you mean now [17:19:00] miles> Seems like the worst kind of racism - like social darwinism. The left/right is to do with the way the brain is organised physically. This has lead to a load of NLP-style babble about how some people are more left or right brained (little proof of this, though some evidence there is a gender split), from this, people have jumped to left or right brained cultures (no evidence of this at all), and it is frequently suggested that asian cultures are left-brained. That's why there's no such thing as Indian, Chinese or Japanese art. Which means I didn't visit the Asian Art Museum here in San Francisco, because it can't possibly exist. [17:22:12] miles> Most of the left/right culture thinking comes from a failure to appreciate economics. I think [17:22:28] myself> how do you mean? [17:23:12] miles> It is relatively easy for western companies to sell into developing markets in Asia because western goods are seen as desirable simply because they come from the west - asian consumers like the cachet value of them. On the other hand, outside of niche handicrafts products or henna or what have you, western consumers tend to view asian products with suspicion, except for established brands like Sony or Toyota [17:24:34] miles> Who would buy an Indra Enterprises MP3 player? [17:24:42] myself> no one, in the west at least [17:25:45] miles> When Asian businesses research the western market and produce products that the west wants to buy, they are accused of being un-innovative, because they ape already successful western products (eg Toyata didn't invent the SUV, American car companies did, but Toyota built a better SUV, and now dominate the market) [17:26:13] myself> now thats very true [17:27:35] miles> In fact, Asian businesses are not being un-innovative, they are simply doing market research - identifying what sells, and making it better and cheaper. This has nothing to do with innovation, it's to do with business. It's like claiming Chinese instructions on a western-made product for sale in China are not innovative because the Chinese already invented Chinese [17:28:08] myself> [17:29:10] miles> Asian businesses need to take this strategy because they are at a disadvantage in western markets - only as they grow, and increase their capitalisation, and develop their overseas offices will they have the awareness of western markets to be able to set trends. [17:29:37] miles> So, for example, Sony is now able to be a global trend-setter because of its size and reach [17:30:01] myself> true [17:31:03] miles> Indra Enterprises is going to have to follow trends - or hire western product designers - for some time. It might well not choose to do the latter, because of the high cash risk of launching a product in a developed market - the advertising budget needed might be actually more than Indra Enterprises's.

And in short, Miles is right. I need to say I'm never a believer of the classification of humans and personality types. I believe there are enough conridictions to make the whole classification useless. However, there is this underline theme that western markets will be right brain thinkers and the eastern markets are left. And I'm sorry but yes that sounds like racism to me too. I'm sure Daniel isnt a racist (sure Miles thinks the same) but this division is fundimentally wrong. I remember in the 1800's that it was widely accepted that different people see colours differently. So a bunch of Camridge prof's went to islands near Australia headed by William Rivers to prove that Blacks could see more colours than Europeans which at the time would mean they had the same colour depth as animals, which of course would prove to the racist of the time that there was a difference between Blacks and Whites. So anyhow William Rivers done many colour tests on the natives of the islands and came to the conclusion that actually most people see things in mostly the same way. And then to his credit, he started many movements when he came back to england to tell the world of his findings. Even thought european colour theory at the time was proven wrong. Is the left brain right brain theorys any different from european colour theory from the 1800's?

No, you can not have it all...

[ Science and Theory ]

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.

Nerd Values

[ Science and Theory ]

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

Ravensbourne Online learning community

[ Science and Theory ]

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.

What's your personality type?

[ Science and Theory ]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/whatamilike/index.shtml

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?

Dissertation time again...

[ Science and Theory ]

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...

If: the lights go out, were pretty much fcuk'ed...

[ Science and Theory ]

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...