Self Focus. Building networks is/are great. It helps. It enables other to help themselves in the same way that I have been taught and continue to learn off others. We do not do this alone.

There’s lots I could have, should have linked to over this time, but I’ve been too busy—Self Occupied. I pushed away current events to focus on the bigger picture of helping others. Easy to say to take a leaf out of my own book.

The realization’s been coming for a while, a root canal broke through. Awoken me to human existence, interconnectedness, and the not need or fascination, but the reality of sharing.

The gaps of silence have been a learning period. Sometimes there is too much of silence—it has a place, but only to some end. Impossible is just a word. There is huge inequality and suffering in the world, I believe we are working on this. The internet plays a role, as have all the forms of infrastructure and communication networks before it. I look to a happy world, and a bright future.

I understand that I must look after myself, but also to not self-isolate. Playing hero isn’t hero at all, it’s a little silly, and potentially life risking.

I’m not thinking reinvention, that’d be running away. The ecosystem of life, our balance and relation that’s where I’m coming from/to. No agile touch, management speak. Meditation helps me, as does Yoga.

We all have specializations and skills. We all have experiences and life stories to learn from each other. To be closed it to reduce the world.

A stake in time. A slower pace of life. What’s really important is not Class A networks aka 16,777,216 host nodes. They are needed, but what’s more important is water, food, shelter, health, and for things like Internets, Electricity.

All resources end. I feel my goal/our goal is to be here, understand we are fortunate and from here be ourselves. The future in this regard isn’t magical, it’s always from now. It is exciting to be alive, the online/offline world has changed, in my eyes, so much over the past few years. 3D Movies couldn’t have existed. Technology. It’s a story, talking about our lives and emotions, which is the purpose…a journey. To allow us, to reflect and pause.

In this way, open-ness is a form of creation. Web, Social, Art, Music work for me. We all have our things. I’ve been putting mine off and away. Time to live, time to be. I feel/find the lessons of my life are powerful in the moment, but often only later do I understand what it is that I’ve actually learnt, but then what? Right?

I’m humbled to be alive in 2010, thankful to have had so many amazing experiences, and am looking forward to wholly entering and experiencing many more to come.

What I’ve been doing over there is helping SF.Gov’s Department of Technology deploy a Cisco Wireless Mesh.

Instead of blabbing on about it, I’ve put together a 5 minute 27 second video, below.

Treasure Island Wireless - SF.Gov + Nodecity from Nodecity on Vimeo.

My So Called Freelance Life

Suggesting an hourly rate or flat project fee without knowing the nature, complexity, and scope of the work is financial suicide. You can, however, offer up a price range. Link

Unity of Circle, through the triangle to the manifest form of the square.
 

Sacred Geometry

If we divide the full height of the human body into the harmonic divisions of the square root of 2, calling the total height unity, we locate the vital center corresponding to what the Japanese call hara (belly), a subtle physical center, just below the navel. The figure will measure 2–√2   from the soles of the feet to the navel center, and √2  –1 from the navel center to the top of the head. In Zen practice this center is associated with a meditational technique of rooting, involving an intensification of the powers of physical self-control and self-transmutation. Tantric teaching in India, on the other hand, seeks to elevate this serpent or root so that it lends its energy to the higher, transformative glandular centers. Link

Simplexity

There have long been plenty of reasons—to believe that urban centers are shaped by laws more powerful than mere municipal planning ordinances. There’s the odd cellularity of a city glimpsed from an airplane window at night, a splatter of light resembling nothing so much as a brain cell, with the axons and dendrites of highways connecting it to the other cells—other cities—nearby. Link

Escape from Cubicle Nation

Each of us has natural, organic preferences for how we feel the most alive, relaxed, happy, and passionate at work. These can include things like; Physical work environment, Type of business, Business culture, Communication styles of managers/clients/co-workers, Size of business, Type of work content, Skills and talents used in work. Link

Bullying Bosses: A Survivor’s Guide

Potential allies might include people who live their lives naturally aware that we’re all bound together in our human interdependence. They might be active in community, church, or school affairs. On the job, they’re the ones most inclined to work with others on a project, a team, or for a cause and so they might also be willing to work with the Warrior. Unfortunately, most people aren’t like that. Link

(1) A lax diet conforming to habitual desires and taste preferences. People following this diet sway back and forth erratically in response to whims and fancies. This diet could be called self-indulgent, empty eating.

(2) The standard nutritional diet of most people, proceeding from biological conclusions. Nutritious foods are eaten for the purpose of maintaining the life of the body. It could be called materialist, scientific eating.

(3) The diet based on spiritual principles and idealistic philosophy. Limiting foods, aiming toward compression, most “natural” diets fall into this category. This could be called the diet of principle.

(4) The natural diet, following the will of heaven. Discarding all human knowledge, this diet could be called the diet of non-discrimination.

People first draw away from the empty diet which is the source of countless diseases. Next, becoming disenchanted with the scientific diet, which merely attempts to maintain biological life, many proceed to a diet of principle. Finally, transcending this, one arrives at the non-discriminating diet of the natural person. (Excerpt from The One-Straw Revolution)

It’s in this climate, with this history, that democratic and communist¹ countries are beginning to enforce internet censorship.

The Great Firewall of China blocks any content outside of the government’s vision/propaganda model.

The UK blocked wikipedia due to a cd cover.

Thailand has a list of over 50,000 sites blocked. This ranges from YouTube videos, and mirrors of the videos. To Hillary Clinton and Charile Chaplin.

Burma during the 2007 protests for democracy ‘turned off’ the internet to stop media from reporting about the public murdering of monks and protesters.

Germany recently passed a federal law in relation to filtering “child pornography” on the internet.

New Zealand has the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A’ that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny.

Iran, after the recent election fraud blocked access to Facebook and other social networks to try and stop coordination of protesters.

Australia is in the process of implementing a mandatory nation-wide filter, called a clean feed, that works on a black-list system. Meant to block only child pornography, but ‘over-blocks’ up to 7.8% of the time, as well as ‘under-blocking’ up to 13%.

Governments around the world regardless of their political background, see internet filtering as a viable option. I see very little point in fighting them on this point. They have censored every prior broadcast medium, and 8 there’s different countries above implementing some for of internet censorship. The battle to stop internet censorship is lost.

I think we need to advance to the next stage of the battle. I think we need to start working on attractive looking packages for those-who-cannot-help-themselves. We don’t agree with censorship, but it appears we aren’t able to stop it being implemented by proving it’s wrong. What we can do is prove it’s without merit and easily circumvented.

A nicely looking package should be equal parts education and technology based. The OpenDNS model of add-value 3rd party free public service (DNS) could work wonderfully. In our case, it maybe DNS as well as proxy. Couple that with a tiered/paid access model giving faster speeds to those who want it, and there’s economic incentives.

The above ‘package’ works on filtered content. Thing is, it doesn’t help if links/ports/sites are shutdown. It may not be possible to proxy through reduced pipes. This is a much harder problem to fix, as infrastructure must be connected to local houses, but also needs to uplink to something/someone not filtering; meaning using links outside the country.

I think we need to change or focus, and start preparing for the next stage of this battle. Scalable solutions are easily deployed. Working with/around link filtering is much harder. My hobby problem at the moment is enabling internet in places without solid local internet uplinks. I don’t have answers, this is just the beginning. Thoughts?

It points out that we are living proof that cooperation is a greater force than competition. Thanks to @wayupnorth for motivating me to post.

Each of us is a composite of more than 30 trillion individual living cells. Yet even these cells constitute less than half of our dry weight. The remainder consists of microorganisms, such as the enteric bacteria and yeasts of our gut that manufacture vitamins and help metabolize our food. These symbiotic creatures are as necessary to our survival and healthful function as our own cells. Each cell and microorganism in our body is an individual, self-directing entity, yet by joining together they are able as well to function as a single being with abilities far beyond those of its parts.

Throughout its life span, each organism constantly renews its physical structures through cell death and replacement. Ninety-eight percent of the atoms in our bodies are replaced each year. Yet the identity, function, and coherence of the body and its individual organs are self-maintained - suggesting that each cell, organ, and body possesses some degree of inner knowledge and awareness of both self and the larger whole of which it is a part. Yet the identity, function, and coherence of each organ and the body as a whole are actively self-maintained year after year. The same is true for all living organisms—powerful evidence that every living being possesses an inner knowledge and awareness of self…

Although the whole plant or animal may complete with its own kind or other species for its external energy sources, its internal cells and organs freely share their available internal energy stores as required to support the healthy function of the whole on which they all depend. When a special need arises, such as in the case of an illness, injury, or need to flee from a potential predator, the available resources are instantly directed to the appropriate cells. When our body’s energy reserves have been exhausted, muscle tissue will be broken down to supply energy to the brain and maintain basic metabolic processes until danger has passed and food may be sought to replenish them. It is perhaps the ultimate expression of life’s capacity for cooperative teamwork.

Local shop, health focused, Bi-rite, on Twitter
 

SF SPCA Business Cards, asking people to follow them
 

Others doing it right:-

• Creme Brulee Cart - posts time/locations on flickr, and then sells food out of a cart
• Epicenter Cafe - posts about news, food, drinks, events, coffee and more

I Could write more, but I think the pictures and links do a good enough job at explaining what’s going on….

To do this, I coupled rsync, a shell script, idisk, and cron. YMMV, but here we go;-


Gratuitous-ARP:~ wadem$ more backup.sh
sudo rsync -E -a -x -S --delete /Users/wadem/Documents/ /Volumes/wadeis/Documents/
sudo rsync -E -a -x -S --delete /Users/wadem/Sites/ /Volumes/wadeis/Sites/
sudo rsync -E -a -x -S --delete --exclude-from /Users/wadem/photo_noback.txt /Users/wadem/Pictures/ /Volumes/wadeis/Pictures/
Gratuitous-ARP:~ wadem$

backup ALL=NOPASSWD: /Users/wadem/backup.sh, /usr/bin/rsync


It is Good.

Mr Pickle, before he was stolen
 

The Mission has a fair few blogs dedicated to reporting local news. The news of Mr Pickle being stolen was rapidly picked up by all of the blogs, with Mission Mission report: “BREAKING: Mr. Pickle Stolen!“.

For a few months, that was it. The shop posted a reward for the safe return of the much loved Mr Pickle, with no charges to be pressed.

Then in May Mission Mission broke the story that Mr Pickle was found…in an aggregate Flickr stream!

Mr Pickle found in a Flickr stream
 

Around this point someone from The Mission bumped into the police. They found out the Police had looked into the photo on Flickr, but had not gotten any leads.

Mr Pickle’s Kidnapper was reading Mission Mission. For a joke he decided to create a Flickr account and post a photo to flickr. (Account’s been deleted, but there’s a copy of the photo).

The Kidnapper posting a photo of Mr Pickle
 

Now this is where it gets REALLY Interesting. Mission Mission again broke the story, “Mr Pickle Hostage Situation“. At this point, “we” had “him”. He’d used his real IP to upload a photo to Flickr. I suggested someone contact Flickr. Less than an hour later, the kidnapper said “ill return it jeez”. Clearly scared about being arrested.

About this time, Mission Mission received a tip from Flickr and was also able to work out the workplace, phone number, and home address of the kidnapper.

2 hours or so later, the kidnapper called up the store Mr Pickle was stolen from, and told Mama Pickle, that “he felt bad” about what had happened. Before the shop closed that afternoon, Mr Pickle had been dropped around the corner and the kidnapper called in to confirm he made it back okay.

Mr Pickle, just after his return
 

I was in the shop yesterday, the day after Mr Pickle was returned. About 20 people ordered whilst I was there. Every person who entered expressed amazement, thanks, and relief that Mr Pickle was back.

Moral of the story, don’t fuck with the internet.

In other parts of my life, I’ve been coding/mashing data up, building services, drawing, wrecking journals, photographing, and filming. Each of these other parts, for me, lives heavily in the nexus of play, failure, and fear.

I could rant on about what the former is like, but it’s not very interesting, and unfortunately, too well experienced. What’s slightly more interesting, and something that’s being discovered by many people can be summed up in 4 points.

Play is really important.
Failure should be cherished. (”He who fails, learns” - Donal)
Fear should be embraced.
There is no I, I am all.

Play, Failure, and Fear all have a common element. They naturally occur and aren’t limited to the human experience. When we’re not allowed to Play, Fail, or Live, often funny things happen.

Don’t be a cog in the system, be a spanner in the works.

 
Fear of saying no, of being different got us in this mess. Society needs to become conscious of it’s actions. It’s not a comfortable process. As a whole, we look silly. No one likes to feel silly, we’ve been brought up based on the ideal of being perfect and always right. When we ask questions, we direct consciousness to the activity. An unconscious or un-thought process, becomes exposed and ’seen’ by society when we raise questions.

Asking questions (of government) is often called Civil Disobedience. As George W. Bush said, you are either with us, or you are a terrorist.

There’s ~60,000 economists in the world, almost none of them bothered, and the industry as a whole failed to ask any questions about the transactions taking place in the global financial system. The industry accepted the framework given to them.

It’s literally insane that a large portion of the world is afraid of helping others. The “us vs them” mentality is still so prevalent. When will these people learn that they live in the world, and can not be excluded from it. At some point the world will tag you, and what happens to your shielded reality then? Either it shuts down even more, a mental trick, unstable in the long term, often causing kinks. The other option when exposed to the world, is the shield collapses, which at some point will cause a ‘mental breakdown’.

Coming back from this closed, no, afraid, fear mentality is a lot of work. Why would someone want to change their reality, especially if they are ’set’ in it? Change is not cherished, it requires consciousness, it’s work, it brings about pain.

By living the 4 points, the world around you changes. When we act and interact with others, there is a meeting between the parties. Sometimes this difference in philosophy is accepted, sometimes it’s not. Weird reactions abound.

It’s impossible to make change happen in another, it has to be done by one’s self. There are ways of trying to bring it about. Zen Encounters work in this way. Meditation is about quietening the mind down and seeing how it works. Drugs are generally about altering consciousness itself to see it better, or to see life through a different filter. Physical exercise is often coupled with working with a different sort of pain. There are many vehicles, but only 1 way.

Whatever the external method, at some point it must be accepted by the internal-self/other-self. This is where it gets tricky. Being Real/Authentic to myself is the only guide I have. I’m using the 4 points to guide me for now.

At Target, you can also buy an $8 toilet brush designed by acclaimed architect Michael Graves. And if you’re really a showoff you can try Excalibur, the $32 toilet brush by French designer Philippe Starck. — Salon.com

Excalibur, the $32 toilet brush, by Philippe Starck

 
A designer toilet brush is an interesting place to start writing, but it’s also the end of a very long what the fuck. There’s 2 issues with this:-

21% of the world lives on less than $1.50 a day, and society’s focus is on making mass producing designer everything. This is part of my general awareness. This is really important. I’d like to point it out for now, just to raise the W T F, and move to where I’m wanting to take this. It’s somehow connected. Feeding people, instead of companies.

 
Over the last year, I’ve been lucky enough to find some lovely people making real-world things by hand. Things they care about and want to share. It’s refreshing and warms my heart.

Ex-a-Sketch – “we put together all of the drawings done at the pub and make a zine!”

To me, creativity is about coming back to our self, about becoming real. Zines, What ever the form of expression, it’s the output of something both personal and deep. Some call that place God, others call it stillness, or The Void. Regardless of what it’s called, in each of us it’s expression is both the same and unique. We are all different manifestations of One.

Through these differences I feel something. It both enlightens and reflects within me. It’s through this personal expression I find myself, and my humanity. This is where the toilet brush comes in. Mass-produced goods are generally, as emotionless as possible. In the industrial era, goods were functional, today, they must be designed. Yet mass-produced design goods are still alien. They rape and pollute the planet and under pay workers. No where in this process is there any signs of humanity, in the production or the item.

Consumption eats self-esteem; creation makes it grow…Making things makes up happier, more whole people. — Callie Janoff, Handmade Nation

Almost typographic, Zine love by Pashrash

Judging by the huge resurgence of DIY and Zines over the past few years, I’m not the first one to discover the joy of being human. I’m sure the internet’s played a role in re-starting this scene. Once isolated creators, are now an army of talented peeps over on websites like Deviant Art and Etsy.com.

I think that handcraft is popular right now as a reaction against a whole slew of things, including our hyper-fast culture, increasing reliance on digital technology, the proliferation of consumer culture, and even war. — KnitKnit, Handmade Nation

Felt Grump by The Fetus

Having a recent run-in with the law for my preferred form of expression, coupled with a move to San Francisco, I’m waiting to see what bubbles to the surface to get creating again. Whilst waiting for something to manifest, if anyone’s got some Zines they’d like to share with me, I’d love to read them…

I Read Zines

I suggest reading the whole thing, it’s a 2 week long online conversation. One section discussed the online/offline dichotomy. It hit that spot.

Okay, brother, I hear you. As a former denizen of a small Texas refinery town, I know where you are coming from. I have a solution for you. It’s kind of a hard karma, but I can promise it will work.

I would urge you to travel. Put the computer down, get out of the house, and get out of the town. Go to weird cultural events, go to conventions of mutants. Travel cheap if you have to, but make a point to spend a lot of time on the road.

You wanna go accumulate a tonnage of stimulating stuff in two or three days. Then take your loot back to the crib, and think hard about it. The joy of living outside the hipster circuit is that, unlike them, you can get some serious perspective on all that noise.

You will never be able to singlehandedly transform your small town of retired people into an ashram for happy mutants. I would not urge you to try that. It’s neither practical nor necessary. But: if you keep your secret hacker personality entirely hidden on a screen, you will come to feel unhappily schizoid.

So: venture out in the open air. Break your routines, and go mix it up with the weird people. In a spare, calculated, fully-planned fashion.

When you start to feel like your boring little burrow there is actually your “safe and secure base of operations,” then you’re on the right track.

“Examining the root meaning of ‘anarchy,’ we find that ‘an’ means no or none, ‘archy’ means rulership. Thus ‘anarchy’ means no rulership or enforced authority. Anarchy does not mean chaos and disorder.
…
Today, the terms anarchist, anarchism, and anarchy have been used so loosely that their specific meaning of no enforced authority has been obscured. Anarchists do, of course, believe in authority, and in leadership, and in organizations—all voluntary and unimposed. It is an error to use ‘anarchy’ to mean chaos, or hostility to the status-quo.

True anarchists hold that individual choice is primary to maturity, and responsibility. For this, they hold that private property is essential, ie, for courageous dissident beliefs or actions, a person must be a beholden to no one—neither to employer nor group or government. For such independence, he needs a place of his own, inviolable and private to himself, from which he can produce his own survival, and from which he cannot be excluded for speech or actions that harm no one. To ensure widespread private property, individualist anarchists work to remove all forms of privilege and monopoly which centralize property, ownership, and control into the hands of a few people.”

Most shopping centres now have TV’s above escalators playing ads that no one asked for, that no one wants to watch. How did this happen? How is this allowed to happen?

Slowly, but surely, everywhere something can be stuck up or hung down, advertising is creeping in. I’m sure the centres get paid well for it too. 100,000’s of eyeballs a year in a place where there’s no other distractions. I’ve even started seeing TV’s inside individual shops advertising.

TV top right (under letters ket) advertising to all their customers.

 
Why have we allowed this encroachment into our lives? Shopping centres cover their costs by renting out shop space. ¹ It’s not like we watch them feeling bad for the shops. It’s just one more thing to screen out.

If we don’t stand up for our rights, we will lose them. No one seems to be keeping the advertising companies ‘in check’. At the thought of a bit of extra cash, private, and public companies alike sell out.

Bigpond bomb Cityrail’s Martin Place station, all walls, roof, and floor with advertisements

 
Public services like Cityrail sometimes have whole stations covered in single cohesive advertising campaigns. Cityrail is run by the State Government. Users pay for trains and stations. How Government services are able to subject paying users to stations bombed with advertising, I have no idea. It should be illegal everywhere, but then super even more illegal for public services.

An online Ad by City of Sydney warning about fines for putting stickers up

 
The contrast to this advertising everywhere, is sterility. Plain trains, plain walls, plain signs. Anywhere that something is put up, anywhere where someone tries to show human expression of any form. It’s removed. There can’t be any show of humans living in the environment.

This is often covered up with ‘environmental damage, and eventual economic cost’ as the result of what happens if work is left up. Utter bullshit, as expanded upon below. The other frequent reason given is we wouldn’t want to offend the masses. Everything must be politically correct. I don’t understand why everything is so unbalanced, either all advertising or nothing at all. Why can’t there be some of everything. Go the middle way. Some of everything is equally politically correct as nothing, but it also honours everything in the process.

The underlying reason for the removal of any act of creation probably comes back to the Broken Windows Theory and the resulting police policies from 1980’s New York City. The theory goes:

“one example of disorder, like graffiti or littering, can indeed encourage another, like stealing.”

An example of graffiti ‘disorder’ by Futura 2000 in New York City. An example of community-generated themed trains

 
Unfortunately this theory has never really been proven, but it’s not stopped implementation by most major cities/countries around the world. It’s a case of Security Theater, allowing Government to be seen To Be Doing Something. It may even be about lowering unemployment, by hiring people for the most meaningless of tasks. That’s speculation. Anyhow, back to a living case of bullshit.

Newtown is probably Sydney’s most ‘alive’ as well as Left-leaning suburb. It’s full of creatives and humans. It’s a place where anything goes, a rarity in Sydney. In Newtown People sticker, paste, stencil, graffiti and even knit things up in Newtown. People create and share their art on the streets. It feels nice to see personal expression. Newtown is famous for it’s culture and community. Without sharing, there’s no culture or community.

An example of a paste up in Newtown. The kind of thing the council likes to take down, or fine you for putting up²

 
Yet Newtown council goes around every few weeks buffing (removing), everything. Resetting the city to start again.

Stickers and pasties don’t damage the environment, taking them down does. The council is now employing people to remove the stickers. When the stickers and pasties are “buffed”, they have to be disposed of. There’s direct costs of hiring staff to take stickers down, but there’s also hidden costs. There’s the transportation and disposal costs to be looked at as well. Disposal is most probably land fill which is already over flowing.

Once the signs are all cleaned, the cycle begins again. More paper and chemicals are used to get new stickers and pasties up. Then a few weeks later, the council’s people come by again and repeat their buffing. These people could be freed up to plant trees, remove rubbish, or perhaps fix the drains, roads, or other failing public services. Instead they lead a cyclic life of removing stickers from poles and signs.

If they council let the city evolve, eventually there’d be nowhere for new stickers to go up. This leaves the options of either no creation, recycling what’s already there, or creating a mash up. All of these options are ‘better’ than having them professionally removed.

An example of what happens if you let people paint on walls.³

 
Sydney council, with all areas combined, would spend over a million dollars a year on trying to develop culture that lasts for a few weeks and is removed. An example of this is Newtown’s 2042. There’s real humans in the city who wish to create and share. Instead we get the fake version. The people want to create their own culture, but it’s unauthorised, so instead we get blank walls, and “No one takes photos of blank walls”.

Let those who have a voice, and wish to speak speak. For those who don’t like it, the same options are out there, let them develop a voice and reply. Let the city be a dialogue between it’s citizens instead of being dull and lifeless, where any form of expression is quickly removed as to not allow people to be inspired to create.

In Summary, on both sides, advertising, and human expression, humans are losing out. We are being sold out and fenced off. The single purpose of a city seems to be economic growth. Cities are a collection of people with thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, and a myriads of factors. We’ve accepted being silenced for so long, most don’t know what it could or should be like.

Movements like Reclaim the Streets and Critical Mass are global movements in the right direction, yet they failed to take off here. There’s limited time, we all lead busy lives. Thing is, the longer we leave it to start re-humanising our environment, the harder it gets. As much as I’d love this to be a call to arms post, it’s moreso a what the fuck. I’m doing what I can to balance the score, are you?

I’ve been bouncing back and forwards with Sighmon on a similar topic. This totally nails it. Great message, and great visual information communication. (via Donal)

I posted a reply on Tim’s blog, asking for comments and clarification of my comment. I’m still interested in what people think, so am sending it to a bigger audience, and wondering what you think….Watch the below video

China’s leaders might be called the “Communist Party”, but if Beijing is anything to go by, this nation is a celebration of a capitalism. So this is what happens when you mix market-minded capitalism with the heavy handed control of authoritarianism?
Tim Longhurst

And now my comment/reply:

As a big fan of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, I was very excited to this video with Naomi Klein.

Wade

This message was re-confirmed last year, in a quote that continues to ring true.

I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter- we never need read of another. One is enough.

Over this time, I’ve not just survived or been sustained, I have been nourished by what I’ve learnt. Through so many great people I know, as well as the many social networking services that are operating for me, by me tagging, and suggesting things to them. There’s 1000’s of people out there recording their preferences helping out the masses.

Google Reader, suggested I follow a new blog. I often check out it’s suggestions and have found A LOT of really good blogs from it. This blog was a capture of Flickr + Text Creative Commons Mashups, itself becoming a record.

And on the front page, greeting me, was the wonderful picture above, itself a long confirmation of the system working in action.

lynetter found this quote via Matthew Ingram’s Blog, who found it via a NYT article looking at “digital word of mouth”.

Before going to work out, I called to cancel my wake up so the ringing phone wouldn’t bother the neighbors. The receptionist then asked, “Would you like me to cancel the follow up call as well?”

Obviously, there’s no reason on earth that someone who is already awake and is cancelling their wakeup call would still want to be reminded of the call fifteen minutes later.

 
Yesterday I tried to call T[Life], George Street. After Google failed to turn up the number, I called Telstra’s Mobile division, hoping for an answer on stock levels and options for an iPhone.

The CS rep I spoke to couldn’t help, but offered to connect me to the shop. Unfortunately, she also couldn’t find the number either. After about 5 minutes, we decided it’d be best if I just went to the shop. I continued searching for the number. Eventually, I found it. I called and got an IVR answers saying the mailbox is full. Way to go. I would not like to be the consultant developing this brand¹.

So I went into T[Life], because I couldn’t speak to someone on the phone. I was looking to purchase an iPhone. The first lady I spoke to said sure, as long as I had an active Telstra Account. Well, I don’t have an active account. The T[Life] Lady said sorry she couldn’t help me.

When asking could I sign up for pre-paid on the spot and purchase an iPhone outright at the same time, I was told No. I was told that doing that would violate policy. She referred me to her assistant manager, who confirmed this policy. Dumb founded by a company wanting to turn down $1000, I kept at it with the assistant manager.

I couldn’t believe that I had to convince a company to take my money!

Eventually the assistant manager, Adam, saw the light. Without formally confirming, he managed to communicate to me, that yes, it was possible, but there was a few hoops to jump through. Adam suggested I walked to the Telstra Pitt Street shop and buy a pre-paid sim and get it activated on the spot and then head back with an “active” account for my iPhone.

Stupid, but not a problem. I got an activated pre-paid account, and $25 later was back at T[Life]. The first lady who I’d spoken to before came up to me saying “I’m sorry, Adam made a mistake, our policy doesn’t permit us to sell you an iPhone, even though you now have an active account”.

So at this point, I’m thinking I just burnt $25 on getting a pre-paid SIM. She now takes me to the Customer Concierge, to confirm I can’t get an iPhone even though I now meet their stupid conditions.

The Customer Concierge says there’s no problems with what I’ve done, and I’m welcome to a phone. The Lady continues stating their policy and how it’s not allowed, and how I’ve just signed up for a pre-paid account. Again the Customer Concierge says it’s not a problem, and finally she bends, saying it’s “okay, but only because we made a mistake telling you about it”.

From here it was all smooth sailing, when asked for my number, I handed over my pre-paid SIM pack with the number on the back, and no one even flinched at what I was doing.

The first customer service lady was doing her job, very proficiently, but blindly so. She was turning down a sizable sale, and pushing away a customer. Seth, in the same article as above, helps illuminate what’s wrong here.

I know it’s more difficult, but hiring people who can think for themselves is usually a better long run strategy…

The moral of the story? If you’re going to hire, please hire humans, not machines.

 
As a member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, I joined the I Will Not Watch Campaign. Flickr launched their 888 Photo Sharing/Celebration, and I thought that was a nice way to avoid watching any TV.

Flickr 888, made me pause. It made me think about who I am, my place in the world, and to look at the world at large. After this meditation, I felt drawn towards a photo on world politics and social justice, whilst still being grounded. I was looking for something that would swim against the grain of the Olympics that would remind people that Tibet is still being Occupied and Repressed by the Chinese.

With the camera out and ready, I bumped into a lady wearing a Free Tibet T-shirt. The exact message I was trying to capture. The lady was OK with me taking her photo, I did, and away we went. I get home and upload the shot, thinking nothing more of it. It turns out we both cohabitate a forum. A few hours later, the lady wearing the shirt’s posting on my Flickr stream saying she was wearing the shirt for Flickr 888. How’s that!

Keeping to the-world-is-a-small-place, Vicky ended up on the front page of the Flickr Blog for Flickr 888.

I’ll be writing more soon about other actions to keep up with during the games. Head on over to Tim Longhurt’s blog in the mean time. He’s on the ground in Beijing and offering a very interesting perspective on the games.

Today Isadore from Child Soldiers, sent me a tweet;-

From there we jumped onto mail, and it turns out I indeed owe her a lunch. It also turns out there was a hidden hand at play here. Again, the Servant of Chaos.

Update (22/August): Isadore’s posted her version of this story over on her blog. Check it out, and also check out her blog in general. She’s an amazing girl working on an amazing project. Thanks for such a great story Isadore! Keep up the good work. Peace, Wade

Also, here’s a great complimentary concept video created by Adaptive Path in partnership with Mozilla Labs. “It sets out to define a plausible vision of how technology, the browser, and the Web might evolve in the future by depicting that experience in a variety of real-world contexts.”(via)

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

 

A most auspicious day!

For those on Flickr, come join me in celebrating Flickr 888 instead of watching The Olympics.