headlessness

BBC Internet Blog: BBCHD and DRM: A Response to Cory Doctorow (continued)

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +0000

BBC Internet Blog: BBCHD and DRM: A Response to Cory Doctorow (continued):

Though Cory Doctorow seems to have moved on to other things, the discussion about the encryption of HD signals broadcast by the BBC continues.

Though the tone of the conversation has become more civil (the other commenters are a bit less antagonistic now), I find it more and more disturbing that Nick Reynolds — a man that, by his own admission, is “not very technical” — is left to field the questions. I feel very sorry for him, since he’s clearly working very hard to respond to reader queries. He’s not even the author of the original response to Doctorow.

The ludicrous situation arises that one of the readers, nevali, is having to explain to Nick the nub of the issues in almost layman’s terms — and he’s doing a very good job of it.

It worries me that, if there’s a lack of in-house boffins to answer the technical questions, there’s a lack of in-house boffins to make, or advise on the technical decisions that have landed the BBC in this pickle in the first place. Let’s see them outsource their way out of this one.

Skyfire 1, East London, November 7, 2009. The London Borough of...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:04:29 +0000

Skyfire 1, East London, November 7, 2009.

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets put on a wonderful fireworks display at the weekend.

Bricks, Stoke Newington, November 5, 2009.

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:47:34 +0000

Bricks, Stoke Newington, November 5, 2009.

The Reverse Geocache Puzzle

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:44:00 +0000

The Reverse Geocache Puzzle:

What a lovely use of Arduino.

anglepoised:

“Mounted into the lid, perhaps incongruously, are an illuminated button, a small display, and a mysterious module that sharp-eyed readers might recognize as a GPS…”

"Twitter is not small blogging! They both provide a mechanism to broadcast text on the web. So does..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:04:42 +0000

“Twitter is not small blogging! They both provide a mechanism to broadcast text on the web. So does IRC.”

- Britt Selvitelle.

Yellow, Dalston, November 4, 2009.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:40:55 +0000

Yellow, Dalston, November 4, 2009.

My delicious horse has bolted

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:25:00 +0000

My delicious has become an unwieldy gigantic haystack, hiding a relatively few needles of useful writings and references amid the chaff of social linkery and ephemera (…ephemera: I hate the sound of that word, but its meaning is useful).

I don’t even have a decent recollection of which needles I have filed away, so abandoned they have become. Maybe if I had entered with a plan, some sort of tagging strategy, this situation would have been avoided, but that ship has left the building. Elvis has sailed.

Delicious has not failed. I have failed. And I shall continue to adore it, and pour links into it and share nice things with it, but I must find a different system for burying the nuts I want to find again.

Statement

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:36:49 +0000

We take such allegations
seriously. Two have been
suspended. Our policy makes clear that
this is unacceptable. Everyone is entitled to an
environment free from
harassment, a principle that we expect
our staff to value and
uphold. This is a
close-knit community. Two have been
suspended. This is a difficult
time for us all.

Museums and things. Actual things.

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:13:00 +0000

Are museums collections of information, or collections of things? Both, I suppose. But if you were to visit a museum with few actual, physical things, you’d be entitled to feel a little disappointed, wouldn’t you?

This is how I felt about a visit to the Cocoon at the Darwin Centre of the Natural History Museum, a lovely new building (I do like new buildings sometimes) devoted to housing a vast collection of species: largely winged insects judging from the displays.

The problem was that there didn’t seem to be much of the collection actually visible to the public. Instead, there was screen after screen of static and moving digital information. But, with a stunning piece of technological misdirection (called NaturePlus), no one seemed either to notice or to mind. NaturePlus (it sounds like cough remedy to me) is an electronic system by which you “collect” data as you travel through the museum. But it dominates your trip, even if you choose not to use it. It’s basically socially impossible to watch one of the video exhibits from start to finish because you’re inevitably holding up a terrifying rabble of card-wielding maniacs.

These generally seemed to comprise families with a minimum of five children, all of which have their own card; even though one would be sufficient “collect” all the data (though of course, it’s the other way round, the museum is collecting data about the exhibits at which you choose to be scanned). And they’re hell-bent on touching in at every card reader, occasionally glancing sideways at a video to acknowledge the fact that they’re actually at a museum, not inside some surreal platform game.

The idea is that when you get home, you can log in to the nhm website, tell it your unique id, and it’ll present all that lovely data all over again. How many visitors will do that? Well judging from the level of interest in the actual information itself at the Cocoon, my guess would be not very many.

I don’t think I’m particularly difficult to please, museum-wise. Show me stuff in the flesh (or bone, or fibre or what have you), tell me what’s interesting about it and I’m happy. I don’t get too much of a kick out of wandering round looking at electronic screens showing me text, videos and films. I might feel different about that if the internet had never happened, but since it did, I rather expect electronic data to do the spatial leg-work these days.

And it’s not that I expect to see something as spectacular as a Diplodocus skeleton. My favourite exhibit in the collection at the Cocoon was a gynandromorphic butterfly.

In fairness, I did go during half-term. And in fairness further, there’s a separate part of the Centre where you can attend talks, interactive sessions and films which I am sure are wonderful. Unfortunately there wasn’t time at the end of my visit, especially since we’d deliberately and resolutely wandered the Cocoon slowly, seeing and taking in as much as possible.

Of course, it’s in the museum’s interests to get people through the doors, so expecting them to make all of the information immediately accessible on the internet is a little unfair; and the museum has to explore new ways to present data to the public now that it’s less acceptable to stuff a rare animal than it used to be. But, compared to Bodyworlds for example, there was rather a lack of actual physical stuff to look at, which I’ve always thought was rather the point of a museum. I could have done with a few more samples, a few fewer video screens and a complete absence of vague, half-hearted attempts to embrace interactivity and the digital age.

Academic Architectural Atrocities

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:13:00 +0000

Odd day, today. Generally, I try not to get too into the ins and outs of work-stuff, because I think until I get out, I’m too involved to differentiate woods from trees and comment in a way that’s interesting more broadly.

Suffice to say my day job is to do with buildings, and today I was looking at a particular one with a view to dramatic refurbishment. It was part of an academic institution: one that is being forced to refurbish a fairly pants post-war building because the government has slashed the redevelopment budget for the campus. They’re making the best of what they have.

On Monday I went to the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum (more on that shortly, I hope), which was great, but it was an opportunity to spend a bit of time in the central hall, once again. It’s old, yes; but it’s also grand. If you’ll forgive the cliché: knowledge and wisdom seems to run down the walls. It’s an inspiring place that you absolutely know very smart people have spent time in, achieving great things; and it makes you feel like you can be smart and achieve great things too.

The particular campus I spent time on today had a mixture of nice old buildings (some listed) and stereotypically-awful 1960s shit. It’s sort of avant-garde to defend very modern architecture, and London boasts several examples of modern architecture — even 1960s architecture — that deserve robust defence. But I don’t think that alters the fact that the majority of post-war architecture is rubbish.

New buildings exist that make you feel awed, but they are few. Sure, most older buildings aren’t awe-inspiring either, and it’s unfair to compare the main hall of the Natural History Museum with the new media wing of Dullchester Poly. I’m talking more about aspirations, I suppose.

I spent a bit of time at Edinburgh Uni, which had McEwan Hall and Appleton Tower (where, I’m 99% certain I performed my first Google search) only a stone’s throw away. These two buildings represent extremes, in my view.

Without making wildly flamboyant conclusions, is it hard to believe that, if academic buildings are nice (let alone inspiring), people will want to spend time in them and perhaps stick around long enough to learn something.

It’d just be nice if we spent a bit more making schools and unis a bit more excellent, really.

In Appleton Tower’s defence, as terrible a building as it is, it boasts some wonderful views, so it sort of fits the bill in other ways. Sort of.

UPDATE: …and thanks to Paulo for pointing out the, er, spectacular Ontario College of Art and Design.

Autumnal clash, London, October 27, 2009.

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:09:56 +0000

Autumnal clash, London, October 27, 2009.

Posterous is more posterous than it thinks, I think

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:01:14 +0000

I haven’t explained this well, because to do so would be a chore, and I’m not in the mood. But if I don’t someone else might articulate the thought before I do, and that’s just annoying. So sorry for the sloppiness…

Went to the farm with some friends and their child. We took lots of photos: child stroking a goat (she didn’t die of anything); friend pointing at a horse — or so they thought: a more suggestive photo than they’d realised. You know the sort of thing: not necessarily what you’d put on Flickr — not publicly anyway.

These aren’t webby people. Not remotely. And convicning non-webby people to use Flickr doesn’t always work in my experience. And in any case, like most web thingies, it doesn’t recognise the sort of loose but trusted network in play, here. The friends in question are from Scandinavia and South America, which is to say that the child’s close family are scattered over half the world. I don’t know any of them, really. How is it best to share that data without impractically hefty email attachments? And not just share with the people I know, but the people they know that I don’t?

I set up a password-protected blog on Posterous, sent it an email with all the photos from the day attached. Then all I had to do was share the web address to my friends with the password they need to access it. That’s no problem. Non-webby people use passwords at work. They understand them.

But, and this is a powerful feature when you think about it: they can share it with their relatives by simply forwarding the email. They can forward it on to the distant aunts and cousins: people I’ll probably never meet, but who all part of this loose network to which I also belong. It’s a trusted network, finite in size, but loose and distributed. Not all members know each other, but no one is going to give away the password — though it wouldn’t matter if they did, particularly.

Even the idea of getting people to participate, to contribute content, is extremely feasible. I just have to explain that it’s as simple as emailing their attachments to a particular email address. People understand that immediately too. They don’t have to touch Posterous, much less understand how it works. Facebook can’t do this stuff.

With a little thought as to how to market these sorts of features (that seem to hardly be mentioned at all) I think Posterous could have broader appeal: if not on a Facebook scale, at least to a Facebook demographic with particular needs. I like it when the stuff that crosses over is also good.

Wall, London, October 27, 2009.

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:24:27 +0000

Wall, London, October 27, 2009.

Cool stuff I got for my birthday:

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:29:18 +0000

Arduino
A nice bottle of wine
A lovely Mah Jongg set
Dangerous Liaisons
Modern Warfare 2
Scribblenauts
Superman: Red Son
Who on Earth is Tom Baker?
Too much beer

Thames Water Walthamstow Reservoirs visitors’ car park,...

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:09:18 +0100

Thames Water Walthamstow Reservoirs visitors’ car park, East London, October 20, 2009.

Bird’s Nest Island. Walthamstow Marshes, East London,...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:21:54 +0100

Bird’s Nest Island. Walthamstow Marshes, East London, October 20, 2009.

Water treatment facility. Walthamstow Marshes, East London,...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:18:37 +0100

Water treatment facility. Walthamstow Marshes, East London, October 20, 2009.

Pylon. Walthamstow Marshes, East London, October 20, 2009.

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:38:24 +0100

Pylon. Walthamstow Marshes, East London, October 20, 2009.

London Fields Radio

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:08:00 +0100

Thanks, Tom, for showing me this intriguing photo of London Fields Radio: a new “radio station in a coffee shop”, Wilton’s Coffee Shop on Wilton Way in the London borough of Hackney. What a wonderful idea, and what a marvelous logo. But other than this photo, and the fact that they were looking for staff a few weeks ago, I know nothing whatsoever about it. More when I do…

Update: a thousand hurrahs, LFR has a website. No streaming yet, but I’m told it’s on the way. It’s still not clear to me if they broadcast actual radio signals and at what frequency. I suppose there wouldn’t be much point in 2009.

headlessness has been rebooted.

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:08:00 +0100

headlessness has been rebooted.