Posts tagged “Uncategorized”

zynga and maxis — Jul 6, 2010
Zynga and Maxis are from very different computer gamer times. Maxis came at a time when the game was the source of entertainment. You would build a farm, worry about pests and locusts, about fertilizing the fields and having enough income to build the next series of crop. Zynga on the other hand is a game that teaches you to behave like a machine rather than a human, where repetitive actions are the standard. Simfarm, among other games was one of those games that you could play for weeks at a time. You would select a difficulty level and according to that difficulty level you would need to use knowledge you acquired through experience. If you put cows next to fields without a fence they would walk through and eat the crop. If you didn’t save enough money then if a crop failed your farm was toast. With Zynga you can put pigs with crops, animals in barns and more. There is no intellectual aspect to this game unless you’re a garden designer. You plant the fields, you wait a while and then you harvest. This is great if life doesn’t get in the way. How many of you know what you will be doing in two hours, 8 hours or sixteen hours? i kind of do, but my life will not center around such a simple game. What I liked about simfarm is that it was not mechanical. There was an aspect of game strategy. By obeying certain principles you could progress quite nicely in the game. Zynga has two ways for progression. The first is patience and the second is money. If you pay money then you can have everything immediately. If you spam your friends and they participate then you are rewarded. Do you really want to have to spam your friends to progress in a game? I don’t. I don’t like this trend, that you encourage people to spend money for a mechanical rather than intellectual game and I think that game makers should take this into consideration. If Civilization V came to facebook then I would play it. I would pay an upfront payment and expect to have the full game. And this reminds me of a recent documentary on the BBC called Coast. Do you, as a gamer, as a facebook user want games that are teaching you a different form of managment where right decisions bring profit or do you want penny arcade style games that require that mechanical put the coin in the slot type response? I would like to leave you with an interesting TED talk to help you think about this topic. I watched it a week ago but it’s relevant to the question of time spent gaming and what we should expect to get out of it....
Zwift events, a social ride and a race — Nov 18, 2018
Today I participated in two Zwift events, a social ride and a race. The social ride was one hour of pedalling at a comfortable pace trying to keep to the same speed as the group. Rather than trying to be as fast as the group I was trying to pace myself to be within the peloton rather than riding off....
Youtube live is a dissapointment, and it hasn't even started. — Nov 22, 2008
In an age where mobile video streaming is cheap in comparison to the past it’s a shame that youtube do not showcase this technology and have three hundred people streaming from one city for example. Why is it that they chose to cover live music events instead. Of course music is cheap to cover, excluding rights issues. Get three or four cameras in a room to cover the action on stage, two or three more cameras backstage and you’ve got a program, That’s not all though. It’s something you can rehearse. The singers do their sound checks, the vision mixers and directors know the music, know the cues. Everything can be well orchestrated. The production will be flat and boring. The BBC stopped top of the pops and now you’ve got Youtube doing live music programs. Of course it’s a different program, of course it’s a different technology, but of course it’s just one more step on the trip towards a different age of television. I love new media and new technology but I wish they would do something more creative with their time. Look at Autumn watch for example. Camera crews went to beautiful landscapes to cover the wildlife. They even broadcast whilst scuba diving. They use the website as an addition and they’re doing some outdoor event. That’s what we need more of. In an age where everyone walks around with a video camera, whether flip, mobile phone or other so the broadcaster, especially when it comes to entitities like youtube, should reflect their user’s method of covering the world. They should get out of the studio and get twenty cameras in a city, and cover everything that’s going on in real life, nothing setup. Just capture life as it happens. If that’s too boring then do some research, see of a live event that you could cover, whether it’s a car show where you’ve got lot’s of drifting, a festival where you’ve got hundreds of things happening at once or a ski resort where you’ve got snowboarders, skiers and other activities taking place. You could have cameras at the telesièges, at the teleski, you could have some at the summit and some on the other side of the valley filming as people ski down. You could have dynamic cameras. Just get out of that studio and give us something that’s not an advert for someone’s latest single. That’s just dull....
Youtube live is a dissapointment, and it hasn't even started. — Nov 22, 2008
richard - Nov 2, 2008...
Yet another reason to love Google Latitude — Feb 24, 2009
Yesterday I met a friend in geneva. The one that uses Google Latitude. I used my mobile phone to see where he was and just using cell towers I got a pretty good fix on where he was, within just a few hundred meters. When I called him to get a more accurate fix, i.e. for him to input the address as his latitude position using the power of Google maps, latitude and 3g it took just a minute to find the actual address. For this reason I love google latitude. When you’ve got technologically savvy users it makes being geo-loced twenty four hours a day extremely useful....
Yet another reason to love Google Latitude — Feb 24, 2009
Bernard Goldbach - Feb 3, 2009...
Yesterday evening at the Apple Store — Jun 5, 2010
Yesterday after work I was meant to meet a friend in Geneva but after a phone call changed my mind. I decided instead to walk to the apple store. What I saw in the apple store was quite interesting. As you walk in, where you used to have iphones and macbooks on display you now have ipads. Walk into the main hall and you have at least three more tables dedicated to the ipad. There were many more ipads than there were people interested in playing with the devices. The geniuses were standing around, with nothing to do. Does that mean that everyone who wanted to get an ipad got one, that everyone was tired from work or does that mean I went at the right time to play with a few devices. Of course I didn’t. I’ve had my own for about a week now so it doesn’t matter. There’s no need to go to the apple store to play with the device as I have mine with me most of the time. What is interesting is Apple’s current move away from laptops and even more so with desktops. When the macbook air came out everyone said that it was a piece of crap in relation to specifications and they were right. Steve Jobs and Apple have taken the netbook concep and skipped it. Instead they provide the Ipad, a device which you expect to have limited capabilities but great potential. What other manufacturers have been able to sell a display without a keyboard after all. You have over two million units sold for over a billion US dollars in spent currency. That’s two million units without a keyboard. That’s a theoretical two million people that are discovering that life without a keyboard works just as well. There’s just one set back ladies. You’ll have to cut your nails if you don’t want the clackety clack as your nails touch the screen. I love the iPad. I love that it’s light, that it’s versatile and that it’s so flexible. Imagine editorial meetings where you have an iPad and the content you’re discussing is in h.264. Drop into the meeting, say the item is interesting and show the editor in chief. There is no need to go to the edit suite, there is no need to go to the computer. There is no need for power cords, adaptors and dedicated bags. We’ve come to what I would call the iPad age. This is going to change the way we discuss and share content. Now what interests me is to see what happens with Apple laptops. Will the touch screen now come as standard and will they release dual screen laptops without a physical keyboards or will they come out with touch screen displays on the screen portion and a keyboard and mouse on the bottom part? Apple have effectively demonstrated how well touch screens can cope with our current demands. The question is how far will this progress? Will we see applications that are specifically designed for a touch screen interface. If so then we are going to a virtual interface that resembles the paper and scissors of our childhood. The computer itself is becoming transparent. What we do with it is changing. What we do with it is no longer local, no longer requiring the same type of data storage and sharing. We are no longer working on one machine. We have decentralised everything. Look at what the android platform can do. Look at Mobileme can do. It’s an interesting time. The computer is the simplest it’s ever been. This means that more and more people, from all ages are able to intuitively interact with the device in front of them. Configuring is as simple as a username and password these days. Everyone understands this method of configuration. It’s a democratisation feature. That’s why two year old children can use the devices as easily as 70 year olds. When you ask the revolutionary and evolutionary question in relation to technology I would go so far as to say this is a revolutionary device. It’s doing away with the keyboard, the mouse, the idea that things have to be configured. It’s the simplest interface yet. I don’t think everyone can justify getting one but it goes one step further in helping people always be connected, never be offline. It helps make facebook, twitter and e-mail be more pervasive in the way we live our daily lives....
Wphone as a wordpress admin tool — Nov 22, 2007
There is a move away from desktops and laptops towards ultra portable devices like the ipod touch, HTC phones and more that enable you to connect to the web whilst on the move. As a result of this a new breed of services have come into being. Facebook and gmail are two of the better known ones. Yesterday whilst watching the twitterstream I saw wphone mentioned. It’s a plugin for wordpress that, once installed, gives a simple intuitive user interface so that you can work on your website on the move. There are a number of screens of which the main ones are; write, manage, comments, plugins, users and latest activity. Each of these has an individual page and you have a nice amount of control over the content of the website. It’s a great little app and I think it would be useful to anyone that finds there are two or three quick changes they want to make to the site whilst on the move....
Worpdress update — Jun 19, 2010
I have updated to the latest version of Wordpress since yesterday morning and it is now running smoothly. I have made sharing of blog posts easier now....
The World from a baby's perspective — Jun 9, 2016
How would you feel if you had access to video footage taken with a 360° camera of the world from a baby’s perspective? This is a question I find interesting to answer. I decided to try this experiment a few days ago. The limitation of most cameras is that they only show what is within the field of view. They only show what the photographer or camera operator felt was worth capturing. With a 360° camera placed at the child’s eye level you can see everything from their perspective. You can see the entire room and you can look up to see the grown ups or down to see the hands and other objects on the ground. You can also see the underside of chairs and tables. With VR goggles you would see the world from that perspective. Imagine a birthday or Christmas party from this perspective. You would see the opening of presents, the reaction of the infant but also of the grown ups, of the brothers and sisters and maybe pets if there are any around. I think that this way of documenting the world would be most interesting for the child when she becomes a teenager or grown up. Imagine the pleasure that could be had by seeing how everyone looked at this time. Conventional cameras are always missing at least one person. With 360 cameras everyone would be in the image. The camera operator becomes part of the scene. One advantage of 360° videos is that they cover what is taking place in front and behind the camera so people may behave more naturally than if a standard video or photo camera was pointing at them. I love being behind video cameras rather than in front. With 360 cameras I am forced to be in frame. I believe that people will behave in a more natural manner than if they were filmed by a conventional camera. We see how people enjoy letters and paintings, photographs and conventional videos. Imagine how much enjoyment people would get from taking a step back in time. Imagine looking at the furniture, the gadgets, the architecture from a decade or two ago....
When I commented on the twitter whale — Jun 24, 2008
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Hard Hat Diving experience — Jun 10, 2013
Hard Hat Diving from Liquid Productions, LLC on Vimeo....
What is There to See in the Lake — Apr 13, 2017
What is there to see in the lake is a question that people have frequently asked me. For at least two years I would go diving nearly every weekend. I would dive in the Lac Léman, the Lac de Bourget, the Gouille Du Duzillet. I also dived the English channel in November. I dived all year round. In summer we would cook in our dry suits and in winter our hands were sometimes so cold that we couldn’t take off our dry suits. Lake divers are an eccentric, hardy bunch of people. I used to say that the beauty of lake diving is that it is not affected by weather. You’ll get wet anyway and if you go below a certain depth water is always at 5°c. I’m in Spain at the moment and I decided to go snorkelling with my semi Dry Suit around El Portet. This is the cove where I worked on getting my rescue diver certification. I snorkelled by the rocks to the west at first. The waters are shallow and I did see a school of juvenile fish. As I finned further I saw some slightly larger fish and urchins. After a while of searching I finned to the other side of the bay. New sand has been deposited along this beach. As a result of this new sand visibility has suffered near the beach. By the rocks the visibility is still good. From the image above you can see that the water is really clear. I thought that with such clear waters I would see a lot. I was hoping to see fish, maybe an eel or two and maybe some crabs. It’s good to dive and snorkel close to marine reserves. In marine reserves fish are allowed to mature and grow and eventually they branch out to other areas. As a result diving and snorkeling are more rewarding. It’s at the supermarket fish section that I saw the most fish. It’s a shame that they were lying dead, on ice, rather than swimming underwater. In effect I see as many fish in the mediterranean as in the lakes of Switzerland and France so you travel for the climate rather than aquatic life. People need to allow the seas and oceans time to recover. It’s a shame not to see much aquatic life. I should try again in a different location where there are fewer people. I might be luckier....
Welcome to the tweekend — Nov 4, 2007
The tweekend is a weekend spent reading twitter posts by all those you are following. I found out about this word earlier today because i am following twitionary, an amusing dictionary that takes twitter terminology and brings it into every day parlance. No self respecting twitterholic should live without it. Kidding aside another twittervox took place with Loudmouthman, Documentally and the ever present PhilCampbell. We discussed why it is that whilst in America everyone Loudmouthman met had twitter at podcamp whilst n the UK the opposite was true. We also took a look at why Documentally created twitterposer, a spoof of twitterposter. If you’d like to view the show then drop by the Tweekend episode now....
Web users and content sharing opportunities. — May 4, 2015
When I look at...
Web Dev Studies During The Pandemic. — Aug 26, 2020
During this Pandemic, I have decided to study Web Development and I am slowly making my way through one or two Linkedin Learning Pathways. In the process, I have learned about CSS, PHP, JavaScript ECMAScript2016, Frameworks and more....
WeatherproHD — May 30, 2010
Weather is something I don’t really care to take note of because it doesn’t change much about my appearance. It does change what I drive though. In summer when the weather is nice and warm then I’d much rather drive the scooter than the car. That’s because if I see a mother distracted by children whilst pulling out onto the main road it’s easier to overtake her. It’s also easier, when at traffic lights to get to the front of the queue rather than wait like an unambitious car driver, and before you object I’m very often trapped in traffic, so please remain polite in the comments (as if there were going to be any. The interesting part. Today and yesterday I was at an event in the lovely rain one day and sadistic rain the next. I call the rain sadistic because it resulted in many cycling injuries during a local race around the lake. One person at the event was playing with weather pro on the Iphone, and from the glimpse I caught I saw something useful. I’m home now and I downloaded the weather app on the Ipad, after all if you’re going to spend money on an app you might as well have a frame to display it. I love how this app displays information. You have the weather graphic to show the main weather trends of the day. You have temperature information, rain information, wind direction, pressure, humidity and more. As an additional feature you have the ability to add your favourite cities, let’s say London, Geneva, Paris, South Africa (for the World Cup) and maybe one more. Click on the right side of the screen and you have information for each city. There are three bonus buttons at the bottom of the screen, the weather button, whose features I have described. The radar tab shows you where the most recent precipitation has been. Satellite images show you what the clouds have been doing for a set time period. We’ll see how often I use this app. I like that it has all these features....
VR Shinecon Virtual Reality Glasses — Jul 18, 2016
The VR Shinecon Virtual Reality glasses provide a low cost opportunity for people to experience Virtual Reality content and immersive videos with their existing phone rather than investing hundreds in a new phone and VR headset. it can fit phones from 4 to 6 inches easily. The front panel opens to accommodate a diversity of phones and sizes. You can open the front panel, place your phone and centre it, and then close it. Before you close the front panel make sure to launch the VR app or content that you want to experience. Jaunt VR is one app that is easy and intuitive to use. Once the front panel is closed and you put on the VR headset you can adjust focus to suit your eyesight. This control is on the right and left side of the goggles.The inter-ocular distance can be adjuste to suit the spacing between your eyes via the wheel at the top of the headset. The straps are velcro so adjusting the headset to your head size is also intuitive. The phone compartment has two openings on either side. This opening allows for headphones to be plugged in to the VR headset as well as a USB cable to charge the phone if you are using this device for an extended period of time. With the Samsung Gear headset the USB port is taken up by the external controls. This means that although you can use your phone with the headset on you lose the ability to recharge the phone....
Visiting the Queen "“ A Mountainbike-Trip in the Dolomites (English Version) — Jan 31, 2013
A fun video showing the path that can be taken by bike. Simple idea, short video....
Virtual Reality and Global conversations — Mar 22, 2026
In the mid 1990s I spent hours and hours in chatrooms. In some cases I spent so long in chatrooms that I saw Australia and Asia get ready for bed, Moscow and Europe wake up and then the US wake up. That was my first glimpse of the globalisation of conversations in real time. It was text based and everyone was on dial up modems therefore every minute spent online cost money....
Virtual reality and Dining — Jan 23, 2016
The history of entertainment is a long one. We have gone from banquet entertainment during Roman and Medieval times. We have had radio and television to entertain us. We have also had books, magazines and kindles. The idea of Virtual Reality and dinner is not that strange. What is fascinating about Virtual reality is that in our lifetime it has gone from requiring massive computers and cumbersome devices. Today virtual reality can be experienced with a mobile phone. The technology has shrunk and become affordable to such an extent that restaurants want to take theme restaurants from décor, painted walls and location to virtual reality....
Village Photography — Nov 25, 2014
On Google Plus, one of my muses, I saw that instead of Street photography someone suggested Village photography. I like the idea because villages are such an integral part of my life. Life in villages is a privileged one. Every time we go for a walk we cross people we do not know and say hello. We walk from field to field and along paths. We see which crops have been planted and which ones are being harvested. We see frequent horses and dog walkers. We also see families. We hear the sound of rifle practices at the local gun range. The practice is for military service most of the time. We also have fountains and old buildings. We hear the church bell every half hour and hour. We see the fountains with wooden chalet to protect from the cold in winter. Villages are seasonal. In summer the sounds of children playing, of fireworks and of barbecues can be heard. In Autumn the sound of wind blowers can be heard. In Winter we see lights on as the neighbours prepare their evening meal. In the mornings we see parents bring their children to school before the bell rings and they head in to their classes to sit and wait impatiently for the school day to be over so that they may go out on adventures. That’s why village photography captivates my imagination. I know villages well. I appreciate them. I look forward to looking at images from the past, and preserving today for future generations....
Views from the Aiguille du Midi. — Oct 24, 2011
Views from the Aiguille du Midi. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157627877773774”]...
Video Insider — Jan 19, 2008
I’ve seen a lot of people create link posts where there’s no comment just links and these are not effective. They’re not effective because they require the audience to click through and read the entire post to see what you thought was of interest. Instead I’m going to choose key paragraphs and link to the article. If you like the paragraph then simply click on the link and you’ll get the full article within it’s context. The user-generated video content tsunami has clearly changed the shape of the online environment we live in today. In fact, the growth of UG video so far is turning the Internet into a non-interactive medium. It’s created the quagmire we’re in today because the industry is treating all online video the same "” meshing UG video with professionally produced brand videos. Even if consumers want to sit back and watch a monkey juggling video online, that doesn’t mean they don’t want to lean forward when they visit Web sites to get information about that car or house they’re thinking about buying. Source _ I believe it’s not about gazing into a crystal ball to predict what ad format will produce the greatest CPMs. In an industry as exciting, creative and fast-moving as ours, it seems we are all becoming as distracted as the consumers we are trying to attract. But we need to remember the basic premise that advertising is communication of valuable information. And for it to be effective, we need to communicate the message multiple times in multiple ways; we especially need to recognize that every time the message needs to be a fresh exciting experience that engages and resonates with target customers, motivating them to take action. David Ogilvy once said, "What really convinces consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form."_ Source Instead, go to work tomorrow worrying about something even more important. Rather than how many see your commercials, worry about how much time they spend with them. Source Let me know whether you like this style of posting. Now to go on with traditional feedreading....
Video Insider — Jan 19, 2008
Jennifer - Jan 0, 2008...
Via Ferrata - Les Baumes du Verneau — Sep 21, 2010
Via Ferrata - Les Baumes du Verneau...
Via Ferrata in the mist. Moleson in the Jura. — Sep 21, 2010
Via Ferrata in the mist...
Via Ferrata du Moléson — Aug 19, 2011
A few weeks ago I explored the Via Ferrata du Moléson and these are the images I came back with. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157626944582830”]...
Via Ferrata du Fort D'écluse. — May 1, 2011
Today I explored the Via Ferrata near the Fort D’écluse. It is an easy 30 minute drive from Geneva therefore can be done in the morning before an evening shift or in the afternoon after a morning shift. As a side note you can see the TGV coming into and leaving Geneva. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157626620791854”]...
Via Ferrata du Diable - Aussois — Sep 22, 2015
The Barrière de l’Esseillon are a line of fortifications two hundred years old and capable of holding two thousand soldiers in total.The fort Victor-Emmanuel is still standing and in it’s day could hold up to one thousand five hundred troops. This fort overlooks the via Ferrata. Some drone shots of the region in winter The Via Ferata du Diable is a series of via ferrata routes located around a bridge called Le Pont du Diable (Bridge of the Devil) which crosses the river L’arc (The Bow). This set of via ferrata varies from two easier ones that are suitable for children to four via ferrata that are suitable for various skill levels as long as you are not afraid of heights. The last one is going to challenge your courage and stamina because it is high off the ground and there are overhangs. The via ferrata are numbered so if you do them then do 6 followed by 3, then walk back and do four and five so that you complete a loop without back tracking. If you want to do the seventh then be ready to be high off the valley floor, to cross a monkey bridge, a nepalese bridge and a more conventional final bridge. There is an escape route but by this point you might as well finish the via ferrata and walk back. [gallery columns=“4” ids=“2573,2574,2575,2576,2577,2578,2579,2580,2581,2582,2583,2586,2587,2588,2589,2590,2591,2592,2593,2594,2595,2596,2597,2598,2599,2600”]...
Via Ferrata de la Tour D'ai. — Aug 19, 2011
La Tour D’ai in Switzerland is a great opportunity to look across to the Canton de Vaud and the Lac Léman. From here you can look at several canton. The via ferrata has a nice little walk to the base. At this point you start the climbing. It’s an easy aerial via ferrata. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157627299831715”]...
Via Ferrata at La Chapelle D'abondance — May 31, 2011
La chapelle D’abondance is a nice via ferrata split into three parts. The first part is not so hard, the second part is harder and the last part is meant to be very hard. The walk from the parking to the first section is short at around 15 minutes. The via ferrata itself took about 2hrs going with people whom had not yet practiced this sport. We did experience rain on this visit to the via ferrata so some of the rocks were slippy, as were the cables. This did not present such difficulties though. Here are some images from the trip. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157626727945869”]...
Venture to the Eiger - Base jump video — Mar 2, 2013
Venture to the Eiger from Bouken Boy Media on Vimeo....
Using an Xtorm Solar Charger — Apr 17, 2017
While in Spain for three weeks I was playing with the Xtorm solar Charger. I found that it worked well for the charging of tablets and e-book readers but not mobile phones. [caption id=“attachment_3462” align=“aligncenter”] Solar charger and external battery For years I have wanted to play with solar power. I have wanted to buy a solar panel that I could fix to my bag or that I could use to charge devices. I often looked at the price and weight and changed my mind. I don’t want something that adds kilos to my load, especially if I am climbing. With a small device like the one pictured above you can carry it with you and use it to charge devices. When you drive to the hike or climb, or when you stop for lunch or a drink you can take out this device and start charging your phone, gps, led lights or other devices. if you want to charge devices to 100 percent then I would recommend charging ipads, ebooks, gps watches and other devices with this device. I found that it’s great for providing a phone with a top up charge but that because of my mobile use patterns it will only provide one full charge per day. When we hear people speak about solar power we always hear about “How do we store the power we generate so that we can use it when we need it?” and I found a way. When I woke up in the morning I would put the solar charger near a window or outside if there was no chance of rain to charge up to over 75 percent. When it reached this charge I connected the solar charger to a 10,000mah external battery. It is by using this technique that I have been able to keep my external battery fully charged with no need to plug it in to mains power. In effect it means that I can charge the ipad, the phone or the e-book reader without using mains power....
updated to 2.1-RC1” wordpress — Jan 19, 2007
Unreasonably low - a rant against a certain ISP — Mar 12, 2007
Dear Victim, Yesterday you exceeded the daily usage limit of 500MB as referred to in our Terms and Conditions. This type of activity could have a detrimental effect on our network and therefore we cannot allow this to continue. Should you continue to exceed the daily download limit we will, unfortunately, be forced to downgrade your service to a throughput limit of 56Kbs dial-up speed, for a period of 5 days. If you exceed these limits on a regular basis, we may be forced to suspend your account. For users of Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BearShare, Warez, Morpheus, BitTorrent, iMesh and KaZaA note the following: Most P2P applications you install will usually be configured so other users can access your hard drive and share your files all of the time. This constant file transfer can degrade your computer’s performance and generate heavy traffic loads on the network, making it difficult for other users of the network to work well. The network is a shared resource and we all must use it responsibly. Network bandwidth consumption is monitored. If your users could possibly impact the overall performance of the network, your computer may be blocked until the situation can be discussed. Should you have any queries regarding this email, please contact Customer Services Regards Appallingly crappy ISP ---------------------------- I’m a third-year media student who has spent the past decade online practically every day. I know where to find content. I understand the nature of the medium. I’m not your garden variety fifty-five-second user. I’m the type of user that would wake up every morning and download a gigabyte or more a day when at home. I go to the uni network and I’ve downloaded 600 megs within about ten minutes and my daily allowance is a pathetic 500 megs. Five hundred megs is not even one full copy of Linux. Some video podcasts are over a hundred megs each. Podcasts can be up to 100 megabytes in size. I hate their false advertising and promises. I have no choice though, I’m not the one selecting the ISP. afterthought Where did Yahoo go wrong with their implementation of advertising along the same lines as google? They took two years longer than they should have to implement what belonged to them. I hope they go bankrupt....
Unhappy facebook users - Marketers and Academics are looking in the wrong place. — May 28, 2017
Unhappy Facebook Users - Marketers and Academics are looking in the wrong place....
Unfortunate choice of words for a Water Charity event — Feb 19, 2009
International World Water Day is held annually on 22 March as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources....
UNDERCITY - urban exploration — Mar 6, 2013
UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo....
Two weeks of recreation — Aug 9, 2006
The next two weeks or so shall see me resting but not from media work. There’s a good chance I’ll be working on a project about a Prison in the Lebanon. It was shot a few weeks ago and the person in charge of the project needs help with the editing. It looks as though it’s going to be an interesting project. I’ve already viewed quite a bit of footage, read the voice over text and discussed the idea. I’ve started to form some ideas of how to create the story and tomorrow this should progress further with me going in to work. In around two weeks I’ll have an interesting work shift, from 5am to 1300 hours, in other words my work day will be finished when other people get their work day started. We’ll see how that goes anyway. Ciao for now...
Two talks at the graduate institute in Geneva, Switzerland — Nov 26, 2014
Last week after work I went to listen to two talks at the Graduate institute in Geneva. The first talk was by David Hone. He presented me with a different perspective on the topic of global warming. For the first time I was presented with the trillion ton carbon budget. He explained the carbon capture schemes in a new way. As a result of this my understanding of the topic of global warming and the carbon cycle progressed. The second speaker was José Manuel Barroso, former head of (check title) and he talked freely for the first time in ten years. He presented the European union in Global terms. This was another interesting talk where his opinions and experiences with personalities were related....
Twittervision — Mar 24, 2007
Twitter is a global short messaging system that allows people to post what they are doing 140 characters at a time. For the moment it is a relatively new phenomenon therefore it’s not too hard to keep track of the conversations going on. They are also geo logged. As you’re watching people’s messages you can see China say that they’re getting ready for the night ahead whilst in Europe people are going out to lunch. In the US people are complaining about having to wake up early in order to catch their planes, go for walks or in certain cases go to bed. It’s amusing and it’s reminiscent of ten years ago when I spent 13hrs in a chatroom at a time when spending ten minutes online was expensive. it’s cyclical. One thing is popular, then is replaced by something else before becoming popular again. One difference this time is the technology used. Google maps show where in the world people are tweeting from whilst the twitter site simply shows what people have written. It’s amusing to watch the world and what people are doing in it....
Twitter's spam problem — Aug 8, 2012
There is an easy to solve problem that Twitter has yet to correct. Spammers create an account and send @username hyperlink. This type of spam would be tremendously easy to eliminate yet twitter does nothing of the sort. A simple filter would be enough to prevent such posts from taking place....
Twitter friendships and why I took some time off — Feb 11, 2009
When you first arrive on twitter it’s lots of strangers sending messages speaking about what they’re doing and it quickly becomes overwhelming, especially with the vast number of people. For the first few months many people send no more than a hundred posts a day as they get used to the twitter stream. Eventually with time they get into the swing of things and they begin to interact with the other users and this creates a sense of friendships. Those friendships grow and they flourish, from the occasional exchange initially until several weeks later they are full grown conversations. That’s when character begins to show, when we see who we would love to spend more time and who we would get to meet in person. That’s when the tweetup is about meeting old friends for the first time in person. For most of you this is a foreign concept. For you the web is a place to keep in touch with friends who have moved out of the town where you are living. That’s why facebook is popular with over one hundred and fifty million people worldwide. That’s why so many of you are friends of mine on facebook but not on twitter. There is another trend, which is stronger and stronger, online friendships becoming physical world friendships. I call them this way because as good as the conversation is online you can’t give the person a hug or share a meal with them. The tweetup was an occasion when you had the pleasure of meeting these people for the first time. i still remember meeting sizemore for the first time, Loudmouthman and a few others. I remember meeting Documentally too. What made these meetings so interesting is that we knew each other from weeks of tweeting in most cases, although in others it was spontaneous. There was no breaking the ice. You just go straight into the conversation an that’s what makes it such a great networking tool. That’s part of the reason I was invited by Seesmic to LeWeb. I really value these opportunities. Recently though there’s another trend. You meet people in person and learn they twitter, you chat to them in person for a day, two days or more and you feel you have a good connection. A few days later you’re online, using twitter and you’re interested in staying in touch with them, seeing what they’re doing and sharing that passion, whatever the project. There is that drift away though, you give them your time but they don’t reciprocate. Instead you get a deluge of self promotion and ignored comments to what they’re doing. That friendship which had seemed interesting is broken. People don’t have time for twitter. Thousands of people are joining twitter every day and thousands of people are finding new followers but none, or hardly any of them are working at what made twitter so great, the community aspect. The community feel has disappeared. It may have something to do with traveling away from London but I think it’s deeper than that. I feel that as twitter has grown in value and as it has become part of their daily lives they are less willing to devote as much time to communication online. Of course this may be a sign of how ubiquitous Twitter has become. If it’s a tool where everyone is spread around the world then everyone wants to be online to talk because that’s their only choice. Now though opportunities have blossomed and twitter has become a local affair, and the bigger the local population the more isolated you will feel if you’re living in the provinces. That’s what I feel now. I’m not saying it’s a negative thing. I really disliked the only twestival event I went to but I think that’s because I saw that twitter has finally become something local. The fact that the event is in over 100 cities proves this. Twitter has become local, and so the focus is on those that live within easy meeting distance of where you live. That’s why London twitter users ignore users in other cities. That’s why there’s a new form of community. I’m looking forward to when twitter becomes more popular in Switzerland, when I get more local friends to use the site. In the meantime though I have to accept that more traditional approaches to friendships may serve me better. I did leave forget my phone at home tonight, when I went to meet some friends and I didn’t turn back to get it. I went out. I was disconnected from the world and it didn’t matter. I was finally living locally once more. I’ve learned a lot from this twitter separation. I will be back to the service but if you don’t give me the time of day when I send you a message then you can forget about me following those hyperlinks to the work you’re so busy promoting. I want to feel I have a personal connection with those I follow, not that I’m part of an audience. I want you to be in my seminar group....
Twitalyser — Mar 5, 2009
[caption id=“attachment_1066” align=“aligncenter” caption=“Some results from earlier today”] Generated by Twitalyzer If you were thinking of following me on twitter then this may help change your mind, or on the contrary encourage you. You may notice my generosity is zero. That’s because I don’t like RT as I think they pollute the timeline. By the same opportunity I have stopped following over 150 people on twitter....
Twhirl as your Twitter interface — Jan 11, 2008
For those of you familiar with twitter there are a number of ways of keeping up with information and my current favourite is Twhirl. What I love about using Twhirl is how well it works. At first it feels clunky. You’ve got to download adobe air, then you’ve got to download twhirl and once this is done you’ve got to get used to the user interface. I went from twitterific to here and the transition was relatively painless. I missed one or two of the keyboard shortcuts. Since then I’ve grown to enjoy using it for three key reasons. The first of these is that you don’t need to restart it as there are no caching issues. For someone who tweets as much as I do and follows as many a lot of time would be sent reseting twitterific. Not with Twhirl. It’s got over 5500 tweets right now and no sign of slowing down. The second feature i love is how you can choose whether to @, DM, Favourite or re-tweet. Anyone using twitter is familiar with the first three. The re-tweet feature is fun. It allows you to retweet verbatim quite easily. I don’t see it used often luckily but it’s a nice gimmik. The third feature that I enjoy are the shortcut keys specific to this program. R for replies, F for friends, D for direct messages and then there are two or three other such short cuts that could be of interest. As an aside you’ve got the filter option although having not used it I can’t comment. It’s a nice package and anyone using Aero should give it a try....
Twhirl as your Twitter interface — Jan 11, 2008
Rox - Jan 5, 2008...
TweetCamp — Dec 16, 2008
This morning whilst tweeting with Fahran Rehman we decided that we would like to organise a twitter event in London with a difference. Twestival and twinterval are great ideas but we’re thinking of doing something over a period of two days that would be like a podcamp but over two days and we need your ideas to make it worthwhile. Already we have 27 people on facebook interested in the project and another 6 so far on tweetcamp. It would take place in London in the not too distant future normally. The reason for it taking place in London is that there are over 10,000 twitter users theoretically based in London already so we might expect at least two to three hundred to come along to participate. If you’re interested in participating then put your name down and let’s get the project underway and see how much interest we can gather....
Turn by turn navigation with the Nokia N97 — Feb 2, 2010
Last night I recovered my N97 after lending it to a friend for a few days and he told me it was too complicated to use, which I do agree with, after seeing how easy the 3gs is, but that’s not the point of this post. Turn by turn navigation is. For those of you who know me you’ll have heard that I’ve used the N95, N97 and Iphone for navigation and each has it’s strengths and weaknesses. Mainly the biggest weakness is having to wait until you’re stopped at a traffic light before checking whether you were going the right way or not. That has now changed. Nokia have recently come out with an excellent, yes, that’s my opinion, add on to the maps software that provides turn by turn navigation with a choice of hundreds of voices. That’s what makes the Nokia N97 such a great, although expensive GPS. You select the voice, in my case female Canadian french, and she will tell you which way to go. She will tell you when you’re at a roundabout, whether to go right or left and more. Best of all her voice will allow you to keep your eyes on the road. If you’re travelling with a fellow geek who can play with the phone whilst you’re driving then they will notice the counting down, telling you how far you are from the next change in direction, show a map of the route as a forerunner to the actual journey or even a map of the complete journey. From what I’ve described above you see that the N97 behaves just like a dedicated navigation GPS that’s constantly online. As a result you get traffic information telling you what to look out for. It’s a beautiful piece of software and I’d love to go on a road trip to test it. I’m in favour of this in car navigation. If you buy a GPS you’d pay 300-400CHF in some cases, several hundred CHF for the Iphone tom-tom app, or you could get it for free with your N97. The choice is yours. I’m very happy with how well it performed....
Tudor Monastery Farm - A documentary series — Jun 15, 2015
I took advantage of a rainy day to watch a series of documentaries by the BBC called Tudor Monastery Farm. It is a documentary series where three individuals live the life people would have lived at the relevant time period for a year. During this year they try farming, mining, fishing and other skills and crafts from the time. These are observational and experimental documentaries. They take the observational cinéma verité and Direct cinema approach to factual television production. As you watch these documentaries so you are transported to a different time period. For years or even decades I thought of this time period as a bad time period. I thought of the church as being an oppressive force. Through this set of documentaries I eventually felt sad that monasteries and the way of life that was illustrated in the series of documentaries was dissolved by Henry the Eighth. Imagine a monastery with 20,000 sheep, imagine the work that was lost by stone masons as the need for monastery construction and other activities declined. If you find this documentary series I strongly recommend watching it....
Totem Escalade - Bouldering in Gland — Sep 23, 2015
The three common forms of climbing are Rock, climbing, via ferrata and bouldering. Rock climbing is an excellent and amusing sport that requires living in the right place, having the right equipment and knowing the right people. I enjoy the sport but have not found a group to go with. Via Ferrata as I love to call it is Rock climbing for tourists. The equipments and routes are set out and prepared so that those with the correct experience, head for heights and equipments can explore the landscape in an interesting and dynamic fashion. The last of these is bouldering. Bouldering is a form of climbing without ropes. In the wild it requires finding a bit of rock and studying the rock to find a route. On Sunday I noticed on Facebook that a new indoor climbing place was opening in Gland. Totem Escalade is an indoor bouldering place where you can practice climbing indoors. As autumn and winter approach this is welcome. It is based by the bowling in Gland, next to where a night club used to be. It has a central structure off which are four climbing surfaces with coloured paper to mark the grade of the climbs. As you progress you can attempt harder and harder routes. Bouldering is physically demanding and develops upper body strength. You need to use your arms, fingers and back muscles to hold on and make progress along the route you have chosen. As you try a number of routes a number of times so your strength will begin to fade. After two hours of enjoyment my hand muscles were done. I can still feel them as I write this blog post. I love that a climbing wall is so close to Nyon. For years I have been looking for this. Now that I know about this climbing wall I will be a frequent visitor. I want to improve my technique and I want to increase my strength so that for the next via ferrata season I will be that much more comfortable....
Today it snowed — Nov 22, 2008
Today it snowed....
Thoughts on "How technology disrupted the truth" — Jul 12, 2016
How technology disrupted the truth is currently a popular topic. This statement is a fallacy because technology is not misleading people. People with political agendas are disrupting the truth. If you remember back to the Obama campaigns you will remember that bloggers were seen as part of the solution, not the problem. In the social age when everything shifts towards clicks and audience reach people lose focus on the value that the world wide web and user generated content can play. With the way in which social media have been hijacked by political groups, trolls, flamers and others it is hard to see social media as sustainable....
Thoughts on the ipod touch — Sep 19, 2007
Today I dropped by the apple store and bought an ipod touch at the same time as a friend. both of us were speaking about how we were going to wait the five hours before the device was charged. I didn’t. I plugged it into the laptop and let it charge for five hours that way So far there are a number of features I love about this device. The first of these is the screen. it’s nice and wide and it’s slim which means it’s easier to carry. Wifi works great whether the network is protected and both the itunes store and youtube are quick to access. Further to this the safari browser works well for browsing news articles whilst within range of wifi hotspots. You can browse several websites at once if you so desire. Among those things I think are limiting is the lack of a proper keyboard. I often find myself pressing one key and finding that another one is pressed. As a result I may have to spend a few hours getting used to a virtual keyboard. If you hold the device horizontal rather than vertical the problem is somewhat resolved. More to come as I gain more experience...
Thoughts on Journalism deaths and those affected by conflicts and war. — Dec 29, 2014
"The implications of these numbers can be put in another way: good journalism is not just the responsibility of the journalistic community; it is a global effort that must be bolstered by individual governments’ commitment to protecting the freedom of the press, and fought for in the face of authoritarian entities. It has become far too dangerous a fight for the individual "“ or even the individual organization ““ to tackle.” I have heard this over and over this year. I have seen Antonio Guterres say this, I have seen two high commissioners for human rights speak about this. I have witnessed Vincent Cochetel speak about his experience for a TED talk. I have listened to Melissa Fleming speak about the importance of providing generations of refugees with a future. This is not an abstract idea. Last week I read about two cars being used to run down people due to religious differences. I was also in Spain, where the Moors were kicked out of Spain. For hundreds of years people have been using religion and other diffrences to forster violence and I see this getting worse. I see a return to a warlord existence where people, rather than fighting for unity are fighting for the opposite. I listened to Barroso speak about the European Union and his vision when he talked at the Graduate institute. We are at an age where cultural differences and ideals are the most easy to access thanks to information technologies and yet this is the time when the narrow mindedness of people seems to be at it’s peak. People avoid hard news and context. Others misinform and terrorise people to get their warped visions to become realities. 199 journalists were kidnapped this year and 50 million people are displaced or refugees. This is more than were displaced during the Second Wold War. The way I have had access to those archives has changed the way I view the world forever. And yesterday I read about how 15,000 westerns were victims of bad weather and road conditions. Imagine the contrast to what is happening in the Middle East. Imagine comparing it to 2 million people and all of those children with no access to an education. Facebook pretends it has been a good year. As my view of the year was formed from raw material rather than soundbites my vision is different. inspiration: http://time.com/3647079/photographers-died-2014/...
Thoughts on Joost — Oct 2, 2007
Joost recently went out of private beta and anyone can join. It hasen’t changed much in the last few months in terms of look and interface and there are quite a few programs giving error messages. I’m already looking forward to what will come after Joost....
Third day in New York — Oct 8, 2006
Today I’m going to Statten Island in New York. It’s the third day I’ve been here so far and I’ve already visited the UN, Battery Park, Central Park, Times Square (at night), and other locations. I transited through Amsterdam from London, stopping there for a few hours. The flight was aboard a 777. I watched both Tsotsi and The Devil Wears Prada. I have another seven days here and it should continue being good fun. When I have a little more time I’ll add some pictures for people to view...
The World as I saw it on my Birthday — Jan 10, 2012
The World as I saw it on my Birthday [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157628485529237”]...
The wait of an early adopter — Mar 22, 2026
I order most of the technology I want to experiment and play with from three or four main sources in Switzerland and most of the time deliveries are fast, within two or three days, for free and by post. In April of last year I heard about the Narrative 2 and liked the concept so I ordered a device. We are now about ten months later and today I saw that the device was out to be delivered so despite waking at 0730 I stayed home. I made sure that I could hear the door and that I was on the ground floor, ready to answer the door as soon as the door bell rang. At 1427 I saw a note that the device was marked as delivered except that it was to a name I did not recognise. I went to see the two neighbours I do not know, to ask whether they had received anything. Both of them have answered no. I have sent messages on Twitter, Facebook and by e-mail and neither Fedex, the carrier, or Narrative have responded to my queries. If I miss hearing the door bell and if I get a note saying “please contact us for deciding whether to re-expedite the item or pick it up at the warehouse”. I call them and tell them that I will drive to them. This is what I have done a number of times before. In this scenario I am powerless. Get Narrative who took ten months just to send the package have been sloppy with keeping customers up to date with the progress. Fedex were very quick to say contact us by DM but completely silent once the DM was sent. I am telling you this because for several months I have regretted ordering the device. I also write this because I have had excellent response times from other companies and delivery companies. Some of them have called to tell me that they are on their way. Others have used the Swiss postal service which I find excellent. I want people to know about the poor quality of service I experienced because I want an apology from the company, at the very least. I also want people to be wary of ordering from this unprofessional company. If a customer trusts you do not ignore them. Treat them well. They have been so slow to deliver that other companies are now providing the same thing. As these other companies are professional I am confident that I could order from them and wait three or four days rather than ten months....
The twitter is great for revolutions bandwagon — Jun 18, 2009
The free flow of information has been greatly facilitated by the development of modern tools such as the smartphone, more common laptops and data plans. As a result of all these tools the control of public opinion has become more of a challenge. It’s easy to block sites, but the problem is you need to be more aware of the communications systems than the users themselves. In particular I’m thinking of Iran, and another revolution before it. People are now saying that twitter is a great revolutionary tool to get information from one person to another quickly. Of course this might be true but there’s a more interesting trend in progress today. This trend is how modern telecommunications tools such as the mobile phone and laptop are affecting social change. In particular think of the printing press and the role it has spread, the role of coded radio messages as well. Today it’s up to the World Wide Web and it’s backbone the Internet to provide a cheap, easy to hide telecommunications platform by which to keep the people informed about what is happening. Remember Thomas from the Unbearable Lightness of Being. He wrote that article and never agreed to a retraction. Now you don’t need mainstream media or even a physical copy of what you’re trying to distribute. Radiowaves carry these messages almost simultaneously to thousands, even millions of people at once. As a result controlling public opinion is a major challenge. Every website that has a mobile interface has potential as a revolutionary tool. Today it’s twitter, because the site is not blocked by totalitarian states yet, but if that site is blocked then you’ve got other sites that could be used. Plurk, Jaiku and Orkut are examples of websites that have a mobile interface. The simpler the mobile website interface the more accessible the information becomes. Herein lies the real revolution. It’s platform agnostic. It’s that ability to create, share and distribute information on the move that is most interesting because it has built in redundancy. Within minutes of one service being blocked a clone can be put up. How do you want to stop the free flow of information in such circumstances? By being flavour of the month twitter, just like facebook, google and youtube may be blocked. The platform style however will remain and this is the most interesting aspect of the new era in electronic conversation....
The summer eccentricity. — Jul 2, 2010
There are four phones on my desk that are well adapted to tracking hikes. There is the nexus one, the e51, n95 and n97. The reason I mention this is battery life. In my experience if you go on a long hike at least one of the phones will die. You could buy an extra battery or two to make sure that this never happens but a more practical solution is to take all of your phones, install the tracking application on them and swap phone once the battery dies. Of course this would involve taking three chargers with you but at least this way you could track the hike in terms of chapters and somehow aggregate the data for a true hike map....
The Stigma of networking — Mar 22, 2026
Every single day I see posts about how facebook, twitter and social media are a waste of time. I read every day about how they distract us and prevent us from making progress in our professional lives. I would like to argue that, used properly, social networks (encompassed within social media) are a great way to connect with people. London is a great place for social media to be used as a networking tool. Due to the number of young professionals user density is at critical mass. Invest enough time online and you will find people to meet in person. Twitter can help you meet new people, Facebook provides you with a place to talk with familiar people and Google+ provides you with a space in which to discuss topics by themes with non-work related people. Linkedin is a place to follow the professional life of your contacts. Conferences are social networks. TEDx talks, unconferences, conferences, General Staff Meetings and events such as LIFT are non-stigmatised social networks. At these events you are expected to converse, to meet new people and of course to discuss a number of themes with people from different social and professional backgrounds....
The Sony Xperia Z5 Compact and 4K recording — Oct 5, 2015
On Friday I received the Sony Xperia Z5 compact and so went to film some cows coming down from the mountains at 4K resolution using the H265 Video codec. I then found out that none of my current editing solutions accept H265. For this reason I spent the next day getting beauty shots of Nyon, handheld and in full automatic. From the variety of scenes above you can see where the camera is well suited and where it struggled. You will see that the camera focus pumped when filming the boat sailing on the lake. I notice also that in the foliage of the trees it had a tendency to underexpose and loose detail. For this reason it is better to take video in manual mode. Image stabilisation seems to work well and does stabilise the image effectively. As I do not have a 4K monitor to review this footage on I am not certain whether some jitter is due to downscaling or whether it is related to image stabilisation. At Nyon gare I filmed two trains moving. In one case the train was a direct train and in the second case the train stopped. In the first instance you will see that the rolling shutter was only a problem when I panned to follow the train’s movement....
The Sony Xperia Z3 — Dec 16, 2014
The Rise of Webcomics | Off Book | PBS — Mar 22, 2013
A short documentary about web comics....
The Rise of Webcomics | Off Book | PBS — Mar 18, 2013
The resilience of Podcasting and Public Service Broadcasting — Mar 22, 2026
This weekend I found myself thinking about the resilience of Podcasting and Public service broadcasting. In particular I have been thinking of how specific broadcasters are lowering the quality of their output to compete with those who are doing it for free, for social media. Television news and newspapers have dumbed down their content over the last two years to compete for eyeballs. They believe that clickbait will encourage people to read their articles and watch their programs. This is great for shareholders and managers but bad for the audience. For months now I have been unable to follow news outlets on social media websites because of how condescending their practitioners are. When I look for news and information I am looking for hard news. I am looking for facts and information. This weekend I spent many hours listening to current affairs podcasts. By doing this I found that the podcasts have not been hit by sensationalism. From Our Own Correspondent and other programs still provide good value for money. They provide us with an informed and educated view of some of the key current affairs topics. One of the most rewarding aspects to the...
The re-tweet is an easy way to pretend you're listening. — Mar 23, 2009
A lot of people love the re-tweet because they believe that it is a fast and effective way to tell both their followers on twitter as well as the person being retweeted that they are listening or that they thought this was a interesting point. This is true in a number of situations but this was not always the case. There was a time on twitter when people who liked what you linked to would comment on the topic and converstions would grow. It would take time, and involvment, and it would create noise, but it did provide one thing. Indications of friendship. You see friendship on twitter is a feature that you see less and less on twitter as the emphasis is on following, rather than conversing with people. Many of those I used t follow now follow thousands of people as a result of which they lose track of what they sad to who. Answering every tweet takes a lot of time, and time is a commodity people are rarely willing to give to others. I wasn’t willing to watch five minute videos on seesmic because I felt there were more effective ways of conversing. People feel the same way about conversation on twitter. They’ve given up on it and this is a shame. Twitter is all about the short form. The more short messages you send the more people will know about your likes and dislikes. If you retweet the short form loses some of that value. You are more succinct about why one point is more interesting than another by discussing the topic with the person. Every message contributes to the grand picture. If you want to show that you like a tweet, or like a link, don’t retweet it. Go to friendfeed and mark it as liked, share it. Write a little comment at the bottom. This provides so much more information to those that decided that what you have to say is of interest. No single network can do everything, so experiment and see which is best for which purpose. Your experience will be enriched by such a process....
THE PURSUIT OF ENDURANCE - A documentar screening — Oct 5, 2015
For those who appreciate documentary screenings there will be the Screening of The Pursuit of Endurance at the CICG in Geneva. This event will take place on Tuesday 6th of Octobre, 2015 from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM The event is free and will include a Q&A session. This screening is happening within the context of the 2015 Conference for a Green and Inclusive Economy from the 6th to the 7th of October 2015....
The post computer era — Jul 5, 2010
The Pleasure of Slow Motion — Apr 8, 2018
Last weekend I watched hours worth of slow motion videos because I enjoy them. I also watched them because I was fighting one of the worst colds I’ve had in years. Slow motion videos are great because what is invisible to the eye, and hard to see in normal speed videos becomes boringly long when watched in slow motion....
The old Geneva — Dec 14, 2008
Here are some old images of Geneva in Switzerland taken over a century ago. You can see how the land used to look and how it looks now. You can see some of the old streets and the contours. Now it’s a mass of buildings and the relief is hidden. [caption id=— align=“aligncenter” caption=“Geneva many years ago”] Then Such a contrast between the two. And the gare de Cornavin And to see how it is now For more images of the set....
The Nokia N95 and some fun to be had. — Mar 15, 2008
Seesmic’ favourite phone at the moment appears to be the Nokia N95 and after months of thinking about whether to get the Iphone or the Nokia I turned to the Nokia because of everything it allows you to do. It’s a GPS, web streaming camera, time lapse camera, e-mail and web browser among other things. It’s also easy to use with services like Jaiku. Streaming Video stremaing from computers is becoming commonplace and as a result we’re growing tired of that piece to camera straight from people’s desk. That’s where Bambuser, Qik and seesmic come into play. Bambuser is still in alpha and has an intuitive easy to use streaming interface giving you an easy selection between the main camera and the front camera. It’s very simple to use and I’ve played quite a bit with it but there are lag issues where the stream doesn’t keep up. The settings can be adjusted quite specifically by the user allowing for quite a bit of experimentation. A second service is Qik. This one has a nice user interface and has in built buffering. This means that as you stream the application buffers and indicates the delay between what you are seeing on the phone and what is being seen. This service has too main options. Optimised for quality or optimised for creating a reliable stream. Seesmic has already been discussed but it’s a good video sharing website. It allows for conversations to take via video similarly to instant messaging. The Seesmic application still needs some work but if you’re using shozu you can record your seesmic posts and FTP the files to the site for others to enjoy. I’ve done a few posts from the car once I’ve arrived at work and the results are good, except for a loss of synchronisation… but that’s in camera rather than seesmic. Jaiku Jaiku was developed by people who worked for Nokia and it’s similar to twitter but with a better front end mobile wise. The application automatically displays where you are, whether you’re free or busy to answer calls and you can follow conversations. **Photo Camera ** One interestig feature of the camera that I haven’t used is the ability to take a picture every ten seconds. In other words to create time lapses that last as long as you would like. I haven’t tried the option but the idea is interesting. **GPS ** I haven’t played with the GPS so far but so far it looks nice enough, I’ll write more once I know more. So far I’m happy with the N95 because of all it can do and I’m looking forward to using it extensively in the near future. As I learn more about the phone and what it can do I’ll write most posts....
The Nexus One — Apr 24, 2010
Recently I bought a Nexus One because the Android operating system appeared to be an interesting one. It is open source, intuitive to use and has some interesting features. It’s part of the Google cloud. Checking e-mails, using Gtalk and the calendar are all accessible through the phone. All content is everywhere as a result. Modern approach: I know of quite a few people that lose their phones and as a result of this lose all their numbers. They create facebook groups to gather back all of this information. Of course with Android you don’t need to do that. All of the contacts are stored online. As a result whenever you’re writing e-mails on the computer you have no need to remember their actual address. It is a redundant system as long as you have a data connection of some type. Navigation is good too. Using mytracks and Google maps you have a precise overlay if the route taken. This post was written using the WordPress app on the nexus one in part....
The Nexus One — Apr 24, 2010
Paul W. Swansen - Apr 6, 2010...
The macbook and macbook pro - thoughts on the touchpad. — Oct 27, 2008
Today I went to try the new macbook pro and macbooks and I found that I prefered the macbook to the other device. I like that the keyboard is there and there’s nothing to the side. it’s a better feeling machine for when you move around. The biggest difference between these two machines and older models is the touchpad interface. Rather than have a seperate button and tactile area both are integrated. press down on the touchpad and you’ve got the same reaction as when you pressed the button. Use two fingers and you scroll. Use three fingers in apps like iphoto and you move from one picture to another. Use four fingers and there are three reactions. The first is when going up then down. It minimises the window, to the sides and it changes apps. Down and you go to see several windows. It’s not as intuitive as it sounds. Whilst the trackpad is a nice idea I think it’s going to take people some getting used to. At first it was really great but within a few minutes I would accidentaly drag things across, select something I didn’t want to or other. In brief whilst it’s meant to be intuitive it wasn’t....
The Lille Flashmob — Mar 10, 2010
Here are the videos from the Lille Flashmob from two weeks ago....
The Hubsan Nano Q4 H111 drone — Nov 5, 2017
The Hubsan Nano Q4 H111 drone is a tiny drone...
The Great War news camera operators — Apr 10, 2013
I would definitely have preferred not to be in this type of situation. Can you imagine how physically demanding this work would have been?...
The Global Humanitarian Forum and live streaming — Jun 23, 2009
Working at the Global Humanitarian Forum today, providing the live streams, was fun as some interesting conversations took place. Among the people present we had Micheline Calmy Rey, Kofi Annan, the writer of the wikonomics book (which I have as an audio book and haven’t finished yet), Nik Gowing, and a few more interesting people. Whilst I was working I didn’t have time to listen to the discussions that were taking place but they ranged from new media and communication to providing funds for organisations and the aspects to be taken into account, managing displacement, demographic dynamics and many more topics. We’ll be streaming quite a few more lives during the course of tomorrow so if you’re interested in humanitarian subjects visit Global Humanitarian Forum for more information. The live streams can be found by following the Launch Live video link provided on the site....
The Global Action Day For Burma - London — Oct 6, 2007
Today was the Global Action day for Burma. The event was centered around a march from the Tate Britain, via the Houses of Parliament before arriving at Trafalgar Square at which point several speeches were made. You can recognise those who were part of the protest for the red ribbons they wore and the t-shirts. I met two friends who were taking photographs, Danfung Dennis and Crina Boros. Danfung has had quite a few interesting assignments. Crina was doing an MA whilst I was completing my final year of studies....
The Francofous yahoo Live wall — Feb 11, 2008
The Francofous are a good group of people and last night we spent a few hours playing with Yahoo Live and skype. Skype provided the audio whilst yahoo live provided the video platform. Yahoo live is limited in the way we can watch and follow video so I created a simple video wall. The principle is simple. i get all the videos embedded into one page and we can watch everyone chat with everyone else. It’s a really nice experience and I’m going to improve the layout for future games....
The Francofous Show 2 — Sep 30, 2008
Et voila que PiouPiou nous donne la deuxième version de la version Française du “Seesmix Français” Francofous Show 2Blog : http://francofousshow.wordpress.com Twitter : francofousshow Mail : francofousshow@gmail.com...
The Francofous Show 2 — Sep 30, 2008
Pioupiou - Oct 0, 2008...
The fifty years of the City Club cinema in Pully. — Nov 30, 2008
Tonight I went to the cinema and saw two films at a cinema that has turned half a century old. The most interesting of those event is a 1930s film with a live performance by a jazz band touring switzerland with that film. I also saw an Avant premiere for a film that was quite interesting. It was a different subject matter than other films I’ve seen. I’ll write more and include links to videos once some of the video material I shot is processed....
The Facebook paradox. — May 6, 2010
In the early days Facebook was one of the most exclusive websites you could be part of it. It excluded everyone but university students from one university. As a result of this exclusivity security and privacy were not a concern. Everyone could find out about anyone else. As those people graduated though, and as the network of friends grew so to did the appeal of having a more open facebook. As a result of this growth privacy and security were less prominant. For a long time there was a degree of self policing. Everyone creating an account gave their real name, their real network of friends who they had actually met. The flaw occurred when people who do not understand the initial premise of Facebook started to join the site. For them every...
The Facebook Monopoly — Jun 29, 2017
I am tired of the Facebook monopoly. While Google gets fined for helping people shop websites like Facebook do the opposite. Instead of increasing the diversity of content on the web and the sharing of ideas it has helped create silos of like minded people. Likeminded people is a polite way of saying brainwashed in the case where opinions are based on opinions rather than facts....
The Dumbing Down of mainstream media — Aug 16, 2015
Recently I have found mainstream anglo-saxon media much harder to tolerate. A few years ago I went to see 90 films in 9 months. I had no TV and the World Wide Web wasn’t quite as accessible then as it is today. For years I could watch BBC World from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. I also read articles and blog posts. I can’t stand the hollywood film output anymore. They are so comfortable with their formulas that within ten minutes I knew the plot line. I used to read dozens of newspapers a day and dozens of blog posts a day. I noticed that blog posts started to become formulaic and so stopped reading blog after blog. The quality of content went down at the same time as output went up. Every blog post was a Top Ten article. Newspaper headlines used to provide the audience with information about what the article was about. You’d read the headline, skim the first paragraph and decide what to read next. As Social media became socially acceptable for growing portions of society so we see the decline in headline usefulness. Headlines should answer the who, what where, when, why how questions and engage you as a reader. The Guardian, the BBC, The Independent and other news sources rather than writing headlines about the content of articles write sensationalist headlines that are designed to blackmail you in to clicking a link. Usually the articles hidden behind these headlines are a waste of time. They provide little of value and they assume ignorance of current affairs. We live in the information age. Within 15 seconds whether you’re sitting at the top of a via ferrata or in a library you can get information on any topic that interests you. Remember that the web is the hypertext markup language. When you write today you can add links to help contextualise the story, you can provide videos and pictures. You can also write in as much depth as you would like. In the information age I would have liked, and I would have expected that writing would become more demanding. Knowledge would be assumed and context would be easy to provide. When background information is a search engine result away it would be logical to assume that experts and writers could write as if we, the lay reader, were also experts. Look at the way the refugee crisis is covered. We see terms like “thousands drown in sea” “Fortress Europe should let in more refugees” and many more phrases. These phrases do nothing to inform and educate the audience. They are only entertaining us. They are encouraging prejudice and stereotypes rather than discourse. With unlimited bandwidth, time and space the topic of refugees and migrants could be covered in great depth. Documentaries could be produced to provide context as to why people are pushed from where they lived. Xenophobia is a result of over-simplification. Imagine that tomorrow when you wake up you see François Hollande or David Cameron in Calais speaking with refugees. What effect would that have on the national debates of migration? We see ourselves as liberals and we see ourselves as citizens of the world. Why, as citizens of the world do we never see our leaders visit refugees? Let’s forget the status quo and let’s go for a contextualised actuality. (Actuality, Actualité, french for news. I chose not to use the stigmatised word Reality). Another example of the dumbing down is the TWIT network. I used to love listening to those podcasts. I would listen to at least five or six of their programs a week. TWIT, Macbreak weekly and others. I started to lose interest when they switched to video and my interest decayed completely by the time it was more chit chat than news. Editing gave their shows value. Without editing you’re wasting an hour and a half of listening time. Media production and advertising revenue is based on the “Lowest Common Denominator” theory. The simpler content is to understand the more views it will get. The more views it gets the more valuable it is. When media assets are owned by the financial sector and when giving dividends to share holders is more important than value to costumers so you get the erosion of quality. This erosion in quality means chasing a greater number of eyeballs with an ever decreasing quality of content. The Guardian, the BBC and other “mainstream media” companies have fallen in to the trap. They don’t need the money, they’re subsidised, but they need the eyeballs to justify their funding nonetheless. If the mainstream media want to destroy themselves then that’s fine. In theory. In practice this leaches in to the social media landscape. As an early adopter I join social networks and social media distribution platforms in their early days, when the intellectual, entrepreneurial and curious people are around. Conversations and friendships make empty social networks look and feel lively. As users engage stickiness grows. As stickiness increases so value increases. Look at Twitter and Facebook as prime examples. Twitter was a fantastic conversation tool in it’s early days, so fantastic that for the first time in a social network I would meet with users every week at it’s peak. Facebook was a uni friend network. We had all partied together and as we knew each other well we could be open and social in a closed network. When advertisers, social media gremlins and PR professionals came in to these landscapes so the conversation chased the rabbit down the hole of the lowest common denominator. Conversations diluted and friendships decayed to the point where trolling became standard. The dumbing down of the mainstream media led to the decline in sociability and friendliness on social networks at a time when social media became mainstream. As a positive last thought everything is cyclical. We will see mainstream media smarten up again. We will go back to long form articles, and we will go back to interesting film plots....
The Diaspora Contradiction — Jun 7, 2010
Local Storage Application installation Need to sign up...
The Demise of Google reader — Mar 14, 2013
Google Reader was a great tool because it made gathering and sharing content from specific sources intuitive and easy. It provided us with one place from which to do most things. Today Google have announced that they are pulling the plug on Google reader. In my eyes Google reader had become obsolete four years ago. That’s when I moved to services like Feedly, zite and others. Each of these services was more interesting because it took our feeds but used algorithms to make relevant content discovery faster and more intuitive. Feedly was fun for a while but eventually I stopped using it in favour of zite. Zite was excellent until they decided to downgrade the user experience to a pinterest like interface. I don’t want the kindergarten treatment when searching for information. I want headers, I want a line or two of content and I want to have a lot of information displayed in a small space. Zite fell out of the useful apps category and was deleted from the ipad and iphone as a result. The next project I’m looking at is Scoopinion. They have a plugin which tracks which news sources you visit and which articles you read. Based on your browising habits it recommends future articles. So far it estimates that I have spent 22hrs reading news over the past month or two with over 980 articles. By this logic it should be good at recommending stories that I would enjoy but it is too tabloid at the moment. This is probably due to the relatively small user base as this is a new project by developers in Finland. I love content aggregators that study my habits and give recommendations based on this. It makes the surfing experience more enjoyable. You also don’t suffer from RSS burn out....
The Demise of Google reader — Mar 14, 2013
Francine - Mar 0, 2013...
The Bellevaux Via Ferratas — Jul 30, 2015
This year I went to the Bellevaux Via Ferratas in June and the area had been damaged by the intense storms and rain from weeks of rain. I went there on Tuesday and the via Ferrata des Cascades was different. For a start there was no water in the cascade. As a result those who were canyoning down the waterfall were dry. It was also much quieter and the sensation from the via ferrata was different. [caption id=“attachment_2460” align=“aligncenter”] The section with the slight overhang. Water is dynamic, constantly moving and making noise. As a result it provides a sense of motion and danger. When water is not flowing footholds are easy to find and your focus can remain on the via ferrata. The Cascade is my favourite beginner via ferrata. The conditions I think beginners will appreciate are: 1. Easy access. Within 200m you are at the via ferrata ready to climb and 2. Proximity to the ground. This via ferrata does climb quite a bit but you are never that far off the ground so vertigo will not add badly to how exhausted you are by the end of the path. This via ferrata has two thick beams you cross over the river and one nepalese bridge (one cable for feet, one cable per hand, fourth cable for the carabiners. There are short bits where you are climbing vertically and then one section where you negotiate a slight overhang. After this you have two more beams and the VF is finished. [caption id=“attachment_2465” align=“aligncenter”] The Village of Bellevaux an hour’s drive from Geneva. If you have energy left over you have two more via ferratas to enjoy. These are the Via Ferrata du Chatelard and the Via Ferrata “La Grotte De Cristal”. These are harder via ferratas. In the case of Chatelard the estimated completion time is about one hour and fourty five minutes. I completed it in over fourty minutes so I am not a reference. This via ferrata starts by ascending diagonally for a bit before continuing horizontally a bit further. Hand holds are not always easy to access and there are certain portions where you have an excuse to dyno (propulse yourself) to grab the next hand hold. The Chatelard is physical but the views of the valley are nice. As you can see from the picture above you have a nice view of the town to the right if you have your back to the cliff and a nice view of the valley if you look to the left. [caption id=“attachment_2471” align=“aligncenter”] View from the Nepalese bridge The Nepalese bridge offers a nice opportunity to admire the landscape. After this point you soon reach the combination point where the medium and hard via ferrata combine. From here you continue towards an excellent tyrollean. I tried it with both the red and the silver devices. With the red device I went fast and only had to pull for the last metre or two. With the silver one which I tried twice the ride is very fast. You hit the wooden ramp running. With a friend we did this twice each. I strongly recommend that you try the tyrollean if you’re with a group of people that have the required equipment. It’s a highlight of the day. When I do the third and hardest part again I will write about it. I tried it one or two months ago and did find it fun. I may write about it this weekend....
The Asus EEE is for people with small hands and children — Dec 11, 2007
Today I went over to try the ASUS EEE and it’s too small. Its got the feel of a child’s toy more than anything else. I’m a touch typist, I don’t look at the keyboard when I’m typing, I appreciate feminine beauty as it walks past me in the computer room. I look around and the content keeps appearing on the screen. What this means is that getting used to such a small keyboard would take quite a bit of time. I prefer a thumb typing device. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the idea. I love small devices that I can take with me. That’s why my coat weighs so much....
The Apple Watch Series 3 — Aug 20, 2018
The Apple Watch Series 3 is more interesting than I thought it would be, I like that it plays nicely with Strava and that it is possible to track shorter duration activities without worrying about battery life. I found that it loses about ten percent per hour. This is fine for most people....
The 50,000th tweet — Feb 14, 2009
For Valentine’s day I reached my 50,000th tweet which I dedicated to @orchideane through twitterfone, as asked by @toppgold. I really want to lay in to twitter for having database maintenance. really I do, but I won’t. I’ll concentrate on other things. There; contemporary joke: What’s the difference between twitter and the Stock market? None they’re both down....
The 3g golden Goose and it's noose. — Jul 14, 2008
You see, 3G is the golden goose for wireless carriers. It’s technology that turns their networks from boring voice systems to multi-functional data systems. They’re going from being a diner offering three specials/day to a restaurant with a huge buffet. This buffet is enticing and offers something for pretty much everyone but you’ll have to pay for it....
Testing flickr integration — Oct 22, 2008
It’s no longer the time of year to see this. I’m just playing with flickr integration into the blog, to see the result....
Testing flickr integration — Oct 22, 2008
Warzabidul - Oct 4, 2008...
test — Apr 24, 2015
[instagram-feed]...
Test mobile image upload — May 13, 2010
To see how well it works...
Ten reasons to give up on twitter — Jun 23, 2010
Once again I have deleted my twitter account. Here are ten reasons to give up on twitter. 1. Europe is neutral about the site. If you want friendships with people an ocean away join. 2. Whenever you want to post some technical problem means you have to post five times 3. If you have a real job, not freelancing, then you can’t afford to check updates all the time. 4. Lack of user engagement, when less than a tenth of your replies are responded to you know there’s no point staying up to date with those people. 5. Virtual community, unlike with facebook and other social networks the people you interact with here are strangers. 6. Spam, as more and more marketers come to the site so the more you use certain words the more unsolicited messages you get. 7. Veteran community: Aside from Facebook all websites are at their community most interesting when the users are new and passionate about the service. That has faded with twitter. 8. 140 characters; Although it was great three years ago mobile phones are now far more capable mobile devices. Limiting yourself to 140 characters is no longer an interesting option. 9. Server downtime. For three years they have been struggling with making the platform stable and for three years they have been failing. If you have to try five times to post 140 characters then something is wrong. 10. User indifference. They are indifferent about their user base. Just take a look at the FAQ and try to offer them feedback and you will first have to go through an FAQ before being able to explain your views. Having a full time job means that my free time is more precious than before. As a result I’d rather be out in the real world doing real things. It’s also about how much time you need to invest into such a service before getting anything of any value out of it. As a result a year after I first left twitter I have left again. This time I think it will be for good. I don’t like the way the company is run and I don’t like the way the users are using the site. Goodbye twitter. On to better things....
Ten Days without Twitter — Feb 5, 2009
There is a video of me at the only Twestival event I have ever been to and I lay into the event for the fashionistas that attended the event. I was so disappointed with the event as a whole that I have lost my passion for going to social media events, especially when I need to travel over a thousand kilometers. Environmental conscience is one good reason for not travelling to these events but the second is the quality of the people there. When I talked to people at the Twestival event and asked them about twitter they looked at me strangely, when I asked them about how many tweets they had written they told me from five to two hundred on average. As a passionate twitter user and having been to a lot of social media events, tweetups and seesmeetups this really dissapointed me. The event felt like nothing more than a facade, nothing more than an opportunity for people to say “look at how trendy I am, I’m on twitter” yet not understanding anything about the ethos of the twitter way of life. I love twitter, and I love those that use it well, I love how certain people use it the same way they use sms and other social means. I don’t like that in Switzerland I’m strange because I use twitter. I like it even less that over here twitter will never be popular. There is no reason for it because of social cohesion, but also a far smaller community. Switzerland is about skiing, sailing, cycling, hiking, parapente and more sports. We’re not in a city. We’re in the countryside, Europe’s playground. Why be geeky when sports would be more social. More to the point everything is current. I don’t need to wait two to five years for people to adopt the sports. That’s why I’m coming back to Twitter on Valentine’s day. (It’s also the day I got my driving licence ;-))...
Ten Days without Twitter — Feb 5, 2009
warzabidul - Feb 4, 2009...
Technology and Fitness — Mar 22, 2026
Technology and fitness are good friends. The more technology progresses and the more it opens up possibilities. It is thanks to technological innovation and fitness training that climbing has gone from an equipment assisted discipline to a free climbing model. We have gone from using climbing ropes and related equipment to assist us in our ascent to a model where we use body strength and technique to get to the summit....
Swimming competitions and your viewing future — Aug 3, 2006
The media is in a time of convergence and that’s what some people find fascinating. i’m listening to a number of podcasts about technology, the media and computing in order to keep informed on developments. Today I will be working once again with footage that has been shot in another country. What makes this particularly interesting is that the footage is coming from Hungary whilst I will be in Switzerland. I will see the races take place, then I will cut the video, add some text and upload it to a website. This is similar to what you’d expect to find on a variety of websites. Once the event has been finished for a week or two I may take one or two of the edits and upload them as part of my showreel....
Sunset — Oct 24, 2011
Views from La Barillette in Switzerland. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157627879004790”]...
Summer Nyon — Jul 11, 2016
[caption id=“attachment_3100” align=“aligncenter”] Summer Nyon This is an image of Nyon on a day when the thermometer indicated at least 31°c on a sunny Sunday afternoon. In this image you can see the CGN boat leaving Nyon and heading towards Geneva. You can see the Jet D’eau in the background. You can see a sailing boat in the distance, some kayakers nearby and two pedalos. What you don’t see in this image are the people playing volleyball, other people sitting at Nyon Plage or yet more people at the Nyon Swimming Pool. From Nyon you can cycle along the lake road to Geneva or Lausanne and if you feel you have the stamina you could cycle from Nyon to Nyon by taking the long way around. This may take 10 hours depending on your level of fitness and endurance. If this does not tempt you then you could go up to the Jura. You can either go up towards La Dôle and choose one of three routes to get to the doppler radar or you could go to St Cergue and walk from that side to the peak. The walk is short but physical so make sure to take appropriate shoes and something to drink. If those options do not tempt you then you can catch the boat you see in the image above or the smaller boat that you see below. These boats are regular. People like to take the boat from Nyon to Yvoire, have lunch, dinner or an ice cream and then come back. If you have the right friends then you could do this trip on a sailing boat as we used to do frequently with one friend. [caption id=“attachment_3102” align=“aligncenter”] CGN boat Nyon has quite a few activities to distract people in summer so if you’re in the region there are a few events and activities to choose from....
Streamlining with Quicktime Pro — Apr 30, 2009
If you’re learning about editing but don’t want to spend much money then Quicktime pro is a cheap and easy straight cut editor. It’s quick and easy to use. With the short cut apple+c apple+N and apple+v you have a very simple editor. Using J to play backwards, k to pause and L to play normally you control how the video plays. With the I key for marking in points and the O key for out points you’ve got everything you need. Find a video clip that is recognised by Quicktime and play the video. Find the footage you want to keep with the J,K,L keys and mark your in and out points. Once this is done cut the video with apple+C and open a new player with apple+n. Paste the video segment in your new player and you’ve got the first shot. Repeat this process with the source video and you’ve got a simple straight cuts editor. There was some footage I wanted to process quickly, without opening finalcut pro and it worked fine. It’s more intuitive than imovie (for me at least) and it’s very affordable....
StravistiX for Strava — Feb 1, 2016
StravistiX for Strava...
Storm Damage in Switzerland after the Storm — Jan 7, 2012
Storm Damage from Thursday’s storm [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157628745202311”]...
Spring Bees — Jun 3, 2013
For those in need of something seasonal. Bees at work on a few flowers....
Sportstracker has been improved. — Apr 5, 2009
Today I was pleasantly surprised after racketing in the mountains to discover that my phone’s battery had not depleted. I was using sportstracker for over two hours and some charge was still left after an hour and a half. There was so much battery left in fact I went for nine more kilometers of walking and still the battery is healthy. That’s not the only thing that’s improved. Now you have maps. You can’t move around the map except by changing geographic location but you can see the roads around you and more. It’s much simpler than google maps but then again there’s no need for such accuracy anyway. Now I can spend half a day walking and still have enough power to be tracked the whole way. I know, half a day isn’t that long. Still better than an hour or two though....
Social Media Platforms and user relations — May 4, 2015
Social media platforms are content management systems. Facebook, Google Plus, twitter and other...
Social media girlfriends — Dec 15, 2007
I like the social media and I spend a lot of time with them. Occasionally i meet the people involved in real life and so the social media are no longer quite as interesting, although of course I still have fun with them. One of the things I’ve been thinking is the term social media girlfriend. What would require for a person to be a social media girlfriend? What does it require in the physical world? Conversation for a start. It would entail many conversations and discusssions, so far Twitter and seesmic both provide that. I wake up in the morning, hardly able to open my eyes yet I open up the laptop and type “good morning world” to which i get a good morning back. There are currently two social media girls that wish me a good morning. Melissah in Australia is one of them. Maggieconv in the US is the second. The three of us are in different timezones but we wish each other good meals, nice evenings, good mornings and sweet dreams. We’re friends in the same sense that flat mates may be but with one big difference. We are not within the same physical space. We’re separated by distance, over a thousand kilometers when we’re lucky, over 20,000 when we’re not. That’s unimportant. It’s the idea that we share our daily lives through text messaging, data access on phones, websites, blogs and even facebook. To some people this is an abstract idea. Why would you want to meet people online in such a way. Well in fact chatrooms were like this a decade ago. IRC is like that today. There’s one major difference. We’re not anonymous. We know how the people look, we know how they sound. We know when they’re happy and we know when things are going well. We also know when they’re going badly. If both physical and virtual friends are both inhabiting the same spaces nowadays then what discounts those whom we don’t know from another context? If I meet you at the cinema and we become friends then everyone would accept that. Online though people wouldn’t. Of course that is changing. For me the distinction is fading since I have met so many of these people in real life, occasionally quite a few at once. Anyway part of the reason for this post is that I was called a flirt online, told that half my seesmic videos answering one girl’s posts were flirts. It kicked off a conversation about flirting and that’s fun. we’re using the social media and we’re flirting. That’s a great idea. The idea that we’re flirting with people across a new medium. That’s where the idea of a social media girlfriend came into place. I saw two friends flirting across both seesmic and Twitter and I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to come out with the idea. Anyway to cut a long story short I was meaning to type @melissah but started to write @maggieconv instead. Would she be more likely to be a social media girlfriend? We added each other on Facebook so there’s a chance she c0uld be a social media girlfriend....
Social media as a lifestyle choice, rather than a stop gap — Mar 23, 2009
One of the biggest ironies of the social media is that those whose profession it is to get brands and companies to set up a presence within the social media environment themselves see it as a waste of time, and no substitute for what most people would refer to as real life, real life being the life that you live in the physical world rather than sat behind a computer, or online. Almost everyone you ever talk to will tell you that communicating with people online is a waste of time, that everything is superficial and there is no gain to be had, on a personal and emotional level. Of course they’re right but not for the reasons they believe in. I was transcribing an interview of a 19 year old Belge girl speaking about how important her mobile phone was and how it helped her stay in contact with the world. In particular she was talking about the role of sms. When asked about facebook though she didn’t think that much of it. A lot of people think this way. They are happy with the SMS, a technology that is about twenty years old by now. As a result of this interview and many I have listened to in the past what I find most interesting is the tertiary role that computers and full social media websites have, as a role in how people interact socially with each other. Have you ever noticed how many pictures and videos are made available through facebook and youtube. Every time you go to a conference hundreds of pictures are uploaded, dozens of videos are shared but then there is one part that is never carried on. That part is the conversation. Where is the modern day pen writing? Where is the passion of communicating with friends you’ve met at an event but won’t meet again for months? Where is the ongoing dialogue? It’s as if once you’ve met someone in the real world you believe that to talk online is a sign of how pathetic your social life is. There must be something lacking if you need twitter to converse. There must be something lacking if you spend too much time on online forums. Facebook is a waste of time for so many people. How many people will take the time to read the comments you leave on a facebook item? How many of them feel that to respond is not a waste of time? Hundreds of thousands of people are on twitter, and hundreds of thousands of them are following strangers they will never take the time to converse with. Why are people on the web so passive? By being passive users of a technology like twitter you devalue it for those that take it seriously. Just yesterday one person said they saw no value in friendfeed because they received no answer to what they said. Of course they got no response. You’ve got to show that your active for people to know that there is a point in reacting to what has been said. You can’t expect people to respond to every new member of a community for everything they say. It just doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work the other way either. To spend hundreds of hours online and commenting thousands of times does help build your profile and for people to notice you, but for how long. In the same way that I complain about how people no longer feel any passion for twitter so I see some of the earlier friendfeed users saying the same thing about that site. It seems to be a staple of many online communities that they grow and shrink. How many of your university friends do you have on facebook and how many of them do you find taking the time to keep in touch. The number is low. The only reason it was high as a student is that you were living a common experience as a result of which the bonds are stronger. That’s why I live with hope for how important the social media will one day become, once we see a shift in how people view the online lifestyle in relation to the social media. Film students don’t mind watching the same film five times in one week, series watchers don’t mind watching fiction on television. For them this is not a waste of time. So why are the social media not fashionable. Why are people so retiscent to create friendships on the web. Why do local communities spend so little time online. Why does the web work to organise events but not for actual conversations between relatively normal people. And don’t tell me it’s narcisism. The same thing happens offline but you’ve grown up with it so you don’t notice....
Sociability and the web — Apr 15, 2009
Yesterday I had the pleasure of someone deciding to spend a good portion of the day with me, something that is quite rare. It’s also something that is important to a topic that I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about. How much of your time do you give to others, and what would you like to receive in exchange for that time. I ask this because whilst Kutcher and CNN are turning followers into a commodity I value the dialogue that I have with those that I follow, and that follow me. Twitter i about just one thing, dialogue. Through dialogue we can discuss projects, we can establish friendships and we can acquire knowledge. All of these things can help up along in life. I’m interested in this topic because one friend, months ago, said that twitter and social media were chronophage, that is to say that they’re a waste of time. Of course that’s something all internet users worry about. It’s something we all struggle to justify and eventually there is just one reality we must accept. There is no point wasting time on the social media with those that don’t have or want to take the time to talk to us. Over the past few months I have seen friend after friend after friend run out of time, losing the ability to stay online and converse, as much through twitter as through skype, IM and other forms of electronic conversation. I’m sure you’ve experienced it too. Each of these people, as they have less time to be social, and as they leave messages unanswered devalue the time we spend online. Send twenty messages without getting an answer and you believe that you’re at fault, that you’re wasting your time. You can stop worrying about that. It’s the people that don’t have the time to answer that are wasting your time, not the other way around. By this I mean that you can always answer. You don’t need to answer the same morning, or the same day. You should still take the time to answer. It gives you value within the social media. It also keeps one more person interested in what you’re doing. A few people have seen the value that answering to everyone has, two examples are Vaynerchuck and Loic Lemeur. I don’t follow either of them but they live according to this ideology. I call it an ideology because in reality it’s as bad as not answering at all. For the novice, the inexperienced web user getting an answer is great, it’s confidence building and it’s flattering. To the social media veteran you eventually see through the smoke and mirrors. For a long time I followed certain big names and without giving names I stopped following them. I stopped because I could see they were giving generic answers, trying not to ignore too many people consistently. The point is the following. The social media are about dialogue so you should only follow as many people as you feel you can have a personal conversation with without losing site of individuals as a result. The social media are about friendship, rather than brand. The more you value the friendships you establish the more you will gain. The popularity contest between CNN and the other guy are devaluing the follower. It’s a good publicity stunt because it generates buzz but at the end of the day because you’re talking to a mass you’re unable to chat with individuals. Remember this. Friendships create community, not crowds....
Snackr and RSS — May 18, 2008
With my love for the short form Snackr is a welcome addition to my world as an easy way to keep an eye on rss feeds. It’s a ticker box that scrolls all the latest articles. You can choose whether you whether you want every post over the past day to a week. So far it’s been easy to use....
SMS no longer exist for me — Dec 4, 2008
I saw a tweet saying that Americans now send twice as many text messages as Europeans and this makes me think of just one thing. It’s obsolete. What I mean by that is that now that I have a data plan and skype and gtalk on my phone I refuse to send sms which I have to pay for when everyone I know uses at least one IM client. It’s so much cheaper (free) for me to chat with you on gtalk. There’s also more chance that I’ll get an answer. I really don’t like the idea of sending sms when there is a better contemporary technology out there costing far less money :-) Just to give you an example. I’ve been with friends in Geneva and Lausanne chatting with other people via gtalk from bars, restaurants and the living room couch. I’ve even skype called a friend with the N95 and she’s in the US. All of this is free, inclusive data within my contract. I want you to modernise, let’s use mobile communication in a more creative way than missed phone calls and unanswered SMS....
Skiing for a change — Jan 17, 2011
Skiing images from last year....
Silbergeier - Nina Caprez & Cedric Lachat — Mar 12, 2013
A refreshing and different look at rock climbing. Mixing humour and the mountains in an original way....
Siberian car clamps and ice skating ducks — Mar 16, 2012
During the short period when we had the “Siberian weather”. many people went over to Versoix to look at the frozen lake and the beauty revealed as ice and wind played with stillness to form nice creations. These pictures were taken between Bellevue, Versoix and the Port de Crans. I particularly like the ice globs that have formed on the reeds. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157629285504573”]...
Shadows — Feb 7, 2013
Lindsey Stirling playing with her shadow....
Setting up Chromecast — Mar 24, 2015
Setting up Chromecast takes four steps 1. Plug it in 2. Connect to chromecast wifi 3 type appropriate wifi password for home network 4. wait as chromecast updates Now you can use it from your devices. It’s like setting up a gopro camera. If you’ve managed that you can do this-...
Self-Sacrifice and Pandemics — May 31, 2020
Self-Sacrifice and Pandemics are intimate friends. In order for a pandemic to end we must learn to do without things that we need. We go without meeting friends for months, we go without hugs or handshakes for months. We go without restaurants, bars, cafés or cinemas for months. We go without needing the internal combustion for days at a time....
Self Driving Cars and ethics — Jun 30, 2016
In recent months we have seen articles about self driving cars and ethics. The question the research asks is whether to kill, a group of people, the driver of the car or others. The question is perfectly logical if you have never driven a car. If you have never driven a car then you believe that accidents may be unavoidable....
Seesmic video and HTML 5 — May 6, 2010
Remember the video version of seesmic, the one that spawned.the francofous? Things changed for two reasons. Bandwidth issues and ressources. Flash would suck down the laptop battery within a few minutes. It meant that you could.only Seesmic from a fixed position. With html5 that problem will dissapear. What I look forward to is an HTML 5 optimized version. It could result in a greater number of users on less powerful machines. I hope we see a growth in users and a more international set of users. I hope they also add more features at the same time. Let us see whether Seesmic take advantage of this opportunity....
Scuba diving in Santa Margherita, Liguria — May 17, 2013
Scuba diving is an interesting and fun way of seeing what the world is like benea...
Scriptfrenzy - The challenge — Mar 31, 2009
Remember when I wrote 50,000 words in one month? Today’s challenge is a little different. From tomorrow, and for the next 30 days I will have the task of writing 100 pages for a script within 30 days. That’s about three pages a day and it shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve done a lot of transcribing so I know dialogue when I hear it. I did also have to study it in uni. Now we’ll see what the result is. I don’t even have a topic yet....
Scriptfrenzy - The challenge — Mar 31, 2009
richard - Apr 3, 2009...
Rocspot and Indoor Climbing — Mar 22, 2026
If you are looking to climb then Rocspot and Indoor Climbing go well together. This climbing center presents you with walls that are 13 meters high. At this climbing center a few minutes from Lausanne you can practice bouldering and climbing. There are two “rooms” so to speak. The first room presents you with climbing routes with self-belay systems where you hook your harness to the system and start climbing. This is a great way to warm up while waiting for other members from your climbing group. It allows you to try routes varying from 4B up to 6a+. If you have your own belay equipment but no rope you have the option of using ropes that have already been set up. You can hook yourself up and when the belayer is ready you can start the climb. This system is practical to learn how to belay properly. It is also an opportunity for people to practice climbing various grades. When you are comfortable with these routes you can move to the second room. The second room is ideal to learn how to “lead climb”. Lead climbing is new to me and this is what I practiced on Sunday. The sensation is different because you have to hook the rope in as you progress. This means that if you fall then you will fall to the last point where you last hooked in. I found the experience more tiring as it adds an increased level of stress. Belaying someone who lead climbs is also an interesting skill to learn because you have the paradox of providing people with enough rope to progress but not so much that if they fall they hit the ground. This is a skill that I am still learning and I expect that within a short amount of time I will develop the right habits and reflexes. They rent, harnesses and shoes for those who do not have this equipment and you can buy 15 entrances or more at once. You also have a diversity of courses to choose from to learn climbing skills properly. Of the climbing gyms that I have tried in the Canton of Vaud and Geneva, this is the best one. I really want to try the overhanging routes because they look fun and challenging. They vary from 5C to 8 or 9. One aspect that I really enjoy is watching people get to the top and fall. Sometimes you see the belayer get lifted from the ground and then lower themselves back down. It is also fun to see the climber swing as they are lowered back to the ground. My aim in going to this climbing gym is to develop the muscles and techniques that will make Via Ferrata when I am climbing outdoors as well as to learn the skills to climb on rock. Climbing provides a full body workout and the more we train over the winter, the easier the spring and summer climbs will be....
Return of the Sun — Jan 26, 2013
Return of the Sun from Glen Milner on Vimeo....
Return of the Cicadas - trailer for a documentary crowdfunded via Kickstarter — May 30, 2013
Return of the Cicadas from motionkicker on Vimeo....
Replacing Social Media with Book reading — Feb 27, 2017
This year I am replacing Social Media with Book Reading because social media is no longer a conversational place. It has become a place for sensationalism and the spreading of fake news and emotional news. As a result of these factors the potential gain of new friendships and interesting conversations has declined. For this reason you might as well find some interesting books and broaden your horizons. [caption id=“attachment_3412” align=“aligncenter”] Replacing social media with book reading I currently have hundreds of books on Kindle and Audible and my collection on the Kobo reader is bound to grow. Recently I read Too Loud A Solitude. This is a book I came across by accident. I was browsing through Goodreads recommendations and it came up. The book is interesting because it tells the story of a person who worked compacting books for 35 years. Every chapter begins with the phrase “For 35 years…”. The journey is an interesting one because we see how someone with a passion for books rescues some before they are destroyed. It is worth reading when you have the interest and motivation. Another interesting book I read is Tartarin Sur Les Alpes. This book is interesting because of its age. It is about the early days of Alpinism. It speaks of various mountains and locations that are easy to get to today but that were accessed by horse and carriage at the time. It also explores the early days of tourism. Books require an investment of time of several hours in the same way that television series require. You can read a chapter or “episode” a day or you can binge through them reading several chapters in a single day. They usually require from seven to 21 hours to get through just like television series seasons. It’s easy to lose entire days. I like e-books and I like audible books. As a result of this I can walk around with hundreds of books at a time and read from one book and then another. It transports me to different time periods and places. For a moment I stop living in the present. With audio books I can drive, hike or walk at the same time. I can be a bookworm without being stuck in a building. It’s a shame that we don’t read more....
Remember this, I do. — Jul 2, 2008
Back in the good old days. Used to watch this video on one of the free channels....
Remember that first tweetup? — Feb 2, 2009
Here we have @sizemore speaking about why he organised the first London tweetup. I will upload some of the other interviews soon but I’m just checking the player embedding first...
Recommending my twitter friends with MrTweet — Mar 10, 2009
Whilst I listened to MrTweet speaking on the Net@Nite podcast from several month ago I found it interesting that he spoke of the re-tweet as giving credit to those you follow who share some interesting links. If you spend a lot of time on twitter though after seeing the same retweet too many times you may not follow them anymore. What I propose is to use MrTweet’s recommendation instead. The process is simple. Go to a profile page and you can see two things. You can see who has recommended you (me) or who you have recommended. If you’re a twitter Veteran like those I follow and I then you don’t need MrTweet but if you like my blogging and tweet style then by seeing who I recommend you can find more relevant people to your twitter stream. As a result you will be following a group of friends rather than random strangers. As a result that sense of community will remain strong....
Rebreather divers on a catamaran 310 miles from Shore. — May 26, 2013
Silent Atoll (Bassas da India) - trailer from Bart Lukasik on Vimeo....
Reading James Bond instead of watching the films — Apr 23, 2015
Reaction - Twitter's best moonshot. — Mar 22, 2026
Every network that has taken the broadcast model and applied it to social media has seen a decline in user engagement. This is true of the two giants, Twitter and Facebook. I estimate that a quarter of my contacts on twitter and Facebook were active when these were conversation networks. When I look at social networks I see that twenty people on twitter and twenty people on facebook are still active. That is a big decline in user engagement. It’s amusing that investors, marketers and PR professionals, rather than creating sticky networks have made Twitter and Facebook RSS aggregators. They take social networks and neutralise the social aspect. Facebook and twitter have become like newspaper and magazine websites. User conversations are of secondary importance. The focus is on giving marketers the illusion that they are reaching their target audience. The probability that I would join facebook or twitter today if I was not a member is now very low. Phone apps do the same thing without requiring the same investment in time. Conversations are in and of themselves a unique selling point. Neutralise the conversation and the network has no value. Google should have kept Google Reader. It would be popular again. Google+ is the last remaining network where I feel people want to connect which is why I give it a greater portion of my social media allocated time. http://itwofs.com/beastoftraal/2016/02/08/twitters-best-moonshot-algorithmic-timeline/...
Reaction to Social media and the loss of identity — Feb 1, 2017
My answer to:...
Random shots of the countryside — Mar 15, 2012
Nature as it appeared a few days ago. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157629508225047”]...
Rafting down the Dranse river. — Aug 1, 2010
Yesterday I tested the Olympus camera during a rafting trip down the Dranse river in France....
Quick N97 thoughts. — Aug 23, 2009
If I had a perfect laptop it would be shaped just like the N97 but larger. I’m saying this because of how much I love having a keyboard and a touchscreen in such a small package. Now imagine if laptops did away with all that wasted space at the bottom, where the trackpad goes. Back to the matter at hand. The N97 is a great little device that can survive about a day with my use before needing a charge. What I like is the duality of control between a keyboard when you slide it from under the display, and the touch interface for those that like that. What makes this touch interface particularly interesting is that it’s designed for mobile phone users with a lot of experience with text messaging. It’s the standard number and key configuration that we’ve grown accustomed to over the past decade. There were some issues with stability, crashes display not working all the time and memory issues but those have been patched....
Qik Live feed — Jul 13, 2008
When I’m sreaming live you’ll be able to see it here....
(Pseudo-) Science Explains How Facebook Makes You Sad. — Mar 22, 2026
"Posting Dead Zones" Are Encouraged by Social Media Practitioners Taking a Utilitarian Approach to Social Media. — Jun 12, 2016
A few years ago we were part of social networks. These networks were based on social interests, activities, passions and more. Over time as attention shifted from Social networks to social media so the activity that people were busy with changed. With that change social media professionals filled the channels, pushed for “audience” rather than friendships and eventually created what they call the “posting dead zones”. This is both amusing and sad. [caption id=“attachment_2909” align=“aligncenter”] Social media sites are part of social networks It is amusing because social networks, later called social media were entirely about conversations and sharing content and experiences of interest. In such an environment you would use social media from the moment you woke up to the moment you went to sleep. You would meet with members of your social media social networks a number of times a day. The Return on investment for having no “posting dead zones” meant that people would be attentive to what you posted. With time, and as early adopters were replaced by mid to late adopters, as conversations became less private and less personal so the opportunities to connect with people declined. Instant messaging via Google Hangouts for Ingress, Facebook messenger for personal friends and whatsapp encourage exchanges between existing networks. The work of adding new people to a social network has shifted back to face to face meetings. As a private user the return on investment in regards to social networks has imploded. We see this with Facebook and Twitter. Their stickiness has declined. [caption id=“attachment_2910” align=“aligncenter”] Taking a utilitarian approach to social media will encourage people to disconnect from brands that fail to engage them. I follow brands, people and projects that engage with me when I post and comment. I look for content. I do not wait for it to pop in to my feed. Social media practitioners forget that social media are about social networks. People use the social network where they connect with other people. When a social network is no longer sociable “posting dead zones” get extended so much that vibrant networks become ghost towns. Facebook and twitter spent so long focusing on getting advertising and mainstream media on board that they forgot the essence of social networks....
Postcard from Switzerland - La Dole — Jun 5, 2013
A collection of images taken up near La Dole earlier today....
The Post Social Media Era — Jun 16, 2016
I believe that we are shifting towards a Post Social Media Era where social networks are built in to online activities. People love to say that online social networks and social media are a waste of time and that they have a negative impact on how we feel about ourselves. For years I have been trying to demonstrate that social networks and social media are as valuable and important as socialising in person. The first 17 minutes are about a game that attempts to provide the player with empathy for those suffering from Anxiety. It then inspires Jack Septiceye to provide us with a look at how he felt after leaving college, how youtube helped him connect with people and how it had a positive impact on his life. When most people read about social networks and social media they read about making money, social media marketing, trolling, disinformation, depression and many other topics but very few of these articles look at the positive impact that connecting with people can have through social media. Social media, after all connect people whether they live in the middle of a big city or in the middle of the countryside. When you live in the countryside and practice sports in the mountains then the car and social media are equally important for having a sociable life....
Post shift Via Ferrata — May 29, 2011
I went to Fort L’écluse again this weekend. This time was different as I went after a work shift. The views were still good. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157626705656121”]...
Possible Lake Parade streams — Jul 12, 2008
There may be some footage from the lake parade moderately soon....
Finding the Vibrant Swiss Pokemon Go community. — Jul 18, 2016
Pokemon Go has been available in Switzerland officially since yesterday but people have been playing the game for longer than this. Some have achieved level 20 and above. There is a vibrant Swiss Pokemon Go community in the French speaking part of Switzerland. Pokemon Go Switzerland is one place where French speaking players can unite. One thousand nine hundred people have already liked the page so if you are looking for other players this is a good place to start. There is the Pokemon Go Lausanne group. This group has 430+ members at the time of writing. Friday they had their first event and at least elevent people were present. Another event is coming up on the 24th of July 2016. 2850 people have liked the Pokemon Go Genève page. Ingress players from Lausanne, Geneva and other french speaking towns have had a Google Hangout dedicated to Pokemon Go for several months. At this moment there are 83 members. 50 members of the Yellow Instinct faction are also highly active on Telegram. Hundreds of messages are exchanged. These communities form online to facilitate meeting other players offline in the physical world. By playing the game there is a good chance that you will come across other players, as would frequently happen with Ingress. Having online communities allows people to plan events and meetings, shares hints and tips and more. Factions can plan a campaign, come to my village and lets capture it from this faction or that faction. Come to that train station or event and you will find these pokemons. The game is creating new social groups and the age range according to one thread I saw today is between 15 years old and 45. I am certain that all age groups are playing. That is the range people disclosed in that specific thread. I expect the community to grow and for events to be organised on a regular basis. If you do play the game then there are hundreds of people to meet and play alongside in the Léman region of Switzerland....
Podcrastinating — Nov 29, 2007
Podcrastinating, when you put off doing something because you prefer listening to a podcast instead. It’s when you know that you should be doing a number of things but because you want to listen to conversations you listen to podcasts instead. Those guilty for taking a lot of my time would be From our own Foreign correspondent, quite a few of the TWIT podcasts and many more. It’s not that you’re not learning because you are. The problem is when you spend ten-twelve hours listening to podcasts rather than getting on with the tasks at hand....
Podcrastinating — Nov 29, 2007
Jennifer - Nov 5, 2007...
Podcasts on the Android — Jun 17, 2010
For three days now I have been listening to podcasts on the Nexus one using Listen. It is a podcast app that allows you to subscribe to and download podcasts from the comfort of the mobile device. What I like about this app is the ease with which you can select which podcasts to listen to. If you want to listen to This week in tech for example just type the name of the podcast and it will find those feeds, allow you to subscribe or manually select which podcasts to listen to. Another aspect of the search feature which I like is the search for keywords function. It displays a number of podcasts according to the keyword. As an example I typed hike to see which podcasts would be suggested. I found some trailcast podcasts and so downloaded a podcast. It works well. If you enjoy the podcast then you can subscribe to and download the podcasts. The settings tab has an interesting set of options. You can tell it to download new apps when possible, select whether you want the downloads to occur when you are using wifi or over the air using the data plan. You can set how many podcasts you want to store on the device at any one time. One of the best features for me is that when you have a few hours to listen to podcasts rather than work by podcast subscription this software allows you to listen to podcasts in queue order. What this means is that I may be listening to This week in tech, then this week in google before moving on to the BBC history podcast and finishing with a trail cast podcast. With this system you do not need to interrupt what you are doing to get to the next podcast. The benefit of a podcast client that is within the phone is that you can select what to listen to whilst on the move. As a benefit of this you are less likely to download hundreds of podcasts you end up never listening to. The last feature is that it is synched with Google Reader. This means that you can see those subscriptions from any google reader application. It is stored in the cloud so should work across multiple devices. This is the future of podcasting, and media consumption. It takes advantage of the power that modern devices can sync from anywherwe at anytime, that your habits and tastes may change and that you actualise it from any machine, computer, or mobile....
PodcampUK - Part 1 of the debrief — Sep 3, 2007
There are many podcamps but Podcampuk was my podcamp. This was an event which was similar to just one previous experience. It was an event where everyone you talked to had at least one website and others may have had several. They also used twitter and prepared radio programs. What is great about the podcast UK crowd is that they’re a creative entrepreneurial group. Rather than take a 9 to 5 job some work as freelancers. They have a variety of skills from drivers to information technology people, university and schoolteachers and more. They range in age from mid twenties and upwards. It’s a nice sample of people. When I arrived on Friday night I heard John Buckley talk about his podcast Dissident Vox and it was interesting to see him describe the cost of creating podcasts. He was talking about time. For certain topics he would spend more than seventy hours researching the topic in order to gain an in depth understanding of his topic. Another podcaster mentioned how the personal nature of podcasts, reaching their audience through earphones, meant that he should be careful about how to present his research. In reality certain podcasters are highly informed people who want to present their ideas and worry as much as academics about what they present. Podcasting I simpler than some thought initially. One great example of this is the presentation by Jason Jarrett who talked about how he had complicated his own life when learning about podcasting. Equipment requirements for podcasting are not as great as some had expected. He talked about how he had purchased one piece of technology and then another to attempt to resolve an issue he was having, sound in just one ear. It’s only after a few weeks that he was informed that the problem was mono sound. He was a great presenter getting many laughs from his audience. Another presenter that was of interest is the one by Trevor Dann from the Radio Acadamy talking about broadcasting. What I got from his presentation is the contrast between professional sports and broadcasting. In both mediums people who are at the top of the scale can make really good money whilst those at the bottom do so mainly for the pleasure. One point which I thought was of particular interest was that of amateur cricket players not taking money away from the professionals. In other words both could cohabit quite easily. I really appreciated that sentence. For months or even years I have been worrying about the new media and what effect it will have on me whilst I look for work. If more and more people want to get content for free and appreciate mediocrity would this mean that there is less space for professional content to be in demand. According to that speech I understood that whilst people’s consumer habits are changing the need and appreciation of well-produced work will still be great enough to make a living. In effect both complement each other. As more and more people pick up a microphone and camera to create their content so the same passion from amateur footballers watching the best of the best is transposed from the amateur viewer to the professional player. Podcasting has a great diversity of talent and some participants of podcamp UK looked at this from an education point of view. Joe Dale from the Isle of Wight was telling us about how he was using podcasting within the classroom. He is in charge of students ranging from 7 years and up and encourages them to create audiovisual content which will help them learn French. They have to produce, write and script their own shows. As a result of this they are involved in improving their written work as well as their aural skill. This is a great, and for young students, far more fun way of learning. It also creates an opportunity to link with people living in different parts of the world. If you’re in England and you’re learning one language then via the World Wide Web it is easy to reach a global audience who may give feedback as to how you could improve. What made Podcamp UK so interesting is the European flavour of the event. One person travelled from Rome to be there whilst UK podcasters came from everywhere in England. As a result of this we saw what the British podcast environment has to offer rather than be limited by what’s going on in San Francisco. I’m glad I got to meet so many interesting individuals with so many interesting projects and I hope to remain in contact with them and see how their ideas progress. It was a great look at the podcasting sub-culture and how it’s progressed in parallel with mainstream media....
Plurk and mobility, why I like it. — Sep 24, 2008
Plurk is one of the most interesting mobile “microblogging” tool available at the moment because of it’s simple interface. Without the need for additional applications, expensive data packages and more you can follow the conversation of your contacts and friends in a way that neither jaiku nor twitter allow. If you’re on your home network then jaiku is interesting because you download the messages. If you’re travelling then twitter is semi useful to read messages whilst mobile. The biggest limitation with twitter is the api limit. Frequently I have found that I can’t access the messages due to a 404 error. That’s problematic. That’s why I like plurk. It provides a simple front page where you can see all plurks. Select a plurk and you can read the responses and respond yourself. That’s great because it means you can converse without putting your life on hold to keep the conversation going. What’s particularly interesting is that there was a time when twitter was as advantageous as plurk for mobility but due to costs they were unable to provide the service anymore due to cost. Cost is an excuse for a lack of lateral thinking. By creating a good wap interface that can as easily be used as easily on an n95 as an ipod touch plurk have circumvented most of the cost problems and provided a service that just works. Of course their user base is much smaller and it’s easier to deal with the requests. We’ll see how things progress from here....
playing with the new macbook air — Feb 6, 2008
As I write this I’m playing with the new macbook air and already i-ve twittered and seesmiced from it. The keyboard is fine and the user interface is good. The only idiotic thing is the mouse button is far too small. I don-t see the point of such a thin slither of a mouse. Now how many people are envious of me testing a macbook air? Now to test the multicontrols :-) update: Can’t test the multicontrols. Haven’t put any pics on so can’t test that feature. What a shame. update 2: The multifinger image manipulation is really fun. Everyone should try it. Turn it. Flip it. zoom in, edit, move over a little, more manipulation. I like it. Wait for the tech on some of the higher spec machines though. It’s got some nice technology....
playing with the new macbook air — Feb 6, 2008
unclr - Feb 3, 2008...
Plague inc, the game — Aug 3, 2016
Plague inc is a game that is available on multiple platforms. These are pc, android, ios and windows phone. The version I played was on android. If you want to watch someone play the game you can watch this series: I was at the first general Staff Meeting for the UNAIDS program a few years ago and more recently I was at the World Health organisation during the SARS crisis helping with Virtual Press conferences. During these two weeks I learned about the language used when discussing epidemics and how to mitigate the threat they posed. During and after the Ebola crisis I was able to go to two or three conferences discussing how best to prepare future responses as well as to discuss what systematic weaknesses there were and how best to address them to deal properly with a future epidemic. Plague inc is a real time decision based game. There are four tabs. Overview provides you with an overview of air and sea transportTransmission: you can decide whether it is spread by air, water, blood, animals or birds. Symptons: You can decide how it affects people, whether through coughing, fever or other forms of discomfort. Abilities: You can develop, cold, heat, drug and bacterial resistance. The game is an opportunity for people who do not live a 20 minute drive from the World Health Organisation and other UN organisations to learn more about the terminology of diseases as well as the factors that can make it more or less virulent and how best to counteract the threat. In the game you may spend two or three years spreading a disease but in the real world diseases can spread over decades or even centuries. Look at Polio for example. Within the last two weeks we saw this headline Only complacency can stop Nigeria "“ and Africa "“ from finally conquering polio. For context UNICEF has a fact sheet about Polio eradication milestones. The Virus was first described by Michael Underwood in 1789, it was theorised as contagious in 1840 and in 1907 Dr Ivar Wickman categorised the different strains. It was first hypothesised that Polio was caused by a virus by Karl Lendensteiner in 1908. You can read more details in your own free time but the first vaccinations in Europe started in 1955 in Denmark. It is in 1988 that the World Health Assembly, the World Health Organisation yearly conference, adopted a resolution to eradicate Poliomyelitis by the year 2000. This goal was not reached due to various factors but finally in 2016 it looks as though the disease is ever closer to being eradicated. Polio type 2 virus destroyed as strain no longer in Kenya...
Phreadz — Oct 8, 2008
Phreadz is a multimedia sharing site from the comfort of where you’re sitting right now. It allows for the sharing of multimedia files straight from your mobile phone to a website where each media content is added to a thread, hence the name phreadz. There is a simple idea behind this site. Conversations are now more and more multimedia rich. Some people converse via video as on seesmic and others converse on the topic of photographs, for example Flickrs. More people speak to each other using Utterli. Combine all of these together and you’ve got phreadz. Each post has a code and this code is the key behind what makes phreadz so intersting. If I watch a video and comment on it then I answer to that video. If someone then posts a photo associated to that video behind my own post then that’s part of the thread of conversation I’ve continued. If someone answers to the source video and another after that answers then a second stream of conversation occurs. In other words we’ve got two sub topics. Expand this by several hundred posts and you’ve got a nice way of keeping track on the directions taken by these conversations....
Phone as mobile wifi hotpot — Jul 3, 2010
Finally I have received the Over the Air (OTA) update from 2.1 to 2.2 for my nexus one. As a result of this my mobile phone can now be used tethered to a computer for internet access or as a wifi hotspot. The WIFI sharing option allows you to use wpa2 PSK encryption. The reason I was so interested in this update is for use with the iPad. I already have two mobile contracts, one through work and the second private. Both of them allow for at least a gigabyte of data per month. With these contracts and tethering I have the ability to download 2 gigabytes of data from anywhere without paying an additional 19CHF per month to swisscom. the next step will be to see by how much my data consumption will go up as a result of this option. At least one side effect is a lot more freedom. Disclaimer, I would add an image if it was easy to get screengrabs with the nexus one but it’s not. Google, can we get that built into the system?...
Path of Beauty — Jan 28, 2013
Path of Beauty from Florent Igla on Vimeo....
Passion Pit - "Cry like a Ghost" — Apr 1, 2013
Passion Pit - "Cry Like A Ghost from DANIELS on Vimeo....
Parigot - animated short — Mar 4, 2013
parigot-animated short film from liok on Vimeo....
Paragliding from Plan Praz to the Mont Blanc — Aug 20, 2016
In this video we see someone paragliding from Plan Praz to the Mont Blanc. To do this the individual finds ascending air at a number of points going from 2800 metres up to 5000 meters before finally landing on the summit of the Mont Blanc. This video gives you a practical example of how a good paragliding flight should go. When I flew at Les Diablerets last week I was surprised that we don’t feel the wind as much as we would expect when on a parapente and I was surprised that you do not feel when you are going up or down. In this video you hear a beep that increases in frequency and intensity as you ascend. The faster it beeps the faster you are climbing. There is another beep that we hear just once in the video that indicates that the parapente is going down. It’s a shame that in this video we do not find out how long the flight lasts. We hear him at one moment speak about the need for patience as he looks for pockets of rising air to raise him to the desired altitude. We hear him comment about how certain people seem to struggle and we hear that his breathing is more laboured as he gets higher. It would be nice to see them take off from the summit and head back down in to the valley. It must be nice to ascend the Mont Blanc in such a way. We seldom hear of people ascending the Mont Blanc by parapente so this video is interesting. In this second video we see people hike up the Mont Blanc and take off from the summit. The view from there must be spectacular and the feeling must be pleasant. Many of us have seen the vista from the Aiguille Du Midi but imagine seeing it from a place as calm and quiet as below a parapente....
Paléo Trafic - enjoying the view from La Barillette. — Jul 21, 2016
Most people think of the concerts, the food, the alcohol and the social aspects of Paléo Festival. If you are one of the collaborateurs (sounds Cold Warish doesn’t it?) then Paléo is about sleep deprivation, roasting in a tent, sleeping under trees, eating with others and occasionally doing the task that you are collaborating on. I decided to look at Paléo Trafic this time. I have spent at least ten hours standing at la Barillette over the last two days filming the Paléo Festival terrain. In that time I have looked at the landscape, photographed the landscape and talked with people up there. During this time the camera has captured the crowds of people walking from the train stop to Paléo, the cars driving from Nyon and tractors harvesting crops in the background. In effect I have captured life in summer. I have been lucky over the last two days because the weather and visibility has been excellent. We can see really see everything at the moment. You can see the valleys on the French side, you can see the Cervin, the Dents du Midi, the Mont Blanc, Lausanne and more. If you spend as much time as me enjoying this landscape then you can see places you have been to in person from afar. [gallery columns=“4” ids=“3162,3163,3164,3165,3166,3168,3169,3170,3171,3172,3173,3174”] If you want to get to La Barillette and enjoy the views in person then follow this link...
Over seventy thousand tweets and my opinions about twitter have not changed. — Apr 29, 2010
For tree years I’ve been using twitter and for at least a year I believed that this was the great social connector, the website that would turn our passive, faceless web habit into something more personal. Of course I was wrong about this. Anonymity is still as great as ever but in a new sense of the word. That motivation to connect, to establish meaningful relationships with people is weak. You see this through every twitter tweet, through every interaction. You see this through the contemporary attitude towards online and electronic conversation. Have you ever listened to two non users speak about computer communications? “I don’t want to use it because I don’t want to lose my privacy”, and the second person "I won’t use it because I don’t want to be stalked, I don’t want someone calling me without me consenting to it. It’s the same line over and over. It’s the line we were given as children about accepting sweets from people we don’t know. The only difference is that these people are grown ups, and the bad stranger is a globalised system of conversation commonly referred to as twitter and another called facebook. Both have been around for a while now and it’s interesting to see how much greater the usage of facebook has grown compared to that of twitter. Facebook, however foreign, however bizarre, however shy in nature is a relatively well respected and appreciated addition to the student life, and to some lesser extent the professional life. That is because it was built around a very private and closed community. So private it was exclusive to one university, then one nation of universities, then the global university before finally becoming a public hangout where you say who your real life friends are, and where their names are visible, their picture is available, their affiliations too. In a sense Facebook is the greatest breach of privacy you could think of. Stalking, as some people worry about is so much easier. At the same time it’s relatively untouched because of the personal security settings that are a common part of every day life. Now take a look at twitter. It’s a hundred and fourty characters of text at a time. That’s not much information. It’s less than an SMS. It’s basically a chat on a global scale. There is no threading, or at least there wasn’t. There was no @ sign. There was no concept of reply. Everything that twitter has become is through a great enough number of users agreeing on a communication convention for it to become part of the site’s fabric. This has been demonstrated a number of times. What makes twitter so “versatile” is also what makes it so unappealing as a communication tool for the most interesting people you know. Anyone with a normal life does not feel the need to communicate virtually to strangers. They prefer person to person interactions in the real world. Twitter is a waste of time. Spend an hour looking at a timeline and you’ll see what strangers are doing all around the world. Now ask just one person to meet and you’ll have no one to meet in great swathes of landscape. That’s because it’s for wealthy people according to some research, 67 percent of college graduates, so educated too. I read in a read write web post that whilst eighty seven percent of people asked knew about twitter or facebook fourty seven percent use facebook and only seven percent use twitter. The article, in it’s analysis went on to say that twitter is far more complicated to start than facebook. I can’t help but think creating a username on twitter would be faster than on facebook. All you need on twitter is the username after all. I think it has a lot to do with today’s social values, the fabric of the society within which we live. People have no problem with e-mail communication. They have no problem with phone conversations. They have a serious problem with electronic social interaction. There are a number of factors for this being the case. One of these is our superficiality, why commit to a person whom we have never met, never smiled at? Why commit your thoughts and opinions on paper, in a place where google can index them so easily, and eventually to be called on them. Does that make twitter appealing? No, it doesn’t. What about the barrier to entry. How many people have a computer that boots up within ten seconds, a permanent internet connection and a machine performant enough to deal with twitter and other sites. You may scoff at this last suggestion but have you tried using social websites on older less powerful machines? I have and it’s a laggy unpleasant experience. Hardly appealing to your average user. Then there’s the matter of time. How many hundreds to thousands of tweets do you need to read before you come to an interesting person? How committed are they to the site? If they post five times a month no personal connection will be established. If they spend all of their time on twitter is this as a result of unemployment or are they on the move with any of a number of smartphones? Do your normal friends have the funds for a smartphone and data contracts so that they are online? Is there a need? The conclusion is a simple one. In a society where people see the computer as a geeky waste of time for nothing more than work, where face to face interaction is prized above all else then facebook is the clear winner. You add friends from every chapter of the life you have already written for yourself. On twitter you’re building on the future, behind a computer, only to find that the early adopter lifestyle means you have to travel to meet these individuals. In other words unless you’re an entrepreneur or freelancer then twitter is a complete and utter waste of time....
On why I will never spend my own money to buy an Apple laptop again. — Aug 28, 2009
There is a known issue with the Nvidia 8600 video card. That issue is that the card fails faster than average. There are two common problems with this video card. The first is that the screen is just messed up. That’s not the issue I have. The issue I am having with the macbook pro is that the screen just goes dead. The failure rate is around once per year. It failed a year ago. It’s failed again just 6 days ago and it’s going to fail again in a year’s time around this time. At that point it will no longer be under guarantee. I know that hardware fails I’ve had twenty or more electronic devices fail over the years. I don’t mind because most of the time the devices are cheap and replacing is not an issue. With the macbook pro it’s different. This is a professional machine. It costs 2000CHF and more per machine. When this machine fails you have a serious investment to think about. Are you going to spend another 2-4000 CHF on another machine? Yes, if the after sale service is good. No if it’s not. When the first video card failed it took over a month to get the machine fixed. No replacement machine was provided. As a result for over a month I relied on other technology. Now imagine if I had needed my machine for video projects during that period. Now we get to this year. My machine failed six days ago and I have still not had an opportunity to get it fixed. I went to the apple store this morning to see whether they could take it in and get it repaired and I was told that I have to go to the website. I know this but the website showed that option as grayed out. I was told that there was no possibility to see them until Monday. I don’t have time to go there on Monday because their bureaucracy does not adapt to my needs. The question is how many more weeks will I be without that laptop. The result of this experience is a simple one. Whilst I love spending money on hardware nothing that I have seen encourages me to buy another piece of Apple hardware. Why should I spend 4000CHF for a professional machine that could take up to a month to replace. If my primary activity was as a freelance editor then I would have no choice. As things stand I am working full time for a good company and having an Apple computer is a luxury rather than a necessity. This means I will never again buy an apple laptop again. They need to learn something about customer care before I come back....
On the Potential of Self-Driving Cars — Dec 6, 2015
When people write about self-driving cars they write from the perspective of people living in cities. I live in the Swiss countryside at the foot of the Jura which results in me seeing the potential of self-driving cars differently. For a start at the moment buses operate from 5 in the morning to 9 in the afternoon. There is a tow hour gap at lunchtime when there is no service and at other times the frequency is once an hour, except at rush hour. When self-driving cars are available I see the bus and taxi services being discontinued. I also see the space dedicated to parking in cities vanishing. I see cars being used to connect villages to town. You get into the self-driven car and it takes you to the train station. From the train station in Nyon you get to Geneva or Lausanne. From Geneva or Lausanne you have trains and buses to take you to your final destination if you are either recovering from an injury or carrying too much weight. Scuba diving and winter sports require a lot of gear so a self-driven car would be helpful. I also see self-driving cars as being great for teenagers living in the countryside. Self-driving cars will provide a 24 hour per day transportation. This means that teenagers will be able to take the last train home and catching a self-driven car from the train station to home. I see this as being just as useful for grown ups who like to have more than one drink when out socialising with friends. For now society believe in designated drivers. With self-driving cars the designated driver will be a thing of the past. The train will transport you from the train station to your home. It will also provide country bumpkins with the opportunity to stay out even after the last train. It will equalise city slickers and country bumpkins. On weekends when groups meet up to do activities self-driving cars will be of great use. At the moment when you hike or do Via Ferrata there is a need for wide open spaces where cars can be parked and sit for hours. Self-driving cars would bring people to the hiking or via Ferrata base and drop people off. These cars will be able to return to active use in the region until activity participants return to the starting point ready to return home. Car ownership would be replaced by car allocation. For now when cars are not used they are parked and space is used for them to get in and out of that parking space. Space is also needed for the car driver and passengers to get in. When cars drive themselves that space will no longer be needed. Car will be parked as they are on ferries. Only a few centimeters are left between cars and unloading is one row or row at a time. Parking could be designed to maximise space and efficiency. Mobile phones and smart watches can also be used to increase efficiency at rush hour. When two or more people are heading from the same train station to the same village their smart devices will see this and allocate a parking bay or vehicle with a display to show the name of the destination village. For now the limitation with buses is that they have a set route. If you are at the end of the route you have to wait for everyone to be dropped off and this can add minutes to your journey time. Self-driven cars you would be routed straight to your village square and walk from there. The point of self-driving cars would be to minimise waiting times. Rather than wait from half an hour to an hour for a bus you would be taken home within 10 minutes of arriving at the train station. Cities and traffic lights today are designed for human drivers, whether for trams, buses, cars, cyclists, pedestrians or motorbikes. In the self-driven future we could do away with traffic lights. Traffic flow in cities will be reduced because trains and public transport will make it easy and convenient to get from point A to point B. In a city like Geneva where the system is nodal from the centre out we would have private transport to go between distances where a 15-minute walk is needed. The point is to reduce the need for people to go from the periphery to the centre and then back out to the periphery. The point of self-driving cars would be to maximise network efficiency and provide people with a smooth and efficient way to commute and participate in social activities. It should equalise life for city slickers and country bumpkins. The purpose of self-driven cars should be to maximise use of the existing infrastructure whilst making the last mile more convenient and flexible....
On reaching 100 dives — Mar 5, 2013
Back in 1999, with family, we went to the island of Martinique. On a whim we decided to try scuba diving. The waters there are warm and tropical. The beaches are sandy and the experience is pleasant. From the beach we kitted up for the try dive. It’s during this try dive that I found out that salt water no longer stung my eyes. A year or two later, when I was in the South West of England I decided that I was bored of always doing the same thing so looked in to scuba diving. This was in November, despite the cold, despite the weather, despite the low visibility. I wanted to do my advanced open water certification, converting from CMAS * to PADI AOWD. Due to the weather conditions they through in the Dry Suit speciality. We managed to do three dives in November. It was only after the dives and as I got home that I realised how frozen I was. I would shiver for three or four hours after the dive. It would take another four or five months before I would complete my AOWD and dry suit course. I did notice how much more relaxed I was in spring than I had been in the depths of winter. During this time I started work on two diving documentaries of which one was completed and led to the second one. For about ten years I did not dive at all. This was due to my status as a student and the fact that I was between Switzerland and London. It was only while working in my last job that I had the income and the opportunity to start diving again. I found the Glocals Dive group and after a discussion or two rented some equipment to do my first dive or two in the lake. When you have dived in the English channel diving in the lake is not a big leap. Lake diving is fun because of the people you meet but also by it’s accessibility. For the first dive or two you rent the equipment but as you see that the conditions are nice you begin to invest. You invest in the BCD, the semi dry suit, the torch and it snowballs from there. Eventually you’re diving with a dry suit, two Mares MR22T, a MARES ICON HD dive computer because the Suunto D9 a friend sold you for cheap was hard to read in such conditions. When diving here you have three main lakes. The Lac Léman, the Lac D’Annecy and finally the Lac Du Bourget. Each of these dive sites offers something different. The Lac Léman offers a dive site within easy driving distance from work at the Hérmance dive site. The Rivaz dive site offers you a beautiful view on the vineyards as you surface after a wall dive. The Lac du Bourget offers both a nice landscape at the surface as well as an interesting wall dive. The serious dive starts at around 30 meters but the bottom of the wall is at around 64.5 meters. This last dive site is for experienced divers. The Glocals dive group is a pleasant group of people whom I meet almost every week, on Thursdays for discussions of future dives and on Sunday to do the diving. People often come on Thursday to discuss diving around here but when it comes to actually diving they are usually not that active. Out of 300 members in the group we have a core of about 10 divers of which three to five of us dive whether in winter or summer. Diving in summer is pleasant. In summer you’re warm, the ambiance is that of holidays, and you’re happy to get in the water to cool down. Sometimes we have barbecues. In summer the water ranges from 21°c at the surface down to 5°c at depth. As you go down you get colder but as soon as you head back up you get back in to the warm waters. Once the warm water actually felt unpleasant. Winter is quite different. Snow is on the ground, the wind is cold and ice has formed on the rocks as we head in to the water. Two of us drive in dry suits with wet gloves and by the end of the dive our hands are very cold. In winter there is no thermocline from the surface down to depth....
Of live video streams and Paleo — Jul 27, 2008
I really enjoyed what Nicholas of K had to say in the interview we did last night for Musicorama.tv. He spoke about projects and how we can achieve anything we want as long as our mind is in the right place. I’ll let you know when that interview is online. This year Paleo has been a different experience from previous years because I went as a “radio/TV” person as opposed to a collaborator (work for free, get free food and free non alcoholic drinks as well as invites for friends), in the latter case you sleep so little it’s not unusual to take a week to recover. I enjoyed myself. I enjoyed seeing all the live acts and I streamed quite a few events, from Iam, The Justice, The goose, Massive Attack and more. We also had interviews with BB Brunes, K, The DO, The Dodoz, Marvin, Girls in Hawai and Caribou if I remember all of them. Here are some of the Live streams Listen as the people realise what song it is. listen to the crowd roar :-) Tikan Jah Fakoly was good too. Nice relaxed evening. He was playing before Manu Chao Manu Chao played for over two hours but I had work the next day so I left early....
Of live video streams and Paleo — Jul 27, 2008
[Pages tagged “caribou”](http://www.blogbookmarker.com/tags/caribou —) - Jul 2, 2008...
No more twitter for a month — Jun 25, 2008
Twitter is obviously never going to sort out it’s issues so from midnight today I will no longer be using the service during a month. I’ll be using all the other sites, just don’t feel like having my time wasted by twitter anymore. For all friends just continue interacting via all the services that have a 99.9% uptime rather than 3% downtime. See you then....
No more twitter for a month — Jun 25, 2008
Laura Whitehead - Jun 3, 2008...
Nice Clouds on a Windy Day — Jul 26, 2020
Sometimes you drive home on the scooter and you look up at the sky and you think "When I get out of this village I’m going to stop by the side of the road and I’m going to take a picture of the clouds because they’re photogenic....
The New Mac Book Pro — Oct 28, 2016
Last night when I saw the new Mac Book Pro I was turned off by the lack of USB-3 ports. To me that lack of ports made the machine unattractive as I do not want to use dongles or pay a premium for thunderbolt drives. Ingestion of data from fitness devices is by USB ports so I would need a dongle for that. I would also need a USB to Thunderbolt 3 adaptor to ingest from the SxS cards I use with the Sony PMW-200. The Mac Book Pro becomes interesting when you look at the storage options of either one or two terabytes of internal storage. My current machine has about 250 gigabytes of internal storage so I only keep the project that I am currently editing. Once I finish I shift it to an external drive. With the new system I would have more headroom. I could easily have a number of projects on the machine and would need a thunderbolt 3 to USB-3 dongle for archiving that material. It means that I would use my current mac book pro for my fitness trackers, USB-3 drives and more. The new machine would be a dedicated editing machine as my current MBP was until the Mac Book air stopped being a reliable machine. As the investment for a new machine is so high I would wait until I have a number of projects to work on. At that point I might consider upgrading to the new machine. You might also remember that I posted that what I wanted was a dual screen editing laptop where the keyboard part of the machine would be for the timeline whilst the monitor would be for the playout monitors and more. With the touch bar we’re a step closer to what I wanted. [caption id=“attachment_3375” align=“aligncenter”] It might be practical....
Nanox,TRP files and Mpeg streamclip — Apr 29, 2009
Satellite television broadcasting is an interesting field to looik into, especially now that there are thousands of channels available on a multitude of satellites. Over the past two days I have been learning about the Nanox HDTV recording device. What I like about using the Nanox receiver is the ability to see stream information, what format is being broadcast as well as resolution. What’s interesting is that some satellite channels are broadcasting at full HD quality whilst others are broadcasting at no more than 576*352 for example. You get the bit rate information too. Now that I’ve lost most people here’s the part I like. You can attach any USB hard disk to the device and record programs off the television. This is particularly interesting if there’s a documentary you intended to watch but weren’t around to watch it. It can record two simultaneous streams at once. TRP files are a compressed file format that are ideal for storage. They’re not recognised by quicktime but if you download mpeg streamclip then you can convert this file format to any file format you desire. If you record a number of files with the satellite receiver with mpeg streamclip you can batch encode a number of files at once. This means that a spare computer can do the rendering without you having to be there. If there is an EPG available for the channel you are watching you can schedule the receiver to record the program. In other situations you can start a recording and it will ask whether to stop recording at the end of the scheduled program. If there is no EPG the process is manual to start a recording but you can select how long you want to record for. It’s a shame that you need to go into the menu to set the record duration however....
Nanowrimo — Nov 1, 2008
This month I’m trying something different. It’s Nanowrimo. It’s a strange word for the unitiated but it’s short for National novel writing month. It’s the time of the year when people around the world set themselves the goal of writing 50,000 words without proofreading. The idea is to produce as much writing as possible during this month. It’s next time that the challenge of editing takes place....
Nanowrimo progression after nine days at it — Nov 9, 2008
[caption id=“attachment_806” align=“aligncenter” caption=“the progression”] I’m not doing too badly. I’m 1000 words ahead of the minimum per day if you take the 1667 word per day rule seriously. Might work up to 20,000 tonight. I’m just 4000 away…...
Nanowrimo — Nov 1, 2008
mousewords - Nov 0, 2008...
Nambu is great — Apr 9, 2009
Nambu is a desktop client for Twitter available only to users of Leopard 10.5. What makes this application great is that it has automatic threading of conversations, making it easier to keep track of conversations. The multi-column to single column view is also easy to interact with and creating groups and adding friends is a breeze. As a result of it’s intuitive nature it’s a pleasure to use this application There are two views that make it amazingly easy to see what your twitter friends have hyperlinked to. Overall it’s a nice product and other people are enjoying it to....
Multitasking on the Nexus One — Aug 4, 2010
Mountain biking down a via ferrata — May 7, 2015
VIA FERRATA from Summitride on Vimeo. Of course riding a mountain bike down a via ferrata is impossible. What is possible is riding the bike at the start and end of a via ferrata. In this video we see an individual ride down some routes where we would not feel at ease with full safety gear....
More pictures of Frozen Nyon — Mar 12, 2012
Here are more pictures of frozen Nyon. These were taken with an Olympus rather than the iPhone. Notice the texture of the ice and the berries that have been captured within the ice. Beautiful setting. I wore quite a few layers. They kept me warm. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157629169768185”]...
Mophie Air — Jan 23, 2010
I tend to play a lot with my new phone as a result of which the battery depletse in a short lapse of time. If I’m by a power source then that doesn’t matter because recharging the phone is easy. There are other cases where recharging is a hassle. That’s part of the excuse I used for getting a mophie air cover for the phone. Last night I was at a party and whilst talking to one person I found out that their phone battery was dead so I removed the cover from my phone and lent the external battery/charger/iphone cover to that person. As a result as the party progressed that person wasn’t tethered to a wall waiting for the phone to charge. She had full mobility. The cover does not recharge the phone fully. Instead it provides you with between seventy to eighty percent of the charge you would normally have. That’s enough to get you home comfortably. In other situations though the back can be used as an external battery. That is to say that rather than recharging your phone it behaves like a primary battery. The cover drains itself of power before the Iphone battery is depleted, therefore making sure that you can have around twice the normal autonomy of such a device. This could be interesting when the device is used on a hike for example. There are two weaknesses to the mophie that I would like to see rectified. The first is for when you’re using the mophie as a cover but haven’t used the cover’s battery. If you plug it in it will automatically start recharging the battery rather than going straight to recharge the battery. As a result I prefer to remove the cover when it is just the phone battery that needs recharging. The second problem is the amount of time it takes when you want to recharge the device both by itself and with the phone already in the case. It’s better when you’re recharging both at the same to do it over night....
Moonriders - a low light experiment in the snowy mountains near Zermatt. — Oct 14, 2015
Moonriders from Christian Mülhauser on Vimeo....
Moonriders - a low light experiment in the snowy mountains near Zermatt. — Oct 14, 2015
Piotr - Oct 1, 2015...
Monkey Thieves, Great in HD — Jan 26, 2009
Monkey Thieves is a documentary about the Gulta Gang, a gang of monkeys in India wreaking havoc. What I love about this documentary is that it’s a great topic in HD. You see all the details. You see the faces, you see how they eat a grape but throw away the skin for example. You see wide shots of the city and you see other animals. It’s all about the visual wealth that documentaries can offer you. It’s just a well shot and humorous look at monkey behaviour. You see smiling faces in the background. The scene is monkeys stealing ice creams and eating them. They hold it with the stick, take little bites and more....
Monkey Thieves, Great in HD — Jan 26, 2009
warzabidul - Feb 4, 2009...
MobileRSS for the Iphone — Feb 8, 2010
When you like to control the information that is available to you through feedreaders the one that I have found most useful is google reader. It allows you to navigate using keyboard shortcut keys rather than the mouse. As a result you are able to navigate more effectively through the sometimes hundreds of posts. For a while now, about three years, I’ve been looking for an app that gives us the convenience of google reader whilst on mobile devices. For a while I had the N95 and ipod touch, the ipod touch and the miniS and now the Iphone and N97. The problem I kept having is with keeping everything up to date on all the devices. I didn’t want to read through twenty articles on a mobile device only to have to wade through the same articles a second time when I arrived back at the main computer I use for content processing. That’s where MobileRSS for the Iphone and ipod touch comes into it’s own. It is a simple, intuitive way to go through your google reader feeds whilst mobile. Select the view you want, whether using “show new” or “show all”. Show all will give you several thousand posts along with all the key words you’ve added, something that is not so easy to manage. The “Show new” tab however is great. When I pick up the phone and update all my feeds it gives me all of the new posts in an easy to process format. I have the option to view all feeds if I desire or to see each feed one at a time. As you know some information sources like to post dozens of posts a day whilst others like to post just one or two a day. Those that post once or twice a day are usually the first ones I’ll read. This is because they’re more specialised, more thought out posts. As a result they’re more relevant. There are two three ways to navigate through the content. The first is by selecting the list view. You see the headlines you want to read. In the second view you can read article by article and click the up or down icons to get to the previous or next posts. You can also drag the article from the one you’re reading to the next one. This speeds up the process by minimising the number of button presses. When I am reading each article I can add notes, keep unread, star, share or even send it to to a number of other places. As a result I can share the articles I find of interest according to the way I think other people prefer to share. The options for sharing are email/facebook/twitter/readitlater/instapaper and delicious. This means that I can share content within seconds, rather than minutes, anywhere I am, whether in a traffic jam or waiting to pay for the day’s shopping. Another advantage is that it’s always on. Whether I have wifi or 3g I have access to all of the latest articles. I’d recommend using it. See whether it makes information gathering and sharing easier for you too. More information...
Minsh — May 5, 2009
This text will be replaced...
Minsh — May 5, 2009
jonmaim - 6th of May, 2009...
Migrating Away From Facebook — Apr 8, 2018
When we first joined Facebook it was filled with chronological timelines kept active by university friends. At that time algorithms did not affect what we saw or how frequently and there was a sense of community. In the last two or three weeks we have heard a lot about Cambridge Analytica and other companies because they have siphoned off user data and used it to manipulate people in a number of political events....
Mewe, pronounced Mais Ouais. ;-) — Apr 14, 2018
Mewe is like all other social networks were in their early days. In the early days it’s all about building a community, it’s all about privacy and it’s all about putting the user above commercial interests. Several years down the line they often shift towards trying to survive and even thrive if possible....
Macbook pro monitor still dead. — May 30, 2008
Over a week later my laptop is still dead. It’s the same flaw as two weeks ago. I took it to technicians who did absolutely nothing for my laptop. They didn’t even run a diagnostic test to see that anything was wrong. Now I’m still without a laptop and I don’t have time to deal with incompetent people. I need someone to recommend some competent people to check my laptop. Think it’s the screen that’s dead… just head the skype sound… What can I do to fix a dead monitor?...
Losing interest. — May 5, 2010
There are many Geo location websites in the web. They have something in common. Using them openly in front of others will not result in positive opinions. As a result of this you want them to work flawlessly. Spending three minutes logging in is too long. That’s why foursquare has been deleted grim my phone. I am not ready to use that type of service when the site goes down for four hours. I feel this way after twitter. Popular site with a lot if downtime. Relations between people degraded as communication became more hit and miss. Now friendships and the core of interesting users is gone. Why invest in social networks where indifference is prevalent. Tara for now foursquare. See you in a year....
Living Or Working By The Lake — Jan 14, 2020
When you work or live by the lake you see it change as the wind, temperature and light change. Sometimes it’s beautiful and pleasant as it was before, as you walk and keep warm. Now that I sat down to write this post the clouds have gone in and you can feel the cold....
Life is Born — Dec 2, 2012
Life is Born, part of All I can, a documentary I plan on watching very soon....
LeWeb 08, deux photos — Dec 9, 2008
Loic Lemeur giving an interview to a journalist with a nice big seesmic logo behind him....
LeWeb 08, deux photos — Dec 9, 2008
Piotr - Dec 2, 2008...
Let down by the DJI Go 4 Android app — Apr 7, 2018
A few months ago, before the winter months came I was happilly flying the drone up to four times a day. At the time I was running their old app and it worked flawlessly. You turned on the remote, turned on the drone and then you connected to the wifi hotpot and within 30 seconds you could be flying....
Le Rocher de Naye Via Ferrata — Aug 20, 2011
the Rocher de Naye via ferrata is a fun via ferrata which takes about 1hr and a half to complete. I went today with some glocals friends. It went well and everyone got to the top. I did not take the difficult stretch this time. I will do it in full in a few weeks. What is interesting about this via ferrata is that there are more technical bits. You need to reach at moments, find higher footholds to progress. You also have a healthy dose of heights to contend with. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157627477641368”]...
Le petit Soldat de Jean Luc Godard — Nov 28, 2012
Filmed in a Cinema Verité style. They mention Geneva. A nice conclusion....
Laughter chain — Jul 6, 2008
Laughter chain — Jul 6, 2008
Orchideane - Jul 5, 2008...
Laptop Backups - anticipated battery failure — Jun 22, 2017
Laptop backups are an integral part of my daily routine. I backup to the cloud with crashplan as well as to an external hard drive. I also back up files as they are every few days or weeks so that if a drive fails I have at least one or two backups. In some cases I have more backups....
L'aiguille du Midi seen with an Iphone 4S. — Jan 6, 2012
L’aiguille du Midi seen with an Iphone 4S. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157628695388819”]...
Lac de Joux starting to Freeze over — Mar 13, 2012
Here are some images from the lac de Joux a few weeks ago. I had not had enough of the frozen landscapes so I travelled further afield. I walked on the ice but there are moments when I could feel it creak as I walked. I didn’t fall through the ice. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157629184590941”]...
Lac de Joux, not quite frozen over — Mar 14, 2012
These images were taken with the Nokia N9. You can see how the lake has not frozen over. The berries are an amusing sight. You’d expect them in spring or summer rather than winter. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157629184752891”]...
Lac de Joux - Atmospheric — Mar 18, 2012
Atmospheric shots of the lac de Joux. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157629461258445”]...
La via Ferrata du Grand Bornand — Aug 19, 2011
About two weeks ago I explored this via ferrata with friends. It’s a nice one worth the visit. In particular notice how close we got to the chamois. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157627407235074”]...
La Cascade Via Ferrata in Les Diablerets — Jul 29, 2015
This year I finally got to see the Via Ferrata of the Waterfall (La Cascade Via ferrata) in Les Diablerets Switzerland. As a child it is a place where we would walk as children and experience the freezing river water. A few days ago I went for the via ferrata. It was amusing to be with friends rather than family. As I know this landscape so well the effort felt minimal. The Via ferrata is a nice medium via ferrata. I’m tempted to say that I found it easy but that’s going to mislead people and I don’t want them to get stuck. According to the geotrails post this is a demanding VF because of the overhanging bits. That’s where doing one or two VF a week pays off. If I was to do this via ferrata alone I would park at the Montée mecanique of Isenau, take the egg up to the top and then walk down by the lake and towards the Glacier 3000 lift. From there I would cross over to the via ferrata on the other side. Access to the via ferrata is quick and the path is easy. The Via Ferrata has some vertical moments but most of the time you are moving laterally. You have a very nice view of the valley below. After you have completed the principal part of the via ferrata you come to a clearing where rock climbers have a number of routes. I recommend keeping yourself attached to the via ferrata cable. Two people slipped on the soil and it’s a useful habit always to stay attached when the option is available. From the flat section you climb a little and then head back down through a split between two rocks. From this point you can head down and consider the via ferrata complete or you can have fun and try the tyrollean. The tyrollean will require you to walk along some slippy rocks to where the platform is. Here you can attach yourself and enjoy the first tyrollean across to the other side. It’s not the fastest tyrollean I have done but it’s the first time I pass under a waterfall and that is fun. When you get to this side you detach, walk down for a short distance and can cross over again. The second tyrollean is slow and there is a good chance that you will have to pull yourself across as I did. At this point you can follow the path down towards Les Diablerets along the river and back to where the car is parked....
Just installed Wordpress 2.5 — Mar 29, 2008
Today Wordpress 2.5 came out and I’ve decided to try it out. The backend is quite different from the old one so you feel the difference. We’ll see what problems I’ll get during this time. Streamed earlier today in the Mountains...
Just a test — Jul 14, 2013
Test...
John Cleese on Seesmic next week — Oct 2, 2008
John Cleese on Seesmic Tuesday 7th at 12am Pacific TimeSo it’s 21h00 in France, 8pm in the UK, 3pm East Coast. John Cleese will reply your questions. See his biography here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000092/[![](http://seesmic.com/images/spacer.gif)](http://seesmic.com) Next week on Seesmic we can look forward to seeing John Cleese and asking him questions. If you don’t have an account yet familiarize yourself with the site. Looking forward to this moment :-)...
The Iphone 7 has Raw support and is waterproof — Sep 8, 2016
The Iphone 7 has RAW support. This will allow people to take mediocre quality images and re-work them in post production. This is an interesting development because in theory you no longer need to get dedicated hardware capable of shooting raw. This is good for covering events when you do not want to carry a DSLR or compact camera. This could include via ferrata, a night out or a trail journey where weight reduction is key. if you’re going to shoot RAW then I would strongly recommend getting the highest capacity iphone possible. It has 256 gigabytes of storage and will allow you to take at least a hundred pictures before offloading them to an external hard drive or storage solution. Ideally you would want the iphone to be like most android phones. SDHC card support is useful because you can easily buy these cards and increase your phone’s memory capacity. With the latest devices you can use SDHC cards with a capacity up to 200 gigabytes. The cost of these cards is decreasing. I like being able to take images with a mobile phone, ejecting the card and downloading to the computer in an instant. If you’re travelling you can walk around with terabytes of storage, if you’re that way inclined. Samsung, Sony and other brands have recently started to make mobile phones that are waterproof. When playing Ingress we would play in the rain thanks to this feature. Crosscall has been designing weatherproof phones for a while now with an IP certification of 68. The new iphone only has an ingress protection of IP 67. It’s waterproof enough to survive caving but don’t take it canyoning. For that you should still rely on Crosscall devices. In essence Apple have come out with a waterproof camera that has internet connectivity and can make phone calls. They are moving towards a more adventurous market at least two or three years after I said they should. I might soon consider using them again....
iPad and the car show — Mar 14, 2011
Tonight I was chatting with a car show speakerine about the necessity of the ipad as a tool she would need for the car show. She was speaking about how the file weighed two to three kilos and how it tired her to carry it. She said that the ipad was the solution. As a former ipad user I argued with her that she did not need to have an ipad to do her job properly. Instead a different work flow and expectation management were the two issues. The first issue is why the people go to the car show. I work under the assumption that if you are looking for information you are looking for a physical appreciation of the product rather than the nitty gritty details of options colours and such. What the customer would want to know is how the car feels, how easy is it to change the seat configuration and whether features meant you would have a clear view of the road. For those things what you need is a physical car to sit in and see how it feels. If you want additional information such as GPS, media playing, tire types and other information you could go to a central desk where staff would be ready to answer the questions the iPad was redundant. This is assuming that the staff do not want to carry around a heavy file and that they are not expected to know everything as they have only had one day of training. In my opinion the iPad would have made a very nice tool to work around with, and to show off with, but for practical reasons was not the ideal tool. It costs 700CHF per unit and whether or not you make sales because you have an ipad are debatable. What you need instead is a work flow whereby the happy person giving information would reflect properly on the brand and spike their interest whilst a more experienced salesperson/marketer would provide the features information. That’s according to my logic. I spend money on technology out of my own pocket and unlike a reviewer my opinions do not affect what future devices I may receive. My point in the argument, although I did not make it is that although the iPad is fun to walk around with and show off the information you provide could more cost effectively be provided by a static person at a desk with access to the two kilo file. Consumers such as myself are interested in the physical appearance and feel of the object rather than the options. Options are there only to add that extra shove towards a purchase. For the blackberry I just bought I did not buy it on technical specs or other features. I bought it on feel and practicality. We are in a practicality market now. Is it easy to use, will I be able to do what I want to do and will I waste time or save it. Technical specs are a bonus and the ipad can provide this but whether a product feels or does not feel good seals the deal. I had an ipad and after only three or four months I sold it. It didn’t provide the quality of service I needed. Same issue with the Nokia n97 I purchased at full cost. Look at Apple and their apple stores. Their unique selling strategy is full usability experiences gained through the apple store. You know the Ducatti advert you see on youtube? Well that advert was given digested for people experimenting with FinalCut pro to experiment with. Did they like the experience. If yes then you have a purchase. If not well they can try the simpler iMovie application instead. If your purchase is on specs rather than feel and appearance then you don’t need the Salon de l’auto. You need a comprehensive site. This doesn’t require an iPad. This requires a good information dispensing website. What would you do with the ten seven hundred franc devices once you sold them? That’s seven thousand swiss francs you could save in one form of marketing and re-invest in better website usability once the client goes home. The question is where do you want the marketing to turn into sales. Do you want the sales to happen immediately or do you expect the purchaser to go home, discuss it with the spouse and friends and then decide? How do sales people carrying iPads end up in additional sales for the brand?...
Interview with the creators of Minsh tomorrow — Apr 29, 2009
Minsh is launching tomorrow and I will be meeting with them to record an interview with them about the website. They’re university students who did this as one of their projects. Minsh is a 3d virtual environment in which twitter users are represented as fish swimming in the ocean. Each fish is a different twitter user. I saw this project in pre alpha and it’s an interesting idea. Tomorrow I will see how it’s evolved and I hope to have a video up by Friday lunchtime which will help you understand what the website is about....
Interview with the creators of Minsh tomorrow — Apr 29, 2009
jonmaim - May 5, 2009...
Ingress and the Sony Xperia Z3 — Dec 14, 2014
Ingress is a game that requires a data connection, GPS data and the screen to be on. As a result of this battery consumption is high. Earlier today I took the Sony Xperia Z3 out in the rain and played for two solid hours non stop walking from portal to portal and the battery was at 50 percent. This is excellent compared to other devices. The phone is also waterproof to a depth of one meter therefore the rain we had this afternoon was no hindrance to game play. Every so often I had to wipe the screen as the touch screen stopped functioning as well as it should due to the signals it was getting from the rain....
Influenza and the World Community Grid — May 20, 2009
The Worldcommunity grid is a datagrid style project where almost half a million people are offering computer cycles to help advance scientific research in a number of fields such as health, nutrition and more. One of the most recent projects to be added to the collection is the one for Influenza. If you so chose you can help speed up the process of finding a solution to the influenza problem. There is an interesting documentary on History HD called The Virus empire which uses a number of interviews with WHO officials and actors to demonstrate why over-hyping a new virus is the smart thing to do. One interviewee in particular said “If you went back to an army doctor in 1918 and told him that whilst 170 people had died already up to 50 million could die within the year from the Spanish Flu then he would have told you to go back to the 21st century.” What was poignant with this statement is the blasé nature that some people showed towards Swine Flu in certain circumstances. Two or three weeks ago they said that it may take up to four months to find a solution to the Swine Flu virus. Now take into account the WHO’s effort to get a number of research labs to work in collaboration against the SARS virus and it’s interesting. Apparently it took four days to learn everything there was to know about the nature of the virus but not how to cure it. That’s where the World Community grid Influenza project comes in. The more computers are used to run models to see which are the best solutions to research the quicker we may have a way of dealing with this new virus. The project is free and here are the projects you can currently help with; Help Fight Childhood Cancer Influenza Antiviral Drug Search Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 2 FightAIDS@Home Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together Help Conquer Cancer Nutritious Rice for the World The Clean Energy Project...
In August I will be at FIFAD — Jul 13, 2016
In August of this year I will be at FIFAD as a volontaire. FIFAD stands for Festival International du Film Alpin Des Diablerets. It’s the international Alpine Film Festival of the Diablerets. I want to participate at this event for three main reasons. The first of these is that I have a passion for the documentary film genre and adventure films. I really enjoyed going to Montagne en Scène a few weeks ago and I expect to enjoy having the freedom to watch certain of the films at this event. The second reason I want to go as a helper is that every time I have applied to help at an event I have got something out of it. I have built my confidence. I have met interesting people and I have found new and interesting ideas. In this case I hope to view a number of the films. The third reason is that I will have an opportunity to spend a week in the mountains once again. I have frequently been to Diablerets for hikes and just once to enjoy a via ferrata. This time I will get to stay for a few extra days and learn to appreciate the town differently. I will have my 360 camera and via ferrata gear with me. Time to ride a tyrolean in 360 right? I hope it won’t rain too heavily. People told me they got wet last time they went under the waterfall. When I watch an interesting film or hear someone talk about an interesting topic I will try to take notes and write related blog posts. It’s good to share the knowledge and passion with you....
Improved Belaying - perfecting our technique — Jul 1, 2017
Belaying is a core climbing skill. With good belaying a climber can climb as fast as he is comfortable to climb, as if without a rope and yet have his fall cushioned at be safe at all times. The belayer needs to be active. He needs to observe and be attentive. I first learned to rock climb with a rope about ten years ago on the Italian side of the Alps and at the time I enjoyed climbing more than I enjoyed belaying. I then spent several years climbing via ferrata instead. The advantage with via ferrata is that it’s a simplified form of climbing. Over a year ago I started climbing indoors daily as I finally found a group with which to climb. My interests and skill in belaying improved. Yesterday I assisted a short belaying perfection course in anticipation of the Villars IFSC climbing event. During this session we were reminded of a few key points....
I'm so happy not to need to fly in the next few days — Aug 10, 2006
There’s some great news and some bad news. The great news is that the English government says it managed to prevent a series of terrorist attacks within the last twenty four hours. What’s not so great is that many people end up stranded at various airports around the world. Apparently over 200 flights and 200,000 people are affected in the UK alone with repercussions around the world. For those who are already on the spot this was good news since it means they’re forced to extend their holidays by a day or two. For those who were stranded at the airport it’s the nightmare scenario we’d all hate to experience. We’ve all known delays but in this circumstance we’re talking about hours of delay. I hope that the idea of preventing people taking laptops and other devices on planes is not realised as I’d hate to be forced to put my electronics in the luggage hold as I know how battered it would be....
Oversimplification — Feb 10, 2007
The more time you spend online the more headlines and articles you read, the more you see mass idiocy. Every time a phone comes out that’s slightly similar to the iPhone they rant about how similar to the iPhone it is. It’s not. There are several models of phones preceding it. My phone is very similar in design to the Samsung f700 but I’ve had it since October/November of the year. It’s got a touch screen and the slide-out keyboard and it’s got all the synchronization features. Why has Apple become the standard for a product they’re not even releasing to the market for another half a year. What a lot of excitement for a device that’s more of a gimmick than anything else. The iPhone is for the myspace generation. Those who are looking for entertainment value in electronic devices rather than usefulness. How are you going to write notes in lectures with the i-phone? One of the things I hate most about web 2.0 is that it’s all about hype, what’s popular, what’s not. What does the mass want, what doesn’t it want? Why is everything over-simplified to such an extent? At the moment you can’t open a paper without the aftermath of the CBB article being rammed down your media-saturated throat yet intelligent articles like “Identity and Migration” by Francis Fukuyama published in Prospect for February 2007 goes unnoticed. It’s a well-written article that looks in-depth at the issues that are relevant to the future of the international community as a whole. The disjuncture between one’s inner and outer selves comes not merely out of the realm of ideas, but from the social reality of modern market democracies. After the American and French revolutions, the ideal of la carrière ouverte aux talents was increasingly put into practice as traditional barriers to social mobility were removed. One’s social status was now achieved rather than ascribed; it was the product of one’s talents, work, and effort rather than an accident of birth. One’s life story was the search for fulfilment of an inner plan, rather than conformity to the expectations of one’s parents, kin, village or priest. One of the strongest arguments within the article is this one: The first prong of the solution is to recognise that the old multicultural model has not been a big success in countries such as the Netherlands and Britain, and that it needs to be replaced by more energetic efforts to integrate non-western populations into a common liberal culture. The old multicultural model was based on group recognition and group rights. Out of a misplaced sense of respect for cultural differences"”and in some cases out of imperial guilt"”it ceded too much authority to cultural communities to define rules of behaviour for their own members. Liberalism cannot ultimately be based on group rights, because not all groups uphold liberal values. The civilisation of the European Enlightenment, of which contemporary liberal democracy is the heir, cannot be culturally neutral, since liberal societies have their own values regarding the equal worth and dignity of individuals. Cultures that do not accept these premises do not deserve equal protection in a liberal democracy. Members of immigrant communities and their offspring deserve to be treated equally as individuals, not as members of cultural communities. There is no reason for a Muslim girl to be treated differently under the law from a Christian or Jewish one, whatever the feelings of her relatives. There are some valid and interesting points within the article. Take a few minutes to read it....
I know which twitter users come here. — Feb 12, 2009
Yesterday I installed twitter remote on this blog. It’s a quick and fun way to see which of you twitter friends have been to my site recently. This is particularly interesting now that more and more people have their own twitter account....
I have the ipad and these are my first thoughts — May 27, 2010
The iPad is a glorious device and I am in love already. What makes this device particularly attractive is that it has a large keyboard and a large screen. This is important for two reasons. The first of these is typing speed. I am very closes to touch typing speed already. The second thing I like about it is that I could easily see myself putting it in the stand and using the calendar feature and e-mail client. The display feels like a sheet of paper. They tend to go for that look. The advantage with such a device is evident. I can see the whole email without scrolling. This means I am less likely to skip over something that I should otherwise have notice. The sound when you type is quite interesting. You hear low taps most of the time but for some keys you do hear the sound of the nail hitting the glass. If you hold it vertical then with my hands you can type although the fingers stretch a little too much....
I have the ipad and these are my first thoughts — May 27, 2010
Paul W. Swansen - 6th May, 2010...
I have become death, destroyer of macbook pros — Aug 23, 2009
For the second time in a little over a year the video card on my macbook pro has failed and I am left with the black screen of death. As a result of this I will have to send the machine off for repair for a second time. Luckily the machine is still under warranty so the only challenge is finding a day off and bringing it for maintenance. It had to fail this weekend, on Saturday afternoon only once all the shops had closed. It means that getting the machine maintained will be a little more of a challenge. The second challenge of course is that I’m meant to do two days of editing on Tuesday and Wednesday and I may not have a computer. You’ve got to love trade unionists for making sure shops are closed on a Sunday. Now the question is what to do next. Do I buy a new macbook pro as the new version of finalcut pro came out or do I invest in a far cheaper computer running linux. In fact do I forget about PC and Apple and go Linux all the way. It could be quite fun, once winter comes back to build a linux based video editing system where I understand the hardware. You know I’m not going to get far with that project. On the positive end of the spectrum I’m in full time employment with three different types of work I’m asked to do so buying a new machine is no problem. It’s just a matter of whether I have the necessity right now....
I enjoy Google Buzz — Feb 28, 2010
Whilst everyone makes fun of Google Buzz and continues living their daily life between google buzz and facebook I have jumped into google buzz with a passion and found it to be nice. It’s a social aggregator of content from a number of google services where you can discuss the content with a close network of friends. The strength of this social network is that it is plugged right into google mail. As a result you are guaranteed to log into this site for the whole day. When you have some free time you can go through the threads of conversation and comment on those of interest. Once this is done you can go back to the mail client. As the day progresses so will the number of people commenting on posts. You will see these comments in gmail and answer straight from there. It means you don’t have to wait for a notification, click on the link, scroll to the bottom of the page and finally comment. Here you just type the comment and then use the keyboard to progress onto the next thread with a comment. The J and K keys can be used to go backwards and forwards between e-mails in Gmail. They can also jog from one item to another in Google buzz. The result is a very quick, natural way of conversing with the least amount of resistance. The biggest drawback at the moment is the lack of users who find any use for such a site. It’s hard enough getting interactions from Facebook so you can wait a few months before Google Buzz reaches critical mass. I will be there in the meantime enjoying conversation with others, who like me are early adopters....
"I Don't Know What's Wrong With Me But I Love This Shit" — Jan 22, 2015
During the cold winter months when the via ferratas are frozen over we might as well have some fun watching people in warmer places climbing....
I bought an Iphone because my N97 crashed too much — Dec 20, 2009
This is an about face for me. As an appreciator of the latest technology I always want to have the latest technology but I can’t always justify the cost. As a result of this appreciation of technology so I have gone through a number of devices. As a child losing devices is a good excuse to buy a new one. As a grown up though desire is enough. I really like the n97 and what it could be but it didn’t live up to my expectations. I spend a lot of time participating in social media, whether blogging, commenting, seesmicing or tweeting. Data plans are cheaper. Apple has demonstrated that people want applications on their mobile device. This has led the mobile landscape to move away from simple telephony. As a result the devices have had to evolve. Bigger screens are needed, batteries with more capacity are needed too. As a result of this new market segment you have many operating systems and more and more choice. That choice does come at a cost. When using both the e51 and the n97 in paralel, one for work and the other for pleasure I found that I was using the e51, a mid range device rather than the n97 because it was easier to use, and more reliable. That changed my focus. Having the latest alternative was fun, but it wasn’t reliable. It’s only after a few weeks of not being able to stop the alarm and a few missed calls, because the device froze that I wanted to change to the next latest thing. I was thinking of the n900 that uses maemo as my next device. Two things stopped me. Firstly reliability, what’s the point of buying a device that costs a lot but may not perform as you want it to perform. The second is the maturity of the third party applications. If you get maemo how hard will it be to install new applications and more importantly how much choice is there? Is it worth waiting another three or four months to get that device only to find that it doesn’t work? That’s why I’ve gone to the Iphone 3G S. It’s the more mature phone. It is well settled into the market, most people find it easy to use an best of all it has a great diversity of applications. It is also reliable. In a year or two we’ll see which devices are out, as well as which are the most reliable. At that point I may switch to another OS. I’d rather wait for Maemo and S60v5 to become more reliable before spending yet more money....
I bought an Iphone because my N97 crashed too much — Dec 20, 2009
nerwin - 20th of Dec 2009...
I am 25,000 tweets old — Apr 26, 2008
Half the amount of tweets from a few months ago and far less than was my habit until now. This should be the normal twitter amount from now on. Don’t have as much free time for the social media anymore....
I am 25,000 tweets old — Apr 26, 2008
richard - Apr 0, 2008...
How GoPro Made A Billionaire — Mar 29, 2013
An interview with the founder of Gopro. There are some interesting and amusing moments. Fun to see how so little capital could build something that would grow to become so popular over a number of years....
Hiking around Vex in the Valais. — Aug 22, 2010
On Saturday I went with a Glocals group up to Vex in the Valais for a short hike. We passed by the thermal pools before heading up to a village where we had some lunch. after that we kept going up towards another village before catching a bus back down....
Here is the Nouvo video where you see me speak about twitter. — Apr 19, 2009
And there you have it, me speaking about twitter. As promised - update - I’m happy with all the positive reactions this video is having. Thank you....
Here is the Nouvo video where you see me speak about twitter. — Apr 19, 2009
Mark Douglass - Apr 2, 2009...
Haven't blogged in a while — Nov 18, 2009
I haven’t blogged in a few months but I have been tweeting, and working full time, and I’m attempting Nanowrimo once again this year. Last year the process was easier as I had a lot of free time. This year I need to make time. I did get to over 20,000 words but inspiration is slower to come. The meetups are still going on. We’ve had two in Lausanne already, one in Zurich, one in Bern and the next will be in Basel. I think I’ll skip Basel as I have some more urgent projects to finish first. Did I mention over 1.3 billion words have been logged for Nanowrimo? That’s after 18 days of writing....
Hashtags and low expectations — Jan 24, 2015
I believe that hashtags which have now been around for a number of years should be handled differently. Rather than see the symbol # followed by a word the word should simply become a hyperlink. In so doing twitter users, google plus users, facebook users and Diapsora users would type the hashtag symbol and word and websites would automatically turn the word in to a hyperlink. There are a...
Half a Billion instagrammers — Jun 23, 2016
As of the 21st of June, the longest day, the day that Switzerland finally got some sunshine Instagram announced that there are half a billion instagrammers. That’s almost the same number of people who live in the European Union. Half a Billion users are sharing square images of their daily life....
Gutenburg Wordpress plugin — Jan 13, 2018
The Gutenburg Press Plugin provides a new way to write blog posts. Rather than write as if a blog post was a single block of text it breaks it up into segments or “presses”...
GoPro: Alana and Monyca - Two Of A Kind — Mar 28, 2013
No need for a camera operator when filming something like this. Self shot works as well. Not as deceptive as yesterday’s video....
Google's shift from narrow casting to broadcasting. — Jan 20, 2018
Earlier this week Google decided that it would shift from subsidising narrowcasting content makers to favouring “broadcasters”. This was demonstrated with their shift towards rewarding content creators with higher requirements. In order to be a youtube partner, you need people to have viewed 4000hrs worth of content and have over 1000 subscribers....
Google Plus LUZERN & PILATUS PHOTOWALK — Jun 9, 2013
For a change of scenery and pace I chose to meet with the Swiss Photography Club G+ for LUZERN & PILATUS PHOTOWALK [gallery columns=“3” ids=“1784,1785,1786,1787,1788,1789,1790,1791,1792,1783,1782”] The images above are screengrabs. The video will be uploaded shortly. GPS tracks created with the Suunto Ambit 2...
Google Latitude and Automatic stalking for only your closest friends — Jul 1, 2010
Google latitude is the perfect tool for anyone that works and has a life where logging into locations would be an unsightly thing to do. By that I mean that you can’t arrive at work and log into the location. It gives colleagues the impression you are not serious about your work. Now take this same situation in a social context. You go hiking and the people around you are not necessarily as passionate about technology. They’re walking around with paper maps after all. That’s where Google latitude comes into it’s own. Location is tracked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week every single day that your device is on. Why am I doing this? Am I not mad? Do I not have this location information to hide, and no shame? Well of course I have things to hide and shame but with this network only your closest friends can see where you are. And they only know your current location, not your previous locations. That’s where the service differs from foursquare, gowalla, yelp and all the others. Your location history is private. Only you have access to it. Then why use it in the first place? Well that’s simple. It’s a lifelog that’s not broadcast. You can keep track of how much time you’ve spent at home, at work and out socialising. Once a week I get to find out whether I was at work for more than fifty hours, whether I was at home for too many hours. More importantly i get to see whether I should not be a little more active in going out, from a personal life point of view. That’s where I’m lacking at the moment. Google latitude’s dashboard will help change that. Now, how could it improve? First of all automatic location check in. If I’m by starbucks in Geneva airport log me in if I’m seeing that network more than ten minutes. If I’m at the apple store for that amount of time log me in there. If I’m at a bar and I lose signal in that region due to poor network coverage then assume I’m in that bar. By being automatic and private location information could be quite a bit more interesting. More to the point that data is being collected anyway by mobile operators so why not take advantage of this? I believe this to be the future of mobile geo-location. With more android phones out there and more devices capable of multitasking this could easily become the norm....
Going to the netbook — Nov 23, 2009
I like smaller and smaller machines. I’m now enjoying the use of an eeepc, the 1000hg. It has inbuilt 3g modem and a 4.5hr battery life. It’s a nice change to use a small laptop because it does the basic things. It allows me to tweet, read e-mail and fail at Nanowrimo. The keyboard is fast for typing. I was able to type over 20,000 words without finding the keyboard to be a hindrance. It’s not the smallest of keyboards, nor the biggest, but it does fit my fingers perfectly. The screen is fine most of the time. It is slightly too small for a few web apps and programs. A few times I’ve gone to a page or used a program which could not cope with the vertical resolution of such a screen. As a result I do need to think about which applications and websites I visit. I also tested seesmic for windows on this machine and that worked well. No crashes, no slowing down the system. I had it running for over 24hrs in between sleep modes and such without the hint of a problem. So far I like the small laptop. It hasn’t fallen into a corner like the 900. This one has actually been used. We’ll see when I feel the need for a larger machine once more. For now though this is fine....
Going to the netbook — Nov 23, 2009
kcarruthers - 7th of Dec, 2009...
Godard talks about Le Mépris — Nov 29, 2012
Glocals and twitter — May 9, 2010
Glocals is a local website to find out what events are going on where for the international community in Geneva. It regroups events in a number of cities making easier to meet like minded people. The reason for which I mention this social network is the low input high yield results from the site. In brief you see an event, you turn up, you meet some strangers and through conversation they become acquaintances. This is contrary to the way I have approached social interactions on the web. I have spent years now building trust, building relations with people in a virtual environment. As a result of this it requires constant attention, constant interest. I am thinking of twitter when speaking about this topic. 70,000 tweets have given me very little return on the time I have invested. In effect twitter is not only a waste of time but just the wrong social network for Switzerland. There are a wealth of people to be met through the Glocals site, some work in the UN system, others for global companies and yet more for other settings. People who have been in Geneva for just a few hours or days meet up with people who have been here for years. There’s also the gender balance. Going to many twitter events you’re surrounded by men, by workaholics, by self proclaimed entrepreneurs. They are focused on work, and profit rather than friendship. In contrast Glocals is a nice mix of men and woman, physically active people who go canyoning, sailing, running and more. It’s a well travelled international crowd. The most interesting aspet of my experiences over the past two weeks is that just because a site is talked about extensively does not mean that this is the site you should give most of your time to. There is a good chance that there is a tiny site with only a few thousand users that will reward you by turning up to events. No need for all that virtual conversing. Turn up, chat face to face and you will have gained new opportunities. The result is a more satisfied end of weekend. I will continue particpating in these face to face meetups and twitter will be a secondary network....
Gland and Ingress — Jan 24, 2015
Geolorean — May 21, 2010
This is a simple Iphone, Android and other platform solution which allows you to add your foursquare, gowalla, brightkyte and other accounts to checkin. The idea is simple. You have one interface where you see everything your friends are up to. You have a second interface where you can check in to locations several at a time. It will save time and battery life to use just one application....
Geo tag test — May 15, 2010
This is to test the android apo...
Geo tag test — May 15, 2010
Paul W. Swansen - May 0, 2010...
Gameplay Youtube Videos — Mar 22, 2026
Freeze complete - Lac de Joux — Mar 17, 2012
The lac de Joux eventually froze over completely. As a result of this you could walk on the ice. Some people were kitesurfing whilst others were having Marrons chaud. In one or two places you could see that the water level had decreased as a result of which the ice sheet had broken. Walking across the ice was an interesting experience. The ice can be seen through. Due to recent snow melt on the ice you were walking through a few centimeters of water in place. The feeling is disconcerting. Enjoy the beauty. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157629461020099”]...
Frozen Nyon — Mar 11, 2012
A few weeks ago the Siberian winter came to keep us company and this provided a great opportunity to go out and take pictures of ice sculptures. Any object was appropriate and the wind and water did the rest. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157629169524109”]...
From One Culture To Another Through Podcasting — Apr 22, 2007
At the moment I’m listening to a lot of podcasts. Probably 5-10 a day on average. I go through one collection of podcasts and once that one is finished I move onto another. As a result of this, the culture of those I am listening to is sinking through. Yesterday I listened to four or five of NBC’s meet the press and I found them interesting. I wasn’t always paying attention to what they were saying but it did make a change. I recently listened to the whole of the Net@night series and the previous series on the RSS feed as well. As a result, I’ve learned quite a bit about new technology. It’s been fun. It’s about web 2.0 and how everything is “innovative” although ten years ago people were doing the same it was called differently. It’s all O’reilly’s(sp?) fault. Today I listened to something quite interesting. It’s the Mac break weekly recorded in Dolby headphone surround or some similar tech. It’s interesting because it does paint an auditory landscape. Leo Laporte was in front whilst the girls on that podcast, Justine and Kendra were to the right, and the guests, whilst two others were to the left. Walking to the shops with that sound was a little disorienting at first but I grew used to it and it’s more fun. I want to hear more podcasts recorded with that technology. I am going through a phase of cultural assimilation. I watch and listen to all these podcasts that are coming from the US and as a result, I’m starting to absorb the culture. I’m telling myself that I should move to SFO where municipal wifi is a reality rather than a dream. We’ll see what I do once university is finished and I have the rest of my life in front of me. We may find that the work experience module teaches me to think more creatively about getting a job. If it does then it’s truly worth writing up tomorrow when I get up. I’m rambling so I’ll leave you to wait for the next post. Ciao ciao...
From a recent hike — Aug 27, 2018
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Fribourg Nanowrimo — Nov 15, 2008
I always go to social media events and meet a lot of geeks who love to use new technology such as twitter, seesmic and more. For once it’s a little different. I’m in Fribourg where I’m surrounded by writers. There are a lot of PC rather than Mac computers. The hot chocolate is good and the city is nice. At the time of writing there have been two word wars. The concept is simple. Write solidly for five minutes at a time and see who has the highest word count. So far I’ve written 313 and then 328 in two sessions, not bad. Word count is now over 24,000 words....
Freemind - Mindmapping — Oct 28, 2008
It’s easy to get ideas but it’s harder to organise them and that’s where mind mapping software like Freemind comes in. It’s an easy to use open source solution that allows to create and share mind maps. I originally came across it when experimenting with it’s ipod touch and iphone counterpart, Ibluesky. It’s intuitive, allows for easy export for website integration, image and e-mail to desktops for further work....
Forced to Wear Mask Outdoors — Oct 24, 2020
Switzerland is currently toying with the idea of forcing people to wear masks outdoors but it’s not clear whether this would be for cities or whether it would be for villages and even rural walks. If the obligation to wear a mask at all times is enacted then I have two reactions....
FLYER THE ESSENCE OF E MOUNTAIN BIKING — Jun 19, 2015
Mountain biking is a sport that is growing in popularity. We see that technology is keeping up with the riders. Between suspension, specialist tires and safety equipment the sport has had the freedom to become more adventurous. Bigger jumps, more travel, stronger components all allow the sport to become more extreme. Usually there are three ways to get to the top of a mountain. The first option is to ride up but with a mountain bike that can be tiring. I have an area where I can mountain bike near home but it’s a 12.7km ride up with a 10 percent grade. It takes two hours to get to the base. I could of course take the car up and cycle around at the top but this requires removing the front wheel and putting the seats down. Another option is to head to specialist resorts where the remontée mécanique are equipped to take bikes to the top of the slope. The third option is to walk up and push the bike. In this video we see a fourth option. An electric mountain bike. I like the idea of mountain biking this way. I like the notion that the mountain bike will assist with getting up the hill more efficiently. Several times I have cycled up a 10% gradiant for a distance of 12.7 kilometres. With the mountain bike I use it takes 2 hours of almost non stop pedalling. It leaves me with little energy to enjoy going off road at the top. With a flyer I’d let the bike get me to the fun part and then use my own power to play up there. I won’t buy one of these bikes but the video is interesting to watch....
Finding the Time to Enjoy the Cycling Season — Jun 30, 2016
Finding the time to enjoy the Cycling season this spring was complicated. Between the rain and bad weather it was hard to find two days in a row with good weather. As a consequence of this I have not been very active. I set myself the goal of cycling 50 kilometres per week which is conservative and I have been unable to reach that goal. During this time I am really happy about one thing. I started climbing every Thursday with a Glocals group from Lausanne. We go to Rocspot, an indoor climbing wall where you can practice routes from 4a up to 9a or more. It has indoor and exterior walls. This place is perfect for rainy days and training. Go when the weather is nice. You have the freedom to choose your routes. I am really happy with one achievement during this day’s ride. I reached 57.2 km/h cycling down from La Rippe to Crassier. For some reason I had the power to reach that speed. That isn’t bad for a mountain bike with slick tires. [gallery columns=“2” size=“medium” ids=“3019,3020”] A good reason to cycle in the countryside is of course to see nature change from season to season, to see the crops from their infancy to their harvest. Today I saw two combine harvesters. One was collecting crops and the other was travelling between fields. Two days ago when I was cycling I passed by the Paléo festival fields and saw that event tents are going up. As a last thought it is that time of the year when you cycle hard and when you stop you feel really warm. I love that feeling. I hope to cycle a lot more in coming weeks and months....
FIFAD Day 6 - Women and Extreme sports — Aug 17, 2016
On the 6th day of FIFAD two films stood out. One looked at a wheelchair bound woman who still had the urge to go climbing and the second film looked at a woman who went from riding snowboarding lines in winter to base jumping in summer. By having these two documentaries the FIFAD event promoted women who appreciate and enjoy extreme sports. A few weeks ago I wrote about superhuman climbers, it explored how differently abled people were empowered through the efforts by climbing centres to allow wheelchair bound people, people with mental issues and others to climb despite the challenge. Rêver sous les étoiles was a documentary exploring this topic from another angle. Vanessa François moved to the mountains with the goal of becoming an Alpinist but was paralysed from the waist down after a block of ice damaged her spinal column. Thanks to the people she surrounded herself with she was able to continue climbing, cycling and doing other sports despite this disability. In the film we see how friends set up a route on El Capitan for her to climb and how the CRS in France prepared the equipment for her to spend a night at over 4000 metres near the Aiguille du Midi. We see how a woman, surrounded by the right people could, despite her injuries, keep living adventures. There is a moment in this film where we see that she is given the opportunity to act in a play where actors in wheel chairs and conventional actors could interact to provide people with a show. As I watched this documentary I thought about how technology could be adapted to be invisible in the performance. At the moment wheelchair bound actors need to rely on conventional systems to move the chair around. Imagine if engineers from EPFL and other tech universities designed a wheelchair control system that would allow wheelchair bound actors and performers to control the wheel chair with arm and head movements. Imagine if the movement of the chair did not rely on a joystick but rather a harness or sweater which controlled the chair’s movement. In future I expect that technology will become invisible, to provide these people with wheel chairs. The documentary is great because it shows that injuries are an opportunity to adapt new techniques to conventional sports rather than to give up and live a life that is more limited. This empowering documentary should encourage people not to give up on their passions and to continue striving for more....
FIFAD Day 5 - A visit from Claude Nicollier and more — Aug 11, 2016
On the Fifth day of the FIFAD event Claude Nicollier came. He is the Swiss Astronaut who went on a number of STS missions to fix the Hubble Telescope between 1992 to 1999. He is an astrophysicist with connections to this part of Switzerland. The Sonneurs D’ormont rang cow bells as the group moved from one area to another. The conference centre where this event is taking place is now named after him....
Facebook and marketing — Nov 25, 2007
Today I really wish i could vote for whether I like or hate the adverts that facebook are displaying in my news feed. The reason for this is simple. Whilst everyone else is complaining about how advertisers are destroying their privacy with targeted advertising I find the opposite is true. I’m really angry with Facebook advertising The Sun in my newsfeed, especially since there is no evidence of me enjoying tabloid crap anywhere on the worldwide web. I’m angry for two reasons. The first one is that they dare to put such a crappy newspaper in my feed. The second one is how they advertise it. If they advertised quality news articles then I could forgive them but to advertise how they intend to invade the privacy of the stars is plain wrong and stupid. For this reason I was thinking of using just the portable version of facebook but to no avail. You can’t accept event invites so within two hours of deciding to ignore the full version I was back. I want to be able to accept events via mobile devices. I also want to be able to say that I hate certain adverts. If I can say I hate news from certain friends then why can’t I say I hate the adverts. I want to let them know that their adverts are crap and that I dislike their products. Facebook If you’re reading this let me show which adverts i hate. It’d be worth your while....
Exploring Geneva at 30 kilometres per hour — Jun 26, 2015
Exploring Geneva at 30 kilometres per hour makes a nice change from driving in the city. Yesterday I met with the Geneva Bike and beer group. It’s an activity from within the broader Geneva based Glocals activities. [caption id=“attachment_2408” align=“alignleft”] Exploring the Geneva landscape by bike The pace is reasonable and the loop is about 20km for this second group ride. There are a lot of opportunities to cycle away from traffic and on quiet roads. It was fun for me to see the landscape differently. For over a year I used to drive in that landscape to get to dive sites and back. This time I was far lighter. As with everything in Geneva the group is international with people from a number of countries and continents. I will participate again....
Experimenting with Spherical photographs — May 25, 2016
I was in Spain with the Ricoh Theta S last week so I took the opportunity to experiment with the Ricoh Theta S in a number of locations. What I like about such a device is that it takes a click to get pictures. I experimented with a manfrotto monopod and a smaller monopod. The Manfrotto base was clearly visible in shots so the immersive experience is degraded. With the smaller monopod the base is the same width as that of the camera. This means that at least the support was hidden....
Experimenting with Spherical photographs — May 25, 2016
Tony Tremblay - 28th of Nov, 2016...
Eurovision coverage of the FIFA World Cup — Jun 16, 2010
If you are living within the European Broadcasting Union member countries you can access live footage of the FIFA World cup matches as well as highlights by going to EurovisionSports. Highlights are also included at the end of the individual games so that you may relive the highlights. There is also a Facebook page where you can hear about the games as soon as the streams start. User feeback so far has been positive so have a look....
European Union as Scape Goat — Mar 22, 2026
EOS 5D Aiguille du Midi — Jan 9, 2012
EOS 5D Aiguille du Midi [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157628561108771”]...
Economist - Shared Article 'Unmarked' — Apr 15, 2018
A popular refrain is that “the user is the product” when speaking of networks like Facebook and this refrain should not be valid. The user should be seen as the primary investor. We invest our time, we invest our social network and we invest our attention. We invest anything from minutes a day to hours a week and days per year. In such an environment the primary focus should be the value that Facebook provides to its users....
Easy walk in Morgins — Oct 24, 2011
Views from a walk near Morgins. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157627907950302”]...
Dream - Art and Culture of Burning Man — May 31, 2013
DREAM - Art & Culture of Burning Man from Spark Pictures on Vimeo....
Downvoting legitimate answers on Quora — Mar 22, 2026
Moderation on Quora needs to be [caption id=“attachment_2919” align=“aligncenter”] Downvoting legitimate answers...
Don't make me sign up to login, and use Disqus so I can leave comments. — Feb 14, 2009
I’m active on the web, spending thousands of hours a year connected to the web. As a result I have to log into a lot of sites often. I don’t like logging in though. That’s why I would love for big name publishers like the WSJ, NYTimes and others to sign an aggrement with Facebook so that I may log into their service without having to remember my account details. It would actually serve them better. Facebook knows who my friends are, where I studied, what stories I recommend and in some cases why. It’s also a reflection of the times that are coming. I went on a blog commenting spree last week and almost all blogs ask for three things, name, e-mail and website url. When I have to input the data I think twice about leaving a comment, and may recommend the story and write a comment in friendfeed instead. Too bad the publisher loses that bit of interactivity. For those publishers that want me to subscribe to your website you can forget it. There’s no way I’m going to subscribe to a website I visit less than once a month. It’s just too much effort and too much additional information to remember. What I love are blogs that use Disqus. That’s because when I leave a comment I can find them all in one place at the end of the day. If someone answers my comment then I can see what they wrote. It means it’s an automated attention solution. Anything where I can spend time looking at new content is appreciated. It’s especially true now that web forums have become extro verted rather than introverted. You’ve probably noticed it too. How many forums are you still part of? In my case none. I prefer the friendfeed and feedly method of doing things, where I actively seek information and get it sent to a central point from which other people converge to comment, and head back out once they’re done. I love the web in it’s current form as a result....
Does the World Wide Web Dumb us Down too Much to Read — Sep 17, 2019
Does the World Wide Web dumb is down to much to read is an article exploring the idea that we have too many distractions and that as a result we are unable to focus. Yesterday I wrote about blogging rather than writing twitter threads and this article goes some way to exploring the same theme....
Diaspora and hashtags — Jan 5, 2015
Dear twitter friends... — Mar 19, 2009
Dear twitter friends I have deleted my main account due to tired I am with twitter and it’s poor performance. I am in other places. I’ll catch you there....
Dear twitter friends... — Mar 19, 2009
Mark Douglass - 23rd Mar, 2009...
Dead Macbook pro — May 21, 2008
Two nights ago my macboook pro didn’t wake from sleep which is why I’m now using a linuxbox. Have to wait for the maintenance to tell me just how messed up it is. At least trusty old linux can be relied upon as a temporary solution....
Day Twenty-Two of ORCA in Switzerland – The Company of Cats — Apr 6, 2020
Today during my walk this afternoon I surprised a cat on some stairs and I moved patiently. It brushed up against me so I started to stroke it. During this pandemic the only living things I have had physical contact with are cats. During a pandemic, if you’re not living with people, you are very limited....
Day Twenty-One of ORCA in Switzerland – A Morning Walk — Apr 5, 2020
I had a morning walk this morning because I found that there are too many people to avoid during my afternoon walks. During my morning walk I took images of flowering plants, bees collecting pollen from flowers, roses budding and Apple orchards getting ready to blossom....
Day Twelve of Orca in Switzerland – Three Kilometres to go — Mar 27, 2020
I have just three kilometres to go before I reach the Activity goal of walking 298.8 kilometres in a month. Reaching the goal in and of itself is relatively easy. What makes it a challenge is doing it during a pandemic when you need to keep a safe distance from everyone. Some days I got tired of avoiding people so I felt like giving up but I kept at it and now I know I will succeed....
Day Three of ORCA in Switzerland — Mar 18, 2020
On Day Three of ORCA in Switzerland, I have decided to deactivate my account. In the last three days, I have been bullied by two people, a third tried to discredit me and a fourth reported a link for spam. As a result of these unpleasant experiences, I have deactivated my Facebook account....
Day Seven of Orca in Switzerland – Quietness — Mar 22, 2020
Today’s topic is quietness. As the weather was bad, and as there is no reason to leave the home unless you have to work, or to go for a walk everywhere was quiet. The roads were quiet, with few cars, the paths between fields were quiet. Even the motorway was quiet, as you can tell from the image above. It took just seconds for traffic to be rare enough for me to take this image....
Day Five of Orca in Switzerland – Next Time We Discuss Shaking Hands We Should Stop and Go Into Self-Isolation. — Mar 20, 2020
It’s Day Five of ORCA in Switzerland. Next time we discuss shaking hands we should stop, and go into self-isolation. We had all the signs that a pandemic was coming. We knew about China and we saw what was going on in Italy. We knew that a virus was infecting people at a rapid rate....
Day Eighteen of ORCA in Switzerland – Plumbing and Scuba Diving. — Apr 3, 2020
Plumbing and scuba diving are not unrelated. If you understand o-rings and pipe/hose connections then you’ll be fine. I dismantled a system, cleaned it, and then reassembled it, checked for leaks and then ran the tap to see if all was well. Once I saw that everything was indeed well, I struggled to place the drawers and then moved onto the next issue....
Day 74 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland - Looking At Swiss COVID-19 Case Graphs — May 27, 2020
For several days I have not been looking as seriously at the COVID-19 case graphs for Switzerland because we the storm waves of new cases that we were getting before are now no more than ripples on a pond. The situation seems to be under control in Switzerland....
Day 72 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – British Anger At The Wrong Thing — May 25, 2020
I want to write about British anger at the wrong day today. As Switzerland gets closer and closer to zero cases and zero deaths per day it’s dangerously easy to think it will be over soon only to find out that it isn’t. I thought that by April 19th we could be back to normal but we weren’t. I thought that when the soft lock down was lifted we’d be able to do group activities. Of course we still can’t and I don’t want to get my hopes up anymore....
Day 71 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland - An Ingress Mission despite Lockdown. — May 24, 2020
Two nights ago we did an Ingress Mission Despite Lockdown. This was a Franco-Swiss Mission to create a field over Geneva. Normally with Ingress missions people would drive tens, or even hundreds of kilometres to capture and link portals but this time was different....
Day 49 Of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – A Two And A Half Hour Walk At Dusk. — May 3, 2020
I just got back from a two and a half-hour walk at dusk. I had no plan to go for such a long walk. It was elongated because I ended up taking a detour to see calves just as they were being fed. They’re quite excited about getting some food. They were very happy to get their daily milk, as you can see from the image below....
Day 46 Of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Contemplating A Walk In The Rain — Apr 30, 2020
It’s raining hard today and I’m still contemplating a walk in the rain. It should allow for some different photographs than usual. If I go to the motorway then I can photograph the vortices of wind behind trucks dragging up water from the road....
Day 39 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Taking Portraits of Cows — Apr 23, 2020
I spent a few minutes taking portraits of cows during my afternoon walk today. Cows were standing by the barrier so it was easy to go up to each one and take their portraits. It’s not as if our vibrant social lives enable us to take portraits of people when we’re self-isolating. It’s day 39....
Day 36 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Disease Vectors — Apr 20, 2020
According to research done in Haute Savoie, France, children present a mild risk as disease vectors of the COVID-19 virus. According to this article in Le Matin, and a few other articles children are not as contagious....
Day 35 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – A Hike To La Barillette. — Apr 19, 2020
Today I went for a Hike from La Barillette to La Barillette. It’s a shame that the restaurant wasn’t open to the public. It is currently marked as private, and scheduled to open on the first of May. Today I didn’t expect to do a long and physical hike. I expected to complete my usual daily tasks and then to go for the usual walks around where I live. In the end I did do such a hike, but it involved a slightly different geographic location....
Dark Clouds Over the Jura — Jun 21, 2021
According to Strava this was my 140th hike this year and my 83rd week of tracked activity. I don’t know why it’s only 83 weeks. My habit is older than that. When I set off, it was nice weather and warm. I didn’t set off with much because I expected the walk to be short. It was eight kilometres long. Part of the reason for this is that I did the usual detour by the Huguenot route before walking towards the Jura....
D-Day Film archives on Facebook — Jun 7, 2017
Yesterday D-Day Film Archives were shared on Facebook. These film archives were of landing crafts landing troops on the beaches, of battleships firing rocket salvos at the coast, of gliders being pulled by planes, of paratroopers getting and more. Over the years films have been preserved by transferring the footage from one film stock to another and then transferred from film to tapes. The problem with film and tape is that they are stored in a physical location that only archivists have access to. This means that if we’re curious about seeing the footage, like the footage included in this post we would have to go to the film archive and ask for permission to see this footage. Within a few hours, days or weeks we might get an answer. We would have transport costs, access costs and more. The advantage of digital video archives accessible online is that everything is accessible within a few seconds with the right keywords. This means that a child hearing about the Second World War for the first time can do a quick search and see this footage. History, rather than being words on a page, is brought to life. It stops being an abstract subject for the mind. In this footage, we see our grandparents and our nephews and nieces see their great-grandparents. An effort, by the international community, should be made to preserve, digitise and then make available as much of this film material as possible. The technology exists today so that, at the very least, we can have digital backups of all of this material and in the best case scenario for this material to be available for future generations to watch and study. I have already spent 15 months as a video archivist and media asset manager and I would like to continue this line of work. I find it to be a fascinating and interesting way to learn about history. It inspires to find books that contextualise the material that I am seeing on screen. This material makes us more informed citizens of the society in which we live....
Cycling up to La Barillette — Jun 25, 2015
Cycling over short distances can be a challenge especially when that short distance takes you from the foot of the Jura to the top over 12 kilometres at a 6-10% grade. Cycling up to La Barillette is an endurance test. Perseverance is key. [gallery ids=“2394,2395,2396,2397,2398,2399,2401”] You can start the climb either from Cheserex or Gingins. The climb starts sharply and takes you up in to the forest. As you climb you follow the winding road by a stone block where old road rules are written. The stone dates from the 19th century and speaks of the regulations which were in effect. The path takes you up some one way and two way roads. At every kilometre as you climb some plaques tell you the gradient for the next kilometre as well as the gradient. As you progress these are welcome. They let you know how much further you have to go. I have attempted this climb four times in the preceding months and made it up twice. One of the aspects to be enjoyed with this route is the lack of cars. If you went up via the Route de St Cergue you would encounter cars every few seconds. On this route cars seldom pass and when they do they are sometimes curteous enough to slow down and give you space as you overtake. You can also enjoy some great views of the Mt Blanc and the Lac Léman. As you go up so the view gets better and better. It also gets cooler. The first 9 kilometres are the hardest. For 9 kilometres you will be struggling to keep your forward momentum and there is a chance that on the first two or three attempts you will give up, especially if you use as heavy a bike as I use. Once you have reached the 9 kilometre mark the path flattens out at around 1000 metres and it is just a matter of cycling for a further 3.7km. When you get to the top you have a beautiful vista of the Lac Leman. You can see from Villeneuve all the way to Geneva. You can see the Alps in their full glory and you can see the Canton de Vaud. You can see Lausanne, Morges, Nyon, Cheserex and many of the villages below. It’s a great opportunity to spot peaks and get to know them. There is a map showing you the name of the peak and it’s shape. If you train over the coming month and see that you have a good time on Strava then you could join the VTT race and see how you compare with others. In summer months from Wednesday to Sunday the restaurant de la Barillette is open. It has a great view of the landscape which you can enjoy while eating an entrecôte or fondue....
Cycling to Geneva and back — Jul 8, 2016
Cycling to Geneva and back is a relatively short route. It is a 60km round trip. Two things make this ride more challenging. The first is the wind if it is blowing against you and the second is the need to cycle uphill. This is true of all cycling in this part of Switzerland. You have to choose whether to cycle upwards at the start or the end of the bike ride. If you start with the uphill then heading back to the starting point can be a pleasure. I went cycling yesterday because the conditions were perfect. The weather was good, the temperature was low and as I was not rock climbing in the evening I could afford to invest my energy and stamina in this bike ride. The outward journey is easy. You start at the foot of the Jura and using the route I used you spend a lot of time cycling downhill towards Geneva. Once you are in Geneva you can cycle around the city and enjoy seeing the city as a cyclist rather than pedestrian or car driver. I like cycling in Geneva and other cities because distances become much smaller. Getting around is easy as long as you don’t cycle over glass and you can stop anywhere. On the way back you can cycle along the lake road. It is flat for most of the way. From Nyon you cycle uphill. I hadn’t noticed that we can see flyby information even when not riding in a group. If I am so inclined I can see who I waved to and find more information about their cycling habits. [caption id=“attachment_3081” align=“aligncenter”] Strava flyby By moving the mouse cursor around on the grey graph you can see where and when people overtook you or when you crossed path. You can see when you overtake people and when they overtake you. On the right ride you can see that there is a representation to show how far ahead of or behind people are. I find it comforting to see that with some people the separation was stable for extended periods. This is illustrated by the coloured bars on the graph. My projects for the coming weeks are to cycle to Lausanne and back and then to cycle around the Lac de Neuchâtel. Lausanne and back should be around 80km and Neuchâtel should be around 96km. The goal after that would be to cycle around the Lac Léman....
(CR)apple and authorisation issues. — Sep 11, 2009
No doubt you remember that my laptop motherboard died. The effects are still being felt today. When you have applications, and when you have several computers you authorise them in order to have access to the same applications and music on more than one machine. This works fine most of the time. You can easily authorise and de-authorise a machine depending on necessity. The problem is when you have hardware failure though. As hardware fails so the device number changes. Itunes thinks it’s on a new machine and all the permissions are gone. That’s the problem I’m having. Over 129 applications have just been removed from the ipod touch as a result of having five machines authorised with my itunes account. There’s not much I can do to change this situation. What I love about this situation is that it’s another reason not to use an iphone. Why would I buy a device which relies on another device in order to function. If the N97 crashes I don’t need to rely on this computer to sync things, if my n95 crashes same lack of concern. Same with the e51 and other devices. With anything apple though as soon as five machines are authorised if you have a hardware failure you’re stuck. Apple have to resolve this issue because everyone has access to more than five apple computers, either through friends or through machines of their own. If I need to use a wifi connection to sync my ipod then I might as well have any generic device. I am one step closer to going back to using Linux for personal computing, windows for work and apple for nothing but editing....
Cosmic Trip - Physical Video gaming - Throw it like a frisbee — Jun 21, 2016
Physical Video Gaming...
Computer Literacy and Virtual Reality experiences — May 12, 2016
Samsung Gear VR - Oculus rift - HTC Vive...
Complaints On Sub Urban-Living — May 5, 2007
I would love to go back to the countryside where I can sleep whenever I choose and wake up when I can. I love being around people, going out and partying but I also love being able to sleep and waking up to the sound of silence. It’s been hard these past few weeks with all the work I’ve been doing in the academic sphere. I would go to sleep between 10pm and midnight were it not for the drunks making noise till 3am and the cleaners and others making noise from 9am onwards. Six hours to sleep is plenty of sleep… theoretically. When you’re woken by the sound of others though and prevented from sleeping by the sound of some then the countryside’s pull is really strong. I’m day dreaming of getting out of the suburbs. They’re the worst of bost world. They’re crap because everyone commutes into town for work yet they’re not deep enough in the countryside to allow for the freedom to walk for hours without interruptions. I want silence. I’m exhausted at the moment, longing for nothing more than a full week of sleep cycles where nothing but my mind wake me up. The villager in me is stronger than the urbanite and that’s clearly visible....
Climbing Virtual Reality, Uniform and Grip — Aug 17, 2016
Climbing Virtual Reality tuition is an interesting idea. Learning to climb is fun because it is a physical and intellectual challenge. The first step is to familiarise yourself with the sensations of climbing and learning to see where foot holds are and where hand holds are. When you begin the hand holds are easy to find and hold on to but as you progress and attempt more challenging routes you need to develop finger strength to hold on to those holds. Climbing Virtual Reality tuition is an interesting idea. In some cases though finger strength is not the only challenge. You also need to learn to read the route and to know which hand to hold a hand hold with, which foot to use on a foot hold and how to reach the next hold. You can learn through trial and error which is fun or you can climb other routes and wait until someone who knows the route that has you flummoxed decides to climb that route. Virtual reality Goggles are an alternative way of learning how to climb a route. In the example provided in the video above Grip by Uniform provides climbers with an alternative. In their example they speak about Shauna coxsey participating in the project and allowing people to film her as she is coached on how to climb a route. In other locations it could just as easily be the route setters. It’s interesting to see such a project because the question we often hear people ask is “How did you climb that route” and the answer is often “I don’t remember”. With this technology it would be easy to provide people with guidance for the routes they find more challenging. It is a new and immersive form of tuition which could help people progress and learn climbing skills more efficiently and within a shorter amount of time....
Climbing in Dorénaz — Aug 22, 2016
Dorénaz is a small village on the way to Sion and about 18 minutes from Saillon. It is also a few minutes from Aigle. I walked around the area before climbing two of the routes and I noticed that the rocks around here appeared to be magnetite. I saw rust where old climbing equipment had been removed. The magnetite idea came from the rust colour on some of the larger blocks that had broken free decades ago. [caption id=“attachment_3305” align=“aligncenter”] One of the climbing walls in Dorénaz As I continued the exploration of the village I noticed that on one roundabout they have a mining wagon so I looked up the village but there was no mention of mining so I extended the research to include mining in the region. It is at this point that I found mentions of anthracite mining in this village. As this pdf illustrates coal mining was one of the local activities. The coal was hard to extract for two reasons. The first is that the deposits are only thin and they have been folded by geological activity. In 1881 they extracted 900 tons of coal from one of the deposits. [caption id=“attachment_3307” align=“aligncenter”] I did not expect that Dorénaz was going to be a former coal mining town....
Climbing 5C comfortably — Sep 23, 2016
Yesterday I was climbing 5C comfortably and consistently for the first time. I often climb 5a, 5b and sometimes attempt 6a and 5c. Yesterday I skipped the easy grades and went straight for the 5C+. I expected it to be hard and I expected to struggle. I expect strength and fear of falling to be issues but they were not. I believe that three factors contributed to this. The first of these is that last time I went climbing I was also bouldering. I believe that bouldering got me to work different muscle groups and that these muscle groups were primed for use when lead climbing. The second factor that helped is that I noticed that the door frames in the building where I live have tiny ledges that I can grip and pull on laterally. By making this lateral effort I was strengthening my grip for tiny holds. I was using the strength I developed on holds that I would not otherwise have trusted. Amusingly it seems to have worked. The third and most important factor is that I took a one week break from climbing. In this time my body had the time to recover and so did my mind. It had the opportunity to absorb what it had learned and desaturate from the previous climbs. In effect I arrived to the wall with a clean slate (no pun intended). I love to go climbing because it is a wonderful form of escapism from all of the stress of adult life. It provides you with a workout and with an opportunity to clear your mind. Some would describe it as a form of meditation. As a former diver I would call it desaturation. You have the opportunity to live in and enjoy a moment with no past and no future. That’s why people love these sports. It can be summarised to one phrase. Well being. Yesterday’s successful climbs contributed to mine....
Canyoning near Annecy — Sep 3, 2011
This weekend I went by the lac D’annecy where there is a gorge to do some more canyoning. The canyon was quite an easy one but without much light. As a result you get some more interesting images. Here are the images taken with one of my cameras. Pictures taken with the second camera will appear later. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157627583713206”]...
Canyoning in the Valais. — Aug 21, 2011
Canyoning shows you some beautiful geographical locations but is nonetheless a dangerous sport. Make sure to practice jumping from lower heights before trying an eight meter jump. A via ferrata friend injured herself. It brought back flashbacks from another canyoning trip I never want to experience again. For that reason I am questioning whether I will go canyoning again. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157627484493352”]...
Buzz buzz buzz — Feb 10, 2010
Google thinks it’s a bee. That’s why they have the new service google buzz. I spent some time looking at it and it makes me think of jaiku, friendfeed and other services all combined into one. It’s threaded conversations and status messages based on geo-tagged conversation triggers. It has a good interface with google reader and of course the question which I cannot answer yet is what does the full version have to offer that will enhance the user’s experience...
Bouldering and Fitness — Mar 22, 2026
Usually I watch these videos not because I need motivation but rather because I love the feeling that I get from bouldering. Bouldering and fitness are synonymous of each other. The more you practice the stronger and fitter you become and the stronger and fitter you become the more fun the routes that you can try. As a beginner you are stuck on a vertical wall with good hand holds. It is as easy as climbing a ladder. As you practice bouldering your arms, back and fingers grow strong. You progress from hand holds to finger holds and from vertical walls to overhanging walls. Overhanging walls are when you start to have fun. As you can see from the video above overhanging walls are an opportunity to swing from hand hold to hand hold using arm and finger strength and nothing else. You also see that agility and dexterity play a role. The more agile you are the easier the climb. [caption id=“attachment_3188” align=“aligncenter”] In this image you can clearly see how many muscles are used when using this specific hand hold. The image above shows how many arm and back muscles are used for a simple hand hold. The beauty of climbing is that you develop the groups of muscles that you need....
Book reading instead of Social Media — Feb 18, 2018
At the beginning of the year I said that I would prioritise book reading over Social Media because I feel that the disconnect between reader and audience has grown to such an extent that you benefit more from reading books than Facebook and Twitter Timelines....
Blog Action Day 2008 - Poverty — Aug 18, 2008
This morning, August 15 2008, Blog Action Day has launched. In the next two months we hope to encourage thousands of bloggers, podcasters and videocasters to learn about poverty, and on October 15, take action....
Black Mirror - A television series — Dec 4, 2016
Black Mirror - a television series Black Mirror is a television series that was broadcast by Channel 4 a few years ago and made available to Netflix audiences recently. The series explores a variety of topics and issues to do with technology from death to crime and existentialism. It also explores themes like family and friendship. We spend a lot of time thinking about technology and how it has changed our lives. Sometimes it’s fun to watch 80s series to see the world as it was before computers and the internet and sometimes it is fun to watch dystopian essays or short stories exploring facets of modern life. In modern society we see that social media is affecting the discourse that is taking place between politicians and normal people. We see how social media and the lowering of the barriers of entry to the fourth estate have created a golden age for propaganda and disinformation. We see in The Waldo Moment that a CGI bear can mock the political system. It could be directly related to what we have seen happen recently. Be Right Back deals with online identity and how a person can be emulated once they have died. The question is an interesting one. The more active we are on social media the more our character and personality can be understood and reflected back. This is limited. We are not entirely ourselves online. There are some things that we hide from the online world. In Fifteen Million Merits we see a dystopian vision of the world where everyone lives in a small dark room. They get out of this room to go and peddle for a few hours to get Merits. Once they have 15 million merits they can “apply” for a different kind of job via a talent show. Nosedive explores popularity and social networks. Everyone is constantly being rated based on what they share, how they interact with others and more. In such a dystopia people can progress or lose privileges based on reputation. In such a reality people are vulnerable. A vertovian theme is explored in “The Entire history of You”. An implant called the Grain records your entire life and you have the ability to fast forward and rewind moments of your life. In so doing you can analyse what went well, what went badly and more. You can also see more than you were intended to see through other peoples’ recorded experiences. In this episode we see the Kino-Eye, the all seeing eye. Your life is no longer private. I like some of the themes that are explored in this series and I recommend people to watch at least some of the episodes. I feel that they are relevant to our discussion about social media and online lives....
Beng'S Production UNDERWATER STUDIO — Jun 1, 2013
Beng’S Production UNDERWATER STUDIO from BENGÄ°Z ÖZDERELÄ° on Vimeo....
Before the storm — Jun 23, 2021
Nice big clouds of the Jura earlier today. The expected rain has now started and I can hear some, but not much thunder. We will see how fun it gets this evening....
Banff Mountain Film Festival — Feb 8, 2013
Doesn’t this make you want to rush back to the mountains and have some fun. There’s a lot of energy in these sequences....
Autostitch for the Iphone — Jan 10, 2010
Port of Nyon in Winter The picture above was done with an iphone and the autostitch application. To produce this type of photograph the process is simple. You take a series of pictures with the Iphone camera before going to the autostitch application. You select the photographs that you want stitched together and click the stitch button. The application will then find objects within the photograph before combining them into one panoramic shot. Once the image is processed you have the option of either saving the picture as it is or cropping it to remove the edges hence giving this type of result....
Automotive Narrowcasting — Jul 11, 2016
Thanks to cheaper cameras, cheaper editing systems and cheaper means of distributing video content automotive narrowcasting has become an entertaining way to cover the subject. Everyone knows about Top gear, the flag ship of automative journalism and mischief but there are dozens if not hundreds of lower budget and fun alternatives. One of these alternatives is by Motor Trend, an automotive magazine that provides written reviews of new cars and other automotive news. Their about page ignores their video activity and yet this is the part that I enjoy. When I watched this specific episode it reminded me of articles from Popular mechanics because it is about reviving an old vehicle that has been dormant in a garage/barn for many years. They show us the steps that were carried out in order to make it road worthy and then they throw in a road trip and fooling around for good measure. Some of these projects are light hearted and fun. The idea for the PreRangerRoverLandeRunner is amusing. "…_they combine an old Range Rover with a Ford Ranger to build an overlanding prerunner that can also play in the mud and rockcrawl with the help of Maxxis’ Bighorn MT-762s. The build process uses the eyechrometer and by the end of the video their machine is broken. _ The stats for this channel are impressive. They have 50 channels and twenty four thousand videos. The average views per video is fifty five thousand two hundred views although globally they have one billion three hundred thousand views overall. Those figures are no longer about narrow casting....
Automation and the changing face of broadcasting — Jul 10, 2016
When I first wanted to become a camera operator cameras could cost more than one hundred thousand francs a piece and a simple edit suite would cost more than seventy thousand francs per edit suite. This was a setup with a player and a recorder. Producing content for broadcast was expensive. These days automation and the changing face of broadcasting allow anyone with a creative idea to get out there and do it. For context imagine that from the moment I wanted to do camera work to the moment I was able to edit that material I had to wait for several years. As I had no access to edit suites I would read books by Eisenstein and others and I would prepare a paper edit. I would have a list of shots and build sequences in my imagination. This changed with the coming of the Miro DC30+ and Adobe Premiere. The first time I edited someone thing alone I spent a day for a two minute video. I had to learn to use the technology after all. This was fun. I bring up this topic because Sky News and Sky sports are making camera operators and other skilled technicians redundant. Why have three or four camera operators when you can sit one person at a console who can control each camera remotely. When I was at France Télévision a few years ago I saw such a system. On the one hand it means fewer jobs for camera operators and on the other it means less indoor work. I bring up this topic because both the United Kingdom and the United States are having “We hate foreigners” movements. Fifty two percent of British citizens who voted this time voted against the rights and freedoms of Europeans. They voted this way because there is a narrative in Anglo-Saxon media that foreigners steal jobs, that they are willing to work for much less money and that this is undercutting the demand for their skills and expertise. That narrative is wrong in a global economy where automation and more efficient work flows are being implemented....
Asphalt 6 on Macbook air — Mar 5, 2011
I installed Asphalt 6 on the macbook air and the game is easily playable. I like this game on the iphone 3GS and Iphone 4 and have spent many hours playing on both mobile devices. Now that it is finally available on laptop/netbooks like the Macbook Air there’s another platform on which to have fun on. One of the nice features is the larger screens, the ease of control and the extra information you can absorb from such a large screen. Yes 11 inches is a small screen compared to a 27inch imac but do you sit at the coffee table in the lounge with your iMac? There’s also the small matter of price. It’s only 7CHF. If you play 7hrs then it’s worth the money, without a doubt. as a side thought you could go to the Geneva motorshow and play it whilst sitting in the real thing ;-)....
As Long as There Are No Clouds — Mar 3, 2007
In less than twenty four hours there will be a total eclipse of the sun that will give us a red moon and this should be interesting to see. Back in 1999 I was in Salzburg for the total eclipse of the sun by the moon. I was almost within the area of totality. It was over 99%. There is nothing like a total eclipse of the sun. At the start you see hundreds of people go into the square and look up at the sky. You see the moon eating up the sun. Over time you see that more than half is eaten. Then you see three quarters and you approach totality. At the time I wasen’t spending too much time looking at the process as I was looking for shots for the video. I climbed up the road to the castle and turned around. As I did so I saw all the birds fly away and I saw a grey shadow racing across the landscape. Hundreds of flashes started going off and people started to make noise in excitement. Totality was here. The light was grey, with no depth, then it was night. As it was night I looked up and saw the corona that forms, where the solar flares are twelve kilometers long, visible because the sun’s main mass is blocked by the moon. Totality is over within a few seconds and day comes back. Many people have enjoyed this event. It’ll be another century for most people to see the next one. That’s why I want to see the red moon, that’s why I’d prefer seeing a silver ball turn reddish. That red is formed by the refraction of sun in the earth’s atmosphere being sent to the moon and bouncing back to give us a splendid sight, as long as there are no clouds...
As if they were flying — Jan 30, 2013
As if they were flying - you see a few sequences with the Jet D’eau in the background. They appear weightless....
Apple phone show 22 is interesting and twitter tracking — Oct 9, 2007
Apple Phone Show no. 22 is a particularly good episode. Andy Ihnatko and Scott Bourne discuss how to use the iPhone in real-life situations. It’s a precursor of things to come in the near future. I’ve decided to try Twitter tracking which works by you selecting which words you want to follow. The messages are then sent straight to your phone and you follow any conversations on the topic....
Apple Airpods — Jul 6, 2018
Airpods are the most comfortable bluetooth headphones I have tried. Over the winter months I tried earphones by Sony and other brands. After months of experimenting I came back to the airpods....
App.net — Sep 3, 2012
App.net is a result of the time at which it came out. It is like twitter was back in 2007, it has the community feel, the engagement and more. It’s already international with people covering every time zone but not yet every continent. These users are all early adopters. They are either developers or early adopters. The developers play and create new tools for those who are interested in the social aspect. Would you pay 50 dollars for what I describe above? Probably not. This demonstrates the coming of age of a concept that has been around for five years. Five years ago no one would have paid for twitter. No one would have paid for many of the services we have now. Porn and dating services are apparently the only things that used to work as communities....
Another reason not to get an Iphone — Sep 6, 2009
One of the great things about devices failing is when you’ve got other devices you depend on to keep everything synced up. In particular today I’m seeing another reason never to get an Iphone. If your computer goes down for any reason syncing between the phone and the computer is screwed up. You could, if you’re not careful lose all the apps you paid for, all the music you paid for and all other data you have on the iphone/ipod touch or other device. Do you really want a device that depends on another device, especially when either one could fail? I don’t. Happy not to be an iphone user :-)...
Anonymous comments have value — Feb 18, 2009
I love anonymous commenting because it’s from the heart that people speak rather than from their pedestal. By this I meran that when you make an anonymous comment you don’t need to know anything. You can say what you feel and you’re genuine. Of course that feeling might last ten seconds and you regret it.The point is that you can speak as part of the uninformed mass, you can afford to be wrong and your sentiments reality the feelings of the crowd. The crowd is important. Understand the crowd and you understand how to please them. You see worries of anonmity, worries of stalking, feelings that the whole community you need is within three miles of where you live. Those comments have value. To be attacked both as an individual or a community doesn’t matter. That’s where dialogue and conversation come into play. That’s when we get to see each other’s points of views and it may result in friendships, or the disagreement doesn’t continue. We are the privileged with our blogs and our advanced mobile phones. For marketers and opinion hunters though it’s great. I read this post and I find myself disagreeing that anonimity is a bad thing. Everyone that comments on this blog lacks anonmity, at least for me because I know them on twitter or other websites. I lack anonimity too. I use a nickname online but within a minute of searching you’ll find who I am. The effect of that is quite concrete. Whenever I post on a blog, a newspaper or anywhere online I have a personality I want to show. I have a reputation I have to attempt not to damage too seriously. That’s because we all have our own egos to feed. I don’t mean that in the self loving sense that those dissenting voices use against the event and against twitter. I mean that I want to be taken seriously. I want to be valued. As a result if I flame someone who is part of twitter there is fallout I would immediately suffer from. I’ve seen it happen to others in forums, on twitter and in a number of places....
Anonymous comments have value — Feb 18, 2009
Kevin - Feb 3, 2009...
Andrew Keen at the Frontline Club — Sep 17, 2007
Content creation and distribution has become far cheaper than it was in the past. Whereas in the past you’d have tons of equipment to create television programs today the barriers to entry are lower as a result of which the cult of the amateur is allowed to flourish. As the technology is adopted by more people those who have never studied the theorie point and shoot. What this means is that there is a huge amount of mediocrity on the web. Some like to say that it’s ninety nine percent crap and they’d be right. Why else use a search engine? The cult of the amateur is a great thing because it encourages those who have no training to produce content for others to enjoy. The problem is that they’ve had no training. As a result they’re sloppy. They don’t shoot b-roll. They don’t edit anything and then they put it on the web. What’s worse is that it’s long. Andrew Keen concentrated on audio and really wanted it to promote the sharing of great works and high culture. Instead there has been a steady rise in low culture. This is a debate that goes back to the days of Adorno when public literacy for all became a hot topic. Over time the general level of knowledge increased and so the natural balance returned. Professional journalists are investigative, going out and doing their own research before digesting this information out and writing their pieces. They have an in-depth knowledge of their topic and rather than go off on tangents they are going to backup everything they say with facts. I listened to a woman present her theories about one topic a few days ago and she always said “I did this” and “I did that”, a few days letter I listened to journalists, ambassadors and other professionals speak about how “we did these things” and “we did those things”. They often looked at creating a sense of a community or group of people working on an idea. The point is that whilst everyone has opinions which they want to share not all of them have the credentials to provide the content. Whilst as individuals our knowledge is not detailed enough to be of value if all of us work together towards a common goal then that work is of a greater value, hence the reason behind wikipedia’s success as a resource. During the Andrew Keen conversation talent was discussed and whether it is natural or whether it takes years to aquire. The discussion focused on the gatekeepers and how they were there to find talent, polish it and then commercialise it. He saw the value of transparency for trust. Both evidence and backing up the information help make resources more reliable. As a student you learn that there is no point in writing something down until you have found someone to backup your sentiment with research. Andrew Keen, to get a definite rise out of the crowd referred to bloggers as a mob and who can blame him. Whilst Journalists go out and interview people and do a lot of background research before writing about their topic of interest bloggers tend to go on what others have written. Whilst listening to this it brought up thoughts about how blogging would be better for content analysis since it is easier to read a collection of articles and write about them than to go out and get access to all those of interest. Andrew Keen made the remark that many blogs do not have original content, recycling what they found on a variety of resources. At one point Keen did accept that his book was written tongue in cheek and that whilst the book had a lot of success in Canada and England the Americans did not understand his point of view. He went on to say that he knew who he was writing it against rather than who he was writing it for. He said that it was a response to digital eutopians. At this point he made clear that he was not a technological determinist but a social one. In other words he believes that people, rather than technology determine the type of life and interaction we have with our environment. Towards the end of his conversation he spoke about web 3.0 as the rediscovery of expertise and professionalism, point which agrees with one of my earlier posts. He wanted the information economy to be about distributed trusted content. He also wanted it to be given a solid backbone. During the Q&A one person asked him whether he was a troll searching to annoy people through the writing of his book. He answered humourously that bloggers don’t read books. It was a clear and deliberate provocation but it was clear that he meant this as a joke rather than a direct attack. I don’t agree with all of the points made by Andrew Keen but he does make some interesting and valid points about the future of the media. it’s something that we must all think about. Culture production is an important aspect of our lives and it would be a shame, after centuries of hard work, to promote works of mediocrity. Finally if you would like to listen to the speech in person it can be found at this address...
An open standards that works on one phone? — Jun 8, 2010
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/viCj0-KCNtQ/apples_biggest_news_video_calling_as_open_standard.php...
An Ipad awaits — May 11, 2010
After the 28th of May I will have an Ipad. I have decided to get an Ipad for a number of reasons. The first of these reasons is activity within the social part of the world wide web. I use it as a conversational and informational tool. I share my location when I’m out, I express my opinions and in general I am at ease with online social activities. I also like being social face to face whilst being online. By that I mean that the age of the desktop and the laptop are coming to a fork. I would say end but laptops and desktops have a way to go. Photography and video editing are just two reasons for bigger machines. At the same time look at how mobile phones have become more competent tools for most of what some of us do in the social media. We share images, we share pictures, videos and even our location on a 24hr basis. For the latter you need to earn the sharer’s trust. Netbooks were an interesting proposition. They’re small, batteries last a long time and they’re practical. The problem is that the software they run is not optimised for a small screen. When you get an error message window where you cannot click ok you have a problem. When you attempt to play flash videos and the system hangs you’ve got another problem. When you visit the twitter site and the netbook struggles you’re just going to be frustrated. That’s where the Ipad comes in. The operating system and applications are all optimised for a smaller screen, for a mono tasking machine. Blogging applications amongst others will be practical on such devices. Any time you’re out of the home you fit it into the bag, pull it out and start writing. You’re online anyway so things are instantly synced with the cloud. No need to worry about being tired after a day at a conference or as a traveller when you prefer not to leave your gadgets unattended. I look forward to having an iPad, that glorified photo frame that can play video and communicate with the world....
An interesting interview - presentation. — Dec 4, 2012
La’ Intensity - A Talk with Silvia Vidal from Boreal Video on Vimeo....
An Autumn walk near Leysin — Jan 12, 2012
An Autumn walk [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157628177774925”]...
An Autumn walk at the foot of the Jura. — Oct 26, 2011
An Autumn walk at the foot of the Jura. It was earlier today as I was doing the later shift. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157627857326021”]...
An Air France advert with swings — Mar 20, 2015
I would have enjoyed working on this. I’d have played on the swings in between takes....
Amish: A secret life — Mar 31, 2013
An interesting documentary looking at the life of the Amish. We don’t often get this perspective of people who are not used to mobile phones, the world wide web and other things....
Amie street, the new mp3.com — Mar 11, 2007
At one time a website called mp3.com existed to facilitate the sharing of music. I enjoyed this website and downloaded quite a lot of music from there. At the time the idea was to share music for free. It was in the days before myspace grew in popularity. The site is http://amiestreet.com/ There is one slight difference: All songs on Amie Street start FREE and can rise to 98 cents. We’re about discovery, not raiding your wallet. That’s perfect. If it’s good they make money, helping to fund the website and the artists and if it’s not that popular yet then lot’s of people getting it for free means more advertising. It’s an interesting idea...
The age of Bloggers and Self installations — May 27, 2017
I come from the age of bloggers and self-installations. In fact, I come from the age of HTML pages and static websites. In those days we surfed the web looking for and finding content. We also found interesting bits of code and we added new features to our websites. We would install forums, guestbooks and more. In so doing our static websites became dynamic. At this point, our website could grow a community. At this time we had our PhpBB forum, our own wiki, our own WordPress installation. When we said, “My website”, “my blog” or “my forum” it was ours. We were the webmasters. We were the ones that had found the code and figured out how to install it on our web host. Communities were small and geographically dispersed across countries, continents and time zones so most interactions were verbal. Fast forward to today and most people do not have their own web server, their own wiki, their own web page or their own blogs. What they have are social media accounts hosted by others. They are not administrators, they do not have the technical knowledge. According to investors, marketers and other groups, these people are users of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus and other websites but their power is restricted to what they post and whether they delete their account. They are so disconnected from the mechanics of websites that they say “My Facebook”, “My Instagram”, “my twitter”. Web sites and by extension social media are not like books, mobile phones or bikes. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are not yours. Your influence is restricted to your personal account, no further. I wanted to have my own microblogging platform, I wanted to have my own diaspora server and more. I never did because my technical skills and budget did not allow it. With both of these, you needed server permissions that I was not willing to pay for. At that time I would have had my own Twitter or my own Facebook. I would have installed them. I would have been the administrator. I would have had the challenge of finding a crowd or tribe to populate it with content. Recently I was also thinking about the discussion about curation that people were having. There was a time when the idea was to get people to surf the web, find content and organise it in such a way as to make it easy for others to find content. Now that we’re in 2017 the idea of curation has evolved. Everyone shares content so the need for dedicated people has dwindled....
Adverts ignored on facebook — Nov 17, 2007
For one of his campaigns, out of 10,080 impressions there were only 8 clicks. The average cost-per-click for Fred was $0.08 and the average CPM was $0.06. This is a less than stellar performance. (source) Of course people don’t click and there’s a really good reason. They go to facebook to see what their friends are doing, what funny pictures of friends they can find and more. Facebook is and will remain a glorified phonebook. People aready want to move away because of all the zombie biters, vampires and many related pieces of rubbish. Keep it simple (stupid)....
Adverts ignored on facebook — Nov 17, 2007
David Fisher - Nov 4, 2007...
A Year Without Handshakes and Hugs — Apr 9, 2021
We are over a year into the pandemic that I wrote about for the first one hundred days, and stopped writing about because I thought that the Swiss Government was getting close to eradicating the disease, or at least getting it down to 0 new cases per day. Do you remember June 2020, when we actually thought the pandemic could be over by August? Unfortunately we’re no in April of 2021 and the pandemic is nowhere near over....
A walk in the mountains — Jan 8, 2012
A walk in the Jura over Christmas [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157628573717573”]...
A Very European Breakup — Jun 2, 2013
Shared by - a look at the relationship dynamics between Germany, Greece, Spain and the United Kingdom....
A Vertovian Reality — Apr 17, 2008
Look up Dziga Vertov and his ideas, then look at this video. Thinking of the documentary makers and their discussion about catching life unawares, getting real life to happen without the person knowing. It’s the creative treatment of actuality. That’s more Griersonian (if I remember right). Everyone has a camera on them and certain of us stream it from where we are. Now it’s time for the documentation of a society through audiovisual means for future generations to puzzle over....
A "Transcribe this" button for seesmic videos — Mar 22, 2009
Something I would love to see on Seesmic, and which would encourage me to use it more is a “transcribe this” button for when I record certain videos. The logic is simple. Sometimes we discuss things that we would like to see discussed but not everyone wants to listen to us explain our idea. That’s why it would be a nice feature. As an add on you could then add that video to your blog, with a transcript for quick and practical reference....
A social media binge — Dec 11, 2007
This weekend I went on a social media binge. A social media binge is the moment when you forfeit sleep and the rest of reality for a few hours as part of the social media. For the purpose of this particular challenge I set myself two pass times. The first of these was to twitter and the second was to seesmic. If you read previous posts you’ll find out what twitter. As to seesmic that’s another story. It’s close to being instant messaging with videos. Normal video chats are live. I talk and as I talk you can respond and interrupt me. In seesmic you talk, type a title and share the video. After that another person speaks, presses stop and posts. Over the period of a few hours many more posts appear and as they do so the conversation evolves exponentially. All of these videos is available to every over member so there is a great degree of overheard conversation. This overheard conversation is where the fun begins. I’ve seen girls dancing, guys act like zombies, discussions about literature and social media. I’ve seen so many things that it feels like the social media equivalent of a music festival. Watch seesmix clips on youtube to get a better idea....
A seesmic morning to you — Nov 8, 2007
Big Red Nose Just one of many seesmic videos to come....
A seesmic morning to you — Nov 8, 2007
tedc - Nov 5, 2007...
A Quick Test of Google WebStories — Aug 22, 2020
A little walk — May 25, 2008
Yesterday’s walk, as seen by Sportstracker. Pictures to come soon....
A Homemade Electric Car - Youtube Video — Feb 25, 2020
On one side of the Channel, you have people like Colin Furze building fun machines that have the fatal flaw of having an internal combustion engine. On the other side of the Channel, you have people like Marc Gyver building an electric car with easily bought components. The video below shows the construction process without talking, and without music....
A free and Open Web. — Dec 3, 2012
Google is asking people to take action for a free and open web...
A Fourteen Kilometre walk and I Crossed Paths With Just Two Other People. — May 20, 2020
Today I went for a fourteen Kilometre walk and I crossed paths with just two other people. It was a couple of runners and we crossed paths at just the right place as I could slip into a clearing, wait for them to pass and then continue on my way. I think this is the quietest walk I’ve been on in a while....
A Dummy's Guide To Conflict Resolution Between Two Appreciators of Beer — May 4, 2007
Going out is great, especially to an empty night club when friends of yours are present. It immediately becomes less fun when one friend decides to enjoy the freedoms of nature on a fence whilst a police car is rolling past. At the time I was sitting in a kitchen with my back to the window when I hear the siren go off. What’s the cause of this I wonder and lookout. I spot two people I know and immediately I understand what they were doing. Harmless engineering term, up to you to figure out which one. A friend standing behind me decides to yell out of the room “stop them, they’re terrorists” which in itself would be a harmless joke except for bored policemen. They decided to give the guy they had interrupted when nature calls an £80 fine. That’s annoying for anyone who’s been fined. You know the feeling. It became more interesting when those two people came up to see me and ask whether I had caused those problems. Having a clear conscience I answered that I had not been the one to land them in trouble. Ok, who did, was the next response. This person Ok, now the situation escalated. At this point, both people knew who was responsible for what and they were willing to fight. I used all of my body strength to come between both individuals because I did not want to see a fight take place when I was a key witness in the unfolding events. No fight took place but the echauffement definitely did. I was asked to leave the flat although I had done my best to avoid a fight and everyone went their separate ways. That’s definitely not what I want to have to deal with after spending so much time and effort on the dissertation. When I wake up I’ll spend some more time adding the finishing touches to my dissertation before handing it in. Goodnight...
97 friends changed pictures — Nov 9, 2008
[caption id=“attachment_810” align=“aligncenter” caption=“pictures”]...
97 friends changed pictures — Nov 9, 2008
Danacea - Nov 1, 2008...
4K video and mobile phones — Sep 26, 2015
In December I filmed some events at a staff party in 4K and never did anything with that footage because it was a private event. Two or three days ago I went to Geneva with the Sony Xperia Z3 compact and filmed some street scenes as well as the locks closing and transferring a small boat from the Rhone to the Lac Léman. I look forward to seeing what the Sony Xperia Z5 compact can do. The boat being raised from river level to lake level I filmed these scenes as a wide shot because I didn’t have the choice but also because 4K is ultra high definition. For me this is an opportunity to film things so that viewers can see context. Imagine landscapes, cityscapes and sports events in 4K or even 8K. With images good enough to fill a wall or two IMAX quality footage will become common place and at a fraction of the price. SES, NASA and other groups are making serious progress in to providing their audiences with UHD content. Swiss cable operators are also advancing towards this new and emerging market. One of the interesting and key selling points is HDR as well as UHD. With cameras such as the FS-7 among others, capable of shooting in raw the latitude that screens and cameras will capture is closer to what the human eye can see. The limitation for now is the contrast ratio. New legislation will have to be approved to permit brighter screens for example. Tourism and marketing Tourism boards, car manufacturers, watch manufacturers and many more industries will benefit from UHD because it will allow them to show their products in ultra high definition. Look at the image I have looking at the Ile Rousseau. You can see more detail and you can get a real feel for the place. If you went to Krakow, to the London eye, to the Eiffel tower you could see not only the famous landmark but people walking and possibly even which camera they’re using. It will give advertisers IMAX quality footage at a fraction of the price, and without the barrier to entry of an imax theatre. Sony’s Xperia Z5 Premium already offers a 4K monitor. UHD is already several years old but with Sony’s 4K mobile phones, Samsung’s 4K displays and Apple’s 4K recording capability there are many brands that are providing people with the motivation to buy 4K capable monitors or televisions. I read an article that mentioned 2019 as a key date. It was for when regulators would be ready for UHD content....
48 hour digital detox — Nov 9, 2015
People like me do not need a 48 hour digital detox. I spend time online socialising and finding people with whom to do interesting activities. With one group of people I would scuba dive every Sunday that I was not working. With another group of people I went canyoning and explored rivers from the river bed rather than from a path on the side. With another group I explored via ferrata and this passion has kept me entertained every summer weekend for five years now. With videos like the one, about digital detoxes, and with articles speaking about teenagers jettisoning social media because this is not the real world it is easy for people like me to develop concern for our well being. For a few minutes we feel guilty about our passion for the world wide web and online interaction. As I eventually made it to the end of this video I felt really good about the life I am living. I noticed that I am really lucky. I do not need to think about what to do on weekends. I have the problem in reverse. Should I do a via ferrata or should I go for a hike. Should I go out to town tonight or should I be on top form for the mountains tomorrow? If I was in a town or a city I would feel the need for a digital detox but as I live in the countryside I feel that my online habits are healthy. Look at my instagram pictures, look at flickr and look at Google Plus. I spend a lot of time doing things in the analogue world. Some day luddites will learn to be happy with current technology habits....
360 photos of Via Ferrata — Jul 2, 2016
Yesterday I was up above Leysin climbing the Tour D’Aï via Ferrata. It was an opportunity for me to take 360 photos of Via Ferrata. The beauty of panoramic pictures is that they provide you 360° of vision both vertically and horizontally. It means that you can get a sense of size and scale. You can look at the person exploring the via ferrata and how precarious their situation is as easily as you can admire the beauty of the landscape. [vrview img=“/content/images/2016/07/R0011307_20160701130638.jpg pimg=”/content/images/2016/07/R0011307_20160701130638.jpg ] Another great aspect to 360° photos is that you can show specific bits of via ferrata and show where the challenging bits are. “Here is where the via ferrata is overhanging” so that you can assess whether you have the strength and courage to try that section or “Here is how high up you are” and so you get a sense of whether you would be paralysed with fear or enjoy yourself. [vrview img=“/content/images/2016/07/R0011321_20160701133926.jpg pimg=”/content/images/2016/07/R0011321_20160701133926.jpg ] Most via ferrata are like the one that you see in these images. You have what I call staples, pedals and occasionally direct contact with the rocks. In other places you have spikes or you have to pull yourself up along the cable. With these images you see how well equipped the via ferrata is and you are not going in to the unknown. This is good when taking less experienced people. A side effect of 360 pictures is that you capture a self portrait of yourself in situ over and over again. It is by nature of the medium rather than desire....
29,000 down, a thousand to go — Jun 25, 2008
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134 days of Duolingo — Aug 26, 2019
I have been studying languages with Duolingo for 134 days....
11 years of Wordpress Blogging — Jul 27, 2017
As serendipity would have it I have been a wordpress blogger for at least 11 years. As I was looking through notifications on worpdress.com I came across the notification below yesterday. As I searched for ideas for blog posts for today I came across an e-mail. [caption id=“attachment_3709” align=“aligncenter”] 10 years of Wordpress [caption id=“attachment_3710” align=“aligncenter”] 11 years of Wordpress On this day, eleven years ago I set up this blog. Since then I have written about one thousand two hundred posts, tens of thousands of tweets and many many facebook messages. I mention this because blogging and social media are two different challenges. With blogging you spend the day thinking about a topic. You’re searching for something that you can write about for 300 or more words. Compared to nanowrimo where you try to have an average of 1666 words per day this is easy, until you add the public dimension. Writing for the world wide web is different to writing for yourself, with the knowledge that you will go back and edit it, eventually, if ever. Writing for twitter and facebook is easy. Twitter is a conversation so the more you socialise with other people the more dynamic your posting can be. The same is true of facebook except that facebook is a “silo” of people you vet and trust. Twitter is in essence a chatroom. A blog post is more time consuming. I like to write about technology and about the adventures I have. That’s when inspiration is easier. Imagine for an instant that Wordpress.com was more popular than Facebook or twitter. Imagine for a moment that people decided that instead of spending a few seconds per update they spent half an hour to an hour per post. Imagine that people read long form posts rather than short updates. Imagine that we go back to a blogging social media landscape where people write reflective posts. Imagine that we read rather than skim. The beauty of the long form, of writing blog posts is that we create content that people search for and read. Emotion is involved, but so is thought. Through blogging we generate an income for our content. More people should blog, and more people should share their posts....