dcinput

One of the things I’ve found really hard about moving house these last few weeks is all the things you have to switch over. It just doesn’t seem possible to make a smooth transition due to all the contracts you have to cancel, new ones you have to start, addresses you have to change etc… I’ve been without internet at home for nearly 3 weeks! Telewest should be installing a nice cable 4Mb pipe into my new flat on the 26^th, which should mean more regular posts.

The new Fulfilment service offered by Amazon looks very interesting indeed. Amazon let you outsource Storage with S3, Processing with EC2 and now distribution of material goods. Starting a business just got easier. Pretty soon we’ll all be living on a beach running our own business. All it takes is a bit of business logic and a phone. Hey maybe there’s an Amazon Skype in the pipeline…

All this week I am at a Redhat training course for Redhat Certified Engineer (RHCE). It’s pretty hardcore. Most of the people on the course have been doing Unix/Soloaris/Linux for over 10 years. So much information to cram into this little head. Managed to find some free wireless on the north river front near Bank.

The City of London where the course is, seems such a different place than the edges of Soho that I am used to. It’s a bustling hive of financial activity. The atmosphere smells of money, everybody needs to get somewhere fast. Maybe this is a financial equivalent of Silicon Valley?

I am now a Flickr Pro! I started using the Flickr uploader for OSX and it makes uploading photos to Flickr so painless that I know I am going to need more space. Can’t believe I didn’t try it sooner. At times you might find some of my photos strange, but I just take pictures of things I find interesting.

New Flickr set: Secret Garden Party 2006.

Another new Flickr set: Bunratty Castle.

By the way my camera is the rubbish one on my Motorolla V3 Razor. You can actually get some pretty OK photos with it if you know what your doing. I kind of like the chalenge sometimes. I guess these are the black and white photos of the future.

I don’t currently have internet connection at home, and I won’t until I move into the new place. It’s driving me mad. How is it that I am this reliant on the web?

I heard yesterday that Amanda Congdon the host of Rocketboom was leaving the show splitting from the show’s creator Andrew Baron. I’ve watched the show for well over a year now and in that time it has entertained me immensely but also certainly has changed how I view this thing we call the web. Amanda and Andrew thanks muchos!

Is it bad news for Rocketboom? I think not.

How to find a replacement for Amanda Congdon

Amanda has done a really fantastic job getting the show to where it is today. My honest opinion though is that I had kind of gotten bored of the format. The exagerated head movements, the throwing of the sheets of paper, that weird machine that she uses to start each video clip. Lately I was getting that ’same old, same old’ feeling.

On the other hand I have really been loving some of the new field reporters who each have very different styles of vlogging. I love the variety, you know being able to see things through other peoples eyes. The fact that Andrew and Amanda relinquish complete show control to these guys is fantastic.

My idea is this: have “Guest Presenters”. Instead of the same person week in week out lets mix it up a little by having people we recognise from the web present some shows. Sometimes just one show, maybe they do a whole string of them, maybe they come back at a later date if they were liked. Suddenly the show has no boundaries: you shoot it in a style that fits the personality of the “Guest Presenter”.

Imagine if you tuned in one day and Ze Frank presented a few days and what about a few days with Marc Canter, Dave Winer or Adam Curry? How about those two Chinese students that lypsync to Backstreet Boys tracks in their bedroom? The potential for the internet to find interesting characters is enormous. Sure, currently many of the known faces are the geeks, but it won’t be like that for ever.

How about if Rocketboom helped to bring in the interesting artists, scientists, politicans, fashion designers, journalists, business men etc of our world into this new open way of doing things? Now that really would be great.

Just my two pence.

dcinput vlog #2: The French in Picadily Circus

Ok so the French beat Portugal in the Semi-Final of the World Cup last night. The match was a little dull and my legs were very sore from standing up but the scene at Picadily Circus afterwards was interesting. vlog #2 illustrates why most people don’t use crappy camera phones for taking video.

The Register: “SGI to emerge from bankruptcy cocoon in September”.

SGI CEO McKenna laid out more of SGI’s product plans here.

Great exit interview questions to store away for a rainy day

I read this Scoble piece called You’re exit interview of me a couple of days ago but forgot to link to it. He’s answering questions from his readers about leaving his position at Microsoft. Some really good questions and I found his answers very well thought out. It’s funny I’m finding myself far more interested in his Blog since he resigned. Not sure why exactly. Maybe because he’s jumping into a space which I find very interesting.

Much ado about journalism

Jeff Jarvis: “This isn’t about citizens or amateurs vs. professionals. We’re all in this together. Journalism is a collaborative venture. Journalism is a network”.

One of the things that bothered me about the “citizen journalism” tag was how it felt so lonely. In the back of my head I had a picture of this renegade guy running around the streets with a camcorder trying to track down what was really going on in the world. This film noir vision isn’t what the internet is about at all. Part of its charm is its abilty to bring people together so they can interact and create things. It’s just a big playground.

Thoughts on Gnomedex and all things virtual

Having learnt from Bloggercon last week that trying to do too many things at once can be bad, I decided to stick to the webcast and IRC for the first day of Gnomedex 6.0. Streaming video was a huge improvement on just having audio. It’s far far easier to get an understanding of what is actually going on in the room. Though it seems that maybe bandwidth problems got the better of them since after lunch only an audio stream was being cast.

The IRC really adds an interesting and useful extra dimension, especially for those like me who are not present. I suppose it’s kind of like having people sitting next to you to bounce ideas off of except that in real life you would find it hard to sit next to 120 people all at once. Due to this virtual proximity of so many people, the level of banter tends to be rather high but it helps to keep the conference interesting and, for the most part, is harmless fun. In addition interesting points do get raised and discussed in the backchannel, it serves as a bullshitometer where people get called out pretty quickly if they are talking rubbish and finally it does help to give some idea of the ‘mood of the crowd’. Though sometimes you wonder whether its just the troublemakers that are speaking up.

Being able to experience this virtual community for the first time in a real meaningfull way has been for me the most rewarding aspect of both Bloggercon and Gnomedex. This sort of thing is probably old hat for many people who attended but its new to me. No doubt I have violated backchannel etiquette on several occasions, but c’est la vie when you’re a newbie.

I’ve added the new category ‘virtual communities’ as I’m sure I’ll be talking about this topic some more.

You can track whats going on at Gnomedex here.

Dave Dederer of the Presidents of the USA led an interesting discussion about the music business in the digital age and covered important topics such as copyright, intelectual property and the ease of getting laid. He started by covering parts of a couple of Lou Reed tracks on an accoustic guitar which came accross real nice over the video.

Senator John Edwards lead one of the sessions though dispite his efforts it kind of turned into a question and answer session. Though I don’t give a monkeys about american politics, it was certainly interesting to see a guy like him trying to understand this new world we’re creating by starting a dialogue with the geeks and in a very open setting [ie. broadcast live to the world]. Just in case he does get to the top I thought I should take a few snaps: singing, dancing and for some bizare reason hitchiking.

The Gnomedex 6.0 conference starts today at around 5pm GMT. There is an IRC channel and a webcast, which is audio and video.

The conference is just about to start…here’s what’s going on there…the calm before the storm.

Ask a Ninja: Net Neutrality.

I haven’t been listening to any Daily Source Codes since my ipod broke - 6th time now but the warranty seems to have just expired on this last one. I’ve been treating it as a DSC holiday which has actually been quite nice as I’ve been able to do read some books on my commutes.

I was looking at the shownotes for the last few shows and it seems that Adam has been talking about net neutrality quite a bit. Check out this show [skip to 19:50] and this show [skip to 6:55]. He seems to have quite a lot of experience in this field and it’s worth listening what he has to say. He is against the net neutrality bill. If I get time I will try to summarise his views later today.

CNet: “Senate panel narrowly rejected strict Net neutrality rules on Wednesday”.

A few days ago a big water pipe exploded under the road just near my house. We now have two enormous holes in the road and a little river. This morning the water supply had been cut off which meant no shower and perhaps more importantly no tea.

I’ve ventured down to Upper Street and am having a nice lunch in a cafe. Great wireless! Turns out the whole of Upper Street now has free wireless in some Islington council initiative. They are calling it ‘Technology Mile‘. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up.

My cousin Deirdre Mulrooney is soon to start working for Cirque du Soleil in Montreal. She has a blog which I really hope she’ll start writting a little more on. I’d love to know what adventures she’ll be getting up to. Good luck with it Deirdre.

Today has been a tourist day - in my own town. I’ve been living in London nearly 10 years now and you can easily forget how beautifull it actually is. I went down to the Tate meuseum to have a look at some modern art. It’s really refreshing to do this every once and a while, it changes the way you look at things.

I took some tourist photos all along the river during my travels but it seems that flickr won’t play ball. It’s actually been doing this for around a week now and I’m starting to worry that there is something wrong with my account. Can you imagine loosing all you Flickr photos? I mean they’re all backed up but what a pain to find them and ontop of that all the links that would break in the blog…

Downloaded the Flickr uploader for Mac OSX. No joy with that either. Urrgh.

Andrew Gursky (Germany) had one photo which simply has to be seen in its full glory. It is called 99 Cent and is taken in a US store. He has digitally altered the colours so that they are far more vibrant than normal.

Other pieces that caught my eye were ‘Siena’ by Olivio Barbiera who takes arial photographs using tilt shift lenses to give the impression that everything is a scale model. Here is an example.

Magritte’s painting of the man reading the newspaper was there too. This is one of my favorites. The way he changes the perspective ever so slightly in each quadrant combined with the fact that the man only apears in the top left quadrant makes me just want to keep looking at it.

Magritte, a Belgian surrealist, apparently prefered quiet subversion over public action. If you know Belgium and its people well you might have seen this in its culture, a part of which has definitely rubbed off on me from my years there.

I’m not too sure of the legality of any of these pictures being on the blog so I’ll be happy to remove them if this is a problem. Just mail me.

The Cinema Expo 2006 kicked off yesterday in Amsterdam.

One of the nice things that came out of my brunch on Sunday was some great reader feedback. I’ve known Pete for around 5 years now and he’s been a reader of the blog from back when I didn’t even talk about digital cinema. At the time he told me that he liked my style of writing, that he found it quite engaging. What he’s noticed of late is that since I’ve taken to the digital cinema route, that not only is he finding it less interesting for him but that he doesn’t even understand a lot of the stuff I link to.

Why did I take to writing about things in my field of work?

One important aspect of having a blog is how it helps you to find out things about yourself. The simple act of writing on a regular basis about things that cross your path and catch your attention changes the way you look at the world. It makes you more curious, more engaged, more interested. It helps to structure your thoughts.

The idea behind giving dcinput a digital cinema direction was to help me explore my current field of work and discover where my interests lie within it. The world of cinema is in such an exciting period of change right now, the boundaries of what is possible are being pushed on a daily basis. Understanding and being interested in this ever-changing environment is of the up most importance.

Using the internet as a tool for finding information and the blog as a way of structuring that information in a way that is meaningful to me is certainly one aspect of the ‘why’. If this was the only reason for having a blog then why bother making it public? Why take the risk of saying the wrong thing and end up with an unhappy employer?

These changes are without a doubt happening on a global scale. The blog then is also a tool to get around the problem of large distances. You see with this blog I can join into the global community of people involved in digital cinema. I can for example find out what technologies are being talked about, what social changes are occurring, and I can take part in the conversation.

In many ways I am still trying to find this digital cinema community on the web. It may be that there simply are not many people from the industry using blogs in this way. I am hoping that this will change. Taking part in Bloggercon IV over the weekend have made me sure of the importance of this new medium.

Even if I have not found the community I am looking for just yet, blogging it seems has another trick up its sleeve. Seen in a bigger picture sense, blogging is perhaps the most useful and powerful as a tool for building bridges between communities. In this new digital age, fields that have traditionally progressed on their own are converging massively. A blog allows you to have a foot in many communities at once. It helps you to build bridges.

Shaping a Blog around reader feedback

Now that I’m on my way to understanding why I do this blogging thing in the first place, I’m going to try to take Pete’s comments on board. Over the last few months my busy work schedule has meant that simply linking to digital cinema related articles has been faster and easier than actually putting across my personal views on issues that matter. I find that most of the things I actually work on I can’t actually talk about for several months and are in any case of a pretty technical nature.

Over the next few months I am going to try to identify certain topics that are of concern to the digital cinema landscape as well as others that cross into other areas. I’ll then concentrate my exploration of the internet somewhat around these areas and write about them as I learn new things. Though you will certainly find me occasionally talking about some new geeky piece of hardware, I will also do my best to venture into themes like Net Neutrality, Intellectual Property and Copyright for instance. I welcome any suggestions!

Thanks again Pete, I really value your opinions.

Looks like the Frontier kernel is heading for a spot of performance tuning. I have certainly noticed peoples blogs on blogs.opml.org acting real slow lately. It’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to stay with Wordpress for the moment.

Rex Hammond has also been thinking about why he blogs: “remember that: The core product, the core brand is you and your cause and your product or service”.

The making money angle is interesting. Making money is definitely not something I am looking to do with this blog. I have no plans to put any advertising in the sidebar and I won’t be pushing any products. This blog belongs to me, only me, and I like it that way. It’s my tool to explore, to experiment, to learn and to communicate. I won’t compromise on this in any way. Ah-ha.

Wimbledon starts today!

This year it seems the officials all have new uniforms. Why do they remind me of Butlins? Also they will be feeding us strawberries with a side order of RSS.

Yesterday’s brunch was fantastic. American pancakes with maple syrup, scrambled eggs with chorizo, eggs benedict and all acompanied by a live piano music. I had the wrong address in yesterday’s post: you will find Aganovich here.

Alistair McClymont is doing nice things with audio and video.

U2 rock the house in second life.

Wired News: “But despite the 21st-century tools that put awesome publishing power in the hands of total novices, the blogger’s ultimate weapon is as old as the first storytellers who sat around prehistoric campfires”.

Today I’m off to have brunch with Pete and Nana from Aganovich & Yung. Their site seems to be down currently but this is the sort of things they do.

[Update: You can now find them at Aganovich]

I’ve been listening in to the live wecast for Bloggercon over the last couple of days. Very interesting in many ways. All the usual suspects are there in some shape or form: Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Robert Scobble etc etc.

I’m impressed by the technology. The fact that a conference can go on the other side of the planet yet I can listen to it live over the internet, on my lap top, in a cafe with wireless is great. The fact that I can also participate in some way through the IRC channel is even better [IRC is new to me and it’s been quite a challenge listening to the conference while reading and writing in there simultaneously!]. When you think that people all around the world are doing this, how great is that? Well I think it’s great.

Plus it looks like we’re all watching the Argentina - Mexico World Cup match.

They are calling this an unconference. The idea being that in the room at any one time there is more knowledge in the room than a panel of speakers can ever have. Everyone in the audience becomes a participant and a discussion leader walks around and guides the discussion.

Interesting session on Building Bridges. Made me think quite a bit.

Boris Johnson has a blog!

Kosso needs a VMware brain [from the IRC]: “we got football = bigbrother - SL and irc”

Geez i’m really finding this crazy multi-tasking hard. Listening to the webcast, writing on my blog and reading the IRC channel and watching the football, following URL links from the IRC. Does this get easier with practice. I bet the kids these days find this a doddle.

I’m going to try and find Kosso in second life at his RSS platform. Grrr it’s asking for me to download a new version of second life and for some reason it won’t download…

OK so I am now in Second Life (SL) on the RSS platform listening to Bloggercon live and direct to Real Life (RL). Weird. Kozzo seems to be somewhere else though I can see his avatar.

Oooh my poor powerbook is freaking out.

Me and Kosso are sitting around the fire on the RSS Platform listening to the Bloggercon webcast from within SL. Cum bah yah!

Some photos from Bloggercon.

Right enough of this shenanigans. I’m off to meet some real people in a real bar and actually chat to them. Might even have a beer and everything.

God is this the future?