Inchoate

Stylus shorthand

The topic of using phones to foster communities is one of the current bees buzzing in my bonnet at the moment and key is being able to communicate. Talking is one aspect of that, the other is SMS, and (soon) messaging on other protocols. Unfortunately data entry on a phone or even PDA sucks. You're stuck with,

• traditional numeric keypad, 855,5557777#7777882226677771111 !
• T9 predictive text, 8557#78267#6377
• if you have a stylus phone you might have any of block, keyboard, recogniser, grafitti methods. Of those I haven't used grafitti but I imagine it sucks too. Certainly "keyboard" entry sucks.

So here's an idea to reduce the deafening sucking sound around phone data entry...

Sandwiches for World Peace

Oh my god. The angels in my mouth are singing!

This midnight snack turned into the kind of culinary creation that if deployed could heal centuries-long national conflicts, bring about unbridled happiness to humanity, and maybe even prevent the Republicans stitching up the election again.

It started out innocently enough...

Chasing Victoria

The first time I realized I could keep up with an undelayed Tube on my bike over a substantial distance (>10km / ten stops) was quite a shock. The Tube's top speed is 80km/h so at least when it's rolling it's not hanging around. In contrast the very best I can manage is about 36km/h for any distance.

Last night I took on what I consider one of the toughest Tube challenges: keeping up with the Victoria Line.

It's all relative

A muse on adaption to circumstance.

Last night I headed over to 491 Gallery to check out their space for a party. This involved a ride from Shoreditch E1 to Leytonstone E11, a trip I'm really familiar with and have covered regularly since I used to live about half a km from 491 for about a year and a half.

What was interesting was how quick I perceived the journey to be.

Hitchhiker's Guide Radio 4 direct link

BBC Radio 4 has produced a new series Tertiary Phase of H2G2 which has run for five episodes so far.

Here's the direct link to the archived stream (copy to clipboard and open with the player): http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/rpms/hitchhikers.ram

The rest of this entry is a whinge about Real Player and the BBC website; ignore at leisure.

Hanging out with the LSS

Inspired by the crazy-for-it Lorraine (whom I was lucky enough to meet at the third CLP) I came along to an evening at the London School of Samba...

Freaks, threads, & airfares

What a great Saturday night. In bed at 21:00 feeling the demotivating edge of flu symptoms, Emir called and gave me exactly the needed impulse to get out of the house. The Euroburners (Yoms & Pete) had put on a party in Holborn and if there was ever an excuse to wear the Blue Fluffy Coat and hat this was it.

Flattened phone

This one direct from the Department of D'oh.

Friday night, was expecting a call and had my phone in my pocket so I could feel the vibes whilst cycling. To facilitate from-pocket extraction I hadn't totally stuffed the phone right down. Which sadly facilitated the phone popping out into traffic around Westminster Bridge just before an unofficial Circle Line Party. And then immediately being run over by at least three vehicles.

The resultant carnage looked like....

Setting default mailman URL

This for mailman list admins only.

Mailman has this concept of a URL that's associated with a domain. Unfortunately it's not possible to configure it through the interface, which on vhosted lists is really annoying. To set, in fact fix this URL, there is an impossible-to-remember incantation with an auxilliary script, fix_url.py. Tired of looking this up and messing up the invocation here's a wrapper.

Actual script on my use.perl journal

I wonder what this script would look like in python (language mailman is written in) and whether it could be absorbed into mailman core?

Circle Line Party announcements

The Circle Line Party website seems to have grown a announcements mailing list. Handy. Pass it on... It seems even the very first CLP 2 report from the old CLP site [via Wayback] has migrated into the new blog format.

As Oprah slaps Bush

I don't intend to make a habit of posting links (there are a million others already doing it) but this SFGate article is so entertainingly written, alarming, and politically apposite I couldn't resist.

Mark Morford in SFGate urging women to vote.

Vote!

Article quotes:

Bike in a cloakroom?

For about a week now I have had a folding bike, the rather odd-looking triangular framed Strida.

Well, it kicks ass. Not only does it eliminate the need to walk even sub-kilometer distances it goes in cloakrooms. On Thursday last week I took the Strida on its maiden voyage to an opening at the Hayward Gallery. Rather than search around for (usually inadequate and distant) bike parking facilities I spent ten seconds folding it, and then wheeled it into the gallery lobby...

Cycling equipment rationale

Prompted by a couple of folks commenting on my fixed gear article I wrote up a quick page on why I chose the bike components I did.

Comments welcome here or by email.

Posh bus

Pic taken of the side of a N36 bus in south London tonight. (Graininess due to low-light & phone camera.) A popular bus route inspired by a famous footballer's wife?

(Mouse over the image if you still don't get it.)

Micro-employing beggars

For one reason and another, I don't give money to folks who come up and ask me for it. Instead I quite often share my food e.g. half a sandwich or something; I find it quite hard to not do something.

So I had an idea to tidy this filthy city and help beggars at the same time.

"Virally Yours", Cybersalon - aftermath

Right after Pillow fighting I sprinted over to the Dana Centre (part of the Science Museum) for a debate about viral marketing, pros and cons, insights into media spending, different approaches of marketing, and so on. I got to speak too :)

London Pillow Fight Club - aftermath

This early evening what seemed like several hundred folks gathered in front of St Paul's Cathedral for the first London Pillow Fight Club. I showed up a little after the posted 17:40 kickoff and it was in full, literally, swing. A core of probably a hundred or so battlers were beating the stuffing out of each other...'s pillows, and quite obviously enjoying themselves. Quite a sight!

Clusterflake

Clusterflake, n. or v. Inspired by this evening and a similar sounding word, clusterflake is the social phenomenon characterized by a buttload of people just not showing up, typically so sporadically, in such numbers, and with so little advance warning that the original plan or plans are thrown into disintegrating disarray. (syn: cluster flake)

"Despite a week's notice more than half the movie group clusterflaked, most without even calling."

"We'd arranged a big dinner, followed by a meet with another crew, then all hit a party downtown. Three people showed up in total, the whole night. It was a complete cluster flake."

Movable Type URL redirection

Movable Type 2.661 has a "feature" that shrouds an author's URL behind a redirect in the hopes of reducing the google-juicing effect of comment spammers being linked to during their nefarious activities.

There are several problems with this, see this excellent breakdown. Most importantly, any halfway competent MT installation will have some software to manage the comment spam, like MT-Blacklist. So the whole annoying redirect "feature" is redundant when you have no comment spam.

But there's no way to turn it off in 2.661, and I haven't found a patch for it, so I have just written one which also corrects a few bugs I found in MT::Template::Context.

LA to NY in 4mins

A really lovely video of a roadtrip set to a beautiful soundtrack: "Behind" (via Eva)

Even though everyone's experience of a roadtrip is unique to them and those that might've shared the adventure, somehow I imagine this video will evoke all the same sorts of emotions and memories. Watched and listened to this now about six times straight.