Episode 83: …ninja kittehs are silent like the wind…

I wish I could teach my cat to do this:

Our GeekDinner last Wednesday already showed us how fun the nice people over at Carsonified are, and now they’re holding a great contest, where you can win a Golden Ticket. The winner of this Golden Ticket will receive the following goodies:

1. A free ticket to ALL Carsonified 2009 events. This includes Future of Web Design, Future of Web Apps, Future of Mobile, Fuel and all Carson Workshops.

2. Pick one Carsonified event and we’ll fly you there and put you up in an amazing hotel, for FREE*

3. An all-access backstage pass at all 2009 Carsonified events

4. An invite to the VIP speaker dinner at one Carsonified event of your choice

Cool, right? All you have to do to win this great prize is write a blog post (what I’m doing right now) and drum up 25 comments on that blog post. And that’s where you, dear readers, all come in. Will you help me with reaching the 25 comments?

To make it a tad more interesting than just a list of “boring” comments, check out the schedule for The Future of Web Apps. Tell me, which session looks the most interesting to you and why?

I’m not much of a shopper. I don’t like the busy high streets, popping in and out of every other store, dodging the tourists and other busy shoppers. The whole rigmarole is just too tiring and most of the time not even worth it. But book shopping? Now that’s a completely different experience.

I can spend hours in one bookshop, browsing through all the shelves, trying out new authors, hoping I’ll find some hidden gem. And when I’m tired with that store, I’ll hop on to the next one. And then the next one. Being a student, I already don’t spend that much on books, but there will always be that book that “I’ve been waiting for more than a year” or “is the final part of a series”. There are just certain books I’ll always have to get.

A couple of years ago I forced myself to a simple challenge for a year: I was not allowed to buy books from authors that I didn’t own yet. But having more than 500 books, means having a lot of authors I still could choose from. And after a time I just forgot about the challenge to myself. The main problem isn’t buying books though. It’s buying books, while still having a huge pile of books you’re supposed to read. And never reading all those books, because there’s always a “better” book.

So after seeing Shannon’s post about the Ban On Book Buying Challenge, I decided to step up to the challenge for the upcoming four months (until the end of this year). No buying of new books until I’ve finished the list of books I’ve setup. The rules are quite easy:

Guidelines for the 2008 Ban on Book Buying Challenge:

1. No purchasing books for yourself until all the books listed are gone. No purchasing books for other people with the intention of reading them after they are finished. Library or other borrowed books can’t be listed.

2. Any books won in a raffle or given to me as a gift will be added to this list.

3. Books to be reviewed for promo companies, other blogs, authors, etc. do not count and are not added to this list.

4. Start anytime and list as many or as few books as needed. Once all books are checked off from the list, the ban is lifted and the spending can begin again.

5. The ending date for each person can vary to a few weeks or months as long as it doesn’t exceed December 31, 2008. This ban can be lifted earlier if all books listed have been read or donated.

6. If you don’t have a blog and would like to still join, list your books in the comment section below.

Simple, right? So here’s my list of books I have to finish:

Myrren’s Gift – Fiona McIntosh
Demon’s Kiss – Maggie Shayne
Lover’s Bite – Maggie Shayne
The Night Watch – Sergei Lukyanenko
The Day Watch – Sergei Lukyanenko

The Wind Dancer – Iris Johansen
Storm Winds – Iris Johansen
Reap The Wind – Iris Johansen
Magic’s Silken Snare – ElizaBeth Gilligan
Cast in Shadow – Michelle Sagara

The Briar King – Greg Keyes
Fool’s Errand – Robin Hobb
The Golden Fool – Robin Hobb
Fool’s Fate – Robin Hobb
American Gods – Neil Gaiman

The Summoner – Gail Z. Martin
The Blood King – Gail Z. Martin
The Rule of Four – Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomas
Doppelganger – Marie Brennan
The Draycott Legacy – Christina Skye

It’s “only” 20 books, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to finish them all before Christmas. There are a couple of books in between them though, that I know will cost me some time to finish. Not because the books are so thick (there’s no such thing as “too many pages”), but because you have to invest so much time into the world and the story, it’s hard to get into.

I’ll try to give a monthly update, to show how I’m progressing with my list. Anybody else want to join me in this challenge?

Interesting links for September 5th through September 11th:

• ohnotheydidnt: Kermit Bale – Cool collection of photos comparing Christian Bale to Kermit the Frog.
• Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet? – In depth article about the Hadron Collider and whether or not it has destroyed the world yet.
• Tokyo Fantasy: Images of the apocalypse – Wow, beautiful photoshopped images/photos of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo.
• Made in China – A whole bunch of Chinese fashion photoshoots. Some of the them are amazing, some I just don't "get".

On the fourth day of our Dorset trip we went to Eggardon Hill, the site of Iron Age fort and settlement. It’s never been excavated, so all you can see (but what a sight!) are the dips and hills of how the shape of it all used to be. The view was absolutely beautiful (it’s no Austria, but I had to quell the urge to sing The Sound of Music).

Panorama (you have to see this in it’s original size and scroll right to the right):

Cristiano on a hill:

Countryside:

Finding a geocache:

Cow:

Geeks in the Country:

Thanks to Cristiano, Sheila and Harry for their photos. You can see more photos of Dorset on their Flickr accounts (Cristiano, Sheila and Harry).

So this was my 6th BarCamp. It doesn’t feel like that. It doesn’t feel like that at all. I still feel like such a newbie at these events, mainly cause I have no idea what to talk about. I’ve held a session at almost every single one of them (except for Berlin, because the schedule was completely full), but never something that seemed useful/professional/barcamp-worthy. I know that I know stuff, but I have no idea if people would be interested in anything I know.

Putting all that aside for a moment though, the third BarCamp Brighton was fantastic. Great venue, great sessions and a lot of interesting people. Like last time, it was held at the Student’s Union of the University of Sussex. It’s a lovely location for this type of event, with a nice selection of different types of rooms and enough space to hang around and chill in.

Saturday

I woke up at 6am that Saturday morning. Cristiano, Dan and I were able to get a ride to Brighton from Emma, but that meant being at her place at 7:30ish, which meant leaving our house at 6:50. Ugh, way too early. We ended up arriving later than we initially expected at 10:15. After a long introduction round, where every single person had to introduce themselves with three tags (my tags were facial expressions, machine learning and werewolf), people started filling up the board with their sessions.

HDR Photos

The first session I went to was Cristiano’s talk about HDR photos. I already knew what they were (High Dynamic Range photos), but not how to make them. The idea of HDR is that you take multiple photos of the same thing, but with different exposures, and then combine them into one image. Some cameras can do the first part of this (taking multiple photos with different exposures) automatically, called exposure autobracketing, but you can also do it by hand, if you place the camera somewhere stable. A handy Mac app that can do the second part is Photomatix Pro. It takes multiple images as input, merges the photos into one and then offers tone mapping to select the right colours, shadows and highlights. 

Ask The BBC Anything

I then went to the Ask The BBC Anything session with Ian Forrester, Rain Ashford and Ant Miller. I didn’t take any notes, so I don’t remember all the details, but some interesting points were raised about how the BBC has to deal with copyright. There was one anecdote about an orchestra concert, which was held at a BBC venue, played by BBC employees, music was in the public domain, but somehow because of the conductor, the BBC still didn’t own the rights to it. 

Rubik’s Cube Solving

One skill I’ve always wanted to have is to be able to solve a Rubik’s Cube. After this workshop with Seb Lee-Delisle, I’m one step closer to that goal. We didn’t have time to complete the tutorial, but I understand more about it then before. The most important thing to realize here is that the six middle points on every side (so square #5 of the 9), all remain on the same location the entire time. I won’t try to explain it further, cause my babbling won’t make it any clearer (there are loads of tutorials available online if you’re interested). 

Powerpoint Karaoke

Who doesn’t know what powerpoint karaoke is? The idea is simple: a victim gets to present a set of powerpoint slides which he has never seen before. The result can be very funny (or if you’re not lucky, very boring). There were hilarious presentations about cannibalism, bacon and genetically engineered trees.

Uncanny AI

This presentation from David Hayward was one of the sessions I enjoyed the most, mainly because part of it was a different perspective to theory I’m reading up on for my own research. The uncanny valley is a hypothesis about the response from humans to robot or CGI characters (anything that’s supposed to look and act human). The theory goes that right before they look and act completely believable, there’s a huge dip of repulsion: they just seem creepy and weird (like The Polar Express and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within). 

Impro 101

I’m not one for quick retorts; my mind just goes completely blank in those moments where I would love to be witty and sharp. I think though that maybe with enough practice I could teach myself how to do that. This session from James Aylett helped already a bit. He took us through a series of games/exercises, aimed to loosen up people and make them less self-conscious, while slowly building up the reflexes of thinking quick on your feet. 

Content, Content and Pop Culture

In this session Relly Annett-Baker presented what happens when companies give free reign to their fans and actually pay attention to what they (the fans) are producing. She gave examples of the Ace Attorney games for the Nintendo DS and the popular Japanese manga Prince of Tennis, which both have a vast assortment of merchandise. The presentation also touched such topics as slash fiction (guy-on-guy fan fiction, Angel and Spike swoon…) and hentai (tentacle sex!).

Werewolf

What would a BarCamp be without Werewolf? 

Game 1

In this game Emma, some newbie and I were the Werewolves. The game started with about 20 players, and us Werewolves went for a kill the non-newbies and non-experts strategy (so those who had played more than once, but not a lot). When there were around 10 people left, I (as a Werewolf) declared myself as the Seer. There wasn’t that much resistance, until one point where I should have accused a newbie of being a Werewolf. Instead I told everyone he was a Villager, which destroyed my brilliant plan. The only option was killing myself that night, after trying to explain to Emma during the night round with a series of weird hand gestures which next steps she should take. She didn’t follow my advice, but the Werewolves still won anyway. 

Game 2

Of course, after the game I previously played, I fully expected no one to believe me. And, of course, I had to pull the Seer card that game. To make things worse, no one died the first night and people straightaway wanted to lynch me. I had no choice but to declare as the Seer myself immediately. To make things even more annoying, some newbie declared himself as the Seer (while he was in fact the Healer!!). The Villagers believed me though and we lynched the newbie. Two rounds later I discovered a Werewolf, but he managed to turn the game around on me. Almost everyone believed him and the Villagers lynched me. The one person that believed me though succeeded in convincing everyone to lynch the Werewolf the next round and he discovered who the other Werewolf was. The Villagers won!  

Game 3

This game was great, but very uneventful. Natalie Downe, Phil Hawksworth and I were the Werewolves and the entire game nobody suspected us. Cristiano was the Seer and apparently had checked me during the same night that we Werewolves killed him. The Villagers kept suspecting and lynching each other; all we had to do was not act too suspicious. We won with no Werewolf casualties! 

There was one more game after that, where I was finally just a Villager. I got quickly killed during the night though, because Cristiano was one of the Werewolves and didn’t want to risk me figuring him out. By then it was already 4.30 am, so it was time to attempt to sleep anyway.

Sunday

After 5 hours of sleep, I woke up half an hour before my own session started. Eek! 

What is the Definition of Geekiness?

I thought I’d do a discussion session following my blog post from last week about how to define geekiness. It went as okay as a session in the early Sunday morning can go. Most people are barely awake (including me) and still flaking out a bit. I did get some people to talk though about the differences between geeks, fans and academics, but most tended to agree with me. Then again most BarCampers do see themselves as geeks, while I think the most contrasting viewpoints come from those that don’t think they’re geeks.

Illustrator for Non-Designers

I’m reasonably proficient in Photoshop, but never took the time to learn a bit about Illustrator. Adam Mills did a quick introduction into the basics of Illustrator, explaining stuff like how the pen tool worked and how the workflow and setup differs from Photoshop. It was really a useful session; I’m thinking I should redesign my blog logo based on what I learnt here. 

Histograms

Cristiano had a second talk explaining photo histograms to newbies and the cool things you can do with them. Most people that showed up though already knew what histograms were (if you don’t, check out his presentation on SlideShare). There were some cool things though, like a image of the New York skyline, of which the histogram was shaped like the New York skyline (some people have too much time on their hands). Next to that, Cristiano created a useful bookmarklet that will generate a histogram for any image within the browser.

Pen and Paper Japanese Puzzles

I love pen and paper puzzles, but I tend to get obsessed with them: once I start one, I have to finish it. This presentation showed 17 newish Japanese puzzles. Most of them I knew already, having played a lot of Brain Buster Puzzle Pak on the Nintendo DS and some puzzle set on the iPhone. There were some new ones in between them though, like Futokoshi and Engima.

Ideas in Typography Related to Experience Design

I met Rebecca Cottrell two weeks ago at the London Girl Geek Dinner anniversary, and she wasn’t looking forward to having to give a BarCamp presentation. Suffice to say, she was surprised when it turned out her session was so popular, we had to move to a larger room. It was an interesting presentation about typography and design, and kicked off some interesting discussions (like typography on mobile). Check out Rebecca’s blog post, it’s worth the read (she’s got her slides on SlideShare and has added her presentation notes).

Geek Yoga

I’m not the healthiest person; I’m not overweight or anything like that, but sitting behind my computer all day, just doesn’t feel too good for my body. But I always thought that yoga would be a bit flaky or spacey, and not something I’d ever do. After this session though I’m completely turned! The instructor Jenny taught us some very basic positions and exercises, focusing on how to breath, move and relax at the same time. I’m definitely going to keep up doing these small things I’ve learnt and (once I’ve got a real job) eventually find a yoga place somewhere here.

Buildering 101

The day ended with an interesting talk from Tantek on buildering. Buildering is the sport of climbing buildings, inside and outside. After a quick presentation (Rule #1: Don’t Die), he proceeded to show some places within the BarCamp venue that were suitable for buildering. That included interrupting another talk, because the walls in that room had gaps in them which worked perfectly as hand and feet grips. I would have loved to try it out myself, but didn’t want to ruin my pretty shoes and dress.

All in all, I had a fantastic two days! I’m looking forward to BarCampLondon5 at Ebay in 3 weeks time. And this time I’m going to present something real!

Episode 82: slash… slash… slash…

Arrr, I love me some pirates:

During our second day in Dorset we went to a couple of cool places. As promised here are more photos:

Hardy’s Monument:

Panorama from the countryside:

Pretty Flowers:

Doggie Woof Woof:

Froggy Ribbit Ribbit:

Lulworth Cove:

Pebbles:

Durdle Door:

Interesting links for August 26th through September 2nd:

• Geek Girl Friday: Darth Vader Nesting Dolls – Awh, these Darth Vader nesting dolls are just so cute! I've always liked the idea of those Russian nesting dolls, but I never liked the design/painting of them (too headachy). But these are sweet!
• Why Me?: Greenpeace – I linked to this artist a while back and how her art is being used as part of a very clever campaign from Greenpeace: "Every signature helps save our seas."
• Roberson's Interminable Ramble – Interesting letter from 1865, where an ex-Tennessee slave, responds to his former master's invitation to return as a laborer on his plantation.
• Codebox Software – How many of the 100 most common words of the English Language do you know? Little game/app that gives you 5 minutes to guess. I got 52 of the 100 (and forgot some pretty simple ones!), what's your score?

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a couple of days now, but I’ve been working on a presentation that was planned for this afternoon, which got cancelled last minute. And that’s ‘last minute’ as in I arrived at the uni, ready to present, only to discover I had travelled down for nothing. Grumble, grumble.

Anywho, last week I got invited to a special guided tour of the ITV London News studio. Now I don’t actually watch the news; I don’t hassle with “normal” TV anymore and most news I find out via the web anyway. I almost declined the invitation for that reason. But the chance to go behind the scenes at a news station? Doesn’t come very often I’d think (not for me at least).

So last Friday (after a good Social Media Cafe) I made my way down to the ITV studios on Gray’s Inn Road. Of course, I managed to be 10 minutes late, but it didn’t matter that much; the first half an hour was for drinks and introductions. (Sidenote: I didn’t take any notes at all, I’m doing most of this based on what I remember. Sorry, if I get any names/titles/facts/etc wrong). I met up in the lobby with Jack, one of the writers on the ITV Local London Blog, and also the person who had invited me. After going upstairs, I met the four other bloggers also there for the tour: Ben Locker, Ludovic from Richmond Transits, The Brinkster and Rob from About Mayfair. We got introduced to a bunch of people from ITV Local London branch (Juliette, Casey, Colin and two others who’s names I’ve forgotten, sorry!) and then started with the tour.

We first had a quick look around of the ITV Local offices, where most of the (web) content was taken care of. After that we hopped over to the building next door, the ITN headquarters, where both the ITV national news and the local news is recorded. We first got to see the newsroom, where all the news is collected and edited into editorials. The desks are arranged here as circles within circles, all centering around one active point (called the hub or the pit). Half of the room was for the national news, while the other half was for the local news. I have to mention the monitor set-up here (cuz me wantz!): most desks had 3-4 monitors, some with an extra 3 smaller monitors stacked vertically above each other, all displaying a different news channel. Yes, this was the place where news was made. 

The editor of the London Tonight News, Stuart Thomas, then took some time to explain what he was doing. With the help of some special news software (it was called something like NewsEdit), he was working on one of the editorials for the program that night about surfing dogs. The funny subject matter aside, it looked very similar to Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere, where you can select the parts of film you want and add a separate audio track to it. Besides that, he could see (and edit) the schedule of the program that night, including which news items weren’t finished yet and which were live on location.

We then got a quick look at the London Tonight studio. It look exactly like on TV: comfy couch, grey interior and a big LCD screen with a view of London. The national news studio, on the other hand, is completely green screen. Okay, the desks, chairs and people are real… but everything else? Green screen. The first thing I noticed when entering that studio were the dozens and dozens of target-like plates hanging from the ceiling (I wish I was allowed to take a picture of that). The idea is that every camera uses these targets (by pointing a laser, I presume) to determine it’s location and thereby determining how the virtual news room should be correctly mapped onto the image it’s recording. Pretty nifty, right?

The highlight of my visit though had to be sitting in the gallery, seeing the news being “put together” live. We arrived there before the actual broadcast to see the presenters (Alastair Stewart and Salma Siraj) record some smaller voiceover bits which would be used later on. I’m not sure if they were putting on a show for us bloggers, or if it was because of the last-day-of-the-week syndrome that is Friday, or if they’re always like that, but both Alastair and Salma were cracking jokes and giggling while they were off-air. The moment they started to record though: pure professionals. Brilliance!

Then we got to the actual broadcast. During this, there were 5 people at the control panel: the director, who operates the video switcher and selects/controls/mixes all the elements of the show; the audio technician, who is in charge of the audio (duh), microphones and music; a production assistant, who takes care of the autocue; the editor, who makes sure all there are no problems with the editorials, and a fifth person (not sure anymore what they called her, for now I’ll refer to her as the timer, for lack of a better word) who makes sure the timing within the overall half slot is perfect. This last task is what makes a broadcasting so hectic: they’re given a half an hour time slot and it has to be exactly half an hour. Not a minute longer, not a minute shorter. Exactly half an hour. Throughout the broadcast an estimate of the end time is given with “plus” and “minus” indicating “over” and “under” time. 

You’d think the presenters “only” have to read off the autocue, but they’re doing so much more. During the broadcasting, the director and the timer are both giving directions through their earpiece. I don’t know about you, but could you read out something aloud, while you’re listening to something else? I couldn’t. Then when they’re a minute over, they have to speed up another segment, without it being too obvious to the viewer. And it’s even more difficult, when they’re a minute under; they have to start ad libbing bits. Another cool bit was the live report, where you saw the reporter getting ready on location. What made it even better for me, was that “on-location” was my local bus garage; I was just there that morning! From all the places a live report could have been, it was a place I knew (okay, okay, there was a strike and that’s a pretty big bus garage, but still).  

After our stint in the gallery, some time was reserved to blog about the tour, which would be followed by drinks at the pub. It was a friend’s birthday party though, so I had to leave earlier than all the others. All in all, it was a great day. This experience really has given me much more appreciation of everybody involved in putting the news on our telly. Thanks, ITV Local for inviting me!

You’d think I’d have more interesting pics to show, huh? I’m still messing around with Cristiano’s DSLR and I didn’t realize (well, I did realize there was something not right, but couldn’t figure out what) that the ISO was way too high. So almost all my photos were grainy and yucky. Must. Read. Manual.