Newsgator on the ipod touch

twitter

Twitter’s broken again

Byrichard 31 March 200831 March 2008

Yes, it’s happened yet again, twitter is broken again but in an entirely new way. At first it appeared that twitter had crashed in the old way, that is to say no server response. This time is different though. We’ve got the WML website version showing. The mobile version is now on the web version.

Does this mean we’ll see the replies tab on twitter mobile? I really hope so. I want to see how people respond, no point in tweeting if you’re not listening.

Thanks twitter, for finding yet another interesting way in which to break.

—update— nothing broke, same crap mobile interface as always.

social media | social media living room | social networking

Mastodon has Eight Million Accounts Today

Byrichard 3 December 20223 December 2022

Mastodon has reached eight million accounts today. That’s close to the population of Switzerland and two million less than London. Mastodon is growing because it was ready to scale up at the right time. As Musk and Twitter shift towards the Right, and as Musk perpetuates conspiracy theories, on a daily basis, so he prepares the idea conditions for other social networks and opportunities to thrive.

As Twitter loses users, and engagement so other social networks are more likely to thrive. Every day I check on Twitter, and every day I am repulsed by what he is sharing. Every day I feel that I should abandon Twitter. I don’t, for now, for a simple reason. On twitter there are conversations to be had twenty four hours a day, whereas on Mastodon, you have to wait for people to show up. That wait is a good reason to do other things, like return to Twitter.

What I am waiting for, impatiently is for enough people to leave Twitter for Mastodon, for Mastodon to be entertaining at all times, without long moments of silence. I am not convinced that Mastodon will be the ideal Twitter replacement. For now it is a curiousity that has the ability to scale up as required, within the current requirements.

Mastodon is to “microblogging” what WordPress is to blogging. It’s a way to create an instance of a service which you can either use in solitude, and yet access what others are discussing, or a way of having a small personal community. We’re used to syndicated blogs. The fediverse is almost the same, but goes by the name “federated”. In both cases it’s spread across servers, more flexible, more adaptive to demand, and easier to sustain. Wordpress and other content management systems could be written to take advantage of this distributed networks of communities.

That’s it for today.

Social Media Deontology | social media living room

Whether Or Not To Tweet

Byrichard 9 October 20219 October 2021

Sometimes we have to ask whether or not to tweet. We have to ask this question because social media is seen by many, in common culture, as an addiction. Everything that is perceived negatively by society suffers, whether justifiably or not. The same is true of cyclists.

In Switzerland there is an ad campaign that says that cyclists are responsible for half of accidents involving them. The truth is that sixty eight percent of accidents involving cyclists are caused by cars. That’s two thirds of accidents. This means that without cars, cyclists would have one third of the current number of accidents. The discourse needs to change, to favour cyclists, not to vilify them.

The same is true of social media. Since the 90s people have said the world wide web is bad, social networks are bad, you don’t know who you’re talking to and more. In the end advertisers and investors seem to be the greatest danger that web users face. Social networks are made, or broken, by the people who take control, and take a conversational social network, into a revenue stream flooded with adverts. YouTube and Instagram are prime examples of this. Facebook is another.

The problem with social media websites is that they see advertisers as the clients, rather than users. Instagram was a nice social network, until Facebook bought it. It was usable until ads were added after every fourth post. I then left. The community went from friends sharing with friends to strangers sharing with strangers for memes. The personal aspect was destroyed.

People like to ask questions like “Are drugs worse, or FaceBook, and although it may seem like innocent fun it isn’t. There is a cultural expectation that social media is bad, so people do not invest themselves as they would, if not for the negative perception.

We are in the middle of a pandemic that we know is airborne. We know that masks, hepa filters, air flow and open windows are open. Despite this we do not stigmatise people for not doing everything they know will minimise risk, to socialise. If you’re an extrovert during a pandemic, risking infection every weekend, no one questions it.

If you’re an introvert on social networks the question “am I an addict” is repeated over and over.

I could go on, but at the end of the day Social media, and social networks, should be about like minded people connecting to have conversations online, before meeting in person and doing sports, working on projects or more. The race to followers and likes, completely nullifies the appeal of personal conversations that lead to long-lasting friendships. It is a shame. I have been discussing this for decades now.

observation | social networking | Via Ferrata

The Roche Au Dade Via Ferrata

Byrichard 15 April 2024

Two days ago I was agonising about whether to go for a via ferrata(VF) or a hike. Eventually I decided that I would go for the hike, because hiking was an 18 minute drive away. I went for a walk/run and then I found that I had a burning desire to do the via ferrata. I went down to the cave and rummaged through to find various bits and pieces. I found my Grigri, climbing rope, harnesses and more. I also found that I had a tandem speed which I considered using.

It’s amusing. I had a real, deep, burning passion to do the Via Ferrata. I had forgotten how it feels to prepare for something that is potentially dangerous, but in reality very safe, if you follow the rules and regulations of the sport. It’s fun to consider whether to use the brand new VF set or to use the slightly older set. My slightly older set might have been used on one or two VF before I broke my arm and stopped climbing from 2019-2024 or so.

When I was walking along the port’s high wall in Javea in 2001 or so I felt scared at being three or four meters in height, compared to the road beneath. I questioned how I would cope with the heights that we encounter on a VF. I hoped that I would not be scared of heights again.

Luckily Via Ferrata is something you don’t forget. I found that all of my old Via Ferrata habits were still there. The habit of keeping arms straight, of resting when required, of taking pictures, of day dreaming and of patiently waiting for the rest of the group. At one or two points I was asked “why are you waiting” and the answer is simple. If I went at my speed the one and a half hour VF would take fourty five minutes. I have done VFs every weekend every summer for years so I am perfectly at home on VFs.

I was so “at home” that I took 72 photos during the VF.

The one challenge I faced was keeping the phone safe. I would have taken more photos but my key concern was dropping the phone if I slipped or lost my balance. I didn’t have as much flexibility to take photos as I would have liked. I need to find a system that gives me that flexibility. When I was doing VF all the time I had a strap so that if I dropped a camera it would drop less than a meter. Yesterday I was taking a risk every time I took photos.

In the past, when doing Via ferrata regularly, I have smashed one or two cameras to bits as they hit the rocks, over and over again. The best solution might be to use the Garmin virb.

About the Via Ferata Itself

The Roche au Dade Via Ferrata is about 45 minutes from Nyon. It is located in the valley that you pass by as you drive from Switzerland to England and vice versa. You get off the main road, drive through the village and head to a small simple parking. There are three or four routes that you can take. You have an introductory VF that takes you across several bridges. You also have the option of just going to do the zipline. There are two of them but for the second one you need to be more experienced to get to it.

For the most part I would class the VFs as easy but that’s with years of VF experience. There is one bit on the classic route that I think people should be wary of. It’s the vertical climb after the last monkey bridge because it is more vertical and physical than the other parts. This is where people might struggle if they are not prepared.

I like that there are three or four routes to enjoy because you can spend more than fourty five minutes here. You also have a picnick table. You can climb one part, get back down, have a snack or drink and do the other parts.

As you can see from the featured photo the via ferrata is right on the road, as is the parking so access time is quick.

And Finally

In the end I’m happy that I chose to climb with the Via Ferrata group rather than hike with the hiking group. One of the advantages of doing something with a smaller group is that you get to know the people better. I definitely want to do more activities with this group and I’m happy that we ended the day with a drink before driving home. I think that “end of activity” drinks, even if it’s orangina, are important.

fun | Post-university life | social networking

Learning more about Dziga Vertov and his views on cinema

Byrichard 2 November 2007

Dziga Vertov is an interesting personality because of his ideas of the Cinema eye. His notion was that with the cinema eye, the Kino Glaz you could capture life unawares whilst being involved in the creative treatment of actuality. After making some quick money by answering some social networking questions I dropped by the apple store only to find that computer games are far too expensive for what they are. I dropped down via the usual streets and got to waterstone’s.

There is a small documentary section which I have visited on numerous occasions in the past and today I found an interesting book. It’s Dziga Vertov – Defining Documentary Film by Jeremy Hicks. It’s a translation of some of Vertov’s key texts so that the non russian speaking audience may understand his ideas more clearly. I only got as far as reading the introduction but I hope that through the reading of this book I may get some new views and opinions on the current media landscape.

social media | tech related

An e-book morning

Byrichard 25 February 201825 February 2018

This morning rather than use the phone, check twitter, look at Facebook, or look at Instagram I took one of my two e-book readers. I have a Kobo and a Kindle device. I have both because I don’t want to lose all of my books if one company goes out of business.

Twitter and Facebook are filled with pushed content that we are not interested in. When we’re browsing our timelines it used to be to see what friends were doing or thinking about. For months now it has been re-shares and other impersonal content.

Twitter recently expanded the character limit and with this move, they also added threading, things that we had right from the start with Jaiku. I wouldn’t mind threading if it was designed in the way that forums had threading. Instead of writing a threaded tweet sequence why not take fifteen minutes to half an hour and write a blog post? With a blog post, you immediately say “I want to be verbose about what I’m thinking about”. It is also an opportunity for us to take back our right to the content we create because the adverts beside our content generate revenue for us.

Instagram is the latest “social network” to increase the amount of noise we get in our streams. They show images from strangers and companies instead of content from our friends. They also start to push hashtags to encourage us to follow topics rather than acquaintances.

Facebook,
twitter, Instagram and other social networks, by encouraging the mass following of certain accounts and individuals are turning a social medium
in to a broadcast medium,
in to a passive medium. By making social networks passive, rather than active, they are turning social networks into books, newspaper articles and radio.

The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) that we felt in the past has been replaced by NAGO. ;-). We’re being nagged to follow specific accounts. Specific accounts post the same content in the morning and the afternoon, sometimes multiple days in a row. In so doing we have no compulsion to check our feeds.

We can dedicate hours to reading a book without interruption. We can leave aside our mobile phones and pick up the e-reader knowing that we are not missing out by not checking our feeds.

Twitter’s broken again

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About the Via Ferata Itself

And Finally

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