GoPro: Alana and Monyca – Two Of A Kind

Byrichard
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No need for a camera operator when filming something like this. Self shot works as well. Not as deceptive as yesterday’s video.

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TweetCamp

Byrichard

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.

Gutenburg WordPress plugin
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Gutenburg WordPress plugin

Byrichard

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” 



A few weeks ago a
Gutenburg Press was brought to the Palais
wilson and we had the opportunity to experiment with printing our own Universal Declaration of Human rights as part of the UDHR 70 event. In Gutenberg’s day you would have to typeset every letter character by character but for the sake of
speed we just had two slates as you see above. One version was in French and the second one was in English. It made duplicating a single page instant. 



Working with blocks speeds up the process of formatting posts because it allows for you to write each paragraph as a block of text and to insert images with ease.



As
twitter becomes more like a blog and as attention swings away from Facebook it is the perfect time for a project like Wordpress to diversify
it’s audience. As we have seen on the Wordpress.org front page they power 29 percent of websites. 



I would love to see us move back towards having websites, blogs and user-owned websites. I want to go back to when people enjoyed writing and sharing content without competing with hundreds of others. The beauty of a blog, as opposed to a Facebook, Linkedin or other posts, is that it can be multimedia rich. We can add images anywhere in the post and we can write information about them. We can share multiple videos at once and more



Using this plugin is a pleasure because everything you do is context sensitive. When you create a block you see what options you have. The tools you need appear when you need them as a result of which the experience is much cleaner. You can see the content you’re working on, rather than the tools. Writing software push that as a feature and now it will become a feature of Wordpress as standard.


I look forward to Writing many more posts with this plugin. 

Migrating Away From Facebook

Byrichard

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. 


During this time articles have been written detailing privacy and the threat that social networks pose. I have seen very few, if any articles looking at people and how easily misled they have been. I see very few articles exploring the issues surrounding how such a large portion of the population is susceptible to being misled. 


The events of the last week are a perfect demonstration of the Manufacturing of Consent that Noam Chomsky wrote about in his books and discussed at his lectures. He spoke about looking at the dominant headlines and looking at what was ignored. He spoke about taking an active look at what is being said and by whom. In theory, the very people that were misled by the manipulation are the people that would have been seduced by his rhetoric. 


What I really want to see, is a shift away from websites like Facebook towards blogs and online communities where users interacting with each other are not manipulated by algorithms. I want to go back to an age where web forums, chronological timelines and more, are the norm. Facebook experimented with emotions in timelines a few years ago, now they have allowed companies to syphon off data and most importantly they are being accused of helping aggravate the situation in places like Myanmar.


The best way to hurt a company like Facebook is not to delete your account. It is for them to lose your eyeballs. It is for you to stop using the site, to start using others, and to reduce their income. If they want to treat us like a commodity then we can return the favour. We can use them fleetingly. 

Day 35 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – A Hike To La Barillette.

Day 35 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – A Hike To La Barillette.

Byrichard

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.





The road to the top is currently closed to cars but sneaky motorbikes and cyclists can still head up the mountain. Plenty of cars were parked along the road by the first barrier. Instinctively I expected that we would see plenty of people walking up and down the road to La Dole but that wasn’t the case. The road was busy with cyclists.


Groups of up to five cyclists at a time headed up to the mountain. Some looked comfortable heading up, others looked okay, and some looked to be making an effort. I was surprised to see one person riding up that hill on a tandem and to see someone else ride up the hill on an electric bike pulling a child’s trailer. I couldn’t see a child in either the child seat or the trailer but that’s still quite a bit of extra weight to get up a mountain. Although that’s a nice distraction it isn’t the reason for this blog post.


Self-isolation means that we have to keep distant from other people but walking along paths with high traffic makes that complicated. For those with a little more energy and a lot of time the solution is to walk from the base of the Jura to the top. Initially the plan was to go up via the road but my curiousity got the better of me so I checked on Komoot to see whether I could take a side road up to the top and when I saw that this was possible I took advantage.





You follow the yellow and the Red and blue markers. We took one wrong turn so we had to scramble through some underbrush and climb up an even steeper incline. At least two or three trees have fallen across the path but they can all be avoided by going either side of them.


Hiking To La Dole


The trail is not used as frequently as others so navigation can sometimes be more challenging. It’s good to have some previous experience of navigating in this type of landscape. There are no sign posts and the red and blue and yellow markings are irregular. Without Komoot I would have explored more. I know that the aim is to reach the top, so from that aspect the goal is simple, but you could spend time wandering around without getting where you want to be.


Hiking To La Dole


During the walk you go from paths that are wide enough for cars to drive along where orienteering is easy to narrower paths where navigation is hard.


Hiking To La Dole


In Summer, when the restaurant is open this would be a good variant. I would have enjoyed having a fondue or Entrecôte at the top. As it so happens that’s my dinner, but prepared by myself rather than someone else.


Hiking To La Dole


Hiking To La Dole


For people who love flowers now is the ideal time to go up. You see plenty of these flowers growing in patches all over the top of the mountain. You need to go just as the snow finishes melting to see them at their best.


Less worried about the Virus.


By meeting up with someone to do an activity I went against my self-isolation rules. Two weeks ago when I was asked if I wanted to go for a bike ride I flatly said no. Now that the virus appears to be on the decline and that the number of cases is dropping I am being less aggressive about my self-isolation. I still give as much distance between myself and others. We also met using two scooters, rather than catching the same car. When I was asked if I wanted to stop for a coffee I had to say no.


People were having a big song and dance about how we shouldn’t call it social distancing because social distancing has negative connotations. Today I wanted to say yes, and I wanted to get back to normal but I couldn’t because the rules are still in place and we’re not in the clear yet. Let me point out that this is day 35 of not having a conversation within normal conversation distance, or of a handshake or a hug. It would be nice to be able to say yes to all of these things.


People, in big families, will never understand what living through a pandemic, is like for people living alone.When we get the green light to meet people again we should celebrate, not by going to a bar but by going on a hike.


That’s it for today.

MobileRSS for the Iphone

Byrichard

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

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4K video and mobile phones

Byrichard

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.

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