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Hit the ground running (waking up in Web 2.0)
There was a time when you would wake up and it’s only half an hour later that the world around you would be clearly visible. In today’s web 2.0 world you wake up and twenty other people are wishing each other good morning. Many are celebrating that it’ Friday and others have pathetic status messages about 40 days of celibacy, about being overworked and all those other messages.
Of course everyone has the right to their feelings and to their own experiences but as certain individuals spend more and more time online they notice these status messages and trends and get really tired. Look at the level of media saturation about the McCann story. I muted a podcast for mentioning the story. Careless parents lost their daughter, end of story. It’s not worth as much airtime as it’s been given.
Then there’s the “back from the dead media coverage” that gets just as tiring. If a royal driving a car doesn’t wear her seat belt and dies as a result of a crash then she should not be idolised in the way people have done. It should have been an opportunity to promote the use of seatbelts to avoid repeat deaths in such a manner.
Then there’s the enthusiast’s oversaturation of the media. In particular I’m thinking of the Iphone. Of course it’s a beautiful new interface, of course it’s ushered in the fully screen tactile device but for anyone outside the US the media saturation has become too much. If you’re an active consumer of new media news then there’s a good chance you would have read several thousand articles boasting about how great it was. As a result a lot of people got media burn out from the story. It’s only as a result of getting an ipod touch that I can tolerate those stories once more.
The 30 minute news round up in the evening preceeded by the daily newspaper has been followed by an era of instant access to news stories once they have been written. What this means is that for ardent consumers of new media it is easy to reach a burn out/saturation point. we, as new media consumers must be careful not to read about single topics so much that we are unable to hear about specific topics anymore.
A Short Run After Two Walks with Hiking Sticks
In the last three days I have been for two walks with hiking sticks and a short run. On Sunday the walk was a ten kilometre loop that took me across several villages. During the walk I noticed that a barn’s roof was generating about 8000 watts of energy despite the day being overcast. If more farmers placed solar panels on their roofs we would have less need for high tension lines across the entirety of Europe ruining natural landscapes as power distribution would be local.
A short Run
I ran just 2.5km before walking the rest of the way. I wasn’t using the 105 CHF On Running cyclon shoes as I need to return those. Instead I was running with the 110 CHF trail glove shoes. I ran a short distance because I haven’t been running for a while so I don’t want to overload my system. I also wanted to make sure that I didn’t feel that my heels had hit the ground too harshly.
Interval Training
I walked for five minutes and then I ran for one minute, and then I ran for one minute, and then I walked for a minute, and then I ran until the bottom of a slope and then I walked up the other side, and then I ran for the flat bit up to the tunnel and then I stopped the running track. I could have been more ambitious but it’s easy to fall into the trap of pushing more than we need to, just for it to look normal or good on strava, Garmin or other places. I am a walker, not a runner. I can walk one and a half hours to two hours per day, every single day, with ease.
I could get to that level of fitness with running but at the moment I need to work on building a good base, and then I can push further. It’s also a way of breaking the walking routine. if I run I can go out for a shorter period of time but get a better cardio workout.
Not Quite Nordic Walking
I started walking with hiking sticks, first because I have a minimal shield if unleashed dogs decide to attack me again, and secondly because it uses my upper body. By the end of the walk on Sunday I could feel that some arm muscles were not used enough in normal walking.
It’s amusing to look at cadence when walking with hiking sticks because for a big portion of the walk my steps per minute was zero. When I use walking sticks I make them long. I take two to three steps between stick movements so it counts as if I am either not walking, or taking a third as many steps as normal. That’s why my step count after a 10km walk is just 8000 for the whole day, rather than 17,000 as it would have been if the step counter had been in a pocket or somewhere else.
And Finally
For the first time in a while I went for a walk without a bag. Usually I always have a bag with me, whether it’s empty, which it usually is, or not. I don’t know whether it impacts my running comfort but I will try to run without a bag for a few runs, to see if I feel a change.
Foursquare and evolving electronic social meetings
We’ve all got smartphones. Some of us are using Nokia, Â others are using blackberries and yet more are using Android and Iphones. As a result when we interact with people we are not interacting with them from a desk somewhere in a building. We’re interacting with them from the middle of the street or on public transport.
As the shift from computers to mobile devices gains momentum we will be meeting more and more people this way. For the past decade it was reserved to geeks through many different sites. At first it was all about protecting your identity and being anonymous. That changed. From Geocities, through myspace and to facebook we have grown more accustomed to sharing more personal information about who we are and where we hang out. As a result of this increasing familiarity, and as more people grow to understand the advantages and pitfalls of online interaction so a new type of activity is taking form.
From twitter where avatars were used to facebook where profile pictures are used our digital identity has evolved, become more open, and more open. On twitter we used to use avatars but more and more people use pictures of themselves. As a result of this the level of trust has improved.
That’s where brightkyte and other websites are starting to become the norm. Recently I have been using Foursquare. I can follow as more and more people locally, in Geneva check in to different places. If I’m at Geneva airport for example I check in and I can see who else has checked in at this location. It’s an international location so there is a good chance of not meeting people there. In other locations though, as more people from our physical group of friends, and by this I mean non geeks, use these services so they gain relevance for “normal people”.
Mix this in with the Iphone and the ease of use of the mobile apps we have some interesting new tools and services by which to meet new people. If I go to Les Brasseurs in Lausanne, Geneva or Nyon so I see who else has been there and could decide to meet them and see whether we enjoy their company when meeting face to face.
Foursquare has a feature that I find interesting, we can share our phone number with those whom we trust to be friends and so we can exchange a few messages before meeting them in person, building trust and assessing the character of the person before meeting. Over a period of a few weeks as trust builds up so we can discuss whether to meet in person.
For those of you reading this on my blog the idea is old. You’ve already been to 20 tuttles, tweetups, seesmeetups and other events and you’re a veteran of this type of meetup. For others, who are more used to glocals and facebook though the idea is relatively new. You might feel uncomfortable about this way of doing things. To you I say one thing. As more of your friends use these services, and as your network of trusted friends grows on these services grow so your motivation will grow to meet others.
Take the frontline club in London as a case example. If I went there once and checked in only that time, never to come back then you would know not be so inclined to see about meeting me. If you see someone else checks in often to this place then your motivation to meet them may increase. As a result of several people checking in to that same location a number of times so the cluster of people may increase and become more important.
As an example think of the independent cinemas that may be close to where you live, the City in Pully in Lausanne. As four or five people check in more often and through the common interest finally you may decide to meet.
The key advantage of services like foursquare is that these sites are local. That is to say that you are kept aware of what those around you are doing. You are not inundated by the irrelevance of what the international community are doing but rather the local. The benefit of such services is they are providing you with local more relevant people to meet, without the effect of isolation that other types of services may make you feel.
The drawback of services like twitter is that you are given a lot of irrelevant information. You don’t need to know who chats with who, what they are doing. Instead you simply see where they’ve been and how often. That’s where the relevance of the badges and mayorships come in. For different type of activities so you get a unique type of badge. If you check into a gym for example, you acquire the gym rat badge. It is unlocked for going to a venue with the tag gym. If you go ten times in a month, so people will know that you enjoy going to the gym. As other badges are created, for going to the cinema or the pub so you can see which people are most active in those forms of activities, hence learning of the relevance of their interest in similar activities.
This is not a dating site, and it’s not a place for geeks. Unlike yelp and trustedplaces you do not need to give your opinion of the venue, it’s a three second “this is where I am and this is how many times I’ve been there” type statement. As the number of users increases so the opportunities to meet people with similar habits increases.
Of course you can add tips and what to do at these locations, which others can see. As different types of personalities go to different places so the recommendations will increase. As you see what people recommend you do, at different times of the year so the wealth of ideas will increase.
The foursquare app on the mobile phone allows you to arrive in a place you have not visited, click on what’s near me, see what venues are already in the database, see what people recommend you do and for you to go to those places and add yourself to those places and acknowledging that you have done what others have suggested. It’s an interesting idea that will come of age within the next few months as more and more users pick up these new habits on sharing local information and experiences. This is in effect part of the social medial lifestyle that some of us have been discussing for a number of years by now.
Back to Solitude
Lost Streaks
On Saturday I drove for twelve and a half hours and felt exhausted by the time I got home. I didn’t write a blog post so I lost my 480 day blogging streak, and I didn’t read using the Kindle app so I lost my Kindle reading streak. In the end losing such streaks is healthy.
Kindle Streak
The problem with the Kindle reading streak is that it encourages us to read a page or two every single day, but that may result in us reading just a page or two, rather than a chapter or two. The other issue is that my reading streak is intact, in that I read an entire book while driving. I read Nowhere for Very Long, as an audiobook. It’s a shame that the book isn’t more focused on travel and adventure. I still read it in a day. I think it could have explored the pleasure, rather than the trauma that led to having that life.
Blogging Streak
With the blogging streak I think that it’s healthy to take a break from writing daily, because life isn’t that interesting. it doesn’t require a post every single day. It’s easy for posts to become spam, or boring, if we write every day. It also encourages us to be more negative, eventually. By taking a break we recharge, and we return to writing about positive things.
Free Once More
By breaking streaks I often feel a sense of freedom. A streak requires something to be done consistently and the further you get into a streak, the more difficult it is to reach a new record if you break it. I need to blog for 481 days to break my previous streak and read from a kindle for 281 days in a row.
The thing is that I don’t want to read books exclusively on my kindle. I want to read Kobo, Google Books, Kindle and Audible and have all of them count towards the streak, without it being propietary. There are several reading apps that keep track of streaks. With these the important thing is to read and log daily.
I have plenty of physical books. Now that I have broken my kindle streak I can read them. I can revert to reading a book in bed and lying down, and dropping the book onto my face as I try to turn the page. I collected so many books in physical form that I ran out of space on my shelves and now I need to read them, and place them in reading libraries once more.
And Finally
Breaking streaks is a good thing. Streaks are a sign of being in a rut. If we break a walking streak, or a blogging streak, or a reading streak it shows that our lives vary from day to day, or week to week. It shows that we have other things to do than keep routines. Years ago said that diving was a break from routine. That person has dived almost every week for a decade or more. That break from the routine is in and of itself a routine. My reading routine is intact. I just broke the shackles of having a Kindle centric reading routine.