Interviewed today by Rajesh Mirchandani at home for the new BBC Radio 4 Click On technology magasine programme. Spent alomost two hours talking to him, the whole thing recorded onto a Minidisk recorder. The microphone was bigger than the recorder. Wonderful. All very informal but I hate to think what it sounds like. Assuming they use them my first contribution on the Connected Home goes out at 9pm Wed 7th Feb, and a second on Second Life a week later.
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BFI | Film & TV Info | Film & TV Database
A rival for iMDB? Many happy memories of tike spent at the BFI when I was a student in LOndon:
- people throwing up at a screening of Christiane F (when she tattoos herself with ink and a bloody nedle)
- people walking out of Peter Greenaways The Falls because they couldn't make sense of 100(?) 2 minute(?) interviews with people whose name begins Fall...
- the wonderful first re-screening of Abel Gance's Napoleon - a great silent classic with real orchestra and some sections shot in triptych.
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0000 - 0300, but by the wonders of Listen Again I can listen to Janice Long's show as I work.
And of course it's like having our own local Moseley radio show, even the Bulls Head got a mention today as the show is recorded at the Mailbox in Birmingham and Janice lives near/in Moseley.
A worthy successor to Jane Gazzo as a DJ who is easy and fun to listen to, and who plays a good blend of the best modern music and 80s classics.
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WTA-SL DISCUSSION JANUARY 2007
If you could upload a digital copy of yourself into SL, would you?"
- Pity I missed this, that's the downside of working in SL you don't get as much time to do the fun things.
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Street-fighting robot challenge announced - tech - 24 January 2007 - New Scientist Tech
Here comes the Terminator...
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The BBC is apparently setting up a virtual world for kids using the Larian Studios - KetnetKick engine. Doesn't look like it will push the envelope any further. Pity.
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A book of neverending suprises. Easily his best book. Far better than JPod, or even Microserfs.
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For Deborah's birthday I decided to hire a Segway for the day. It just so happens that the UK distributor for Segway is based in Matlock, just 20 mins way from our cottage. Even better Cromford Meadows just outside Matlock Bath was the ideal place to play around with the all-terrain version of the Segway.
We had an excellent afternoon, and even invited some local friends to join us. We all decided that hiring a Segway is a must for several other birthdays coming up this year. Bombing across the grass at 12 mph, herding sheep and splashing through puddles on a Segway is just great fun. Everybody learnt how to use it in about a minute, it's so intuitive. Nobody fell off, and everybody ended their turn with a big smile on their face and a plea to do it again.
(click on each image above and below for a small mp4 video)
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Went to the most wonderful nu-folk gig at the Glee Club organised by the Contemporary Music Network. There were 4 bands/artists, Adem, Vetiver, Vashti Bunyan & band and Juana Molina.
Unlike most gigs which would put them on one after another here the 4 bands shared the stage for almost the whole time, helping out on each others songs. Superb. The only exception, but also wonderful, was Juana who played on her own, but used a sampler to build up each line of the song, playing against numerous loops of herself.
There's lot of music samples at the relevant sites, and someone has posted video of the gig to YouTube.
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Joost - there's a lot of buzz about this - a new interactive TV platform on the web. Sounds close to an idea I've been mulling over for a while about being able to build my own media channel from existing output plus stuff I might like, a cross between last.fm and deli.ci.ous ( and a bit like Wired's random Web 2.0 idea generator!)
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Wonderful resource for CC licensed sounds and sound effects
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Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | 2006: a vintage year for ideas that will change our world
Great article by Will Hutton. The highlights:
- YouTube and the new web community, aka Web 2.0 and including Second Life
- Immortality is on its way, with a nod to Ray Kurzweil
- Happiness is what counts, well-being not well-off
- We're Interdependent stupid - even the US is beginning to realise that
- None of this matters if we fry - An Inconvenient Truth
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The favourite sport for the New Year appears to be trying to work out how big SL will be by the end of 2007. Banana Stein on the Goddess and Banana podcast talked about 10m users and 100,000 concurrent by year end (that should keep Linden Labs busy buying servers - assuming the architecture scales which some seem to doubt.
Tristan Lewis reckons that SL could be at 3.5m-9.6m by end April with an average of 7.3m. What is interesting is that although he made his estimate on 5 Jan 07 SL is ALREADY outstripping his forecast!
The number that really gets me is the in-world economy. SL appears to be running on a nice 100/50/1 ratio, ie for every 100 thousand users there are 50 thousand $ being spent a day and 1 thousand concurrent users. On that basis 10m users would mean $5m a day being spent in world, that is $1.8bn equivalent annually.
To me 10m sounds about right. Even that will make it bigger than World of Warcraft. The chances are the competitors (Multiverse) won't get seriously going by year end, so SL will be making all the running.
Of course the real way to predict this is by S curve. But is the S curve for SL, for virtual worlds of this generation, for worlds as consumer environments or as business environments. And when did the curve start, in 1995/6 with the first web based VR spaces, or 2003 when SL opened? And when does the curve finish - when the worlds have hoovered up the current Virtual World inclined users, or when the 2D Internet and 3D internet merge?
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Kevin Kelly is a board member of The Long Now Foundation, well connected and well respected.
His blog covers various futurist issues - Technium.
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BBC News Maps - powered by backstage.bbc.co.uk
Same architecture as our NewsGlobe and Bird Flu maps.
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Watching the season finale (twice) last night I was struck by the Christian imagery that Russell T Davies was piling on - intentionally? Owen as Judas, Jack as the Son, waiting only for his Father (Dr Who) who forsook him both when he attacked the monster and when he failed to tempt him, The Tardis as the Holy Ghost (the spirit that brought Jack back to life the first time), then the resurrection of Jack after Gwen has been watching over him, the reunion with the team members (the disciples), and then the coming of the wind (the spirit/tardis/Dr Who/God) to take him away, leaving the disciples alone.
Stunning finale and an excellent series. Can't wait for Series 2.
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A very wet New Years Day walk along the Miners Track from Glan Dena to the Pen Y Gwrd Hotel. We started in the rain, the rain turned to hail as we walked up under Tryfan, then turned to snow as we crossed the Glyders (just enough to make snowballs with), then turned to hail as we descended, and finally rain as we got the the PYG. Luckily a glass of hot mulled wine was waiting!
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