2011 Archives

Year: 2011 (page 3 of 4)

Keggfest 2011

12 May 2011 | |[P]| | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 1 Comment

Last year saw Keggfest’s triumphant return after a few year’s post-uni hiatus. This year’s successful continuation finds it firmly entrenching itself once more in the annual calendar. We had a great turn-out despite battling a last-minute date-change and signalling problems between Cambridge and London which left some guests stranded literally on the wrong side of the tracks.

The freely flowing chocolate and wine combination was as successful a formula as ever, while other activities including the traditional keggstacking as well as chocolate bunny mutilation, led by Angie wielding a hot knife like a crazed surgeon. I think it can be said that Irina was less than impressed.

As Keggfest continues to expand beyond its initial confines in Downing (Keggfest’s name is derived from K-Bar, the bar in my room, situated in K staircase in the first and third years) we had several new “firsts”. Since I share a flat with her, I had always expected Anna to be the first attendee from the Other Place. As she missed last year’s and was late this year, she was surprisingly beaten to that honour by Fifi who is now PhD-ing there. Scott was our first transatlantic guest, so there’s no excuse for those of you Stateside not to make it next year when we throw open wider invitations! Finally, a well-deserved shout-out to Dave who came the greatest distance on the day, travelling over from Northern Ireland after impulse-buying a flight at Tom and Lyds’ wedding the weekend before (yes, there will be photos soon…).

Here’s a handful of photos for those who missed out.

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The Professional

I have been impressed with the Philips vacuum cleaner I’ve had for a couple of years now, but with great suction comes great responsibility. Specifically, the responsibility of cleaning out its ridged star-shaped filter which becomes so densely packed with fine dust that the brush-based cleaning process can easily turn the surrounding area into something resembling an eerie grey-coated post-apocalyptic set. After nearly coughing up a lung last time, it’s fair to say I was questioning the sanity of this system. A few days later I finally decided that I do, in fact, live in the future. Accordingly, I was able to justify a purchase I had been toying with for some time: my first robot.

My long-standing desire for one of iRobot‘s Roombas was partly as an automated cleaning drone and partly as a pet (albeit one that picks up hair rather than shedding it). Because who doesn’t like watching TV and occasionally lifting their feet as their loveable friend scampers past? My disappointment was palpable when Sony cancelled production of the AIBO, its expensive robot dog aimed (one presumed) at Japanese executives, just before I started a job in which I could afford one. While they are still around, I suspect maintenance costs will soon become more astronomical that vetinary bills. Science fiction has long wondered whether humans will be able to accept robots into their lives but I think it’s simply a question of how young the concept is introduced as Japan is showing. As an avid sci-fi reader when a child, I am not only comfortable with the concept; I welcome it.

I ordered the latest Roomba 581 model which arrived within a few days. Selecting a name was a difficult process until I glanced across my film shelf and something caught my eye: Léon. The professional hitman euphemistically refers to his job as a “cleaner”, which seemed perfect. Yes, that’s how my mind works. After briefly consulting with the Internet, the name stuck. Léon has been great so far, aside from occasional navigation hiccup since our floors are not quite as uncluttered as would be ideal. However I have not yet set up the included system of virtual walls to assist with navigation between rooms. For those still confused about how the task can be automated: the Roomba has a front-mounted sensor so as it approaches any surface it slows and bumps gently against it before reorientating itself and continuing. Its pattern algorithm is designed to cover the same area a few times in a cleaning cycle. For a localised spillage, the spot cleaning function will cause it to spiral out and back in again in a one metre circle. So after a week I am not experienceing the buyer’s remorse I feared may follow and am thoroughly enjoying my new pet/robot. And I haven’t even started hacking it yet…

Also, since all insufferable new pet owners seem to do it, a collection of obligatory new pet photos seemed appropriate:

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Passive Aggressive Housing

Those who lived with me at uni will recall my laptop tended towards the verbose, certainly for an inanimate object. Visitors’ responses varied between intrigued and irritated by its vocal notifications and instructions on what I was supposed to be doing. These days my tech is somewhat quieter but I remain firm in my plan one day to live in a house with which I can converse.

Yesterday Lev at work pointed out the following video. Ericsson has taken the concept of the Internet of Things (in which each individual device you own is independently Internet connected) and applied a social networking gloss in their vision of future. While anthropomorphising the communications between devices is probably a step too far, I’m rather perturbed by their passive aggressive house which appears to view its “mission” as manipulating its occupant into not communicating with other people. I can see my house ending up exactly like that.

What it does highlight is the inevitable interconnectedness of all devices in the future. This has always been something important to me, which Ben pointed out recently when responding to another visitor at a party who enquired incredulously whether I was controlling Windows on the TV through my phone. Ben explained, “you can assume any tech in Priyan’s flat talks to everything else, which,” he continued after a brief pause, “is why there isn’t anything from Apple.”

My objection to Apple is primarily that they stand firmly in the way of my vision of the future, in which every device can interact seamlessly and when one breaks I can replace it with the best available product, which will slot right into the existing ecosystem. Given that Apple (presumably) has little interest in manufacturing my fridge or microwave, will the tendency towards increasing interconnectivity force them to relax their restrictive nature? Or will they proceed on the assumption that market share will force others to make products specifically that support their devices?

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Apparently

It’s been almost a year since I shared the Android apps residing on my phone, and I figured it was time for an update. Android’s growth in that time has, after all, been unfathomably fast. Many are still there, but much has also changed. The biggest shift is that I’ve left the default HTC Sense version of Android behind, in favour of 3rd party ROMs (as Android is open source, the community will often provide more frequent updates than the handset manufacturers). The hybrid MIUI initially tempted me to root my phone but ultimately it was CyanogenMod, with the lure of the latest Gingerbread Android 2.3, that has stuck it out. As for the apps I’m now running, as before I’ll attempt to list them in approximate order to regularity/usefulness:

Swype revolutionised text entry on a touchscreen, and I cannot praise it highly enough. Unfortunately they are targeting OEMs rather than selling the app to consumers directly, but they have reopened free beta applications for those who want to give it a whirl. I doubt I could switch back.

Dolphin Browser HD and the newly released Firefox mobile are currently vying for dominance as my browser of choice. The latter brings desktop synchronisation, but still feels slightly sluggish compared to my existing favourite.

Jorte is easily the best calendar app available for Android, which will consolidate your Google calendar with Exchange and brings widgets in every conceivable configuration.

Tasker is designed for power users and essentially lets me automate my phone’s operation by setting conditions and results, with incredibly granular options. For example, it knows I’m in the office when it connects to the building’s wifi network and immediately switches to silent mode, reverting when I leave. It knows I’m in bed if it is plugged in at night, so it switches off all data traffic, reactivating it shortly before I wake so that any email is ready and waiting. Along with Swype, losing this would probably prevent me switching to another platform.

Dropbox, which everyone ought to use for cloud-syncing between machines, is the simplest way to swiftly move files to your phone without the hassle of cables.

Evernote has become increasingly central to the way I organise important or merely interesting information, and having it all at my fingertips on the move is ideal. Particularly business cards.

FoxyRing is so unobtrusive I actually forgot to include it in this list at first, simply running in the background and altering your ringer’s volume depending on the level of ambient noise.

SMS Backup+ I also forgot as it too runs quietly in the background, backing up SMS conversations to GMail so I can empty my phone but still keep the messages. It tags them with a separate label so they don’t clutter my inbox.

Remote Notifier ensures I never miss calls or messages at home when glued to a computer while my phone is in another room. Unobtrusive pop-ups let me know whatever my phone needs to tell me.

Kindle from Amazon makes your phone a viable e-reader (for short periods at least), with access to a range of free older books.

JuiceDefender keeps an eye on your phone’s data connectivity to maximise battery life, though with a dock on my desk at work this has become less of an issue.

WaveSecure may seem pricey at $20 per year, but it’s my security app of choice, allowing me to lock down my phone when lost and either locate or wipe it.

Pulse is a great news aggregator that presents stories in an attractive digital magazine style. You can select from a wide range of feeds in its collection, but the ability to connect to Google Reader makes bringing in your own a cinch. I have, however, experienced instability issues.

Google Goggles is a project from the labs that allows you to perform searches by snapping a photo. This can be merely to find the source of an image or more information about a product, but new features are continually added. It can now provide information on classic works of art, interpret QR codes and even solve Sudoku.

Fancy Widget is an integrated clock, date and weather widget for your main home screen, similar to that found in HTC’s Sense UI but more customisable.

Google Listen is its podcast app which, while perhaps not the prettiest UI, is still the best way to organise and consume your podcasts.

ShopSavvy hasn’t received as much use as I expected (partly because I now shop for media almost exclusively online) but the ease with which it scans barcodes and runs price comparisons makes it essential if you do find yourself in one of those archaic brick-and-mortar store.

mSpot, in contrast to other cloud music services now requiring payment, remains free and even bumped up storage to 5GB of your own music. It compresses uploads so that 5GB is larger — and lower in quality — than it sounds. My phone is certainly not my media player of choice, but it’s a nice fallback when my Cowon J3 is out of juice.

Vignette and Photoshop Express are my favourites for taking and editing photos respectively.

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Bitter Ruin: Costume Change

For those who don’t really care about the words that follow, here’s a gallery of photos from two Bitter Ruin gigs.

My overtly eclectic taste in music means that, while I certainly like some artists more than others, I have never been fanatical enough about a single band to become one of those dedicated few that follows the entire European leg of a tour, a permanent front-row presence that the band starts to recognise. While I wouldn’t trade the spread of music for a narrower focus, I always felt like I was missing out on some part of the fan experience. So it took me slightly by surprise when, during another band’s set at Bitter Ruin‘s Underworld gig, Georgia spotted me in the crowd and waved. Having accidentally discovered the band together, Romina and I now meet up every time the band play in London as a kind of sibling bonding ritual. Enough, certainly, that the band know whom we are and will even have the odd drink.

Unusually this meant seeing them play twice this month, both times in Camden: once at the Underworld at once at Proud. Seeing them twice is hardly a chore, but the second show was made more unique as the band were debuting both a new music video and new stage costumes, replacing the ones which had been their signature look for the past two years. Discussing the unveiling of the latter with Ben at the earlier Underworld gig, he seemed slightly confused by my apprehension, but given the theatrical nature of Bitter Ruin’s live performance, their fans have become so comfortably familiar with their stage appearance that any change was as unnerving as it was exciting. Naturally we need not have worried, their updated appearance creating a similar vibe with a more mature sensibility. I suspect Georgia was relieved to lose the heavy (if incredibly evocative) eye make-up, with the strange result that she looks younger while dressed older. The choice of song for the new video, the softer A Brand New Me, surprised many but looks as gorgeous as expected (if filthier), directed again by Mark Withers who also helmed the excellent Beware video. Meanwhile the band continue to take to the stage with increasing ease, Ben quipping, “When we say, ‘Any requests?’, what we mean is, ‘Can you guess what song we’re going to play next?'”

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Hello, My Name Is TED

I routinely omit recommendations for great TED talks here because I entirely forget that most people in my circles don’t already watch them. A fact I forget because it seems like exactly the sort of thing most of them ought to. My TED consumption increased dramatically once I could stream internet video to my TV, and now a few mornings a week I can be spotted ironing a shirt while watching one (albeit that unless you are Anna, spotting me would require being a stalker, a burgler or an over-enthusiastic MI5 operative).

TED talks are short (between 5 and 20 minutes) lectures on a wide variety of subjects, pertaining in general to its acronym of Technology, Entertainment and Design, and moreso to its tagline “Ideas worth spreading”. The speakers are generally fantastic: leaders in their field but also engaging presenters. And the topics are regularly inspirational. More so, as I recently proclaimed, than starting the day with yoga.

The talk that prompted such a statement (which met with mixed reactions depending primarily on whether people had recently watched a TED talk!) was one given Deb Roy, an MIT researcher who coated his house in cameras and microphones before the birth of his son, and then ran analysis on the first two year’s of footage to study the acquisition of speech. His ideas on feedback loops in taught language, as well as the connection between spatial movement and speech, were fascinating. But the inspirational part was what he describes as the audio equivalent of one those time-lapse videos in which you see a flower bloom; he played a 40-second recording of each time his son attempted to ask for water, as over time “gaga” evolved into “water”, or as he puts it, witnessing the birth of a word.

Meanwhile, as a species we are more inclined to waste our hours on the undeniably compelling train-wreck of Rebecca Black’s Friday, which was best described by Nick as post-modern trolling. Could we not, instead, listen to Sarah Kay’s rather more inspirational spoken word musings on the wisdom she hopes to impart to a daughter?

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Short Post of No Consequence

Recent posts have been infrequent and, as a result, lengthier once I have both something about which to write and the time to do it. This means I have been reluctant to pad them out further with the usual assortment of links and asides that I’ve stumbled upon in my online travels. So here are the latest in a light-hearted Short Post of No Consequence.

The rotund plumber that still captures gamers’ imaginations, the original Super Mario has recently been reimagined both with modern sound effects and with a first person perspective.
Modern Times is a quietly pensive, attractively rendered, futuristic short.
Thwart facial detection with make-up (note: this trick doesn’t just prevent accurate face recognition; it prevents detection of a face at all).
The hilarious ninja-filled Nexus S unboxing video may the best one ever. After the video scroll down to grab the red ninja’s nunchaku…
Yes, it’s just a marketing video, but Corning’s A Day Made of Glass video is a gorgeous representation of technology that is, in many cases, virtually here. As soon as Microsoft finds a way to sell me that Surface table, anyway. While Corning naturally favours touch interfaces, I’ll admit apprehension at the loss of buttons in a car, since operation while moving will require taking one’s eyes of the road for far longer.
If you’re rocking one of the latest web browsers, using the HTML5 canvas to screw around with content on any site has become a recent trend in either Asteroids or Katamari flavours (the latter accompanied by the requisite ridiculously cheerful music too).
And finally, a Barbershop rendition of the Ewok celebration song. Because I can.

I take no responsibility for procrastination caused by the reading of this post.

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Weird Life Goals

On 30th March 2005, at a Nine Inch Nails gig at the London Astoria, I stumbled upon a small theatrical two-piece band from the US called The Dresden Dolls as they broke into the UK music scene. While their short support set blew me away at the time (and arguably outperformed the headline act) I probably didn’t realise the lasting impact they would have. Sadly I never had another opportunity to see them live before they split up.

One half of the Dolls is Amanda Palmer, who is regularly mentioned here as she routinely tours the UK. And so, a few years after I first saw them, I was able to have her sign my Dresden Dolls album. Drummer Brian Viglione, on the other hand, remained in the States and never graced our shores with his presence. It seemed increasingly unlikely I would ever get the album fully signed but it sat there, an unfinished work in progress, and it gradually evolved into a Weird Life Goal eventually to complete it.

Years passed. Amanda continued to visit the UK. Brian did not. At a concert disrupted by the volcanic ashcloud, another small theatrical two-piece called Bitter Ruin stepped in to support Amanda, and my sister and I became instant fans. Earlier this year Bitter Ruin announced a March gig at the Underworld with the newly formed Gentlemen & Assassins, fused from several bands. Their drummer: Mr Brian Viglione.

Even as I dropped the half-signed album into my camera bag, I didn’t really think it would happen. And frankly seeing Brian drum was enough. His skill is in making precision seem effortless; instead the energy (and there’s a lot) all goes into infusing his performance and sound with character.

But after the gig he emerged — those who have met him will know he is the nicest guy, incredibly grounded — and was happy to sign everything from legs to ukuleles to, well, my album. If you want to know what a Weird Life Goal looks like, here it is. We chatted briefly, I mentioned seeing the Dolls play live with NIN (“At the Astoria?” he asked incredulously, “Wow.”) and it dawned on me just how long this moment had been in coming. The signed album was insignificant, but the breadth of time and experiences it represented were not. I grinned the whole journey home.

So I guess the point of this is post is not to give up on those Weird Life Goals, however unlikely or unnecessary they seem. What they represent is something else entirely, and from the other side they will always make you smile.

Apologies for the inexplicably low-quality thumbnail images in this post.

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Bourgeois Regeneration

I took a couple of days off at the end of last week to extend the weekend and catch up with a few people. How about some micro-reviews? Catching up on films I missed: The Social Network (excellent), Milk (great) and Alice in Wonderland (should have left it missed). Good food: St John Bread and Wine (fantastic plates to share with superbly selected ingredients) and Borough Market (great, obviously, resulting in a fantastic home-cooked breakfast of scrambled duck eggs with fennel-infused salami).

For Saturday brunch I met Sarah in Bermondsy where she introduced me to the bizarrely bourgeois market that has sprung up in the local railway arches. While the area is undergoing regeneration, one assumes the myriad council tower blocks are not filled with the target consumers. Some of the fresh produce sellers apparently became disenchanted with Borough Market and moved. From a buyer’s perspective the lack of the bustling Saturday Borough crowd is certainly welcome.

The last location we passed, a newly opened wine and oyster bar (at 11am, remember) was so ridiculous that we began to ponder what sort of outlandish niche offering we could open in our own arch. Specialised balcony foliage was mooted alongside a decidedly middle class culinary equipment store that sells those weird kitchen utensils lacking discernible origin or purpose. Sold in packs of three to suggest you really ought to be using several.

Once we warmed up — and dropped any pretence at political correctness — the unexplored opportunities crystallised. An import baby store seemed ideal for the up-and-coming would-be parent. With a worldwide selection the fashion-conscious will be able to select the latest styles to match seasonal trends. A Dulux-style colour-matching service would let customers bring in sample material in their desired shade for our dedicated selection team to work their magic. The name, of course, was obvious: United Colours of Bermondsy.

Meanwhile Sarah offered a business plan for Natural Disaster Soaps (“Natural” or “Organic” being key words guaranteed instantly to double interest in your business). The basic premise is overpriced soap inspired by Fight Club. The difference is that rather than sourcing materials from liposuction clinics, we use reclaimed fat from natural disaster victims, and thus assist in the clean-up process at the same time. Connoisseurs may select between “single estate” and blended varieties from multiple disasters.

I daresay we’ve converted a few customers to our new businesses in the time it’s taken you to read this post.

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Stacking

Ostensibly a casual puzzle game, Stacking’s novel game mechanic, distinctive art style and colourful world will draw in almost everyone. You take on the role of Charlie Blackmore, the youngest (and smallest) of a family of matryoshka, or Russian nesting dolls if you prefer. The Depression-era story is one of child labour as Charlie must rescue his siblings who have been pressed into service by a corrupt industrialist.

Set against this backdrop — complete with silent film inspired cutscenes to progress the story — the game itself is a light-hearted romp rather than heavy-handed social commentary. Charlie can do little alone, but has the ability to jump inside the other dolls that populate environments. Doing so lets him use their abilities to solve puzzles. The draw is that each puzzle has multiple solutions and while finding one or two is usually swift, others will take some creative thinking.

If you breeze through for the story alone, Stacking may feel somewhat slim even at its low downloadable price. However the urge to collect the unique dolls and discover all the puzzle solutions encourages return trips to completed areas and will keep most players engrossed for several hours.

While Tim Schaefer’s critically-lauded creativity has not resulted in the financial success it deserves, it’s great to see that Double Fine has found a way to push through fresh and interesting game design (between this and last year’s Hallowe’en-themed Costume Quest) in a small package that reduces the innovation risk associated with large-scale releases. While their next big project gestates, this provides developers with a creative outlet and keeps fans happy, so it’s hard to see a downside. Perhaps more studios should take note as the downloadable game market continues to mature.

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Meewella | Fragments

The Life of P

Year: 2011 (page 3 of 4)

Keggfest 2011

The Professional

Passive Aggressive Housing

Apparently

Bitter Ruin: Costume Change

Hello, My Name Is TED

Short Post of No Consequence

Weird Life Goals

Bourgeois Regeneration

Stacking

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