i'm a bit snowed up at the moment so sorry that my usual blogging has taken a hit but i assure you i'm on the case with it. still have the blog posts in my evernote and i'm building up to recording audiogravity and thegravity (videoseries) again. i'm just a bit sidetracked with the following. .

- uploading the back catalog of buddhistpodcast in bittorrent format
- working on the social distribution of updates for mygocard
- writing out scripts for the videos for mygocard
- firefighting my eviction notice
- organizing transport
- waiting for my dsl router to arrive and go online
- trying to get some kind of homeshare going
- connecting with the ymca in nottingham about digital projects
- waiting for us to be moved into the basement at lacemarket
- planning to get content together for an ipad application
- trying to record screencasts in between the madness
- planning to get car on road
- trying to come up with a plan for the house in general
- meeting and networking with a bunch of creatives
- getting to a variety of events across nottingham
- redesigning a clients website
- trying to sell my digital slr
- wanting to replace my iphone but not enough funds
- planning for the introduction of the deathstar

plus a whole bunch more. .. i'll be back when the dust settles.
until then i've gotta crack on! :)

Loading mentions Retweet

When: Monday 2nd August 6:30pm

Where: Upstairs at Dogma

What: General geekery and beer. http://geekup.org/ GeekUp is a community of web designers, developers, creatives and other tech-minded folk from the UK. It’s a grassroots knowledge sharing and networking social for folks involved or interested in the web and technology industry.

Speakers:
Peter Cooper (Author of “Beginning Ruby”) speaking for us: Ignoring Common Sense: The Aircraft Carrier Made of Ice and Other Technical Flights of Fancy Get permission to abandon common sense through a look at flights of fancy and “failures” of common sense in the worlds of engineering, computer science, and fashion. 

the other speaker, Dominic from Nottinghack (nottinghack) will be talking about: Nottinghack – a Hackspace for Nottingham An overview of the hardware hacker and maker movement in the UK & an introduction to Hackspace Nottingham – Nottinghack.

Followed by a show and tell. So bring along something cool to share with the group, whether it’s a new shiny gizmo, IDE, code snippet or handbag! ( :

Get in touch if you want to get involved (gemma dot cameron at esendex dot com)

Sign Up:
Let us know you’re coming on our upcoming page:
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/6589920

Loading mentions Retweet

quicklink | go-connect.co.uk

disclaimer straight off the bat! - i'm working with mygocard who provide the go: connect service as an additional product. i have paid for the service myself and will be reviewing it in the normal way with no bias whatsoever to the company.

ok. glad that is done!

as some of you will be aware i have been disconnected from the internet at home for quite some time (over six months) and have been using 3g dongles to enable me to use the internet when at home. this has caused me to consume the internet in a different way and also highlighted to me the price of connectivity when using such a dongle/bandwidth system - with fixed broadband at home bandwidth is not one of those things that you spend too much time thinking about.

as i am very keen to rent/houseshare the property having internet in the property is paramount. having looked around for a way to get it back on i was told about go: connect the partner phone service from mygocard which has a much lower re-connection fee than if i went back and asked BT to do it.

It actually worked out better all round what with the £11 a month flat fee for the line rental and then only £5.99 for my internet - all of this being take from mygocard prepaid mastercard which is perfect because it allows me to pay directly from my card without having to worry about another direct debit from a bank account. i believe that BT require over £100+ for reconnection - my engineer arrived (funnily enough a BT openreach van) and was done and out the door within fifteen minutes of his arrival.

I was a little let down on the day that the router equipment had not come ahead of time but i'm to expect it after the installation date. the distributer/reseller policy is that the installation has to work and go ahead because they send out the ready configured router i presume - normally this is next day but it failed to arrive on this occasion. i'm guessing that it will arrive at some point today. a minor frustration that i hope with working though the customer feedback will enable mygocard to alter the way the installation is handled.

one of the good things about the way that the go: connect package works is no credit checks. my credit history is terrible what with the mortgage issues and the arrears on the house since i have been out of work in the last six months so trying to get back on the internet has been a pain. having to go and drink coffee every other day or scrape money together to purchase bandwidth with 3g dongles and the slow speed that they normally run out can make it impossible to get things sent up and done on the internet.

i see the go: connect isp service more than just an isp distributor. it is using the same ethos as the mygocard prepaid mastercard product to actually help digital inclusion for those unemployed or low income families by giving them a way to get reconnected and manage the money they do have. i'm sure there are many other services that are better, faster and have more features than the go: connect offering but for the low income family trying to keep their head above water in these difficult recession times the price and offering is one that will enable many to search actively for work again online.

i'll update you with reliability and upload/download speeds once i have done some more testing.

Loading mentions Retweet

quicklink | nottingham riviera

from 23 July - 5 September 2010 indulge yourself at the seaside in Nottingham's the Old Market Square courtesy of sponsors Jet2 Holidays and the Mellors Group.

ella wanted to go away 'to the seaside' again today but i was too exhausted from a day out yesterday without the pushchair. she had a lot of fun and just maybe we will go again next week if the weather is still good - and this time i'll remember to take her some proper clothes for bathing. was expecting more food stalls with 'nibble' kinda small portions so you could snack and walk, i think the one i remember in birmingham was a little better on the food turnout front. that said, a fun day out in the middle of the city.

Loading mentions Retweet

                       

Click here to download:

lifes_a_beach_-_old_market_squ.zip (2567 KB)

as i have my monthly rail ticket and ella is only three (under five travel free) we headed over to nottingham for the day to play in the centre of the city in sand and in the swimming pool. was a bit of a pain carrying her all around but we had fun regardless.

in the aftenoon we came back to burton and did a small clothes shop so she had some new trousers and shoes. a good single parent style kinda day. sam is rowing this weekend.

Loading mentions Retweet

                       

Click here to download:

a-few-weeks-with-the-htc-hero-autofocus-camera-Ha11UelbVNMUMAhZbaAv.zip (1628 KB)

as i floated around nottingham this last few weeks i tested out the camera on the htc hero and i have to say it seems a lot better than my old skool iphone 3g i had before. looking forward to a 3gs or iphone4 to see what kind of quality i can get from those optics! :)

Loading mentions Retweet

i keep seeing these beasts popping up.

sooner or later one of these will be used for festivals/events doing some kind of social media live streaming i'm sure - not sure how it would work out. maybe a nice shotgun mic facing downwards with a nice windscreen on and a basic mobile phone with qik/bambuser installed to start with - mic used as a line in. either way i would love to play with one of these. they look a lot of fun.

Loading mentions Retweet

for the last five years since i discovered videobloggers the requirement to make media in my life has exploded. one area however that i knew i had to address at some stage was the ability to re-consume the archives. the ipad is the perfect device to explore this arena. i sat down with cj and paul yesterday and we geeked out and talked iphone and ipad - it's a reminder why i need to pull my finger out to at least tool myself up with at these one of these two devices.

excited to be going to a horizon event next tuesday about digital archives that will really form a solid internal dialog for the development process. if your in nottingham you should come along - i think it will make a really engaging day and is an area that i have always had an interest in as the cloud computing platforms start to sprout up more and more.

i have really mellowed out and found that the exercise of 'just to want' rather than one of 'requirement' has been a valuable lesson in the last few months and has re-wired my thinking as to what makes me hungry in this digital space. my determination levels and focus have returned because of it. basically, i have shifted my techno lust to areas of my life that are more important - it's a good thing. i think we all need to take stock of our digital requirements so we are not just feeding our wants rather than our actual daily needs. regular exercise has helped me adjust focus as well. doing just those weak five miles a day on the bike (10 if i go there and back) have been enough to restore clarity.

so with all that aside, now i have a need. i have a need for the ipad more than the iphone right now because i see how i can move forward on a number of projects because of the consumption nature of the device. i'm very happy that we are to be working directly with paul on ipad developments and can see a very busy and productive period ahead. the area i first want to tackle is that of digital archives of my own created social media (at least a few years worth across the boards) later fusing in the rezpondr concept and taking what we have and finishing it off by porting existing code to a cleaner, lighter format.

so my location sources are the following (this is more for paul than me/you) - these have quite a bit of content in them so it is good for building out the viewing system and also for the backend code for conversion using the cloud/encoding/heywatch backend for transcoding (basically for anything that does not 'naturally' have a ipad version) - might be an idea to pull all the content anyway to store it in directorys on a cloud platform like s3 in iphone/ipad versions so they are up to date - while we are at it we might as well convert to all the open source video formats that are out - thinking ogg, mkv, webm and html5. this then makes it nicely packaged for spreading to other cloud backup locations around the web.

seesmic.tv (.flv content)
rss2.0 - http://feeds.seesmic.com/user.philcampbell.rss
atom - http://feeds.seesmic.com/user.philcampbell.atom

qik.com

http://qik.com/philcampbell/latest-videos 

bambuser.com
http://feed.bambuser.com/channel/philcampbell.rss
(may need to go in via api)
http://bambuser.com/channel/philcampbell

blip.tv (.flv format)
http://dm.blip.tv/rss (general video store)
http://themobile.blip.tv/rss (videos via mobile devices)
http://thegravity.blip.tv/rss (old sd video series)

audioboo.fm (.mp3 format)
http://audioboo.fm/users/202/boos.atom (audio)

vimeo (api maybe?)
http://vimeo.com/vlogz/videos/rss
http://vimeo.com/philcampbell/videos/rss

I'm sure i have more destinations but some are just reposting sites. i need to revisit all my hosting video sites from previous years to see what is where. i just literally had head down and headed out into the digital wilds of america for a long period of time producing media.

Loading mentions Retweet

after waiting for it all day i have finally rolled over to 100k. i'm quite chuffed with that. i need to find a new target to head for now on some of the other blogs. it would be really useful if i could have a total for all blogs on an account. another wishlist feature for my posterous draft in evernote.

Loading mentions Retweet

what a day. a packed day.

lots of things happened today with interviewing people and crossing the streams into different avenues of media output. also spoke to paul about ipad and iphone development and we have some really fantastic things on the boil now. wow, what a day. ;)

Loading mentions Retweet

quicklinks

facebook - http://me.dm/link/antenna
main site - http://www.antenna.uk.com

I was lucky today that i managed to sit down with craig and talk briefly about all things antenna. as a creative hotspot for myself for connectivity i was keen to speak to craig about how they plan to develop antenna and alert him to the digital social footprint of people having conversations about antenna already and how time needs to be invested in that for feedback into this creative hub and how brand ambassadors (thanks for that @AlexiaL - good identification!)

in the social arena could help. i have put forward a bunch of suggestions and as one of the ambassadors i would like to try and cross the bridge and mediate into the hub what can be done in this engaging and 'always on' space.

excited to where this can go for nottingham. i personally think antenna is a blueprint of what a creative digital meeting space can be and with all our input i think we could roll in a variety of services to make something wonderful in addition to the services we already enjoy in there.

i have posted this on the fibrestudio facebook pages and also on the antenna page on facebook. i would love it if you would engage with me with your feedback - if you would rather it go through me anon we can do that as well. i just want to get comments and feedback aired and try to do a weekly/fortnightly catchup show to see how those areas are being responded to.

if you are a member of antenna or perhaps you might be if something was fixed for you let me know and i'll make sure in the order of things it is mentioned.

look out for a twitterwall on the screens soon. we need to decide on a hashtag as well people for 'chatting' around antenna i guess as well - #antennauk maybe - your thoughts please.

Loading mentions Retweet

     

Click here to download:

so_antenna_has_a_dolby_5.1_stu.zip (3989 KB)

i thought they had just a little studio. i had no idea what is actually in the basement. epic kit - looking forward to exploring more in the coming weeks and months what happens down there and maybe do some video streaming shows from down there for 'thegravity' and our weekly pcmprojects catchup shows.

Loading mentions Retweet

posterous should be careful.

i have uber love for posterous, you should know that from the get-go. i love the ability i have to theme and send posts in a fashion that is rapid and almost throwaway 'post it note' style posts that arrive somewhere between blogging and microblogging fused with a side order of 140 character snipville.

i tell all my friends about it - i also tell potential and existing clients because i like the notification features and the autoposting additions - they make my social media aggregation and distribution of information to my contacts easier to roll out. all of this stuff is great and forms the main reason for my switching a year or so back from moveable type. moving from moveabletype was very much like my move from the pc to the mac - i need to remove a level of frustration from my life to allow me to blog instead of performing routine admin on my content management system in the form of patches and updates and protection against vulnerability. the things that as a creative, geek or blog writer you really should not have to entertain. you want to write, not to maintain a cms.

and so, finally to my point. forgive me for stretching that out.

if your going to roll out fifteen importer tools to allow people to switch from different networks please do not switch your coding division aggressively just to this because the money men want to see some traffic increase number to validate having millions of pounds of investment if your not going to maintain the original services you enticed us in with. i'm not pissed posterous, but i am getting frustrated. it reminds me of the moveable type days. i really do not want to feel that way.

and so, what is the frustration? - a number of things actually.. .

- we sent a post@posterous.com email to do the post without an account thing, we got no email back for the setup (that should be bulletproof in operation) - demo to a client that you do not have to have an account and not getting that nice email back to say you can 'claim' that post and blog is really embassing. yes, email systems do go wrong. i know what it takes for things 'to go wrong' but you can have multi levelled ways of sending that email - tracking the status and uptime of your sendmail from multiple locations around the globe and generally 'keep on top' of the core components that entice and delight the 'new user' - it's a paramount function and it should work 99.9% if it can.

- sitemaps. i'd like some google juice and have people find my content. currently it seems the rss feed has my last twenty posts in. i would like a more full choice of rss feed. i know this is a feature request but i would have thought sitemaps would have been in by now, after a year.

- still no movement on supporting a range of javascript services that 'could' be validated - i'm thinking things like get satisfaction and other analytics. i could roll around it and just use the posterous api and retheme completely but when you say you support tumblr themes and do not support javascript and it does. i find that really hard to explain away to my friends, clients and potential future conversations about your product. i've heard your points about javascript - truth is thou tumblr have been doing it a long time and they seem to be dealing with it ok? - infact they are still growing at a huge rate. (btw, i have mad love for tumblr but i was lured away to the posterous fluffy land) - i did a great horizontal infinite scroller jquery/api mashup on tumblr because it had support for javascript over on www.projectswebmedia.com - maybe i need to revisit tumblr? - wow, was that the first signs of posterous abandonment - scary.

- the wordpress importer with our 'special needs' buddhistpodcast. i'm not gonna bang on about it but the experience has left me very upset about the way it's been handled. i realise your a free product and you have a lot of busy releases and things to get done - fixing my little xml issue is using additional resources. i guess i just thought that if i could import a very well known good content audio podcast show with over five years of internet following in over 100 countries that it would be a good piece of social capital to talk about on your blog that he switched from wordpress to posterous to get the new social features and auto posting. i'm sorry if that social capital is not as good as $4.1 million pound of investment money. just saying.. .

it's not all doom and gloom however - on the flipside. ..

i'm ready to pay for my pro features. i'll say it again, i'm ready to pay for my pro features - i'd like to be starting to get excited all over again like apple make me feel every time they roll some hardware that i never knew i wanted until i play with it. you do a great job of auto posting - so much more could be done here for pro users. glad to pay a monthly payment to allow more developers to be bought into the mix to be able to roll feature requests faster.

so please posterous, this is one of those digital relationship sit downs every one should have once in a while. call it a digital expiry date on our so far digital relation, i'm checking the label and making sure we are both still in date.

i'll make reservations. let's talk.

Loading mentions Retweet

quicklink | http://pilot.yoxi.tv/pitch2/team-3-bike-tab

What's the best way to get more people on bikes? YOXI has started a
design competition to help figure that out. Here's our latest video as
part of that competition. If you like it, rate it up at the link below
and help it's chances to move forward and win $5000 to go to charity.

Loading mentions Retweet

just received the new 2nd generation mifi unit from three mobile buzz and wow. first impression are everything. for that instant on, one button sets up the wifi network action and clear indication units and a nice screen (battery had a bump here i presume to power that lovely screen) - looking forward to testing it out over the next couple of weeks as i wander around nottingham powering my devices on it and uploading vimeo videos etc.

Loading mentions Retweet

i'm liking that a lot. wondered how it would take for someone to make
something up.

Loading mentions Retweet