it's the simple things in life.

good chat, good coffee and freshly cooked different foods daily bonding people together from the locality around open conversations -- a decent cafe space in sneinton finally (now with wifi!)

i found out about the secret cafe through cj (@pcmcreative) about a month ago as we went along on friday evening to show our support, record some interviews and take a few photos.

fast forward a month and last week i just finally got around to installing the phs300 cradlepoint wireless router in (as part of my community project that i never started a year ago) -- see the blog post after this one for more on that.

with mifi up and running i spent a few days there last week for lunch and had some great soups, salad and tartlets but more so conversation. it was great to hear people being upbeat and realistic about the near future.

doing something to change their current course in life, inspiring through doing with a can do attitude towards running a space to serve people a meal for a reasonable cost -- we even had some dropped off to us on friday which was awesome after a few pints at antenna.

you can find the sneinton secret kitchen down trent road near the st christopher church (it's next door) you can't miss the sign really on the railings.

the space runs from wednesday to friday from 9:30am (i think) till 2:30pm (might be 10:30 i forget) and food is normally ready around 11:30 ish for those looking to just drop by to see what's on that day.

i'm really hoping that it goes from strength to strength there and that more non-profit ideas and services come together there for the whole of the community.

great work marsha for getting it going!

seriously no wonder people dislike all things wifi, internet and slow speeds.

while my hat is tipped firmly tipped in the direction of wifi companies that provide a free period of bandwidth for 'passing through' briefly checking in and email scanning digital travellers like myself, the speed, quality and resolution of issues in a timely manner by some of these companies leaves a lot to be desired.

my frustration set in when i had gone over the 40 minutes free that houston international give you to use on the web.  for love or money i could not get the ipad2 working on the service at all.

i signed up for two different packages, the cheaper $4.95 one and after that another for $7.95 - both of these allowed me to login on the website but for me to actually get on the web i needed to have downloaded the boingo application AHEAD of time of me going in the airport!

for someone that does not use a mobile phone i realise i'm a rare case but even if i did the last thing i want to do in the airport is talk to someone on a phone - i'm just not that kind of customer. i use email, twitter and social sites to talk back to companies, you need to have methods of listening in those areas too -- you are after my money after all right?

have to say, kudos for support for paypal.  that's pretty much how i get any funds these days right now so that helped a lot -- even if you did take two amounts and not give me the services i wanted.

i did get those payments back in a timely fashion via paypal thou.

so, my suggestion to fix this problem in one masterstroke -- work out how to give us limited access to the app store or work on some kind of temporary system of udid sending so we have a temporary application that can be updated once online.  i realise that it's messy but here i was sitting in the airport trying to get on the wifi and being told that i needed to download your app from the appstore when i had run out of complimentary wifi access to do that.

should i really need your application to get online?

the other thing that needs to be said about boingo wifi in at least houston international was that it was super slow, like i ran a speedtest and everything and while that might have been giving false postives because the firewall is locked down so much it was a terrible experience and needs resolution.

these companies moan about 'the numbers are not there' and the 'mainstream' are not using these tools and devices to do things on the web, well perhaps if you spent a bit more time on the maintainance and the backhaul of the connectivity of these hotspots in airports you would start to see the numbers going up.

you can't shoehorn a system into an airport and walk away from it, it needs regular monitoring and someone needs to be on hand to deal with situations, you should be leaving free passes and voucher codes with some of the airlines so that people like me who were a rare case could have gotten on the internet a bit longer to download your app.

because of my experience, i'll probably never use your service.

i'm a brand advocate you lost simply because you left me with frustration and angst that i could not get the work i needed to do out to the world, you have all these potential brand ambassdors sitting in airports around the world everyday, i'm sure by now you could have invested a little bit of that money into some kind of social media strategy. 

morning!

lovely day. hardly feels like i've had ella for any time at all in the last 12 hrs but i picked her up and as soon as she was her i've dropped her back again - she does have a 1pm birthday party however.

me and sam spoke briefly about having bella for one day in the middle of the week as well. it's something that i've been wanting to do for a while but it really depending on transport.

chcland throw me a curve ball by suggesting that i get a vm transporter t2 instead of an iq or smart car. after much consideration (ie. about 12 hrs) i'm on the fence about which to go for.

the camper van would be a perfect backup incase anything goes weird in the ark or we want to get away for the weekend to the beach or something - it's pretty darn slow however.

so... back to the point of this dead time blogpost i heard yesterday that an occupy nottingham style event was happening in the market square today. i'll be wandering around that area to see if anyone turns up - i heard it was a worldwide 'occupy' day but i'm not sure how well that works if people only do it for today/tomorrow.

to be fair i think they need to be a lot more clear about demands otherwise it's just going to turn into squatting sites around the world.

while i agree with this annoyance about being the 99% how do we transition those that have 'dug' into there 'birds nests' of gobs of money.

i'm still very much in a transition from losing everything due to lack of education about money and the recession and i'm building up the passions, projects i want to work on.

i have been looking at some scary figures in the last few weeks however about 16-24 year olds and that 25% of them are unemployed, this is a scary figure and something we need to address rapidly.

something that i hope that fibrecamp, ontheground training and the rattlr project can in some way help with - after all a lot of it is not about money but training how to use these new range of free web2 style tools of the internet.

point and shoot training.

we have been very lucky with fibrecamp to have a studio to be able to pull together video content for preamp shows quickly.  since we started the studio we have been using a brilliant piece of software called wirecast which allows us to switch sources to movies, other cameras and remote screens on other computers over the network.

as i was recording content for the different shows last week i thought it might be an idea to put together a short video and blogpost and send the link over to the guys at telestream to see if they can put this in a future patch/update - having the ability to hotkey different sessions would be incredibly useful.

actually, i'd like a timed scheduler too but you cannot have everything.  one of the key features that we really want for the fibrecamp studio spaces is the ability for a client to be able to switch different sources easily without a need for an operative to be on site. 

except when we have no access.

three days of this 'ontheground' trip to the imwithphil relief effort in the town of phil campbell, alabama really opened my eyes again to what a world is like with very little connectivity.  not being able to login to my video stream provider (you have to authenticate first before you can stream) put a lot of pressure on me to change tact and use different tools in the moment - the knock on effect of this is that you miss the 'live' component.

not being able to title your stream, go live and have other people around the world to feedback their comments to you in realtime - we only ever had decent wifi connectivity at the hotel in russellville (great job best western btw with fifteen phil campbells staying in the building at any one time) and the police station in phil campbell had internet i could use - that's why you will see clips from both of those venues.

in between both these locations driving into phil campbell (15 miles) from russellville you are effectively on edge/gprs all the time - this effects your work flow and so below are a bunch of notes about what i did to make sure i captured as much content as possible while still trying to help out and capture the moment.

interviews with mainstream media
i was having to go back and forth with the media in terms of contact details, headshots and some bio - i've since put together a guide and intend to keep a dedicated page on my new front-of-site so that media outlets can access this quickly (media.me.dm) - i might extend on this format later on for the additional sections of my site for people who only want to tap into certain parts of what i do (making it easier to find)

using a digital camera with hd recording
i'm currently utilizing the canon ixus 200is (720p) - it takes really nice video footage and the microphone is pretty good.  i'm also carrying a backup of the kodak playtouch which allows for an external microphone.  i used this to collect the personal interviews around the table - the night before leaving.

recording audioboo interviews offline to upload later
i use a ipod touch 4th generation from apple to record my audio interviews as a cheap £6.50 microphone from griffin which is great as it also has the ability to start and stop the video inside the video recording application.  this external microphone (make sure it has three strips on the plug) allows me to position the microphone near the person i'm speaking to or can be wore for handsfree recording when driving for instance.  audioboo is great in that you can get the application for iphone, android and if you have a microphone on your computer the website.  it allows you to record clips of audio and then with a bit of extra setup post these to your website, facebook and even tweet about it on twitter - automatically.  it's a very useful application and once logged in on the website you can even get access to the .mp3 afterwards.

capturing clips and imovie on the ipod touch 4g
because i had trouble uploading clips to bambuser (mainly because of having authentication issues with lack of signal) i had to get creative how i was going to really capture the scene in phil campbell.  it was a balancing act between working, taking part, and making sure i captured the essence of the work we wanted to do.  i've got a bunch therefore of clips on my ipod touch that i need to go through and edit in imovie.  a downside of capturing offline as such - more work to do when you get back to a computer.  we did catch some things on bambuser but not as much as i wanted too.

using 360 to capture 360 degree panoramas
this is my favorite new application at the moment for making media with 'ontheground' - it makes these really neat 360 pictures of things around you.  i'm really trying to find the ultimate utility to allow me to spin the camera round easier when the sunlight is bright because it can easily handle capturing the 360 when it has enough light.  you do have to get people to stand absolutely still however if you go slower.  i've had some fantastic results with it.

charge and go, charge and go - have a backup
cannot stress this enough, your power will go the moment you really want to use it.  yes it will annoy you, yes you will have it lingering around in your head.  pack as much extra power as you can afford to carry.  it's really useful to try and have a backup device that can do all of the above in some way so you can capture that interview or that perfect moment.  try and add to your days media making pipeline the routine to stick your devices and backup power units on charge the night before.  having an extension lead with everything in ready to go can help you dig out the devices from your kit (label up the plugs) too.