Operation Concrete & Creativity

For anyone that comes across this old blog, please have a look at this, my new collaborative media project, Operation Concrete. I'll probably post on it again fairly soon, as it'll help my SEO out and people still do visit here through image referrals, if you like music, art and sci-fi novels, you should jump on over. The above image is from one of the artists involved, Holly Exley.

Also, my creative blog is still going fairly strong, Cementum, where I blog about fun and interesting creative things. And on occasion, let out a little steam about estate agents.

The Novel is the Monster

Self exploration is never easy. If you're open to the idea in the first place, willing to take on and tackle head-first what you believe in, what you think of to be true, your own beliefs and ideals, thoughts and concepts, then I believe you're a step ahead of a lot of people already. If then you take all of those ideas and belief systems and put them on paper, in an effort to really discover what you are, and potentially further down the line, have some sort of impact, then that's another step ahead, of a lot of people. A push to better yourself, to self-actualize and commit to something through a process of deep thought, exploration, analysis and discovery. It's all good stuff, and it brings out sides of your personality you thought you never had.

I know, it's a situation I'm currently in the middle of, it's a voyage I am currently undertaking and it's a twisted beast that's unrelenting and fascinating at the same time.

And in light of this blogs theme, some could say I am on a technologically fueled hedonistic quest of the highest order. Using my ability to add to, to research, to share and discover new parts of my being through a social media, my EEEp and a WIFI or 3G connection. A quest of self discovery, literary desire and technological competence to incite change in myself and with hope of possessing hearts and minds of others down the line.

From here on in this blog is on permanent hiatus whilst I concentrate on my first novel and attempt to discover more about myself than I ever have.

You can read about the progress of this novel if you are interested at http://www.cementum.co.uk

Three Little Words

1) Tech

2) Social Media

3) Hedonism

More coming in the near future, I feel a wave of personal motivation coming over me, work is going well, so time to get everything else organized.

(Idea borrowed from Chris.)

The rough and the smooth

Take them both, equal portions, move forward, become better, stronger, faster and never let up. I’m doing my best at the moment, personal blogging has taken a second seat to professional blogging, work in general and my book, which I’ve had on the cards for a year now and desperately want to get finished.

So, just a quick update, about myself, I’m well, I’m doing very well in my job, I’m learning a lot, I’m surrounded by great friends, there’s even a quite awesome lady in my life which hasn’t happened for a while. More on technology and hedonism soon. For the mean time, take solace in the fact that I am indeed, very ace.

Good times ahead, I hope everyone else feels as good as I do.

Numerous and Belligerent

A definite social media presence, but just too little time and connectivity to do anything about it at the moment. I will soon BECOME media, like Robert Scoble, who apparently IS media…although I don’t believe that, he haunts the facets that are open to him like a geek plague, lost touch with the common man, did he ever have it?

Anyway, I’ll soon be out of the pit I currently call home, I’ll soon have the net, I’ll soon blah blah blah, a few more weeks and hopefully everything will be sorted, but for the mean time posts will be few, my writing will be sporadic at best and my attitude will remain snappy.

SOON!! MONSTERS…in the mean time keep up with me via the micro blog on the right

Updates are a go, patience is fleeting

I have to run, little content here, just to say that I put the new Jaiku badge in my side column. Thus, now everyone can see what I'm doing all the time, the widget is also fed with my Vimeo videos, Flickr image stream, Digg articles, Del.icio.us articles and Kyte.tv broadcasts, all of which i'll be doing more of in the near future.

Talk about social media presence. I'll be talking about Omnipotence and the paradox that ensues more soon no doubt. But for now, I have to find a new place to live!

BOOM

Class divide on the internet

Just who are the glitterati of the internet? The geeks? The bands? Who are the aristocrats? Mass owners of land in second life? A high-level dwarf in World of Warcraft? Hard to tell at this juncture, and I have little time to think about it at the moment.

Suffice to say, is danah boyd, a PhD student in the School of Information at Berkeley, has been looking into this realm for the last four years, and just the other day, one of her recent papers kicked up a right stink across the net…getting down to brass tacks and saying Facebook is for the wealthy, educated, middle-classes and Myspace is for every other deviant subculture under the sun. HAH, how I laughed.

I wouldn’t care to agree or disagree just at the moment, I wish I had more time to read her blog, it’s terribly interesting, and actually makes me quite jealous of her insight an the respect she commands. I’ll broach this subject again once I’m in possession of all the facts and can really hit it hard, in the time being I thought any readers might be interested in the argument itself, and the fuss it’s caused online.

On a side note, there are changes ahead, namely a re-design, it was always in the pipeline, as I don’t like these generic blogger templates, and now my designer friend has a bit of time on his hands he’s getting cracking. So things will go missing, stuff will appear, problems may strike, we’ll see how it goes.

More soon.

Presence updaters and Shane Macgowan

The social presence revolution is all starting to kick off as far as I’m concerned. Most people will only know about this though their facebook ‘Richard is doing blah blah’, and probably won't even realise they're part of a wider picture when they put on all manner of applications to their Facebook profile.

Alas, the real revolution is rocking this way, giving people the facility to see what their friends, loved ones, family members and even favourite personalities online, are doing at any given moment throughout the day. It’s 24/7 surveillance, except with this Big Brother, you can turn it off.

I currently rock Jaiku, Facebook and Twitter on occasion, although I’ve yet to set it up properly so my feed is coming off my Jaiku account. Robert Scoble, is pushing his omnipotence, the pros and cons of each part, on us with a recent blog post, he say’s there’s something interesting going on that we should all be aware of, I’m inclined to agree.

It’s a tough on to call though, whether it really will be incorporated by the masses or just left for us geeks who continue to believe we’re ‘right on the edge, above the curve, living in a technological space, right out of the box... man’ or whether the ‘normies’ will actually pick-up on any of this sort of stuff.

On a technological and hedonistic level, I believe it’s about staying in the loop, and having the facility to do it anywhere, any time, keeping right on top of what everyone is doing all the time. I was in a pub on Saturday somewhere in north London, good times, good music, reasonable prices and Shane Macgowan sat in the corner, HA. The point is I could have loaded up Jaiku, or Twibbler, geo tagged a post and let the friends that I have on my contact list know exactly where I was, what I was getting up to, and told them to get down for some awsomeness.

I didn’t as it happened as I was a little to drunk, and totally forgot about the ‘presence updater revolution’ at the time, in favour of some ‘real life’ hedonistic pursuits, one of which was losing my mind.

Where will it all go? Who knows? And in the light of wanting to keep these posts relatively short, I’ll end it there, leave the question open, and maybe address it again soon. Lets see how it goes.

I’ve got so much to talk about here at the moment but the lack of internet at my house is a serious drag on my want and ability to blog on a personal level. But there you go.

More soon

Gadgets, technology and the history of man

With all the god damned hubbub that’s taking place around the iPhone at the moment, the wired blog has taken it upon themselves to put it firmly in its place, get a real perspective on things, and ask their readers in a good old fashioned poll, what they think the greatest gadget EVER is.

Hedonism and technology have gone hand-in-hand from the dawn of time, from the first flickers of fire heating up fine cooked meat, to the humble toilet bringing forth sanitary and an all around more pleasant atmosphere to modern civilization.

Calling fire a gadget is pushing the boundaries, defined by the internet a gadget is officially:

"A small specialized mechanical or electronic device; a contrivance."

Some online dictionary

So everything else in their list easily falls into this remit, from the combustion engine – my personal favourite – to the personal computer. What exactly is the greatest ever is something that could obviously rage on forever. The iPhone is clearly not the greatest, it’s average at best, the Nseries N95, which I currently sport, wipes the floor with it in most departments and it’s already freely available.

I’d also submit Lego, simply for it’s awesomeness, whilst some would argue there’s no real practical use, Lego art is just one example of how this work of engineering and technological genius is moving leaps and bounds ahead of what it was originally set out for. In fact, I’m going to start blogging more about Lego, I invisage a world made of Lego, and not just the miniature ‘Lego World’ I visited in Blackpool as a child.

On a side note, I still have no serious internets at home, so I’m staying late at work and blogging from here, which sucks, I still want to get my head wrapped around a few cool ideas I’ve been introduced to but don’t have the inclination to at work. Very annoying.

More Lego and more other stuff tomorrow.

Grinding my teeth

I was going to read up on social objects, maybe talk about that a little, throw in some other garb about things I like, about the future and other assorted bits, but in all honesty I’m fucked off.

So after three days and being quite keen to get a blog post up I’m eager to get home, give my parents a call (fathers day yesterday) sit down with a movie and not think, because my slow as fuck computer at work is pissing me off, the fact that one of the students at the house still hasn’t got the fucking internet sorted after three weeks, is pissing me off, and a couple of other things to boot.

Will sort this out tomorrow. Before I break my knuckles.

What’s fucking you off at the moment?

Faster blogger! Kill! Kill!

Just a quick one tonight, I’m still at work, 13 hours so far, hitting the road soon, but inline with the subject of this post, and the general blog theme, may I present to you the Razer titanium-clad Boomslang Collector's mouse, a very awesome piece of kit for you gamers out there and anyone any geek who appreciates the finer things in life.


It’s a genuine limited edition, 10k to be made and the DreamHack expo in Sweden on June 16 is expected to have the info on pricing and whether or not it will use a High-DPI optical sense or opt for laser tracking.

Arh, all this fuss over a mouse?! Well, who’s to say? In yester-year it may have been a fine fur, rubies, metals, and whilst those goods a still touted as high-end hedonism in many respects, the people that abuse them now are, how should I put it? Often out of the loop? HAH.

Well I told you it was going to be a quick one.

More soon.

MTV generation 2.0

Ye Gods! I can wait until the mainstream press picks up on the likes of this malarkey, the coined phrase, at the beginning of its evolution I’m guessing, is ‘The Attention Crash,’ and by god, it’s pretty accurate right at this infantile level.

It revolves around the human capacity to absorb information, and those of us who work in the social media, with computers, marketing, PR, this ethereal environment where so much money flys around, so little gets done, but so much is accomplished. Steve Rubel kicked things off by simply saying;

“We are reaching a point where the number of inputs we have as individuals is beginning to exceed what we are capable as humans of managing. The demands for our attention are becoming so great, and the problem so widespread, that it will cause people to crash and curtail these drains. Human attention does not obey Moore's Law.”

Steve Rubel, 11/06/07

The one thing that always stuck out in my mind about the MTV Gernation, which I’m gladly a part of, was our lack of any sort of decent attention span. Well, fuck me, as I’ve grown and my inputs have kept up, my attention span has drifted to what I think is around 3 or 4 seconds. That’s generally how long I’ll stay looking at one thing, email, blog, twitter, jaiku, facebook, myspace, last.fm, imdb, plazes…the infinite list of social tools. Terrible.

Hugh Macleod obviously had his own succinct opinion on the matter in hand, which as usual also hit the nail on the head.

“Of course, this web-enabled, stressed-out success model isn't anything new. Since the dawn of time, to get anything interesting done in this world pretty much requires one kissing normal life good-bye. This sudden mass overload of input we're constantly witnessing is just one more example of it. One of many. Same as it ever was.”

Hugh Macleod, 12/06/07

I think I’m in an interesting position though, as Hugh says, “to get anything interesting done in this world pretty much requires one kissing normal life good-bye,” I’ve pretty much always know the life I’m leading now, although now I’m getting paid for it. Blogging, jumping into technology and the social media, I grew up with it, this fast paced, action packed ride of geekery and hedonism, it is what I do, and have over the last decade (since I was about 13), so it’s no different.

I love it, every minute, apart from my increasingly apparent lack of attention that is, HAH…it’s the future-boyo. So where am I? I work 60 hours a week, I play 50 hours a week and sleep the rest, it’s brilliant, give me more, I want to absorb everything. What are your thoughts? Lunacy or progression? I can't seem to agree with this '4-Hour Workweek' stuff, what the hell am I going to do with the rest of my time if i'm not absorbing information that I like? Play golf? Go fucking swimming with dolphins? FUCK THAT, GIVE ME EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE. I'll chew it up and ask for seconds, some might that’s young naivety, but I’m fine with that, when the hell else am I going to have the chance to balls up what I’m saying? So there it is.

More tomorrow.

Build ‘em big, build ‘em fast

That’s what I say, nuke the rainforest, throw up gigantic scrapers of the sky that protrude like terrible stalagmites of doom. Surround me with concrete, awash in a sea of grey and strangers, orange light and thick air. That’s me, a brutalist at heart, I love the nature of intrusive architecture, maybe because I’m some sort of terrible 80’s Wall Street driven, power tie, cigar smoking beast. I actually think is has more to do with my technological influences during my youth, but that’s a different blog all-together.

For now we’ll concentrate on the 3000ft Burj Dubai. Monument. Jewel. Icon. Don’t take my word for it, A-rabs in Dubai have been playing with words and came up with those three. I’d tend to agree, this beast is a testament to the long development of human architecture and, as far as I’m concerned, just totally outstanding in every aspect.



It’s a beautiful spectacle, and almost at the pinnacle of this theme that I try and write about, the combination of hedonism and modern technology. There’s literally nothing quite like this building, and as soon as it’s built I’m going to visit, and do my best to dominate it, as I have done with a wide array of other earthly structural monuments.

Anyway, I love this building, and the fantastic thing for you green types out there, it’s surprisingly environmentally friendly, just read the spec over at their site.

Now, it’s hot, I’m bothered, and I want some food and then some cider. So I’m off, into the fray once again

More tomorrow.

Hedonism and technology

Okay, less of my astounding political and social insight in this post (HA) and more straight-up technology that can benefit us in hedonistic ways, short and too the point as somewhere in this damned city there’s beer to be drunk.

MIT have been developing their magnetically coupled resonator technology that essentially allows for wirelessly powered…well anything hopefully. NO MORE WIRES! FOR ANYTHING THOUGH WITRICITY!

The one thing that I always thought would hold us down, how to actually get power to something without wires, okay yeah there’s batteries and possibly fuel-cells but this is a much more viable option and will prove for some very exciting times in the future, I’m hoping at least.

Secondly there’s Steam Punk, I’ll probably do a slightly more in-depth post on this one day and the guys behind it, but it never fails to impress and if I ever get any serious cash, everything I own will be calibrated in a steam punk fashion.


Just look at this wonderful set up, post-modern to the hilt, outstanding work as always, I’ll definitely combine this with my Witricity for some serious aces.

More tomorrow.

Content is King

Yeah I know, I know, I’m just rushed off my feet at work, I have no internet at home, it’s summer and I like beer gardens. Combining these factors doesn’t do anything good for the old blogging situation.

A good thought though from Amnesty International on the changing face of censorship on the internet, especially in China, god damn commies. To quote –

"The chinese model of an internet that allows economic growth but not free speech or privacy is growing in popularity, from a handful of countries five years ago to dozens of governments today who block sites and arrest bloggers,"

Tim Hancock, Amnesty's campaign director.

What I don’t think they realize is by opening up the net, they’ll actually have greater control and economic growth, but I guess commies will be commies. Speaking of which, Putin is threatening to train his missiles on us? Better get some of that factor 3k sun lotion on standby because things might just get a bit hot out there.

Just a touch of hedonism today, and pretty much completely off the general theme of this post, but this walking robot is outstanding, just pull up a seat and away you go, lazy legs, let the robots do the work, hopefully they’ll make one that can feed and clothe me soon.

Terrorism? No fun to be had here.

Problems and problems, freedom vs protection, being the main of them really, I wrote on this issue a few years back when I was travelling America, but in a different light all-together, here’s a snippet.


“It’s unlikely the rent-a-cop security employed to search and scan everyone getting onto Greyhound busses, for example, really know they’re infringing on the natural civil rights of all of these people, the 4th Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

‘Probable cause’ I think is the phrase that comes into discussion at this point, “Our intent is to root out and discover possible terrorists and to protect the greater good”, indeed, that seems to give these rent-a-cops the right to search anyone, well, where are the individuals these days…?”

Jack Rawstone - Circa 2003

More and more of us I guess, and that’s just the problem as the internet opens up with the social media, I wrote just the other day that my entire life is basically online, and I’m fine with that, I don’t mind, it’s my ‘15mb of fame’ (just call me the next Andy Warhol). But the guys at read/write web wrote an interesting article the other day on naivety in the social media, essentially technology and terrorism. Am I being naive?

Will the openness that we’re experiencing now come and bite us on our rosy red arses? Will the governments come in and close us all down for our protection? “Sorry, you’re not allowed to upload your images online son, you took that picture in front of the White House / it proves you’re a dissident for some commie faction”. No doubt some madness will ensue, there’s already talk of the CIA and likes tracking everything online, EVERYTHING. But at the same time they’re partly relying on that, to keep track, to categorise, I guess it would do more harm than good for these fascist agency types to kill the social media than to keep it going.

Really though, it is great for me, I can find out what I want, when I want, where I want, however I want though a few key clicks, and it’s going to get simpler, as search engines become more intelligent (no Skynet please), I’ll soon just click and have. And I’m not scared, it’s a bright future as far as I’m concerned, no ‘the glass is half empty’ for me thank you very much.

Your thoughts?

More tomorrow.

The uncanny valley and disturbing times

I love technology, but I would never actually ‘make love’ to technology. I very much doubt the Japs were interested in the pederast possibilities when coming up with the CB2 Child Robot, but none-the-less, it’s completely fucked up. I mean, fucking look at this thing, it's an abomination.


The video (found here) is even worse, the man softly-softly patting its leg, fucking hell! And this inevitably brings us to the Uncanny Valley, how we as humans feel unthreatened by robots, cyberoids, etc until the point where they look too much like us, then we freak the fuck out, and I’m thinking this monstrosity is at this point.


Getting back on point for the blog, we're almost at that hedonistic mildstone of ‘sexbot’ technology. Would I genuinely fuck a robot? It would probably depend if the robot was my overlord and pointing a laser gun at my face, in that instance, probably yes.

But undoubtedly this technology is going to become more and more familiar, the Japs probably leading the way, until ultimately, you’ve got the facility to walk down the street and get your pleasurebot in any size, shape or form. In my mind there’s something just categorically wrong with that, but thinking about it, that’s a healthy train of thought.

Take for instance Darwinism killing off the greasy bottom of the gene pool leech heads because they’re all out fucking robots instead of real humans. But, inexorably these robots are going to be for the rich, well-off types that can afford them, not the proletariat webbed feet type at the bottom of the social hierarchy, so which way will it go? Hmm lots of room for thought here I guess, yours on a postcard, or perhaps in my comments section.

Anyway, my net connection at home is down at the moment so I’m just going to be doing short daily, somewhat thought provoking, posts in my short lunch break at work for now, and if I get access to some wifi at home I’ll do slightly larger more commentary based posts from there.

So, adieu!

More tomorrow

Anarchy in the social media

Ha, welcome to the party, pal!

One great article that recently caught my attention was over at mashable, concerning chaos within the social media, online communities, static-anarchy in an online space, freaks with keyboards, weird wired times.

The article is detailed and informative but doesn’t seem to get into the grit of these actions, these weird call to arms taking place over the internet, a movement spawning from an online space in a space – for all intents and purposes – that doesn’t actually exist, it’s a bunch of 0’s and 1’s.



One classic example is the Digg revolt of 2007, concerning a certain code that was deemed illegal by some company, somewhere. Digg quickly took down any stories pertaining to the code, for fear of being sued and taken out by the Mega-Turbo-Compu-Corp type organisation that owned it, or at least was threatening to sue.

This is where it gets interesting though, the Digg users fucking hated that, they ‘revolted’ against the establishment, against the people who were responsible for running their community, they didn’t give a shit if the community went down, as long as it was open, they fought for their freedom, to post whatever they wanted in an online community that was built on a system of open sharing. THEY FOUGHT WITH MIGHT, THE MIGHT OF THE GEEK.

And they fucking won-n-all, 24 hours after Digg said, ‘we’re taking this down because we’re worried about legal implications,’ the founder of the site said something like, ‘fuck it, if we’re going down we’ll go down with the users,’ which was a real turn up for the books. And now nothing seems to have happened about the whole situation anyway.

It’s a space where users have true power, because, in a lot of cases, and I hope more in the future, the Kings listen to their people and know what their people want in a truer sense than in real life. There’s a great saying by Plato that goes something like:

“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.”

Plato - Ages ago

Now, okay I might be getting carried away where, but the examples we’ve seen, with the likes of Facebook and Digg, have seen the need for change, and have taken on board the revolt, the opinion of the user. Granted there’s no lives at risk, and it’s all done behind the safety of a keyboard, but big things are afoot, and these are interesting times. There’s nothing more hedonistic to myself than freedom, and use technology to propagate and explore the concept of freedom is just totally outstanding.

Jump in with ideas and thoughts on the whole situation.

More tomorrow.

All good things come to an end

As part of a blogger relations programme from TalkToshiba, I was recently given a Tecra A8 Toshiba laptop to handle for a week or so, test out and finally put down my thoughts on.

And after a week I can say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, whilst not the lightest or most compact lappy in the world, it’s a good size and of quality build, the sort of build that’ll make sure the only reason you need to get a new laptop is because three years down the road, the spec needs updating, but you’ll always have your backup there.

I took it around to various places, the local coffee shop, even to a cider festival in Wales, to make sure I wasn’t left out of the loop. After pairing it with my N95 it still rocked and I managed to grab my emails. Whilst the spec on the one I had wouldn’t exactly tare up some of the latest graphically heavy games, it did the job for what I needed it to do, and because of the mid-end innards, it kept the weight down to bearable.

Probably the three most important aspects of a laptop, as far as I’m concerned, are the keyboard, battery and the screen, all three of which I’m pleased to say do the job well. In fact, after getting used to the slightly ‘positioned-right’ nature of the keyboard it was a pleasure to type away at, the monitor had a nice contrast and handled even high-definition divx playback to a reasonable degree and the battery lasted for hours, on highest brightness setting.

Anyway, I have to run but, they’re good lappys, if you’re after something that’s mid-end, good build and reliable, I’d recommend them. The only bad thing was the amount of heat it pumped out, making it slightly uncomfortable on the lap after an hour or so, but you tend to get that with most laptops.

I enjoyed the experience, technology allowed me to have a good time and put a smile on my face, which is after-all, the point of reporting on this blog, and I loved the fact that because I am a blogger companies like Toshiba value my opinion and ability to affect people, perhaps more than a magazine or TV advert could. Interesting times, I might talk more on this later on.

More later.

Fahrenheit 451 and the birth of the Ebook

Guy Montag, you ain’t even going to get close pal, there’s people doing your job for you, idiots with agendas, think they’re proving a point when all they’re doing is looking very, very silly.

Take this chap, Tom Wayne, he amassed thousands of books in a warehouse during the 10 years he has run his used book store, Kansas City, Missouri, now he’s decided to burn then all because people aren’t buying them. That has to be the most ridiculously stupid thing I have ever heard, and I’ve heard some serious cock flow out of ‘got kicked in the head as a child’ idiots.

It’s the electronic age buck, get with the fucking programme, this Tom Wayne is burning his books in protest at ‘the death of thought in America,’ and whilst some stats do show less people are reading for pleasure today than 15 years ago, the inlet for most people’s reading these days is their net presence, and who ever heard of anything good being said on the net? It’s primarily a news source and reading today’s news is anything but pleasurable, I wouldn’t say more than 50% of my reading is pleasurable, I read books, but I read tonnes and tonnes of news and pure information.

Anyway, I’m tired beyond belief after a very heavy weekend spent drinking copious amounts of cider and getting itchy legs, so I’m cutting this short. I just wanted to throw it out there, people have said for getting on for decades now that the book will die out, I personally don’t think it will ever happen, eBook readers are generally rough around the edges, the contents of what people read might change over time, definitely what will be the sort of catalyst that will be the paper book’s death knell.

I do enjoy the fact however, that I can walk around with my Lliad, light, compact, perfectly balanced brightness, and carrying thousands of novels. Outstanding.

Technology, reading, hedonism? Not necessarily in this situation. Shame.

More tomorrow.