liquidindian.com

There’s an unbelievable claim on the front of the Google Mobile Blog at the moment.  I know that Google are capable of some pretty impressive things, and have massive computers the size of skyscrapers and are waiting to take over the world and make us puny humans their amusing puppets when the time is right, but there’s no way I’m believing this without any proof:

You can now search Google Maps for Android using your voice, making it easier than ever to look up places while on the go. Whether you’re searching for an address, a business, or nearby windsurfing spots, just speak your query and Google Maps will find it. Our voice recognition engine currently understands English in American, Australian, and British accents.

British accents?  Google can recognise all of the accents of the UK, from Aberdeen to Devon?  I’m not sure this is possible. Time to put it to the test with a Fife accent - mine. Read the rest of this entry »

So the BNP has a foothold into politics. In case anyone reading this doesn’t know what I’m on about, the BNP are a bunch of fascist holocaust-denying racists that voter apathy has allowed to represent parts of the UK in the European Parliament. I’m angry, I’m frustrated. These people just seem evil to me, and we voted them in. Need convincing? Here’s all you really need to get it.

So I’ve decided to do the only thing I feel I can do. I want to make some sort of protest, but, you know, I’m busy and that would take effort and that. People are already out there throwing eggs at BNP leader Nick Griffin, so it’s not like I need to add to that - it’s being done already. I could take Nick, create and effigy and burn him, as seems to be popular in other parts of the world, but even that seems like too much effort in today’s new culture of apathy, and I doubt health and safety would allow it. No, I’ll take a more modern approach to this: I’ll take Nick Griffin , recreate him in The Sims 3, and do unpleasant things with him. You know, much as you usually do in The Sims, but this time to make some sort of ineffectual ham-fisted political protest.

First, I need to create Nick.  I’d like to point out that I’ve always been terrible at art, so this will be a very rough attempt.  Most likely it will be generic tubby, ruddy-cheeked man in a suit.  Here goes, with a little side-by-side comparison of the real thing.

Yeah, it’s rubbish, but it’ll do.  I’ve used makeup to give him that red face, and adjusted various sliders so as to make an approximation of him.  He still looks nice, though. Avuncular, even. It’s the best I could do. But he’s called Nick Griffin, so that makes up for the fact it barely looks like him.

An aside - I used my phone to search for an image of Griffin while creating his doppleganger, so I didn’t have to switch between windows.  I then forgot about this, so when I was in the supermarket later, his image reappeared on the screen when I answered my phone. I received the sort of looks that, well, the sort of looks you’d give a man who had a photo of a prominent right wing lunatic on his phone. Not friendly ones.

Time to choose his personality traits.  The Sims 3 lets you choose five from a substantial list, and these affect the things the sim can do in the game, and how other sims will interact with him.  Most of what I chose was fairly obvious. Evil is pretty self-evident, and as you rarely get laid-back demagogues, I picked Hot-headed too. As for Inappropriate, well, it was more the description that swung that one - “Inappropriate Sims talk about the wrong thing the wrong time, never think to dress properly, and never think to apologize when they’ve wronged someone” - and as Griffin is talking racist bollocks in 2009, that’s clearly the wrong thing at the wrong time.  Like Evil, Insane is pretty obvious. Loser is more for because I want him to suffer in the game. And also because anywhere the BNP gets a foothold, the electorate turns against them pretty sharpish. A mixture of prediction and wish-fulfilment, that one.  Then a couple of final options to choose, setting his favourite food to Fish & Chips, and setting a favourite colour.

Well, obviously. That done, time to move him into his new home. And there’s a surprise before I’ve even begun. We know how Nick feels about people of different colour, but this is something new for him. How’s he going to react?

How does he feel about the transparent?

(to be continued…)

It’s been about 15years since George Robertson said that of Scottish devolution that it “will kill nationalism stone dead.” With the threat of a Tory government, and  the SNP’s small majority in Holyrood - could the idea of independence make a serious comeback?

This has been preying on my mind recently. I’m not in favour of independence - I feel that Scotland has more to lose than gain from it, and devolution allows for the political differences.  But I do wonder if the memories of what was done to industry and the poll tax could resurge under a Conservative government, and what the effects will be.  Considering this question, I had a glance at Wikipedia, which has a fascinating section on opinion polls and independence:

Poll results often differ wildly depending on the wording of the question, with the terms such as “break up” and “separation” often provoking a negative response…an opinion poll published by the The Scotsman newspaper in November 2006 revealed that a “Majority of Scots now favour independence”…In a poll in 2007 commissioned by The Scotsman newspaper it said Scottish independence was at a 10 year low with only 21% of people in support for it…

It lists a bunch of other results, too, which back this up. Do we want to stand on our own?  Yes! Do we want a break-up? Oh, that sounds nasty: no thanks.

SNP support is no barometer, either.  The Guardian quotes a recent poll:   Alex Salmond’s ruling SNP near 40% and apparently on the crest of a wave. But then you check the independence question on Scotland’s polls and see that support for separation is also heavily down – in the lower 20s. So of the people who vote for the party that has independence as a main part of their credo, only half actually want that.  It’s a bizarre situation that the SNP can’t really acknowledge - they’re the most popular party but the voters don’t actually want what they stand for.  They must know this, but for the sake of face Alex Salmond has to claim that the country is two-thirds of the way to independence.

What’s probably the final nail for the idea that independence could be resurgent is that the Tories haven’t been disgracing themselves in Scotland - possibly the opposite, if reports can be believed. While I’m seeing it from a distance, they seem to have learned the lessons that can only come from absolute humiliation.  The Guardian points to increased funding for police numbers, small business assistance, and drug rehab as their victories - hardly the usual small government stance of the traditional Tory - and polls point to the possibility of six seats in the next Scottish election. From this, it seems that independence would hinge on how odious the Tories are in government, if they win the next election.

Still a ‘maybe’, then.

Right. This blog has been sitting here for a while, unloved. The sidebar has been doing rather well, due to me mucking about on various social media places, but I’d like to write bits in this middle bit here more often. Here goes. I’ll start with a thought that struck me at Media140, a microblogging event I was lucky enough to attend this week.

While Media140 was a pretty laid back place to be, there was a sense of mild panic in the air. The question that was asked and unanswered several times was ‘this is all very well, but how do we make money out of this?’, as various journalists and editors argued about how Twitter has changed (or not changed) how they do their job. The most entertaining panel was probably the first, with Darren Waters from the BBC, Jon Gripton of Sky, Mike Butcher from Techcrunch, Nick Halstead from Tweetmeme, and Bill Thompson, sometimes of the BBC. Everyone seemed very aware of the problem - if information, and news, is free and shared, what’s the role for the journalist, and how does it pay?

The most striking part of the talk for me was Mike Butcher’s assertion (that he retracted a little immediately after) that his readers are his editors. If he makes an error, then those who comment on Techcrunch will leap upon it. He did clarify this, saying that if this was a regular occurrence, it would affect his reputation. However, this highlights to me the thing that a lot of the big media outlets are missing. Yes, the news is out there and it’s free, and so the obvious conclusion is that you can make opinion and quality journalism pay, and simple reporting of facts should be without charge. Or, in a later panel, Simon Grice of ideas.org said that extremely local news would become more important, and therefore able to make money. But I don’t pay for information, when I buy a magazine or a newspaper. I’m not even really paying for the physical artifact. I’m paying for selection, for someone to tell me what’s important.

Crowds are much more idiotic than the individuals within the crowd. I could probably find some scientific study to prove this, or mention the Stanford experiment, but all you really need is to look at the front page of the BBC News - today’s most read stories include Evan Davis giggling and the Jonathan Ross radio show being pre-recorded. Those are also on the front page, but further down, throwaway and not at the top of the news agenda. Go to digg.com and it gets worse - the ‘best stuff’ is porn stars, funny images and cartoons. Let people decide for themselves what is important and you get a bunch of crap. Buy a good newspaper or magazine and you get information you could likely find elsewhere, but selected by someone and presented to you - and that’s where the value is. It may seem paternalistic… but get rid of pater and we may well just revert to useless children.

The lesson we should perhaps be learning from Twitter’s success is that stripped back is popular, and that having a whitelist of trust is as important than the stream of information.  I don’t have the time to sift through an ocean of information to know what’s important.  The gatekeepers will always be necessary, but they and we need to recognise this.  Pat Kane said in the opening speech that with social media we can all play at being journalists, and that sounds fun.  Playing at being a whole media organisation sounds like a lot of wasted effort.

The Infinite Wheel Dub City Rockers site allows you to create your own dub tracks.  I recommend number 8 - move your mouse over the flowers to choose a backing beat (I was tempted to use the word ‘groove’ here, but I’m on shaky ground as it is) and then use the stars for melody and the bouncing, um, things for your echo-ey sound effects.

I have yet to attempt ‘toasting’ over this.

As a result of being very very angry, I’ve discovered a fantastic resource - The NHS Behind The Headlines site.  There were two things that angered me, and they were both in the Daily Mail.  First was a story claiming that Facebook increases your risk of cancer, the other was a seemingly reasonable attack on irresponsible parents refusing to vaccinate their children.  The Facebook/cancer story was easily rubbished, either by having a look at the source, or by, you know, having a little think.  The other story is mostly fine if it was on its own, but this follows loads and loads of scaremongering and innuendo in the Mail.  I think the only thing that would satisfy me regarding the Mail & MMR is a headline that says “WE’RE IDIOTS AND WE’RE SORRY”.  That’s unlikely to happen.  What’s more likely is that they’ll move on to the next scare.  Which is where the NHS site comes in.

I had no idea my tax was being spent so well.  To pick something almost at random, here’s a story that appeared in The Independent:

It is the simplest hands-on experiment – and, for once, it is safe to try this at home. Compare the length of your fingers and predict your own future. Everything from sporting prowess to academic ability, sexual orientation to susceptibility to disease can be assessed on the twin measurements of the length of the ring and index fingers. It is science’s answer to palmistry.

Well, it sounds like a load of nonsense.  What does the NHS say?

As a small cross-sectional study, it is not possible to infer any causal effect of finger length from this study alone. The researchers rightly say that as digit ratios are set early in life, it is probable that digit ratios predict profitability, not vice versa. However, this is not the only aspect to assess when examining potential reasons for this link. There are many more factors that may be responsible for the association seen. Therefore, further research will be needed before this sort of study leads to anything practical.

And adds, brilliantly:

Sir Muir Gray [the director of the NHS National Knowledge Service] adds…I can’t think of a use for this research finding.

It filled a few pages of newsprint and gave us at least one blog post, I suppose.

All three parts of Jim Al-Khalili’s BBC4 series on the Atom.  Dramatic and soap opera-like without ever dumbing it down too much. Jim’s a great presenter, too - enthusiastic and he really wants you to understand it all.

The Clash of The Titans

The Key to The Cosmos

The Illusion of Reality

Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of meeting @x5315, a pleasantly excitable young chap and one of the talented people behind Twitterfall. Now, one of the things that always said about Twitter is “what is it for?” – that and “it’s full of self-important people spouting off”.  But ignore them, even though they have a point.

The non-obvious thing, at least to me and I think to lots of beginners, is that a twitter feed on its own is pretty useless. It’s more like instant messaging, but if you describe it as sort-of Push to Talk Asynchronous Instant Messaging, you’ll probably get blank looks.  I did.  But get a lot of people tweeting on a similar subject, then it becomes… not a discussion, but a kind of mass stream of consciousness, with all the noise that implies, but fascinating nonetheless.

Anyway, Twitterfall.  I’m currently one of a handful of people back in the office while most of the others are out at a big trade show.  How can I possibly know what’s going on?  Luckily, tech journos and tech PRs are twitter-whores, and by plugging a few search terms into Twitterfall, I was able to get a… well, a twitter cascade, I suppose, and every time the application found a new tweet, it would queue it at the top ready to drop it in.  It’s what ‘liveblogging’ promises, but doesn’t really deliver, swapping one voice for a multitude.  I was able to follow the Nokia press conference – or rather, I would have been able to if I didn’t have more pressing work to do.

The Twitter search on the website is useless in comparison; while the ‘there have been 3 tweets since you searched, please refresh’ is nice and all, it’s not a patch on this.  By default, it has the trends identified by Twitter as search terms, which is both immediately informative and quite depressing - New York Fashion Week is the most important thing right now, it seems. But, still, it makes me feel like I’m in a science fiction film, which counts for a lot.

I’ve been asked about the little handwritten headers that litter this site.  I have almost zero design skills, and there’s no way I can be arsed to create a little image each time.  Here’s how I did it.

First, create your own font using yourfonts.com.  This site gives you a little grid to print and fill out with each letter in your own handwriting.  You then scan it in, and it spits out a ttf file, which you can then install as a font.  If you have a mac, it’s as easy as double-clicking.

I then installed a plug-in called FLIR in Wordpress, which is easy to configure, and also uploaded my new font, as the ttf file.   I have it so anything that’s in a heading html tag - h1, h2 etc - is automatically converted into a little image using my handwriting font, using… well, I don’t know how it does it.  Javascript or something.  Which just shows that you don’t need much knowledge to do this.

Nice, though, isn’t it?

An aside – you may notice that I avoid capitals in the headers.  This might seem like some modern web2.0 design decision, but it’s actually because I made a mess of the capital ‘W’ when making my font.  So I’m avoiding caps.

Martin Parr takes a tour of the UK in 40 photographs.