1. Show & Tuttle

    During the eGovernment hack day, RewiredState, a bunch of us were taking a break downstairs at the Skiff, where the projector was set up.

    rewired state at the skiff, brighton

    Brian and I started showing the others in the room the QR Code project we had been working on, and so started a few hours of browsing the internet, discovering things and showing each other cool stuff we’d found, or saved earlier.

    Brian demos QR Codes

    Yeah maybe we did also just watch a view videos, or geek over various map mashups, but we all came away with a feeling that the format worked really well, even though it hadn’t been planned.

    The guys upstairs finishing their project came down and joined us, and so we wrapped up and went to the pub. We all learned something, shared something, and felt just a bit inspired.

    So I’ve decided to organise a similar session.. 27th March from 5pm, at the Skiff, sign up here. There is no agenda, and no pressure to show anything, just come and hang out and see where the browsing and conversation takes us.. I’ll also add a wiki page for each of these meets, where we can list all the things we browsed and add some notes.

    Sign up here.

    We’ve very kindly got a small sponsorship for beer and projector hire, which has covered half the cost. If you want to chuck in a fiver (or more!) that’d be appreciated, there’s nothing like beer karma for geeks :) Click here to make a donation. Thx! And hope to see you there.

    P.s. Tuttle coworking is meeting weekly, upstairs at the Sanctuary (map), at 10am on Fridays. All are welcome, go signup on Upcoming here.

    P.p.s. Almost forgot to thank the guys at the Skiff for letting us use the room! Thanks :)

    Posted March 16, 2009 in the events category, with the tags: , , , , , , , , and no comments yet

  2. Ownership of a file vs. ownership of content

    WARNING! Swearing and emotion ahead. if you’re not human, don’t read on!

    Those of you that know me, know that I have strong feelings about this, and if you didn’t know that, you know me well enough to know that I would do :)

    I’m going to lay this out simply, with no opinion, and let you come to your own conclusions.

    iTunes will now let you encode at “iTunes Plus quality” – great.
    I have several hundred CDs- all paid for.
    I encoded them, with iTunes, in 2001 – it took *ages*.
    They’re encoded at 128kbs – not the best, you can hear the clipping.
    Can I convert them to “iTunes Plus Quality”? – well no. How do I prove I own them?
    What’s the fucking point? – totally.

    I bought that shit. The first time around. And excuse my language, but I’m just having my face rubbed in it. Well look, it’s two thousand and fucking nine, this should be a non-issue.

    I paid for the content, not the file.

    Let me repeat that with emotional emphasis.. and this should drive home several things.

    I *paid* for the *content*.

    I really want to reward creativity. That means paying artists for their awesome music, and their time spent sharing it with me.

    There is nothing in place to reward *me* for paying them. This may sound stupid.. but this is a huge issue. You (record labels/industry at large) have this all wrong. We are not criminals, but you’re encouraging me to steal from you by not letting me have the things I’ve already paid for.

    So.. fuck you. Fuck your business models. I hope you just go away.

    Artists… we love you (on the whole). Love us back by enabling us to *pay* for your content.

    And don’t think that you TV and film producers and distributers are any fucking different. There’s a reason I openly admit to downloading Battlestar Galactica. It’s because I *really* like it! But it’s aired a week later in the UK, which is basically inviting me to download it on a Saturday morning from the US (including Sci-Fi channel overlays, I don’t care if they’re there.. just like I don’t care if there are messages about the Oscars on films I download.). I like it that fucking much, a few days matters!

    We want your content. Your content is good.

    But enable us to reward your creatives appropriately. Seriously.

    You’re not helping your industries, which we like, by clawing on to the behaviour that, let’s face it, fucked you into the position you’re in now.

    Posted March 14, 2009 in the Business category, with the tags: , , , , , and 7 comments

  3. Gary Vaynerchuk says you have to love what you do, or quit

    And I completely agree.

    When I was a chef several years ago, I learned so much (ask me next time we bump into each other). How to cook was only part of it. Long story short, I eventually realised that I’d stopped caring about the food, and that it had become just a job. As soon as you realise that, you can no-longer do the job the same way. You need to give a shit. You need to be part of what you’re doing, and it will be part of you too. So I gave it up. Luckily I soon started to work at Comic Relief.. and during my time in the kitchen I started Loose Connection too.

    The reason I started working in the kitchen in the first place was because I wasn’t enjoying the web any more, and I got out of that for the same reason!

    Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot from the experiences of all those paths, and am happy to be back in the web/digital industry. I have focus, purpose, experience and (almost most importantly) community.

    Now watch this, he says it better than me.

    So, the points to remember: (and this is not exclusive to building things online)

    • love it, or stop
    • live it, you’ll be working *all the time*
    • don’t just listen, take part
    • be prepared to fail for your love, don’t compromise your ideals (that’s the hippy bit apparently)
    • do something you’re actually into, it’ll show if you’re not, and you’ll lose interest
    • and more… you can work it out

    And go find him on Twitter, he’s worth listening in on.

    For some more technical stuff about building things online, here’s my list of what it takes to build the perfect webapp.

    Update: Oh I forgot, remember to be happy. That’s the foundation for being successful. In both life and business.

    Posted October 22, 2008 in the Business category, with the tags: , , , , , , , , and 1 comment

  4. How to get cheaper train fares between Brighton and London – train hacking!

    You do not need to be spending £20 to get a return ticket to London from Brighton! A day trip to the capital can cost you just £13.50, this is how..

    train hacks - cheap travel between brighton and london

    Disclaimer – there are no tricks, slight of hand, illegal activity or rail discount cards used in this hack.

    As an ongoing promotion to get more people visiting London, “British Rail” offer a ticket called the Super Off-Peak Day Return (previously known as the Price Buster!!1!one!). This ticket can only be purchased in Brighton, as it’s designed to get people to travel to London to presumably spend money on touristy things. Traveling to Brighton as a tourist, well that’s of course, unheard of! (duh)

    However, it’s possible to get this same ticket in London, for the purposes of traveling to Brighton. Let me explain.

    Traveling from Brighton to London to Brighton (a day return)

    1. Use a “quick ticket” machine, this is important, the staff on the counter will try to up-sell you other versions
    2. Select “find station” or “station a-z” and explicitly type in “London V”, this is because you’re going to London Victoria, not “London Terminals” which is pretty much everywhere (and becomes important later in the story *)
    3. Select the only station you’re presented with in the results, which will be London Victoria
    4. Now, on the right hand side list, select the Super Off-Peak Day Return, it’ll be £13.50
    5. Done. Now of course, this can only be used off-peak, so that’s after 10am on the way out, and not between 4pm and 6pm on the way back. (or something like that, you work it out)

    What’s important to remember is that the train companies, and in fact their business models, are profiting through obscurity. By this I mean that they take advantage of us by providing an awful user experience that ends up in us spending the most money. The first options we see are the most expensive, not the most economical. This is bad for several reasons, but mainly (for me, personally), is that if the trains *were* cheaper, or more people knew how to get cheap fares, then we would use the trains more, and thus not our cars. Big picture, joined up thinking guys! Come on!

    Traveling the other way, London to Brighton to London (also a day return)

    Now this is the fun bit. (if you enjoy watching confused people trying to work out what you’re up to)

    1. This time, queue up at the counter. Yes you’re going to have to try to have a conversation with one of these people. They (usually) don’t want to help you, be prepared for questions.
    2. When it’s your turn, which it will be eventually, trust me, ask the nice person for a Super Off-Peak Day Return from *Brighton* to *London. Yes, from *Brighton* to *London*.
    3. Answer their questions with “yes, I know it sounds weird, and yes I know I’m already in London, I know what I’m doing. Kthx.”
    4. Hopefully you’ll then be able to pay them £13.50 for your ticket, which will be a return, from Brighton to London and back to Brighton. (bear with me)
    5. If you’re not now paying for your ticket right now, that may be because they’ve claimed that it’s not possible to sell you a ticket from a station that you are not at. This is not true. They can sell you a ticket from *anywhere to anywhere*.
    6. To prove this, use this logic: ask them to try, if the computer doesn’t let them, then it’s not possible, and they will be proven correct! However, if it works, you get your ticket.
    7. And here’s the clever bit, you’re now going to use the return half of your ticket for your outgoing journey to Brighton. And then your outgoing half of your ticket for your journey back to London. This is the bit that confuses them, they don’t life hack. What you’re essentially buying is two one-way tickets, it doesn’t matter which order you use them in.

    It’s important to stand your ground, you are in the right in this situation. They just have a failure to understand the logic. What you need to impress upon them is that that is not important! Their job is to sell you a ticket.

    Of course there would be no need for this hack if they played nice. Old (business 1.0, ack) school businesses need to understand that, long term, being nice is better. Simple as that. Make it obvious that the cheap tickets exist, or better still, reward us for wanting to use the train at all!

    * London Victoria isn’t the same as London Terminals. If you try to buy a ticket from the ticket machines in London Victoria, they don’t allow you choose where you’re traveling from, and default to London Terminals. Clearly you are standing in London Victoria. This is why you have to queue up and explicitly ask for the ticket you want.

    UPDATE 1: I got a tip the other night about the “DaySave“, which is an all-day ticket that can be used throughout the entire Southern network, starts at £10 off peak, peak is only £30. Could be a winner!

    Posted October 17, 2008 in the Geek category, with the tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , and 15 comments