Mark Higginson

My musical listening history is dotted with artists who went from being the next great inspiration to just having one early album as the defining moment in their career. The mark of the true artist is not one of a discrete act of creation, but of development and ascendency. The Kleptones had that one great album, A Night at the Hip-Hopera, an exercise at once both thematically complete and diversely eclectic. This was an album so popular it was stolen from the hi-fi while it was playing at our house parties. What marks them out is that they have built on this success with each subsequent release.

Their latest work, Uptime / Downtime, scoops up a great armful of my most favourite tunes for a hug that delights as much as it surprises with a continuation of the double album concept of 24 Hours. As my friend Joe would say, so retro, so future... to a point where the vital feeling I had when I first listened to these old friends is recaptured in these multi-layered self-referential slices of pop (culture). The Kleptones are successful at recycling the inherently disposable into something greater than the sum of their parts; making the tunes that really meant something into genre and time-spanning dancefloor fillers, whether that floor is a club or your own front room.

If reading an 83-page Apple patent application isn't your bag then at least skim this summary: Apple exploring wireless system for quantifying the unquantifiable over on AppleInsider. The "sprawling patent" talks of "sensing systems" that collect data about what happens to objects as they move through space and time. Although the article doesn't use this term Apple are essentially applying for patents on a variety of types of spime, one of those technologies that, like the barcode, will have both a sudden ubiquity and a profound effect on how we view the world of manufactured objects that surrounds us.

If you want to indulge in a little further reading on what's coming next then try When Blobjects Rule the Earth. If your interest is sufficiently piqued follow-up with  Shaping Things; both the speech and the pamphlet are by Bruce Sterling who coined this particular neologism. In fact I believe spimes first appeared, but were not referred to as such, in his 1998 novel Distraction, which is well worth a read.

I start with a clean white Google search page, I have Adblock Plus installed and use Readability to bring the content I find to the fore without any distractions. Add quietube and I'm all set:

"... watch web videos without the comments and crap..."

More of my time is being spent preparing reports on what people are talking about on the web. There are a number of companies offering tools that do this kind of thing. The way they work is by identifying keywords in a dataset and pulling out pertinent information around the word(s) such as date of mention, where it occurred, on a webpage fitting what kind of recognised format, etc. This data is then presented in the form of a 'dashboard', i.e. a few charts, possibly with some sort of 'score' attached. I prefer to work with the actual data retrieved by a crawler for particular keywords rather than use an automated summary as I want to be able to check the accuracy of the underlying information. There doesn't seem to be an offering out there that doesn't provide some sort of bell-or-whistle that tracks 'influencers' or 'emerging trends' or promises the dreaded ability to analyse sentiment... however:

Algorithm-based sentiment analysis doesn't work accurately

If it were possible then natural language processing would allow me to have a friendly chat with Google when I wanted something and not have to parse my requests into a few pithy search terms. The reason sentiment analysis is a key part of tracking is that most of us who use these tools would like to believe the promise that they can discover when people are saying good or bad things about the topic we're interested in. Unfortunately this knowledge is not perceived as valuable enough to have a real live human read and assess every mention that has been discovered so inaccurate methods are employed in an attempt to achieve useful results. Conversations on the web are human conversations with all the nuance and multiple meanings afforded by the language used and the context in which the conversation occurs, e.g. correctly identifying sarcasm is at present an impossible challenge for a computer. If you're looking into using one of these tools then ask these questions of the supplier:

• Can I export the data to CSV, XML, etc.?
• How do you identify and remove spam?
• On average what percentage of mentions identified constititute spam?
• How accurate is your sentiment analysis?
• Please may I see the human assessed sample of mentions versus machine assessed sentiment that you used to produce that figure?
• Which academic / research papers would you suggest I read to find out more about the fields of natural langauage and sentiment analysis?

Dashboards and scorecards are only as good as the data that lies behind them so if you can't see the actual data or easily compare 'scores' across multiple keywords and understand what the differences mean you should run a mile. I've been through and am still going through trying to make monitoring work effectively and am currently working on an efficient way of working out sentiment that is not subject to the flaws outlined above.

I picked up on this bookmarklet via a post on Matt Haughey's blog. I read a lot of webpages daily and this tool transforms that experience into something almost pleasant. It was created by arc90 and strips out the text of whatever page you are viewing and formats it so it's easier to read. Being able to get rid of all the clutter to get to the content I actually want to see makes me very happy. The image below compares a page from Wired.com against the Readibility version so you can see what I mean:

You can tweak the style to suit yourself when you create the bookmarklet. Perfect! Reminds me of the layout suck.com used back in the days of low resolution displays. Also, if you use Safari and sync your bookmarks with your iPhone you can use it on that device too:

'Readability' in Safari on an iPhone

Go treat yourself right now. Arc90 assures us it works in most modern browsers.

I loved this game when I first played it ten years ago as the silent Gordon Freeman wandering the Black Mesa Research Facility. Martin, you thought it was pretty good too as I remember? Proves that Physics PhD's can mix it up with the best of them. It's interesting to read that a team of dedicated people have re-created the game using the Source engine. I'll look forward to revisiting it.

3 original comments:

I recently installed windows on my mac for the solo purpose of playing the hl sequels. The original is the best, probably – especially given what a quantum leap (no pun intended) it was for storytelling in those sort of games.
Comment by Martin Austwick — 20 November, 2008 @ 3:24 pm

Half-Life itself didn’t grab me, but Counter Strike… my god.
Comment by handolio — 23 November, 2008 @ 10:42 am

Agreed. That was my first foray into online gaming and it was extremely satisfying.
Comment by Mark — 26 November, 2008 @ 6:06 pm

I've had to call the RAC twice in the space of a month. It's one of the hazards of driving a sixteen year old car with one previous owner who only ever used it to drive round a village. The service has been spot on both times I've dealt with them. Given my brushes with Orange, Virgin Media and various utility companies this is an all too unfamiliar situation. They're prompt; I've received a call from an operator to tell me the patrol was half an hour away and then one from the patrol itself when they're ten minutes out on both occasions. All of the people I've spoken to have been polite, really know their stuff and expressed a genuine desire to help get the jalopy going again. If you own a car then do yourself a favour and buy great customer service from the RAC. Hell, even if you don't own a car who knows when you might be in one that breaks down. Cover yourself then you'll never be stuck. As an aside I once spent three hours late one night waiting for the AA when a friend's car broke down. When the recovery vehicle finally did arrive it was from some local garage. There was a total mismatch between the expectation set and the service delivered hence why I chose the RAC when it came to needing cover myself.

Disclaimer: if the above seems a little out of character then it's because I want to balance the fact I moan an awful lot about crap customer service on this blog. If someone does a good job I figure I should mention that too.

It took a lot of persuasion by Cindy for me to come round to the idea but I'm really glad we went to WOMAD which was on in Wiltshire this past weekend. It was pretty much the perfect music festival having both artists of a high quality and a friendly atmosphere. Perhaps I'm showing my age but I really liked the fact that by Sunday drug-addled teenagers weren't falling over me every thirty seconds as they staggered round like zombies attracted by the brightest / loudest stimulation in the vicinity. The weather was beautiful and I had the privilege of seeing the following highlights:

Altaikai: being a fan of Huun-Huur-Tu made me really keen to see more throat-singing, even more so as these people were from Altai, a country I'd never heard of (another one to add to the list), which is also reportedly where Shambala is believed to exist.

Sa Dingding: I'm not sure I'd sit and listen to one of her albums but the live show was pretty incredible. Best described as frock-tastic with dancers.

GOCOO + GoRo: I love Taiko drumming having seen Yamato earlier this year. GOCOO were a different style and performed with GoRo, a chap playing the didgeridoo, which is usually somthing I wouldn't be able to stand but fitted perfectly in this contest. It was like techno with instruments; a thoroughly physical experience that the crowd responded to with an enthusiasm I've rarely ever seen.

Tashi Lhunpo Monks

From the WOMAD website: Altaikai, Sa Dingding, GOCOO + GoRo

I seem to encounter more inconsequential pleasures in the kitchen than anywhere else. The other day I was making borscht which usually involves me grating beetroot by hand, a very awkward and tiring job given the quantity I usually make. This time though I had the Magimix....

25 year old Magimix still going strong

This is a great piece of design. It feels solid, the plastic exterior wraps around a weighty motor that could run forever, indeed, this Magimix is around 25 years old. Best of all it has no buttons. To operate it you do no more than set the container on the base and snap the lid into place. Genius. It is so straightforward I find it charming. No instructions are required; it cannot work any other way. Not only isn't it overcomplicated, it also doesn't add complexity to the tasks it's designed to help accomplish.