Alexander's blog

Adding velcro to the back of an iPad and stick it anywhere!...

Thu, 27 May 2010 00:13:33 +0100

Adding velcro to the back of an iPad and stick it anywhere! Although, I can’t personally imagine placing that much trust in velcro when it comes to my own iPad.

"We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to..."

Sat, 22 May 2010 19:04:08 +0100

“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”

- Steve Jobs

Venez comme vous êtes A rough translation (feel free to email me...

Fri, 21 May 2010 10:28:00 +0100

Venez comme vous êtes

A rough translation (feel free to email me to correct it):

“Yes, I was thinking of you, I’m looking at the class photo, and I miss you,”

“I have to go,” he says as his father approaches with their meal.

Dad asks, “Is that your class photo?”

“I looked just like you when I was your age,” says nostalgic papa, “I did quite well with the girls.”

…

“It’s too bad there are only boys in your class… You have all the luck.”

Thanks to Carnal Nation.

What Do Women Want? - Discovering What Ignites Female Desire

Mon, 17 May 2010 20:09:20 +0100

What Do Women Want? - Discovering What Ignites Female Desire:

A fantastically enjoyable article, looking into the work of several specialist professionals from various fields and how it is uncovering the mysterious realm of female sexual desire.

I want Facebook to be useful again

Mon, 17 May 2010 19:51:00 +0100

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I have recently become increasingly disillusioned with Facebook.

Why Facebook is becoming useless for me

There are two key factors behind the decreasing value which I can find in Facebook. Firstly - and much more easily solved - is the seemingly endless barrage of pointless information from various applications on the Facebook ‘platform’. These - despite my best effort to prevent them - alert me to every detail of various people’s fictional farms, zoos, lemonade stand, and racist views.

Secondly, and potentially more troublingly, is the sheer amount of total idiocy that Facebook shows me on a daily basis. Its’ the misspellings, thoughtless comments, the aforementioned bigoted and moronic views, and awful photographs of various horrific escapades.

I believe this itself is down to two factors. Firstly, people believe that they needn’t be careful about what they write - or how they write it - because “it’s a website”, and it isn’t thought to matter. I disagree, but this isn’t an important point, for now at least.

Secondly; in general, people tend to take the view that Facebook is ‘private’. I want address this in another post, but in short: due to their expectation of privacy, people feel as if they aren’t really “publishing” any more than sharing with a select group of ‘friends’.

Are the people the problem?

However, whatever reasoning may lie behind this kind of behaviour, it certainly isn’t everybody. As I said, the solution to this kind of content problem on Facebook isn’t as easy as blanket-blocking particular applications - but it’s similar.

I’ve always had a fairly modest ‘friend count’ on Facebook, my most ever hovering around 330 or so, and I imagine this solution would be less tenable for those with much larger numbers of contacts. But for me, the solution I tried was to delete a fair number of my own contacts - about 70 in all - based on a short list of practical criteria. One of these criterion: do they frequently post things of the nature which I’ve described above?

The result

This method - although perhaps not ideal for everybody - has certainly proved effective for me. Of course it hasn’t eliminated every stupid post that crops up on Facebook, but it has meant that I can actually use my newsfeed again, and not feel irritated and upset with people in general every time I use Facebook.

ReclaimPrivacy is a bookmarklet that will scan your Facebook...

Mon, 17 May 2010 18:53:13 +0100

ReclaimPrivacy is a bookmarklet that will scan your Facebook account for privacy settings that may be unexpectedly set to public, and inform you of specifically which settings these may be. Check your account at ReclaimPrivacy.org.

"The men who committed the atrocities of September 11 were certainly not “cowards” as..."

Mon, 17 May 2010 12:51:35 +0100

“The men who committed the atrocities of September 11 were certainly not “cowards” as they were repeatedly described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. They were men of faith - perfect faith, as it turns out - and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be.”

- Sam Harris, ‘The End of Faith’ - The Nature of Belief, p67

"We must finally realise the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance."

Sun, 09 May 2010 16:22:52 +0100

“We must finally realise the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance.”

- Sam Harris, ‘The End Of Faith’.

Another little peak at what I’m up to with data...

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:12:49 +0100

Another little peak at what I’m up to with data visualisations of the Sunday Times Rich List: visualising wealth with Ford Fiestas!

A small tease of what is to come from me with respect to the...

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:40:00 +0100

A small tease of what is to come from me with respect to the Sunday Times Rich List.

My mouse activity for today, graphically realised. Lines show...

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:40:17 +0100

My mouse activity for today, graphically realised. Lines show mouse tracking paths, and dots show pauses. The larger the dot, the longer the pause.

Reflecting on my own impact

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:52:00 +0100

Over the past few days, I’ve become increasingly upset with things which I’ve seen on the internet, and particularly on Facebook. I very much dislike some of the ways in which I perceive some people to be acting, or representing themselves online.

Reflecting on this, however, brought me to consider my own impact. Whilst I try very hard (and often succeed) at being measured, considerate and thought-out in my writing online, I am often absolutely not. This, I believe, is almost entirely (if not completely) in tweets: 140 characters of expression, which rarely allows for a balanced approach to issues.

In Facebook comments, my longer articles on issues which interest me, blog posts such as I have begun writing here, and even simply my more discursive uses of twitter, I believe I can be successful in reaching these aims of moderation and balance. Far more reasonable than I sometimes let myself be on twitter, at least.

As much as I might still believe in the point, then, I will aim from today to stop posting reactionary, inflammatory tweets about things which make me angry. Instead? Maybe I’ll take notes for a calmer, more thought out blog post or article later.

My friend Grace once said that I sometimes fail in allowing my anger to ‘dwarf my opinions’, and I think that puts it perfectly. I do believe that I can be successful in giving an impact - both to those who know me well, and strangers who may come to know me through online media - of myself which is very positive. I think I’ve done this several times, and I place great value in the relationships I’ve formed and new people I’ve managed to meet through twitter. I’m finally taking the lesson that this positive point can so easily be damaged by explosive attacks, compressed and concentrated into a tiny 140 characters.

There’s also another reason to try and change this about myself: anger is easy. Being angry, and more importantly; being critical, is effortless. That’s why so many inches of opinion columns by regular writers are filled simply with complaints. I don’t wish to dismiss these types of article, but what I do want to do is encourage myself to be thoughful and interesting, rather than merely angry and emptily provocative.

To all those who say "fuck the police"

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:27:00 +0100

I honestly do not know or understand why people would ever say “fuck the police”. I don’t pretend that my ignorance of this fact alone means that people who say this are ‘wrong’, nor that everyone ought to adopt my personal view of the [British] police.

Personally? I have a great deal of respect for the police, and I think that they are all too often limited in what they are able to do in certain situations.

If I was trying to empathise? I suppose I could posit two theories.

1) The police are seen as nothing more than a force to disrupt their fun, by enforcing laws on marijuana, drinking, or - because this can be what is considered ‘fun’ - other far more serious situations.

2) These people feel unfairly targetted by the police. Perhaps I like the police because it’s very easy for me to. Perhaps some of these people actually are unfairly included in groups of those who are fairly treated to an increased level of attention from the police. Although, to be fair, this is almost certainly a necessary inconvenience, rather than a significant problem.

You don’t even mean it

However - whether or not I agree or can even properly empathise with an anti-police stance - I fundamentally object to anybody shouting, writing or even casually saying “fuck the police”. For many reasons.

One of the most basic and significant, however, is that I simply don’t believe that anybody who says it truly believes in it. On a macro scale, I can’t imagine that anybody honestly believes that the police (or a police-like presence, from a principle point of view) to be useless, or not worth having in a civilised nation. But we needn’t even enter into a complex political discussion about these issues.

Why? Because if these people’s mother’s house was burgled, or their father was attacked, what would they do? Unless I significantly misunderstand this situation: they’d call the police.

Apple is doing the right thing with the international iPad launch

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:29:00 +0100

Like many other people living outside of the United States who have been hoping to get their hands on an iPad, I was disappointed when Apple quietly changed their UK website to reflect a month’s delay (and issued this press release) to the iPad’s international launch.

The obvious question, which Scoble tackled here, is; how did Apple get their estimates so wrong? They had sold over 500,000 units when the announcement came, and Apple stores across America were sold out. Even then, we’re only talking about the WiFi model: the 3G model wasn’t, and currently still isn’t, available anywhere.

So, thanks to this huge US demand, the international launch was postponed by a month. To me, and many others, the obvious fact was that we weren’t getting our iPads so that American customers could stay happy. We felt undervalued: second class citizens in the eyes of Apple. This email to Steve Jobs - with his characteristic reply - makes this exact point.

But it also made me change my mind completely.

Given that Apple got their initial estimates on a US launch so wrong, it’s imperative that they make sure that the international launch is done properly. I’d rather have a delayed launch in the UK if it means that it goes smoothly.

The situation that clearly shouldn’t be allowed to arise is one in which US Apple stores are out of stock, and European Apple stores experience a launch in which they very quickly become unable to satisfy demand - especially with 3G models just around the corner.

Yes, it’s unfortunate that the estimates being so far off have led to this situation, but I’d rather that American stores get their stocks back up now. Then when the iPad launches in Europe, with the lesson of American sales behind them, Apple should be able to ensure that everyone - from the wannabe queuers, to the casually interested customer - can have their iPad when they want it.