It’s been a while since I’ve been blogging. I’ve not posted anything in about a year, for various reasons (well, excuses). I’d like this to change and so I’m going to be experimenting with splitting up my blog. I’ll be posting more personal and whimsical stuff on posterous, keeping xerode.net for more “serious” content like code and animation/graphics.

I’ll be toying with different ways of bringing all my content together on my homepage through lifestreaming software or I may just stick to using my flavors.me account for that.

I’ve got many reasons for the above but most of it boils down to re-evaluating what I want to do with this site and various new goals I’ve set for myself. Ideally I’d like to make this site more professional and start integrating my portfolio and creative projects into it, while keeping the more personal content elsewhere but still accessible from my homepage.

So this is the last of these kind of posts you’ll see here. Instead expect more about coding and graphics – I’ve got a few drafts about ActionScript to finish and I’d like to post some of the work I’ve done in Processing, as well as document my first steps in OpenFrameworks territory. Hopefully this blog will end up with more purpose, instead of being a neglected mish-mash of mostly unrelated content and the occasional angst.

I’d also like to take the opportunity to completely gut this install of WordPress as I think it’s long overdue. I’m probably going to end up moving it to the domain root, clear out my unused plug-ins and carefully configure existing and new ones, all to make the site more functional. Once I’ve got everything running as smoothly as I’d like, I can sit down and flex my atrophied design muscles to create a more interesting visual identity that I can then use across the sites I post to.

Hopefully my small amount of subscribers will find this as interesting as I do and will be able to contain their excitment until it’s all finished.

ETA: unknown

It took 4 shops before I managed to find a pair in stock. Annoyingly they were a size too big but as they were the last pair in the store and limited edition I still bought them. They’re Converse, so I can just do them up tighter and pray I won’t get blisters.

This was all part of a shopping trip for clothes, as aside from some cheap tat from Primark, I can’t remember the last time I updated my wardrobe. I also picked up some new t-shirts, including two with prints of Shepard Fairey’s recent works and another with the Laughing Man logo.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s an awful lot of work put into the exhibition and it contains a stunning collection of documents and artifacts of the history of civil liberties in Britain. However, the whole tone of Taking Liberties seemed to be so horribly self-congratulating that it left a really bad taste in my mouth. Most of the questions asked of the visitors were populist and lacking in any real substance. Considering that the advertising promoted it as something hard-hitting, I thought that topics such as tuition fees were really weak and almost missing the point.

Speaking of the questions, the interactive element of the exhibition involved swiping a barcoded wrist-tag with a unique ID underneath a POS-style laser scanner each time you wanted to participate. Maybe it was just the way it was presented but it seemed to miss the irony of the obvious comparison to ID cards, data-mining and the database state and even if it didn’t, it really should have made more of this.

The main problem with Taking Liberties is that it concentrates too much on the past when it should be asking harder questions about the present and the future. What’s the point of cheerleading these achievements when they’re slowly being eroded away?

Don’t go to the exhibition. Watch the documentary of the same name instead.

Omnipotent and yet unable to perfect queueing theory. Either that or even God relies on the excuse “the cheque’s in the mail”.

Found in Whitechapel, the home of the Salvation Army.

A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment.

Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight.

Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper, ‘Please wake me at 5:00 AM’ and left it where he knew she would find it.

The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight.

Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn’t wakened him, when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed.

The paper said, ‘It is 5:00 AM. Wake up.’

Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests.

Now, I love jokes that tackle the difficult subject of stereotypes as much as the next person but I spied an interesting footer after the final joke: “SEND THIS TO SMART WOMEN WHO NEED A LAUGH AND TO MEN YOU THINK CAN HANDLE IT !!!”. I decided to test her sense of humour and see what she could “handle” by responding with the following:

Funny. Here’s my favourite “men and women” joke: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/ashe1108.pdf

The punchline?

“Excluding overtime, the median hourly earnings of full-time men were £12.50, an increase of 4.4 per cent, compared with £10.91 for women, an increase of 4.1 per cent. The stronger growth in full-time men’s hourly earnings excluding overtime compared with women’s has meant that the gender pay gap has increased to 12.8 per cent, up from 12.5 per cent in 2007.”

I’ve yet to receive a response.

Health

• The perennial favourite, quit smoking. Well, I’m still smoking although recently I’ve been cutting back a lot when I’m at work and pretty much restricting myself to fags at lunch. If only I can do the same while I’m at home or out and about and I’ll have this addiction licked.
• Go to a dentist and try and get my teeth sorted. I had a couple of visits last year but I’ve missed my 6 month check-up.
• Improve my diet. Since my relationship with a soon-to-be-ex-housemate ended, I’ve been very lazy when it comes to cooking and for the past few weeks I’ve been living on junk food. I need to start cooking for myself again and stop eating so much crap. Success! After a lot of pizza earlier in the year, I’m eating healthier and home cooking again, resulting in losing 2 stone in weight compared to this time last year.
• Cut down on boozing, especially beer. After a few too many alcohol-fueled embarassments, I’ve been working on this and keeping it in mind while drinking.
• Lose some weight and exercise more. The gym nearest to my house has the inevitable “New Year, New Body!” promotion on, meaning there are no sign-up fees. As I’ve used sign-up fees as a reason not to join before, I have no excuses for not getting my membership sorted. As mentioned above, I’ve lost weight, now I need to keep it off and tone up. I’ve got the membership but went to the gym a grand total of two times, so I really need to improve on this or cancel my subscription.

Money

• Start saving instead of blowing all of my wages each month. At some point in my life I would like to own a house or at least have the option of doing so. Still need to start on this one.
• Blow some of these savings on a holiday and some kind of snowboarding trip. I didn’t make it to the Bangface Weekender or Machinenfest last year, so these are my priorities this year. Anything else will be bonus.

Social

• I seem to have ended up in a relationship so I guess I should make an effort not to mess it up as I did with my previous two. Well this pretty much went to shit. I think I need to be single for a bit while I get my head together and get over my ex. As much as I’d love to get back with her, I doubt it’s going to happen and I just have to accept that.
• Respond to text messages, phone calls and e-mails in a timely manner, instead of ignoring them and wondering why some people take offence. No real improvement so it’s back on the list for this year.

Creativity

• Finish my blog and keep it updated/Expand my portfolio and put it on-line again. As I’ve combined my blog and fledgeling portfolio into one entity, these are really the same. I overhauled the design and although it’s not 100% to my liking, I’m pretty pleased with it. I need to start posting more updates as I’ve slacked off since November and I’ve got half a dozen posts sat waiting to be finished and published.
• Blag a DJ set somewhere. I failed at this last year but it looks like I’ve managed to get a gig in March. I’ll believe it when I’m actually standing there “spinning” tunes from my laptop though.
• Get back into photography and use my flickr account more. More success! The Anonymous protests really got me back into photography and I’ve been snapping a lot more, appreciating the beauty of RAW and playing with LightRoom.
• Start learning German. I pretty much ignored this once I realised I wasn’t going to make it to Maschinenfest. As I’m now adamant about going this year, I suppose I really ought to learn the language.
• Have some kind of tuition for the piano/keyboard. I stopped working on music around the summer to concentrate on Flash. I’m starting to play around with it again now but I’ve realised it’s never going to be anything but a hobby. Tuition would be nice but I’ve got more important things to spend my money on.

2008 was pretty tumultuous for me. Changing jobs and all the stress that involves, particularly at the hands of useless recruitment agents. Heartache when my then-girlfriend goes travelling and breaking up with her, not realising it’s likely for good. Seeing someone else on the rebound and having to realise this. Moving house and severing part of my “support network” in the process.

On the plus side I’ve moved in with a fantastic housemate, I’m out of Saffron and really progressed my Flash work, started on some freelance work and it feels I’ve started a career of sorts.

I’d like 2009 to be better but after yesterday’s events, where I realised that I’m still in love with somebody who doesn’t feel the same way, I don’t have any particular hope. I think I need some time out to sort out where I’m going and what I want from this year, to try and mature emotionally and stop running from one relationship to another, as it feels that’s what I’ve been doing these past few years.

Unfortunately due to a long queue, a small window of opportunity and some people deciding to get everything they ever owned signed by him (including multiple copies of the same book – hi eBay!), there wasn’t much time to actually speak to him. I really wanted to ask about his workflow, as I’ve loved his work since being introduced to it via Machinehead, Fear Factory and later Skinny Puppy and Frontline Assembly etc. and I’ve not read too many interviews with him where he goes into technical details.

The irony is that Forbidden Planet lost custom – I was going to pick up a nice, shiny new edition of Arkham Asylum to get signed but due to later arrivals such as ourselves being limited to two items only, I put it back and had what I brought with me signed instead:

I think Dave was a little surprised by me asking him to sign Brap. I’m not sure why I asked either but it’s my favourite Skinny Puppy album so that might explain it. Regardless, he certainly seemed to prefer my choices over boo’s.

When I was in Brighton a few weeks back with boo we stumbled across a surreal scene in the town centre. In a small square two security guards kept watch over 4 massive letters spelling out “love”.

It was obvious something was taking place but noone in the small crowd seemed to know exactly what. Suddenly a lone little girl walked up to the one of the letters and started drawing on it. As a small group started pressing chalk and paintbrushes into the hands of children in the crowd, it became clear that this is what was intended.

The letters were soon swarmed by children, parents and passers-by wanting to make their mark using images or text. As the low-lying canvas within arms’ reach of most of the artists was quickly used up, some started climbing up the letters or each other to gain access to the areas left untouched.

I stupidly forgot to ask those giving out art supplies for any information and searching the Internet has been pretty fruitless – try searching for Brighton, love and graffiti and see how many results are returned. My best guess is that this was some kind of community art project as that was certainly the mood. The letters themselves felt uneven with several layers of paint so it might be a regular event. Interestingly, it was very civilised and people quickly fell into the “respect” mindset of the graffiti community, avoiding interfering with each others work.

The work may not have been as good technically as that at events like the Cans Festival but they both shared the excitement of the public altering their environment to their own desires. I just wish that there were more initiatives like this or a change to graffiti laws so that urban life would be much more colourful.

More photos on flickr
[flickr]tag:Brighton+LOVE@xerode(square)[/flickr]

When I first heard about this campaign (from Dan*) I was all for it and intent on taking part. After some thought, I’m really not sure I support it. It’s not that I don’t agree with the message but I do object to religious advertising. Even though I’ve noticed an increase in advertising for religious organisations and charities through print, television and billboard campaigns, I don’t like the idea of petty eye for an eye retaliation.

However, the fact that the target was met so quickly and has since been eclipsed is at least good news for secularism in this country. Of course, the aim of the advert is to encourage debate about faith and by generating headlines across the world it’s certainly done that. I just wish a gimmick wasn’t responsible for this achievement.

* Dan has also had one of his suggestions featured on the site

Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.

GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project.

Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers – thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers.

With an international recession on the way (or it’s already started depending on who you speak to), the Labour government want to expand the role and powers of the Government Communications Headquarters – at the cost of £12 billion. No doubt this is in part because the existing ECHELON system is unable to cope with the explosion of digital communication since the mid-90s due to the rise of mobile phones and the Internet becoming mainstream.

When I started thinking about this, I thought that it might be unworkable. Hell, the amount of processing required to monitor a high traffic transient site like 4chan seems astronomical until I remembered news from earlier this year – Google “Phorm packet inspection” or read this handy round up of Phorm news from The Register. This technology is available now and BT have already run secret trials on it’s customers last year. BT and Vodafone are the two companies rumoured to be taking part in the GCHQ trials and if successful, it wouldn’t surprise me if legislation was introduced making it compulsory for all UK ISPs to have similar packet inspection technology with the logs made available to GCHQ. Or just bypass all that and install the system on the physical networks spanning the country.

I had this entry sat unfinished in my drafts folder since the story broke last week and was thinking about deleting it. However I think it’s still relevant in regards to 2 news stories from yesterday:

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

Aside from being unworkable (how will it cover the second hand market for phones or the existing phones in circulation?), won’t this legislation mainly punish those with a low income, stereotypically the main users of PAYG phones? Up until last year I hadn’t had a passport for around 10 years and it cost me around £80 to get one. Will this now be the entry cost to owning a mobile phone?

This is of course ignoring the main fallacy of this proposed legislation – those who are intent on breaking the law will still break the law. Creating more laws for them to break will in all likelihood not stop them from breaking laws. Theoretically it would also encourage identity fraud and theft – if a passport is the only way to get a phone, then won’t this incite a black market for fake or fraudulent passports? Won’t criminals look to stealing phones even if they will only be able to use them for as long as the phones aren’t reported stolen? Hell, The Wire explains very succinctly what happens to criminal networks as you try and monitor their communications – they find other, more difficult to monitor, means of communicating.

Maybe The Times article is just being vague. Maybe it’s the sale of pay as you go SIM cards that the Government want to regulate. That still won’t address one major problem – from my current residence I can walk into Hackney Central and pass at least 5 independent shops offering PAYG SIMs on any network for less than £3 each. If this legislation were to come into effect, will all the mobile service providers be able to recall all of these cards? Will they be able to track down all the cards that aren’t recalled?

This proposal is also missing or conveniently ignoring the point that thanks to existing mobile phone technology the Police can already pinpoint a suspect via mobiles. You don’t need a new iPhone to be tracked down via GPS – phones can be located to within metres using cell site analysis. Couple this with data on repeated calls from a particular location and bingo, you’ve just found out this suspect’s house, place of work or local pub.

So once more, Labour are pushing for a national database – the key part of that last quote being “part of a much bigger database”. Despite mounting opposition to Identity Cards and the National Identity Register (a 2006 YouGov poll revealed that 79% agreed that Britain has become a “surveillance society” and that 51% were unhappy with this) Labour wants the right to spy on all British citizens through the oxymoron of restricting our civil liberties to protect our freedom.

Thankfully, at least one person is standing up against this bullshit. Amazingly it’s not the ever delectable Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty (although I’m sure she has something to say) but one of Tony’s cronies, Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions. I caught him on Channel 4 News ahead of his speech last night and was surprised that the head of the Crown Prosecution Service was warning about “mission creep” of legislation brought in to aid the Police and Secret Service:

“We need to understand that it is in the nature of state power that decisions taken in the next few months and years about how the state may use these powers, and to what extent are likely to be irreversible.

“They will be with us forever,” he said. “And they in turn will be built upon on.

“So we should take very great care to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we can’t bear.”