Packing list for Camping at unconferences

Based in part on https://wiki.har2009.org/page/Camping:Some_guidelines, and my experiences at the recent SSWC here is my packing list:

Essentials:
- Tent - be aware most tests seem to be designed for tiny people, so get a slightly bigger one if possible.
- Ground sheet/sleeping mat/air mattress
- pillow
- Towel
- Torch
- Warm jacket
- Waterproofs
- phone charger (unless your phone is one of those really simple ones that can last a couple of weeks on one charge!)

Good to have:
- Spare torch or one of those head mounted ones
- Spare towel
- extra jumper, multiple thin layers
- knife or multitool
- string
- hat/pippo

Things that will make life easier
- multi-block/extension lead - there are never enough power outlets at these events.
- Jesus-tape/gaffer-tape/duct-tape
- bungee cord/luggage strap
- Case trolly - the bigger the wheels the better. Useful if the wheel on you back breaks, easier to clean, if you hurt your back and can't carry your bag.

(I have used Clas Ohlson not because thaey are any good (in fact not sure where i got my stuff from!), but as they have pictures for the things where the name it not 100% obvious, and sell it in Finland and Sweden)

Tab Sweep - Funnies

Inspired by Tim Bray's Ongoing, here is my first Tab Sweep (basically, a bunch of tabs that are open, but are not worth sending to del.icio.us or twine. These all came from either Jaiku or Twitter links

First, this video, which is a response/inspired by this one (Warning, slightly NSFW if you work somewhere that does not like sexual references or rude words)

Then it seems that Tribbles have arrived

Bit USAian in it's outlook, but still true - the 8 levels of drunkeness

Then, a story about internet sucess from a couple of years ago. Someone submits a picture to deviant art, and then gets a job working drawing the Simpsons.

intersting things happening around Jaiku

Checking Jaiku this morning, it seems that a couple of potentially significant things have happened over the last 24 hours.

First @lemonad puts up a post announcing that he is looking at getting the Mdot version back up and running.

And then I see @jyri's announcement of a 20% project that has the potential to solve the feed fetching problem, and thereby allow feed fetching back into Jaiku.
Check the FAQ (that is linked in the comments) for what problem this is designed to solve.

Also, by checking the #Jaikuengine channel you can stay (sort of) upto date with whats happening with the development of Jaiku.
The Bug tracker is here while there is a seperate code review tool here.

Next steps for Evolve Design Consultants

Just checked out my friends new website, looks pretty cool.

Spent some time discussing some ideas how he could take print design into the web and work with the curent media companies to create some exciting things

BarCampHelsinki III

Fjord have put up a post announcing that they are hosting BarCampHelsinki III.

So far they have been excellent hosts and have managed to even get WiFi working (are rae occurence at most events!!)

MobileDevCamp.fi - Starting to come togeather

So after answering the call to for volunteers, it seems that the sponsors are coming in to allow us to create the potential for a really good event.

The reason for only saying potential is that it is the people attending that will make an event, and the attendee list so far is looking rather good for an interesting event.

Details of what is happening can be found on the web site

Helsinki Bike Show

So i went to the Helsinki Motorcycle show on Saturday.

It was interesting as it was much larger this year, and the spreading out allowed it to feel less "crowded".
The effect was to have three "halls" or area's; the mainstream/manufacture's hall, the small dealers/misc-stuff hall and upstairs there was the custom/vintage hall, along with a cinema showing Easy Rider.

The mainstream all was crowded and not so much new, although the Finnish Ploice stand was interesting as it was projecting videos of chases of speeders, and showing what was the average speeds and the actual offical speed limits in those places.
Most of the stands had a couple of girls in tight clothing sitting on bikes.

The small-dealers/misc-stuff hall benefitted from not being crowded by the custom hall, so the ailes could be a bit wider, making it wasier to browse or just walk as you choose (other years the aisles were smaller making it a bit more difficult to just walk around as the people buying/fondling the merchandise would fill up the aisles causing blockages).

The custom hall, was kind of interesting, as the same as last year a couple of the local workshops had transplanted themselves to the hall and were showing their work live(ish).

Overall, a good afternoon out.

My pictures from the event are shown below:

I think i might have figured out why i don't like Twiter

So at the day job we have finally got more than 50 people signed up for Yammer, and with that number of people the activity has started to get interesting.
This caused a slight parting of the clouds/light bulb moment about why i have struggled with Twitter and why i don't really like it.

The Yammer web interface will show threads (if people use the reply option!), bubbles active threads to the top (like Rejaw), reasonable clients (web, Adobe Air desktop client, SMS, IM...) that offer multiple ways to post, self made groups AND daily summary emails.
If all this sounds rather familiar, it should, this is the feature list of Jaiku (without the presence stuff, but normally you have some form of IM client to do that).

So why do both Yammer and Jaiku work so much better for me?

Well, it finally occured to me that, what i like about this is that i can add my thoughts/comments at a time that is convient for me, and i don't have to be online ALL the time, and can actually do the tasks that the company gives me money to do.

The real-time nature of Twitter might be useful for some, but it fails spectacularly as i see it, because Twitter has no "do not disturb" option like a true IM client does (other than closing the client).

Videos and memes i helped friends discover over the xmas break

So as i was traveling around the UK visiting various friends and catching up with them in real life, i was telling them about various things that i had seen via various places on the internet.

Everyone seemed to enjoy them, so i thought i would gather them all together here in one place.

Silly ones:

Numa Numa guy
Leave Britney alone
Chocloate rain song
Baby Panda Sneezing
fat cat fail

Interesting ones

Money as debt, very interesting/scary explanation of how the banks work
where the hell is matt, view the three videos and read the FAQ.

I also showed Spotify to a few people. This post is a good explanation of how it works

In other news, I also attended my first Tuttle club meeting, and had some very interesting conversations (and geeked out a little :)

Another post on the subject of Thoughts on Mircoblogging

Another slightly long one.

So some of this post has been sitting in the "queue" of ideas fermenting away, and then over the past couple of days a minor flurry of activity was kicked off, that prompted me to finally post this. More on this "controversy" further down.

First, after some thought, here is my current view on the two oldest microblogging services:

Twitter feels more like old school blogging.
From how i see twitter, it has the same "mental model" as blogging.
Someone creates a single post, then there are some responses to that, comments == @ replies and DM == emails.
The difference is that unless you do some work (or use a range of third party tools), it is impossiblevery hard to figure what was said (the original author can figure it out i think, i am not enough of SocialMedia bigshot to have any real experience with that :)
Also Twitter, due to it's limited functionality, but existence of an API that exposes all of that functionality, has caused an eco-system to grow up around twitter. This eco-system also has a secondary effect, in that now there are not only people writing about how to use twitter but also what tools are best to use with it.

Jaiku feels more like a forum.
This is probably due to the threaded nature of the conversations.
The fact that replies can use markdown and can be longer also contributes to this feeling.
The channels also help to separate off some of the noise as well.
Another thing that helps, is that the social circles in Jaiku seem to be slightly tighter, or at least that is my experience. For me this shows up as the same names showing up in threads, even though i am not following that particular person, so i can take a longer time getting to "know" them before following/friending them.

now about what inspired me actually do something with the ideas written above:

Ville Vesterinen put up a post on the Arctic Startup blog, where he outlines his idea that he will be spending more time on Twitter as the majority of the people he met at LeWeb08 were on twitter, and he thinks that he will get more from using that as his primary tool.
This caused a bit of a stir on Jaiku (along with a slight uptick in the number of Finns registered on Twitter i would guess).
Ville, to give him credit, follows this up with a second post and third post about the responses.

Possibly as a response to this (and also due to the general rumblings on #jaiku) Jyri announces in a blog post his understanding of some of the future plans for Jaiku.
Interestingly he also posts it to both Jaiku and twitter.

One of the hightlights of this was the comedy moment when this jaiku thread started up in response twitter post by one of Jaiku's more prolific contributers

Another highlight was @Spongefile's comment here

Jaiku is like a constant huge cocktail party hosted by your friends with interesting conversations to drop in on with semi-strangers.

Twitter is like getting constant voicemail from everyone you know. You can reply via the same method, but that's no way to communicate.

which i think has to be just about the best description/comparison of the two services i have seen in a while.
And also ties in with one of my all time favorite Merlin Mann quotes here