Good excuse

I can explain why I’ve not been posting recently…

See, I told you it was a good excuse!

Sir Terry Pratchett at The National Press Club

To launch his 39th Discworld novel “Snuff” Sir Terry Pratchett gave a lecture at The National Press Club in Washington D.C. and I was lucky enough to be there.  Not only that, but I was lucky enough to be one of 100 guests who were invited to an exclusive “meet Sir Terry Pratchett” session after the main event!  I could barely contain my excitement.

Sir Terry Pratchett, standing next to me!

Click on to read more about the lecture below the fold!

If a thing is worth doing…

…it is worth doing in time-lapse!

So Laura and I spent an hour or so priming the guest bathroom, in preparation of repainting it for Kevin’s visit later in the month.  The two of us managed to work in masks, with paint, in a cramped room, and not damage each other or anything else!

The music was written by Laura in 2008, and just seemed suitable for a bit of time-lapsery.

I’ve been commuting…

So when I’m not posting here I’ve been working, and to get to work involves a commute of just under 25 miles.  Most of this is along dual carriageway (two lane divided highway for those in the US) and so common sense says it should take a smidge over half an hour to complete the journey.  Unfortunately here in NoVA nothing is that simple, and school buses, rush hour traffic, poorly timed traffic lights and a few drops of rain can transform this into a march of over an hour.  My record commute currently stands at just under 3 hours due to snow and crashes, so by some standards today’s wasn’t that bad.

Anyway, enough of my moaning, here are two videos of my commute, one in ideal circumstances at around 7am, and the other under far from ideal circumstances starting out at about 8:10am!

Okay, so this started out as a tech demo to try out 720p time lapse with a GoPro Hero HD camera, but now I’m hooked!

“Quality over quantity” or “why I like Google+ Circles”

The web is ablaze with Google+ gossip, and everyone is quick to jump aboard the new social media revolution from the world’s leading search engine/portal/mapper/web dev magic shop.  So why should this blog be any different?  I’ll wade right on in there too.

First off, for those wondering “what is Google+?” I suggest y read the following:

1. What Google wants you to know – Take the tour of the Google+ project
2. What XKCD and most geeks (including this author) thought – XKCD Google+

So now you know what it is in broad terms.  You’ve also noticed this is the “Google+ project” and not the “Google+ product”, and that seems to be because Google does not intend to replace FaceBook with a different social networking platform.  Instead they want to continue to evolve their products to work closely together and infiltrate your entire browsing experience.  On the one hand this sounds brilliant, a creative light in web technologies striving to make the interwebs better for everyone… however, the realist (or cynical IT worker) in me also sees this as a potential invasion of privacy, and another attempt by Google to not just help you enjoy the web, but actually monitor and control how you interact and communicate with the digital world.

For me though the experience so far has been quietly enjoyable.  The integration with other Google products I use is relatively painless, and worryingly intuitive.  The overall experience is uncluttered, with clean white space, with subtle animations and hints of colour guiding your around the interface.

The big win for me though has been the “circles” concept.  This is a visual way of grouping your friends into multiple circles, allowing you to rapidly and easily communicate with only select groups of people, or with everybody you know, or even the whole world.  FaceBook attempted this with lists, but the interface was rudimentary, and the publish method was neither user friendly or easily maintained.  Circles for now seems easy to understand and the drag and drop interface makes management of groups of friends quick and easy.  Will it continue to grow as more users come online and everybody’s circles grow?  I’m not sure, but for now it is a clear advantage that Google+ has over FB and other social networks.

So why quality over quantity, well aside from the annoying bugs that one expects in early code they haven’t bloated the product with features.  Google hasn’t tried to out-FaceBook FaceBook, they’ve looked at a few key social interactions, and how people could expand those interactions on the internet, and have run with that idea.  I don’t think it is a FaceBook killer, but it has definitely introduced some new ideas both technically and design-wise into the marketplace.