Pete's Eats

I just took the plunge and installed Tweetdeck (despite some serious misgivings about having yet another AIR app that is not signed with unrestricted system access) and found it enables an easy way to see the tweets I’d marked as favourites over the months… Looking through them, I still think some of them are complete gems and I wanted to share:

hrheingold – “I first learned to play squash on acid. Forty years later, playing squash in only four dimensions is a breeze”

loic – “@joi has just been called a ‘venture communist’ on stage at Fortune Brainstorm as he promotes openess into the internet”

antimega – “you’re like the oyster of N****a, filtering out all the rubbish ideas and occasionally shitting a pearl”

moleitau – “When you yanqui wander home drunk you cannot possibly hope to pee on a 2000 year old bit of wall like I just did. So there.”

peterelst – “Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some people appear bright until you hear them speak”

adamgreenfield – “Cursing Apple and their software installation process. When did they get so very Redmondian? Fuck them in the eye”

I love having such a diverse range of friends as this, seeing them post on blogs, twitter, flickr etc etc over the course of a working day means I feel very much ‘in touch’ with them despite us being scattered across the globe. Ahh, hugs all round 

I’ve been messing with Ubiquity for a couple of days off and on because I’m interested in their interaction model and how it might work elsewhere, and I have to say it’s a brilliant idea. I hope they keep developing…

Downside is, that as of the current version of Ubiquity it breaks the javascript detection for any site that requires a recent (as in V2 on) version of Firefox to work, such as Apple’s .mac online services. As I use the (still really shonky) .mac webmail site, this causes me a headache so I’ve had to sadly disable Ubiquity whilst I need get on with my working day.

This is probably going to affect less than .01% of the internet’s population I know but after searching to see if there was a known work-around I came up with no references to it at all so I thought I should add one maybe…

Head over to Storyplanet.com and have a look… Tell me what you think?

Here’s why: Bjarke, our CEO, is the guy behind Magnum in Motion and some of the stories there are just staggeringly good both in terms of content and production. More, Magnum have always been a huge influence on my photography and the chance to work with someone who’s been an integral part of them for some time is too good to turn down. Having the chance to work with Joi again (he’s our Chairman) is a huge plus too. BUT, mostly because I find the idea behind Storyplanet to be simply superb and it’s chance to get back to a role that I seriously enjoy and can get my teeth into using technology and methods I genuinely value. That’s the short version. I’ll save the long version for when I see you in person.

I’m taking the role of CTO on and that’s going to mean a very welcome return to everything technical that concerns our infrastructure and platform. With my background I’ll also be straddling the business and creative side of the house when needed (or, when I can meaningfully contribute anyway). Up to this point, despite being in the various places I’ve found myself since starting in this industry all those years ago, this is my first startup and I’m very seriously looking forward to the challenge of building our business in this financial climate.

I had a 1st gen iPhone that I bought from the US long before they were out here in the UK and of course I had to jailbreak it and unlock it to actually use it. I despised having to do that but Apple had decided that the UK wasn’t going to get the iPhone at launch and that was that. I put it down to supply in that there probably just weren’t enough iPhones to go around.

A little later, I bought a 16gb 1st gen iPhone on O2 when they finally launched it over here and signed for a new 18 month contract; at least I had an ‘offical’ iPhone now and could make day0 use of the software updates that seemed to be coming in thick and fast at that time. A few months later, they launched the 3g iPhone at the same time as in the UK and although I was in Japan at the time and couldn’t get one of the first batch I upgraded pretty soon after thanks to O2 offering a free upgrade if I extended my contract with them.

The app store has been a revalation and kept me pretty interested and excited about the phone since then. I’ve even dipped my toe into iPhone programming during this time. The pace of innovation seems to be slowing though and I’ve been secretly very jealous of most of my friends with their jailbroken (and mostly unlocked) iPhones at being able to do so much more with them by using unofficial apps that seem to make much more of the platform. So, anyway, I jailbroke my iPhone today because I’ve been waiting for Apple to approve the release of Qik for ages and there seems to be no word on it yet. I don’t know if the hold up is with Apple or Qik or the operators but I’ve really wanted to use the app for some time now and at last I can…

I hated having to do this though and it very sharply throws into contrast the problem with using and supporting closed platforms like iPhone. I’ve been reading Jonathan’s ‘The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It’ over the past few weeks and it’s really shifted my thinking to a new level about this kind of thing. I’ll try and find the time to make a proper post about closed platforms etc because I realize that it’s a bigger, more important issue than I’d thought before.

For reference: it’s not easy jailbreaking a 3g iPhone and certainly not one that’s fully up to date with the released firmware updates installed via iTunes so I used ‘Pusher‘ to put installer on my iPhone without jailbreaking in the end. You don’t get Cydia, just installer, but that was enough to get Qik for now… With all of these things though, try it at your own risk as there seems to be plenty of horror stories out there despite it going perfectly for me.

Knowing my luck, Apple will release a huge update to the firmware tomorrow or something and I’ll have to lose the installer app and Qik again!

Me on Qik

In an attempt to get back up to speed with PHP and MySQL I’ve been messing around on a little project called ‘dearbankmanager‘.

Earlier on in 2008 I was the victim of debit card fraud and the whole thing is still not resolved; there’s been a lot of fallout from the situation and one of the things is that I’ve changed banks. It’s a huge source of frustration that you cannot actually get to talk to someone who cares, someone who’ll take responsibility and actually work to help you out. So many times I wished I could just text someone and have a moan at them…

So, I thought I’d build up a quick app to enable anyone to complain about their bank in 200 words or less. The format keeps it readable and to the point; in this ‘texting’ era, it’s a format that people are probably quite used to as well.

I still need to finish off some bits, most notably:

• - design (css is a bit b0rked atm)
• - ratings
• - comments
• - rankings
• - twitter integration

After I’ve finished those bits, I’ll release it all as a generic ‘dear-x’ engine on GitHub. The idea being you can then install and run your own ‘dear-x’ project about the things that are important to you. Josh has already begun modding the code to fit his ‘Dear Economy’ idea (I’ll link this when it’s live too).

I’ll post a link to the source here when it’s done…

Please drop by and have a moan about your bank – or, maybe even compliment them instead…?

Update: FOTBM has been canceled. I met with John last week, and spoke at length on the phone too and I know how much this has got to him. John is one of the people I’ve known the longest in the Flash world (if not *the* longest in fact) and I can tell you he hasn’t taken this decision lightly at all. There will be disappointed people for sure, but I think John has gone a long way to compensate for this by giving comp tickets to Brighton to everyone who was registered for Miami as well as full refunds on the ticket price. Sometimes tough decisions have to be made and there will always be people who won’t be satisfied with the results, but in doing this John has secured the Brighton event no matter what happens from this point on.

I’m really, really looking forward to the event in my hometown later on this year and feel chuffed to be able to take a bit of credit for why it’s here in the first place. Brighton’s FotB has been amazing every year since it started but for the last two years whilst working for Microsoft, I’ve been a bit ‘out of it’. This year will be different – this year I’m back in the Flash world with a vengence and can’t wait to catch some of the best speakers and educators in the industry.

So, kudos to John for having the guts to make such a tough decision… Here’s the notice he sent out verbatim:

Flash on the Beach Miami has been cancelled

It is with huge regret that we have taken the decision to cancel FOTB Miami. Our intention was to take FOTB with its awesome speaker line up, fantastic networking opportunities and of course terrific FOTB vibe to the USA, but low registration numbers have meant that we would not be able to deliver the high calibre event that Flash on the Beach has become well known for.

It seems that the recession has really hit harder than anyone expected. Even reducing tickets to an incredible $99 did not increase the registration numbers enough to be able to deliver an event which is as good as the European conference.

For your information, we have given every registrant a 100% refund PLUS a complimentary ticket to FOTB Brighton.

Flash on the Beach Brighton will go ahead as scheduled, and already has some very big names, and exciting topics lined up. It is being held September 20-23rd.

We would like to say a huge thanks for those who supported us and tried to help make Miami happen.

John from Flash on the Beach just emailed this:

For 48 hours only, Flash on the Beach is giving a crazy “New Year, January Sale, Late Christmas Present, Hello Obama, Things Can Only Get Better, F*** The Recession, Sooper Dooper Unbeatable Unrepeatable Discount”!

Don’t miss this opportunity to get tickets to the hottest conference around!

For the next 48 hours only – ending at midnight PST on Wednesday 14th January. A full 3 day pass for $99! Are we mad? Nuts? Loco? Doolally? Yes – for 48 hours only, we are! Use the following code when booking:

RSKNUTS1

Get your tickets here now!

That’s one hell of a deal…

I’ve been using Camerabag for the iPhone for a while now and it’s definitely my favourite and most used app. I’ve been using the sync with Mobile Me function to maintain a gallery which I’ve then been updating Fotonauts from.

Anyway, I’ve just created a collaborative album on Fotonauts so anyone can add their own. I love the ‘Helga’ filter but this album if for all of the filters. Should be fun