Kitten Fluff

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Aliens?,
originally uploaded by The Kitten’s Toe.

We have done San Fran and went over the Muir Woods to do some tree hugging. Now off to Monteray to try and catch some rays!

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Haight Ashbury,
originally uploaded by The Kitten’s Toe.

We went camera shopping and to Haight Ashbury today – fantastic. Really not very nice weather though. Hopefully it will be WARM tomorrow…

Had a chilled time in Haight, then I bought the new camera – the Canon 7.1 megapixel SD500. AMAZING. This photo was NOT taken with it…

I shall be taking all my other snaps with it. It is jolly bloody good.

Had an early brekkie in a very smart Philip Starck hotel called the Clift, with Mr Dave Winer. The eggs benedict were not as nice as Blugg’s.

Found fantastic cafe bar place with loadsa characters in it called Enricos. Highly recommended. If you check out my Flickr stream you can see the pictures – taken with my NEW CAMERA! – of the very cute kitten that sat at the front desk most of the time.

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DSC01641,
originally uploaded by Wyscan.

We have arrived in San Francisco. It was Gay Pride today – we had no idea. But we knew when we saw a completely naked guy riding a bike. Or maybe that happens all the time here.

We almost missed the plane because I got the flight time wrong. When we arrived at the airport, we then found out we had been put on the bloomin standby.

Went for a sarnie and found ourselves sitting beside some rapper and his bling bling posse. I knew he was famous because people kept staring and asking for photos. When I first saw him I thought he was Whoopi Goldberg.

I asked if he was famous or something and he nodded and mumbled “Yeah, jsadljkjad”. As you might be able to tell I have no clue who he was. He had silver front teeth and dreds. He was quite short. That’s about it.

After saying “who?” twice, I decided to leave it, saying instead “Oh, we are British so we have no clue.” I asked him if he had been there, but he had not. So I know he was not Lil Bow Wow.

Hopefully going to meet up with Dave tomorrow for brekkie before heading off to sniff the seals on Pier 69 or whatever it is.

It is bloody cold here. I thought this was California.

“We are the media,” says Adam Curry, wearing a suit and tie. “We want to take back the media and hold it in our hands.”

The music industry is one of the first parts of the media that people will be taking back in their hands because the tools used to produce this stuff are the same for all.

He is right, of course. He is also right to say that the big nobs – the Microsofts and the Apples of the world – need to give people the fuel to do it because the people will sell the gear for them by creating the media they have in their hands.

I think it is hilarious Adam is in a suit and tie (pink, of course) presenting his keynote here at Gnomedex.* Has been wheeling and dealing or does he want to get away from the leather jacketed 80s VJ look ? ;0p

If you want the full shebang, he did the keynote as his 200th Daily Source Code.

Oh, and he thanked Dave Winer for all his work. And he loves him.

*Btw – Just before he started, he played a mash-up for a few minutes and everyone clamored with their cameras to take photos and videos of The Curry and The Scoblelizer who had bounced up to the red couch on stage to jig along. Geek Celebdom. Bizarre.

One person we have met at Gnomedex – among many others – is Bre who is a middle school teacher here in Seattle.

He blogs, he video blogs, he likes aliens, his parents were hippies whose guru gave him his name, and is responsible for the very cute Pink Bunny is Love.

We will Skype him when we return to our spaceship.

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sharon’s-lip-gloss,
originally uploaded by sharonspotbottom.

My Lipgloss as Flypaper hell has inspired yet another masterpiece from Sharonspotbottom. Fantastic!

Three really good examples of citizen media efforts today at Gnomedex. Some are working within traditional media frameworks, but doing really innovative stuff, such as WKRN News 2, others doing it outside of the traditional media space, such as Our Media.

JD from Our Media took us through some examples of DIY content, while Terry Heaton showed us how he has helped the TV folk understand what citizen media is about. The blogosphere has trebled in Nashville since they began at the start of the year. Their plan is to get the bloggers they have helped get started, on air and “reporting” what matters to them. Cory Bergman showed us Lost Remote TV blog which I have to check out. I was too busy checking out the Our Media stuff to listen properly to him. Sorry.

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Phil Torrone’s phone,
originally uploaded by The Kitten’s Toe.

So it is the final day of Gnomedex, and we have had a lot of fun talking to all sorts of passionate people. After struggling with the wifi bottleneck, I have finally posted some pictures on Flickr. Everyone’s Gnomedex pictures can be found here.

Very moving and insightful talk from Julie Leung who talked about blogging her family life. She talked about the decision she made to protect the identity of her children online by never showing their faces in her photos.

Although she felt restricted at first, she negotiated it and found what she posted was a lot more creative in many other ways. Sometimes we all too easily think we should do things the way we are used to and forget that often the best of what humans produce can come from struggle, or difference.

She also talked about the shifting and blurring boundaries between public and private space and the way being online opens up different sides to your “self” – and narrating those different sides.

These sides are often dormant deep within us until a channel opens up that lets them breathe. We are not linear beings with one side to us.

Humans are constantly playing out different personlities depending on what space – virtual and physical – they inhabit at any particular time.

That’s why I will always be online. I was pleased to hear Julie’s voice because it echoed what I tried to bang on about in my PhD way back when.

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its all gone a bit jules verne,
originally uploaded by twhume.

After bemoaning the fact that we actively chose to come to a geek conference half way round the world instead of going to Glastonbury – which would have been Blugg’s 13th and my 5th – we are so fucking glad we didn’t. No, it would not have been fun at all.

Just look at the flooding.
Thank god the geeks saved us. Went for a drink tonight with Dave Winer,
Steve Gillmor, Nick Bradbury – of Feedreader fame – er Bloglines guy (whose name I can’t remember – Robert Scoble and his lovely wife Maryam, and Buzz Lightyear.

At least, his name was Buzz something.*

We also met a funny guy who offered to take us for a speedboat ride to see Bill Gates’ house! Coolio. Last day of the geekfest tomorrow. We are having ENORMOUS fun.

*Bruggeman actually.

…wifi meltdown – that’s what. I would really like to upload all the photos I have taken so far here, but more than 300 geeks all armed with laptops putting finishing touches to their applications, uploading photos, blogging and podcasting means the network is like wading through treacle wearing oversized wellies in slo mo.

Annnoying.

I shall try again later when the geeks have gone out to drink and talk APIs. Interesting stuff so far though. Lots of talk about grassroots journalism, citizen media and open source. Good stuff from Dan Gillmor.** And there is a contingent of bees here evangelising* about Hivecasting. It is the future for insect networking.

Weather is great here. Warm. But I am freezing in an auditorium. Hope it is pissing down in Glastonbury.

*Every second person seems to be an evangelist.
**Who reminds me of Dustin Hoffman.

So Blugg and I have arrived in Seattle for the geekathon that is Gnomedex. Should be lots of fun with much Rss-ing and podcasting. You have to watch what you are saying because you may be being recorded for any number of podcasts. Check out the conference blog for updates here.

Good thing we spent most the night making badges – or BUTTONS as US folk call them. I am wearing one that warns people I may be recording. heh.

Seattle is nice. Coffee filled and slightly hilly. Lovely scenery and very friendly. It think I could get comfy here. We travelled 20 hours to get here. Tired. Done my shopping – found a great cat cartoon artist guy on Pike market – loadsa fish there – and bought a couple of his prints. Very funny.

So the first session is about to start – Dave Winer is going to lead us in song before we start.

The one good thing about being at a geek’s conference is that there is never a queue for the bogs.

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kittenpumpkin,
originally uploaded by girlsnotgrey.

Cuteness overload. This one I found through Flickr postcards. Cool app built by a very clever coder.

I was just checking out the Big Blogger site I mentioned earlier and came across this blog.

JonnyB is evidently one of the Big Bloggers, but also has his own.

Entitled Jonny’s private secret diary: Norfolk village life exposed, it is a surprisingly witty ditty. Blogditty. You non Brits out there, check it out.

It sounds inordinately dull, but it isn’t.

Big Blogger. Magic. Blogging has gone mainstream.

Flickr, as a result of its acquisition by Yahoo, is moving lock, stock and barrel to the US from Canada, where it has happily been the home for such lovely creative people.

Here is what Flickr says:

The Flickr team has up and moved this week to Californ-i-a and has

been singing Beach Boys songs non-stop since arrival. And you're

moving too!

We're moving each and every pixel, bit, and byte, all your data, lock,

stock, and barrel, from our humble server shack in Canada to our new

server palace in the U.S. of A!

They are moving all the data to servers in the US, from Canada, so that they can be housed on Yahoo’s servers with all the support that involves. I am sure it is a necessary move for them.

It is so interesting that amongst the virtuality of cyberspace, once a company is snapped up by a bigger fish, that bigger fish wants to make sure it has uprooted every single bit to make it its own.

Cybercolonising at its most impressive.

You know when your trainers smell so bad that they actually start to smell like shit? And you know when your breath is so foul, it too begins to whiff or excrement?*

Two people I sat beside in close hot quarters on the London Tube today smelled like that. It nearly made me wretch. Imagine the London Tube. A long piece of shitty tin which sits out in the baking sun then spends all day going to and fro from one end of the city to another revving up even more heat. There is no ventilation to speak of. Yesterday was the hottest June day since the 70s.

But then when I got off, it occurred to me that it might in fact be me who was smelling, not everyone else. So I started doing that smell your own breath thing – not using your hand as a fan device I hasten to add – but that didn’t really work.

London stinks of shit.

*A thought. Maybe that is just me?

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Jigsaw man as a sketeton,
originally uploaded by The Kitten’s Toe.

Tonight – hot night. Scary Jigsaw Man creation.

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HPIM2146,
originally uploaded by GAIZKA GARATE.

What has become of our cat youth today… tut tut

Tube gossip* courtesy of TheManWhoFellAsleep.

16th June 2005

1. Don’t worry about time – it’s very fluid.
2. Scott Parker has done nothing to deserve that kind of price tag.
3. It’s like that old adage about boiling a frog.
4. I wish he’d realise that depression is not something to be proud about.
5. There’s all these tiny scabs inside my nose.
6. Have you still got my sachet of salad cream?
7. I was surprised how attractive Ann Coulter is.
8. You’re my girlfriend. If you won’t do it, who will?
9. They made the Dalek all wimpy and emotionally needy. What a load of crap.
10. Don’t touch me! I am contagious!

*What he hears random people utter on the London Underground.

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sharon’s-sea,
originally uploaded by sharonspotbottom.

Check out some more fandabbiedosie Sharonspotbottom adventures…Now that I subscribe to her Flickr RSS feed, it is like my regular cartoon strip in my Bloglines feed reader.

When can I get a t-shirt, handbag and mobile dangly thing please?

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Soooooooo silly,
originally uploaded by fofurasfelinas.

Need to do a proper kitty Flickr sweep.

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Fluffy,
originally uploaded by upthedubs1.

Very fluffy. Want to bury my face in its fluffiness. Any fluffiness would do right now in fact.

MAKE: Blog: Claytronics

I can’t wait to get my hands on some claytronics. Imagine the possibilities? They are basically tiny robots that can be moulded into any shape – like a mobile phone. The nanobots are called catoms – apparently.

Watch this video clip called Sony Revolution. It is amazing. Movable touch screens that you can site next to each other and drag different bits if information across to, and interact with. They are called DataTiles. One of these screens – like glass tiles – is like a controller dial which then swivels through content on its neighbour. You have to watch to understand. Via Gprime.net and Geek News Central.

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“There’s not enough of this boy to go round”,
originally uploaded by Hog.

This young British fellow’s Flickr photostream is intriguing. Do a quick slideshow and get a glimpse of The Trendy South of England-ish lifestyle.

This is the most amazing thing I have seen this year, the I/O brush from those krrazy kiddies at the MIT Media Lab. Apparently it has been around for a year or so, but it has totally missed my crapola radar. Basically it is a camera paintbrush that picks up textures and movement and colour of object and paints them. Cool. You have to see it in action to get it.

Update: Dr Who also has THOUSANDS of daleks in it this week. When I was looking for a dalek picture with which to illustrate this post I came across this one on iPod Lounge. I also came across some 1970s soft porn shot done by one Katy Manning.

This week’s Dr Who on BBC One in the UK is absolute futuristic, rather sinister, genius. Rose – The Dr’s assistant played by Billy Because We Want To Piper – ends up on The Weakest Link with Ann Droid as the robotic presenter. The Dr ends up on Big Brother with Davina Droid as the presenter and the other yank time traveling charmer whose name I can’t remember, ends up on a robotic version of What Not To Wear with Trinny and Susannah – or should it be Tinny and Silicanna.

Oh, and we hear Trinny or Susannah – never know which is which – mention President Schwarzenegger.

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Baby cat,
originally uploaded by fofurasfelinas.

I am suffocating under the blanket cuteness onslaught of the photos in this new Flickr group I was invited to join – Baby Cats. I want them all.

I misread this as Sanity Chair. It is in fact a chair for your filthy mates. Via Shiny Shiny