Just set up Google Apps to work on my bodyhacking domain. mail.bodyhacking.com will now lead to a custom gmail interface. Not sure what to do with it yet, other than it just being used for me to experiment with changing DNS records and playing with subdomains. I may use it as an incentive to “premium” users, if I set up premium accounts.
Seems like a good way of introducing people to a familiar interface, along with getting them a different email address.
I’ve been working on a new website for a few weeks now. Initially, I was looking at WordPress Mu, but it just wasn’t capable of doing what I wanted it to without some major code changes, and I suck at the code part.
So, I moved it all to Drupal.
First thing first, I’ve got no prior experience at all with the software, the major hurdle was finding out what does what, as the terms used are quite different to those used in other software that I am familiar with. I then had to find out what modules I needed, again, not too obvious at first, but luckily the people over on the Drupal site were very helpful.
I just spent the last few days adding around a thousand terms to the taxonomy, only to find out that it was wasted, and I should have been adding them to custom CCK fields, which was a small irritant. Ah well, that means I have to change all the Views I’d already set up, and find a way to change the custom blocks to take advantage of the new CCK fields, rather than taxonomy.
Hopefully I’ll have the site working in some sort of form within the next few weeks. I don’t plan on theming it yet, just having it working would do for now.
I’m not going to be around for this one, but it looks like good fun.
Gaming culture takes over Tate Britain. From low-tech parlour games Charades and Werewolf, to performance and interactive media art with Blast Theory’s Can You See Me Now? Plus talks from presenters of Resonance FM’s One Life Left Ste Curran and Simon Byron, and experimental music from David Toop and Unknown Devices: The Laptop Orchestra – it’s all to play for.
Some photos from one of the rooms at Lovebytes.
A summary of the conference on friday.
Some quick websites and things mentioned before the conference started proper with regards to the theme of the conference, We Love Technology.
The conference started with a talk from Tuomo Tammenpaa, from Finland, who talked about the OHANDA (Open Hardware and Design Alliance).
Things mentioned in Tuomo’s talk were:
Related websites: Misusage | Yatta | Ohanda
Next up were Steve Symons and Simon Blackmore, who are two thirds of the Owl Project, who make sculpture, music and sound art. They started off by demonstrating their iLog, which is an electronic device built into a piece of wood. The device can be used to control music, computers (they demonstrated the iLog being used to control emails, although it didn’t seem to work very well). Apparently we’ll all be using it in the future (I doubt it).
They next spoke about a project called Flow, which is essentially a raft floating on a river in Newcastle. The raft will be a floating, interactive sound space, powered entirely by the motion of the water upon which it floats, by means of a rather large water wheel, which along with providing electricity, will provide water and mechanical energy. Flow will be made of wood, and will include interactive components, comprising of a bubble synthesiser, an underwater camera made to look like a rock and a salinity sequencer. The aim of Flow is to bridge the gap between technology and nature.
Related Websites: OwlProject
After that we had a talk from James Boardwell, who focused on social technologies. He wasn’t a great speaker, but some of the things he touched upon were incredibly interesting. Things mentioned were online etiquette (ie everyone calling everyone else a faggot on YouTube). Crucially, he mentioned the difference between online versus offline networks, and the fluidity within groups of peers.
Another thing touched upon was surrendering control, with regards to things like Secret Santas with online networks, where the gift you receive is entirely up to the person who’s sending it and getting lost in the real world, so that you have to approach new people. Offline networks tend to be very stagnant, with new people coming together only at key moments in a persons life (school, jobs, etc). Getting lost and being forced to interact with people is a good (if sometimes scary) way of getting to meet new people, if only very casually.
Queues were mentioned as a way of setting up temporal networks, with people often speaking to one another, but never going any further than that and forming any real form of bond. Something I found amusing that was mentioned was an experiment by halfmachine who put LED signs on the male and female toilets and frequently switched the sign, so that both men and women entered the same toilets (normal occurrence at BangFace) which created awkward social situations resulting in people interacting more with one another.
Related Links: Techno Goggles | Rattle Central
More to come later.
I’ve been working on a new site, it’s not complete yet (the new version of vBulletin is a bit of a pig when it comes to styling). But it’s getting there. Still lots to do.
Here’s what it looks like at the moment.
Still a great deal to do as you can see, I’m looking into finding a way to automatically get various RSS feeds posting articles to the homepage, although I’ll have to be careful with how that’s used, I don’t want to steal other sites content.