For many years, we have been making better cameras.

Like, waaaaay better. In your phone.

My first digital camera was a 2.1 megapixel, four-AA-battery, HP-branded behemoth. You could have smashed a badger to death with it with enough run-up.

Bought another one later on about two years later. Two AA batteries. 3-point-something megapixels.

And they were all right. Not great, but all right.

Now? Now, I have a better camera in my fucking phone than I ever had drawing 6 volts in my bag giving me a hernia.

Then what?

What do we do with these fantastically fucking fabulous cameras?

We take the shittiest, loest-fi photos. We deliberately fuck up deliciously clear and crisp acquisitions and slawm a load of piece-o-shittifying filters (or make it look like a Polaroid, only much, much worse).

Why?

Clearly, photography is the only field in which technology is getting better, but the pushback from existing (and in some cases new) proponents is increasing in proportion.

No-one takes a brand new car and fucks with the air filters and the carburettor and the catalytic “to make it sound more authentic”.

The pioneers of photography would be smashing our fucking faces in if they could see what we had, and more importantly, what we were dicking about doing with it. They craved the kind of quality and clarity that we have now.

And we take off-colour, overprocessed pictures of our goddamn cats.

Thought experiment: Define what about digital photography is too convenient and remove that aspect.

Postulate: Today’s users crave the feel of analogue film cameras.

OK. So how about this then?

• Make an app for any and all smartphones (what do I care, anyway?) that has no live preview, just a tiny tiny viewfinder with deliberate parallax introduced into its calibration.
• When the photo is taken, snap the shutter closed, don’t allow any post-processing and stop working when the buffer reaches 24 or 36 photos (the 36 option could be an in-app purchase).
• When the buffer reaches the maximum, prevent the user from taking any more photos for about three days, to accurately simulate the “authenticity” of sending the film roll to the lab, unless they buy a second roll.
• Send the user their photos (by email, I guess. Ugh. *eyeroll*) in one big batch, with some randomly introduced errors (or an unremovable “overexposed” or “underexposed” sticker on the good photos).
• Charge them for each time they fill the buffer and for each time they want their photos again (a “reprint”).
• *some scenes missing*
• Watch the money roll in, or, more likely, watch people fall back to the default camera app that came with the fucking thing and save a shit-ton of money.

Honestly, this is a terrible idea for an app, and it undermines everything about digital photography that we hold dear.

Ladies and gentlemen, I implore you. Turn off the filters. Corrections, yes. Red-eye, yes. White point, yes.

But every time you put a bokeh or anything else on your photo to “make it better”, David Bailey pisses a bullet.

Because I am ostensibly in the “tech community”, I am informed that I should be thinking about cloud computing.

And so here I am. Let the thinking commence.

First, a bit of background. I’m sitting in a coffee shop (which for my friends will be no surprise at all) and typing on an old Bluetooth keyboard paired to my smartphone.

The keyboard is larger than the display. Last time I had it that way round, I was using a Nokia internet tablet bunnyhopping my 3G. But now, we carry smartphones and with that, we carry the whole world around all of the time.

People don’t want to sync. People want *stuff* to sync for them. Palm people, you’re with me on this one. Yes, it was easy to drop your device in to the cradle and press the HotSync button, but it would have been all the cooler if it had just happened by itself without having to remember.

Humans are notoriously bad for remembering to do basic tasks with any degree of reliability. One need only look at the airline industry. A non-zero sum of crashes are caused by pilot error. Which is not to say that these are bad pilots. Quite the reverse; in some cases, excellent airmanship saves the plane. But the problem is what pilots call “the scan”: checking altitude, attitude, airspeed, etc. This is a routine part of flying. The auto-pilot takes care of the actual hands-on flying (apart from take-off and landing) and the captain and first officer take more of a supervisory role making sure the aircraft is doing what it’s supposed to be doing.

Which is so boring. And which is why humans lose interest and planes crash.

What the hell does any of this have to do with my computer?

Good question, those of you who asked. Let’s steer the ship back into Ritalin Bay. The point, dear reader, is that I suck at remembering to do stuff. Important stuff, like back up my devices. Which is why I need it automated. Which is why my main machine at home backs up by script and notifies me, dead-man-switch-style, when it can’t. Then I can take action.

But syncing? Tricky. There are services that’ll do it. But all of them require you to trust a system implicitly. As though it can do no wrong. Now, for the most part, that may be true. Your syncing system doesn’t plan on aborting take-off without your say-so or ploughing into a mountain. But it might end up doing it without meaning to.

Enter, the faithful landline phone. At this point, we’re more keen than ever to drag the beaten, bruised, possibly aflame black box from the wreckage and work out where your data went. To do so is costly, both from a time and computation standpoint. You call the provider. Pass a bunch of security questions and then maybe, maybe, they can restore a remote backup to you. Maybe. Assuming they’re keeping good backups and that they have one of the offending data. Which might be a long shot.

However, if I were to run my own cloud, at home on my own equipment, I can simply switch to the other drive if my data takes a nosedive. Like nothing ever happened. The fabled Undo Last 24 Hours. So when my contact list takes a dirt nap at 4:30pm, I can just switch over to my previous dupe, made that morning at 5am. As long as I get back to my server somehow before first light tomorrow, I can forget about what happened today and go from yesterday’s set.

Fiddly. This is the first word that sprung to mind when I first contemplated this idea. Fiddly to set up but simple when working (as long as you don’t fiddle with settings) although fiddly again when something goes wrong and you have to nuke it and start again.

Maybe I’m being pessimistic. Maybe. Or maybe I’m being crushingly realistic. It could all go wrong. I could lose *all* my data, not just the last 24 hours, especially if my maths are wrong or my method just doesn’t work. Perhaps I should trust the giant farms, with my data securely red-velvet-roped off away from the insurance database to one side and the illicit porno collection to the other. (My data’s in a nice neighbourhood in that rack.) They’ve been doing it for a while so why should it go wrong? Probably just paranoid.

But is that such a bad thing? Is it wrong of me to be fiercely protective of my data, given how some datacentres and services have been hacked recently, leaving an oil-slick of data on the Internetic Ocean? Someone once said, “never underestimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon laden with floppies doing 70 on the highway.”

I can’t remember who said that.

Maybe it was Stallman.

I forget.

Point is, they were on to something. If *I* have my data, I can access it with no latency, no throttling, no nothing. I can just unplug a FireWire cable and pour it into my machine. I can put my cloud in a bag, a suitcase or a hotel safe. And I can take if offline if I need to. Also, because it’s all local, if my connection goes down, it doesn’t matter. Syncing will still happen over Wi-Fi and Ethernet at home. But it will still happen.

In typical fashion, I have probably overthought the problem and overcomplicated this post. But I am keen to hear from people. Would you use something like this if it were easy, safe and mostly free?

Please let me know via the usual, or @thecontingency.

Hand to God, I love Sky.

Absolutely over-a-barrel love ‘em, because God *damn* if they didn’t help me figure something out.

Primarily, due to their ludicrous procedures and an inability to listen to the customer, we’re stuck without landline or broadband until next week because they decommissioned my line and made it un-transfer-able.

Fucking stupid.

HOWEVER! It has helped me work out two things:

• My phone has faster 3G than the broadband we were getting anyway (thumbs up)
• You can in fact screen-share between two computers and still get amazing frame rates (double thumbs up)

At this rate, we could ditch copper altogether and go fully 3G.

And if Sky hadn’t royally cocked up, I would never have known that. I feel richer for knowing it.

OH THAT’S RIGHT I DON’T, on account of the half-ton I have to pay to my new ISP to commission me a phone line again (which, apparently, requires an engineer visit but whatever).

Avoid, avoid, avoid. 

With a deep and seething self-hate and rage, it has now occurred to me.

I have lost a shit-ton of stuff. Not physical matter, you understand, but content. Photos mainly, but I’m sure there’s some music, and dear lord if there isn’t ever a bunch of documents that have gone walkies.

In a vague sense of fortune, I know what’s to blame and that (primarily) is endless data migration. For three years, I ran an all-Linux household (difficult) and that sometimes required reinstalls. Lots of reinstalls. Point being that every time, I would have to:

1. back up (usually a delta-backup and latterly with rsync)
2. wipe my drive with fdisk
3. reinstall from CD or USB drive
4. modify my display drivers to make my tablet PC’s touch and pen sensors work
5. attempt (which is the key word here) to get my data back in place
6. updates, updates, updates, updates, updates, etc.

Not a pleasing task, especially when there was a 7” netbook, a 9” netbook, my 12” laptop, a tower PC and another 9” netbook that all needed updating and all had to be in sync. Urgh.

Anyway.

All of which reminds me that I used to suck at backing up which is why now (AUTOMATION!) I farm that problem out to equipment. Because for the love of anything sacred, I can not and do not back up without help.

Don’t be fooled.

You’d be amazed how much toothpaste you can squeeze out of an “empty” tube.

And so it is with computers.

I have an entry-level, base-configuration machine with 4GB of RAM. But it’s fucking FLYING.

Currently, half a gig of that is handed over wholesale to a virtual machine (which is running in the same window space as my native OS (which is wrecking my head (and which is also taking me to my third parenthetical level))).

(Parenthetical Level is the name of my new Kraftwerk tribute band.)

My VM is currently running software updates over its Ethernet-but-not-Ethernet connection and chugging away nicely. I might as well be looking at an empty desktop, given how snappily the unit seems to be running. Glancing at my system resources, I note that both CPUs are up to about 80% and hovering there. But everything is running JUST FINE, you guys.

To sum up, here’s what I currently have on the go:

• browser with Flash running
• music software (loud - even though that makes no odds)
• Twitter
• hard disk config client
• calendar
• text editor (yeah, well, yawn, but here for completeness)
• IM
• a terminal
• system resource monitor
• The Legal Obtainer (ahem)
• my notes database
• tasks/to-do database (actively syncing with my smartphone AS WE SPEAK, folks)
• and oh yes, a fucking VIRTUAL MACHINE.

You know what? I spent plenty.

For those that are interested (of which, I understand there will be few):

===BEGIN PGP FINGERPRINT===

inverse vagabond hamlet outfielder crowfoot bookseller alone escapade enlist graduate dogsled speculate guidance speculate crackdown equation playhouse pyramid tonic therapist

76F271A142170B565A674AD670D6405493BCE4DF

===END PGP FINGERPRINT===

That there is my public key if you’re using a PGP- or GPG-compliant email application, or something like Hushmail.

No, you have a nice day.

So. I’ve cut down the amount of apps on my smartphone.

Culled most of them, in fact. I’m now down to three home screens, and that could be shrunk to two if I just munged the last two together.

Front screen - no folders, just my top 20 apps. Second screen - all folders, grouped by verb.

That’s it. With a hat-tip to @rands and @mrgan for the idea. I had had two folders full of games. Now I have one folder, containing three games. Not the stupid ones that you abandon after a few tries, more the ones that I’m likely to play over and over again.

Cut The Rope, Osmos and The Incident (by @mrgan, as it happens), if you must know.

It’s really easy with a load of free or cheap-as-free apps that you end up with a lot of very pretty but useless garbage on your phone, clogging up loads of memory and visual space.

I rather like it now. Fallen in love with my app launcher again.

Which, I will concede, is odd.

We live in a two-bedroom flat on the second floor.

We have three large storage cupboards, known as The Airing Cupboard (albeit just a cupboard with air in it), The Shed and Under The Stairs.

I know.

We’re a riot.

Anyway. We still have a Metric Shit-ton™ of our boxes and moving stuff in there from our old place. Just never got round to unpacking all the books &c. that move with you.

There’s an espresso machine in there.

Additionally, having been looking in there amongst the Metric Shit-ton™ of stuff (for a cable), I stub my toe on Laura’s old PC tower. And possibly an idea. Although mostly the tower.

This gives me an idea. And some pain.

The pain goes away. The idea sticks.

All of which goes to explain why, on a perfectly useable day off, I am sitting cross-legged on my living room floor, neck wrenched upwards to see my TV while fiddling with DVI cables and 3.5mm cables and power cables and keyboard cables and mouse cables and another Metric Shit-ton™ of cables.

I’m doing it for Boxee. The reason being is that we have an awful lot of TV shows and movie which have been Obtained From Legal Sources sitting on networked hard drives around the command and control centre that is the office.

It’s not going to be doing a large job. Primarily, its job is the following series of steps repeated over and over:

1. Pull media from hard drives all over the home network and/or the big bad Internet.
2. Throw it on to my HDTV.
3. Operate a couple of dumb servers like SSH, FTP and VNC.

Rinse and repeat.

I have always wanted a home server, but never known what to do with one, realistically. Any computer I’ve ever had for that has always been in use as a production machine by a human and I’m not keen on sacrificing all its CPU to be able to do Fancy Stuff.

So this seems like a nice compromise. It’ll run quiet (hopefully), have an aggressive power-saving policy and might (eventually) work with my fancy remote control, but in the meantime, my smartphone is more than enough to control it.

I’ll report back.

Good evening.

I am typing this with new fingers.

Those of you still reading probably deserve an explanation.

This very night, perhaps the veriest of all recent nights (although tomorrow could be verier), I crashed and burned. Not in an automotive way. That would have required a car.

No.

What happened was that I suffered one of my major panic attacks.

A what now?

Yes. Not the must-leave-this-crowded-area-now kind either. They usually sort themselves out after a few minutes. I don’t suffer that type.

Hmm. Instead, this was the all-alone-in-my-hotel-room-shaking-uncontrollably type.

Unpleasant. Not quite the word.

Anyway.

The deal is that from time to time, my brain overclocks itself. It runs full tilt, as can be seen by my ABSURD output on Twitter in the few minutes leading up to the attack.

My timeline is here and is relevant for this evening.

That amount of output in one go, all at once, and all of it trying to be “funny”? Never figured that was a warning sign until tonight.

Well, that and combined with the shaky legs, fingers and general terror. My speech slurs (although kind of irrelevant when you’re on your own), I can’t stand and I give off all the symptoms of a stroke, but with the kicker of being painfully cold, shaking (or just trembling) and being in pain in large muscle groups.

That’s fun.

Hmm.

So. What to learn. Well, I, for one, learned that when I tweet a lot, it’s not funny, and I would be likely to do the Twitter equivalent of die on stage as I would on open mic night on any other occasion.

That’s not the main thing.

Hyperactivity and headaches are a painful combination and usually count as symptoms.

Please. If you notice unusual activity on The Twitterz, you are allowed (perhaps encouraged) to contact me and ask me what in the ruttin’ ‘verse is going on.

Probably nothing. I’m probably trying to be funny. But at least we know I’m all right.

Well, until open mic night, anyway.

Sometimes I am spoiled to have excruciatingly talented friends.

The sumbitches.

Actually, no. That would be to do them an injustice. They’re talented, granted. But are they successful in making awesome stuff just because they’re talented?

No. They’re talented and fucking committed.

They work hard at something not because they’re good at it, but because they want to get even better at doing it (and putting me to shame in the process).

I accept this.

Example: Take my friend Mike. The guy’s a wizard with a camera, was in a band so I suppose that makes him a musician and pulls creative musical compositions in Ableton by pulling them out of his ass.

Easily? No, I expect he gets writer’s block. Or whatever artists get.

Art block.

It doesn’t matter. Point is, he makes stuff. As do most people I know. Especially people I work with. Everyone has a 9-to-5 job and makes amazing things on the side.

I can’t do anything about not being talented. Hell, perhaps my talent is writing, or public speaking or (heaven forfend) stand-up comedy. What’s with hotels these days, huh?

SPEAKING OF HOTELS.

Currently, I am in an undisclosed location (London) doing REDACTED which is… well, suffice to say, verifying my view of my own identity. Having denied my geekiness and nerdery for so long, it’s nice to be able to finally admit it.

Why? Well, for a simple reason, really. Those that know me will kind of guess that about me anyway (it’s not a secret). Those that don’t will have to, well, deal with it, you know? If someone’s not keen on me because they think I’m too much of a nerd for them, then I’m sorry, but you’ll need to return to your homes and places of business, because I’m not going to dumb myself down, like I had to do for fucking ages.

At last, I can accept that yeah, I can come across as intimidating and so forth, but I’m a human being and I’m trying to keep a check on that. But if you don’t keep up, hard luck.

This sounds douchey.

I know.

My point is…

that people like Mike (and my other friends - he just happened to be last in my Firefox history) just get on with it. They don’t have a strategy. No books except maybe a few references, but no motivational horseshit.

This author is NOT QUALIFIED to talk about that. I have unread “self-help” books littering my abandoned and dusty desk. That says two things:

1. I physically cannot stand being at my desk.
2. I cannot maintain focus on a book.

Evidence for number 2? This copy of Snow Crash, purchased in 2004 and NOT FINISHED. Started, yes, but not finished. Which is driving me nuts.

Facetiously, I joked that my new year’s resolution would be 1080p. Historically, I never carry out any threat to improve myself, but dammit, I’m trying. This two-week thing will change my career and allow me to just get on with it in the workplace. As far as the rest goes, viz. my personal life, we’ll have to see.

I see a massive failure in the distance in that regard. Hope to avoid it, but really can’t be certain. Previous attempts at shedding distraction, procrastination and general lack of motivation have been poor, perhaps, ironically, because of a lack of motivation to do anything about it, which I do realise is an entirely circular argument.

Don’t need tips.
Don’t need books.
Don’t need “life hacks”.
Do need friends.
Do need to do “stuff”.
Do need to feel fulfilled as an intelligent animal.
Would be nice to make something that I’m pleased with every now and again.

This post is very, very long, even by my standards and for that I apologise (especially to you, TL;DR brigade).

Maybe I’m depressed because I’m charging a computer from a hotel safe power outlet, or because I’m drinking instant fricking coffee out of a stick.

Probably not. I’m probably just bored and venting my frustration at no-one and nothing.

Whiner.

So I’m going to hit Create Post now, because that will at least let me make something and that will be a great first start, no matter how shitty people think it is.

To those that do: deal with it.
To those that like it: awesome. I’m probably friends with you already. If not, even better.

I understand that’s known as popularity in human society. I wouldn’t really know much about it. You can probably tell. But let’s embrace it. It might be the only thing going for me, considering an apparent vacuum of talent.

I do have a large head. The brain, not so much, but it does have its moments.

That’s a problem. Especially when it comes to headphones. In-ears are OK, but headband ones tend to squeeze my head over a period of an hour plus.

That’s a problem.

Plus size headphones? Anyone?

One day, I will create a clock with hands of identical lengths so that you can’t just look at it and know what time it is.

You’d have to look back at it another time to be able to tell what the time really is.

So yeah.

Just an idea. But, given my sense of chronic inertia, it’ll probably not come to anything anyway.

Shit. It’s really quiet here.

We are moving house.

Or, more precisely, moving flat. From our tiny one-bedroom flat into a purpose-built two-bedroom apartment in a dedicated building.

In short, the sort of apartment one might see in the Ikea catalogue or an ident for a home style channel.

All of which is cool. Beyond cool. We’ll have a big kitchen with plenty of space for cooking. A separate office for us to study. An ensuite. Things that make the difference.

But I’m finding the packing hard. Not boxing stuff up. That’s easy. The actual task of where to keep these boxes in the flat until we move out, however, is something else. It’s taking up more time and thought than I’d imagined.

Which isn’t to say that we haven’t moved house before. But we had storage for that. Stuff went in, we moved the very basics and stuff came out again. This time, we have a week of crossover between moving out and moving in, so in theory the new place will be storage. But we have to wait three weeks until we get the keys. Until then, we will continue to be knee-deep in boxes.