Lifelogging

Experiments in Lifelogging, Part 8: It's dead, Jim

Well, that was some rather short-lived fun. Last Wednesday, I came home from our local PHP user group meet-up and plugged the Narrative Clip into my computer, as usual. It uploaded the photos and then, as has happened before, I forgot about it and put the computer to sleep. So I found it hanging from the back of my iMac in the morning, unplugged it and went to work. When I plugged it into my computer at work, the Narrative Uploaded didn't recognise the Clip.

I tried a few things (unplugging and replugging cable and Clip, restarting the uploader), but no dice. I also noticed that the LEDs on the Clip didn't light up when it was plugged in or when I double-tapped it. Oh dear.

    Unsortiert

Sind wir nicht alle ein bisschen Pono?

Ich muss gestehen, der Mauszeiger schwebte schon kurz über dem Bestellen-Button. Als Geek mit einer milden Form von Gadgeterities bin ich für solche Spielsachen natürlich anfällig. Aber dann setzte die Vernunft doch noch ein.

Pono ist ein Projekt von Neil Young. Er findet, dass die ganzen digitalen Musikformate und -Player der Musik nicht gerecht werden und will bessere Qualität liefern. Klingt ja nicht schlecht, wenngleich es ein wenig nach den ewigen Tiraden der Audiophilen klingt, die auf ihre vergoldeten Digitalkabel schwören ...

Seit gestern nun ist Pono in Form eines Kickstarter-Projekts vorbestellbar. Da ist zum einen der Player selbst, der in ungewohnt dreieckiger Form daher kommt. Das "Futter" soll ein Music Store liefern, aber das Gerät kann dankenswerter Weise auch vorhandenes Material abspielen, auch wenn das ja angeblich so schlecht ist.

    Bücher

Mini Book Review: The Year without Pants

The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work by Scott Berkun

I stopped reading the book somewhere in Chapter 17 (of 24). The outset seemed promising: Former project lead, who wrote a book about project management, goes back into the field and joins a young company with a very different approach to work.

Automattic, the company behind the popular WordPress blogging platform, works completely remotely and distributed, i.e. you'll hardly find any two of its employees in the same spot at the same time. They work from home or other places they feel comfortable in or happen to be, so all work is done, discussed, and coordinated online. That's a very different environment for someone who used to work at Microsoft.

    Lifelogging

Experiments in Lifelogging, Part 7: Travelling without a computer

I found myself going to two trips recently: A weekend in Brussels and a week in Paris. I don't have a laptop any more; all I take with me is my iPad. But you can't download your photos from a Narrative Clip to an iPad.

    Lifelogging

Experiments in Lifelogging, Part 6: Photo overload - some suggestions for the Narrative app

After two months of wearing the Narrative Clip, lots of footage of my life is starting to pile up. The point has been reached where the restrictions of the Narrative app are starting to become apparent - and quite a bit of a nuisance, too.