Year: 2011

about that R.I.P. thing

I believe in Agape.

This week, one of my Twitter followers died way too early. It’s unknown why he died at such an early age in his late thirties, and the cause actually doesn’t really matter. What matters is that his voice will be missed among the many opinions out there. A qualified opinion that knew what The Net is all about.

Whenever I see people tweeting “R.I.P [$prominent person]”, I don’t take it as a standardised way of replying on a sudden or even expected death, but rather understand it that those who wish the “Rest In Peace” actually care about the dead person and his/her achievements.

The irony is that many letters of condolence regarding his death mentioned that they “had only known him online” – which really reminds me of my blogpost ex 2010 where I had asked about the real difference between these offline and online worlds. Obviously, there’s none in 2011 – because we value people by what they contribute and share with others. Offline or online.

When someone dies and leaves this world with a legacy of 400+ blog posts dedicated to the political strategy for the internet and explaining how it has meanwhile become part of our lives – well then I can only take my hat off to this guy and appreciate what he has left behind.

Activism really pays off. Have an opinion on something, contribute and share your thoughts. It’s all that matters.

The culture code thing

culturecodeFollowing an article in a German magazine about the French “marketing specialist” Clotaire Rapaille, I’ve recently written a longer blog post on my sanitation-related blog and openely wondered if there is any toilet code in a culture, and if so, how it will be triggered.

Clotaire Rapaille, who runs a company that tries to explore the “hot button” in each culture, also published a book called “The Culture Code – An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do”.

The idea of having someone actually trying to make a connection between consumer behaviour and how a particular society / swarm acts because “it’s in their culture” triggered my interest and actually made me buy this book – and this although Rapaille received a lot of hatred and anger over his remarks on the “code” of the City of Québec in Canada.

I was reminded of this culture code thing today when I openely tweeted about the many demand media and rss-feed link farms from India vs. original content and tried to explain – with Rapaille’s words! – that “Indians are at root a practical people”, which is why they wouldn’t waste time on reinventing stuff.

Now, India of course isn’t about copying foreign works and I truly believe that a lot of innovations and understanding in today’s “civilized” world actually hail from the Indian continent, BUT this “are practical people” somehow stuck with me because I believe it to be very true.

And that’s exactly my reason for today’s blog post: like my post on “The Africans” the other day, there’s always this danger of making such public statements. “Germans, Indians, Kenyans, Spaniards – they are all so and so”. You’ll instantly be hated by your readers if you make such general statements because in most cases they’ll reply with a “WTF?!” and will start arguing with you.

Of course we’re not all the same, and I myself am probably a good example of why such phrases don’t make sense, but despite all our differences, I think there’s still this culture code thing, the hot button as Rapaille calls it, which defines a common nature within a given culture. Something from deep down within, something from the “reptilian brain”.

It may not be the ultimate code that will explain all actions in a society (of course not), but if one of these identified culture codes could help to fix some of the problems we’re currently having out there in this world (e.g. wrong management that will lead to famines, exploitation of natural resources, wrong priorities, injustice, wars, etc.), then I am all for these codes.

Which gets me back to my sanitation-related blog post and the question, if there is any culture code in toilets. Well, is there? How come that in Japan consumers spend ~ 2500 EUR on a computerized toilet while in other, poorer societies, a toilet is at the very end of the wish list? And this while the toilet thing affects all humans on this planet?

A question which – according to Rapaille (or Freud? :-) – makes me think we should seat our kids on 2000 EUR toilets only to trigger such a demand at a very early age.

Six years and still no Top10 list


Customer: Do you have Soul?
Rob: That all depends.

This private blog is online since six years now and during this time I have covered a lot of topics that touched me one way or the other. Love, music, politics, environment, computer….yes, I even wrote about cars the other day.

And yet there’s still one blog post that’s been idling in my drafts folder since early March 2008 and will probably never be published unless I just start writing about it:

My Top 10 list of music videos

I’ve never published it for various reasons. One certainly being that such a list will have to change over time, so to define such a list for good is almost impossible. It’s not like the above mentioned list of Top 10 cars which only includes classics. No, a list of most-loved music videos is a temporary love affair that becomes diluted by the constant penetration with new music videos.

I tried this the other day with a list of Top 10 favorite songs. I went through my music library, copied all relevant mp3 files in an empty folder, uploaded them, listened to my selection and realized I got it all wrong:

[edit: content removed]

TOP10 lists suck. Why? Because in the end you’ll realize that a selection almost isn’t possible and that if anything at all, it will just define the moment or a certain period.

It’s not the list that matters, but the selection process while searching and deciding which songs are eligible for such a list. And in the end you’ll just compile it for your own satisfaction and desire to have a Top10 list somewhere out there – on the internet or burned to a CD in your shelf.

We’ll need a universal service to sync all our metadata

I’ve only recently joined Spotify (via a Dutch proxy server) – the in-the-cloud music service that has almost all tracks. I like Spotify – a lot – and wouldn’t want to stop using it, even though it isn’t that easy to register an account with them from Germany or even pay for an unlimited or premium Spotify access.

opened guitar amp

a somehow unrelated photo I’ve posted here to focus your attention on the text. (yes, I’ve recently repaired this Marshall guitar amp for a friend of mine)

There are alternatives to Spotify, alternatives that are accessible from Germany, namely Grooveshark and Simfy. Grooveshark is somehow questionable because – as far as I know – they do not have agreements with record labels or the German Society for Musical Performing and Mechanical Reproduction Rights (GEMA) which has for long been an obstacle for internet surfers in Germany to access music videos from a German IP. But nevertheless, from a user perspective – and that’s all that matters right now – it doesn’t really matter which service you are using as long as your stuff is available*. What’s your stuff, you ask? Your metadata.

I am using the term “metadata” to describe all the soft and invisible stuff that provides the extra, the bonus data that brings the icing on the cake. With music services, it clearly is playlists. Your own and those of other users you’ve subscribed to.

Playlists

Now, with all these different music services, music in form of downloadable mp3s and streaming audio to your desktop computer or even mobile phone, it seems to be obvious that the availability of multimedia files as such isn’t the latest fashion, but instead your private or shared playlists. Playlists, I think, are the same reason why I prefer carefully written music blogs to mass music blogs that keep on publishing music-related posts just because it’s their business. No, playlists are the modern mixtape, the human selection that you can share with others. To me, these are very valuable.

When I switched from Spotify to Grooveshark the other day, I was wondering about my playlists and starred tracks on Spotify and how to get them onto Grooveshark. There’s a service that does exactly that: Groovylists.com – which will help you importing up to 200 tracks in one go.

spotify

In-Sync

However, I found myself preferring Spotify to Grooveshark for different reasons (there’s Fadhili Williams on Spotify!) so I went back to using Spotify and have been wondering how to keep these lists in sync. Would I want to manually keep all these services in sync? Will this question be solved one day with the introduction of Apples’s music cloud service and the standards (if any) it will set for their competitors? Mimi, me I don’t know. But what I do know is that we’ll urgently need a service that syncs all our metadata to the cloud and makes it available via a secured API to all these fancy new Web 2.0 sites. Just like the already existing password, bookmark and setting synchronisation via Firefox, Chrome, Xmarks and LastPass. Or that I can already backup all the apps from my Android phone to my Dropbox folder via Titanium Backup in one go.

What we’ll need is ONE service that does just that. Something that we can trust and that syncs all the selected metadata, be it private or openly shared, from all devices and all services to all devices and services. I’d even pay for (the privacy of) it.

Does something like that already exist?

(* = “your music”, as in “your mp3 won’t be uploaded to our music service because it already exists on our Amazon-S3-based service where we’re paying for the Gigabyte”, or in other words: it’s not the music files that matter, but the associated data, hence the metadata)

 

St.Louis Spéciale

“Documentary about Orchestra Baobab that was made for their comeback album, 2002’s “Specialist in all styles”. It documents Baobab’s story, music and band members.”

L’Orchestre Baobab may not be my favourite band, but these documentaries are just fine. Abdoulaye, Mischel – Nan nga def?

[via]

just another multitool

The only reason I am posting the following is because I get terribly excited about multitools. Think of Apple fanboyz and you’ll know what I mean. I think it’s the EveryDay-Carry (EDC) syndrome – the need to have the perfect tool in your pocket.

EDC also reflects a lifestyle of preparedness, where the individual wants to be prepared for the majority of situations ….(…) People who carry EDC items have a mindset of planning ahead for emergency situations. (src)

Fortunately, I am not alone on this and there are others who not only visit EDC-forums, but also come up with detailed reviews on my latest purchase: the Leatherman Squirt PS4 (e.g. 1, 2 & 3) and even their own (and very smart) modifications (& here). Unfortunately though, my new Leatherman PS4 does not have screws but rivets, so modifications are very limited. The perfect tool does not seem to exist yet, but we’re getting closer with every iteration.

Leatherman P4
A Leatherman Squirt P4 I bought some time ago forwarded as a gift to her father. He really loves this one and prefers it to his older pocket knife.

Leatherman PS4

The Victorinox Manager 0.6365 I got instead of the LM Squirt P4. A very nice & slim pocket knife that comes with a pair of tweezers and ballpoint pen. Mentioned here because I think the perfect tool should also come with such a handy ballpoint pen and tiny screwdrivers. Also, Torx 5, 6 and 7 would be great!

I bought the LM Squirt PS4 (not P4) because it comes with pliers and isn’t that much bigger than the Victorinox. The tools I need the most are a) knife, b) screwdrivers and c) pliers. When I switched to the Victorinox in 2009, I also stopped carrying my LM Charge TTi – so I always missed the pliers. Hence this recent purchase of the PS4 which is a successor to the P4.

Leatherman PS4
LM Squirt PS4 vs. Victorinox Manager

The quality on the LM could be a bit better. This also applies to the Charge TTi below. There’s a clear difference between the tools Leatherman produced some years ago and the ones they are selling these days. Victorinox clearly wins here, even though steel quality is equally bad. Sufficient for my needs, though.

Leatherman PS4
LM Charge TTi vs. LM Squirt PS4

Leatherman PS4

I’ve paid about EUR 20 for this LM PS4 and it arrived within only 7 days from the US. The cheap EUR-USD exchange rate probably is another reason for my love affair with multitools :-)

Leatherman PS4

The real winner of my EDC concept is the Swiss+Tech Utili-Key 6-in-1 – because it looks like a key and is on my keychain. A great little helper that even passes through TSA while all other tools have to be stored in the luggage.

Are you also infected with the EDC virus? What’s your favourite EDC gadget?

P.S.: There’s a Wiki on MultiTools. God, I love the internet! 1!11