After just less than a month experimenting with a standing desk I decided to pull it down and return to my more usual sitting position.
Now, some people out there might be forgiven for assuming that I caved in to the ridicule I've received from various hardcore members of the online sitting community, who - quite understandably - reacted in denial of any possible health risks from sitting and staring at a computer for hours on end, day in day out. Others might think that I simply wasn't man enough to maintain my erection for long enough, and they'd be closer to the bone.
The straw that broke the camel's back for me was a return of lower back pain after walking around the local park three times on Thursday last week, making it uncomfortable to walk, let alone stand. During these four weeks of standing up I also found that I had become a much more passive user of my desktop computer.
Unable to stand for long periods every day, I spent more time watching videos than I used to and more time reading web pages pushed to my Kindle via Instapaper and Kindlefeeder or even cheating by sitting down, looking up at my faraway monitor with pages in full screen and text zoomed in. I learnt one or two new keyboard shortcuts (e.g., Alt + [back arrow] for navigating back on a web page) and also probably spent more time listening to music and podcasts.
All of these are positives. And despite my lack of fitness and stamina for standing, I did feel some physical benefits - I felt like I'd exercised some different muscles and have been sleeping well.
Not so positive was what I felt to be a reduced level of writing, or any other form of creativity, and social interaction (although I did give Diaspora* a go, and found it quite pleasant). All of this might be just a coincidence with a generally depressed mood, of course, which, for me, always results in social withdrawal and lack of interest in things. And there's been stuff to get depressed about, despite United's glorious start to the football season - my mate Andy C's pain in the arse and the final demise, although not unexpected, of my job.
My employer asked me to stand down because of my long-term sickness absences over the last eighteen months, but I was advised by a friend in the know, and by my trades union representative, that doing so might adversely affect my benefits entitlement. Thankfully, my union rep was able to negotiate a financial settlement close to what I believe I was legally entitled to - the balance of a part-paid backdated pay rise and holiday pay while I've been off sick.
So now I'm sat around at home doing nothing much, just like for most of the past year and a half. I have no idea what I'm going to be doing to earn a living in the future, but at least now I feel like I have the mental space to begin to think about it and the physical space in which to make a start.
I don't care about Gordon restating his suggestions for how we could improve our 'workflow' for recording, editing and publishing, which he also aired on the show he appeared on.
I don't care. Because I've heard it all before - on 17 April, to be precise - and responded to it all on 19 April.
The full unedited recording we did with Gordon for TINAP episode 3 on 13 April was over 3 hours long. I edited it down to under an hour in less than four days, mostly cutting out Gordon rambling on interminably repeating the same old clichéd moronic monorant we'd heard twice already.
There were no markers
Gordon declined our offer to look at and contribute to our pre-show notes, which are a rough guide to what we want to talk about in some kind of order. If Gordon had accepted, he would have seen all the 'markers' he needed to know what was going on and coming up in the show.
Result is a single audio file
When we recorded the shows we did with Skype we uses Skype Call Recorder to do so, which records two tracks, one locally of me and one of everyone else on the call. The result, therefore, is two audio files.
Advice was not only unwanted, but deemed hostile. As I have tried to help them with a faster and easier workflow, it was rejected [sic]
Here's what I emailed to Gordon on 19 April in response to his email feedback of 17 April:
Gordon,
Thanks for taking the time and effort to share your thoughts and write some voluminous feedback for us.
We will certainly take some of your suggestions into consideration for future episodes, especially trying to finish the whole thing in two hours.
We did actually record a special show on Scottish football, but when I had edited it down to the relevant, funny, interesting bits, there was nothing left. Literally.
Seriously, though, I'm glad you enjoyed the experience and yes, it was never meant to be an interview, so, once again, thanks for joining us for a chat on the sofa. It seems that plenty of people enjoyed it, too, some even suggesting it was the best episode yet.
I'm sorry you feel let down by the final edit, though. I was aware of a few rough cuts, but felt that it hung together OK and actually presented you in a concise and positive way. If you can give me any precise examples of cuts you think are too brutal and spoil the conversational flow, please let me know and, while I can't undo what's done, I can learn from that for future edits.
Thanks also for explaining again how Roy produces the TechBytes podcast (I hope Roy recovers from his bout of the runs soon - but all credit to him for soldiering on and calling from the john). As I'm sure I said to you on Skype before we officially 'went on stage', we set out from the beginning to record our podcast the way we do it and edit what we consider to be the best bits into shape for the published show. I also explained to you that you would receive a preview of the edit with the opportunity to suggest changes before publishing, which you subsequently declined to listen to, saying on identica that you trusted my edits.
As it's all done now, I'm not sure what I can do to change how let down you feel. Is there anything you would like me or us to do?
I would also suggest that your email feedback might form the basis of a good blog post, which I'm sure would attract plenty of new readers, too. As Andy says, we're big boys and we can take it - both praise and constructive criticism.
Best wishes,
David
Gordon emailed back the same day to say:
there was nothing to undo
that I shouldn't edit out any 'ums' and 'ahs' (nor presumably any silences, noise, slanderous or boring bits)
he could give no specific examples of my 'brutal' editing
he did not feel misrepresented by the cuts I made
it's our show and not his place to give us advice on how we should do it
The first episode took ages in editing, so I'd hoped that by declining my part in the clearance process, that the episode would be released a bit quicker. It still took ages.
We recorded over 3 hours of audio on 13 April and released under 1 hour of edited audio on 17 April.
The problem is if you're going to take weeks to edit something, people kinda expect better as a final output. Something of this audio quality shouldn't take weeks to edit and release, specially with noticeable butchered cuts.
We recorded over 3 hours of audio on 13 April and released under 1 hour of edited audio on 17 April. And in Gordon's own words: 'I am perfectly happy with the sound quality of the show.'
When it takes weeks for a conference call to be recorded...
We recorded over 3 hours of audio on 13 April and released under 1 hour of edited audio on 17 April. Yes, other shows have taken longer to do and there have been good reasons for that of which I believe you were made aware at the time by Andy. Regardless of any of that, we will record, edit and publish our show how we want to. If you don't like it, don't listen. Oh, wait, you have stopped listening. Thank fuck for that!
It's old news. By taking so long to go from recording to release TINAP have old news treated as current affairs. Within a day or two of the event finishing it becomes yesterdays [sic] news
Despite the brilliant name "this is not a podcast" it is exactly that, a podcast
No. TINAP is not a podcast.
Another retort I got was about "we aim to have no listeners" which again is false.
Yes, Gordon. It's a joke. Although we genuinely don't care if anyone listens or not. We only hope that if they do, they enjoy it, and if they don't enjoy it, they don't listen.
TINAP is a current affairs audiocast. By choosing a real time social network as their hook, TINAP is by definition a time sensitive show.
No, it isn't.
They say they want feedback
In Gordon's own words (and there are many to choose from):
Feedback page: 'No comments. No Twitter. No pingbacks. No real-time ‘reactions’. Just post on identi.ca with the tag #tinap and we will respond or consult our lawyers as appropriate.
If you don't care what your listeners think, you don't solicit feedback.
They talk about some feedback on the show, as well as mention others in the show notes. They've also expressed gratitude for all the good will they've gotten in various forms including Identi.ca on the show. You don't do those things if you don't care what your listeners think.
Why would anyone want to put a lot of effort into an audiocast about a social network, and stories that develop within the parts of it they see, and not want to take part in any conversations about their output?
The whole anti-social act on Identica seems to suggest they don't want negative feedback, even if it's aimed at helping them. I don't treat those as serious statements, but as retorts in a heated discussion with me
Someone thought it'd be a cool idea to embrace their community by telling people who gave them feedback to randomly fuck off. The Identi.ca anti-social act in full effect. Of course this could be seen as funny, if you're aware of the joke.
Fuck off. As I have explained to you previously on Identi.ca, the telling people who give feedback to 'Fuck off' idea was yours on TINAP 3.
That was the beginning of the end for me with TINAP, the whole anti-social "we don't care" "we do our own thing" act, when their actions don't match that attitude
Next sentence: 'They are nice guys.'
I was not prepared to listen to 57 seconds of guitar feedback
LOL.
The whole anti-social act on Identi.ca wore very thin, the huge delays in releasing making the time sensitive content stale, along with the guitar feedback and snarky replies I decided I'd had enough of TINAP
Plus ça change...
Maybe they had more people like me who told them they didn't appreciate it
No. Not one.
The result was a disappointment
Next two sentences: 'My trust that David wouldn't edit out of context was well judged. There was nothing out of context, he did not try to shaft me in any way in the final edit.'
"We do our own thing"
Gordon: 'I agree, audiocasting is all about that. It allows anyone with the inclination to record a show about whatever they want, their own way. There's no reason why they shouldn't do their own thing.'
This is our first original release. It's called Jimmy Carter and as you might expect it's about... well... Jimmy Carter, the former US president. We didn't set out to write a song about him particularly, it's just that someone came out with the line "Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer", and it had to be put into song. After a quick trawl of his Wikipedia page we were turning up all sorts of gems. Such as Jimmy Carter is the cousin of Motown Records suprimo Berry Gordy, he's also won a Nobel Peace prize and even a Grammy award. Mad huh?
All those nudgets of trivia found their way into the lyrics. It was originally just the main riff but then other sections were written to make it a bit more interesting as a full song. It's hard to know what to describe this as, it's almost country blues, but somehow not. There's a bit of harmonica thrown in there so watch out for that too. You can't beat the old gob iron.
This is licensed under CC BY-SA because it's our own original work. You can download it, share it with friends, give out CDs and generally help us spread this music as far as possible. We need your help to make this work.
Enjoy!
I have been enjoying it ever since. One thing perturbed me, though: Dan is a Liverpudlian and supports Liverpool Football Club. Surely the song should have been about the one time Liverpool footballer Jimmy Carter and not the former US president?
As the song is released under a Creative Commons licence, I realised I could rewrite the lyrics and do my own version. And here it is, my tribute to Jimmy Carter the ex-footballer, based on his Wikipedia entry:
Jimmy Carter is an ex-footballer
He made his name in south east London
Signed for Millwall from Queen's Park Rangers
He ran down the wings in tight short trousers
There's only
One Jimmy
One Jimmy Carter!
Jimmy is a man with honours
He won Division Two with the Lions
But the winning stopped when he signed for the Scousers
King Kenny's dream turned Sourpuss nightmare
So Jimmy signed for his boyhood heroes
But his Arsenal days would soon be numbered
He went out on loan to Oxford United
While the Gunners' team won three cups without him
There's only
One Jimmy
One Jimmy Carter!
Then Jimmy moved and played for Pompey
But they were shit and there were no more trophies
Back at the Den for one last shot at glory
Jimmy hurt his back and it was end of story
There's only
One Jimmy
One Jimmy Carter!
Whatever happened to Jimmy Carter?
You can still buy his print for less than a tenner
And with the change you can get his football sticker
And sing with me 'There's only one Jimmy Carter!'
Some time ago (in the last decade, in fact) and inspired by Alan Pope's Mumbuntu, Philip Newborough's Dadbuntu and AndyC's Wifebuntu, I set about a new project for a friend who wanted a cheap laptop for her new Turkish daughter-in-law so that she (the daughter-in-law) could have a bit more independence, improve her English, look for jobs and communicate with her friends and family back home.
At work, we had recently been evicted from our premises of five years thanks to the joint efforts of our not-so-friendly neighbourhood neighbours and the local council who stood by and/or colluded with our neighbours' vicious and totally unwarranted hate campaign against us. Truly a fine example of David Camerolf's Big(oted) Society in( )action.
As a consequence, we sought new homes for a number of brand new computers, which we had purchased with a grant from a central government proxy, which in turn derived its revenue by encouraging people (no doubt including our hateful neighbours and their toadying elected council members) to gamble what little money they have on the ludicrous numerological dream of becoming instant millionaires, rather than food and other essentials.
We also had a few older computers, too, and once the demand from my charity's members, volunteers and staff had been met for the new ones, I decided that the old Dell Latitude D600 (incomplete with missing removable CD/DVD drive) I inherited from my predecessor would be a suitable machine for my friend's daughter-in-law.
The main requirements were Skype and MSN (Microsoft Messenger). But I also wanted to try to create something that was a pleasure to use (which ruled out reinstalling Windows XP) and that I could easily help with remotely, if ever needed.
I tried Jolicloud 1.1, and Ubuntu-based 'cloud'-based operating system, which I'd used on the old netbook I have, but while it looks nice and all, I find it too restrictive to easily customise it to my needs. So, I went back to the Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop Edition, first with the Live CD to make sure it was compatible with the laptop's hardware before double-clicking on the 'Install Ubuntu 10.10' icon on the desktop.
I will now regale you, dear reader, with some technical and observational humour regarding the installation and setup I chose.
Getting easily sidetracked, I noticed the 'Examples' folder on the desktop and thought I'd take a look inside. Despite having used Ubuntu since 2005, I'd never once been tempted to do this before. Inside the 'Examples' folder is the pathetically grandiosely titled folder 'UbuntuFreeCulture_Showcase', which in turn contains the 'How fast' video in Free ogg format and Josh Woodward's 'Swansong', also in ogg format. It doesn't specify if these are the best, worst or only examples of Ubuntu Free Culture, but we will have to hope and pray that it's not the former or the latter.
'How fast' seems to imply to me that ten seconds is how fast Ubuntu 10.10 starts... while Josh Woodward seems to be some kind of hippy playing a banjo and singing 'time for me to leave this all behind', which, at 1:35 in, is where I, too felt it was time for me to leave this all behind. No biggie, but it occurred to me that it's perhaps a little odd that both video and audio files opened up in Totem Movie Player by default and that the ogg music file doesn't open with the default music player Rhythmbox.
I chose English as the install language. Although I was setting this machine up for a native Turkish speaker, she wanted the default language to be English to help her with her learning. Plus if I chose Turkish at this point I probably wouldn't have been able to complete the installation. The only Turkish I know is ekmek.
After language selection came a reminder that I would need a minimum of 2.6 GB available hard drive space to install this version of Ubuntu (unfortunately there is no advice on how to verify this), that your computer is plugged in (always welcome advice, of course, but perhaps might be worth mentioning why this is a good idea), and that it is connected to the internet (preferably by an ethernet cable rather than wirelessly, I would add).
Because I hate Freedom and because I wanted to set up an easy-to-use operating system for someone who initially wants to use Skype and the MSN Messenger service to keep in touch with family and friends, but who I suspect is likely at some point in the not-too-distant future is likely to want to watch a Flash video and listen to MP3 music, I checked the boxes indicating that I'm OK with Ubuntu downloading evil. I also wanted to do this without using the word ekmek or lecturing her in a language she is still learning about Software Freedom* and so that she can switch on her laptop and start using it for what she wants straight away.
Desktop Webmail so that mailto links open up her hotmail in a browser
A Turkish-English dictionary and thesaurus, although I forget which ones now
Minitube (a lightweight YouTube streamer that doesn't use resource-heavy Flash)
Chromium web browser for the web application shortcuts feature
Grooveshark (similar to Spotify, but without the terible audio adverts or country restrictions) as a Chromium webapp for streaming free music
TV Catchup as a Chromium webapp for streaming live Freeview TV in the UK
Miro TV to play, discover and manage videos and podcasts. I took the liberty of adding the TED ('ideas worth spreading - riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world') video feed :-)
Docky to prettify the desktop with a Mac-like left hand sidebar and give easy access to applications
Arista Transcoder to convert audio and video to a range of other formats suitable for other platforms and devices
Adobe Air so that if ever she wants to use an Air application, it should should just work
AbiWord for word processing. I have to confess that this was my biggest failure - I wanted to set AbiWord up so that it saves as .doc by default, but couldn't figure it out :-(
I also removed Gwibber, Ubuntu One, OpenOffice and Evolution among other pre-installed applications that I felt would be unused, too complex or too bloated to use with such an old machine.
I made the desktop look a bit like a big iPhone or something, with application icons all over it in a grid, so they were easily accessible - not too dissimilar in appearance to the Jolicloud desktop above.
I had hoped to install a virtual copy of the machine using VirtualBox on my PC, but a problem with Desktop Effects and GuestAdditions on VirtualBox put a stop to that, and hence no lovely screenshots to show off. Instead, here is a potato that looks a bit like a duck:
Finished! It was just like Christmas, I was so excited! In fact, it was Christmas. I called my friend and arranged to deliver the laptop so that I could hand it over in person and be there to help her daughter-in-law get started, explain what else she could do with it besides Skype and MSN and maybe even how it was all F/free* and how that was a good thing.
I handed the laptop over to her and she handed it to her husband who was sat next to her.
'I should tell you it doesn't have Windows on it,' I said.
'That's OK,' he said. 'I've got a Windows CD.'
'It doesn't have a CD drive, either,' I said.
'Oh.'
He switched it on. It booted up in ten seconds flat.
'Wow! That's quick! Ooh! Doesn't it look nice!'
Despite setting up MSN and Teamviewer for her to contact me for remote support, I haven't heard from her since.
I awoke screaming in agony as if the ball had ripped off my torso and torn off my flesh.
AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!
AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
AAAARRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!
The previous day, I'd enjoyed an afternoon walk in the park with a friend who commented on the boys playing cricket. 'Don't even think about catching the ball if it comes our way,' I advised, 'It's a real leather cricket ball and it will hurt.'
The last time I tried to catch a cricket ball I dislocated my left thumb. Which was the most excruciating and sustained pain I have ever experienced, at least up until the doctor manipulated back into place some hours later the same evening.
Inevitably (and with the football season over), that night I dreamt about watching cricket. The batsman launched a huge six in my direction. Although it was hit high enough to go into the crowd, it was still travelling upwards and at speed when it got to me. Instinctively (despite being a wicketkeeper) I stuck out my ungloved right arm to catch it.
The weird thing is, the shocking pain I then experienced in my right shoulder was identical to the sharp, instantly debilitating pain I've been getting in my left shoulder for several months now due to adhesive capsulitis (frozen shoulder). And, in the waking world, I didn't move my arm at all.
It’s Just A Ride.
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed through a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, life is only a dream and we are the imaginations of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.
Bill Hicks
