Awake at the Wheel

My usual refrain in this blog has been how in spite of all the great stuff going on at the BBC's R&D area, basically it's going to hell in a hand cart. Against that background the last 3 weeks sojourn in Hungary, Croatia and Italy was a blessed release from the pressure that working in such a state of apparently terminal decline can bring about. Great holiday by the way- will blog some pix via flickr later.

About eight weeks ago Eric put the whole relocation of R&D on hold- a move I was worried by (and I still do think it will have cost us some difficulties in setting up a space in the White City buildings). Yesterday we saw the first elements of what he has cooked up during the hiatus, and it delights me to say that everything we saw looked great.

There are three key points as far as I'm concerned:

• The decisions about where to put R&D geographically, and how to structure it internally, are all being based on a serious 'back to basics' review of what the BBC is doing R&D for- and they're being quite up front about saying it's a philosophical enquiry. This is tremendous exciting, and appears to be really progressive too- Eric considers R&D to be an asset at several levels, including nationally and internationally.
• The relocation plans, as were, are scrapped since we were going to loose too many people with those. That's not to say that some elements won't look familiar, but the fundamentally cavalier way that the relocation of staff looked like it was going to be handled is gone. That, plus the clear, sensible, and intelligent context the analysis above is providing will give us a much better chance of keeping enough key people. We must retain critical mass, and this move will be designed to acheive exactly that.
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly and most tellingly, Eric has appointed Matthew Postgate to be controller of R&D. This is great- I've been working part time on an innovation strategy for mobile for the last few months, and he is a rock solid bloke. Eminently proffesional, technically savvy, open minded and with a radical streak a mile wide- he was running the BBC Mobile area for a few years and under his managment we've seen some great launches (iPlayer on iPhone and Nokia n96, Electric Proms, and the great Olympics coverage to name just a few). The fact that this appointment has been made early, and in advance of Erics wider scale rejig of the whole of FM&T, gives us confidence in our place in the dvision and the wider BBC.
  

The atomosphere at Kingswood was better yesterday than I have seen it for years, perhaps ever. We used to feel that there really was no one at the wheel, or at best we'd get occasional nudges from a sleeping, part time, frankly un-qualified and un-interested journeyman manager. Now we have Matthew, and we have very high hopes indeed.

The latest greatest meh!

Just returned from Fly Me to the Moon at the Odeon in Brighton- rainy afternoon,weekend looking after 4 yrar old nephew, so we check out the latest animated feature. This was different though- this was in 3d using circular polarized projectors and glasses.

Of all the 3d technologies I've experienced this is possibly the least worst- no colour weirdness, no flipping out if you tilt your head or move an inch to either side, but it was still a vaguely nauseating hour and a half, with perhaps twenty minutes spent with uncomfortable eye strain and unresolved stereoscopy. The Film sucked too, very much so. No humour of any kind, some very laboured 'jokes' and in the end credit, Buzz Aldrin appeared to tell us it was a 'scientific impossibility' that there had been three talking flys aboard the Apollo 11 mission. Nice touch!

Avoid this like the plague unless you absiolutely must see every single 3D tech going. I'm off to lie down in a darkened room.

A BBC Micro for the 21st Century?

Wow, just done my first flying solo Barcamp session, and I'm relatively please with how it went. It was a pretty loose exploration of the last BBC Micro (late 80's, hugely influencial, but with a gestation and reasoning behind it which might not agree with your preconceptions!), and an exploration of whether and what the BBC could or ought to do along the same lines some 25 years later.

Thanks a gazzilion to Rain for blogging it. That's actually rather more structured and complete than anything I had written down about it!

I'd also like to thank the audience, who not only seemed really attentive, but at the end everyone engaged in a really spirited discussion of the potential avanues in which this could develop. I hope to continue this dialogue in Backstage, keep eyes peeled for a blog post there.

Ask the BBC Anything!

Just done a session at BarcampBrighton3 (for which Adactio has just produced a delightful Schedule) on' Ask the BBC Anything' alongside Ian Forrester and Rain Ashford of the BBC Backstage team. Not a huge turnout (which was probably for the best) and the questions were all sensible and managable:

There was one about the slight flakeyness of a widget for Radio POP, a social netwpork radio beta from Radio Labs; apparently for one of the campers the widget stops running when minimised on his Mac. One to pass along I think.

There was also some interesting questioning regarding the way the bbc interacts with 3rd parties in developing it's web presence. It seems we're perceived as being entirely self sufficient, technically in this area, or at least we were, and it was interesting to discuss the sometimes conflicting dynamics toward efficient centralisation and adaptive, flexible local development, along with the complexity of dealing with potentially thousands of suppliers (and I didn't even touch on our finance system nightmare!).

We closed with a discussion on copyright, and the oft quoted Tom Loosemore tale of the orchestral work with difficult to clear rights came up again (twice). The feeling seemed to be hugelky sympathetic to our (the BBCs) plight, as opposed to the feeling of the long term copyright holders. The continuing copyright renewal of Mickey Mouse came up, and much grumbling was heard.

I hope that a few of the people there do come and join the Backstage community, and that we get some good input from them over the nextfew months- there was enough smarts around the table!

The Omnivores 100

Just once in a while I'll go off piste and stray away from the workaday grind on this blog, and here's one such diversion- I'm following the excample of WordRidden (another Brighton blogger who, like me, will be taking her first plunge into Bar Camp at BarcampBrighton in a couple of weeks) who has completed her Omnivore's 100. I could explain, but this link has everything you need to know. So, bold, I have eaten, crossed out I would never EVER eat

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Feeling pretty good about that, and the things I've still to try look intriguing! Only two things I'd never eat, and I am adamant about that (though I doubt I'd revisit the Durian in a hurry).

An occasional bulletin

I've been slack with blog posting, and to tell the truth, I can't promise I won't be just as slack in future, but in the mean time here's a few updates:

• The follow up to Mashed continued with a visit from ARM to Kingswood which was brilliant and facinating for all involved, and a visit by me to CogApp in Brighton, which I found fantastically interesting and should, I hope, lead to some collaboration before long. Might even help me get into Broghton BarCamp (I keep missing the ticket allocations).
  
• The departmental move out of Kingswood Warren to White City continues to stumble on- it looks as though both the research portfolios I work in will be in the new spaces by mid October, and since I don't have much specialist kit, I'll be based there permanently by that time. I shall still make up copious excuses to travel to Kingswood while I can though (it's much better than Wood Lane for flying rockets!).
• The big division I'm a part of (FM&T) has a new head- the very excellent (and YOUNG!) Mr Eric Huggers. Sadly this has not yet led to any visible progress in the appointment of the Controller of Research nor either of his deputies. These three critical roles remain under the care of stand ins, and though I know and admire them all, it's not their main job, and this is getting into deep management crisis territory.
• The BBC has a new 'director of archive content' in the shape of Roly Keating. If you've come here to get some idea of what that means, then I'm sorry, but I am as flummoxed and confused as the next person. It's a weird role- Archives are part of FM&T (Eric's fiefdom) but Roly will Report to Jana Bennet. However, it's also true to say that the BBC has been banging it's shins against getting the archive public since Greg Dyke announced it at Edinburgh almost exactly five years ago. In the mean time we have had the Creative Archive (now defunct), Motion Gallery (commercial but excellent), and the brilliant but metadata only Programme Catalogue (also defunct). Copyright in all it's many forms has consistently knee capped these efforts- that and a shameful timidity at the very highest echelons when it comes to engaging with and possibly against rival commercial interests. Maybe what we need is someone who is 'all about' getting content in front of audiences in the mix and getting the content out there. Quite why that role needs so many wierdly dotted lines of management around them bemuses me. I'm considering running a book on when the next big re-org is coming.
  

The Monday after Mashed

This is a tough blog to write- for the last two days I have been immersed in yet another epic hacking fest, and this time I took rockets! Sadly I don't have very many great photo's, you can find hundreds here though.

Highlights:

• Social Flight Simulator- a tremendous, multi hack team effort, given inspirational leadership by Ewan Spence, a man for whom the word eccentric might have been invented (though if it had, it'd be spelt with at least half a dozen markup characters!). I had a brilliant flight up from Darwin to Tokyo with the very excellent Michael Sparkes. Michael turns out to be an exceptionally good pilot an gave us a tremendous flypast of Mt Fuji!
• Meatspace GPS Tron Bikes- Tristan Roddis of Cog Apps (a brighton outfit i've been aware of, and slightly in awe of for a while) had a great game with GPS phones, google earth and walky talkies. It was a hoot, exhausting and buggy- just what Mashed is all about!
  
• IBM Power managment games things- can't remember what they were actually calling this, but it was brilliant games driven approach to using data out of power usage monitors.
• BBC Subtitles- at last, after an unfortunate loss of access to the subtitles on our own shows (we outsourced this work, so now have to pay extra if we want to do anything with this utterly invaluable additional metadata- DOH!) someone hacked an OCR driven XML creator for these, then integrated it into REDUX (if you have to ask....). Out of the back of that dozens of hacks were started at around seven on Saturday night, and a fair few, including an amazing translator, made it though to final submission.
• Pie. Great pie. Thankyou Matt Locke and Channel Four for great pie.

Not only all this great geekery, but I also got to catch up once more with Craig and Josette from o'Reilly, Glyn from ORG, and Nick Radlo. Pamela Clark from Nasa was a facinating person to meet, and we chatted for ages about research analogies, institutional cultures of innovation and cuttlefish skin. Thanks to Matt Locke not only for the pies but also for the lift back to Brighton- Matt is a luminary in this world- franky if he offered me a couple of hours to chat about the BBC, innovation culture and continental philosophy in a skip full of rubbish I'd take it in a femto second- to give a lift home too was generosity itself.

Gearing up for Mashed

So Over the Air was cool, but I wasn't around for all of it. No this year's big hackety fest for me is going to be Mashed- except I can't get the HTML badges to work, hmm.

Anyway, there will be a few very very cool bits that I already know are happening, but I'm not sure what's public yet, not being at the absolute nexus of Mashed planning. However, Channel 4 have been involved already, so hopefully they'll have some cool stuff to play with. The Kingswood guys have gone full throttle on building a complete TV station in a box- so we can hack around with live tv feeds. And I think I'm going to bring some rockets, and little camera, and let's see if we cant do live interactive rocket cam TV. Not sure about 3d though.

UPDATE on the Badges- OK I think I see the problem- somehow a rogue " character is borking the HTML on the badges on Matt's site. He knows and will fix soon I expect.

UPDATE II- Fixed by the Exfellent london biker!

Time for a big hat

It's not easy shifting from traditional linear, one to many broadcast into a world where content is consumed in a myriad of different places and times and ways, and it's salutary to Ashley Highfield that the BBC has made the transition is has as well as it has. It's been bumpy at times, true. The Graf Report was a swinging attack on many of the advances that the BBC had made, and it led not only to a drastic restructuring of our offering to the web, but indirectly to many changes internally too. BBC Jam's demise was another dark day for the BBC's online ambitions, and that too had a real impact on the staff and the whole culture behind it. However, through all those troubles Ashley has driven a large and growing dept that tries in many ways to be the most innovative it possibly can be. Of late, he's faced open hostility to the principles of net neutrality that would underpin public service internet distribution. To an extent it's to his credit that the next role he's taking on will be addressing just that issue head on. It's a fight that I think he's been gearing himself up for for some time, and the Kangaroo position gives him the power of the big terrestrial broadcasters, but the freedom of an independent company to really get to grips with the matter.

Great.

Except, well, the web was only a part of what his department was meant to be. Last year he took charge of the newly formed Future Media and Technology department, which included not just his core web group, but also the hundred of web content and systems people in television (renamed 'vision') radio (renamed 'audio') and news and sport (renamed, oh never mind, you get the idea). He also got a lot of the technical support people too, all those who weren't sold off to Siemens in 2004, and the archives too. He even got Kingswood Warren and it's Research & Development team.

Sadly, not all these additions to his fiefdom have blossomed quite the way his core web team has. For every iPlayer success, there are perhaps a dozen research project foundering for a lack of good management and leadership. I'm not actually criticising anyone here- the fact is there are no managers!

For years now there has been a void as senior engineers have left, and a succession of managers have taken temporary charge of the research teams. Some of those managers have had great visions for the future, but a combination of temporary roles, drastic and painful change, and an agonisingly slow and unpredictable relocation process have resulted in a team dreadfully understrength, over committed and with little clear picture of their role in the corporation. The three roles of Head of Research and two deputies looking at Broadcast and Future Media areas (an arbitrary and frankly meaningless distinction, but London and Manchester sounds too simplistic!) have been defined but unfilled for many months now. And now Ashley is off too!

It's probably churlish to mutter that it would have been nice if he could have made sure the R&D function was OK before he left. I understand that even he has had plans for R&D quashed. However, it is worth bearing in mind that once upon a time, the head of R&D was the head of all technology for the BBC, and sat on the board reporting directly to the Director General. Is there an opportunity here to return to that model? Could this be the BBC's chance to put innovation right at the core of its future? Who on this list could wear that hat?

Over the Air Gurus

ian_hat_2, originally uploaded by meeware1.

Here we see Ian F and the estimable Dr Darlington getting into the swing of this evening's Yahoo party at Over the Air at Imperial. I'm on the door right now, so if anyone wants to sneak in, they need to come by me. And I might even notice!

OTA1

Hej from Over the Air, live from Imperial college. We're up to about 300 registrations here, the core team are beginning to flag, the last roud of seminars, and we're about to start the afterparty. So far so good, but the amatuer rendition of torchwood may yet bork the whole event! Wireless networking is holding up, but seems to have given up allowing new users to join the network.

A different sort of museum

Tortoise and Family, originally uploaded by meeware1.

So a couple of weeks ago I blogged about the beautifully presented, interactive, swish but ultimately disappointing National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. On reflection I still hold the same opinion of the place- it used all the latest interpretive techniques, it gave different views and it showed many slices of the UK's association with the sea. However, it didn't hit all the high targets it set for itself, in that there was no overall compelling picture, or narrative- no arc of tech development, or all encompassing view of the country and it's relationship with the sea.

Last week however, on a quick jaunt out west with family to Swanage and the New Forest, we looked into the Tank Museum at Bovingdon , and it was at the complete opposite end of the scale. Shortly things will change, as by June they expect to be in new accommodation, but for now, it's practically just loads of tanks. I mean, loads of them. In fact, it's probably fair to say they have all of them.

There's a little info board by each, and some attempt to group them according to which faced which in battles around the world, but to me it made clear that no amount of interpretive gloss can make up for just having loads of what you're trying to show off.

Sure, they could have had animated maps of battles, or memorabilia of crews, or a few more models, but they were about tanks. And had lots. And that worked.

Edwardian Info-Graphics

CLASSIC_INFO_GRAPHIC, originally uploaded by meeware1.

Now, some say today's graphic language is the apotheosis of visual communication- that we say more to each other today in complex graphical and textual forms than we ever have. That may be so, but if you dig around from time to time you'll find examples as delightful as this one, from the Hartlepool museum.

It's a poster produced during World War One detailing the bombardment of Hartlepool by the German Navy. I think they've really missed a trick not selling copies of this in the gift shop- perhaps the copyright is tricky?- but this is a stand out example of a lot of complex info being intriguingly presented. No, it's not simple, but tell me it doesn't just make you want to poor over it's details and understand the story it has to tell!

My only regret- the quality of my photo isn't good enough to read the text. Bum.

Eight things you will never know about me.

Upon reflection I think I may have overplayed the grumpy old man card, so here's a revised 8 things. Bear in mind though that I am the very last person to do this, so I'm buggered if I can find eight others who've not yet done it.

1/. 'I am a churlish sod from time to time'- yeah well this stands. I'm prone to grumpines of the highest order, and I can be downright stroppy when hungry. I blame it on hypoglycemia, which is I think a made up complicated name for getting stroppy when hungry. Avoid me if I've skipped breakfast, and if in doubt, offer me a biscuit.

2/. 'I don't actually know eight people to pass this on to.' It's true, I am positively the last person to hear gossip, and internet gossip even more so. There are lower order primates more connected than me.

3/. Used to be in the Royal Navy as a trainee officer for a vanishingly brief and fairly miserable period. All I can say is that it wasn't as much fun as Sea Cadets, and that's where I'd got the idea from. The only upside is that they paid for me to bum around India and Thailand for three months when I was 18.

4/. I put all my worldy possesions into storage, moved out of my flat, and walked to Cornwall to see the eclipse in 1999. I'd finished uni, was fairly optimistic that something would sort itself out, and fancied a walk to clear my head. It was great, it was the fittest I've ever been in my life, and it really didn't matter that it was cloudy for the eclipse.

5/. The most sporty thing I did at school was being best at holding my breath and 'doing a mushroom' in the pool. That's not a scatological reference. I don't really do sport.

6/. Since turning 30 I have decided that it's pointless trying to pretend that I am in any sense cool, and that I am in fact a hopeless geek, perhaps even a nerd. I like cars and planes and tanks and documentaries about battleships, and toy soldiers and lego and spaceships and geology and computergames, and damnit I can't help it! I like poetry too, and the opera, and music 'n stuff. But I'm still a geek.

7/. I once appeared in the Brighton Argus pretending to be a scottish poet- I was helping run a poetry reading, and we'd got the paper to come down to meet the poets and do a shoot on the beach, but one of them went to the pub to see a mate, so I pretended to be him and stood in the background staring off into the Channel being all moody and poetic.

8/. I play pool left handed. Nothing else, just pool. Acording to the very lovely Chris McManus it's not at all unusual to do one or two things 'other handedly' to what you usually do. His book "Right Hand, Left Hand" does a brilliant job of explaining the may varied aspects of assymetry, and he was really kind to chat to me for an afternoon when I was an undergraduate at a totally different university looking at this area of neuropsychology.

Right. That's it. I'll have a think about who to send this too, but everyones so much more popular and connected than me that I doubt there's anyone on the planet who's not yet done this!

Leave of Absence of Mind

Right, I've got to go on leave now. The hols have just been piling up untaken, and it's use 'em or loose 'em by the end of March. So today I set of via Sutton, Manchester, Lythan, Ambleside, Whitehave and Durham to Edinburgh, to pick up the work batton again for some lovely project stuff with the University of Edinburgh and other super people.

I shall have another mini break at the end of the month around Easter- probably not to Spain and the Sierra Nevada as I had hoped- no idea where at all in fact! Suggestions on a postcard please.

Oh, and yesterday I popped up to the National Maritime Museum for a nose around. All very lovely and interesting, and both Geof, my septuganarian Father-in-Law and I reverted properly to type and started playing with all the hands on experiments. However, with the exception of the brilliant 'Bridge Simulator' there was not so much as a cabin off a ship there! THis really surprised me, and to behonest, although there were some great bits to the museum (Art and the Sea being one highlight) overall it didn't really hang together to tell a story, or even a linked sequesnce of stories. For instance- there was a section on Artic exploration (all very heavily staged with fake ice caves etc.) and a section on antarctic exploration, but no sense that the two were in any way related, or the point of any of the exploration. In fact the artic exploration had been a really political and economic effort and hugely important, but you just came away thinking it was jolly cold. And it so needed ships. A maritime museum without ships is rather like a bread sandwich- it can be as substancial as you like, but you can't help feeling it's missing something vital.

Shifting sands

Some developments of late- my great erstwhile boss, Dr Richard Wright, has departed these shores for a three month sojourn in Lesotho. Richard is a total guru in the field of the engineering issues of large scale digital archives, and a really sound chap to boot. I've rather thrown my lot in with his crusade to save the BBC's archive from the vagaries of mistaken economies and other tribulations, and I'll do what I can to keep the fires burning in his absence, keeping an eye on his great wiki.

Meanwhile, we happy few who run the archive research projects have (for the most part) finally been accepted into the fold of Research & Innovation. We don't anticipate any radical changes in the near term, but this is an interesting change, and might make some difficulties easier to address.

One little update on the R&D project proposals front- we've had quite a few interesting ones for the Digital Libraries and Semantics calls, but still nothing with any real meat to it for the FET Forever Yours- at this rate I'll have to make something up myself! After all, there's 20 million euros going begging!

More R&D Opportunities!

The way I do most of my projects here is that they're part funded by some national or international organisation, and I put in a proposal with a consortium of interested parties and we do the work as a virtual team. Lot's of drawbacks in terms of culture clashes, managing expectations etc. but it's worth it to get the mash up of expertise and the extra cash. Lots of extra cash.

So right now I've very interested in the fact that the EU has two calls for projects that are of very focussed on archives, and that the Tech Strategy Board (part of what was the DTI) also has one coming up for 'The Creative Industries'. I'm also a bit worried, because this will be a ton of work to get appliocations together for all three at once!

EU calls:
Forever Yours- digital eternal storage!!!- very interesting, we have some work that heads in this direction, but the challenges are collosal.
Information and Communication Technologies Call3- includes media semantics and digital libraries.

TSB Call:
Phase 3 of the Autumn Program- Creative industries

Recruiting at the BBC

There are some seriously senior R&D positions coming up at the BBC in the next few months. I really hope we get some good candidates. I know some people who'd be great in these roles, but I just don't know how I ca help get them aboard.

A Greener Way to Italy

So last week I was in Genoa for the SAMT 2007 conference, a very good review of the work going on across Europe's universities to develop the technologies to allow people and computers to make sense of content in any format. Fascinating highlights included a great deal of work now coming up in the semantics of 3-d shapes, and a whole new language to allow interactive markup of music, MX. I actually missed the industry day, which was a mistake because the academic stuff, while great, is still way ahead of anything we have the infrastructure to support or provide services on to our audiences. Still I did get one thing right- I traveled there and back by train!

Brighton-London, London-Paris, Paris-Ventimiglia, Ventimiglia-Genova on the way out, and Genova-Milan, Milan-Paris, Paris-London, and London-Brighton home on Saturday. Lots of learnings from this: The new StPancras is much better than the old Waterloo for departures (light and airy and well designed) but rather worse for arrivals, having an overlong and annoyingly tortuous exit. Not all TGVs are equal- the one from Paris to the Riviera is a modern double decker that's fantastically swift and very well maintained, but the Milan to Paris one is a bit of a clunker with stinky chemical loos. Almost all the TGV lines have slow bits, especially at the far end from Paris. In fact, they turn into stopper services in Italy. It can be expensive compared to flying, because you eat more on the way, get through more magazines, batteries etc. (I'd need a bigger music player, or better low bit rate codec, if I did that trip again). It really feels like traveling- when you fly it's like being teleported between airports, and the space in between doesn't exist. On the train, and especially with multiple stops, the journey is one of constant transition and change. Landscape, language and culture are all churning over as you go, and it really is landscape too! I do love the look of the land and sea on a god flight- I've had some extraordinary flights over the Alps, the mountains of New Zealand, and over the far northern Atlantic, but traveling through a real place is rather different.

Tips- Take spare batteries. More spares. Give yourself about forty five minutes to an hour for every changeover. Any less can get a bit sketchy and un-nerving. Avoid sandwiches on trains. Do try the hot chocolate on TGVs. Don't bother hiring a PSP on a TGV, the games selection is rubbish. Don't expect to be able to charge your laptop- power coverage is very variable (2 of 18 coaches on any Eurostar have it, none of the TGVs I was on did, but half the Italian local trains did). Enjoy yourself, take in the scenery and lie back. It's a trip!

BBC Homepage update update

Have been playing with this a little lately and it's growing on me. It's certainly more 'come back to' able than the old page, which really felt like a weird mix of a table of contents and an index, and wasn't really able to get across any sort of 'feeling' about the relationship between the user and the corporation. I had the very great pleasure of meeting Bronwyn, the art director, at an event run in collaboration with radarstation giving us training in design led innovation- she seemed very capable in this area, and I think it shows. Of course it will get flack, everything we do does, but a lot of us are giving constructive feedback and I think it's a real step forward. Huzzah!

The new BBC homepage

The new BBC homepage, originally uploaded by adactio.

I saw this first via Adactio's flickr feed into my netvibes (how web2.0 is THAT!) and it's generating the most interesting discussion. Adactio is Jeremy Kieth, a prety well now web designer and engineer, who also happens to live in Brighton. As do I. But I've only met him a couple of times and both at work in London.

Anyway, one thing I've picked up is that you can't tell much abut a web page from a screen shot- I've been playing with the beta for a few days now, and the key thinks that I'm bumping my shins on are nothing to do with the look and feel as you can see in a screen shot, but much more around the way it works- the functionality, the responses to imput etc. I'll be honest, it ain't there yet! Lot's of the simple relationships between elements are slightly off kilter- instructions are laid out differently to the things they control, bits aren't as configurable as you might have expected from their presentation, or from what yu can do elsewhere on the web. Don't get me wrong- it's good and a better representation of ALL the BBC than the previous home page was and includes great features that are a real advance. However, within its limits, that 'glass wall' design felt perhaps more cogent and complete. Enjoy while you can: http://www.bbc.co.uk/

p.s. Apologies for te typos- laptop has lost backspace and it'll be 2 weeks for a replacement (bloody outsourced IT!)

Relocating Research- some worries

Well there was me thinking that even if it wasn't exactly good news on the relocation front, at least it was news, so we could deal with things and get on with stuff. Sadly, it looks like we're still facing some problems. I haven't got hard numbers yet, but it's looking like a considerable proportion of the staff at the Surrey R&D establishment are sufficiently dissatisfied at the proposed move arrangements that they'd rather not stick around. This is a combination of far longer and harder commutes (which no amount of compensation can really make up for in terms of time and energy), a 'not as nice' place to work (probably a minor consideration), and a worrying lack of a clear long term plan for how and why we do R&D in all the announcements.

This last point is a bit of a shame- a real and, in many ways, an unavoidable effect of the increasingly fluid nature of the BBC. Whatever we say the arrangements will be, they're bound to be transitory, temporary, open to change. Sadly, when you've had a long term commitment and a permanent infrastructure to depend upon for many years this shift can really undermine your sense that you're valued.

So, how to fix? Not sure. We do need to have a clear (ish) statement of what we expect to do for a longer time frame. The level of detail may have to be cut to meet the needs of a changing future, but if we could have some statement of commitment to R&D with some sort of evidence supporting it in the very very near term, that would help. A stated expectation of the contribution that the corporation and the wider broadcasting industry and the nation as a whole anticipates coming from R&D will at least let us know we're wanted, and how hard we'll have to work (and hence what facilities, in general terms, we'll need).

Some sort of plan for where 'kit' might go after TVC gets sold off would be healthy too. A plan can be high level, but it's existence, and clear ownership, is essential to reassure those who's day to day work depends on what looks like being a fairly itinerant bunch of boxes over the next few years.

We could, usefully look at some more radical options for housing researchers too. We have other parts of the BBC who are distributed- so could research engineers work there? We have partner companies with facilities across the south east- could we work there? The danger, which I had thought had largely passed, seems still to be quite real. If people go in large numbers some key projects that support not only the BBC but the whole of broadcasting, could be in real trouble.

It may well be that many of these elements are in hand, and I have some intimation that innovative accommodation solutions are in the mix. This needs to be nipped in the bud though. At Christmas people go home, spend time with their families, and have time to contemplate their future. I don't want to come in after the new year to get an inbox full of leaving do invites.

Archive+Performance = Genius!

On Thursday I caught up with SSL, a Covent Garden based software engineering company, who have worked with us on a few archive preservation projects. They're doing a report for JISC n preservation strategy and challenges, and one of the concepts they've been throw to deal with is 'performance'. When I hear that I think of latency, bandwidth, reliability, but in fact what they're considering is the 'softer' idea of audience plus media in presentation- the whole 'performance' of putting on a show and what it means to audience and performer.

In archive terms this throws up some interesting examples- for instance, who of us has actually sat and watched in a large public space, with hundred of others, a silent movie projected on a big screen accompanied by a live pianist? That is performance, and it's rare, and very different. Or at least, it's rare unless Paul Merton does something about it.

Last night we went to see Paul Merton's Silent Clowns at Tunbridge Wells Assembly Hall. Paul introduces a series of selected examples from the greats of silent movies, and in the second half we see a full performance of Safety Last, the Harold Lloyd classic (the one where he climbs the building).

The difference is stunning, we laughed and laughed- at one point it suddenly dawned on me I was howling and had been for minutes, and so was everyone else. No small part of the experience was down to the vivacity, exuberance, and sheer stamina of our pianist for the night, the incomparable Neil Brand. Turns out Rowan knows him from Eastbourne theatre days. Small world!

Rumours III- The split and clumps

Right, so we're moving. Fine. Really, it needs to happen, and in spite of the risks, we'll do it, do it well and crack on.

But actually there's a little more to it. You see the move will be partly to W12, and partly to Salford. How that location will work out I've no idea- high hopes, but no real clue. The area is one of those bleak post-industrial, chrome and glass zones that I've no great love for (I rather prefer real places) but still and all, could well be a great gaff. The idea is to build up a media neighborhood, which might work. Hasn't quite happened in W12 (that was a plan apprently) but you never know. 'Who is moving there?' is an interesting question- it's going to be 'internetty' stuff.

The split of R&D is indeed broadly to be into linear 'traditional' broadcasting technology, versus interactive, IP driven, non-linear webby stuff. From some angles, even I must admit that this looks odd, but from others, OK. On the odd side- you'd think perhaps we'd worked out the 'traditional' stuff, wouldn't you?

To be fair though, there's a strong realisation that it's an arbitrary split, and that we expect a LOT of cross over between the two sites. This is clear to all of us who've taken a look at the proposals, and plans. We ran an excercise to try and think of all the research projects we might do in the next five years and to sort them into the two categories above, plus a 'neither' bucket. The 'neither' bucket was full, the others empty. So, we'll see. It's a thankless task predicting the future of R&D, but fun. Some people will be up north, and some down south, and they'll have much the same set of skills, and do related if different work, and build over time their own distinct identities, but right now all we can sensibly do is try and make sure we can give them each the facilities they need to do their current work.

What that work is and how that's organsied comes from the clumps- the project portfolios. These were themselves somewhat experimental, and have really only existed for a year or so, and rationalising them seems a sensible move. One problem in such an excerise is that some research is big, and urgent, and has big teams, and some is little, and niche, and quirky. Slotting it all into a small number of equal sized portfolios was difficult and not altogether succesful last time. Some were characterised by their relationships with other institutions, some by their target applications, and some by their core technologies. In such an approach inconsistencies and contradictions were inevitable, and it was a difficult task to lead some of the more nebulous groups of projects.

Now we're making fewer bigger groups, and we are, it appears, acknowledging that some of these are large and perhaps not possesed of a single focussed objective. It seems fair enough really- not all of the the management layers of R&D can be totally subject focussed. Some management is just that, management, and there's no reason why that shouldn't work.

Rumours II- R&D changes

Although the technology and new media bit of the BBC (now known, bizarrely as 'Future Media and Technology') has emerged from the latest round of cuts relatively unscathed, there are indeed some changes on the way. The largest from where I'm stood are those impacting on the old R&D area. It's now called R&I (Research and Innovation) by the way, but let's not go there.

The changes are really three fold- we're relocating, splitting into two main groups, and clumping the projects differently.

The Move- we always knew that Kingswood Warren was going to be sold, and it went on the market a few weeks ago. It's a bit of a shame (who wouldn't lament the loss of a Victorian mansion in acres of landscaped surrey countryside as a workplace- sigh) but the real worry has always been the impact on the work, not so much the sentimentality or love of the place. It has, right now, got some of the most brilliant research infrastructure and culture- studios, labs, test chambers, RF facilities, dedicated server suites, and it's own wonderful IT staff, not to mention a dedicated technical library (with real librarians- WHOOT 'Shhhhh!' sorry), and some of the most fabulous rooms for meetings and mini conferences. It is too big, and too far from the rest of the BBC though, and has been a bit of the boffin gulag for too long.

I think, personally, that in trying to fix the admittedly broken relationship with the rest of the BBC something rather awful happened. A 'shock and awe' decapitation of a difficult area was followed up with an ill planned administration, shades of the emerald city perhaps, but at least now, with these new changes, there is a recognition that not only must some things be stopped, some others need to begin. (Oblique, moi!?!). So, we're moving. Except not to a similar more appropriately sized facility in the neighborhood.

See, that had been 'PLAN A'- a new, smaller, KW nearby, perhaps on a better connection to central London. However, apparently management were surprised when that sort of thing, for the accom alone, looked like being about £10million. Frankly that appalls me. Not the cost, but that fact that it was a surprise. I mean, if you're going to sell something for £20 million (best guess at the low end of the market value for KW) and want something half the size nearby, well maybe you'll be paying about half that. So anyway, all shocked and stuff, we're not buying a new gaff. Fair enough. We're moving to the grottiest offices we have in W12- White City- the Ministry of Truth, the monstrous carbuncle, Ceacescu Towers. Yes, as Factual deal with loosing headcount, and promptly bail on their worst cubby holes, we pile in. And I suspect that the budget for fitting them out will not be free. I wonder if anyone senior will be 'surprised' by the cost.

Weirder is to come though, because we are also going to have the heavy kit- the studios, the server suites, the labs, slotted into Television Centre. That too is on my list of crap BBC buildings, and I'm not at all sorry we're selling it. At least, I wasn't, until they told me they were moving part of my dept. into it. Kind of makes you wonder just how much left hand/ right hand comms are going on. Or if there's much of a future in anything other than the shortest possible terms for the group. Ah well, I'm sure it will be fine. I know I'll do my level best to make it fine, brilliant even. But still, you know, weird isn't it.

Gosh, this has gone and got big. Ok, so more of the split and reclumping next time, and perhaps also a comment on the importance, or utter irrelevance, of the Amazon S3 European launch from a large scale A/V master archive point of view.

Rumours manifest 1- changes on the large scale

Over the last few weeks several rounds of announcements have been made at the BBC regarding our future size, shape, services and locations. I've studiously avoided any face to face briefings- I find they tend to get dominated by those who howl the loudest, and not always the most cogently- and instead I've been perusing and pondering the various written pronouncements and powerpoints.

At the large scale, I guess we're cutting our cloth more economically now- though it's sad to see TVC on the list of places to leave, I'm ambivalent. I just don't know the London TV studio market well enough to know if it really is excess capacity- though it is a peculiar context for the sale of BBC Resources (just what the prospective buyer gets for their money is a bit moot!). Personally, TV doesn't excite me that much, and since studio based drama doesn't happen so much these days, I can't bring myself to be too upset by the loss of the home of so many second rate sit coms and chat shows. From experience, it's a fairly impractical, dingey place for most of the people who work there, and would be very difficult and expensive to upgrade. Possible, but pricey, and witha risk that it would never be busy enough to justify it.

The scale down of F&L is harsh, but apparently driven by the over capacity there at the moment. Trimming News too, is arguably overdue. At times it does seem to be a very well staffed part of the operation, and it's conceivable that it could be as effective with fewer separately dedicated people and more pooled resources.

If there was anything that seemed a real shame it was the decision to cut the local radio support buses. As I understand it, these vehicles do us sterling service, and actually support a key, and often under valued part of the BBCs activities. Local radio is a bit of a 'Cinderella' in the BBC, but has colossal reach- building ,and in some cases rebuilding relationships of trust and ownership with our audiences is key to the strategy- and it seems odd to be cutting these great tools for just that sort of capability right now. Still, what do I know?

A little more about the R&D area perhaps? Next time.

rumours

Quite a few people will have heard the rumours that the BBC is about to shed a load of posts, and indeed some have been kind enough to ask me if I'm worried. Well, yes and no, but there's quite a lot to this worry, and lack of it.

We can and should be more efficient, and the amount of money we have is very limited. Big, granted, but there is a hard cap on it- even more so than there ever has been before, because the treasury has capped our borrowing.

Anyway, we'll hear the whole thing on Thursday from our DG and Trust Chair. Can't wait.

On the road again

As ever autumn brings a gentle ramping in activety, so I'm off again next week. To Edinburgh, via Durham, and then to Paris. I'm happy to report that not a single airmile will be garnered along the way either, it's rail all the way. And thankfully, because I booked so far ahead, I was able to aford first class for much of it too! Huzzah! Here's hoping there are power points! and not the MS kind!

trials of the green machine

A quick update on the monstrous alienware and it's rebuilds. As you may recall, I wasn't that happy with Vista- it made the machine run at least three times slower than it ought, primarily because nVidia weren't able to develop a driver for the SLI video cards. That would be hard, since the video scuttles around the bus encoded, making splitting it to two video cards a tricky proposition.

So over a weekend, and on the phone to alienware help desk, and borrowing a work licensed XP pro install disk I re partitioned the disks (keeping them as Raid 0) and put on XP and Vista. And then, a week later, I borked XP, so needed a full reinstall, so lost the dual boot. So for a month I've only had XP. And guess how much I have missed Vista.

Now, my only gripe is that the little alien eyes on the back of the lid have stopped lighting up. Totally non- critical, but significant- in that they signify 'look at me, I'm a spanky super machine' and they've gone out. Probably a loose connection or something. Which isn't a great sign either.

On the other had, everything runs like a greased weasel, including every sim and FPS i can throw at it. Only thing I want is faster network, cos that's the lag on 2nd life. Really should get back in there too- that was, after all, the main justification for the thing.

Eventually, gaping void will describe your life

And today I found it happened to me...

tv unfestival 2007

reading the wall, originally uploaded by meeware1.

My sincere thanks to the BBC backstage crew for inviting me to help out at the inaugural TV Unfestival. I know this will grow and grow over the years, and will be instrumental in the transformation of TV into whatver comes next- so big up to Ian, Matthew and Sarah for all their tremendous efforts to bring it together.

And thanks to my liver and kidneys for surviving the Edinburgh licensing hours.

Fire Poi in the wet

Fire Poi, originally uploaded by meeware1.

This is well overdue, and Rowan has a much better blog on the subject, but I am happy with the photo, so thought it fit to blog. Weekend before last Rowan double blagged us into the crew camping at the Green man festival for free- she wrote it up for an online review, so justifying the tickets, and we camped quickly in the driving rain to get a place in the crew field.
The festival was excellent and I can recommend it highly- for us it was a classic Rowan and Ant andventure and very welcome in this long wet summer. It did rain, lots, but inspite of it all we had two brilliant days of music and daze in the gorgeous Powys hills.
Highlight- My Brightest Diamond- I urge one and all to seek out these wonderful people. Also, I discovered MONSTERISM as a musical genre, and have since failed to find any trace- think bongo syncopated prog funk. YEAH BABY!

the green machine is here

So now I have this new, astounding, huge and actually slightly intimidating laptop. Except I thin if I had a lap this big I'd probably have spent the money on a gym membership, or perhaps be a horse. It's one of these but in metallic green, which they no longer do. They do do matt black now, which is nice, and intel dual core processors, which is very nice, but hey, I got mine and I love it. I will love it more when I prise Vista out of it's shell- my how I hate big rubbish OSs. Ahem, meanwhile it runs everything OK when it's not being asked anything to complex, and the screen resolution is staggering. I mean utterly mind blowing. And bright and crisp and if it's just rendering away, even running on only half it's video cards (thanks for that Vista!) it's a blinder. Just can't wait to sort out XP and Ubuntu on it. Yum!

A fun post (at last!)

So what's JJ Abram's working on now?

Great trailer though- I mean, completely excellent as an ultra short film/ short story in it's own right.

1/18/08

Play large as you can.

Brilliant.

After the music stops....

So earlier this week, Monday in fact (I know I know, slack blogging) we convened the last steering board of a govt sponsored industry/academia group. We all sat round, reviewed the performance against the targets, looked at how we'd spent the tax payers £50k over three years, looked at the resulting projects and knowledge, and one and all agreed it was brilliant, wasn't it, and we should definitely keep doing this.

Then we tried to work out how.

It's very difficult sometimes to take the great efforts you've made and the brilliant results you have achieved out of a project or a short term funded network and turn them into something useful and permanent, and even with the best will n the world, I can see us not managing it in this case, maybe. And for what? £20k per anum! We could tuck that away in the miscellaneous accounts of some projects!

The network with modest funding allowed several innovative SMEs to remain engaged in large scale fund research efforts, by underwriting the costs of the proposals- these costs are very substantial- ironically, it takes 18 months to get an innovation project proposal through. You have to be VERY innovative in order to avoid being obsolete by the time the funding comes through. Looking that far ahead is a risk, plus, not every proposal gets funding, making engagement in this sort of thing a pretty dodgy proposition for a lot of smaller companies.

The proposals for continuation look like they'd be unable to manage that sort of effort though- as a purely commercial network there simply wouldn't be the motivation to bank roll such work, however modest the requests for funding. Hopefully we'll find a way to keep going with a drip feed of public funds. I know a lot of people have a real dislike for subsidised research, especially if it's someone else and not you getting the subsidy, but remember what this enables- real ground breaking research- risk taking stuff, stuff that if we didn't get a bit of seed funding to do, just wouldn't happen! Perhaps, as Michael Arrington suggested earlier this year the BBC is stifling start ups and entreprenurialism. It's bigger than the BBC though- it's the European way- we share risk, socially. All I'm saying is we can and do and have funded this research publicly, and to change horses now will definitely put us back a few years. So lets keep on with the model our society/culture/govt. has got and try and do the best work we can. All this fannying around trying to be nice to competitors in the open market is frankly absurd, and does them no good at all I'm sure- the independent web educational content provider market has hardly exploded since Jam imploded has it? or have I missed something?

Bugger, that one turned into a rant as well didn't it. Tsk.

Critical Mass, Almost

Yesterday to KW for an inter-corporate meet. It was good and interesting, and well worth setting up, but I can't help feeling we didn't quite reach the dizzy heights of synergy that we might all have wanted. This is a shame, but I need to think abut why it happened this way this time, how we ought to take this connection forward, and see if there are any lessons to learn so we can 'spark up' quicker.

Now, I'm not going to say what the other agencies were- wouldn't be fair, and whilst my employers very generously tolerate this published info, there's no saying how it would go down with less, um, well, with others.

What ended up happening was a very loosely structured talk, with various eminently qualified and experienced people (and me) piping up in turn and holding forth on their own areas of interest, and most of the rest of us sitting, nodding, and wondering what on earth we could do about it. There were three organisations represented there, but in essence there were perhaps rather more, because the 'we' in this were coming from perhaps three separate areas of the beeb. Sometimes this is fine- in fact meetings outside the beeb are sometimes the most effective way to meet people around this place who are working on similar themes to yourself, but in other divisions or areas.

In this case though, I think it actually counted against us. On the one hand we saw a very interesting exchange of ideas, but on the other we didn't see a well presented cogent presentation of what we, the BBC had to offer. We had info around DAB radio, DAB+, data feeds, video analysis (though perhaps we ought to have had more), EU and DTI projects and engagement programs like Backstage . However, I don't really think we really put over a great, compelling offering.

Similarly, I wonder if we really got a grip on what the other agencies were offering, how they wanted and were mandated to engage with their public or what they really wanted from us.

Perhaps, if we are going to do this sort of thing again we should take a little time to organise the engagements- to build a good idea of who would offer what, and to present a more cogent offering. We need to have a better approach to presenting 'works in progress' too. It is a difficult thing to do- give guidance as to the direction you expect new radical approaches to delivering content to go- but I think we can do better.

Outside the box. A long way outside the box

This post has an ethical dimension, and I strongly defend my position, but feel free to have a pop. Last Wednesday I and a number of colleagues attended a show called 'Soldier Tech 2007'. It was as you might expect from the title, an exhibition and conference covering all the latest the a soldier my desire. It was very VERY interesting, and well worth attending as an innovator in broadcast technology.

The following day I presented an idea that had come from the inspiration of that show, and it appears not everyone thought it was quite as focused on the needs of broadcast as it ought to have been. Without going into the detail (it was a proposal to look at the dangers faced by journalists and technical crews in news gathering and see if we could help develop better protective gear for them- niche, but important) I strongly feel that an important point needs to be made here, and made very clearly:

To innovate means many things, including creating new ideas and developing them in new ways. It also means taking an idea from place and applying it in a new way. The Broadcast world is actually very small, I've been in it for perhaps five years now, two and a bit at the R&D end, and though I meet new people all the time, I do already recognise a 'horizon' to this world. Go to broadcast tech show after broadcast tech show, tv conference after conference, and you will soon see the same old stands, technologies, lectures one after another. Sure there will be announcements, new demos etc. but they will ave been leaks, murmurs before, and the application will already be sewn up, and the world keeps ticking on all the same. Groundhog innovation. Something of a non-sequiteur don't you think.

To any and all technologists and innovators out there- at least once this year, go to a show about which you no NOTHING- nada, didly squat- abut the application area. Two things will happen- you will learn new things and have new ideas, and so will the people there. It's a win win, and frankly if any of us are going to make any difference in our jobs, we have GOT to get out of our comfort zones. Swords do beget plough shares, but not by us hiding from them.

Harrumph, thas bedder.

A new laptop

As I sit listening to 'Sailing by', that peerless intro to the shipping forcast, I am pondering my next procurement. I am going to get a non-desktopped latop. That is to say, a work laptop that isn't nailed to the BBC's rather restrictive standard config. I get the standard config thing (though I've long argued we should run at least two standards- getting everyone from the high end off line editor to the PA to the DG to use the same standard of software set up and support seems to a fool like me to be positively perverse), but I want to run very graphics intensive immersive stuff, so I'm looking for something with a bit of umph.

Turns out there's a lot of umph around these days. Options are:
Alienware- Hi Def native, massive storage and savage video set up, but AMD processors
Sony- great for playing DVDs, but a bit dissapointing otherwise- qua the ar31
Toshiba- beast and very very very old fashioned looking
HP- nothing that good yet in the UK- but the US and japan are getting these very nice pavillion 9500 machines.
Dell- Well there's a couple of options here- the outrageous 2010 (which really needs a team of sherpas to carry) or the very very powerful glow in the dark 1710 - except someone else at work already has one, and if part of the point of this is comparing different stuff, then perhaps I shpould get different stuff!?
Partial edit done at half nine at ally pally

Thing is though there's so many groovy new things on the horizon, or just a cintilla over it- 8 series nVidia cards, solid state disks, hi def 19 inch screens with LED lights. I feel like a kid in a sweet shop, next door to a bigger better sweet shop that'll be opening next week!

Futurology?

Yesterday marked the first meeting of the L10 group that I was invited to. L10, or Life plus 10 (I prefer L10, 'cos life plus ten sounds a bit too much like a gaol sentence for child murder, license fee evasion or copyright infringement or something) is a small, informal, off the books, black ops directorate of the BBC's technology division, like Alias except without a Jenifer Garner. Um though actualy we do. And we do have both an Arvin Sloan and a Jack Bristow. And somethig of a surfiet of Marshals. Oops, there, just blown the plausible deniability.

Anyroad up, we sit around, try and figure out what the world will be like ten or fifteen years hence, and determine how, why or whether the BBC fits into it at all. Sit around was what we did this time. But I hope there will be some standing up too. And waving of arms a la Peter Snow. I really enjoyed it- I got to make completely unattributed Plato quotes and throw up some half boiled social psychology ideas about the nature of communities and society and why people starting uni use facebook (it's cos they are scared and positive vetting of your mates online is cheaper and easier than getting utterly shit faced every night for three months so you just don't care). Ah, the old days.....

Now why am I blogging this? Well I just do don't I. I blog and blog and blog and do all our dirty washing in public, and you can all see it. Both of you. So howabout some feedback. How about all you teeming hordes of BBC-ophiles drop me some sparkling feedback on just where you see the world being in 2022?! Why not point out just how hideouly irrelevant the BBC will be, or alternatively how Ofcom and the BBC trust will have seen the light, and turned over to the BBC an exponentialy growing license fee that we can collect worldwide from a fleet of black helicopters, and any and all dabbling in communications by the publicly owned institutions of europe chall be controlled, edited and ultimately owned by the uber BBC! mwahahahaha. Or you know. Not.

I may yet float the occasional flight of fancy here on this very blog, in part to garner your feedback, but mostly to scare my bosses silly that any of my out of the box radical nonsense is leaking into the public domain.

P.S. I once tried to think inside the box. Sadly I become rather flatulent whilst thinking hard, and so almost suffocated.

P.P.S. I really wanted to come up with a cool logo for L10 based upon the Lagrange points idea, but apparently there are only five lagrange points in a two body gravitic system, and in a three body system the maths aren't do able within the lifetime of the universe. So it would be a random scribble. Which I quite like too.

More DRM CPCM banter

Just posted to this article on Artthreat- with a bit off luck this may keep the cpcm drm thing buzzing along- for the record I'm not trying to kill it outright- if it works, if it does what people want (all people, creators and consumers and all of us in between) then it would be a good thing, but I think it needs and active debate to thrash out the pros and cons, and not just a bandwagon flight from the horrors of DRM as everyone fall over themselves in Apple, EMI and Macca's wakes.

Twitter vision vs Jodrell Bank

What if the twitter fed coordinates of all the radio telescopes were piped to a 3d twitter vision globe, and you could see all the directions that all the radio telescopes in the world were pointing like a giant grapefruit with cheese and pineapple on sticks stuck in it. Different frequencies could be represented by different fruit, and you could see from the direction they were all pointing in which bits of the sky were being looked at and which bits the aliens could sneak in and attack us by. Then over time you could do a sort of time lapse animatin to see the sweep and flow of radio astronomy acros the sky. That would be pretty.

This is my idea #1 for hackday.

zzz

zzz, originally uploaded by meeware1.

Did the Great Escape festival last weekend in Brighton, and twas brillig, but I had forgotten this band, zzz, who, on balance, were probably my favourite. Quite weird, almost scarey, and very very dutch, but none the less outstanding. Some day all rock will... actually no, it never will.

Tweeting to a select few?

Or broadcasting to the world? According to Bojo it turns out that due to the way that twitter's api works at the moment, all that carefull 'only tweeting to friends' or 'blocking' is completely circumvented by pulling a feed via the api. Does this matter? not sure myself- I never really saw the point of private tweeting, or at least, I can see the point, but it is essentially different to the main, core twitter proposition.

I mean, I have tried to follow people that I thought would be interesting, and found them blocking all and sundry, and felt a vague sense that they weren't really playng the same game as the rest of us, and similarly, I have only very rarely been tempted to block. In essence, I see twitter as fundamentally public- those are the rules, use twitter to publish stuff and we'll all play nice.

i can see a role for a more exclusive twitter type service too, one where it's more invite only. I think the distinction between the two approaches is only now becoming evident at all, as usage blossoms and critical mass is reached. If Ev or anyone else reads this, I'd like to suggest a bifurcation of the twitter service, into private flocks and public mobs, or whatever the correct zoological term is for describing homogenous and heterogenous groups of birdies respectively. Covey and flock would seem to fit the bill. (see what I did there?)

Escapades

One day and five bands into the Great Escape Festival, and I'm rather liking the format. A music festiva in my home town, in my favorite pubs and clubs- I can get twisted listen to great new bands, then roll home to my own cosy bed and wake up with my own bathroom right there and home baked bread. Living in Brighton and commuting to London isn't always the easiest way to do things, but today it really really makes sense.

It would appear I am not paranoid...

and in fact my fears of the looming crisis in the BBC's innovation/ research and development area are in fact shared elsewhere. In the Guardian. And by the ever so erudite and perspicacious Bobbie Johnson. Ok so the grauniad piece is by bojo, but still it looks like the FUD is beginning to get noticed elsewhere.

As it goes I have a slightly different take on this to bojo and others currently in print and blogs (see also the very wise Euan Semple's blog). As I understand it these guys see the main problem as being Ashley Highfield's corralling of the BBCs new media elements as likely to lead to a stifling of the previously fecund diversity of the teams across sport, news, radio etc. I get that. I can see that it is a culture change and that at the core there are things moving perhaps slower. However, I thinks that's because at the core they are trying to do harder stuff. The fringes will remain dynamic, active, and perhaps now we will get better cross fertilisation. No, the problems as I see them are far more severe than any slight dulling of web innovation.

Ibelieve the Trust is showing itself to be quite weak in defending the BBC when it is doing good- This is an edit of a far more strongly worded earlier post, but in essence I think a poor precedent has been set for the support of good services, and this is something that Euan and Bobby and others such as Cory Doctorow have picked up on. Imortantly though you have to recognise that the Trust is NOT the BBC. And in fact it seems to be rather antithetical toward the BBCs objectives. That is a problem.

The second problem is internal to the BBC, and does in fact reflect upon Ashley and the senior management of his inland empire- Future Media and Technology. The story of what the new division comprises is long, its new leadership appointments have been long winded and in some cases quite hotly contested, and some friction has emerged. In essence several groups with widely differing cultures and world views have been brought together, and it's not actually working all that well in some key elements. One area of particular concern is the R&D group- these are engineers, people who have over the years given the world DAB radio, ceefax, much of NICAM and MPEG, and many thousands of other highly technical broadcasting engineering inventions. They are scientists and engineers, people used to working for years investigating, experimenting, testing, developing and standardising technical ideas.

In many ways the skills and professional approach of these people is different from the equally, but differently, talented web developers and engineers who for the last few years have been rapidly spinning new idea into finished products in mere weeks or months. The difference is profound. I can only guess at the very top level issues and roles and responsibility that are failing to correct the obvious and glaring problems but the problems themselves include;

• An ongoing process with no obvious outcome to shut down the facilities at Kingswood Warren and relocate the engineers and scientists.
• A lack of a clearly identified role at the head of line management for R&D who displays a strong understanding of R&D in a broadcast engineering context. (EDIT: There are really good people there, but authority and responsibility gets weirdly muddled and loads of stuff is falling through the cracks)
• A merging together of a lot of highly qualified and varied men and women into a 'pool' structure where all job roles are considered to be generic.

Upshot- these people feel rather undervalued. And are leaving. Fast. Just as fast as the web developers.

Then, to compound all this, there is Siemens. Bless them. Good example of a partnership though. Ahem.

Right, I've definitly said way too much, and I haven't even had a pop at the archives yet. But hey, the night is young, and I still work there, and at some point about a couple of hundred words back I crossed a line about discretion I'm sure. I believe, deeply, in the power and the need for public service broadcasting, and also in our responsibility to shoulder the burden of making the best technical systems for this country's and the world's viewers listeners and browsers. We should because we can. If the Trust lack that vision, then that's their look out.

N.B. I have toned this down a tad- last nght it all got a bit splenetic.

Seen Straight and Fast

Almost wish..., no definitly wish I'd had something a tad sparkly to imbibe before seeing the spectacular that was Lola Rennt with a live soundtrack by the Bays at the brighton festival tonight. And hour and half of solid extremely loud utterly livid vibrant stomping hard core house and a brilliant film. I even managed to have a quick chat to the projectionist- tonights film was shown on one of the UKs two brightest digital projectors at 25,000 somethings, runing at 1000 by 2000 raw digital SDI of digi beta at SD. makes you realise how patchy an original it is- occasional artefact torrents and some really staggered contrasts and exposure.

BUT still and all I'm sitting here typing at ten to thr dozen listening to the soundtrack again determined to do something very fast and physical at some point soon. Graaaaaaaaah!

I have been in america...

and it was nice, but in 140 hours I was airborn for 40. San Diego is really nice, especially if someone else is putting you up at the Carlsbad Four Seasons. It is very very very liovely- Valhalla with infinity pools. I like hot tubs at dawn with humming birds.

Chicago was realy nice too- at last I caught up with cousin Eleanor and got the grand tour of Chicago's finest architecture. Then I got the wizz bang Evanston low down- including a trip to a top five dawg joint, a pancake that could have killed a small dog if dropped from a sufficient height, and several whirlwind meetings. Might have given a presentation on the bridge of the starshiop enterprise at some point too. Weird trip. But nice.

My sincere thanks to Lisa, Jerry and Andrew and all the other lovely colonial types I met.

For shame...

Ok so twitter is cool and great and has kept me in touch with the world for two weeks, but this MEEZ business- what am I thinking! Still it's about right according to Row, and she should know.

Alcazabar & Mulacen

Alcazabar & Mulacen, originally uploaded by meeware1.

Sorry for all the inactivety here. However, here´s why- I was walking up these hills. Took me best part of a week from Ugihar to this point, and inthe end I didn´t do the big one, but it was great, and I stayed safe- later that day (sunday) the clouds came in, the vis dropped to nothing, and the temp went down fast. Meanwhile I was in the refuge drinking with jolly Norweigans and Germans.

I think this photo is taken from about 3181 metres, but I don´t know for sure- happy to be corrected.

Anyone want to buy some crampons?- only used once (by me).

Kickin' the habit

The 77O has flown home, the 9500 is back at the warren, and I am now running with a dinky little Motorola number. Not over enamoured of the new thing, but hey, at least it's just a phone, and it'll punt out a tweet when i need it to.

And now I'm flying off to spain, to what I'm not sure, but it'll be tech light. I have decided to take the Ogg though. Wasn't going to, but decided there's a need to toons when walking a lot, and theres a little room to stick some Led Zep and Neil Young and Lonnie Liston Smith in there, so, yeah, why not.

Hurgh! The habit really kicks in

Ok, so this 9500 is a really nice piece of kit. Symbian is a bit ropey, the applications seem to need a pointer that the device doesn't have- the joystick is useless in trying to do a presentation- but a stylus or mousey type thing would be great.

However, there is something rather like a killer app taking place when you start to do 'twitter' on a phone with a nice big keyboard. Ooooh, lovely.

Have to use the keyboard though, becuase for some insane reason, there's no predictive text in this falsh gordon housebrick (mustn't have been room for it after they squeezed in a massive useless powerpoint application- sheesh!

Richt, now I really want to get geo twitter workibng- can't yet see how people are letting it know where they are. Confused, intrigued, facinated even. Hooked.

Mobile Gadgetry- Geek Crack

I swear this stuff is addictive. So I have borrowed a nokia 770 for a while- I like it- bugs and all. It's not mine, so perhas I haven't gone as far as I should have in personalising it; plus the whole loading of libraries for Linux apps is mildly intimidating- a may have done coding in a unix environment, but that doesn't mean I was ever really comfortable with it.

Anyway, over the wekend I broke the second of my two spare old unlocked phones by dropping it really hard. Poor old nokia blob dies a sudden death, with no flicker of recovery. Yesterday therefore, after a very interesting Mobile SIG meeting, where we discussed future research invstment strategy cycles of development, the role of the BBC in the mobile landscape, and the role of the mobile in the bBC landscape, I went to scrounge a test phone of Steve Jolly.

Well bless him, he didn't have a phone handy, but there was a Nokia 9500 kicking around I could borrow for a few weeks.

Oh, blimey, what a beast. It took me an hour to find how to turn off the keystroke beep. Incredible machine. Not sure I go a bundle on Symbian just yet, and the keyboard has shades of the ZX81 about it, but this could be fun.

At the moment i've got it running on my tesco pay-as-you-go sim (very very cheap) but I might slip my work SIM into it later to see what the web access is like. Hmm. Its like I just graduated to freebasing.....!

BBC does gritty DRM podcast

Those brilliant chaps at backstage have been exceptionally brave/clever and put out a podcast exploring the myriad issues around the use of DRM on BBC content delivered over the web. The luminaries engaged in this admittedly long 'cast include Tom Loosemore, Miles Metcalf and many others.

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/02/bbc_backstage_p_1.html

The reactions have been gerally positive- though boingboing seems to have reacted more to the crcumstances than perhaps the actual content of the 'cast.

The one point I'd make.., the two points I'd make are:
The law is behind the times and will have to change, and it should be opne and clear about the new rights and responsibilites of creators and users of media- a clear fair law is a better barrier to priacy than any encyption.
Secondly, a good drm system need nt be proprietory- there is o theoretical impediment to fully robust open source DRM- only the keys must be secure, all else can, and really, for a public service, should be open.

Erm, can I have a third point- DRM has two parts, hard (technical managment of access and security) and soft (definition of rights and managed allocation thereof) and by and large we, the world at large, are a bit weak at both.

Pain at both ends

Had a great weekend of adventurous geekery- huge game of toy soldiers, big long bike ride on brand ew shiney red bike and tried to get some new stuff to happen on this Nokia thingy. Best not to dwell on the toy soldiery (it's the nadir of my geelery) but the bike ride was brilliant- it was really cold with the misty clouds bowing off the downs, but the ride was great. I think I might need t make some adjustments to the bike before taking it out along that type of route again- road style slicks were tough to get much grip with, and the rear wheel jammed up totally with the snug (and very practical) mud guards. The 'penny farthing' or 'gentleman's velocipede will need some serious adaptation in order to get it full of roadable.

Thinking of maybe getting a second set of wheels. Maybe. Dunno.

Ah, so why the other end hurty? Well I'm trying to get this 770 to do some interesting stuff and now my brain hurts trying to understand how I got a lib conflict on automatic repository synching. or something. Maybe. Dunno.

Flickr Merge- I'm really not keen

I have a flickr account, I enjoy flickr. It's a pleasure to use flickr and I really like the interface and the community feel and the, well, the general flickr thing. I like it so much that I pay them for it. Not a lot, but it's the only thing I pay for on the web (ain't the internet cool!).

You've seen the news- Yahoo accounts only from the 15th March. I'm not happy. I don't really like the yahoo experience- it's just nowhere near as nice. So, I don't really want a relationship with yahoo jammed into the flickr thing. Flickr is pure and clean and focussed and just right, yahoo is cludgy messy complicated overwheening and not something I want to pay for.

Ok so I have been paying them for ages- ever since I signed up for a pro account, but that was still a relationship with flickr, not yahoo. Oh it make s me mad.

On the upside, I know the person who wrote the BBC news online story today!

innov2

still here and it's going well. done a pitch for four ideas, and bar the one the engineering blok stamped on, all were well recieved. sounds like the iplayer one happening anyway, the planning tool is recognised as essential, and the carbon footprint tool is a no brainer. whoo hoo!

innovating as i type!

sitting here in the bbc innovation forum, so it felt appropriate to blog a bit. highlights so far include;
os trust framework for media exchange
multi sensory signal processing
a quick chat with siemens innovation chap

so far so good (but the monkey story was wierd!)

Too into the music (metadata)

So I am a very lucky boy, and kind generous wife (who has just made the most amazing muffins by the way) bought me an MP3 player for Christmas. And knowing what an utter anti nasty software paranoid freak I am she buys me one of these . It's brilliant. And it plays Ogg vorbis files. These are like MP3 in that they are compressed music files, but often they are better quality. Ah quality- so often a secondary, tertiary, or, lets face it, a completely ignored consideration in modern broadcast. Crunchy talk shows, squished classical, fizzy jazz, and that's just Radio! So in a curious mix of neo ludite harking for a quality past, allied with a pseudo-geeky need to try and get this device to have very cool open source support, I eventually set myself up with this software to get music off CDs, and this software to turn it into very nice Ogg files. Took a little time to get it all set up, then the next question is- what do I call the files.....?

Cue massive wracking of brain- what do I want to see on screen? Will it be whole albums? Tracks? will I navigate via a menu or just shuffle? Where is the metadata coming from? What will I use ot for? How long will it last? Will I change the use? Panic! Worry! Confusion! Insomnia! (Ok it was christmas and I over ate. A bit. Bt I swaer soe of the insomnia really was down to an inability to commit to a metadata schema for my new MP3 player!

I am so sad.

Anyway I have tried a couple of schemes, and neither is really perfect.
For whole albums I do a directory structure of artist/album/tracks and I name the tracks as:
Track Number- Track name dot ogg.
For ripped tracks I just put them all under the artist, and then put:
Track Name- Album Name (track number) dot ogg.

Excpet I'm not even being consistent in these applications (I ripped the whole Yo La Tengo album in the individual track schema as an experiement and it is more useful, except the album name is so long that it takes over a minute to scroll across the screen)(good album mind).

Any advice on good track naming schema for small screen mp3 player usage gratefully recieved.

Like the dust will ever settle!

"It'll get sorted out when the dust settles"

If I hear that ever again I might well resort to fisticuffs. Last time I posted was about RDA and how it looked like i was now going to be largely on internal projects. Well I sort of still am. RDA has been a really hard slog, but is significntly further along now (Radio 3 and Radio 4 do now have a fighting chance of getting a digital archive by May), and my brain did get totally scarred thinking about audio metadata.

However- I now have an intern (he's great- kind of like having a remote mini-me I can send on missions to parts of the BBC I've never seen). He's also about eight times brighter than I have ever been (I know I'm getting thicker), and far more personable and very very driven. He's also very generous with his geek toys, and for the last few weeks has let me teeter on the edge of completely destroying his Nokia 770 . This is an amazing device- not perfect, but very very interesting.

A side bar- this guy makes me realise that no matter how anti social and borderline asbergers I get, I am not a techno geek, due largely to the fact I am useless at tech and very very far behind the times.

Anyhoo, so this new (to me) thing is around, and Framework Seven is kicking off, and so yesterday I get to go to Denmark to discuss some projects about mobile services and the future of broadcasting (waaaaaaaaaaaay out of my depth) and who is there but a really nice chap from Nokia who has just donated 100 of these things to the University I'm visiting! MAD! Serendipitous! bizarre!

There's no way I can begin to pull all these threads of weird serendipitous work related hi tech future broadcast stuff together in a blog post- I'm trying, but my brain just can't. I may post more later.