Scuppered!
My plans (not that I had worked them out yet but that’s how I start this post)… My plans, have been dealt a mortal blow. Not by Somalian pirates, not even by good old Cornish ones, but by my good lady wife. Well not so much her but by her flat tyre. The net result is that she be hijacking the good ship TT and all who would sail in her. So while it was hard enough working out what to do with the final day of the decade with working transport I now have to work out what to do on foot… unless of course my final act of the year is to put on the spare.. Its a plan!
Then i can return to sitting in front of my computer screen grumbling about wasting the day.
All right stop collaborate and listen…
Its often good practice to slow down, stop and take a look around. That’s just what I’m doing now. Its a quiet Sunday morning post Christmas and Boxing Day. Having sat in front of the screen for a while catching up on the news and my dismal Fantasy Premier league score this week I realised that it had been some time since I had posted to my blog, it also got me thinking why this was. There are many reasons why I feel that I’ve not had the time to write anything meaningful but many of the answers lie with the iPhone and Twitter.
While both the iPhone and Twitter are fantastic in what they do there are things that suffer. Both offer an immediacy in the flow of information that has changed many ways I do and enjoy things. One example is watching event TV while watching Live comments via Twitter. It all makes for a communal viewing event that enhances the experience. I can also take photos and without going through the camera>iPhoto>flickr>blog I can snap and Tweet. An example of this would be the recent #uksnow feed where I could not only Tweet weather conditions but actually show the pics to a live audience. This is where I come back to my opening statement. Sometimes we need to slow down.
One negative aspect of iPhone and Twitter is that I’ve stopped regularly posting to the blog. I’m too busy blurting out things I’m doing or what I’m thinking that there often is nothing left to blog that doesn’t feel like I’m repeating myself. And my photos have gone from me studying fine detail and form in upwards of ten megapixel detail to Polaroidesque snaps. I feel I’ve lost something that needs to be put back. I also feel that I’ve lost a purpose, something to look forward to. Something to provide ‘wantage’ and I think I may have found a solution to my problem.
From where I’m sat I can see a Sony DSC-T9 pocket camera that has served me well. If I was to look down the stairs I could see a Nikon D60 but I have no urge to use either of them, you see the Olympus PEN has worked its spell and got under my skin. I want one but I don’t think I need one, but there’s something about it I can’t quite see. A bit like Jack Skellington trying to work out what Christmas is.. What can it be?! What can it be?! I told Jayne who told me to just go out and buy one but I’m enjoying the mystery of it all at the moment. The feeling in the gut, the want. And why I’m still working out what this PEN is (its not a pocket camera and its not a nice big SLR) I do think that it will give me some enthusiasm to be more creative again. To make me slow down, stop and look at what’s around me.
That can only be a good thing, right?
ugvx.com – It just won’t die
Many of you know that I’ve been involved with ugvx.com for many years. You’ll be excused for thinking from the title of this post that its been a millstone around my neck. Far from it and I’d describe it as more of a labour of love. There is no denying though that it was in terminal decline but since I was happy to pay the hosting, I was happy for it to just ‘exist’ and be there.
I often considered what to do with the domain/site but always more pressing matters came up and again I left it to ‘exist’ but on one such occasion over a particularly large mug of coffee I pondered on why people had stopped using it and at which points along the timeline. Undoubtedly there were events such as the loss of XSN, the advent of the 360 and with it the integration of other services that tracked gamercards, achievements, Facebook, good old Usenet (particularly ugvm) and Twitter. So on comparing elements to the site to other communication mediums I was striking out elements of the site as unnecessary or done better elsewhere. It then occurred to me that the only remaining popular part of the site was the shoutbox. Being a big Twitter user I saw an opening. What is Twitter but a shoutbox on a big scale. But while there were obviously a lot of Xbox users with Twitter accounts (proven by the popularity of XboxTweet, etc) I wanted a way that I could see if anyone on my Friends List had an account. So this is where the idea of a searchable directory came from. But I still needed a way of grouping Tweets. The answer was to have a hashtag but for it to be effective I had to make it popular. That’s when I finally decided to call on @SDChown and pitch the idea. Maybe it was a bit selfish to wipe the site and create what could be considered a sandbox project but it was worth a risk. A few days of coding later and ugvx.com was launched.
Its still finding its feet. We’ve had unforeseen things such as flooding the stream with ‘AutoTweets’ of achievements and since its prompted a number of gamers to turn to Twitter they are still getting to grips with it so we are writing the rule book as we go. I quite like it like that.
Truth be known. I don’t visit the site much. I don’t need to as its doing its job. I have my Twitter clients tracking the #ugvx hashtag that the site has popularised. Either way, its nice to see something fresh rather than an old PHP Nuke site in its death throws.
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"You'd kill yourself for recognition; kill yourself to never ever stop.
You broke another mirror; you're turning into something you are not."
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