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Friday, 31 July 2009
An audio recording from AudioBoo
Day 17: lull (and out on the green) boo
Posted by james at 2:40 PM
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
An audio recording from AudioBoo
Day 15: settling down(?), reflecting and gluing boo
Posted by james at 4:10 PM
Saturday, 25 July 2009
An audio recording from AudioBoo
Day 11: More surgery boo
Posted by james at 9:50 PM
An audio recording from AudioBoo
Day 11: a long long (and rather frustrating)day boo
Posted by james at 7:50 AM
A photo from TwitPic
The city, glowing, shortly before dawn (shame it was with such a rubbish camera..!)
Posted by james at 5:00 AM
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
An audio recording from AudioBoo
Nearly finished Freecycling boo
Posted by james at 10:20 PM
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
A photo from TwitPic
This pretty-much sums up my life at the moment. It could do with a tidy, for a start...
Posted by james at 11:40 PM
Saturday, 18 July 2009
An audio recording from AudioBoo
My Mother
Posted by james at 2:50 PM
An audio recording from AudioBoo
Day 5: The Great Escape boo
Posted by james at 2:50 PM
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
AudioBoo: Day 2 part 1: post-surgery boo
Posted by james at 9:20 AM
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
A photo from TwitPic
Beth, in her hospital bed, all wired up to machines & things (some of which go ping, but most go 'bleep bleep ...
Posted by james at 10:00 PM
A photo from TwitPic
dusk over The City and Whitechapel. Imagine the near-constant sirens and you're practically here.
Posted by james at 9:40 PM
AudioBoo: Day 1 part 2: spinal surgery boo
Posted by james at 3:20 PM
AudioBoo: Day 1 part 1: Hospital admissions boo
Posted by james at 8:30 AM
Monday, 13 July 2009
A photo from TwitPic
The juxtaposition of new versus old in Whitechapel
Posted by james at 10:10 PM
AudioBoo: Day 0 part 4: Frustration and Wetherspoons
Posted by james at 7:20 PM
AudioBoo: Day 0 part 3: phone frustration
Posted by james at 7:20 PM
AudioBoo: Day 0 part 2: Whitechapel
Posted by james at 4:10 PM
AudioBoo: Day 0 part 1: Luton Railway Station
Posted by james at 3:50 PM
Saturday, 11 July 2009
AudioBoo: Audiobook Audioboo
A brief summary of the day, including such delights as
- Trainee's leaving drinks
- Luton library's audiobook service
- Audible audiobook store
- Radio 4's excellent iPlayer offerings
An audio recording from audioboo.fm
Posted by james at 12:20 AM
Thursday, 9 July 2009
AudioBoo: Luton Airport Apron boo
Posted by james at 8:20 PM
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
AudioBoo: End Of Tuesday Wrong Button Pressing boo
Here's an audiojournal I recorded for Tuesday evening.. just a summary of the day's events, really - and a list of things I still need to do!
I'm hoping this will become a more regular event, since it doesn't take nearly as long to record my voice as it does to write stuff down!
Topics covered:
- The 'plinth' artwork at www.oneandother.co.uk
- My visit to said plinth and the failure of my N95 to record it
- Freecycling
- The children watching Ice Age 3 in 3D as an end-of-term treat
- Chris going to the e-learning Centre and enjoying Garageband
Posted by james at 9:40 PM
A photo from TwitPic
A photographer called Adam on the #plinth 2pm-3pm today. His pics will be on the #oneandanother site soon.
Posted by james at 5:10 PM
Monday, 6 July 2009
A video from Vox
06/07/2009: A summary of Monday - lots of tidying and a project completed!
Posted by james at 9:30 PM
AudioBoo: Late Night Visitor Boo
Posted by james at 2:20 AM
Saturday, 4 July 2009
The chronicles of life - Web2.0 style.
There are now some amazing ways to tell stories on the internet. In some respects, blogs are 'old hat', in that they are a distinctly linear method by which an account may be recorded.
I have gone on at length about twitter as the ultimate means by which to chronicle events quickly within the limits of a text message, but even that has been somewhat enriched by the 'accessories' that are available for it. Thus:
- Pictures
Lenni in front of the nasturtia ... on TwitPic
- Video
Until recently I've been using Qik, both on the i600 and now the N95, since it offers some quite amazing abilities to stream live over 3G (quite expensive unless you have an unlimited data plan) or upload automatically when one arrives at a place with wi-fi.
The N95 offers some 'Share Online' services, though, which includes a blogging site called Vox, which seems to have slightly better quality video.
Here's an example from this morning - a drumming workshop organised by the Family Workers and Chris and Lenni's schools, led by the mightily talented Tom Southerton.
- Audio
It's called Audioboo, developed by UK-based BestBefore Media, and has already gained a lot of media attention, much like Twitter. Perhaps it's my fondness for radio that has inspired me to adopt it as a (yet another!) way of recording my experiences, but it's meant that I have bought a microphone (the Macally iVoice III and had to make slight modifications to the software so it works on my 1st Gen iPod Touch) to enable me to use it.
I'm sure there are other means by which audio accounts can be recorded and uploaded, but this is exquisitely simple, and although there is no software yet available for other mobile devices, it is possible to use an adjunct to the service - PhoneBoo - to record and upload phone messages to the service.
What's quite brilliant, though, is that the phone number is an internet-based one, so it's possible to use Voice over IP software to call it up and leave messages. I will - if I have the opportunity - write a blog entry about it, but I've managed to get the N95 (which is already capable of internet telephony) to record AudioBoos that way as well. In fact, the ubiquitous mobile messaging software Fring is capable of making internet phone calls, but unfortunately it doesn't (yet) support 'touch tone' (or 'DTMF') key presses, so it's possible to record a message, but not to stop or upload it!
Here's an audioboo I recorded last night - about water butts, of all things!
The tricky bit, of course, is aggregating all these disparate media into one place. Fortunately, both TwitPic (by its very nature) and AudioBoo can automatically post a new item to Twitter to announce their presence. Because Vox generates an RSS feed for a user's items, I've made use of an excellent service called twitterfeed.com which examines the feed and creates a tweet if something new pops up. As a result, my multimedia exploits are collected into Twitter, which is quite good, but ends up in the marass of microblogging that goes on during the course of my day.
Since my blog isn't particularly regularly updated, I thought it might be quite nice, therefore, if I were to try to find a way automatically to post these items to my blog, as well. I think it should be fairly straightforward to write a script that rummages through my Twitter RSS feed and finds any new media that's popped up.. that's my project for the next couple of days. The benefit is that my blog is slightly more regularly updated with fairly rich content (that I can consolidate by editing the post and adding bits later), but it doesn't take me hours to write a long and tedious blog entry (like this one, for which I apologise!)
It's been a hot, hot week, which has made it hard to concentrate in the office (the air conditioning has never really worked, and the windows have been limited for health & safety reasons) but we're doing OK at home. Beth's operation is approaching quickly - she had her pre-op appointment yesterday, where she spent five hours at what I've dubbed The Cockney Hospital since they had something of a doctor shortage. The nursing staff, however, couldn't be faulted - they were helpful, patient and apologetic, so that reduces the worry about the impending stay!
More on that - and everything else that's going on in our lives - soon, then... in one form or another!
Posted by james at 4:35 PM
