Cristiano on Tech/Life

We “lost” the previous Geek Dinner website (archive.org still has some of it) because we never managed to get our hands on the files and the database after the server went down. So for a while we had a vanilla Wordpress blog which didn’t really represent the Geek Dinner heritage. So with a little effort and less than 2 hours of work I managed to give the site a new look. I even added OpenID and hAvatar support.

Time for yet another London Geek Dinner, this time with special guest David Terrar, who will talk about “Creativity”. The talk will focus on creativity and how the current education system is broke, designed for a 19th century industrial age, and how web2.0 tools can improve creativity.

We haven’t found a venue yet, as our previous home for the Geek Dinners has been letting us down lately, but we will announce it shortly.

When: Monday, April 7, 2008, 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Where: TBA
Special Guests: David Terrar
Cost: attending is free, cost for food will be announced soon
Upcoming: 465933

Please use the upcoming link or comment below to indicate your interest

Alper and Eelke made a little video, explaining what Tipit.to does, for a competition that might get them some tickets for The Next Web conference in Amsterdam next week. The video is only in Dutch for the moment (English version coming after the weekend) but I couldn’t stop myself from posting this already.

Tipit.to Startup Pitch from Alper Cugun

• Final Fantasy vs. Dead or Alive: Round 2 – Wow, this some very nice piece of fan-fiction. It looks like machinima but it is actually all made from scratch.
• OOP Concept explained: Polymorphism (Technology) – NSFW explanation of Polymorphism in programming. I think this is how Reinier would explain it if he was in a pissed off mood.
• ABC 3D – A brilliant ABC-popup book. It's a masterwork.
• Video: "How to Speak" – Interesting lecture on how to speak. I totally agree with he video.
• Places near you – WikiNear is a very cool idea that would really fit into my idea for Over The Air.

• MyPCTV sound and the Hafler Principle – getting good quality surround sound on a budget. – broadstuff – Interesting article on how you can turn 4 speakers and a cheap stereo amp into a nice surround set. Might do this one day. I like living on a budget.
• The trouble with Steve – interesting article on Steve Jobs and the danger he poses to investors.
• Data Portability: Reasonable Goal or Impossible Dream? – Nice article by PC world but I don't like the title because it puts DP in a black/white perspective. I would really like to have people see the DP initiative in a more interesting way and see the potential it has to make things better.
• Sniff browser history for improved user experience – Use css and javascript to sniff what services a visitor uses in order to show them their favorite openid provider login, social bookmarking button, etc.
• How To Solve A Rubik's Cube – I always wanted to know how to solve a rubiks cube and now I do. Next step: get a rubiks cube.

• Attention Profiling: APML Beginner's Guide – A good read for when you want to know what APML is.
• Wax On, Wax Off? – Very funny story that melinda reposted from a different blog. Even I as a guy had to laugh about this.
• picoformats – Microformats – This stuff is really cool. I feel like wanting to do something cool with Picoformats!
• Our Bad. Wired Had Some Tips For Apple — We Were Wrong. – Wired admits that they were wrong on some of the tips they gave apple in 1997, when Apple was on their all-time low and about to go bust.
• Down for everyone or just me? – Want to know if a website is just down for you or also for everyone else? This little site helps you with that.

I went to BarcampBrighton2 last weekend, held at the University of Sussex student union (USSU). I normally don’t get excited about Barcamps on universities but I have to admit that this Barcamp was brilliant. The food was good, the rooms were great, the crowd was inspiring and the talks were exciting. I was actually amazed about the amount of new people (about 50%) which made the event yet again refreshing.

I attended a few talks including giving one myself on “Voluntary Economies” (more in a moment). During the day I visited quite a few talks, including:

• Barcamp Ephemera (by Ryan Alexander) – A quick and funny introduction to Barcamp
  
• Arduino Introduction – I got to play with an Arduino board to get a led light to pulse on and off with increasing/decreasing speeds. And all of that within 45 minutes. I need to buy an Arduino board and do something cool now.
  
• Open Rights Group (by Glyn Wintle) – A nice talk by Glyn on how the ORG prevents the UK government from making even more mistakes than they already do. His talks are always good for some interesting anecdotes.
  
• How to : Uncricket (by Melinda, Emma, and Patricia) – What i thought would be a lame talk by the girls on how to play something without rules that they had come up with in Berlin last year, turned out to be a lot of fun. It did lead to some bruises and swollen tongs though.
  
• The Origins of Design Patterns – What town planning, poetry and design patterns have in common
• Summer 2008 movie trailers (by Melinda Seckington) – Mel did a nice talk by simply showing all the coolest trailers of the summer movies on the big screen, with nice surround sound.
• Wine and Cheese (no really, eating and drinking) by Emma Persky – I think the title says it all. Good wine though and I could use some cheese by then.
  
• High-performance scalable web apps with memcached (by Marco) – Interesting talk on what memcached is exactly and how it can make your site so much faster.
• Ask the BBC ANYTHING! (by Ian Forrester, Sheila Thomson, Dan Morris) – Interesting discussion on the BBC, the fun they and we are having with the iPlayer, and the future of the BBC in general
• Delicious Pecha Kucha (by Tom Morris) – Pecha Kucha style session where people got to explain a random 5 of their last 20 del.icio.us bookmarks as they showed up on screen. I didn’t present as I was afraid it would be way to boring.

As i said I also did a talk myself on “Voluntary Economies” and the talk went pretty well. For most part I stole the slides from Alper and Reinier who gave a similar talk before during BarcampLondon3 and BarcampAmsterdam3, and I probably should have prepared a bit better. Still, people seemed to love it and we filled the 45 minutes with ease. Here are the slides:

Finally I made a few photos. I had a play with Mark Ng’s Sigma 30mm F1.4 HSM which resulted in some very nice photos during the uncricket session. I really need to get this lens, so can someone donate me £200 ?

After the previous massive movie review I decided to do this more often as a service to all you undecided movie goers.

Juno (2007)

Very witty and lighthearted comedy, with some marvelous dialogues. Really worth watching and worth the Oscar, a must-see for all.

A Tale of Two Sisters (2007)

A Korean psycho-horror with a marvelous plot. If you like these kind of movies than this is really a must-see.

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

Typical costume drama with a predictable story and annoying camerawork. How many shots through fences/windows/bushes do you need?

The Lives of Others (2006)

A very touching movie about espionage in former east-Germany. Very worthy of winning the 2007 Oscar for best foreign movie.

Stargate: The Ark of Truth (2008)

Odd mix between a movie and a tv episode, and it wasn’t even a good episode. Still love Stargate though.

27 Dresses (2008)

Cheap romantic-comedy with some great actors, a good story line, but very annoying extras. Sadly too late for valentine’s.