My Bookmarks For March 19th - March 21st

Posted on March 21st, 2008

Looking Back at BarcampBrighton2

Posted on March 20th, 2008

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
    BarcampBrighton2
  • 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.
    BarcampBrighton2
  • 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.
    BarcampBrighton2
  • 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.
    Uncricket @ BarcampBrighton2
  • 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.
    Barcamp Brighton
  • 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 ;) ?

My Massive 20-Word-Movie-Review #2

Posted on March 19th, 2008

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.

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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.

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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?

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The Life of Others (2006)

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

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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.

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27 Dresses (2008)

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

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My Bookmarks For March 15th - March 18th

Posted on March 18th, 2008

My Bookmarks For March 11th - March 12th

Posted on March 12th, 2008

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