For ConcertWall I created code to interpret XML as fast as possible. Part of that code is now shared on GitHub. It is a category expanding NSString with methods to convert to NSDate or NSNumber without using NSDateFormatter or NSNumberFormatter. Do not use this on any other strings than computer-generated ones, as all conformance checks are completely skipped.
This presentation by the ConcertWall designer, Wolfr, has accumulated up to 90000 views already. I’m impressed.
This weekend I attended my first Barcamp.
There was somebody that had made a little robot out of debris of a house refurbishment he is doing. His enthusiasm was beautiful and contagious.
There was a presentation about Wikipedia. It presented some hope that masses can predict facts better than a specialist can. The speaker mentioned this book, The Wisdom Of Crowds, and it sounds interesting. Maybe I’ll read it, though in general I adhere more to the idea that 90% of people are stupid.
I also saw a presentation about going WiFi only on your mobile phone. I was thinking of doing this myself, but then I joined a new mobile operator that promises to cut my bills by 50% or more. We’ll see how that turns out, going WiFi only is probably the next step.
Somebody gave an overview about the state of the arts in augmented humanity, aka. “putting computers in our bodies”. The video that he showed where a computer recreates images seen by humans just by looking at brain activity were scarily spectacular.
There were also sessions where we were just discussing amongst us, about copyright and about privacy issues.
What I liked about this barcamp is that it felt a lot like a conference amongst equals. The regular conferences I attended always have that feeling that you are a visitor and the speakers are the stars, emersing you in their wisdom. Here it felt completely the opposite, and it felt more like a search where everybody had an equal amount of questions and answers and everybody’s opinion was respected. It’s great.
Since I thought it was the very basic idea of a barcamp for everyone to do a presentation, I also gave a presentation myself. In the end it turned out not to be necessary at all, but it was a good exercise. I am not sure if I like the result of it, I have to say. Somebody posted it on YouTube and it is weird to see myself talking. Looking back at it, it seems like too much of a group psychology session about me and I feel like I failed to make my point. Maybe I should have exaggerated and presented my ideas more black and white. It is just that I am not a black and white guy, everything is always more nuanced in my head. That does not come over well in presentations. Lesson learned.
Yesterday I was floating in my bathtub with an issue of rekto verso, my favorite culture magazine, and there was this article about romanticism as opposition (In Dutch) and I just devoured it. For instance this idea: Ivan Ilich’s concept of counterproductivity says that if you calculate the speed of a car and include the cost to make it, to advertise it, to produce the fuel etc. you come at some meager 7km/h. That is so bad, you almost want to throw away the complete concept of a car.
There are more ideas in the article that are very interesting. How the ecologic movement embraced technology and why that is a bad idea, for instance. What lessons can be learned from Into The Wild and Grizzly Bear, two films about surviving harsh nature. In the end the article concludes with this:
Everywhere around the world local communities appear where people are not instruments in high tech systems, but try to recreate their environment with technology they control.
Somehow everything in this article resonated with what I felt this barcamp was about.
