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More Friendfeed tips - video 3 May 30, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : friendfeed, social objects, web2.0, tools , 3comments

Four more tips for getting to grips with FriendFeed

In this third video of the series I show four simple techniques for delving further into the productive use of Friendfeed as a social media tool.

So this being a Friday, you’re now all set for an exciting weekend experimenting and exploring the fast growing conversations in Friendfeed Rooms. Seeya there.

Note: due to a misunderstanding of Blip TV episodes you might have failed to view video 2 in this series which is here: Friendfeed and Social Objects

And if you can’t access video at all for some reason, there are some transcript notes included below and over on edocr.com at Friendfeed video transcript. Thanks to Allison Reynolds 100 eggs post for that idea.

Friendfeed and Social Objects May 28, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : friendfeed, internet, social objects, tools , 5comments

In this second screencast video about Friendfeed, I talk about the way Friendfeed uses social object theory to add stickiness to imported feeds. There’s also a discussion of Friendfeed rooms, and a reply to Linda Hartley’s question about the first video in this series: Friendfeed for Microblogging.

Warning: This screencast is hosted on Google video Blip.TV because I overshot the length limit of ten minutes for youTube - oops.

Social Object theory or Object Centred Sociality has been explained by Jyri Engestrom of Jaiku.

If you are trying out Friendfeed yourself, you might subscribe to mine here: Andy Roberts Friendfeed

Reflection on keeping an Action Log for a month May 27, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Action Log, Action Research , 1 comment so far

This is the fourth post in a series of Action Research posts, following on from
1) 2008/04/27 First Person Action Research
2) 2008/04/29 Keeping an Action Log for 1st Person Research
(also 11 comments on the above link)
3) 2008/05/12 Action Log Examples

Reflecting on the process of Action Logging

Having meticulously kept up my Action Log for one month now, it’s time for me to reflect on the process and the implications for my practice as a self-motivated online worker.

Some thoughts about the Action Log in practice have been burbling away, somewhat informally near the front of mind in the past week, especially since writing up the examples. So now it’s time to use one of the reflective models to scaffold a deliberate piece of reflective writing and discovery. I’ll turn to the Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle model based on the simple diagram below:

Gibbs Reflective Cycle Model for Reflection

Description - what happened

I took to Action Logging quite readily, keeping up the short daily notes from 16th April until 15th May and have continued since. There is only one day off without any actions at all recorded, a deliberate day off. Apart from that the number of actions recorded varies between 1 and about ten, but of course the size of the actions varies enormously. Most if not all of the records are still meaningful, so a working log of all the various additions and adjustments made is now available to me, each tied to an exact date. After two weeks, I started dividing the days up into AM and PM, sometimes adding EV for evening. I very rarely had to go back and fill in a previous day’s log, but regularly use the browser history now, to check back over the past half a day or so to refresh my memory of where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

Feelings - what did I think and feel about it

I felt good about it. Satisfaction that I was indeed getting things done, and not just whiling away time browsing and checking. Sometimes it would still feel that the only things to show were quite small things, but better than nothing. A little bit of wonder that I seemed to have come up with an idea that was really taking me forward through instilling the beginnings of a good habit of self discipline. Later on some self doubt began to emerge, as I began to suspect that I might be letting myself off from some larger tasks by making do with having achieved some small ones. A slight sense of waste that I might be expending energy on accumulating valuable data without having any formal plan for getting around to actually using it.

Evaluation - What’s good and bad

What’s good

What’s Bad

Analysis - What sense can I make of it

Keeping an action log is giving me a sense of reassurance at least, and quite possibly that very act is making sure that at least a minimal number of concrete positive are taken each day that go out into the world and stand a chance of having an effect. Almost certainly. Once logged, however, nothing else is happening to them at present. It’s got nothing to do with testing and tracking, but perhaps something to do with probing, pushing, and building.

I think it’s also quite healthy to have a sense that there also need to be some checks and balances to makes sure that some longer term goals and bigger tasks are being addressed. That’s fine. At this stage, the greatest achievement is to find something that seems to be working and largely stick to it.

Conclusion - what else could I have done

That’s a hard question, which is a good thing in some ways, or am I failing to spot something that’s missing? Maybe I should have recorded some reflections on the process as I went along, so I would have more to chew on now.

Action Plan - What will I do differently next time?

Mostly I think I shall declare this first cycle of my 1st person Action Research a productive one, and aim to introduce modifications only gradually. Steady as she goes.

I’ve always insisted that the Action Log method is not a complete package, it’s just a useful tool for use in a situation that might already be a bit out of hand. It’s almost an emergency remedy, a blunt instrument of rescue. Once the patient is stabilised, we can then start to introduce solid food and gentle exercise.

This has to be in the form of some kind of planning or task list, but still keeping the main focus on the actions getting done and logged, avoiding the tyranny of being surrounded by lists of things not done. I’m starting to imagine a supplementary system which is like a kind of ‘lucky dip’ of additional tasks that could be done, nice ones, interesting but necessary ones, without any deadline. The lucky dip will sit somewhere a bit more at arms length, and every so often when I think of something appropriate I might add it in. The lucky dip shouldn’t grow in size to more than about 50 tasks, and they should be things of a size that the whole lot could be cleared in a month if it was decided to concentrate just on them, but that isn’t the plan. The plan is that every now and then when I come to a juncture in my activities, I might decide to go the lucky dip and pick a task to do straight away. That will then give me something to put on my action log for the day.

Reflective process

For the sake of completion it’s customary to reflect on the reflective process itself so without disappearing up my own whatsit, I’d like to record that I’ve noticed that while this piece of reflective writing has not gone into any really deep reflection, it has spontaneously produced a very clearly defined action for my second cycle - implementing the “Lucky Dip” list.

Addendum: Using Twitter for the Action Log

This paragraph doesn’t really belong here but I postponed it once already.

I suggested a private space online, a text document or a physical notepad. Another alternative which Bill observed is the idea of using a twitter account. I can see how that might work, especially for people who can take advantage of mobile access to send in some action records while on the move somewhere. There are some disadvantages as well, such as the clunky interface for accessing archives but I suppose you could always pull in the RSS feed and archive it yourself. The main point would be to set up a separate twitter account solely to log the actions, and not expect it to attract and retain followers, or even try.

Friendfeed for microblogging - a screencast video May 26, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : friendfeed, social objects, web2.0, tools , 6comments

Friendfeed is more than just a clever lifestream aggregator for all your other applications, it’s also a micro blogging platform in its own right. Here’s a screencast video I made to show how.

In the next screencast video of this series, I’ll show how Friendfeed microblog entries can be social objects, and the use of “rooms”.

Meanwhile, I’d be interested to hear how you think the future will unfold in this area. Twitter has the best community at present but can it hold on to it? Friendfeed has some of the elements of Facebook but without the apps. Have you tried migrating to Jaiku or Pownce? Can’t understand what’s the point of microblogging is anyway?

friendfeed for microblogging

Twitter writing competition - a story in 140 chars May 21, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : social objects , 5comments

Twitter Story Contest

I was alerted to a twitter writing competition over on copyblogger and decided to have a go. The rules are that the story must be exactly 140 characters in length, and it’s only one entry per person with a deadline this Friday so I composed an entry right away. I could have waited to get the measure of all the other entries coming in, but it’s better to be quick and impulsive sometimes.

Twitter Competition

What is twitter for?

Twitter is the simple web and mobile application that allows for an exchange of public and private messages of up to 140 characters in length, and it’s the simplicity and brevity which make for the charm of the environment. That and the fact that twitter was the first micro-blogging tool to achieve critical mass, so it’s where everybody else is. The only Social Objects are the “tweets” (posts) and “twits” (twitterers) themselves.

Writing styes on twitter can vary from ugly txt speak (not gr8 !) through cut down sentences ( “need coffee. late for bus” ) to Haiku poetry, free expression and eloquent mini sagas. As with blog reading, the value is in following developments over time - days, weeks and months.

My humble entry for the twitter writing contest

Here’s my 140 character twitter story:

I feel my neighbours make far too much fuss about their precious lawns and flower borders. So stealthily from my side, I grow weeds at them.

But you can do better than that! Of course you can.

This is a very strong entry by Smithereensblog

We all expected nuclear war, epidemics, melted ice caps. But poisoning by plastic? A childless world? We had no contingency plan for that.

A collection of twitter stories

There are 263 comments on the blog post where the competition is now, most of them simply links to the twitter status updates as entries to the contest, and I’m not sure if the stories themselves will ever need to be gathered together on a wiki page for example, or if they can just be linked to in situ. It’s not very fluid to work your way through at present, and with nearly three full days to go, it can only get more unweildy. Following on the apparent usefulness of the ABblogpack drop.io I tried setting up a twitter story drop.io to allow for anybody to add their own links but that doesn’t seem to offer much more than the original list of blog comments really, so I didn’t proceed with it. Or should I?

Who else has blogged this?

Waiting in Transit: Twitter Writing Contest on Copyblogger

Blogscapes: Twitter Writing Contest

The Golden Pencil : Write 140 Character Fiction for an IPod Nano

Noel Feria : Twitter Writing Contest: Win an iPod Nano For the Best 140 Character Story

The competition entry page again: twitter writing competition

twitter story drop.io

Gare du Nord in Paris May 17, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Paris Breaks, UK , 1 comment so far

If you’ve ever been on Paris breaks by eurostar then you’ll be familiar with the Gare du Nord mainline railway station because that’s where you first arrive in central Paris and it’s where you have to get back to in plenty of time for the train home. You’ll have waited in line there to be ticked checked and processed for immigration to the UK, through customs, police etc and then taken a seat in the lounge, on the other side, where you are no longer in France effectively. Sometimes that can be a sad place, depending on the circumstances, or it may be exciting.

** book online Eurostar breaks with central Paris hotel**

Do you have a special railway station?

I’ve no idea how many of my readers will understand what I’m talking about if I try to explain a sort of emotional response to specific large terminal railway stations. Perhaps if I begin by saying that I was brought up in Cornwall, so when I leave London from Paddington Station that’s like already being on the ‘last leg’ of a journey which marks a kind of homecoming.

Paddington Station is like Gare du Nord Paris

So for me, Paddington station is not a part of London, it’s almost a part of Cornwall through association, anticipation and all those memories of being away from home and then returning. You can almost smell the seaside there, well you can definitely smell the pasties these days!
People from the southeast of England might have a similar association with Charing Cross, Waterloo or Victoria stations. Northerners with Kings Cross and Euston. And so it is with Gare du Nord in Paris, the arrival point from Calais, the Dover ferries and now eurostars from St Pancras, Ashford and Ebbsfleet. Eventually, hard as it is to imagine, Stratford International Station will become a little door to France, implanted in East London.

Gare Du Nord, Paris

I arrived at Gare du Nord from Rotterdam on my first visit to Paris. I had no idea where to go, so I walked out of the station, crossed the road and walked slightly downhill for ten minutes. I needed to find somewhere to stay, and down a sidestreet spotted a 1 star Hotel, booked in, and stayed there for six months. That was in the Rue Faubourg Poisonniere, just off the main Rue LaFayette so I got to know the area around the Gare du Nord pretty well. The big boulevards Magenta and Madelaine, the pretty little churches and small leafy parks. The little north african grocers shops, bakeries, bars and tabacs, and further down the main road the magnificent Galleries LaFayette. I had little reason to visit Gare du Nord during day to day life except on occasion to visit the bureau de change which was the only one I knew about, open on a Sunday at that time. It was on one such visit that the idea of planning a trip home occurred to me after many months away, such can be the effect of being in the presence of one of these special stations.

Gare du Nord is not only an arrival point for Brits taking Paris breaks but also the departure point for Parisians visiting London for the first time, or perhaps on a weekly basis for those who work in the City finance industries and go home most weekends. There are about 300,000 French people living in London now, that’s a lot isn’t it! And I suppose for them, the new St Pancras eurostar station will eventually trigger a familiar sensation of being almost back to France.

Which is your special station?

.

.

Action Log examples May 12, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Action Log, Action Research , 3comments

This is the third in a series of articles exploring the Action Log concept for 1st person research. The first article began to explain the practice of first person action research, and the second introduced the idea of keeping an Action Log.

In the comments, Shelley asked for a real example of an Action Log and Bill Anderson has provided one already, which we discussed there. He also sent me his second day’s log which I can publish and discuss here, together with an example from my own. First let me repeat how I described the type of actions to put down and the purpose of the log.

The simple idea is to jot down on at least a daily basis, a list of the actions taken. By actions, I mean visible external steps which are intended to have a positive effect, to add to a movement in the desired direction.

The purpose of an Action Log is:

Two Action Log Examples

So this is Bill’s Log for Tuesday, May 6, 2008

  1. Replaced air filter
  2. Tried to replace light bulb - need professional help.
  3. Contacted AD about his blog error about me.
  4. Contacted TB about TCDL presentation req’ts.
  5. Commented on JM’s FB wall.
  6. Contacted UIUC info sys prof about ASIS&T07 session on training curators of digital science resources.
  7. Phone call with DH.
  8. Note to AD about his blog.
  9. Memtester run on pandora (2x).
  10. Voted in city election.
  11. Minimal HD cleanup.
  12. Sent class times to ML R-L.

My comments

This is a great example of an action log, with minimal description of discrete tasks accomplished. My first reaction was to question #2 , which could be about decision making rather than action taking but if you think about it the act of trying to replace the light bulb has been done and it’s moved Bill forward towards solving the problem. The other one is the phone call at #7. If the action was to make a call to DH that needed doing for a specific reason then fair enough. But If it was just to receive a call and pass some time discussing this and that, then this is just accounting for time spent rather than logging actions.

Andy’s Log for three days

Comments

These entries are fairly typical, representing a number of small tasks and one or two larger ones. The descriptions are not very helpful sometimes, for exaple ” tweaks to LT posts” doesn’t help me remember what the tweaks were, but at least I know I was doing something useful, hopefully. “Worked on draft” is a giveaway, so I’ve caught myself out justifying time and recording an action prematurely. Not until the draft is published does it become an action of the type I am interested in, although I suppose I felt I’d made some good progress towards publishing.

General Points:

Not a timesheet.

Action Log is Not a timesheet

We are not trying to account for our time, in fact the actions which I log only represent about a quarter of the time I spend working online. The rest is research, interaction, reading, learning, and taking actions behind the scenes that may precipitate effective actions later on, but at this stage don’t yet count.

Not the Total Solution.

The Action Log isn’t a “Total Solution”, it doesn’t account for reflection, prioritising, decision making or lots of other essential tasks. It’s only intended to address one aspect of the personal workflow, not the whole thing.

In the next post in this series I shall reflect on the possible impact and implications from keeping the Action Log and also discuss briefly the idea of using twitter.

More WordPress foibles May 11, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : wordpress , add a comment

This is a post ostensibly about “WordPress Foibles” which, on reading it just before posting I suspect may be more about “Andy Roberts Foibles” than anything else. If you don’t enjoy messing about with WordPress then it might not be at all helpful, but if y0u do, then you probably already know this stuff. Anyway I started so I’ll finish….

WordPress Logo

I was making some changes to a WordPress self-hosted blog recently, a modification which ought to be quite straightforward to implement once the design is decided, but I temporarily got myself into a bit of a pickle. I’ll document it now for future reference. You see, I like to use themes that present horizontal navigation tabs, which in WordPress tend to be created automatically by some skins, according to the presence of pages in the WordPress content structure.

WordPress Pages and Page Tabs

But sometimes I might need to have a page that doesn’t show up on the navigation.

Or I might want to have a navigation tab that leads to somewhere that isn’t a page.

So I bodge it a little by using redirection for the latter and “Invisibility” for the former. Invisibility used to be an option for pages I think in previous versions but these days the “Post Status” options are “draft” “published” and “private”. Private works the same way as invisible, so that a page can function perfectly well on the public face but without being listed under “Pages” and without making a visible tab for the page in the header. There’s a bit more to this because pages can also have a parent page, and only a very few themes make use of a hierarchical page structure to show nested pages as dynamic navigation lists, and those I tried out failed to do so effectively. So I have a page called “invisible parent” to which other pages can belong.

The Problem

My problem occurred when I need make a change to the settings in Options / Reading. That’s where you can set the Front page to be static rather than the blog, and also where you then have to designate a nominal page to act as a container for the actual blog part. I changed the blog part from being on the “news” page to a new one I’d created called “blog” and saved the option. The blog part worked fine, but later I realized that my static front page had disappeared. It was displaying the blog as well. For a while I was nonplussed. Not only couldn’t I understand what was happening but it also seemed for a minute that the old static frontpage content had completely vanished. Panic!

The Explanation

In the end I discovered that the drop down selection for the location of the static page had reverted to “- Select -”. And I rediscovered my content hiding in a page which I’d created ages ago called “about”. So all I needed to do was to select the “about” page from the drop menu, right? But that page didn’t appear as an option. Oh no! Why isn’t it there? Because I’d made it belong to an invisible parent Doh.

WordPress Dashboard

the Solution

*Make the invisible parent temporarily visible, so that the offspring appear as options for selection in

Options / Reading Front Page displays: a static page - select -

*Select the page from the now complete list

*Update Options

*Make the parent invisible again.

So what?

In documenting this process I’ve learned a couple of lessons, or at least made them more explicit. One is that I still sometimes miss real programming languages and get frustrated by having to find workarounds when restricted by others fixed logic. The other is to rediscover a problem solving technique which involves taking something apart a little, in order to set it up better when its put back together again. Like solving a rubik cube, when you have it 95% completed sometimes you have to undo a couple of layers right back to 60% before getting everything in place to reach the 100% solution.

Rubik Cube

Theatre breaks midweek May 10, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : theatre breaks, London theatre breaks , 3comments

Theatre breaks in London for those who can get away midweek

For theatre lovers and those who enjoy short theatre breaks in London there are some seriously amazing bargains to be had in the New Year and also this summer for people like myself who are not tied to regular 9 to 5 weekday working hours. Even if you have to book one day’s annual leave on a Wednesday in February, a Friday afternoon during the schools summer term or something like that it will be well worth it, because one of the best online theatre breaks booking sites is now offering a special cheap deal for hotel theatre breaks with the show on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday or Friday. You won’t believe it….. the theatre tickets are free!

** Book Theatre Breaks in London with Hotel in 2008 **

I know it seems strange. It’s well known that city hotels are mostly used by the business community travelling on expenses, and therefore have over capacity at weekends. So you would think that the bargains would be for weekend theatre breaks, but apparently not. London is not quite the same as Norwich or Basingstoke, people come here from all over the world and also from the UK for a variety of reasons. Intercity trains are packed on Friday evenings as weekly commuters migrate to and from the capital. Office workers, teachers and civil servants are required to work weekdays with precious annual leave saved up mostly for a couple of weeks in the sun, and restricted logistically by school holidays.

Theatre breaks prince edward

So if there’s any way you can possibly slip away on a Tuesday afternoon with the next morning off, take a flexi-day, or if you are one of the growing band of self-employed perhaps, choosing your own hours and working from home for instance, then you are in a position to save hundreds yes hundreds of pounds by booking a midweek theatre break in London with hotel and show.

There are now eight great musical shows which qualify for this summer 2008 offer.

OK, it’s a limited list of shows but the great news is the number and class of hotels that are available for this summer free theatre tickets offer:

* Holiday Inn Bloomsbury
* Holiday Inn Regents Park
* Intercontinental Park Lane
* Crowne Plaza St James
* Millennium Gloucester
* Millennium Baileys

So all you have to do is choose a combination of one from the six top hotels and one from the seven great shows and book for a weekday between now and the end of July ( dates excluded are 20th June, and 14th,15th and 16th July) - which means the first week or two of school holidays are included in the cheap theatre break offer!

By taking advantage of the special summer deal you can get the cost of a London theatre break down to as little as £70.50 per person for a posh central London hotel with free theatre tickets and full breakfast included.

Below is a description of the previous New Year offer which ran until March 2008:

You wouldn’t have been able to get the free hotel offers for the week beginning February 11th because that was half term for most schools, but the following week seemed to suit others, although just a few shows are restricted that week as well. The best thing to do is to get out your calendar, consult your partner or family and then visit the booking site and see what you can come away with. My advice would be to probably avoid the Friday matinees if you want to see the top stars because they seem to arrange for the understudy to have a go for some of these performances. You should be warned if that’s the case anyway.

H****
Try a four star central London hotel for £10!

theatre breaks Charing Cross Hotel
The theatre breaks free hotel offer is for a three star hotel in London midweek which is bound to be lovely, but you can also upgrade to a four star for only £10. I recently stayed in a four star hotel myself so I made this list of what extra luxury you might expect from one:

* Enormous comfortable beds - sleep perpendicular to your partner!
* Luxury bathroom - endless hot water with top quality foam and big fluffy towels
* Free breakfast ad lib - real coffee with abundant food of all types in smart surroundings
* access to sitting rooms, bars, views, gardens and terraces
* Wifi, cable TV, mini bar etc
* If you forget your toothbrush, comb, shower cap or anything like that don’t worry there’s one for you already there.
*interesting gadgets to play with, like a whirlpool, desk hairdryer or trouser press.

I suppose what I’m saying is that the show tickets are the main reason for, but not the only component of London theatre breaks. With the amazing show and hotel offers it’s going to be affordable to add little extras like a ride on the London Eye, pre-theatre meals or entrance to the Tutankhamun exhibition in Greenwich. Remember, the offer ran until mid March for theatre breaks midweek bookings as long as the show was before March 14th 2008, excluding the week beginning February 11th.

**Book London Theatre Breaks with show and hotel in 2008**

That photo in Here Comes Everybody May 8, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Flickr, London , 2comments

Thanks to Frankie for first noticing it and Shirlyearly for tracking the page down for me in Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Here Comes Everybody

Flickr photo reference in

Please do not inform children of the explosions

This is the picture referred to in the book, and it came in for a lot of attention on the day itself, July 7th 2005.

do not inform children

The book relates directly to the topic we’ve been discussing in the “End of Organisations” debate, and there’s also a blog by Clay Shirky which recently published an insightful article about the cognitive surplus caused by forty years of watching crap TV, which I can relate to. It’s called Gin, Television and Social Surplus although the permalink reveals a subtitle “looking for the mouse”.