Dimen Designs

Updating Your Status is Why Facebook is Valuable

Buildings & clouds reflecting
in a East London street
Originally uploaded by cherbert.

A friend recently complained that when logging into Facebook, ~70% of his home page was filled with my "stupid updates - this isnt twitter man!"

As someone said recently, why be on Facebook if you're going to update your status? Or see the NYT's piece on ambient awareness.

Because despite the trivial, banal, and seemingly trivial drivel that can *sometimes* appear as people's status updates, your friends actually do read this. They may never admit it-- similar to people when asked which magazines the read would never admit to reading the tabloids at the check-out points of the grocery store-- but they do read and secretly enjoy seeing what their friends are doing. We are voyeristic animals, it's as simple as that.

Here's my what I posted back to my friend about my seemingly too many status updates (which I bet are on average, or only slightly above average, for status update frequency across the Facebook user base):

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Think of it this way, I don't post crap, I actually post cool, interesting things here that I think people might not have seen but that they would enjoy. In that sense, I'm a "cool" filter or curator who goes through of all the crap ad shares only the best of the best. You need to stop and smell the roses every once in a while and that's what I'm doing when I post a photo, story, link or video, I'm making you pause from the normal 9-5 rat race so that you can remember the more important things in life.

India Trip, Day Three: Agra

Below is Day 3 from my India Trip, as part of my one post a day diary from the 2wks spent in India.

See my other India posts: Day 1 | Day 2

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  IMAGE_00165 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

Wednesday, July 9th

Slept like a baby after probably only 3/4 hours of sleep the night we arrived (couldn't sleep in the car to or back from Agra- the craziness of the driving made it almost impossible to fall asleep, even after a day of walking around in the hot, humid weather), and had toast and tea for breakfast. Got on the hotel's PC in the lobby and checked email, Twtter, Facebook, and chatted with a Rochester friend.

We re-grouped in the hotel restaurant to plan out the rest of the day and prioritize what we wanted to do over the next four days, museums, shopping, spas, etc. And here I sit in the Amatria Spa getting a pedicure. Yes, you heard me correctly, I've officially entered Metrosexual Land.

  IMAGE_00160 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

To top it off, it's a full spa treatment-- manicure, pedicure, and massage. I never had a real professional massage before so I'm looking forward to that part. I never thought that I was a spa person (I'm still not sure that I am yet) but I did the full spa trifecta for a few reasons:

1. It would be relaxing and hell, I'm on holiday so I might as well splurge a little.
2. I'm in India for the first time in my life, why not go to to an Indian spa.
3. The rest of the group wanted to go, including the only other male compatriot of the trip, and that was enough for me.

  IMAGE_00167 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

The rest of the day was shopping (Mattias and I were on this trip with six or seven other women) and of course, the guys snuck over to the small bar in the plaza for a little Kingfisher time. Later that night, after grabbing a Pizza Hut pre-dinner snack--don't ask me why, it's greasy and dirty but good-- we went out for drinks, someplace in Delhi, and I'm almost positive that we were the only non-Indians there-- and almost the only ones dancing too.

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Now playing: Chicago Public Radio - #362: Got You Pegged

India Trip, Day Two: Agra

  DSC_0012 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

Below is Day 2 from my India Trip, as part of my one post a day diary from the 2wks spent in India.

See Day 1 for an introduction to the trip and as always, the entry below was written during the trip so I haven't edited the text except where absolutely necessary, it's my thoughts and observations as they happened during the trip.

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Tuesday, July 8th

Checking in from the 2nd day of India. We stayed at an Islam cultural center Monday night after landing in Delhi. The flight through Helsinki was smooth and mostly non-eventful.

  DSC_0036 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

[ Sat next to an Indian gentleman and his university-aged daughter on the Heathrow to Helsinki flight. An extremely nice guy who asked me about my India trip and explained exactly why he was going back-- it's a heartfelt story.

Having moved to the UK about thirty years ago and putting all of his children through school and dental university (yes, I think it was two sons who were already dentists and the daughter who was traveling with him was currently in dental school) as an accountant, he was now using the money that he typically put aside for his own children to start a primary and secondary school in his hometown...]

After three hours of sleep we woke up at 4:30 (was supposed to be 5:39-- not sure how that happened but it meant having a headache and my contacts in for an extra hour or so that I didn't need) for a 6am departure to Agra, where the Taj Mahal and Fort Agra are located.

Now that it was light out, the abject poverty was depressingly obvious.  It reminded me of the summer that I spent in Guadalajara, Mexico, when I was in college.

  DSC_0044 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

The same amount of squalor but probably on an even grander scale.

Three quick cultural observations from the trip so far:

1. Driving here is nuts, plain crazy, make your own way or get the hell out of the way. But more than anything, as I've noticed in other places, you honk your horn before you brake. And in India, you honk the horn at everything, no matter how far ahead of you that thing is (car, truck/lorry, bike, rickshaw, cow, goat, dog, etc.) just make sure it knows you're coming like a bat out of hell.
2. Women were very scarce; there were some here and there but in public it was 85% men.
3. I saw men holding hands, which isn't an uncommon site for large cities, but to see this in Agra was quite surprising.

DSC_0137    Originally uploaded by cherbert.	DSC_0170    Originally uploaded by cherbert.
DSC_0286    Originally uploaded by cherbert.	DSC_0294    Originally uploaded by cherbert.
DSC_0353    Originally uploaded by cherbert.	DSC_0265    Originally uploaded by cherbert.

India Trip, Day One: London to Delhi

My two-week India trip, visiting the cities of Delhi, Leh, and Varanasi, was about three weeks ago but it's taken some time to organize all of my photos and thoughts. I'm now ready to publish my diary & notes from the trip, along with a few photos sprinkled in, and will post a single day of the trip over the next two weeks.

Please keep in mind that I wrote my diary off an on during the trip via my smartphone and I'm posting the entries without much editing, so take the grammatical mistakes with a grain of salt and remember that I wrote this almost three weeks ago.

Check back everyday for the next day of the trip and make sure to post your comments as well.

  DSC_0010 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

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Monday, July 7th

Started off the trip w/ little sleep, which seems to be my MO for air travel these days-- I tend to sleep more for work trips b/c I have less to pack and thus procrastinate less-- but I digress. Bed at 2:30, alarm at 4, and then crammed some mango into my mouth before rushing to Liverpool St. No, I hadn't called a cab b/c I 'm thrifty and figured I could make the bus/train combo work.

[I had actually spent time plotting out the trip to Heathrow since the flight was at 7:30 and the tube won’t open early enough. According to TFL, I could catch the 205 at 4:47 to reach Paddington by 5:20 for the 5:25 Heathrow Express and arriving at Heathrow by 5:45. Nothing like a great plan but as in business, it all comes down to execution. So with my new rollee bag and my trusty duffel bag on top, I rushed down Brick Lane and picked my way to Liverpool St. And I actually wasn't too late.]

My watch said 4:51 and it's a little fast but I no way of knowing if the 205 had already cruised by or not-- time for Plan B. That meant hoping there was a taxi outside Liverpool St.

Not only were there several cabs but the cabbie convinced me that the fare to Paddington and the 40pound Heathrow Express would be only about 5pounds cheaper than just taking the taxi all the way to Heathrow directly. Less stress for 5pounds more, sign me up.

And if this good luck wasn't enough, it got even better as I chatted with the cab driver. He gave me some tips on good Indian food around Brick Lane (he said it wasn't all played out there as I suggested it might be per some of my reading) and told me there was a really good place in Picadelly Circus, complete with an Indian band and fire torches on the wall. More than that, he explained the difference to me between European Indian food and regular Indian food (the latter being the more authentic, traditionally vegetarian and latter being, o course, packed with meat as British like). To make the point, he told me that the British export Chicken Tikka to Western hotels in India because the Europeans want it but that kind of Indian food doesn't exist natively on the subcontinent.

  DSC_0002 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

But cooler than that, the cabbie was a techie and more specifically, a Nokia phone tester-- how does it get better than this, I get to have a techie nerd discussion on the way to Heathrow, debating the merits of the iPhone versus the Nokia N95. And though he was obviously biased, he convinced me (again, as he had with taking the cab all the way to Heathrow instead of just to Paddington) that I ought to pause on purchasing the iPhone when I get back.

He told me all of the cool things that he can do wit the N95 that I'm seriously thinking about going that way:

• TV out
• Open app development for the phone (Apple is still certifying which apps it will allow onto the iPhone)
• Unlimited data plans with Three (which other people told me had bad network coverage but he told me that it had 98% coverage and that the phone could piggyback onto Orange network)
• Streaming music app that allows you to listen to your PCs music from anywhere the phone has coverage-- that's an amazing, killer app that I've heard anyone mention before about the N95. No need for a massive hard drive on telephone when you can jut stream your entire music library onto the phone in 3G real-time

And the guy was a Slingbox user too, how random and how cool. I've never met as many interesting cab drivers as I have in London, probably because the job of a cab driver in London is well paid.

The guy convinced me of the N95 so I gave him my card and told him that I'd like to keep up with him so he said he'd send me some links. He knew TechCrunchUK and Engadget but suggested AllAboutSymbian.com since I was in Europe now and in Symbian Know Nokia country.

Back from India

  me_india 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

I returned last weekend from my two-week holiday in India but I have to still attack the over 5Ggs, 2,270+ photos (editing and uploading) so here's a preview.

More photos and a detailed account of this amazing trip are coming shortly.

Raja, R.I.P.

  raja 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

Raja was the best dog that you could ever ask for and my family will miss her dearly. Rest in peace ol' girl.

“About Her” — Malcolm McLaren (mp3)

Red Bull Flugtag in Hyde Park, London

  DSC_0505 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

Great time at the Red Bull Flugtag yesterday in Hyde Park. The weather held out and we had a good crew of people hanging out.

Had my telephoto lens so the photos of the ramp is as good as I could get from our vantage point and there was no standing up-- the English crowd used their boorish football heckling skills to pressure anyone standing up in front of the rest of us (who were sitting down) to promptly sit down.

Took lots of photos, despite Ellis' distasteful shots, which I didn't include here. let me know if you want to see those, they're censored for now.

A Smartphone Without the Phone

       My old but
  dependable XV6700

Having moved to London, I've been in the quandary of what to do for a mobile device. My old smartphone, an XV6700 from Verizon, was a birthday present from three years ago. While awkward at the beginning, I did become quite attached to it (I thought maybe I could have the phone chipped over here and keep using it).

Or I thought I was addicted to the smarthphone.

What I've realized after having been without the phone connection, however, is that I'm addicted to the web, not to the phone connection or even the device.

In fact, I could almost care less about the phone. So I did use it for voice calls-- quite often in fact and with a full QWERTY keyboard, texting was a breeze-- but I've never used my personal mobile that much during the day for phone calls because of office line.

So until I picked up a new, cheap, pay-as-you go phone via Virgin, I was really only missing the mobile after work. And I will admit, looking for a flat in London without a mobile is almost a suicide mission; even with Google Maps, you still get lost.

  My new MotoFone F3 via Virgin

What's surprised me is that the smartphone is almost as valuable as before, even without the phone service, because it has a wi-fi connection.

All of a sudden, I'm no longer dependent on Verizon for getting on the web, checking Gmail, sending Twitter posts, etc., I'm now dependent on free, open wi-fi hotspots.

But the fact that I can get by with almost 75% -85% of the my phone tasks without having the  smartphone on a phone network should tell you a lot; it's all about the web now.

Granted, I'm an early adopter so I everyone may not yet be at this stage but this case exemplifies where the world is going within the mobile market. Yes, we still want to talk and text each other, but damn it, just get me on the web somehow (and wi-fi hotspots, at least in a big city, are easy to come by) and I can get by just fine, thank you very much Mr. Dinosaur Teleco.

The telecoms aren't disappearing but their market is all about 1s and 0s now and that's a hard notion for them to grasp. And once the voice connections become better via VoIP and Skype on the smartphones, then the assumption that we still need a dedicated voice connection for our phones may start to crumble.

Could you get by with almost 75-85% of your must-have tasks without being connected to the phone network and only using the smartphone's wi-fi connection?

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Now playing: Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart

Cold Beer on a Hot London Afternoon

Things I'll Miss About DC

It finally hit me last Wednesday night when I went for my usual run down at The National Mall that I'm going to really miss D.C. Beyond the obvious fact that I'll miss all the great friends and colleagues I've met over the last two years, there are the small, seemingly trite and overlooked experiences of living in a place that I’ll miss the most. This was my last run in D.C. and the realization that I’m actually moving to London for the unforeseeable future made me slightly melancholy.

  kim_Mall 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

I’m going to miss the view from the Capital looking West down The Mall and to the Lincoln Memorial in the distance. Sitting on the wall with that view in front of me became an important part of my running cool down ritual; it was relaxing, allowed me to clear my brain, decompress from work, and have a good think. In fact, my goal was to dream up some cool web sites or other companies that I wanted to start while sitting there with The Mall stretched out in front of me.

Still haven’t started any of those ideas, yet, but they’re on a list on my computer germinating. Maybe they’re time will never come unless I act on them but I refuse to give into that sentiment that they will never happen. Granted, there’s never a right time for anything but I haven’t given up the dream behind those ideas.

I’ll also miss the Military Band Summer Concert Series that performed on the steps of the Capital. What an amazing venue for listening to a military band play classical music during a warm summer night. And for those concerts that I stumbled onto, during a run of course, I always stopped to listen for awhile and soak in the atmosphere. The band would play close to the North steps and the audience (lots of families) would pack the steps in front of them while the rest of the audience sat or stood in the arced space behind the band.

  Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC 
  Originally uploaded by bpmccaffrey.

Just beyond the Lincoln Memorial is Arlington Memorial Bridge and a set of stairs that look across the Potomac towards Rosslyn, VA. As part of the run, I went across the bridge into Arlington National Cemetery and loop back to those stairs on the D.C. side, running a few speed intervals. The stairs were tiring because they happened after having run out and back across the bridge, which was always windy and the sun was in your face for at least half of the trip. But the view from the set of stairs was always settling and motivating, despite my sore legs and dry throat.

The Capital Hill neighborhood was quite good to me. I’m not in politics so it may seem an unnatural fit but I was talking with a fellow CC alum about the D.C. neighborhoods and she thought that a lot of us came to Capital Hill over other places because it matched the type of people we are. Take that where you want but I think her point was that it has a small town, tight-knit community feel and that’s something that I take away from my experience at CC and being in Colorado Springs. The Hill had that feel where the neighbors knew each other and said hello on the sidewalks or in the coffee shop, families with strollers could walk around during the day to the parks or come back at night without any concern, and the people themselves were outgoing, driven and also cool at the same time.

I’ll miss that vibe of Capital Hill along with my daily walk past Eastern Market on the way to metro every morning. Walking past the dog walk area, the school on 8th and Pennsylvania, and the antics of Barracks Row (there’s nothing like hitting the 7-11 on Barracks Row at night, there was always a odd mix of characters in there. And don’t forget the Sizzlin’ Express either, a chain restaurant that was actually a community hang-out for a lot of Capital Hill people. I will miss the H3 form the hot grill, what a delicious chicken sandwich.

There are more experiences and moments that I’ll miss about D.C. but it’s these kind of innocent, perhaps trite memories that I fondly cherish. It was a good two years (hardly enough time to really know a city but about average for most young people in Washington) and perhaps I’ll return but for now London is my new home. And I’m hoping to discover just as many little nooks and crannies about this city as well.

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Now playing: The Bird And The Bee - F*cking Boyfriend