thestateofme.comChris Swan's Weblog | IT mixology and other thoughts about tech, life the universe and everything

Chris Swan's Weblog About Commenting Speaking Podcasts July 2020 31Jul20 Another month has rolled by. These were the highlights. Hot tub We’ve always enjoyed a hot tub in rented holiday places, which led to some discussion on whether to get one at home. I’ve not been keen due to cost, hassle and environment concerns; but on a sweltering hot day $wife came home and ordered an inflatable tub – an Mspa Alpine D-AL4 , because that type was available without too much delay. It’s been lovely to jump in the tub for 20-30m at the end of a day. I must also say that I’m impressed with the engineering and comfort of the design. In terms of running costs I think it’s costing something like £50/month in power, chemicals, test strips etc, which isn’t so bad when I think that’s what I pay per week for hot tub heat when holidaying in Florida. I also bought the inflatable cover pictured above, which seems to help a lot with keeping heat in (before it was in place rainwater that collected on the cover would get warm, but that doesn’t happen any more). Zoom Comedy The highlight of the last few summers has been taking the family to Edinburgh for the Fringe , and we’re all huge standup comedy fans. To get our fix of funnies during the pandemic we’d been working our way through Prime and Netflix standup shows, but they’re not the same as going to live events in small venues. And then we came across the Rachel and Marcus Tuesday Night Club, which led us to other shows at Always Be Comedy , which led us to The Weekly Standup ; and it’s almost like Fringe from the comfort of home. We’ve been able to see some top artists trying material that would never go onto TV, and it’s been great. I also like Always Be Comedy’s innovation of The Front Row where artists can get live feedback from some of the audience. We’re all streamers now I talked a little about the shift in conferences last month , but it feels like the theme for July has been that we’re all streamers now, and those who are used to presenting to live audiences have a lot to learn from the YouTubers who’ve been doing this stuff for years. My colleague Olivier Jacques first introduced me to Open Broadcast Software ( OBS ) Studio a while ago as a way to do presentations with a talking head overlay, but he’s recently been taking stuff to new levels with green screen effects and more. I’m hoping that he’ll do a write up of how he put together a ‘ sizzle reel ‘ for one of our partners recently, as it was an amazing piece of work. Meanwhile I’m collecting streaming related tips on a Pinboard tag . Whisky tasting For many years I’ve enjoyed joining friends at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society ( SMWS ), but that’s yet another thing that’s had to go virtual due to the pandemic. I finally joined the society myself following a tasting for a friend’s birthday, and bought the July and August selections for online tastings. The July box was excellent – I even enjoyed the peaty one (which isn’t usually my preferred style), and it’s been fun to join friends on Zoom for the streamed tastings. BBQ Knowing that I like low and slow cooking Bob Harris has been egging me on to buy a Big Green Egg for a while, but when I asked him which accessories he considered essential he suggested checking out other brands of Kamado BBQ. That led me to Kamado Joe , which I saw described as ‘if the Big Green Egg is the Blackberry of BBQs then the Kamado Joe is the iPhone’. This video comparison was the clincher for me, and I found a decent for the Classic II package at BBQs2U . I’ll be firing it up for the first time this evening. Pi Stuff After getting my Pi4 to boot from a USB3 attached SSD I was chuffed to find out that it’s using the UAS driver mentioned in this post as being substantially faster iPad as PC monitor I bought Duet a little while ago so that in a pinch I could use my iPad as a second screen when on the road. But that won’t be happening again for a while. With lots of presentations to do I’ve found myself short on screen space, so I’m now using my iPad with Duet as a 3rd screen – mostly for my Pi powered MotionEye CCTV, and chat windows. Apple TV+ As Apple have been giving away year long subscriptions with new devices (like my iPhone SE) I took the plunge – mostly to check out Trying , which was really good. Since then I’ve also enjoyed Greyhound and The Morning Show . I’m not sure yet whether there’s enough value there for me to continue once I need to pay, but I’ve got most of a year to figure that out. HDMI USB Android HD monitor Last month I mentioned the HDMI USB adaptor I’d bought, so I was intrigued to see one being used to turn an Android phone into a monitor . Filed under: Raspberry Pi , technology | 2 Comments Tags: Alpine , Apple TV+ , BBQ , comedy , Duet , hot tub , iPad , Kamado , Kamado Joe , Mspa , OBS , Raspberry Pi , SMWS , streaming , whisky , Zoom Virtual Venues and Liminal Spaces 20Jul20 TL;DR We need to make space between online activities if we want to remember and appreciate them. Background – a virtual meetings just running together? One of my Leading Edge Forum ( LEF ) colleagues sent me this Washington Post article ‘ All these Zoom birthdays and weddings are fine, but will we actually savor the memories? ‘, which basically seems to boil down to saying that online meetings run together in a way that it’s hard to tell one from another. I think one of the issues here might be a lack of liminal space : The word liminal comes from the Latin word ‘limen’, meaning threshold – any point or place of entering or beginning. A liminal space is the time between the ‘what was’ and the ‘next.’ It is a place of transition, a season of waiting, and not knowing. In essence, if you’re sat in front of the same laptop, in the same room, then don’t be surprised if all your online meetings run together into some amorphous glob. Some contrasting personal experiences Reflecting on some contrasting personal experience of the last few months (and I realise that I’m fortunate to live in a large(ish) house with a variety of rooms on offer): Drinks and games with friends – we’ve done a few sessions where we’ve joined friends on Google Meet and played Jackbox party games. The setup I used for that had the friends or the game on my larger living room TV screen rather than just using my laptop standalone. Similarly, live comedy shows (mentioned in my last post on The Front Row ) have been watched on the TV, but also with surround sound switched on (this is an area where I think the platform providers can help my allowing show producers to stream different audio sources [performers/audience] into different channels [centre/left/right/rear]). For drinks with a particular group of friends I’ve been using my iPad in the kids’ games room – so again a different device and place from ‘work’. I’ve done a couple of whisky tastings recently where the tasting was on a Facebook or YouTube stream, with a parallel tasting party on Zoom. I used my ‘work’ setup for that (as the multiple screens are handy), but I think in that case the different tastes and smells of the whisky make for a distinct experience. My sense here is that part of what makes events memorable are the liminal spaces around them. It’s not just that I go to a restaurant or comedy club, but also the journey there and back. Mostly being at home during lockdown means there are fewer opportunities to pass through liminal spaces, but there are still ways that we can create different spaces for and around virtual events to make them more memorable. A connection to learning? Related… (I think), following Jez Humble’s endorsement I’ve been reading ‘ Learning How to Learn ‘ with the family. The book talks about focus time and diffuse time. If we’re going to focus on things in virtual events, then we need diffuse time between them (by transiting through a liminal space). Conclusion If we want to get value out of online work events, and enjoyment from online social events, then I think we need to create ...