Fair & Bare – The little shop I run (with a little help from my wife) is having a January Sale right now in celebration of entering the year 2010. Every shirt we’ve made to date is just 10 squid! Hurry up people, it only runs until Sunday.
Archive for category General
Discovering Google
Oct 25
I’ve recently read a post over on the guardians technology site which gave a whistle-stop history of the internet as it turns 40. I thought I’d share here my own experiences of growing up alongside the web, more for my own record than anything.
I remember at school a time at which there was no external connection, nor internal network (which we the pupils used) so the Acorn machines used at our school at the time could communicate with one another. Computers, for me at that point were standalone. I had as much of an interest in computing then as I do now and I can remember early on, staying around after school to use one of the only PC’s in the school (which was bought to run a piece of career piece software called Kudos), in order to attempt to run the demo games from cds found on pc mags at the time (the only one I can remember was a lawnmower man demo). I did this until ofter one time a friend and I accidentally removing the autoexec.bat file which I hadn’t backed up…..oopsy
I of course had to stick around at school because we didn’t have our own pc at home, because they were very, very expensive (When we did finally get one, it was a Crappard Bell 486 DX2 66, 4 MB of RAM, 400MB HD and was over £1000). I felt a little jealous of my friends who both had PC’s and were able to use Microsoft’s Encarta to help them out with their homework at that time. (Interestingly Encarta later also became a website and is to be discontinued later this week).
Bizarrely, I’d opted for A-Levels at 6th Form which didn’t allow me to experiment with pc’s much, not that it would have mattered as although the rest of the world was transitioning toward them, the Gryphon school I attended had a whole computing lab full of RiscPC’s. I think I went there once in the two years of A-Levels I did and kept my nose upturned whilst I was there.
Some point over this time, I’d also got hooked on a magazine called PC Format since the latter years of school, which allowed me to get all the games demos I wanted without spending however many years (and £’s) it would have taken to download them all. (I kept all 4 years worth of magazines I’d bought and cds/dvds right up unto moving in with my wife). At home, even though we were now in the year 1999, my parents hadn’t yet opted to purchase a dial-up modem and make that leap online. I was of course, still jealous of those mates – who now were connected. I got myself a hotmail account, where I eagerly awaited emails from no-one.
I can remember going to college and being scared about the prospect of doing a computing course but never having had any prior experience of using the web. My parents finally got a modem that year, but I still used to use the computing labs after teaching. I could download 1MB samples of music from Juno records much more quickly over the leased line than I ever could waiting on the 56Kbps dialup at home. I also began working at Dixons (for my sins), getting paid a pittance to talk to many clueless customers about “stereos”, “cd players” and “N64’s”. Working at Dixons did at least afford me the opportunity to experience playing Quake in Yeovils one and only internet cafe on a LAN against my friends and the staff that worked there.
My LAN parties moved to the computing labs at the university, outside of working hours (because as their 10 year old posters claim, you’re not allowed to use games on them during working hours…). Over several years of using the web, I’d never once heard of Google until it was mentioned by one of the research students taking our internet computing lectures. “You’ve probably heard of this” he said. “Er, no”, I thought – why did no-one tell me? I’d used a number of search engines such as lycos and later webcrawler, but all were pretty awful in terms of giving me what I wanted – results. Instead they seemed content with a ridiculous number of adverts and making me hunt through a huge number of pages. Their pages now seem to indicate a new direction.
A bit of a trip down memory lane, but that’s how I ended up being introduced to Google. How about you?
I’ve been pondering this morning how the use of the internet has (or may have) changed my life. As a child/teen during the web’s infancy, I was blissfully unaware that so many lifes/careers/relationships would be enabled or changed as a result of the interactions it might facilitate. I hadn’t even heard of google prior to arriving at university and two years prior to that had never had internet access anywhere locally.
I am sure my behaviour today would be pretty different if the web wasn’t around due to the massive impact its had in my world view. It seems a far smaller place and more tightly coupled. I feel free to drop messages to strangers and write blog posts into the ether. I won a T4 competition in my early uni years which landed me a car and £4k richer, which I wouldn’t have entered if I’d had to phone – so I’d definitely be poorer. There are however, examples where the use of the web has had a detrimental effect on particular individual lives.
It’s a huge one to think about. Would my life be better as a result of the web having not been so widely adopted in the way it has? Would yours?
It has struck me over the last couple of days and it’s a reflection of my attitude to being interested in geeky things in general. I’m an elitist. When I started my blog back in 2003, I loved the fact that relatively few of them existed. It was a reflection of my day to day life and I felt my voice was being heard (even though I had no analytics tools to back that up and it was not particularly interesting).
Back then, I started out on Movable Type and quickly moved it over to b2/cafelog, which later grew into Wordpress. Fast forward 5 years to now and every manner of blog subject exists, whilst in the meantime my own seems to have fallen into a state of disrepair.
I think my blogs’ own slowdown has occurred because blogging about day to day life is not so much fun now – I’m no longer unique as I was in terms of the technical ability of being able to output my thoughts. Anyone can start a blog, tumblelog, lifestream or twitter account and use it to expose their daily activity online. They need to know nothing, or very little at all about how the back end works. So I’m now left thinking, what do I have to contribute in all this?
My own PhD research has had little exposure here, where if I had chosen to air my thoughts, it might be continuing in new directions from discussion which may have opened up around it. Instead, it is hidden away in research papers and closed forums which an average joe may never come across.
I’m proposing that I push to air my thoughts on all manner of subject here over the coming year, as well as my usual day-to-day activity. Hopefully I’ll be contributing something new, something interesting, something playing on my mind and which I want to discuss with each post.
I’d love it if you’d join me for the ride and I promise I won’t be at all elitist.
Fairy Tale Design Challenge
Jan 13
It seems that all I do these days is talk about what’s going on over at Fair & Bare and if you’re here because you prefer the more geeky side to me I apologise I’ve not been indulging you recently. However, that said, these posts do represent a significant part of me right now and what’s going on in my life so I think it fair I shout about it.
We’re holding our second design challenge right now and calling for designs based around the concept of a unique twist on a fairy tale. The prize is our biggest ever, at £200 + a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS3 (which was kindly donated by one of F&B’s community!). You have until 15th February to both submit a design and get it voted on by the F&B peeps!
It looks like I’ve also failed to mention over here the winner of our Snowdodgers competition as the amazing Mister Shrew. The shirts we printed look amazing and you should pick one up now if you haven’t already.
I’m really pleased to announce that Fair & Bare has just released 2 new shirts. First up is “Feel the Force” based on a slogan submission by JonnyDanger and secondly is the fantastic Esther Aarts’ “My Bike is My Castle”.
We printed these on super-soft, Fairtrade certified, organic in-conversion cotton using fantastic waterbased inks. They also look pretty darn good. It’s the net result of a ton of hard work by our printers, designers, community and the original cotton original farmers that mean that these have been able to be released. Head over to buy one (or more!).
Yesterday I announced that we’re running our first design challenge in conjunction with team Snowdodgers at Fair & Bare. These are some really amazing fellas who are trying to raise £48,000 for charity by rallying a £200 banger round 4000 miles involving the Arctic circle. We’re asking designers to get in designs relating to the chilly weather and the guys crazy antics!
If you’re interested, you’ve got just a month to get an entry in. You’ll win £100 plus a space on the rally car for your design!
Check out the challenge page for full details of how to enter!
Fair and Bare’s first shirt!
Jul 22
So, its been a long time coming, but Fair and Bare’s first t-shirt is now available to purchase!
Thanks to everyone who’s participated since we kicked off. Really appreciate all your designs, words and support. We’re still taking submissions for our competitions, so if you haven’t hit us up already make sure you do!
Undeserved Job Titles
Sep 20
Today on the return from uni I passed the new Subway that is opening up soon near Queen Street train station. On one of their job adverts, they were advertising for team leaders and sandwich artists. I’ve never really noticed my sandwiches being arranged in a artistic fashion before, maybe it would brighten my day if they were. I feel sorry for the poor art school graduate who ends up filling baguettes for a living.
Does anyone else have examples of jobs with somewhat over enthusiastic job titles?
Since moving to Taffs Well, just outside of Cardiff, Viv and I have enjoyed fantastic views of the Garth. This mountain is the centre for the original true story of “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down A Mountain”, a book/film which I managed to catch on TV this week. Basically, it goes like this, the villagers of Taffs Well work together to try to prevent an English cartographer from leaving the village and classifying the Garth as a hill. They gradually take soil to the top of the (then) hill and eventually get it classed as a mountain by the cartographer. Carrying all that soil is no easy feat – it does require roping in all the villagers into getting it up the hill. It was quite amusing to be sitting in our living room watching a film about the mountain which could be seen through the window right next to our television. Anyway I’m really enjoying it out here – its such a sight to wake up every morning and see the Garth covered in cloud at its peak. I hope Viv and I get the chance and enough enthusiasm to walk it together soon. Stuart Herbert has some great pics of the Garth on flickr.
