5 tiles is a brilliant example of designing from 1st principles.
It is an android keyboard, designed specifically for touch-screens to keep the screen free for content. I’m slowly beginning to pick it up.
I guess it’s similar to the sort of one -handed keyboards used by divers.
It is a very different proposition from Google’s keyboard or Swiftkey which try and learn about you and predict what you are typing using your data.
Instead it is asking you to invest time in learning a new system that allows a new freedom - more screen size (or the ability to type underwater for the diving analogy).
I’ve also been using duckduckgo as default search engine for a couple of weeks as primary search engine on mobile and laptop.
It stands up pretty well, but the best feature is !bang which builds commands to search other websites, like StackOverflow or Google Maps directly, directly into the core search. URLs as interface.
In use, it feels similar to the sort of commands you find in vim and other text editors.
I have a hunch that more alternative/complex input methods are going to start to become naturalised in more mainstream UI.
I finally got around to moving my email from Gmail to Fastmail. It’s been churning away moving over 8 years worth of emails for over 24 hours now.
First, that meant sorting out my domain name. It was with namesco, who don’t support two-factor auth which no longer feels like an acceptable risk for something that has defacto access to your email.
I moved it to iwantmyname.com. All very easy.
Since they have one-click DNS setup for Ghost and github pages, I figured I may as well sort out my blog whilst I was at it.
I culled my old one when the wordpress/ubuntu installs went horribly out of date, and never got around to sorting it out.
So I now have blog.memespring.co.uk.
They also make it simple to point a domain at github pages, so I figured I should fix the broken links I created to random talks / downloads etc.
I’ve started to rescue old content from a mix of backups and archive.org at www.memespring.co.uk. Mostly slide decks for now, including this one from a 2006 event that I seem to remember Francis signed me up to talk at without asking me (I had never did any public speaking). Glad he did.
I also added the video of the talk I did last year at Opentech which, listening to it now, lays out some of the early thinking behind habitat.
Completed the Capital Ring. Last 3 stages were a bit epic - about 19 miles in one day. Nearly walked into a deer.
Deer in Richmond Park
The Capital Ring is well worth the effort, but there’s a total lack of good online information about it. It’s crying out for a dedicated wiki of tips, being able to link to each stage, open GPX tracks.
Off work this week, mostly working on habitat. I now have a working example client for posting location data, and for editing scenarios.
Scenario client
Both are written in Backbone.js, which I still haven’t fully got my head around.
I ended up slightly hacking the oAuth workflow - since the habitat server is self hosted, the idea of issuing client ids, then adding those to the client, then giving permission is a bit odd. So, for now at least, the clients can choose their own.
Walked stages 9 and 8 of the Capital Ring South Kenton to Osterly (3 more to go).
Final show and tell of the Land Registry concept.
More work on habitat - a personal, programable datastore (or that’s what it is untill I have a better desceiption). I got oAuth working using Flask oAuthLib. So you can now allow clients types of access to specific resources.
Julian was down from Liverpool, so took him to visit South London Makerspace.
Saw Mountain of Love (Eddie & Piers, formerly of Alabama 3) at Jamm.