I’ve been playing with the Panda, because … well just because.

In the mean time, I’ve pushed out an Alpha version … i.e. it’s a bit sketchy in IE, because I’m trying to be at #openhacklondon in spirit :) and it’s Flickr’s 5.25 Birthday tonight. Which seems like a good alignment of omens to push a Version 1.0 out.

Next version (unless someone else does it) should allow you to specify a tag/group/user to display instead of the Panda’s selection and to point to a different mp3 to play in the background.

Anyway, it’s here: http://www.fluffykittens.com/projects/panda2/#playmusic=1|autozoom=1.

Back to that “just because” bit … mainly because the Flickr Panda displays well on a portrait orientated monitor, which just happened to be how I had my monitor at work. But it was pointed out that it’d be fun to plug it into a TV or projector, and for that it needs to be landscape. So I grabbed the other Panda and made this instead.

The photos come from the flickr.panda.getPhotos API method. Music is played with SoundManager2, the Panda comes from The Searcher and the zooming stuff with a hacked up version Fancy Zoom.

Which is nice, because the WoW stats on my blog haven’t been updated for ages making me look like a slack gamer, which will never do!

Anyway, for a long(ish) time I’ve been thinking about what happens when large websites just shut down. Mainly from links to and from here …
Eviction, or the Coming Datapocalypse, Datapocalypso! and rather subtly
FUCK THE CLOUD.

Those generally kept leading me to the thoughts of, obviously, Flickr being 5 years worth of an awful lot of everyday life. If we/it stopped accepting uploads tomorrow, it’d still be an incredibly important collection of photos.

Which then started me off along the concept of a blog post trilogy …

1. A World Without Flickr
2. Every Building with a Shoebox in it’s Basement
3. Peer-to-Peer Photos, a culture tax on your Hard-drive

The idea being that the first post plays around some “what if” thought games, how does all that important information get persevered and so on. The second is a stab at the locations you take photos accepting some responsibility for photo preservation, rather like an image sponge. And finally some way to spread photos around users own desktop machines.

The problem being that I’m kinda stuck on the first one, I keep flip-floping over exactly what I think, while at the same time, really wanting to push out my thoughts on the second part. And I know how this plays out, as I’ve done it before, I never get to any of them, due to being blocked on the very first bit.

So I’ve just gone ahead and posted: Every Building with a Shoebox in it’s Basement.

It’s not the best bit of thinking ever, but I’m happy just to get stuff down onto paper, well, kinda paper.

I also know this is a little meta linking from there to here, a blog post about how I feel about that blog post.

Anyway, while I’m here, there’s also another not really related bit. I go though cycles of reading everything I can get my hands, eyes on, about the subject I’m interested in … and then other phases where I don’t want to read anything, because I get to the point where I’m not sure if my current point of view is just borrowed from what I’ve recently read, of because I’ve kinda got to there myself.

I’ve been in one of those, “keep myself pure” phases for the last 4 months. Which means it’s entirely possible that someone else, and probably someone I know, has already written about what I’ve just written about, only far far better, and I just haven’t realize.

Once this is all out of my system, I’ll start reading again to catch up :)

This in combination with the weekly automatic flickr post was supposed to make a nice two or three posts a week that’d drop in-between more regular blog posts.

Turns out I’m not very good at ‘more regular blog posts’ and twitter a lot more now. To the extent that the twitter posts are frankly annoying.

And so, they are dead.

I may look at rounding up tweets that have been faved recently though and see how that goes.

• @lachlanhardy let me know if they mention being able to find pizzas or coffee (then kill ‘em)
• If the iPhone’s new hardware control API works over bluetooth, I think it’ll become my ideal personal computer (if it keeps getting faster)
• Now wants to be able to plug his iPhone into everything … assumes it’ll happen. +last.fm plz record location when listening to tracks ty
• #flickrhq … given lots of cardboard boxes, do we a) pack b) make a fort? Screw you #sxsw we have a castle!
• (and by that I mean CloudMade or anyone else who wants to give it a shot)
• Oooh, OpenStreetMap should position themselves as map tile provider to the iPhone stars :) (or easy ways to make your own)
• @charliebcatt and I starting World of Warcraft date night, off to go questing and slaying hand in hand.
• Charlie with 1st baby “Wee, on the change mat? We’ll have to boil wash and bleach it”. 3rd baby “It’ll dry”
• Oh I don’t know, be a werewolf once and you’re tainted forever in #BroadRichmond #werewolf359
• @notmatt Mods is only 6 (or nearly 7 as she keeps telling me) which is plenty fine for gold farming :)
• @notmatt Looks a little early for Modesty :) but perhaps Scratch from MIT http://scratch.mit.edu/ ??
• Following current #sxsw twitter makes me remember why we homeschool (with WoW as (a small) part of the curriculum)

• Helping @charliebcatt fill up her own last.fm station
• So apparently a mapping session still needs to mention pizza (really?) may stab self.
• @danhon Yay for Suns and Moons! Now I need is just to be lynched a little less often :)
• Sigh, was (a winning) Villager in last #werewolf359 game, again this game. Someone eat me so I can move onto next village #Griningas :)
• Boo, its gotten a bit too late, a bit too cold and a bit lunch not ready to go out now
• #MiddleStaintun On the grounds there’s just 4 ppl left, there can only be 1 werewolf and they need to be killed next round, hm #werewolf359
• Mod “Whats this” D “It’s old punk” M “I’ve never heard such a thing!” D “Yes you have like The Ramones and NY Dolls” M “Oh yeah”-clicks fave
• @danhon Cheers, and I really don’t fancy knowing the length of that todo list ;)
• @waferbaby Yeah Bogan, will you please hurry up and die in this game already :) #weewar
• @sixtostart #werewolf359 You should use sun/moon in your (logged in) top graphic to show the current time of day/time left for current turn
• I’m conflicted, pretty sure ppl from the UK can’t be Werewolves (too polite) but ppl from the BBC are for sure! I sense overlap #werewolf359
• And for the record, I’m totally not the Werewolf! #werewolf359
• In the queue to join the next Werewolf game village … http://werewolf359.com/villages/queue/ #werewolf359

• “Throw your hands in the air like you just don’t mind”
• The plus side of SXSW, it’s so exciting over there that ppl forget to take their WeeWar turns and I can boot them.
• Yay for Friends on Fire, now all I need to do is a) add friends b) wait for SXSWi to be over :)
• Well twitter just got weirder, I think I’m being followed by a Pace Maker.
• FSOSF - Future Sounds of San Francisco
• @hanni yup, it’s totally the author’s fault.
• I’ve been using #WeightBot for 2 days now and haven’t lost any weight, perhaps it needs an update
• #flickrpanda The Search wins Internet Awesomeness for the day: http://bit.ly/P5vHr “The Rainbow Vomiting Pandas Of Interestingness”
• Zachary climbs into bed at 5am, had cuddles, dozes for a while, big hug, strokes my face then declares “I don’t like you daddy” sigh! #kids
• *blinks* Woot, seems that Flickr Getty has gone live … http://www.gettyimages.com/Creative/Frontdoor/Flickr
• I hope my children totally rebel against authority as they grow up there’s just so much more of it now-a-days, harumph, kids get on my lawn
• Charlie’s introducing Modesty to the joys of the original Weird Science
• Well today was certainly far better than tomorrow … oh wait? Odd maybe, but none the less true. Perhaps I can just skip to Wednesday.