Introducing Pokebook.co.uk
Friday, July 24th, 2009
We don't all seem to aspire to be a founder of a website which allows you to poke people.
I don’t aspire to be one either; I am one!
Introducing www.pokebook.co.uk…
Pokebook is an exciting new service which has transformed the landscape of the web. Designed for teenagers with too much time on their hands, it has been specifically engineered to capture the attention of kids as they flip between youtube and bebo.
Pokebook is currently about to enter a private alpha period whilst
looking for VC seed funding to take this exciting new venture to the
next level.
Tim Dobson
CEO, CTO and Founder of Pokebook
“The biggest innovation since Windows ME” – Time Magazine
Washed out – taking a step back
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009Over the last three months, I’ve been really involved in lots of stuff:
- I bought a waterproof video camera
- I organised DFEY to visit 2morro
- I videoed myself sailing my sailing dinghy
- My (ex-)girlfriend and I split up
- DFEY now has a logo
- I ran my first session as an RYA Sailing instructor for GSC’s first OnBoard day
- I went to several friend’s birthday parties including that of a large web agency
- I filmed an anti-fascism rally
- I went to (and filmed) a multitude of talks at various North West technology related usergroups
- I finished my A levels and left college forever
- I contacted speakers for Manchester Free Software group
- I videoed lots of sessions from Barcamp Sheffield
- I started full time work at DMC
- I filmed Tomorrow’s Yesterday and Buried from Above at the Ruby Lounge
- I do contract system administration for the BBC
- I went to the pub to catch up with old friends
- I filmed the Big Chip awards
- I gave a talk at Liverpool LUG
What’s on the cards?
More time spent looking after myself.
In the past few months, since I’ve left college and hardly stopped to breathe, think or relax. This needs to change. Doing stuff 100% is awesome if you have the energy, but you need to have the stamina. 90% of the energy 90% of the time would probably be enough… if the remaining 10%’s were leisure and sleep.
Going to bed earlier
I currently work 10am until 6pm, this means I get home late, go to bed late, wake up late am late leaving for the train and start every morning with a five minute jog to the station.
This needs to change. I have a lot of control over what hours I want to work so I need to start going to bed earlier whatever..
More Exercise
Not necessarily to get me fit or to lose weight, but I’m going to start swimming again every week.
My sailing has also been suffering – I need to battle it out with the elements on a regular basis. It’s only wind and water!
Projects into the future…
Open Source Schools Unconference
On Monday, I’m speaking at Becta’s Open Source Schools Unconference in Nottingham, I need to write a fully prepare a talk for that. Public speaking when I feel properly prepared is something I’m confident about, I’m not great at busking it yet.
A Holiday
I’m looking for ideas for a holiday of a kind I would really enjoy; I’m thinking of perhaps chartering a Sunseeker yacht offseason, going on one of the big ships adventure kind of things…
Not everyone’s cup of tea but I’m not everyone.
The best days of my holiday in Madeira were spent doing quite dicey things involving water, steep cliffs and gorges in a beautiful place!
If I’m not exhausted by the end of each day of my holiday, I might as well simply go and work from a “nice” location for a week; that’s a beautiful thing about the internet.
Chaos Communications Congress
I’m aiming to go to Chaos Communications Congress (3C), a big German hacker conference (read: festival) in Berlin next Decemeber. I had wanted to go to Hacking at Random this summer but my passport expired and I’ve not been quick getting it renewed.
Open University?
I’m not going to University in September and will be working full time. I need to work out what Open University Degree I want to do and apply.
Life
People sometimes say taking charge of one’s own life is scary.
I know I just need to ask myself:
- What I’m doing
- Where I’m going
- Why I’m going there
- How I can get there quickest with the minimum effort
A tribute to Richard Rothwell
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009Many reading my blog will not have heard the name Richard Rothwell and thus will have very little idea of his significance in the early days of DFEY.
I first encountered Richard, like many others, via the Schoolforge-uk (SF-UK) mailing list, with his posts on free software and LTSP related subjects.
Ben Webb and I, on hearing he would be speaking at Manchester Free Software group in May 2008 about Sustainable Education Solutions, went along to see what we could gather.
As probably one of the only Manchester Free Software talks that was not been videoed (release of the videos is a separate issue!), it was a talk that I vividly remember regretting it was not being recorded mid-talk. I regret this to this day.
Some may know that Richard was a important (I think Chief) Examiner for one of the exam boards in GCSE ICT (I think) and at the time, I was having a really hard time with my AS ICT Applied double courses.
I really enjoyed his talk which, whilst focusing on his deployment of LTSP in secondary schools, gave some very insightful ideas into what an school which fully embraced free software could turn out like.
He mentioned that the idea of running the network on LTSP came from two technologically adept 15 year olds.
He explained how they approached him with this distro that did basic LTSP, and so he took them out of lessons and got them to demonstrate how it worked to him on two old machines. Once the potential became clear, as I understand he deployed LTSP on a largish network with minimal resources, saving oodles of money and using recycled computers.
To me, a place where IT staff not only listened to the students, but interacted and were willing to look into ideas shared by the students is amazing, but for them build this system *around* free software is a utopia.
I think Richard persuaded me that there were better places out there, and it was worth working hard to work towards those.
I hope this is what I’m doing now.
A true legend, remembered well.
Richard sadly died on Friday 17th July.
There is a tribute website set up for him at http://tributestorichardrothwell.net, where you can leave your condolences.
Tags: DFEY, Digital Freedom in Education and Youth, education, inspiration, Inspiring, LTSP, Manchester Free Software, Manchester Free Software Group, Richard Rothwell, Schoolforge, tribute, young people
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