An inexplicably shoe-covered tree in Heaton, Newcastle

I was wandering through Armstrong Park in Newcastle the other day, when I came upon an unusual sight. In a small clearing there were three or four trees, each littered with hundreds of pairs of shoes.

A small board in front of the trees, placed there by the council, raised more questions than it answered. It seems that nobody knows how it got started, or what exactly the point is.

I stopped and gawped for a couple of minutes, along with a few passers-by, before capturing a couple of washed out snaps with my iPhone’s camera.

When I got home I did some research and found that there are 26 of these trees in the US alone, and unknown numbers all around the world.

Is it the same madman who travels the planet, planting the seeds of this odd ritual, I wondered, or is there some distant evolutionary reason for this odd behaviour?

I also found that there’s a novel in which the Heaton Shoe Tree(s) plays a central character. It’s called The Taxi Driver’s Daughter, and it was written by the late Julia Darling, who Robyn Hitchcock mentioned was a close friend when I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago.

The tree – and the coincidence – is all weird enough, but the oddest thing of all is that I wore through a pair of shoes last week, and now I want to throw them in the tree…

I still have no idea how it got started, but at least I understand how it keeps going.

By the morning we’d accepted that there was no way to get to Barcelona by bike from where we were. We were within an easy morning’s ride on almost completely flat ground, after traveling hundreds of miles over a mountain range, but there was a motorway in the way.

It turns out that our map was out of date – by several decades – which is how it had managed to sneak up on us.

We arrived in Barcelona later that morning, with our bikes slung in the back of a taxi. It was a shame, but the thought of a week in the city soon perked us up – we spent our time wisely; whizzing around the sights on the bikes by day, and sampling the nightlife in the evenings. We might not have got the whole way, but we had a great time trying.

Back to the start

Being out in the open, we woke up early, ludicrously early. We were both very sore, tired and grouchy at this point, which could explain how we ended up cycling for 11km on a motorway instead of the road we aimed for. Later we found out that the police are pretty strict about this heinous crime, and tend to hand out 500 Euro fines.

After this slight navigational cock-up we arrived in Mollerussa, where we hid from the midday sun in a cafe while a friendly stranger bought us a drink.

By this point Dave’s knee was hurting quite badly, and without the challenge of any more mountains to climb he considered jumping on a train for the remainder of the flat distance to the coast.

I convinced him this was a bad idea, and his turn at whinging was promptly finished. Later we passed through Igualada, where we were bought some more drinks by some more friendly strangers.

The next stretch was a bit of a pain. We went only a few miles before we started getting lost, and progress slowed to a halt. We arrived at a junction where the road turned into a motorway which wasn’t on our map, and we rode in circles for hours trying to circumvent it.

In the end we risked a fine by riding on the motorway for a spell, then came off again and opted to go over another Col to get around it. By 10pm it was foggy, dark, and we were throroughly lost. We were making no real progress, but covering lots and lots of miles. We saw a hotel an hour later, and at the front desk we were told that there was no way to cycle from there to Barcelona, at all. We considered this set-back over a few beers.

Back to the start – On to day eight

We woke up in Spain, and I had a quick wash in what we later found out was called the “River of Death”. It was actually very refreshing, and not at all poisonous/doomed.

Dave speaks wonderful Spanish, so we set off to find some people to speak Spanish at, and hopefully buy breakfast from, having wolfed down the last of our supplies the night before. We stopped at the first place we saw and ate rabbit for breakfast. Wild rabbit has virtually no meat on it, and we discuss the fact that I once heard (from Stephen Fry, so it must be true) that you die of malnutrition if you only eat rabbit meat. We decide to eat several chocolate bars each, just in case.

It works, and we got 45km before we had to stop again for lunch in Ainsa. Unforunately, everything was shut, so we decided to try for the next town. There was nothing for 25km, and we started to run very low on water. When its really hot, and you’re working hard, it’s amazing how much water you need.

Frustratingly, we passed a beatiful lake that was more blue than can possibly be natural. I wanted to go for a swim, but there was no way down to the water from the road. I think if I had managed to get in I would have been posioned by whatever terrible chemical made it that gorgeous colour.

The sight made us even thirstier, but the landscape at our height was almost desert. Along the road were lots of snow warning signs, although it was nearly 40 degrees. Eventually we arrived at Barbastro and bought what food and drink we could find, which consisted mostly of a 7 Euro jar of jam and some bread.

After this odd dinner we set off again and kept going until 11pm, by which time we’d covered 127km. By this point we were so tired, and it was so dark, that we couldn’t put the tent up. We found a field and slept out in the open in our sleeping bags. We were right next to an animal shed full of what we presumed were some very sick cows. Sick cows make some very strange, and very scary noises.

Back to the start – On to day seven

I woke up in a comfortable bed and promptly forgot to continue the previous night’s whinging where I sleepily left off, so we had breakfast and set off for the Col d’Aspin – nothing compared to the previous two day’s hurdles, but a mountain nonetheless.

It was an uneventful climb, and the harsh, exposed landscape of the previous day was replaced with a sheltered route through forest. At the summit were a smattering of tourists and cows, the latter of which tried to knock Dave over. We ate, took in the scenery and looked over The Map for what seemed like the thousandth time that week.

On it there was a handy tunnel that connected France and Spain, and it didn’t look too far from where we were sitting. We decided to try for it by that evening, spurred on by the thought of crossing the border, although we soon realised that it was actually a very long way away, and uphill all the way. That’s the problem with those winding roads – distance is all guesswork.

It was getting late as we neared the tunnel entrance, so there was even less traffic on what was already a virtually deserted, and increasingly barren route. The rocky scenery and general isolation felt weirdly alien, and we saw virtually nobody for hours, except the odd truck driver who would give us a blast on their horn.

When we eventually arrived at the mouth of the tunnel we were pleased to see that it was downhill all the way into Spain. It was a small tunnel, carved directly into the rock, and lit by dull orange bulbs. There was no wind inside, so we had no idea how fast we were going until a motorbike edged past us, carefully obeying the speed limit. We must have hit 65km/h, for several miles, although it felt like we were standing still without the wind or passing landscape to gauge speed with. Once we emerged into Spain we pulled onto the side of the road and set up camp next to a stream.

Back to the start - On to day six

Some cyclists are trying to highlight these accidents, though, by placing ghost bikes at the scene of fatalities.

You may have already seen one without recognising its significance; spectral bikes painted entirely white, often bearing a memorial and a photograph of the rider. These bikes are intended as much as a political statement as they are a memorial to a fallen fellow cyclist. A reminder to drivers and riders alike, a plea for vigilance and safety, and a call to local councils to do more to protect the most vulnerable of all commuters.

The phenomenon was born in 2003 in St. Louis, but since then the project has spread to reach our shores.

London cycle mechanic Matthew Butt heard of a fatal accident just minutes from his home, and decided that a ghost bike would be a fitting tribute. He knew little of the idea prior to this, so posted a message on the popular London bike forum www.londonfgss.com offering to help organise a memorial. Matthew was later contacted by the victim’s family, who were keen to see a lasting memorial erected. He’s far from the only one in the city organising ghost bikes. According to www.ghostcycle.org.uk, there are now 14 within London alone.

“The only other one I’ve seen is on Kingsland Road,” says Matthew, “there was an accident down there and that sort of appeared a week after.”

To many the idea seems morbid, but are they really that stark? There’s a good chance that they could help save lives in the future. Certainly, it’s obvious that relatives need to be involved before any action is taken – not everyone would be able to stand such a constant reminder of a tragic event.

The thing is, it works. Waiting at a red light beside one of the tributes I couldn’t help but notice all eyes turned to it, whether cloaked in the relative safety of a car or exposed to the elements on a bike. Matthew says he would consider adding more, for this very reason.

“We’ve always got enough spare bikes to do it, but hopefully we won’t have to.”

This story was originally written for The Guardian

By day four we were starting to ache, but the largest mountain between us and Barcelona was still on the agenda.

The Col du Tourmalet stands at 2,115 metres (however they work these things out), which is more than two kilometres, straight up. If there had been a nice, flat cycle path all the way back to London town, I would have taken it at this point.

I checked the map, and there wasn’t one, so we set off South again. Dave once again shot off ahead, although he was slowed down when one of the cleats fell off his shoe. Despite limping along like this, he still beat me to the peak.

We met again at the top, and once again I raced ahead on the way down to make up for my poor performance on the way up. I chased a Peugeot for 10 miles or so, but backed off when I briefly looked down to investigate a strange smell and noticed that my front brake was actually smoking.

I quickly ducked behind a hedge and waited for Dave to overtake, before sneaking past him again and racing downhill for another 10 miles or so. Once the road began to flatten out we had to grudgingly start using our legs again, but compared to the uphill section it was a doddle, and we covered some good distance in no time.

We found a small hotel to stay at that night, and popped to a local pub for a drink once we got showered. I took the opportunity to whinge on endlessly about the remaining Cols, and told Dave that I was going to pop out of the Pyrenees, and go around the bottom to Barcelona.

Back to the start - On to day five

The second day waking up and packing the tent was much easier, and we were on our bikes quickly. I had a half-hearted wash in the freezing stream, and steam rose from my shoulders as I got dressed.

Today was the start of the first proper hills. The terrain until now hadn’t been flat, but would seem so in comparison by the end of the day. We wanted to climb the Col d’Aubisque before the evening – a proper, real-life mountain (take a look at its Wikipedia page, and you may recognise the two grinning fools at its summit).

Getting up to the top wasn’t easy. It’s 1,709 metres tall, for a start, and we were carrying all our clothes, food, tent and tools on the back of the bikes. Lycra-clad, aerodynamic athletes on the latest, light carbon racing bikes shot past us, and we struggled on, slowly but surely, although Dave took to hill-climbing far better then I did.

I was later to find out that I excelled at the going downhill bit. After hours and hours of climbing at a snails pace, watching the Tour de France graffitied tarmac pass under me, I eventually broke into cloud and arrived at the summit, Dave having got there a while earlier. At the very top there was a cafe, and they sold bloody good coffee.

We stopped and compared notes for a while, and then came the fun part, the bit that makes going uphill worthwhile. We put on as many layers as possible, and started to roll down.

It may sound cheesy, but I popped in my headphones and played a Sigur Ros album while snaking through the cloud-obscured curves at a frightening and effortless pace, before zooming out into clear sky to see one incredible view replaced at each corner with another. Those twenty minutes will stay with me for a long time.

After the descent we found ourselves in a large-ish town, and noticed a campsite. Our preconceptions of a weird, family-orientated, chemical toilet nightmare weren’t far off the mark, but hot food and a shower were more than enough to win us over.

Back to the start – On to day four

When we woke up we realised that piles of ancient rubbish were strewn all around our tent, including around ten extremely rusty vintage bikes. Some of them looked wonderful. I wanted to take them all home to London and clean them up, but had to suffice with some photographs, which are easier to carry.

We suspected that it may be the dumping-ground of some kind of cyclist-killing maniac, but couldn’t verify this theory. Setting off, we covered ground quickly through a hot and sunny morning until lunchtime, when we came across a particularly inviting river. We took a dip, and waved at people in cars passing over a nearby bridge.

Reluctantly we climbed back on the bikes, and traveled another centimetre or two along our map before rolling into Moulean. This was a strange little town, where we saw our first ETA graffiti – ETA being a group of people with guns who would like Basque independence, thanks very much.

We stopped and had a coffee while we pored over the maps, unaware of what a ludicrously frequent ritual this would become.

That night we gave up for the day by a small river, looking for somewhere to camp. We waded through it, carrying our bikes and luggage, and found a small wood with a flat clearing between two streams. We put the tent there, aware that it could get washed away if it rained, but not caring much because it was gorgeous, and we were shattered.

While we were making ourselves at home a man came to fill water buckets for his donkey, and we got chatting about bikes. It turned out that he used to compete nationally in mountain bike competitions, but now he had a donkey. We were unsure why the two would be mutually exclusive, but we didn’t argue, and thanked him for his advice on possible routes for the next day.

Dave seemed to think that he was upset about our lack of preparation. I saw where he was coming from.

Back to the start – On to day three

Late this summer a friend of mine returned from a year spent in South America making websites, and I met up with him for a drink. We inevitably got talking about what we’d been up to in the last 12 months, and conversation eventually stumbled upon a ride I’d done from London to Cambridge.

Somehow, we decided that we’d try a longer trip together – from Biarritz to Barcelona, perhaps. What would normally have remained a pub conversation turned to reality when I got an email from Dave later that week containing details of the flights he’d just booked.

This is a very long description of that very long holiday.

Biarritz to Barcelona

Having arrived at the airport with plenty of time, we discovered five minutes before boarding that we were at the wrong gate. Sprinting the length of an airport is always a great way to start a holiday, I’ve found, especially one that will involve cycling up several large mountains.

Once we landed we found ourselves in a nondescript car park in France, with two cardboard boxes full of bits that needed to become bikes again before we could get started.

Cue an hour of swearing, tightening nuts and bolts and wondering what the bits left over were, and we were set. We confidently struck out North towards the coast, before turning South for Barcelona, so that we could say this journey was properly coast-to-coast. Only a few miles later and we arrived at the sea, Dave fell off his bike, cutting his knee and we temporarily lost each other. Spirits were boosted by a large steak, and we begun towards Barcelona.

It wasn’t long before we arrived at a small town and I impatiently jumped a red light, unluckily within sight of the most eagle-eyed policeman in all of France. He caught up with me on his enormous motorbike and handed me an equally enormous fine.

Later on, the French police righted this wrong by giving us a generous escort to the main road when our map-reading skills were found wanting. Every time we managed to catch up with them, they took it as a sign to speed up, and we ended up putting in a performance that would make Lance Armstrong proud, before waiting for them to say goodbye and collapsing in a heap.

The terrain begun to get hilly almost immediately as we left the coast, and we finished the day by finding an abandoned and overgrown road where we wearily set up camp.

On to day two

But, I’m still leaving.

I’ve decided to try my hand at newspapers – as if a monthly deadline isn’t stressful enough. I’m heading back to my old hometown, Norwich, and starting work for the Eastern Daily Press. It’s going to be a culture shock; it was founded in 1870, which is before even the first generation iPod came out, I believe.

During his twenties my dad was covered in the EDP for his football prowess (which skipped a generation). My parents read the EDP when I was a kid, and I read the cartoons. I bought it at university to keep up with local events. I even worked there briefly, on the website, as a summer job. In short, there’s a lot of history there, and I’m looking forward to starting.

My first four months will be spent in Newcastle, taking the NCTJ course, then it will be back to East Anglia for assignment in one of the regional offices. I’m missing Pro already, which is weird, because I’m sitting at my desk now.

I was supposed to be writing an article on the site, so I wanted to register and give the service a proper trial. I managed to open an account easily enough, but couldn’t seem to log in. Everytime I put in my username and password it followed up by asking me what the last school I attended was. I don’t recall entering this during the registration, and after three attempts I was locked out of my account.

I emailed customer service, and after a few tries I was told to go their secure email site. Here I was given a URL to release the lock, but it had expired. I emailed again, and got another expired link.

Eventually I got back in, and had to go through a security process to prove my identity. I entered all the required details, and was told that I couldn’t be found. A few more emails to customer service and I was told that all I needed to do was send a copy of my passport, signed on the back by a responsible member of society, along with a recent bank statement, and I could then be registered.

As well as all this, I also spoke to their PR people to get some quotes for the article. I recieved a few short answers, in an odd mix of caps and lower case letters, without grammar, some of which didn’t make sense as sentences.

The problem is that the service sounds like a wonderful idea. I could transfer in money through PayPal, and make a good rate of interest, whilst helping someone else out and cutting the banks out of the deal. I really wish I had been able to get it working.

Update (29/03/07): Zopa called this morning, and said that they would reset the security questions. Checked later, and they hadn’t been changed.

Lesson learned – don’t rely on one email address.

Is anyone else having problems? I haven’t been able to log in for a few hours now.

Update: It’s now Wednesday morning in London, and I’m still locked out of my email. It seems like the problem is solved for the ‘vast majority’ of users though, which is good. Sorry if you’re waiting on an email from me.

 Update: At work now, and I have my email back. Thanks Google.

I’m in Leipzig, Germany at the moment. Last night I went to Bimbotown, which is both a nightclub and a physical manifestation of everything that’s right about this city.

It’s an abandoned warehouse on the edge of town, absolutely enormous, and full of industrial machinery and detritus. Despite it’s size, there’s no big empty space like in an English club – most of the main room is full of coffee tables, armchairs and sofas.

Around the edge you get these crazy contraptions made of old hydraulic systems. Most of the sofas and armchairs buck like a startled horse at random intervals. The bar stools leap into the air when people on the other side of the room press buttons. There’s a coffee table that walks.

There’s a convoy of beds that drive themselves around the entire club, occasionally dissapearing through a hole in the wall to emerge somewhere else a few minutes later. We took a ride on one and it carried us across the dance floor, bumping people out of the way.

I tried to tell people how crazy this was, and how impossible this would be in the UK or the US. We have a nanny state, and it doesn’t take well to this kind of thing.

A couch descends from the roof, about to land on someones head, and a guy just taps her on the shoulder to let her know. In the UK there would have to be safety barriers, alarms, helmets and safety stewards. You have to cling on to the sofa if you’re riding it – in England there would have to be harnesses.

The way it’s run wouldn’t work here either – the people who organise it live in the place, and run this night once a month to make some money. In the UK this place would have been commercialised to death, opened every night and been ruined within a year.

All this craziness was supplemented with VJing from Piotr Baran, a set from Surf Punk band Yucca Spiders and various performance artists.

If you come to Liepzig, then time it so you can go to Bimbotown.

The Industrial Age centralised the production, increased the quantity, and homogenized the design of manufactured goods. Traditional arts and crafts techniques dwindled to niche markets, and factories creating hundreds of thousands of identical items a day became the norm. Products became significantly more complex, and now it would be impossible for consumers to make most common household items themselves.

However, a paradigm shift may be on the way in the form of cheap rapid prototyping machines for the home. Cheap because you don’t have to buy one, your neighbor can ‘breed’ you one via self-replication.

The designers behind these machines have a formidable but admirable goal; to democratise the production of household goods. The Rep-Rap project at Bath University vocalises this goal with its slogan, “Wealth without money.”

Some recent advances have already allowed the enthusiastic hardware-hacker to create certain items at home; it is possible to make custom-designed PCBs using a laser printer for example. But these have required some technical know-how on the part of the user, and a vast amount of tinkering. Normal rapid prototyping machines also allow production of certain parts, albeit with an enormous price tag and large space and power requirements.

The RepRap project at Bath University, headed by Adrian Bowyer, aims to create a cheap rapid prototyping machine that also allows the creation of printed circuits. Their method of lowering the price is ingenious ‐ enable the machine to self-replicate. One person with such a device could make two more and distribute them. The two recipients could also make two more, and so on. This exponential production could create millions of these machines very quickly.

“What we are attempting to do is make a machine that can produce almost all of its component parts, to make self-replicating machines.” says Bowyer.

To do this requires creating a machine that walks a fine line between complexity and simplicity; complex enough to manufacture its own constituent parts, but with constituent parts simple enough to allow this.

The team aren’t far from their goal according to Bowyer: “We’re at the stage now were we have almost all of the component pieces of the machine designed and tested, and what we’re interested in now is tying them all together.”

In order to improve the design, and to allow replication, the plans will be made freely available under the GNU licence, as will the software to design parts and control the machine.

The project certainly isn’t lacking in support. A flurry of press attention in 2005 brought a number of people to the project from all over the World. Currently there are teams in New Zealand, the US and Canada, and they’re all working on a volunteer basis. Vic Oliver, a team member in New Zealand, has very recently got a small machine working, which produces small components, such as small plastic polo-mint shaped pieces. The American team are about halfway to finishing a working model. These teams are all coordinated and supported by Bowyer and his team in Bath. At their lab they have the luxury of a rapid prototyping machine, supplied by a government grant, and they use it to manufacture parts for other machines as well as their own. The next goal, once these distributed machines are working, is to combine the best elements of each to produce a ‘Version 1.0’ machine.

Currently, some parts to create a machine will be bought in, rather than produced by a parent machine as it makes economic and practical sense, says Bowyer, “We buy in nuts and bolts as it is cheaper and easier. It would be nice to have a pure machine, but I would imagine that it would be some time before these readily available parts are produced by the machine itself, even when they are possible to be made. It will be a long time before people bother because they’re available across the whole planet, very cheaply. It’s a practical problem rather than a philosophical one.“

The ultimate aim is to create a machine that can also create electrical conductors, and once that ability is combined with the 3D plastic forming any device can be created, even electrical motors. According to Bowyer this could happen within 2 years.

“To get this conductor extruded is very easy there are two alloys, wood’s metal and field’s metal, which have lower melting points than that of the plastic used in the machines construction. Field’s metal would be preferable as Wood’s metal contains lead. We would have a small chamber that heats this alloy and we can then extrude this from the same nozzle that we would use to extrude the plastic. The plastic component would have a channel left there in the design, which we fill with the alloy.. The big advantage is that you can then put a layer of plastic on, and another layer of alloy ‐ you have 3D circuits. You can then hide these circuits in the actual structure of the machine, in the frame of the machine.”

Once these machines are capable of reproducing, and once some spare parts have been formed and safely stored, then they could spread exponentially.

It is then that they can become productive, and could be used to create any household product. It is envisaged that a vast library of open-source designs would be made available online, created and refined by users, just as with open source software.

Subsequent machines with refined designs will be able to create ever more complex components and devices, explains Bowyer, “Once we have these simple things right there’s a very clear path to making complex things. Making complicated things is not a large step, certainly not as large as the step from making nothing to making simple things.”

There are some potentially revolutionary ideas that arise from the ability to create complex devices at home, most notably in communication and medicine.

An open source, peer to peer, mobile phone network that doesn’t rely on a service provider would be made possible by creating phones that also act as base stations, routing traffic from one phone to another towards it’s destination. The absence of a service provider would theoretically make the service free. Free mobile communication could have a phenomenal impact on the whole world, but developing countries in particular would benefit.

Another exciting area that reprap is anticipated to make an impact in is medicine. The idea would rely on the fact that patents don’t apply to personal production. If an individual has the means to make a copyrighted drug, then they are freely allowed to do so as long as it is for strictly personal use. The only problem is that no one does have the means. Bowyer imagines that reprap could change this.

It is almost cost effective even now, to produce drugs at home in certain scenarios, as Bowyer explains: “Take Herceptin for example. A year’s dose costs £20k, that’s a lot of money. When you look at home drug replication machines, they cost £70k-100k and that’s more than £20k, but not a lot more when you consider that someone may be on a drug for many years.”

Bowyer believes that insurance companies, particularly in the US, will begin to take advantage of this. Reprap machines could take this democratization even further, enabling people to create drug replication machines cheaply within their own homes, and reducing the cost of even the most expensive drugs to little more that the price of its raw materials. “Once that idea takes off you have a complete change in the pharmaceutical industry, and there’s no reason why the rep-rap machines couldn’t produce these drugs, or machines to produce them. We need a wide uptake to get these machines out there, to make them popular. Back in the early days of computing I soldered together my first computer, and in a few years time that will be where reprap is: being made by geeks and hackers like me.”

The supply of raw material is as bizarre and inventive as the rest of the project. Initially it is envisaged that they will be supplied commercially, but in order for this machine to realize its full potential the cost needs to be kept to a minimum, and the availability needs to be universal. Bowyer has been investigating a polymer called Poly-Lactic acid that can be created by fermenting starch, either from corn or potatoes. By growing the raw material you have an almost carbon neutral source of polymer, which is local to the machine. In the developing world this will be very vital.

The whole point of this machine is that it reproduces, so that you have something that is analogous to a biological system, and because it reproduces it will evolve. People will always be changing the design, to improve and diversify. However there are some core aspects to the machine that will probably be widespread, for example the software.

The software is currently being written in Java, and the machines will require a computer in order to control them. The machine will probably connect via the USB port of the computer, and because of the platform independence of Java, can run on a multitude of computers. One particular project that the team have been watching closely is MIT’s $100 computer, as it would provide a perfect controller for the device. It is designed to run from 12 volts, just as the reprap machine, so could use the same power source, and is capable of running Java code.

The cheapest rapid prototyping machine currently available still costs £12,000, whereas the parts and materials required to produce a reprap machine will cost £300. The price is important, because it’s within the boundary of what people will pay for a home appliance. It’s really no different to other rapid prototypers, except that every component part can be made by the machine itself.

The benefit of these machines is yet to be seen, but a tipping point is incredibly close. Perhaps even by the time this article is published the first machine will be finished, which will be capable of producing most of its own parts. Once this has happened there will be a rapid surge in the machine’s capabilities. Constant design refinement will enable more complex parts to be produced, which will enable more complex design refinements. Obviously there is a limit to this refinement, but does that limit lie above or below the level needed to produce a drug replication machine, or a peer to peer communications infrastructure?

I tracked down Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian today, still reeling from the Wired buy-out of the site. We talked about money, what it’s like to go through a buy-out, the future of Reddit and what he’s going to buy his mum.

Matt: Hi Alexis!

Alexis: w00t

Matt: So, Alexis, how are you feeling?

Alexis: My mom asked me that question this morning. I’ll tell you what I told her: I don’t know.

Matt: Ha! I bet it’s quite a confusing time.

Alexis: Feeling excited about getting done with all the legal wrangling and getting back to working on Reddit. Still in a bit of disbelief. I don’t feel any different.

Matt: Tell me what it’s like to get bought out. Who approached who? What was the process?

Alexis: Well, we can’t take much credit for this… We were approached by Kourosh to build Lipstick.com in the spring. He’d heard about the site through some people and pinged me out of the blue.

I called him back, we chatted for a bit, and he said that they were interested in building a Reddit-like site for celeb news/gossip

Matt: He’d heard about reddit?

Alexis: Yep. A little alien told him? I’m not sure.

Matt: Ok, so you built him Lipstick.com?

Alexis: Yep, we got the specs from their side and built it. The whole thing didn’t take to long to get online, but once it was, they seemed pretty pleased with the result. From there, the discussions started to shift to bigger things.

Kourosh definitely got a few points when he came to our shabby apt and let us beat him in XBox. Actually, it was PS2… Soul Caliber (Steve and I have an ongoing competition with some XBox games).

Matt: So, then what happened?

Alexis: Nothing too climactic

Once we’d agreed on the terms, the lawyers got involved and we got to hear a lot of legalese for a couple months.

Matt: So, you’ve known about the buyout for some time?

Alexis: Yes, we’ve known that something was in the works for a little while, but we try not to take anything for granted.

Frankly, the only time we knew was when we were signing our final documents.

Matt: Did Wired give TechCrunch the scoop on the buyout, and ban you from writing a blog post?

Alexis: We were putting the finishing touches on our blog post.

Granted, I kinda wish ours had scored higher on reddit than the TechCrunch post, but oh well

The people have spoken.

Matt: I think that’s just because it was posted first. Weird though. Strange decision from Wired.

Alexis: I just draw the alien

Matt: Did you design the alien? Where did the logo come from?

Alexis: We probably should have had a better title anyway — that’s a valuable piece of reddit advice we forgot to heed.

Yah. We’d wanted a mascot and I’d been doodling in class. Then I came home and rendered it in a copy of PSP 5.0 (shareware).

It took a few versions, but it basically hasn’t changed much since (except on all the random logo designs).

And I finally got Illustrator. Yum.

The mascot archive has all the versions, and yes, it was 100% google-inspired. Except they usually have a good reason (holiday, global event, etc) for theirs — we don’t.

Paul was actually quite opposed to the name early on, but to his credit, he’s admitted that in the end, “Reddit” didn’t turn out to be so bad after all.

Matt: Reddit is quite a catchy name I think, not a bad choice. What were the other ideas floating around?

Alexis: There were some really unfortunate ones…

Newstew/Newsstew, Newsbug, Poplex, Octopop, Popdar…

Matt: Oh dear.

Alexis: Bubbleup, Popurate…

I could go on, but my head hurts.

Matt: BubbleUp is quite descriptive, but still not great. Reddit is better.

Alexis: Glad to hear that you agree. Had to take a few licks for defending it, but everything worked out.

Matt: So, I presume I can’t ask about money, and that everyone asks you that?

Alexis: Yes and yes.

Matt: I thought so. I presume that you’re not going to ever have any money worries again though?

Alexis: You know, I’ve been pretty fortunate growing up.

There are plenty of kids who had to worry about things like paying for school, etc., but all the parttime jobs I’ve worked have been for money that just ended up in my savings acct.

Matt: Fair enough, so you won’t be splurging then?

Alexis: But, hopefully, there won’t be any money worries in my future.

You know, there really isn’t much I need that I don’t already have.

I’m going to have to treat my mom to something though… just need to figure out what…

Matt: Diamonds. I’ve heard that women love diamonds…

Alexis: Hehe — you know, that’s the thing with my mom, she’s not into that kinda stuff. No bling.

I feel pretty spoiled as it is to have the family and friends that I’ve got.

Matt: I think that that’s more important than money, but I say that as a man in debt.

Alexis: Fair enuff

Matt: Are you going to be staying on with Reddit then?

Alexis: You bet.

This doesn’t feel like an ‘exit’ to us — we’re raring to put our attention back on building out Reddit.

Matt: So, you’re going to be Wired employees?

Alexis: Technically, I believe we’re CondeNet employees.

Matt: What’s your job title?!

Alexis: Oh, I just learned this — we’d all been co-founders until yesterday.

“Co-Founder” Alexis is now a “project manager” — I think.

I’ll basically be doing what I do now: everything that a hacker shouldn’t have to think about or do. That ranges from PR/alien-drawing to picking up the carryout, and to be the front end for all of our interactions with clients as we keep building out our licensing model.

Matt: Yeah, I’d like to ask about that. I was talking abou this today. I guessed that your purchase price is 50M, and we think that you can bring in 2.5-5M a year advertising.

So, are you going to make money licensing white label solutiuons? If so, are you going to charge, or make money driving traffic back to Reddit and advertise?

Alexis: We are hoping to. We’ve got a few folks who are at various stages of “clienthood” (is that a word?)

Matt: Perhaps!

Alexis: This is something we’ve given–and are still giving–some serious thought to.

We want to monetize it in a way that offends/interferes with our users as little as possible

Matt: I think that’s great, and you obviously trust Wired to go along with that? They’re a good brand.

Alexis: Aye. It really feels like they (CN in general) understands where we’re coming from.

Matt: That’s reassuring for Reddit users I bet.

Alexis: At the same time, we know we don’t know everything — but we now have a fantastic resource.

Keeping the reddit community happy and healthy is paramount. They’re the ones who got us here, and CN definitely knows and wants to honor that.

Matt: Is that in the contracts?!

Alexis: “CN understands that we must keep the reddit community happy and healthy”
it should be, but it isn’t. We do have a pretty great deal of autonomy.

And all the conversations we’ve had about it have been quite encouraging.

Matt: So, it’s all on trust?

Alexis: Not entirely, but I can’t comment on any details of the deal.

Matt: Ok, sorry!

Alexis: We’ve just been well media-trained

Matt: Some spin-doctor consultant?

Alexis: Nah. They basically told us “We’re not going to be discussing the details of the deal”, and we said “OK”.

Matt: Is the secrecy short-term, or permanent?

Alexis: Not 100% sure, but I’m confident it’s permanent… or close to it.

Matt: Wow, that’s going to be hard.

Alexis: We’re pretty good at keeping secrets. We didn’t even pinky swear when acquisition talks started and I don’t think there was a single rumor floating around before yesterday.

Matt: No. I heard nothing.

Alexis: I have to go now, to see a movie.

Matt: No problem, thanks for your time.

Disclaimer: Alexis is going to be sending me a Reddit t-shirt for free, but it doesn’t make me like Reddit anymore or less than before, and didn’t influence this post. I love that alien.

Matt: So, maybe you could tell me a little about how you started Worth1000?

Muchnick: Sure, I was a graphic designer, but got laid off and decided to go to law school… in the interim before school began I had an idea for a quality Photoshop contest site.

Until then, all I’d seen online were goofy ones done for kicks, but real artists didn’t really participate, or if they did, they got drowned out in a sea of clichés and Internet memes.

Matt: So, worth1000 was set up for the more talented designer?

Muchnick: well, really to help people learn, but to encourage even poor Photoshoppers to try their best, think hard before making an image, and not just resort to a quick joke.

Matt: Did you expect that level of success with the site?

Muchnick: I hope I’m not sounding negative about other sites – I do love other sites, especially earlier ones that ran Photoshop contests. I just saw there could be something different.

Yes and no. I hoped it’d be a success, and I thought the system I made was a step up above existing ones in terms of ease of use.

It was one of the first sites of its kind where users could upload and host their artwork. But no, I didn’t really believe it’d take off as it did, and I figured that if it didn’t, at least I’d have fun.

Matt: I think that in recent years it’s become obvious that a strong community is essential to a site’s success. How did you enable this to grow?

Muchnick: Well the contests were the attraction. All winners were featured on the homepage and had a “trophy mantle” on their stats page. Users saw others getting featured and figured “hey, I can do better than that and win too”.

Competition is a strong impetus for content, but it carries negative effects into a community as well.

Matt: In what way?

Muchnick: It encourages cheating, backstabbing and drama. Not things you want in a community.

Getting around that was the biggest hurdle, we had to develop a special karma system and moderate the community strongly. Get special users to help catch cheating. We did well at it, but it was a serious challenge.

Matt: These are challenges that a lot of sites are facing I think, as user generated content becomes more common.

Muchnick: Yes, copyright issues are going to be the biggest problem of all soon. When users upload content they don’t own, who is responsible?

Right now it’s just a grey area.

The site isn’t responsible unless they don’t take it down once notified, which is a nice loophole that other sites exploit to steal content.

Matt: Can we name names?

Muchnick: ebaumsworld.com
They are pretty notorious for posting content without permission, there was a Wired article about that I think.

Matt: So, after Worth1000 took off, you decided to start Plime?

Muchnick: Wwhat’s interesting is that a site may not have rights in the works that are uploaded to it. So, let’s say Ebaumsworld steals stuff off worth1000. Worth1000 might not have a legal recourse to ask ebaumsworld to take it down, because the copyright lies with the original uploader who might not even know or be reachable.

That’s an issue we deal with now a lot.

Back to your question – yes, about 2 years into worth1000 i wanted to expand.

Worth1000 focuses on the arts, and I wanted to have something for everyone.
At the time there was no news site that aggregated content for all topics, then Google news came out, and then topix.net.

I’d started working on the code already at that point, but did it as a side project really, and progress was slow.

Then, last year I showed off a prototype on live TV.

Matt: Where?

Muchnick: G4 Tech TV – same show that Kevin Rose from Digg used to host actually, that’s how I first found out about Digg.

Matt: Did he steal your idea?!

Muchnick: No, no.

My idea was a bit different at the time; it was a lot more wiki like and self running.

For example, users submitted an RSS feed, which then populated Plime with articles. They also submitted keywords relevant to categories and plime would try to pair up articles into the categories based on the keywords that users added, and the content of the articles.

The system was neat, but I just decided it wasn’t accurate enough. Anyway, Digg was growing strong then, but they only focused on tech news at the time.

Matt: So, you decided to change your strategy a bit?

Muchnick: I thought there was still room for improvement.

We just removed the RSS feed element really, users still could submit directly before and there was still voting before.

I just thought, I’ll still be the first for all categories, and the first with Wiki like abilities.

I guess it’s half true now. I wasted too much time getting to market – there are lots of features I’ve since shelved that I spent months on.

Matt: I think that if you had got to market sooner, you may have captured some of the Digg market share, but the WiKi feature is still a unique selling point.

Muchnick: Thanks. The biggest problem with the site now is the lack of a FAQ or otherwise indicator to random guests that it is a Wiki, that they can add new categories, change the look of a section, or edit posts.

I have a great group of worth1000 members helping test and critique it each day as we add features (and remove redundant ones).

Matt: It must be a great benefit to have a loyal user base that you can get to test stuff?

Muchnick: Definitely… it means not having to test from scratch and having a solid launching pad for when I’m ready to really get it off the ground.

We have 300,000 members I can show this to when I am ready to increase traffic, members who have already expressed an interest in the site we made.

Matt: So you haven’t actively promoted the site?

Muchnick: We put a bar above worth1000′s homepage, that’s it. It’s a very good way to keep the traffic consistent until all bugs are worked out

Matt: Ok, so what’s the user base like on Plime right now? Because I signed up today, and I’m 11th on the weekly leader board.

Muchnick: There are 750 beta testers I think… About 100 members visit each day. About 2000 guests visit each day. About 20-25 people post articles each day.

The interesting thing is that the number of guests is growing each day.

The challenge will be to have members want to submit content, and of course, once it’s ready, we have a whole community to help with that.

We have 5000 article clicks each day.

Matt: I think that you have a good set-up to entice generators – the leader board, a points system and a friends feature.

Muchnick: the leader board is basic for now. When it’s done it will be more like Worth1000′s setup, with stats and trophies. It will turn it more into a game. We’re also going to make the system more personalized.

Matt: I think that’s a really great way of getting people to work for free, like the Google page that gets users top tag photos.

Muchnick: It’ll learn what you and your friends like, and show you more of the same.

Yes, that’s a really fun tool – it’s funny you mention working for free.

Have you ever heard of chacha.com?

It’s a search engine that is powered by user guides, who are paid to help people browse.

Anyway, compensating users is always something I’ve thought about in some form or another.

On worth1000 we’re spinning off a new company that lets artists sell their work on custom gifts, so in effect, artists would be using worth1000 to promote their work and make money on sales.

Not sure how that could work with Plime… yet.

Matt: Are you producing the gifts yourself, or farming that out to someone like Spreadshirt?

Muchnick: We’re actually acting as a go-between between the artist and a few different manufacturers. I believe we have 6 signed on right now. The artist will choose who does order fulfilment, based on the manufacturer’s wholesale prices and their product line.

Some manufacturers specialize in specific items.

What’s cool is that because we have good volume as a group of sites, we get better pricing than if an individual artist or site would do themselves.

Matt: This is something that I’m really interested in, mass customisation.

I think it’s exciting how user generated content is becoming real-world merchandise, and eroding the desirability of big brands amongst a certain demographic.

Muchnick: Yes definitely. Knowing that a t-shirt you own is unique to you, and isn’t worn by every other person you see, is great.

Matt: I think that now this is possible, we’re going to see the true demand for this. Obviously not everyone can do it. If you lack imagination, then it’s easier to go and buy a brand name, but the extra effort is worth it.

Muchnick: Yes, I feel the same for how we consume information as well.
News used to be: go to CNN, see the same exact page.

Matt: Now you can customise what you consume intellectually as well.

Muchnick: Exactly. There are so many great sites that now customize information to exactly what you want, it’s an amazing time to be alive, as cheesy as that sounds.

Matt: No, I think that you’re right. We’re definitely in an age where information is the most valuable commodity, and these sites are experimenting with different ways to plough through that information in a sensible way. The only problem I can see is that they only work if you’re well aligned with the community. They won’t work as well for the average person in the street.

Muchnick: Which means in 10 years from now, all business people will be really, really internet savvy, as they were the teens from now.

I can’t imagine what web 3.0 will bring.

Today I had the chance to have a look around the Jet fusion reactor in Culham. For those that don’t know what fusion is, it basically is a method of creating plentiful nuclear energy that has no atmospheric pollution, is inherently safe and creates no long-term nuclear waste.

The only problem is that it doesn’t work, yet. Jet is currently the largest such reactor in the world, and runs for a few minutes at a time. ITER is an international effort to be built in France, that should run for hours at a time, one step closer to sustained power. However, it is likely that it will take until 2050 to get usable energy out of fusion.

Some scientists believe that it will ultimately work, others don’t. The scale of the site is amazing though; you get tired walking from one end of the experiment to the other.

Read this review on Slashdot.

Ever since the first codes and ciphers were developed, there has been a battle between those who want to keep their information secret, and those who want to read that information. It has been a purely intellectual war, but one that is often driven by motives from above that are far more violent. This book chronicles that battle, from it’s inception, to the modern day, and outlines the techniques used to obfuscate information, and the fascinating history of the application of those techniques.

Cryptography has been a tool largely used by governments to avoid their communications being read by the enemy or other unfriendly states, but historically it has also been utilised by individuals to protect their more questionable or taboo activities from discovery.

This battle is presented in the book as a rather bipolar trend; cryptographers trying to protect data and crypt-analysts trying to discover the meaning of that data. I found this to be slightly misleading. The representation of the history of the field as a constant struggle between two distinct parties does make for a more entertaining read, and adds an element of conflict by conjuring images of an ancient and continual intellectual game, but in reality these two groups are often one and the same.

Whilst I admit that the race to develop stronger codes and ciphers was in many ways separate from the race to break them, they were also inextricably linked, and undertaken by the same people. One has to allow a certain amount of poetic license in popular science books, especially in this case, as it has lightened what could have been a dry topic.

The way in which the book is structured allows a complete novice access. Starting from the first discoveries in cryptography and working forward chronologically, whilst explaining the method behind the discoveries, educates the reader in basic technique without effort. One reads a fascinating historical account, and later realises that they now have a good understanding of the mathematical concepts behind these approaches they’ve been reading of.

The book places these techniques into context, giving historical examples of their use. Often they are revealed to have played large and important parts in famous events, ranging from wars and political plots, to events which are not even strictly related to cryptography.

For example is is shown how crypt-analytic approaches were utilised in the decipherment of ancient languages such as hieroglyphics. These languages are dead, in that there are no living individuals who have the ability to read them, and no information was available to help in their decipherment. By studying the frequency of letters or symbols in the text, as when attempting to break a cipher, it was possible to slowly read meaning into the text, and map the alphabet.

Many of these scripts were decrypted by amateur crypt-analysts, rather than academics. One point the author makes is that there are still many that remain a mystery, such as the Etruscan and Indus scripts. One has to wonder whether a book like this, combined with the current national fixation with puzzles such as Soduko, would create a resurgence in interest, and lead to some of these being broken.

One interesting point that the book makes is that the vast majority of work performed by cryptographers is done in secret, largely for security agencies all over the world, and that this has been true for some time. Therefore it is not uncommon for crypt-analysts to receive no recognition for their work, or to have a discovery attributed to them long after their death. These organizations must classify the work in the interest of national security, so in a way this book stands as an anonymous tribute to their cunning and multidisciplinary talent.

Examples from the book of such discoveries include Charles Babbage breaking the Vigenere cipher in 1854, which only came to light in the 1970s. The author suggests that the work was kept secret to aid the Royal Navy, as it occurred just after the Crimean War started. The credit for the discovery instead fell to a retired Prussian army officer who independently discovered it in 1863.

This is shown to be one of the enduring themes of the story of cryptography, leading right through to the 1970s where credit for developing the RSA cryptographic technique went to Diffie, Hellman and Merkle in 1975, despite being developed in 1969 at GCHQ, a fact that was only publicly admitted in 1997.

A section of the book that will be of particular appeal to computer scientists is where cryptography is shown to have given birth to computing. Born from the desire for a method to perform simple operations on numbers very quickly. Computers now dominate the field of cryptography and crypt-analysis, and their ability to perform a task millions of times with no errors has transformed the science. It is also noted how much we rely on cryptography daily, in areas such as e-commerce, where our details are encrypted without us even being aware of the fact.

The final chapter is an examination into the politics of cryptography, and a balanced look into the ethical implications of governmental snooping on communication, versus the possible benefits of reducing serious crime and terrorism. This is clearly a very pertinent point in todays political climate, and a balanced look at this issue is a very valuable thing. With the heightened risk of terrorist attack, or at least the public perception of such, the government are intercepting more and more communications for analysis, and encryption by criminals is becoming more and more popular.

The book covers the topic well; from governmental use, to anecdotes about lovers exchanging secret messages. Throughout this the reader is constantly being eased into the mathematical technique behind, in a manner that does not require a background in mathematics. There is an appendix to the book, in the form of 5 cipher challenges for the reader to attempt to crack. The knowledge gleaned from the book should be preparation enough to do so, and will fascinate the curious nature of the books audience.

Buy the book on Amazon.