Flip ...

“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”

As you may have noticed I’ve been giving vlogging a go recently. This is because for Christmas K bought me a Flip camera.

I love the fact that it’s as simple as my Lomo camera but you can see what you take immediately on the small screen at the back.

I still need to work on editing, my copy of Pinnacle doesn’t support MPEG4, and it will be a while until I have something as good as these….

Evernote ...

One thing I’m glad about is that Google Reader doesn’t have a count of starred items.

I read around 300 newsfeeds in Reader and keep around 200 articles which I star per month to read “later”.

Some of those appear on my shared items feed most are there waiting for me to either read them or to keep whatever handy tip, idea or place to go that’s caught my eye somewhere safe.

To try to clear the backlog of three years saving things I’m now using Evernote to organise them into something a little more structured and searchable.

It’s early days at the moment but things are looking a little neater, even if it’s only the things from October…

The Age Old Skill Of Telephone Support ...

“OK, but I think we need to use Net Meeting so you can try this on my system”.

At this point I give up explaining that the error message, “You do not have rights to run this service on the server” has nothing to do with how Internet Explorer runs on my laptop.

Of course it was kind of this person from tech support to dump my cache and clear out my cookies. I smiled as I watched them do that and remember the days when people who thought they had a little knowledge used to tell everyone that was the fix for all sorts of ills on the Internet.

I connect to their “system” using Net Meeting, watch them share their desktop (revealing their IE Window where they are Googling the error message and the chat window to a colleague asking for more help with this), connect and run up IE.

We both fall silent as the error re-appears.

“I cannot fix this - you need to contact another help desk for second line support”.

Something tells me I’ll be back in Net Meeting soon…

Phorm : An Update ...

You may remember me writing about Phorm earlier this year.

Basically several UK ISPs will be selling your browsing habits to a third party so they can watch where you go and sell your data target their adverts.

The situation is looking a little rocky for Phorm at the moment with their shareprice taking a tumble and them struggling to get agreement with the ISPs

No significant progress has been made in Phorm’s dealings with the UK’s other two largest ISPs. Its statement today continued: “Phorm expects that Virgin Media and TalkTalk will commence consumer trials in due course. Following successful completion of these trials and an appropriate planning period, it is currently expected that Phorm’s platform will be rolled-out across these networks.”

Speaking to The Reg, Virgin Media maintained its position that no decision has been made on whether to deploy the system. It conducted a lab test some months ago during negotiations with Phorm, but has not moved beyond planning since.

A TalkTalk spokesman said that its position also remains unchanged. “We do still intend to introduce this system but we’re not committed to a particular date,” he said. “The key thing for us is that it will be an opt-in proposition.”

If you want to know more, visit BadPhorm

NowPublic ...

Amy Judd over at NowPublic has kindly selected one of my pictures for a news story about the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square.

I really need to start doing something serious with photography …

How We All Got Here ...

This NeXT workstation (a NeXTcube) was used by Tim Berners-Lee as the first Web server on the World Wide Web. Today, it is kept in Microcosm, the public museum at the Meyrin site of CERN, in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland.

The document resting on the keyboard is a copy of “Information Management: A Proposal,” which was Berners-Lee’s original proposal for the World Wide Web.

The label on the cube itself has the following text: “This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!”

Just below the keyboard (not shown) is a label which reads: “At the end of the 80s, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web using this Next computer as the first Web server.”

500 ...

Arghh, I seem to have a sick and broken weblog.

Every time I try to post or maintain this place it falls over with a 500 error.

Hopefully those nice people at my hosters Acenet will be sorting it soon.

The Long Journey From 3 to 4 ...

I’ve decided it’s time to upgrade.

Movable Type 4 has been out a while now and seems pretty stable it also supports a few features I’d like offer here such as iPhone support, the ability to subscribe to follow up comments on postings, threaded comment responses etc. Oh, and it’s something vaguely technical and geeky to do.

The other reason is that increasingly the content for this blog is being pulled from other sites across the Net. I now use Flickr for pictures (and perhaps video), Google Reader for things I find in other RSS feeds, Twitter to update Facebook and for microblogging and Friendfeed as a means of pulling it all together. Now I need a better solution to present and syndicate that content on my blog.

But, at the moment, that’s a little way off. I need to move some pictures around, remove some old sub-sites and free up a little disk space before I venture into the world of PHP.

Mix and Mux ...

Remember a few years ago when we discovered Mixed Tape ?

Now we have Muxtape a neat way to upload some MP3s and roll your own mixtape that others can share and download.

After all the problems with copyright material on the Net I can’t imagine it lasting forever so make sure you go visit it soon.

The Good, The Bad and the Just Plain Sexy ...

Shirin Oskooi is the Product Manager for Google Calendar and seems very happy with his latest product, Google Calendar Sync :

Official Google Blog: Google Calendar Sync

I was probably the most excited person on the team when we started developing it, because now I can access my calendar at home or on my laptop, on Google Calendar or in Outlook. When I add an event to the Outlook calendar on my laptop, Google Calendar Sync syncs it to my Google Calendar — and since I also have Google Calendar Sync running on my desktop, the event then syncs from Google Calendar to Outlook calendar on my desktop. All of my calendar views are always up to date, and I can choose whichever one I want to use.

Sadly, I’m less impressed. Most of my Outlook calendar is full of invites sent by other people. These don’t seem to be copied across to my Google Calendar making it more or less useless to me. Another nice feature I would have expected Google to include would be support for authenticating proxy servers for outbound Internet connections. If Google want to move their business on from simply using their applications in fun to using them in business they need better designed, more feature rich applications.

Much better is the support offered to iPhone and iTouch users over at the BBC iPlayer.. Within a day of announcing it’s support for this new platform I was sitting in bed watching Mad Man. Things seem to have moved on a long way since the BBC’s head of technology Ashley Highfield said :

BBC ‘not in bed with Bill Gates’ over iPlayer - News - Tech.co.uk

We have 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK and, as far as our server logs can make out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are Linux users.”

Perhaps no one told him what the iPlayer runs on. Mind you this is the same man who thinks DAB has, “mass market appeal”.

Aside from the problems for all those people whose ISP caps their downloads the industry as whole has some major concerns over video streaming :

Telco 2.0: BBC’s iPlayer nukes “all you can eat” ISP business model

The key outputs from the Plusnet data is that in January:

* more customers are streaming;
* streamers are using more; and most importantly
* peak usage is being pushed up

This equates for Plusnet to streaming cost increasing in total to £51.7k/month from £17.2k, or an increase of 18.3p/user from 6.1p/user. This is a 200% cost increase in just the first MONTH of the service.

If we assume that the Plusnet base of 282k customers is a representative sample of the whole UK internet universe than we can draw some interesting conclusions about the overall impact of the iPlayer on the UK internet. On the whole UK IPstream base of 8.5m the introduction of the iPlayer would equate to an increase in costs to £1.5m in January from 500k.

Perhaps I’d better enjoy my streaming while I can.

I’ve been tempted recently to get a sub-notebook for those moments when the TV doesn’t interest me but I don’t want to be stuck upstairs alone. The MacBook Air is a little outside of my price range but the ASUS Eee PC looks a good alternative, if you can find one around. Luckily there’s a rather nifty stock checker which I’m going to keep an eye on …

Neighbourhood Watch...

Those nice people over at mySociety have been working for a while now on a new facility for reporting problems to local councils.

FixMyStreet allows anyone to report problems which FixMyStreet passes onto the relevant authority.

FixMyStreet was paid for via the Department for Constitutional Affairs Innovations Fund and launched a year ago and went through a name change recently.

The site runs as a charity and I wonder if that is one of the problems with it. It’s competitor CommunityFix has a better designed look and feel and at first glance seems to win as it uses Google Maps rather than what appears to be iffy scans of local authority plans.

Why on earth does the summary of all reports not scroll with the column headings remaining fixed and just what is the difference between “New problems”, “Older problems”, “Old problems state unknown”, “Recently fixed” and “Old fixed”?

I’d much rather see some naming and shaming of councils in a summary form. I’m not interest in Aberdeen City Council just the one who should be sorting out the underpass flooding down the road from me. One nice summary page with my local councilors, their contact details, a mug shot of them and their attendance record in Parliament (where relevant).

What I do like about FixMyStreet is the RSS feed for my local area and the summary page showing the problems reported. But why isn’t the date they were reported shown? Just how long have those bollards been missing ?

Over at EGov Monitor Stephen F. King writes about the problems with these types of sites :

eGov monitor - A Policy Dialogue Platform |

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of FMS to date, and its future potential, the views of a range of stakeholders were obtained: developers, local government officers responsible for e-government and customer services at two councils (Council A and Council B), and prospective users of the site.

Whilst FMS is very easy to use, and clearly popular with the prospective users surveyed, its impact to date has been somewhat limited. None of the prospective users had heard of the site, and only one of the five council officers interviewed had heard of it. We do not have figures for the total number of problems reported to Council A in the first year of FMS’ operation, but suspect that the 155 problems posted on the FMS site at the time of writing represent a very small proportion of these. The site needs more publicity. Not surprisingly, the local government officers interviewed voiced a number of concerns. The key concern was over the accuracy of the reports (from “bogus” posters?), and whether fixes were reported quickly by the site (or even reported at all). Because the local councils don’t own the site, they cannot get their messages across to the users, for example to explain why problems are not being fixed or to outline their future plans for the area. This is part of the management of expectations, which is seen as key by the councils – who also feel aggrieved that their good work is not being reflected in improved public esteem. Presumably a mechanism for enabling the council to post to FMS when a problem has been resolved from their point of view would be useful. This would provide the council with a “voice” in the process, without denying the citizen’s voice.

I hope that the people at FixMyStreet have taken notice of these comments. Not all of them I agree with but I believe that mySociety are the best people to make this work, the problems are not impossible to resolve and with enough people using the system councils can be encouraged to work with the system rather than against it.

Got a problem ? Get someone to FixMyStreet.

Too Little, Too Late ...

Has the tide turned for Facebook ?

BBC NEWS | Business | Facebook ‘sees decline in users’

Facebook has seen its first drop in UK users in January, new industry data indicates.

Users fell 5% to 8.5 million in January from 8.9 million in December, according to data from Nielsen Online.

This was the first drop in user numbers since July 2006 when Nielsen began compiling data on the site.

Now, I’m not a prolific user of Facebook but I can see just how bored people are getting with it.

Not every one is into micro-blogging and there’s a limit to anyone’s patience with the number of the number of requests and notifications anyone can wade through.

True there are some good changes to the Facebook interface of late but the basic problem is not everyone has the same likes and dislikes and I’m not that sure I want to know my stripper name, be hugged or buy a friend.

Where Facebook wins is the dramatic take up it enjoyed, the fact that it’s free and you can link up with people you lost contact with.

Sounds a little like FriendsReunited doesn’t it ? I wonder just what the future for FriendsReunited is other than a marketing database for ITV. It’s look and feel is years out of date, the interface is truely appauling and not extensible like Facebook is. The management of the site is dodgy - I regularily get emails telling me that new people have signed up to FriendsReunited but when I check there are none. You have to pay and if you do pay there’s no way of telling if people are still active on the site.

How sad that both sites seem to have wasted a chance. Facebook by being too snappy and Web 2.0 and FriendsReunited by running on a old business model and looking rather an untrendy uncle at a family wedding.

London Free List ...

For almost as long as I have been writing this blog, and whenever I have been planning a trip into London, one of the best websites I have checked for what is on has been LondonFreeList.

Now, sadly, they are closing on 10th February.

If you are in London this weekend and want to check out the very best in free, or nearly free events make sure you check them out.

Leslie Harpold ...

This week a year ago Leslie Harpold died.

To celebrate her life Lance Arthur has written a series of articles to remember her and share her wisdom with those who perhaps didn’t know her when she was alive. It’s not quite the same as the Leslie’s yearly advent calendar but it’s a great reminder of Leslie and what she held so dear.

Do yourself a favour and read these before you set any New Year’s resolutions.

• WWLD? No. 1: Clothing Optionals
• WWLD? No. 2: Keeping Connected
• WWLD? No. 3: Organizing your environment
• WWLD? No. 4: Living Your Life

Shopping Online ...

BBC NEWS | Business | Online shopping expected to soar

Credit card firms are predicting a rise of more than 50% in online shopping this Christmas, compared with 2006.

Shoppers will spend £5.6bn online this month - more than 10% of all plastic card spending

I think I came close to spending that today.

In the next few weeks as the boxes arrive this place will look like Postman Pat’s idea of heaven.

Longing, Julmust and Other Christmas Drinks ...

Here’s a look around the Internet tonight :

• The Girl in the Cafe makes me wish I’d sorted out that trip before Christmas with her latest report
• Stpiduko provides a useful collection of Youtube videos including some covering the Holga camera.
• Rachel North is back and blogging and reports on a man who had gone into a diabetic coma on a bus in Leeds was shot twice with a Taser gun by police who feared he may have been a security threat.
• In Sweden Francis Strand enjoys a glass of julmust as Christmas approaches
• While Henry tells us why should be savouring Baileys Irish Cream

I’m off for a warming brandy to try to shift this cold…

On The Top Of The Downs ...

An amazingly warm and sunny day. On the Downs you could see for miles and all you heard was silence and birdsong.

Chinese Bake-Away, Nuclear Power in an Earthquake Zone and a Podcast Queen...

• There’s an interesting article by Paul Feldman over at Freakonomics saying the underground fires in China alone contribute as much CO2 to the atmosphere each year as all the cars and light trucks in the U.S.

• Albena Simeonova at Comment is Free wonders if it really is sensible to build a nuclear reactor in an earthquake zone in Bulgaria

• Jayne Morgan, podcast queen, launches Podcart, “On this site you’ll also find all kinds of interesting things related to podcasts and podcasting in South Africa – whether you’re a listener, a podcaster or someone who’d like to use podcasting as one of the ways your business communicates.” - go check it out now.

If you are in the UK Panorama tonight at 21:00 carries the Alan Johnston story.

GIMP...

Amongst all the fun of learning Unix I’ve found a little time to look at Gimp, the GNU Image Manipulation Program as a means of editing photographs.

Normally I use a variety of tools to produce pictures. These include Nikon Browser for things I take with my Nikon D100; Zoombrowser EX for things taken with my Canon G6; Noise Ninja for anything taken over 200 ASA; Photoshop for more serious editing and Photomatrix Pro for HDR and tone mapped images.

I’m not really sure what part Gimp may have in how I deal with the pictures I take but looking at the pool of pictures submitted to Gimp Users Flickr pool it may be an interesting ride…

Burma ...

“We stand alongside the citizens of Burma in their peaceful protests. We urge you to oppose a violent crackdown on the demonstrators, and to support genuine reconciliation and democracy in Burma. We pledge to hold you accountable for any further bloodshed.”

Sign the petition and support the marchers

Uzbecks, Arsenal and Boris Johnson ...

Mr Eugenides: Blogging and Free Speech (updated)

“If you can be silenced for calling a businessman a crook, then you can be silenced for calling a politician a crook, too. Then it’s everyone’s problem.”

It seems Tim Ireland’s site Bloggerheads has been taken down by the latest Russian Uzbeck billionaire to reach these shores. Not only has he lost Bloggerheads but Craig Murray, Bob Piper and the prospective candidate for London mayor Boris Johnson have also been taken out by Alisher Usmanov as the webhoster caved in faced by the letters from his lawyers, Schillings.

So, why all fuss ? It seems that Usmanov has his eyes set on buying Arsenal football club. Tim posted some comments on why this wouldn’t be the best deal in the world for Arsenal. This all relates back to some comments made by the formal UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, about Usmanov and some less than professional business dealings.

What’s that got to do with Boris I hear you ask. Well, nothing is the answer. The problem was the hoster just decided to take out Murray’s, Piper’s and Boris’s as well - I guess some poor admin got jumped on from a great height and hit the delete key as fast as he could.

As Mr Eugenides states :

Mr Eugenides: Blogging and Free Speech (updated)

“And let’s be clear on this point; these blogs are down not because Usmanov has been libelled, but because he says he’s been libelled, and has a room full of paid monkeys sitting at typewriters firing off theatening letters to that effect.”

At the moment, sadly, that’s working in the blogsphere - imagine that approach with the offside rule ?

Free speech is a right - it needs to be preserved, upheld and defended - everywhere.

For more on this :

• Mr Eugenides: Blogging and Free Speech
• Chicken Yoghurt: Public Service Announcement
• Tom Watson MP

Thank you Google ..

At long last Google Reader has a search capability. Odd that it’s taken so long for a search company to add it but at last they have.

Now I can find that long lost article on obscure cameras ….

A Sad Update ...

Rachel from north London

“Mum died in the early hours of this morning. Dad was with her. The family had been at the hospital since Monday morning, sleeping there, being there, keeping faith. Dad never left her side. Day and night, her husband, and children and brother were always with her, praying and talking, keeping silence, thanking her, holding her hand, telling her again and again how much she is loved. She knew. She was not afraid. It was terrible but it was also beautiful.”

We Can’t Turn Them Away ...

Head over to Dan Hardie’s weblog and read the plight of the Iraqis employed by British Government who now face jihadi violence as we pull out from the country.

The response of our government seems to be that these people “register with the UN refugee agency” It seems morally wrong to abandon these people simply because they were brave enough to help us.

If you feel the same way follow Dan’s advise and contract your MP. He provides details on how to do this or you can use websites such as Write to Them.

Thanks.

Facebook ...

Suddenly I feel very, very old.

My attempt to join the hip, happening Web 2.0, interconnected world seems to be floundering and it’s all due to my age.

Hardly anyone I know is on Facebook and my attempts to discover people fell at the first hurdle when I scanned the alumni of my old college. As Jayne (one of the few I know on Facebook) said:

“i have noticed that the other alumni for QMC are very very young. I mean stupidly young. Does that mean we are very hip and trendy and are communing with the happening generation in the new social media thang. Or we are sad old gits who haven’t got a proper life in the grown up world.”

I’m even more depressed after reading her profile. Self-employed as a “Copy and feature writer, podcast producer, media trainer”. What on earth is a media trainer ? Are my MP3s too slothful ? She even has a podcast player on her profile !

Lets hope that the impending court case against Facebook by rival site ConnectU doesn’t stop us all trying to find people from our past (and present) or prevent Jayne enjoying the Scrotum Artists group …..

The Return of the Kilted One ...

Evil chuckle : strokes cat.

So, my attempts to shame Troozers back to the world of blogging have finally worked.

Over the other side of the Blogsphere, on a shiny new domain, a brand new blog is born (note to self stop listening to Johnny Mathis).

Ladies and gentlemen fire up your browsers and head over to Andy’s Blog sooth his paranoia and watch him sort out the problem he has with tubes.

My nagging attention will now move to getting Casper’s fingers off his balls long enough to let him update his blog….

CSS Woes ...

While I was struggling with a copy of Firebug trying to make some CSS work properly, then trying to make a tag cloud in Movable Type (hat tip to Jay Buys at Code Scene for these instructions which worked and hiss and boo to Cloud Nine whose plugin I couldn’t get to work and whose site seems a little light on support and updates) other people were using their time more profitably.

Diamond Geezer mourns the sealing off of the Olympic Park; Jason Kottke answers my need to get my waistline down for my holiday with a new diet pill and Francis Strand’s enjoyment of dressing up gets interrupted by China’s President Hu Jintao.

Tonight Alan Johnston faces his ninety-first day in captivity. Join the 148,000 people who have signed the petition demanding his immediate release here.

400 Days of Abuse - Your Help Is Needed ...

Evenin’ all.

Some of you reading this may well be in a cyber cafe, library or somewhere with cheap Internet access in good old London town. If you are (or recently have been) please take a moment to turn to your left and smile at the person sitting there, then the right and do the same then please check out this entry on Rachel North’s blog.

If you see (or have seen) the person described there (one Felicity Jane Lowde of Oxford) then please contact your local police or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

As Rachel writes :

“Therefore I say that the best way to protect free speech and blogging from the damage done to it by people like Felicity Lowde is to use the internet for good purposes. We do not need to be regulated, we can look after ourselves and our own, and we can self-regulate. Here is an opportunity to help the police bring a woman who brings blogging into disrepute, to justice, and to do so safely and legally.

Please do not do anything that could jeopardise her arrest and sentencing. Please do not respond to her or anything she says. Please just help the police do their job of bringing her to justice.”

Rachel from north London: Cyber-stalking: Your help is needed

Thanks for your help….

BSOD ...

You walk away to make a cup of tea and at that very moment an attractive blue screen appears.

It looks like it’s time for the annual laptop rebuild ….

Satin Dolls ...

Baby, shall we go out skippin?
Careful, amigo, you’re flippin’,
Speaks Latin that satin doll.

Satin Doll By Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn and Johnny Mercer.

Over at Fistful of Euros the third annual Satin Pajamas Awards are up now.

Loads of worthy potential winners but if you’re a reader of Petite Anglaise, Francis Strand, Random Acts of Reality or Rachel In North London then head over there and vote.

Turning Hope Into Action ...

We hope that people can take the despair they have felt and channel it into positive action. We have said we must look forward and turn hope into action.

‘We believe our Madeleine is safe and we won’t go home without her’ | the Daily Mail

As the hunt for Madeleine McCann enters another week just want can we all do ? How can we take the request of her father to “turn into action” and make it something real ?

Here’s a few ideas :

• Display one of the posters available from www.findmadeleine.com in your shop / work

• Take notice of the people around you - if you’re an estate agent do your clients have a child who meets Madeleine’s description or a teacher who has a new starter at their school in fact anyone in service industrys from dental nurse to pizza delivery driver can help

• Publicise the issue using one of the banners available from www.findmadeleine.com on your blog, myspace page or website. The code to do this available here

• If you were in the area where Madeleine went missing and you have pictures of the area and of the people that were there at the time you can upload them to www.madeleine.ceopupload.com for review by the UK police. If your photo’s are on film then Jessops are supporting this latest initiative and will digitize your pictures free of charge. More information from Jessops here

It doesn’t take much time in your day and your contribution could just make that break through we all want so much.

Virtual Tourist ...

Scattered on the floor are holiday brochures, splattered across my laptop are a selection of Firefox windows with travel sites.

Outside it’s grey and drizzling. Inside the heating is on.

Somewhere there’s a holiday ….

The Day The Internet Stopped ...

After seeing his son send his first text (and doing it faster than he could) then being shamed for having an email account for over a year and never using it Martin - at last and under instruction - sends a mail …

Welcome One, Welcome All ...

It always makes me laugh reading through the logs for this site.

Here’s a selection of recent arrivals via Google search :

• The person looking to get a copy of “is safely gathered in pamphlet download”
• Someone who mistook me for “Melinda Messenger”
• The person seeking business knowledge in the form of “the do,s and don,ts of operating a gypsy retail garden center”
• Someone who hasn’t seen my waistline and confused me with “tomboy models”
• The person who has seen me and thinks I needs to visit “offline department stores that sell padded male briefs for males”

Alan Johnston - How You Can Help ...

If you have a blog, or a Myspace page, or just a simple website go here, get the code for the button shown above and help to publicise the plight of the BBC reporter held captive since 12th March.

Thank you.

One Tough Lady ...

Rachel North nearly died in a vicious rape and thought she had suffered the worst ordeal of her life. But then she boarded a crowded Tube train on July 7 this year…

Rachel’s story-News-TimesOnline

I read some amazing blogs but Rachel North’s story, and her writing, always catch my eye. Her blog Rachel from North London served up a first hand account of 7/7 and provides challenging and interesting political reading from a woman who has already had more than her fair share of adversity to overcome.

Now comes the revelation that she’s another blogger who has had to suffer cyber-stalking. Typical of Rachel she has been (at the correct time) open and honest as to what she has been made to suffer.

It’s unfortunately seen as part of life on the internet these days. But one person went too far, and either could not, or would not stop. I can now finally tell you all the story. And having told it, I would like to draw a line, and never think of it again.

Rachel from north London: Felicity Jane Lowde of Oxford has been found guilty of harassment

I hope so too. Life is way too short, and too precious, to have to spend on dealing with this stuff. I’m looking forward to more incisive political writings and the odd tale of wedding plans from Rachel.

Some Good News...

Anyone who watched BBC4’s Tube Night the other day may have seen the Arena programme featuring Ted Batchelor, the lost property manager’s attempts to re-unite a urn containing cremated human remains with the family who lost them.

Annie Mole over at Going Underground reports :

Amazingly the family have been found, thanks to John Fisher, an amateur genealogist who took it upon himself to find the family. Quite how he did this I don’t know, but the family had the urn amongst some luggage which was stolen from a British Rail train. Thieves had taken the bag with the urn onto the Tube and discarded it when they realised it was of no value to them.

Now Molly Maile has finally been reuinited with her father’s ashes.

London Underground Tube Diary - Going Underground’s Blog

In another part of the blogsphere amazing news from Petite Anglaise on the results of her recent doocing :

I won. A year’s salary, plus costs. I will only get this compensation if my ex-employer does not lodge an appeal (they will have one month in which to do so once the written version of the decision is published in about a fortnight’s time). But right now, the principle is enough for me. Round one to petite anglaise!

Petite Anglaise

Amazing news !

Chinese Takeaway ...

So, I have to bid farewell to my Chinese readers. Not because I want to but because the Chinese authorities have blocked this site.

I can’t say I’m surprised. Writing about Tibet and China seems to have been a feature of this blog over the years. Openly writing about sponsoring Tibetans in exile in India must have also caught the censor’s eye.

How do I know this ? Well, thanks to the Great Firewall of China which allows web masters and bloggers to check if their sites are blocked.

So, just in case the censor is still reading, here’s a little reprise of what shouldn’t be read in China :

• Death on the Slopes of Chomolungma
• Oh Mr Hu ….
• Chinese Whispers
• Happy Birthday : The Stolen Child

Unfair ...

“Playing fair is a central precept of both citizen journalism and blogging.”

Principles of Citizen Journalism | Center for Citizen Media

Clearly that hasn’t happened for Kathy Sierra.

As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I’m not. I’m at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I’ve been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that’s not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs… blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers.

Creating Passionate Users: Death threats against bloggers are NOT “protected speech” (why I cancelled my ETech presentations)

I’ve been around the ‘Net for a while and seen people bully, hate and manipulate from the comfort of a warm ISP but to see this erupt and affect such luminaries as Kathy Sierra and Robert Scoble is upsetting.

Maryam and several others here at PodTech asked me about it and are concerned since the same sites that are attacking Kathy also mentioned me and Maryam. Maryam is really freaked out about it. So am I.

Taking the week off ｫ Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger

Already the bloqsphere is talking about the use of OpenID as a means of stopping this senseless bullying.

Blogging was supposed to be challenging and fun. Not the place to threaten and hate it seems today to have become.

Irrepressible Info ...

Egyptian blogger jailed for four years|The Register

An Egyptian blogger found guilty of insulting both Islam and the country’s president has been jailed for four years, Reuters reports.

An Alexandria court sentenced former law student Abdel Karim Suleiman for eight articles he wrote in 2004. He had been in custody since November last year over the polemical outpourings which included one claiming that “al-Azhar in Cairo, one of the most prominent seats of Sunni Muslim learning, was promoting extreme ideas”.

Another ill-advised musing - headlined The Naked Truth of Islam as I Saw it - reportedly “accused Muslims of savagery during clashes between Muslims and Christians in Alexandria in 2005”.

Regarding Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Suleiman “likened him to the dictatorial pharaohs who ruled ancient Egypt.”

China locks up online “addicts” for harsh rehab|The Seattle Times

No one is comfortable talking about the third floor of the clinic, where serious cases — usually two or three at a time — are housed. Most have been addicted to the Internet for five or more years, Tao said, are severely depressed and refuse counseling. One sliced his wrists but survived. These teens are under 24-hour supervision.

Led by Tao Ran, a military researcher who built his career by treating heroin addicts, the clinic uses a tough-love approach that includes counseling, military discipline, drugs, hypnosis and mild electric shocks.

Join the campaign, at least sign the pledge : online AND offline human rights should be impossible to repress.

No Longer in Focus ...

Sad news today of the passing of Lynn Rockwell who lost her battle against cancer.

Not just a member of the photoblog community on the Internet she was a open and honest blogger who took on the challenge of explaining her battle with a terminal disease.

Her photoblog Focus on Photography lives on; there’s a final post to her blog here and a tribute at Photoblogs here.

Chicken Matsui ...

I’ve finally given in and got an MP3 player.

After wondering for ages if I needed one the backlog of podcasts that I have to listen to and my attempts to get out once a day for walk finally convinced me.

Not needing to carry around a life’s collection of CDs and assorted MP3s I plumped for cheap device, simple to use and with the advantage that I could record onto it.

I had visions of travelling, listening to some music on a beach and recording sounds from markets and musicians to podcast myself.

So, back from PC World I came armed with the Matsui MAT110MR. I plugged it into the PC and downloaded a few podcasts, wandered around the house and listened happily to them.

Back I went to load some music and more podcasts and that is where the fun started. Either the device sulks and refuses to appear or it appears, needs formatting, allows you to copy to it then refuses to restart when removed from the PC.

After trying for over an hour (and listening to some of the backlog of podcasts) I give up and turn to Google where I discover that this sort of behaviour seems to be a “feature” of this little device.

A sense a trip to PC World is due …

A Tale of Two Posts ...

You may remember I wrote yesterday about the sad death of Leslie Harpold.

Early in the morning, trying to make sense of all the posts listed over at Del.icio.us, I tried to put across my own feelings in my own words.

Later, I was ideally searching at Blogsearch when I came across a post with the same words, the same idiosyncratic phrasing.

Now, I suppose that Parnell over at Ireland’s Few could have decided, like me to use Myspace as an example rather than Blogger, and that those particular words described Leslie the best way he could. Perhaps I have found a like coul on the Net.

Then again perhaps not. You decide. There’s this post and then there’s this one …

The Sadness of the Seventh ...

Her Advent Calender is stuck on the 7th. Leslie Harpold has died.

She was a blogger before the word was invented. A prodigious, inspiring and amazing writer her guiding hand rested gently on harpold.com, Smug, 43Folders, The Morning News and many others.

Open, unique, groundbreaking and challenging : anyone with a Myspace owes it to this woman.

Hold Very Tight Please ...

Our highly trained team of webmonkeys are making a few changes to the bits and pieces which make this site run so hold tight and lets hope it all works at the end …

Elizabeth and Me ..

Today started dark and ended dark. For a brief moment in the middle of the day I turned the light off and sat on yet another conference call.

All day long, outside, it’s rained. All day long, inside, I’ve tried to deal with the vagaries of this project.

In amongst all this gloom and on a day off from school I caught up with Elizabeth’s news on Jabber throughout the day and wondered just when geography homework started to need a video camera ….

Clickstream ...

For a while now I have been trying to sort out just how to aggregate and read all the RSS streams I have been using.

I started off using FeedDemon, which worked well until the last update and then it started to slow up. As I was spending more and more time away from my home PC I started to look for a portable solution and that’s when I moved to Sage, the RSS reader add in to Firefox. For a while it seemed to be the solution I wanted but the hassle of moving subscriptions from one browser to another didn’t inspire me.

Now I have settled on Google Reader. It’s portable, lives on the web so I can use it from a number of PCs and manages to handle the feeds I want without slowing down. The other advantage is I can share out things I have seen.

So, if you fancy a potted tour around my corners of the Internet look here ….

Turn Here...

There’s been some discussion recently about the videos here and the quality of them.

The rather excellent Turn Here has much better videos. Short films, cool places including my old stamping ground of Uptown, Minneapolis, Tom’s Diner New York and this one on Krakow, Poland.

A Very Quiet Coup

p a s s i o n r e a s o n: Bangkok Coup blogging

“The Thai military have taken control of the city and a state of emergency has been declared in Bangkok.”

- security bulletin received

I’m safe right now, trying to monitor the news, however, the news just got blacked out.

Let’s hope it stays quiet.

Some other people live blogging events in Thailand’s capital are :

• Bangkokpundit
• 19Sep
• Metroblogging Bangkok

Taking Refuge in PHP

After a day which proved we had more severe challenges than anyone had considered I needed to prove I could still do something, anything, technical.

It’s not much but small and achievable mean that I can step back and say “I did that”. A few alterations to the template, a few additions around categories, a new Google site index and some things in background.

Not a vast amount but I can still do it, it still excites me and that’s why I came into IT.

Backlog ...

I can’t say it has been the best of days today at work but at least it’s over.

Tonight I’m still in the study, trying to catch up on my backlog of weblog reading, photos to process and CDs to burn.

I seem to have less and less time to do all this sort of stuff but a longer and longer list of things to do. I’m reluctant to stop blogging but trying to push myself to new areas photographically (which inevitably needs research, practice and time to get it right) and writing as well is taking time.

At least I now, finally, completed Dave and Mouse’s wedding pictures, got some CDs of the pictures copied and the pictures submitted for printing.

Now all I have to do is make some space on my PC to get the wedding video onto it for editing….

The Dangers of Doing This

Sad news from the blogsphere as another blogger is dooced. Just when will companies stop this petty minded attitude to something which doesn’t hurt them ?

Good luck Petite…

The Office...

Well it was sunny today ….

Life on your Thumb ...

Lifehacker has a really interesting piece on carrying your world around on a thumb drive.

I still have my Ipaq, despite it’s dodgy battery, but more and more I tend to move browsing, files and a whole lot more around on a thumb drive.

I wonder how long it will be before everything is web enabled like Writely from Google.

Travelling to China...

Remember this ?

Now look at this …

sigh

Alone with the Goats ...

It started with the wrong shoes.

The plan had been to go to the County Show. We drove to the park and ride car park. It started raining. We sat and waited. Then we noticed that rather than sensible shoes Joanne had small, thin, sparkly ballet style shoes on. The rain stopped and we arrived on the bus, avoided the mud at the gate and went to see some of the cattle and sheep.

Almost in stereo started the cries of “Hungry”. We queued up for chips as Richard and Joanne ran around, despite the advice to watch out for the mud. Then, from behind the van appeared what was once a little girl dressed in pink but now covered in mud.

After the chips started the cries of “tired” and “want to go home” and so that’s how I found myself alone with the goats whilst Martin caught the bus back to the car and then drove them home.

Despite the sun this was a cold day with the odd shower. Not at all like the other times we’d been here in the blazing sun and heat. I settled down to watch the show jumping with a cider and wondered how to get home. After some more cider it didn’t seem such a big problem.

Martin came back to watch the end of the show and wander around the car stalls with me (Golf or Alfa ?) and watch the heavy horses but by that time in the day even the goats had left …

Take One Google...

I’m more and more surprised at what you can do with Google.

The last few days I have been playing around with Google calendar and trying to layer together all the various bits of information I have into one calendar.

Now I discover that you can use Google to cook with.

Check out the Google recipe base here….

Getting People Talking...

Independent Online Edition > Homes

“In this virtual village, people know their neighbours well, do favours for each other, run errands, share resources, arrange social events, buy and sell things, get together to sort out communal problems, swap information on services in the locality, and sometimes just let off steam. And this is all done via the website.”

There’s an interesting report in The Independent on the efforts of the residents of the Jam Factory development, just to the south of Tower Bridge in London, to produce a sense of community by running their own intranet to share ideas, news and gather opinions about the environment that they live in.

Over the years I’ve run and written a few sites which have has some of the elements of myjamfactory.com such as discussion forums, private for sale ads and galleries. I’m a little surprised that some elements of this site aren’t integrated into the main site (such as the blogs) and I do wonder if Joomla would have been a better solution.

What does interest me is the ability of this type of site to knit together communities :

“Sarah Fry, 40, a costume designer, has lived at the Jam Factory for three years and admits: “The first thing I do in the morning is check what the gossip is on the network. I use the intranet as a thermometer for what’s going on. I take the temperature of the Jam Factory every morning.”

“Sometimes it’s really lively - people might all be sending congratulations to a couple getting married. When the temperature is low, it might be that there’s a complaint about someone leaving a door open. Or you might see that so-and-so has got a bed to sell. There might be a party invite, or an invitation to a good sale. Or someone might be saying: ‘My taps have gone, can someone help me find a plumber?’”

I can’t help feeling that something along these lines would be good where I live. The community is becoming fractured not because of the people who live here but simply because they don’t have the time to invest in residents committees and meetings.

Perhaps something virtual would replace that. Perhaps I need to pick up my mouse and start work …

Generation C

BBC NEWS | Technology | 3G mobiles ‘change social habits’

How do you use your 3G phone?

• Social gatekeepers: Fulcrum of a social network and use 3G mobiles to keep friends up to date
• Piratopians: Creative outsiders who use 3G phones to make short films and other broadcasts
• High Street hedonists: Use phones to show off new purchases, take pictures of items or asked for instant opinions from a dressing room

A study by The Future Laboratory concluded :

“Bloggers, film-makers and clubbers all benefit from 3G phones”

“The report’s authors dubbed the new generation of mobile phone users Generation C, with C meaning content. As well as offering bloggers the chance to post instantly to their own sites, researchers saw 3G phones used as a counterpoint to retailing, socialising, and as a tool for documenting their lives.”

“Men used the technical capabilities of their phones more extensively than women, the report suggested, often adopting fictional personas to make amateur news reports, dubbed the “Andrew Marr effect” by researchers.” Some women used their phones to take pictures of taxi drivers in an effort to guarantee personal safety. The increasing use of camera and video capabilities has already opened up new opportunities for phone users to contribute to news coverage on TV and online. And the time-honoured blind date could soon fall out of fashion, if the report’s conclusions are correct. More and more people might use 3G phones to check out a potential date before meeting them, or use video calls as part of an interactive dating service. “

I have enough problems with my ordinary phone …

Cast Adrift

It’s not often I post a link here really but this caught my eye.

It’s an online tracker for ship locations.

Busy isn’t it ?

Taking Stock

With the benefit of technology and a warm Internet connection we both managed to work from home today.

I struggled against a tide of email some of which was almost immediately answered proving that I wasn’t the only one sacrificing part of their Sunday while L ran a stock check and tried to explain to me what all those figures flying past really meant.

Luckily the day wasn’t all work. We both managed something creative. I took the dog proofing down and planted the pots in the front garden. OK not that creative but unlike a lot of my work a job with a start, middle and end. Also, one that was achievable and completed.

L took on a bigger challenge and picked up a pencil and some paper and produced after a four year break something I wish I could have produced after four years of trying….

Nominating

It’s that Bloggies time of year and the nominations are open for your favourite weblogs so make sure that you head along nominate and vote !

Resource Planning

I have a challenge from Amanda to put her resourcing spreadsheet on the Internet for her fellow directors to update.

I’ve been playing around with an easy way to host this Exel file and still make it updatable by all of them and I can’t figure out how to do it. So now I’m looking through Sourceforge trying to find a package which will suit what she wants to do.

I think this is going to take some time ….

Death by Dreamweaver

Sounds easy doesn’t it : a few changes to a website but an hour on I’m still no closer to sorting it.

Amanda’s gearing up for the birth in a few weeks and getting new Directors onboard to help her through maternity leave and to build the business. So, that means changes to the site and me trying to remember how and why I did things all that time ago.

There’s the comforting ding of a new message on MSN and the odd sense of hearing someone speak as you read what’s just arrived and then it’s back to the swearing as I try to push something into a place it doesn’t seem to want to go which, oddly, is what Amanda will be doing in a few weeks time….

OLPC

There’s a really cool initiative going on to provide a one laptop per child at a cost of $100 for every child.

Annan presents prototype $100 laptop at World Summit on Information Society - MIT News Office

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan unveiled the first working prototype of the $100 laptop Nov. 16 at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia. Annan was joined by Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and co-founder of the Media Lab at MIT, in presenting the laptop to the gathering.

The $100 laptop, first announced by Negroponte at the World Economic Forum in January 2005, is an ultra-low-cost, full-featured computer designed to dramatically enhance children’s primary and secondary education worldwide. It is the central project of the nonprofit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) association, which aims to equip the world’s schoolchildren and their teachers with a personal, portable, connected computer.

Whilst $100 doesn’t sound much to us it will be for people in the third world but at least this provides them access to computers and the Internet and that can’t be a bad thing.

The Curse of DXDIAG

A little while ago I picked up some educational software for Richard. I had this working on a laptop with no problems. Then I had to rebuild the laptop and it no longer worked.

I wrote to the suppliers who said it didn’t work with Windows 2000 : I wrote back and said well you state it does on the box.

Next, they asked me to run DXDIAG and send them the results. I got this back from them today.

“However I suspect from various forums on the web that these may not be available as the laptop wasn't designed to run Windows 2000 and other users have reported problems with graphics and sound on this system with 2000 or XP installed.”

Don’t you just hate it when people can’t be bothered to help and take the approach of it’s not desgined for this, you need to upgrade the drivers.

It’s a poor excuse for a poor product and it’s even poorer excuse to hide behind this approach.

Flocking to the Web

I’ve been a fan of Firefox for a while now and I just came across something which builds on the Mozilla codebase and says it will be the browsing experiance to have.

Flock offers a whole bunch of goodies and gadgets including the ability to search your history folder, something useful for us older, more forgetful surfers.

If you fancy flocking to the web check out the features here.

Offerings to the Computer Gods

Day one of a series of seminars and training programmes around the project which we are working on.

Meeting up again with the American suppliers was good and it’s nice to have all the team in one place. What would have been nicer would have been a server which worked. Shipped across Britain it arrived with me with no discs and no ability to load Linux, let alone the much missed wiki.

Getting back home I turned on the desktop pc to see only the Bios screen and a no boot disk message.

Clearly today the computer gods aren’t shining on me.

Apple's new Ipod

I wonder if the new video Ipod will change vlogging as the original Ipod did for podcasting. Pocket sized battery TVs never really took off but with high speed Internet, better battery technology and more people needing to timeshift things to fit into their lives perhaps now’s the time for this kind of device.

Maybe I need to look at an upgrade…

Radio as You Want It

Seems that Podcasts are now mainstream what with the BBC offering several shows in a podcast format and now Yahoo having a whole site devoted to podcasts.

Here’s a few that caught my ear :

• Cinecast - all the latest film reviews

• Eatfeed - the food and cookery podcast

• NPR - music new and old

Limboing

I’d turned down some website work the other day on the basis that I didn’t have the time or the patience so it’s a little ironic to find myself downloading the latest version of Limbo to start on making a new site.

This, however, was a long term committment and copies the type of sites I’ve done before. Unusually I won’t have access to the server, which is why it all needs to be done in a CMS which uses flat files rather than a database.

I should have taken the other work which may have involved photography and using Flash but this is an easier option and sometimes we all need to prove to ourselves we can still do reasonable work.

Fallen Fruit

I’m always amazed and inspired at the various ways people use the Internet and here’s an excellent site.

Apprently in some American states fruit from trees which overhangs public paths are public property. Fallenfruit maps these trees and provides people with an email alert when the fruit is ripe.

In fact they go further, from their manifesto :

“WE ASK all of you to petition your cities and towns to support community gardens and only plant fruit-bearing trees in public parks. Let our streets be lined with apples and pears! Demand that all parking lots be landscaped with fruit trees which provide shade, clean the air and feed the people. “

Now wouldn’t that be cool next summer….

Return of the Russians

One of the interesting things about email is that you never know what will appear in your inbox.

As I watched mine downloading today I saw a mail address I didn’t recognise go whizzing by, and it was one with a very large attachment.

It turned out to be 4 Mbs of pictures and news from the Russians I’d met on The Mall in the Summer.

Alexey seems well, having taken his family around Europe by low cost airlines to Spain, Germany and Holland they all went to Finland.

It’s really nice to hear from them and know they got home safely and also got the pictures.

Do svidaniya!

Welcome to Planet Linux

I’ve been wanting to play around with Linux for a while and, finally, I’ve got around to downloading the latest release of Whitebox Linux, installing it and wondering “How on earth do you do that on here”.

So far I have OpenOffice for general documents and XMMS for music from the Net.

What I need to do next is setup wireless networking, that means going into battle with Ndiswrapper.

I’m sure in the end I’ll get there but this isn’t a total conversion at the moment. I’m too aware that I can easily mess up and as easily be in the position of having to start again. We’ll see.

Blocked

One of the problems with writing every day is you can get writer’s block.

What should I say about today ? How should I say it ? I guess that’s an issue with any writer and one that a new website called the Imagination Prompt Generator tries to address.

The site is geared to people who write, blog and photography and provides a series of ideas around which you can let your imagination and, hopefully, your creativity run wild.

Push your imagination a little bit further here or get some ideas to write and blog here.

World Changing

World Changing provides a blog where “Models, Tools, and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future ” are discussed as well as a whole lot more.

So, if you’d like to :

• Know how urine can help make cheap batteries for medical sensors and testing kits or in an emergency battery

• Find out how architects are making more of roofs

• See how a Stirling [1] engine can help make power

Drop by them and read some more.

¹ Years ago my father bought a Stirling engine. I was so impressed by it’s simplicity I made one in what was them called in school “metalwork”. It’s basically a chamber which is heated, causes expansion and contraction and moves a piston. It’s a brilliant idea and, coupled with a “green” energy source would help everyone out and cause a lot less issues on the Earth.

Doors

Sounds opulent doesn't it : Conservation Area. It isn't.

Whilst it ensures that to a degree we preserve the character of the Edwardian area in which I live, built between 1898-1912 in a layout which remains untouched to this day but without it's corner shops, two builders yards and Mission Hall, it also enforces a set of rules about what can and cannot be done.

I'd like to change my front door. It was an early modification to the house once I moved in, replacing a three panelled clear glass door with one of more solid wood with a mock Art Deco glass panel.

For years it's been brown, stained wood but I'd like a colour. In fact the sage green which was inside the pub I went to with Amanda recently. To do that takes all sorts of calls and checks with the local council.

I think we're sorted now. I also checked up what I'd need to do once I found The Door of My Dreams (which is actually installed in a near by road: black, part glazed and with a large Art Deco pane of glass).

So now I know. When I go hunting in reclaim yards I need to take with me a tape measure, a digital camera and the email address of the Planning Offcer to check I can buy it before I apply for Planning Permission and wait for 6 weeks....

Sticky Shadows

Socialight is an interesting attempt to allow :

“people to connect with others in their social network by using mobile telephone handsets in novel ways. Using location-based messages known as Sticky Shadows, the Socialight platform enables new kinds of communication, taking into account the current and past locations of friends. Location is especially important in Socialight since the oldest (and, we think, most natural) time to really connect is when we ‘re out and about, and moving from place to place.”

“Sticky Shadows are virtual multimedia sticky notes that you “leave” for your friends in specific places using your mobile phone. Your Sticky Shadows can include various media types such as text, audio, photos, video or any combination thereof.”

It looks like an interesting cross between warchalking and blogging.

The State of the Blognation

BBC NEWS | Technology | One blog created ‘every second’

“The blogosphere is continuing to grow, with a weblog created every second, according to blog trackers Technorati.”

“Thirteen percent of all blogs that Technorati tracks are updated weekly or more, said the report, and 55% of all new bloggers are still posting three months after they started.”

“The voices in the blogosphere are also sounding less US-centric, with blog growth spotted in Japan, Korea, China, UK, France, and Brazil.”

Ladies and gentleman tonight I can report that the state of our Blognation is confident and strong.

Vistas

News from Microsoft about the new version of Windows, codenamed Vista.

Check out the Vista Virtual Pressroom and some screenshots here

Back Again

Of course today just seems odd with no seagulls.

Amazing how fast you get back into the routine of life. Tonight I'm sitting out with Part Owned trying to get to grips with "The Rule of Four" which is described as "The Da Vinci Code for people with brains", perhaps that's where I'm going wrong ....

BBQ

Chinese Whispers

Reporters sans frontières - China

Reporters Without Borders said it was disgusted to find that Microsoft was censoring the Chinese version of its blog tool, MSN spaces, the system automatically rejecting words including “democracy” and “Dalai Lama”.

“Following Yahoo !, here is a second American Internet giant giving way to the Chinese authorities and agreeing to self-censorship”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said.

Reporters Without Borders has been able to check that, as reported by several news agencies, when a Chinese blogger attempts to post a message containing terms such as “democracy”, “Dalai Lama”, “Falungong”, “4 June” (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), “China corruption”, or “human rights”, a warning displays saying, “This message contains a banned expression, please delete this expression.”

Google, which has so far refused to censor its search engine, now looks likely to follow in the footsteps of its competitor. When the company announced it was opening an office in China, Reporters Without Borders wrote to its two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, asking them to respond clearly to the question : “Would you agree to censorship of your search engine if Beijing asked you to”. Google never replied.

Makes you wonder what the Olympics will be like.

Age is a Relative Thing

A little while ago I posed the question of when the birthday of this place was.

I was reading David Allen's blog today and noticed a link to Arianna Huffington's blog, which seems to have caused a stir in the general blogsphere.

What made me laugh was the strap line, "DELIVERING NEWS AND OPINION SINCE MAY 9, 2005".

Not even three weeks, a stirling service indeed.

Webbys

At last the results are in from the Webby Awards and it’s nice to see so many of the sites I have enjoyed over the last year or so receive the recongnition that they deserve.

• In the automotive section, the excellent Mercedes-Benz site

• In best navigation/structure the ever cool 10×10

• Best celebrity, Jamie Oliver

• Best practices, Google

There’s loads of great sites, both winners and close runners up, so check them all out here.

Someone mention audioblog ?

Almost done....

Well the latest copy of WebAPP fixed the problen, even though I did have to delete what I had there already.

I've got the site up and running, made the forums and the links. The gallery mod is installed to let people load pictures and show them off. I just need to sort the roles and security and set the categories for the topics and it's done. Well, until the colours are wrong or we need some new gadget on the site.

Building...

Ok well I have the basics installed and some links and logos to load but I can’t sort the permissions to stop everyone who signs up to the site posting content. Argggghhhh. Then after reading the next release does this I loaded it and now get “Can’t open at /mnt/web_i/d01/s28/b0243de0/cgi-bin/user-lib/ads.pl line 5.”. Argghhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Back to their support forums to see if anyone else has had this. Perhaps it will seem clearer tomorrow after a few glasses of wine with Martin.

Bloggies 2005

No, we didn’t win but the results are in over at The Bloggies 2005.

So, here’s a summary :

• Best Meme went to Flickr the photo sharing site.
• Best article or essay about blogging went to Tony Pierce on How to Blog
• Well deserved Middle Eastern winner is Where is Raed?
• Best British blog Plasticbag.org
• Best photography blog Daily Dose of Imagery
• Best gay/lesbian/bisexual/ transgendered community blog How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons
• Best overall blog of the year Boing Boing

There’s loads more deserving winners at the Bloggies site so make sure that you head over there to see how this should be done properly.

On a personal note I’m so happy that Sam Javanrouh at Daily Dose of Imagery has won. He’s one of only a few blogs that I check every day when I startup Firefox. His photography is stunning and inspiring and he has a great ability to capture everyday scenes in an interesting way.

I’m also so pleased that Francis Strand won for How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Lessons. His writing is honest, amusing and skillfully done. Of course I’m a little biased by the fact he writes about Stockholm but I’m sure once you have heard his voice over at Broken English you’ll forgive me.

Congratulations to all !

Music While You Blog...

If you've spoken to me you'll know I have a wide taste in music. Whilst I don't go out of my way to force it onto people I do like to share. So, tucked away at the bottom of the sidebar is a small jukebox which you can launch as a popup to play a little music as you read...

New Kid on the Blog....

I have competition, and it's the kind of competition which is talented and armed with more toys like email posting and voice blogging.

I need to up my game here, but in the meantime drop by Blogger and see what Diamonds has been up to ....

Another Belated Christmas...

Ok I admit it, I'm in hiding and don't really want to face up to it all. Last night I hid at Martin and Fhai's, taken in as they sensed that I wasn't that happy. It was a cool evening and reminded me what Valentine's was all about. Fhai curled up on the sofa telling me how they met all those years back in Chaing Mai, travelling up to Mae Hong Song and trips on the back of his mountain bike.

Today I had another Christmas with some presents chosen with love and care from someone special to me. I never expected them and I really lucky to have them, and her.

Tonight, again, I'm hiding. See you tomorrow.

Such a beautiful horizon

I've dug out my pictures of Barcelona to share here Maybe we all need a little warm sun today ...

Meanwhile here's something all about derelict London

Well, a good film tonight, one DVD left for this week. I managed to clear some work as well as all my travel reading so I have a hugh pile of paper to re-cycle now. The next DVD is being rendered on the PC ready to burn and test tomorrow. So that leaves reading and sleep.

See you all tomorrow.

SQL

I've converted this blog to use SQL, there's no real difference but for some odd reason rebuilds had stopped working on the default Berkley database. Odd.

Next on my list is the grey block at the top ....

More Maintenance

I've added a few more things here today but more for my benefit than yours. I now have future posting setup so I can write items and allow them to automatically appear here at a set date and time. To assist with this and to get around and issue I have with the category archives I've setup scheduled rebuilds of all the files as well.

Updates Updates

OK well I thought tonight would be a note here and then that was it. In the end I have upgraded Gallery, converted all the albums, chosen a new skin, altered the PHP random block code, converted the blog to PHP and added in the random picture block and a link to the main Gallery page....

That's enough, I'm off to bed.

Mobility

Already I'm thinking about how I could continue to update this if I wasn't in front of a PC 24 / 7.

Looking around I found Audblog. It uses a USA access number which means international calls but perhaps it would be OK if I was traveling.

Ideally some kind of update to MT via Email which I could do from a phone might solve the issue. Theres a few interesting posts on the MT site like this one and some talk of pop2mtblog.pl. Clearly people are doing it and here's a good example and here's one using B2B.

After a little digging I found mail2blog.pl but all the talk of CPAN modules is kinda scary right now like this

Perhaps this is something to put on the back burner for a while - I have enough to do with the look and feel for now....

Technology Marches On

No sooner have I got to grips with Blogs, Moblogs and Photoblogs than Podcasting comes along.

There's a good overview of this new innovation at Wikipedia which is always a good read and reminds me of those week by week encyclopedia's I got from Mrs Odey across the road when I was a lad.

There's a full break down on Podcasting here with some links to resources. I have enough trouble writing this let alone sitting down, thinking about what I want to say and then recording it, rendering it to some slim format and uploading it. That said, I can see the attraction and it does remind me of the excellent Letter from America which I always enjoyed and frequently forgot was on. I wonder what Cooke would make of this years election and the recent Osama Bin Laden tape.

Maybe I need to sit and surf these links and explore the Pod....

Better ?

OK well maybe thats a little better now ....

The upgrade was easy and brings this up to the most recent level of software. The template will do for not until I get a little time to play around with one and make it mine.

I managed to fix my laptop as well, a bad DIMM and trip to PC World and it's fixed. I'm really pleased with that as fixing it if it was hardware would be a pain and I really can't afford the time to find someone at work and get them to do it.

Now I just need to catch up with where I am with all the projects, calls email and faxes.

Hold tight....

We're going to upgrade - I have the latest MT upgrade from SixApart so after a backup it's time to upgrade to version 3 and get a new look .....

Time to Change ?

Looking at the use the site gets I'm tempted to do a makeover and then close it.

There's a few things which need to change for sure but on the whole the majority of it really doesn't get used at all. Maybe it's time to finish up then perhaps keep this going and publicise it via one of the main blog lists.

One thing you learn about running a site is you need to have