Doing it for free?

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Volunteering is a great way to increase your self esteme, meet people, increase your experiences and make yourself more employable, … oh yes and help other people!

David Cameron’s Big Society ideas rely on volunteers so he’s keen to get more. I did get the impression New Labour didn’t like amature do-gooders much of the time. There is a theory that we should leave it to the professionals and all that’s needed from us is our cash but I think getting your hands dirty (figuratively or maybe literally) is good for us.

Anyway, to help get more volunteers there is a government report – it is, unsuprisingly, a bit wordy but has some helpful bits.

Here’s the report
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/unshackling-good-neighbours
and here’s a couple of sites commenting on it
http://www.vsnw.org.uk/news/view/2011-05-17-unshackling-good-neighbours
http://www.wrvs.org.uk/news-and-events/news/Unshackling-good-neighbours

Super injunction – is tweeting chatting or publishing?

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

I’m a bit confused about this whole super injunction fandango. The courts say you can’t publish stories about X and people said this was mad as you can talk down the pub about it. Now they are trying to charge someone who has tweeted about X – is tweeting chatting or publishing?

Maybe it’s how it has always been, you can call anyone a philandering moron to your mates down the pub but technically you could be sued for slander. If you jump on the table and proclaim it to the whole pub you may well be sued for slander.

It all seems a bit mixed up but an individual tweeting seems a lot different to a 6 page spread in a newspaper. Something to do with personal vs. corporate, size of content and profits made. There’s something about conversation / statement. I can express my opinion and you can reply in a conversation, in a statement there is no immediate right to reply. That differentiates a phone conversation from a newspaper article but where does that put a tweet or an email or a text?

As I hate secrecy but also hate scandal rag newspapers and also the ability of the rich to exploit the law in their favour I’m torn in too many ways.

What would be nice was if people weren’t interested in prurient of scandal – but that really is mad thinking.

It’ll be worse before it’s better…

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

I used to have this verdant, green lawn. However, if you looked closely much of the green was moss. So, a couple of weeks back I fed it “weed and feed” which killed most of the moss and I have spent much of this weekend raking it out. The trouble is I now have a lot of brown earth and not much grass. The idea is now the moss has gone the grass will (eventually) grow over the bare patches the way it couldn’t over the moss.

So what has this to do with IT? The whole process reminded me of bug fixing a project that has gone bad. Once a system is well out of hand fixing the bugs gets tricky because they interact with other bugs and you end up with temporary fixes and work arounds until the other bugs are fixed which in turn create their own problems… The “best” approach (for development) is to clear them all out and start afresh. The problem is you end up with system much like my lawn – a bit bare.

This doesn’t go down well with users, however they will sometimes live without features for a while IF they believe they will be replaced with fully working ones.

Marketing usually really hate the idea – they’d rather have a healthy looking a system even if the healthy look is only from a distance. Still, I have often said the you could display everything about most marketing departments’ enthusiasm for openness on one screen of a smart phone … in a very large font.

How to blog sulking

Friday, May 13th, 2011

Blogging is a weird business. I have no idea how many people read this. One approach is to make up a target person and write just to them; but assuming I’m writing to the great British public I have to say that I’m not speaking to you. Not “not addressing all of you” or “failing to reach”, actually sulking. My lack of blog wasn’t laziness, it was me deliberately snubbing you. The trouble is I don’t think any one noticed.

I did rather pin my colours to the mast over the referendum and as far as I’m concerned a no vote to AV put the “dumb” in “referendum”. The only people I’ve spoken to who were against it didn’t understand it – of course it could be plenty of people were against it but didn’t want to have a boring argument with me so pretended they were. Considering the majority of people didn’t vote for the ruling party (parties if you assume the lib dem’s have any rule) why wouldn’t people vote for a system that lets them have a say in their second choice…

Anyway, there are two ways we can play this. Either I get 68% of a 42% turnout* – say 17 million – comments apologising or we just forget the whole thing and pretend it never happened.

What never happened? Rather than crash the site I forgotten it already. Friends again?

(* results from
http://ukreferendumresults.aboutmyvote.co.uk/en/default.aspx turnout was amazingly hard to find for a site dedicated to informing us of the results!)

Decaffeinated? What’s the point?

Monday, April 4th, 2011

On occasion I drink decaffeinated coffee and even alcohol free lager but I can’t imagine me reading a de-godded bible

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9445000/9445961.stm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Book-Secular-Bible/dp/0747599602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301911817&sr=8-1

Initially it seems pointless but thinking about my drinking I guess I go with those options when I want the pleasure of the drink but can’t handle the effects of caffeine or alcohol. So I suppose if you want the pleasure of a read without any serious effect you may want to read a “The Good Book: a secular bible” – but if you want to wake up in the morning or reach some level of relaxation / intoxication or change your life you need the real thing.

All abroad for iPad2 alternative

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Did we queue up at the local Apple Store for an iPad2? You must be joking! We lunched in Barfleur, on the Cotentin Peninsular, sitting alongside the harbour and enjoying the year’s first really hot sunny day to eat our assiette des fruits de mer washed down with a delicious bouteille de cider artesanal.

So what if it meant getting up at 5am to catch the fast cat ferry? Or the night before, French dockers decided to strike meaning instead of the day trip to Caen and Ouistreham, we were rerouted to Cherbourg. We didn’t even worry when the downstairs toilet suddenly started to gush water uncontrollably at 9pm the night before.

The following day, £350 unexpectedly appeared in my bank account and I was handed a ‘Birthday Voucher’ saying it was only to be used for an iPad. A quick ring around all the local Apple dealers showed we had chosen the best option. It had been either get up at 5am to join the queues at the Apple Store or snooze in comfort as we were whisked across the English Channel. The former with no guarantee of actually finding any iPads left to buy whilst the latter meant conspicuous consumption in the restaurant followed by Carrefours, to top up with all the goodies English shops don’t sell. Such as unsweetened squash drinks and fizzy water with a lemon taste. Can’t people in Britain drink anything without a ton of sugar or aspartemin?

Our trip was also the anniversary of a year ago less one day when the sudden closure of a door in a wood burning stove left my index finger broken in two places. The painful year has seen my guitar playing shrink to zero and computer mice become hurtful things. A trackpad was the obvious answer and very good it is too.

The Apple Trackpad is about half the size of an A5 Wacom graphics table, it is Bluetooth and runs off two long-lasting AA batteries. Set-up is simply turning it on, pairing in Bluetooth and that’s it. A tiny green indicator light shows when it is turned on or off, its location becoming indistinguishable from the aluminium trackpad when the lamp turns off. I bet the Apple guys had fun with that trick.

A control panel lets you set all manner of ways to use the trackpad which includes, one, two, three and four finger inputs and swipes. It is exactly the same as using a MacBook multi-gesture trackpad but larger. There is even a click function as two little rubber feet operate a microswitch by gentle pressure on the trackpad. This guy here sums it all up:

It didn’t take more than a moment or two to adapt to the trackpad, anyone with experience of a modern Apple laptop, iPad or iPhone will use it instinctively and for web browsing it is the easiest way to navigate,. The Bluetooth range is longer than we could get across two rooms and a wall. This makes a trackpad ideal for controlling a Mac linked to a TV, for example, and at prices up to half that of Apple’s own, a trackpad can be bought from Amazon or eBay.

As for an iPad2, that has been ordered from Apple’s on-line store with the hope that anticipation of getting it in a week or so time, will not be sweeter than owning it.

Pure DAB Con

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

I wanted a nice little dab radio I could carry round and I was bought the Pure One Compact as a present. Hopefully the giver isn’t reading this as it is a bit pants.

Not only does it have a bit of a naff UI requiring manipulation of buttons on the top and the side just to change channels (and pressing the button on the side really needs two hands or it falls over!) it also loses its presets with sickening frequency. Requiring more clicking and scrolling and pressing and holding to put them back.

My old Tesco value one was easier to use in general but setting the presets was horribly complicated. In fact the only time that lost its presets was when I deleted them all trying to save a new one! Hopefully this will last a good deal longer than the Tesco which just died one day (and is no longer made) and it does sound a lot better.

The other problem with the Tesco one was it ate batteries at an alarming rate (as DABs do – back to my frequent complaint that turning off analogue broadcasting is an environmental disaster!). The Pure One has rechargables, oh wait it has a recharging circuit and takes a battery pack “sold separately”.

As this is marketed as a “portable” radio can I sue because it isn’t portable unless you buy another bit of kit at £25 to go with it?

Could anyone get away with selling a laptop without the batteries???

What a plonker

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Something is beeping at me. That long, languorous beeping which sounds almost half-hearted. I can’t determine if means my large file has downloaded, maybe it’s to tell me to put the dirty clothes in the oven at 180°C, or is it the whole heads of garlic into the washing machine at 30°C fast spin. Then again, the dishwasher might need rinse-aid or salt. Get it wrong and our clothes will stink of garlic all week or our glasses will look is if they are made of limestone.

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Presenting the iPad2… for me…?

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

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Taking a break – from the net?

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Sorry, I’m sure you missed my enlightening blogs but I spent last week away and had no web access. We debated taking the laptop and hanging out in such wi-fi zones as Costa & Macky D’s but bravely decided we didn’t need it.

We could have done with google & google maps a few times and the lack of iPlayer & on (or off) line games in the evening meant a trip to poundland for a pack of cards but all in all we managed.

I can email & browse from my trusty tiny screened samsung if desperate but I never got THAT desperate and you wouldn’t want to have read a blog entry I keyed using numeric keypad!