I kid you not, but when I started my degree in computer studies (in 1984) this book was on the recommended reading list. I still have my copy around somewhere. Not sure why I seem to have the 1971 edition tho'.
June 2005 Archives
The BBC Backstage project has announced a new data feed which contains details of BBC TV and Radio programs for the next seven days. Looks interesting but, of course, what I really want is details of the listen again radio streams so I don't have to screenscrape them.
One of the worrying things about ID cards is the idea that putting all of those personal details together in one database is just asking for trouble when unscrupulous people get hold of the contents of that database. Of course. it doesn't help when those unscrupulous people happen to be the people who are running the database.
Personal details of all 44 million adults living in Britain could be sold to private companies as part of government attempts to arrest spiralling costs for the new national identity card scheme, set to get the go-ahead this week.
The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that ministers have opened talks with private firms to pass on personal details of UK citizens for an initial cost of £750 each.
(From the Independent on Sunday)
Interesting article from the Telegraph about the rise of RSS and its (potential) impact on news media.
To the consumer, the main benefit of RSS services is that they make receiving news more efficient. Instead of looking at one news website, then another, and then another, each time looking for stories that are interesting, RSS pulls news from the sites for you, and can do so thematically.
If you want business news from Sky, the BBC and the Telegraph websites, but without the fashion or gardening articles, you can have it. Simply choose the relevant feeds, and leave out the others. You can then go straight to stories without having to go to news organisations' home pages. RSS also allows users to pick up news from unconventional sources such as weblogs, or blogs, which are opinions, reports and diaries published by individual internet users.
(via Simon Waldman)
I'd always assumed it was by Party Ben (most of the mash-ups I've been enjoying recently seem to be) but a bit of googling indicates that "No One Takes Your Freedom" is actually by DJ Earworm.
Anyway, it's on heavy rotation here. The Scissor Sisters, The Beatles, George Michael and Aretha Franklin - what more can you want? I love it.
I've just noticed that the BBC have started styling their RSS feeds using XSLT. Take a look at this one for example. It all looks a lot nicer than the raw XML version. I may have to consider doing something similar for my RSS feeds.
A couple of months ago, I wrote this entry about the Huntress Group and how they were pissing me off.
Well, having published that piece everything went quiet. I didn't get any more unsuitable job requirements sent to me from Huntress. Until yesterday.
So when I replied to the agent yesterday, I pointed out what I'd written about them and also that this page ranked rather highly in a Google search for "Huntress Group". Within a couple of hours I had their contracts director on the phone apologising and explaining what was happening.
It seems that Huntress agents have been removing my details from their database each time I requested it, but that because Huntress share their database with other agencies through iProfile then each time my profile was updated by another agency, then iProfile sent Huntress a new copy. Frankly that all makes me a bit nervous about dealing with any agency that uses iProfile, but the Huntress director assures me that he will ask iProfile to ensure that my details never get sent back to them again.
That still leaves us with the problem of Huntress agents assuming that I'm a good match for an SAP role simply because my CV contains the letters 'S', 'A', and 'P', but the director I spoke to agreed that this was unacceptable and promised to do what he can to put a make sure that they look a bit more closely at a CV before assuming it's a match for a job requirement.
So, all in all, I feel a little happier about the Huntress Group. But I think I should take a closer look at how IProfile works.
Lead story on the BBC's technology news page is about a review of web sites carried out by a company called SciVisum. In it they say that one in ten web sites don't work properly in Firefox.
This is a problem that I often come across when persuading people to switch to Firefox. If they find that one of their favourite sites doesn't work in Firefox, then there is often a temptation to blame Firefox, rather than the site itself (which is where the blame really lies).
This is largely because web developers are used to testing their sites just using IE rather than so-called standards-compliant browsers, which only use code ratified by the World Wide Web consortium.
In my book, anyone who works like this doesn't deserve to be called a web developer.
Then there's this quote from SciVisum's chief executive Deri Jones.
"There is a certain business logic to this as IE is the most widely used browser," said Mr Jones.
This is a point of view that should have been forgotten many years ago. Non-IE users can make up 10% of your visitors (and that's a number which is increasing). Do you really want to ignore that proportion of your potential audience?
Creating a web site that works just as well in all browsers isn't hard. If your web developers are telling that it is, then your web developers are wrong. Employee someone else who knows what they are talking about.
Back to St Georges this afternoon. This time for an echocardiogram. And here's a good tip. It might be a good idea to walk down to the hospital (it takes about 45 minutes), but it's not such a good idea in the midday sun when you know you have to take your top off in front of people who have been in a nice cool hospital all day!
So all in all, I was a bit sweaty and embarassed by the time I got there. But never mind. I'm sure they have to deal with far worse.
The process itself was simple enough. It's a lot like the ultrasound scans that they do on pregnant women. I had a few electrodes attached to me to monitor heart rate and then they used a probe (with a bit of gel on the end) to get an ultrasound picture of my heart.
The whole point was to see if the sarcoidosis has effected my heart, or if it's just in my lungs. The results should be through by the time of my next appointment with the consultant in about a month's time. But I assume that they'll let me know before that if they find anything too untoward.
According to Google Maps I live here. But I think they've got it wrong. We're actually on the other side of the railway line that goes through the centre of the photo.
Update: On rechecking, I see it's been fixed.
My contract with Guardian Unlimited finishes at the end of the month. So I've been poking around looking for a new contract.
And it seems that I'll be moving from one large media to another one. I start work for the BBC out in White City in two weeks.
Simon Waldman talks about the way that Guardian Unlimited needs to interact with bloggers. He's talking about it in the context of the Guardian's forthcoming move to a Berliner format.
The world our Berliner will launch into is almost unrecognisable to the one that greeted our last major change - the redesign of 1988. It was a world with only a handful of TV and radio channels, where the only digital device in your home was an LCD watch or a pocket calculator. There were no mobile phones (well none that you could honestly call "mobile"), no Big Brother, and most important of all, no internet.
Of all of these changes, it is the internet that has brought newspapers the greatest threats, opportunities and challenges.
Later on he says
Yes, if we make a mistake - or if people think we have made a mistake - there are plenty of bloggers watching who can, and will, tell the world.
So I'm sure I'm not the first person to point out that the internet did exist in 1988. The internet is generally accepted to have started in 1969. What he actually means is that it wasn't a part of of most people's everyday life in 1988.
Oh look. I wasn't the first. I was even beaten to it by the Guardian's own Online blog.
I finished the article that I mentioned last week and it's now online. It's an introduction to RSS and, in particular, how end users can read RSS feeds.
All comments are appreciated.
Some thoughts on the final episode of the new series of Doctor Who.
In general I've really enjoyed this series. Most of the stories have worked well and I think that Eccleston was a great choice to play the Doctor. Bizarrely, the stories that I have liked least ("Father's Day" and "Dalek") have been the ones that have received the most critical acclaim. And from what I see on the internet, "The Parting of the Ways" was also very popular and I really didn't like it very much.
Oh, there were large parts of it that I loved - thousands of Daleks, the Emperor Dalek, great special effects - but what really spoilt it for me was the conclusion of the plot. It's this whole "heart of the TARDIS" thing and Rose somehow merging with the Time Vortex and becoming this all-powerful person who can destroy all of the Daleks so they don't have to resort to the Doctor's (frankly a bit crap) plan. I disliked the heart of the TARDIS idea when we saw it a couple of weeks ago in "Boom Town" (which was obviously just set-up for this episode) and I really hope we don't see any more of it. If anyone can become some kind of super-powered being simply by looking into the TARDIS core then that becomes the obvious solution to most of the Doctor's adventures. Ok, so you'd have to sacrfice someone each week (and the Doctor is fast running out of regenerations) but given the number of people who normally die in an episode you'd definitely still come out ahead.
So yes, a really stupid idea. And I can't help wondering what would have happened if Eccleston hadn't decide to leave the series. Perhaps in that case, absorbing the time vortex would have been fatal to anyone except Time Lords. I really hate it when that kind of lazy plotting is so obvious.
Oh, and best not mention all the kissing. So I won't.
On the positive side though, the regeneration scene looked really good. And I'm looking forward to seeing what David Tennant does with the role.
p.s. What was the point of killing of Captain Jack. And then bringing him back to life. And then leaving him behind? Was the actor being difficult when renegotiating his contract?
I've been concentrating on other things recently, so I haven't had time to post about the new limits on demonstrations around parliament. Luckily, Robin over at perfect.co.uk has summarised it all nicely so I don't have to.
But looking at it in a wider context, it's just one more step along a path which increasingly prevents the general public from getting involved with the political process. I mentioned this a couple of years ago when I got all nostalgic about the fact that kids can no longer have their photos taken with a smiling bobby outside 10 Downing St.
This is all very disappointing.
A leaked copy of a document on climate change being drafted for the G8 summit suggests plans have been watered down.
A version of the communiqué leaked in May treated climate change as a fact and pledged money to energy projects.
In the new version the words "our world is warming" appear in square brackets, meaning at least one country disagrees, and all financial pledges have gone.
And, of course, we can all guess who that "one country" is.
Labour's ex-environment minister Michael Meacher suggested the US government would not sign up to a document that mentioned global warming.
"Presumably it was taken out because of the Americans," he said.
The new text was "very disappointing", he added, saying it was "extraordinary" that doubt was being cast on the notion the world is getting hotter.
Can't we just ignore the US until they get a sensible government?
An interesting article from the Economist discussing the fall in newspaper circulation and largely blaming the BBC's web site for this.
It is the success of the BBC's news website that most troubles newspapers. Its audience has increased from 1.6m unique weekly users in 2000 to 7.8m in 2005; and its content has a breadth and depth that newspapers struggle to match.
Newspapers need to build up their online businesses because their offline businesses are flagging. Total newspaper readership has fallen by about 30% since 1990 and readers are getting older as young people increasingly get their news from other sources—principally the internet. In 1990, 38% of newspaper readers were under 35. By 2002, the figure had dropped to 31%.
It also mentions newspaper web sites like Guardian Unlimited.
Some papers are having some success in building audiences online—the Guardian, which has by far the most successful newspaper site, gets nearly half as many weekly users as the BBC—but the problem is turning them into money.
The difficulty for all newspaper websites is that most of their visitors tend to stay only briefly, viewing just a few pages. That makes it tricky to build a subscription model. Aside from specialised content, such as crosswords, or business news on the Financial Times's FT.com, newspapers offer their content free. As for internet advertising, most of it goes to the biggest sites, such as Google and Yahoo!
Still, some papers are covering their online costs. The Guardian's site is on the brink of making money. FT.com broke even at the end of 2002, after lots of investment, and the Daily Telegraph's site started paying its way from 2002 onwards. But if the papers' internet arms are to counterbalance the loss of revenue offline, they will have to start covering rather more than just their incremental costs.
You'll have heard that the BBC are making new performances of all of Beethoven's symphonies available for download as MP3s. In this post, Dan Hill (from BBC Radio and Music Interactive) says that this has been extremely successful (600,000 downloads) and has generated a huge amount of discussion around the BBC. Which can only be a good thing.
The Guardian has confirmed the rumours that it will be resizing to Berliner format this autumn. The Observer will follow early next year.
Update: Oh. They'll be full colour too.
Update: Changed link to a very similar-looking story in the business section (which doesn't require registration).
I read all of my email using either mutt or Thunderbird depending on which computer I'm using at the time. When I install either of those on a new computer, the first thing I do is to configure it so that it won't display HTML email. I have many good reasons for doing this, but mostly I just prefer reading email as plain text.
Most email these days seems to be sent with both HTML and plain text versions so I just get to see the text version, people who are more trusting than me about HTML email get to see the HTML version and everyone is happy. If someone sends me email with no plain text version then I don't get to see it. This is rarely a problem as these mails tend to come from people who I don't want to read email from anyway.
But recently I noticed another advantage to my policy. It's helping to protect me from phishing attacks. The whole point of a phishing attack is to persude you to click on a link which doesn't go where you think it goes. So you think that you are verifying your account information with Paypal whereas you're actually giving your username and password to someone who you really don't want to have it. The best way for them to do that is to send an HTML email where they can disguise the links. The text in the link makes you think that you're going to a legitimate site, but actually the link goes to somewhere completely different. You can't disguise that in plain text.
So phishing attacks generally only have a HTML version. A plain text version would give the game way too easily. But all of the legitimate businesses who the phishing attacks pretend to be (Ebay, Paypal, my bank) always send both plain text and HTML versions as they have nothing to hide. So if I get an email from Ebay and there is no plain text version, then I can instantly see that it's a phishing attack and can be deleted.
Just one more reason to say no to HTML email.
So the Live 8 ticket lottery winners have all got their text messages and I didn't get one. My stepdaughter's boyfriend did tho', so they'll be off to see it together.
I'm slightly jealous. But I suspect I'll get a better view on the TV.
Neil Gaiman on OBEs (it's at the bottom of the piece)
An OBE, for those of you in places that aren't British, is the Order of the British Empire, which seems rather sweet, considering there isn't a British Empire any longer. It's like being made a lord of the manor of a village that was long ago taken by the sea.
I didn't really have much interest in going to the Live 8 concert. Those kinds of gigs where there are far too many people and you only really want to see a third of the acts have very little interest for me. But I sent a text message in to the draw away - just in case.
But now I read that Pink Floyd will be reforming for the concert. And I mean that Roger Waters will be playing with them. For the first time since 1981.
I saw Waters playing with Pink Floyd on the Wall tour in 1978. But in some ways that doesn't really count as they just played the Wall from start to finish. I'd really like to see them play a proper gig.
Now I'm actually starting to hope that my text message wins me a ticket to the concert.
I'm coming to the party a bit late, but I've finally got round to adding tags to my blog. Hopefully Technorati will do the right thing with them. It's folksonomitastic.
It's nice and sunny today and that always makes me think of World Music.
The first time I remember coming across the term "world music" when I bought the album New Roots in 1989. It was a very well-planned album as it had a number of artists that I already knew and liked (Billy Bragg, Michelle Shocked, The Pogues) alongside a number of names that were new to me. Looking at the track listings I found that a number of the interesting new names were from a record label that I'd never heard of - Cooking Vinyl.
Investigating further, I found another compilation called Hootenanny which was produced by Cooking Vinyl to showcase their artists. The cassette version of that which I bought is possibly one of the most played recordings that I've ever owned. Over the next fifteen years listening to Cooking Vinyl records has introduced me to some of the most interesting music that I've ever heard. At one point I was even signed up for a subscription service where they automatically sent you a copy of each CD they released (I only left that service because they withdrew it).
So yesterday I pulled out all of my old Cooking Vinyl compilations and started ripping them and listening to them. I was surprised to see how few of them I was missing - and a quick visit to the Cooking Vinyl shop filled most of the holes. Unfortunately, my original copy of Hootenanny went in the Great Cassette Massacre of 2003 and I can't find a copy for sale anywhere. I'd love to get my hands on a copy (tho', to be honest, I probably have most of the tracks on other albums now).
It's been a lot of fun listening to those albums again. I don't listen to anywhere near enough world music. Thank you Cooking Vinyl for releasing them.
They say that if you want to be a writer then the important thing is to keep writing. And I'm certainly not going to disagree with them.
But I've been a bad writer recently and other than the witterings on this site I haven't written anything for some considerable time. My last published works were two articles on perl.com almost a year ago. I seem to have spent most of the last year writing code rather than words.
So last night I decided to force myself to write something substantial. I spent a couple of hours working on a new article. And it all seemed to go very well. I'd forgotten how much fun it was to write. I got almost a thousand words written in that time. The article isn't finished, but I hope to complete it by the end of the weekend, at which point I'll put it on the web somewhere and post a link to it.
The best thing is that I've got ideas for a couple more articles too. So it looks like I'll be spending quite a lot of the next couple of weeks writing. By the end of the month I'll be complaining that I don't spend enough time coding :)
I shall be really glad when the new Harry Potter book is finally published as it will stop idiot staff in WH Smith asking me if I want to pre-order it each time I buy something there. I mean, do I look like the kind of person who reads children's books?
And, by the way, why "pre-order"? What's wrong with just "order"?
Until this weekend I'd never really seen a PC running Windows that was connected to the internet using a domestic broadband connection. The only Windows PC on my home network is hidden away behind a firewall provided by the ADSL router so no-one out there on the net even knows it exists.
This weekend I was at my parents' house for the first time since they had broadband installed. They asked me to sort out a couple of small problems with their PC and I realised that at the same time I should probably install a virus checker and a firewall. The firewall I tried was from McAfee and one nice thing about it is that it gives an easy to read summary of the connections that it has denied. By the time I'd finished installing it, it showed that it had denied seven connection attempts. By the time I'd finished with the computer a couple of hours later, that number had grown to almost 160. Every 45 seconds or so, someone out on the internet was probing the PC for weaknesses.
I've seen stuff like this demonstrated on TV but this was the first time I'd seen it for myself. Any computer connected to the internet is constantly being probed by people who want to see if they can use it for nefarious purposes. You need to have some kind of protection. Please use a firewall.
(has anyone else just had a flashback to those 1985 government "use a condom" ads)
Recently, most of my CD buying seems to be replacing records that I own on vinyl as I can't be bothered to get my turntable set up to listen the originals. Ebay is proving to be a great source for cheap replacements.
And I'm finding that the music I want to listen to (and, hence, buying) is more and more influenced by random external events. For example, on Sunday I had a conversation about the forthcoming film of "The War of the Worlds" and have therefore found myself listening to the Jeff Wayne album for the last few days (I really recommend the remixes album).
Then this morning I read the interview with Tanita Tikaram in today's Guardian and I'm already tracking down cheap copies of Ancient Heart.
Of course, the downside is that I end up getting hold of albums about a week after I decide that I wasn to listen to them, but I kind of like the random way this all works.
p.s. Bloody hell. While looking for links for this post, I've just found this 7 disk collectors edition of War of the Worlds. Released in a couple of weeks.
In this week's Bad Science, Ben Goldacre puts his finger on why he dislikes people like Gillian McKeith.
At first glance, they give quite sensible advice. Dr Gillian McKeith PhD - for all the awful poo business and her bizarre misunderstanding of basic science about things like photosynthesis - promotes a pretty normal, sensible, healthy diet. The GI diet, for all the guff that goes with it, does too. And the grandiose nutritionism-peddling columnists from Sunday magazines, even if they do recommend you eat some particular nut because it contains lots of vitamin G and selenium, are still basically recommending fruit and veg. Everyone knows basic dietary advice, and they don't need a nutritionist, doctor, alternative therapist or journalist, to tell them. They need their mum.
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