September 2006 Archives

I've written a review of Google Analytics by Mary E. Tyler & Jerri L. Ledford.

Executive summary - it really wasn't what I was looking for.

I've just found this write-up of day one of the recent YAPC::Europe conference. It was written by someone who spent that afternoon in my Advanced Databases for Beginners talk. It sounds like he found the talk useful, but I particularly liked this line.

Dave speaks indeed slowly and he's loud enough

I'd like to use that on my publicity material :-)

The Guardian potentially launches itself into controversy today by including a free wallchart which claims to illustrate the history of life on Earth. This blasphemous poster includes the ridiculous claim that there was life on Earth over 500 million years ago. This is clearly nonsense as any sane (and righteous) person knows that the Earth was only created in 4004BC.

The evolutionary process that is depicted is, of course, "just a theory" and I hope that the Guardian will be redressing the balance forthwith by publishing an alternative poster depicting the creationists viewpoint.

A few different approaches to the same story.

Let's start with the BBC (who can be expected to be a little biased here):

Hippos help revamp BBC One idents

BBC One has unveiled its latest on-screen identity, complete with new logo and images for the channel.

Segments between programmes from 7 October will feature kites, the moon, surfers and hippos.

They replace the current idents such as the Indian dancers and skateboarders, introduced in 2002.

BBC One controller Peter Fincham said: "In an increasingly competitive marketplace a channel needs to stand out from the crowd."

The Guardian took a similarly factual approach:

BBC ditches ballet and basketball in favour of hippos, kites and surfers

After more than 43,000 appearances, BBC1 is retiring the ballet dancers, wheelchair basketball players and ravers who have introduced its programmes for the past four years in favour of a £1.2m rebrand.

The eight new "idents", the 10-second clips that link programmes, have a consistent circular motif and include images of hippos swimming, stunt kites flying, children playing and gravity-defying motorcyclists riding a wheel of death.

The corporation hopes that, together with a new "softer" logo for the flagship channel and fresh music, the idents will help BBC1 stand out from the hundreds of digital channels and competing attractions on the internet and mobile phones. They will be launched on October 7.

But they do go on to say:

The BBC is likely to be criticised for the amount spent on the new clips and the fact that two were filmed on location in Croatia and Mexico. Coming on the same day that BBC News announced its latest tranche of job cuts, the move was attacked by broadcasting unions.

The Daily Mail saw it all in a completely different light:

BBC blows £1.2m on 80 seconds of hippos, kites and surf scenes

The BBC has spent £1.2 million of licence payers' cash on 80 seconds of programming. The money has been spent on a new series of eight 'idents' for BBC1 - the 10-second clips that link TV shows. It is part of a major rebranding of the channel, which means ditching the old links featuring wheelchair dancers, Bollywood performers and tangoing couples.

But the cost is bound to stir up controversy as the broadcaster wields the axe over hundreds of jobs and enforces budget slashing measures.

The £1.2 million bill would pay for nearly two hours of primetime drama featuring a bigname cast and overseas filming.

The corporation may attract further fury because many of the segments, despite featuring extensive use of computer generated images, were shot in foreign locations including a surf scene on Mexico's west coast and a peninsula in northern Croatia.

The new links will also disappoint traditionalists, who have long been campaigning for the return of the old BBC globe motif.

I particularly enjoyed that final point about traditionalists - that's classic Daily Mail.

The Sun (prop: R Murdoch, owner of BBC rival Sky) were also predictably negative:

Beeb have gone hippo potty

BEEB bosses were blasted yesterday for splashing out £1.2million on 30-second plugs — including one showing synchronised swimming hippos.

The computer-generated “ident” is one of eight which will run between programmes on BBC1.

The figure, which works out at £5,000 A SECOND, is £500,000 more than was spent on the previous “dancer” clips, which included a wheelchair routine and had run for four years.

Dontcha just love the variety of the British media.

Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion is published today and over the weekend the publicity machine started up. On Friday Dawkins was interviewed on Newnight. The interview will still be available from that site until tonight's edition replaces it later today. The Newsnight site also has some extracts from the book and a discussion on some of the points. It's good to see the number of rational people who are contributing to the discussion - but there are still a few religious types desperately clinging to their medieval beliefs.

Then the Guardian on Saturday had more extracts from the book and a review - they make it their book of the week.

Then on Sunday, Dawkins was apparently on the Heaven and Earth Show. I never watch the Heaven and Earth Show and the show doesn't seem to be on the BBC web site so I don't know what was said. Maybe I'll try to track down a torrent tonight.

I haven't read the book yet (I've got it on order from Amazon - got it for a tenner), but from what I've seen it's an extension of the arguments that Dawkins' presented so clearly in his documentary The Root of all Evil? earlier this year.

In a world where the voices of medievalism and superstition seem to drown out a lot of rational debate, it's great to see Dawkins' eminently sensible views getting such a lot of publicity.

Update: I've just found the Newsnight interview (albeit in a very dodgy aspect ratio) on YouTube.

MOO is a new company set up by a number of well-known faces from the UK new media scene. Their plan is apparently to create real-world products based on stuff that you find on the web.

If that sounds a bit abstract, here's a good example. The only things they are selling currently are MiniCards. These are rather lovely looking sets of business cards with photos from Flickr printed on them. You can get a set of 100 (with all different photos!) for only $20. And if you're a Flickr Pro subscriber (and who isn't these days?) then you can get a free sample set of 10 cards. I've ordered my set. I'll let you know when they arrive.

Oh this has made my day.

The Post Office have announced a new scheme whereby people will be able to pay for postage online and print out postage labels to stick onto letters and parcels. Just like the franked mail that companies have been sending out for years or the stickers that get printed for you at the Post Office when the postage on your package is a slightly unusual amount, these stickers just contain the minimum required information. They therefore don't have the Queen's head on them.

The BBC has a dispassionate and factual report on this. The Daily Mail, on the other hand, has taken a completely different view. Their headline is "The Queen's head removed from postage stamps" (which isn't even slightly accurate) and the story says that "the decision ends a tradition dating back more than 160 years". It then turns into an extended rant about the creeping republicanism that the goverment are forcing on the country.

But it gets better than that. The Mail has (moderated) comments on all of its stories. And the readership, goaded on no doubt by the less than accurate story, are incandescent with rage. Not one of them shows any sign of knowing what is really happening.

You couldn't make this up. It's the funniest thing I've read for ages.

So it seems that currently, Sunday's post about the Doomsday Code documentary is the top Google hit for "Doomsday Code". Which is all very gratifying, but it does mean I'm attracting the nutters.

Firstly I got an email from Niels last night assuring me that I'm completely wrong and that we are currently living in the endtimes. As proof, he suggested that I take a close look at the ZetaTalk web site which will apparently explain it all clearly. Open-minded as ever I brought up the web site, only to see a picture of a Grey alien on the front page. So what we have here is a web site agreeing with the endtimers' interpretation of Revelations, but claiming that it's all an alien plot. For those who (like me) can't bear to read sites like this, Wikipedia has a good summary of Zetatalk's main ideas.

And then today I find a comment from Phil explaining that he's angry about the documentary because it did nothing to explore the creationist point of view. Actually, the documentary did make it clear that the end-time ministers were pretty much creationists to a man - which, of course, just emphasises the fact that they are all as mad as hatters.

It's all very amusing. But also incredibly sad.

I've been meaning to mention this for a couple of weeks, but I keep forgetting. A friend of mind wrote a novel which is in the form of a teenager's diary and we thought that the perfect way to publish it was as a fictional blog.

So the result is Alternative Freak. I'm pretty sure that none of my regular readers are really in the target audience. But if you know any teenagers, then perhaps you could point them at the site. I'd love to hear what they think.

I've just got back from seeing An Inconvenient Truth. It was a well-made and interesting film. but not as life-changing as other people seem to have found it.

The film largely consists of a lecture about climate change that Al Gore has given many times (he says over a thousand) over the last few years. It's a smooth and compelling introduction to the subject. It covers the causes, the effects, the evidence and, perhaps most importantly, what we can do about the problem, but personally I thought this was all covered far better in David Attenborough's Are We Changing Planet Earth? and Can We Save Planet Earth? which were broadcast earlier this year. But perhaps Americans are more likely to take this kind of news from an American politician than a British naturalist. The film was certainly squarely aimed at the American audience (for example, a caption at the end encouraged the audience to write to congress about the problem) and a lot of time was spent underlining just how much of the problem could be laid at the USA's doorstep.

Of course, the very fact that the film is made by a politician means that many of the people who would gain most by seeing it will dismiss it as political propaganda and will ignore it. Gore is very eloquent and interesting in his exposition, but he's still seen as the antichrist by the current administration and their supporters. Add to this the fact the the lecture is intercut with some rather oversentimental autobiographical sections (including a strangely neutral section on Gore being cheated out of the presidency in 2000) and you end up with a film which Republicans aren't exactly going to be rushing to see.

But maybe that's alright. Maybe enough floating voters will watch it and be convinced enough to switch to the Democrats in 2008. But isn't that what we all hoped for with Fahrenheit 911? Let's not get our hopes up.

So, to summarise. It's an interesting introduction to the problem, but I find it hard to believe that any reasonably well educated British person will hear anything that they don't already know. However, the credits do contain some good tips about changes that everyone can make to their lives to help reduce the problem and there's a lot more good information on the web site.

If you have any doubt about the cause or the extent of climate change, then please go and see this film.

Last night we watched Channel 4's documentary, The Doomsday Code - which was one of the most worrying television programmes that I've seen for a long time.

The programme was about the groups of christian fundamentalists who believe that we are now living in the end time predicted by the Book of Revelation and who are conducting their lives as though they expect the Rapture to take place at any moment.

This is all very well. They are, of course, free to believe any ridiculous nonsense that they choose to believe. It's nice that they have a hobby and it gives the rest of us someone to laugh at. But in this documentary Tony Robinson demonstrated that it's a little more serious than that. End-time believers are in very powerful positions in the US and their actions can effect us all. Some examples:

• As the Book of Revelation clearly mentions Israel as a nation, Endtimers are strong supporters of the Zionists and will fight anything that they see as a attack on the Israeli state. This is clearly a big problem when trying to address the problems in the middle east. Some go further and believe that an all-out war in the Middle East can only hasten the arrival of the Rapture.
• If the End-time is just around the corner, why would you care about any detrimental effect you are having on the enviroment? You're not going to be around to deal with the problems, so leave it to the unbelievers to deal with it. it'll just add to the problems of the Tribulation - which has to be a good thing, right?
• The Book of Revelations also mentions that at the End-times the word of god will be preached to all countries. So missionaries are out all over the world trying to make this prophecy come true. The documentary picked on the example of Uganda, where End-time preaching is so endemic that large parts of the population seem to have almost given up the will to live as all they have to do is to be true to god in order to be ensured of a place in heaven when the Rapture comes.

It's a nasty, pernicious belief and, of course, it's all based on a misinterpretation of what the Book of Revelation is trying to say. There's no evidence that it was written by Saint John and it's far more likely to be a criticism of the Roman Empire than a book of prophecy ("666", for example, is just an encoded way of refering to Nero).

So what we have here is a powerful sub-sect in the christian church who are wilfully misinterpreting the bible in order to support their owen warped view of the world. As I said above, this would just be amusing if it wasn't for the fact that some of the most important people in the US either hold these views or are influenced by people who hold these views. It seems a bit trivial arguing whether or not Islam is a peaceful religion when christians are busy cheering on the end of the world - and some of them are doing what they can to hasten its arrival.

Update: If you didn't see it, it's repeated late tonight (Monday 18th September) - 1:30 tomorrow morning on Channel 4. Set your video.

According to Piers:

the buzz about Ruby and Rails is the sound of “a bunch of Java programmers finally discovering how cool Perl is.”

Which sounds about right to me :-)

I have a new three hour tutorial called Advanced Databases for Beginners. There were two main reasons why I thought it would be useful to write it.

1. I keep coming across databases that were designed by "professionals" who obviously have no idea about good database design practices
2. I keep reading articles by the authors of various application frameworks encouraging people to treat the database as a dumb data store and to put all of the clever stuff into the application rather than using the database's native features for describing data

Hence this tutorial. It introduces things like referential integrity, normalisation and views to people who didn't previously know of their existance. It was a struggle to get it down to three hours, there was a lot I had to miss out, so don't be surprised if it turns into a longer course, a series of articles or even a book over the next few months.

But in the meantime, the slides are available online. I hope they make sense on their own, but if you're interested in having me give the presentation to you or your company, then please let me know.

I've always wanted to be an astronaut. I still have vague memories of my parents waking me up in the the middle of the night to watch the Eagle land on the moon in 1969. And from then on I've known that some day I want to go into space.

Astronauts have always been older than me. And whilst they are older than me, then there's always a chance that I can be an astronaut when I get to their age. I know it's a bit of a stretch, but it keeps me going.

But now that's no longer true. The current space shuttle mission has a crew member (the brilliantly named Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper) who was born in February 1963 and is therefore five months (exactly five months as it happens) younger than me. As far as I know, she's the first astronaut (or cosmonaut) who is younger than me. And if youngsters like her are being sent up then I'm going to have to finally accept that I might just be too old to get onto the space programme.

So my only remaining chance of getting into space is to become a space tourist (they've already taken people far younger than me). And that means I need to get a lot more disposable income than I currently have.

p.s. By the way, here's a very cool Wikipedia category - People currently in space

Dave Gorman has an interesting story that neatly illustrates the way that the world has changed in the last five years. Whilst taking this picture of Battersea Power Station just after midnight on Saturday night, he was stopped and questioned by police under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Just for taking a photgraph.

(via Bloggerheads)

Looks like Tom Watson has resigned from his post as a junior defence minister. You can read his full resignation letter here. He was named yesterday as one of the MPs who had signed a letter urging Tony Blair to clarify his plans about standing down as Labour Party leader.

Tom was also one of the first MPs to have his own blog. That might get interesting over the next couple of days.

Mike has emailed me to point out smok0.com which shows the top news stories from a number of different news outlets. Apparently he's making use of the OPML files from my newsfeeds page.

Nice to know some of my stuff is useful.

Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice and all-round godbothering nutter and offence to all decent people has been arrested for handing out anti-gay leaflets at a gay festival.

See, it's news like this that makes me think that there just might be a god...

(via MediaWatchWatch)

One of the things that I haven 't been too keen on in the new version of Doctor Who is the "soap opera" approach where we got to see altogether far too much about Rose Tyler's mother, boyfriend and (dead) father. When they all got trapped in an paralled universe at the end of the last season I was very happy and I started to hope that the new assistant would come with less baggage.

So I'm a bit disappointed to read this story from the BBC.

Former Top Of The Pops presenter Reggie Yates will play a leading role in the new series of Doctor Who.

BBC Radio 1 DJ Yates, 23, will star as the brother of the Time Lord's new assistant, medical student Martha Jones - played by Freema Agyeman.

Other new faces in the series include Trevor Laird, who plays Martha's father, and Adjoa Andoh, as her mother.