andylockran’s blog

15th May - Panic Buy Carrots!!!

Posted by Andy under Facebook, Funny, Personal, Ubuntu, twitter

It’s a little bit funny. On facebook a couple of months ago, Freya Valentine started this group. It’s not the most exciting of ideas, but has generated a bit of a cult following. It’s been mentioned on Sky & the BBC’s Steve Wright Show.

I’d be interested to hear on how the Panic buying is getting along, therefore suggested setting up a twit-feed to monitor it - however, twitter has been down for the last couple of hours.

Just goes to show that a de-centralised system is needed. A free, open source, de-centralised mechanism for twittering.

Oh well, I’ll just have to remain ignorant, and enjoy my carrot soup.

When should an application be a protocol?

Posted by Andy under Control, Digital Freedom, Freedom, Marketing, Political, Projects, SBLUG Planet, Software, Tech Geek, Ubuntu, twitter

I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m becoming more immersed technically in technology, rather than ‘functionally’ as I was previously, but it appears as though issues at the political level are clouding achievements at the technical level.

Zeth has posted before on a Social Networking protocol. That is to say that applications such as facebook, myspace and bebo share alot of similar datafields. Standardising these global fields and setting up a new social networking protocol would allow greater freedom of data-sharing, and enable more powerful “mash-ups” of data.

Tim Berners-Lee’s book, “Weaving the Web” (which I am currently reading) is opening my eyes to just how self-deprecating his work has been. Not only would his work have normally afforded him a very wealthy lifestyle should he have chosen to ‘close’ the development of the project and put restrictions on his work - but he actively encouraged other people to benefit from his work - even when the way in which they were taking his idea was contrary to his own.

Now, nearly twenty years after the ‘World Wide Web’ started to gain momentum into something recognisable as what we use today, we’ve not yet got to a point which has fulfilled Berners-Lee’s vision. He envisaged an open mine of information and collaboration. Wikified browsers were the original intention - where collaboration and editing was a key as browsing.

Another example of a good application that would work better as a protocol is twitter. I think the reason most people don’t get twitter is that in essence its just an RSS feed. Today, paulbradshaw suggested that there be a twitter feed created purely for football scores - not chatter, just results. An RSS feed would have the same functionality - but a different interface.

In the same way that programmers have now begun to separate the content from the design with the advent of Content Management Systems and ‘Blogs - so should things like twitter be more transparent about the platform on which it is built. RSS is expandable and usable - twitter has released an open API to allow integration and collaboration - yet it’s still hindered by having a Central Point of Control. The initial design of the Web implied there was no central point necessary. By manufacturing applications and functions so that a central point is necessary is to lose part of the magic and scalability of the Web.

Brummie Bloggers

Posted by Andy under Birmingham, SBLUG Planet, twitter

Just over a week ago, Pete Lewis and I set up a blog aggregator @ http://dev.zrmt.com.  We initially populated it with a few blogs that we knew of around the Birmingham Area (mostly people from SB LUG and a few other places.   At the start of the week, we decided to move it across to BrumSpace.org.

The main reason behind this was that we wanted to do something that was more than just blogging.  Having been able to read a number of Birmingham Blogs all in the same place - it made me realise that there’s lots more to a BrumSpace than just the blogs.  Twitter is a fantastic medium which is really starting to take off.. like everyone’s hidden mistress.  There’s also Plings - which is a site I’ve recently discovered thanks to a tip-off from a colleague.  It’s aiming to be an event-driven-twitter-thing as far as I can tell.  Looking at their ‘labs’ page shows they’re trying to integrate with twitter rather than replicate it - so watch that space!

The bloggers meet-up this evening was really nice.  It was good to meet so many interesting people.  As I’m fairly new to the blogging community here, I could do with some online introductions.  I’ve met some bloggers offline before even meeting them online - how weird! If you were at the meeting, add me on twitter here = andylockran.

It was also good to meet some of the guys who I’ve spoken to a fair bit on IRC/Mailing Lists, such as Pete, Zeth and Dan.  Looking forward to the next one - when I’ll hopefully be able to put more blogs to names to faces

Quick Update

Posted by Andy under Digital Freedom, Freedom, Ingots, Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Projects, Software, Ubuntu, Update, twitter

OOXML

Unfortunately last Wednesday, MS (n)OOXML was fast-tracked to becoming an ISO standard.  There’s alot of controversy in the geek-world about this decision (and rightly so) - but it’s something we’re all probably going to have to live with.  Check out Zeth’s Article for a succinct and simple analysis of the issues.

Birmingham Bloggers

In what started out as an offer of some free hosting, I’ve now helped shockhead (Pete Lewis) set up a few Brummie related IT ’solutions’.   The biggest one is currently up at http://dev.zrmt.com.  Thanks to Paul Bradshaw, we shall soon be setting up a permanent home @ http://planet.birminghambloggers.com.

There’s alot of Brummie stuff I’ve been made aware of this week, thanks to the repercussions from a Bloggers Meeting earlier in the week.

We also have an IRC chatroom @ ##brum on irc.freenode.net.. and a nice non-geeky web-frontend at http://dev.zrmt.com/brumspace.html.  For non-geeks, this is basically a 90’s style chatroom.  My nickname (handle) is andylockran… I bet you wouldn’t have guessed.

LNMF.info

In tragic circumstances in December 2006, a good friend’s mother was killed in a freak horde-riding accident.  However, so that her memory may live on, a fund was set up in her name, and a number of fantastic projects have been run in order to build a boarding chool in Bidar Province, India.  I’ve set up a WebSite to keep people up to date about what’s happening with the project, and it’s coming very close to completion.  It works well in firefox and opera (and IE7).. but I’ve had some issues with IE6 and Safari.  Please check it out (and pass me feedback on how it works in your browser to andy@SPAMTRAPlnmf.info).

Make IT Modular 

I’ve been doing a bit of charity work recently, and wanted to share a bit of advice that I think is pretty generic to Charities and Small to Medium Business.  One things I am passionate about (with my geek hat on) is Open Standards.  I hopefully aim the articles at a more general end-user.

The article is part of an ongoing collection of blog-style articles that are presented in a more professional way than this blog.  I often find I’m repeating the same message in lots of emails - so it’ll hopefully become a useful resource that I can point clients/charities to.

Ingots 

Now that this blog is reaching a bigger demographic - I urge the new readers to take 5 minutes out of their day to have a look at the Ingots.  If you thought that the ECDL was the only computer qualification worth having - this one could be right up your street.  The INGOTs stand for InterNational Grades in Office Technology - and are the brainchild of a Tamworth based company.  Big up the West Midlands!

Twitter

Twitters proven to be a nice way of breaking up the day.  It’s nice to see some random stuff pop up now and again.  It’s amusing to see the ramblings of loudmouthman and his Humphrey Littleton-esque style departings.  Also the collaborative book review by paulbradshaw et al. I though to be a neat little idea.

Documentation

I’ve been working on lots of documentation this week and my head hurts.  I need sympathy.

I’ve joined Twitter

Posted by Andy under twitter

It’s not one of those things that had massive appeal when I first heard of it, but I’ve finally succumbed and joined it.

http://twitter.com/andylockran for the latest on what I’m doing.