March 09, 2010
--> Computer books clear out
Continuing my general spring clean clear out, I have the following computer books (all in excellent condition) which I no longer need and are free to a good home:
- DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design Using JavaScript & Dom (SitePoint)
- Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP (Wrox)
Texinfo (Free Software Foundation)- SEO Warrior (O’Reilly)
- The Art of SEO (O’Reilly)
- Open Source Game Development – Qt Games for KDE, PDAs and Windows (Thomson Delmar Learning)
- Beyond IBM (Penguin)
Beautiful Code (O’Reilly)- C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 (Prentice Hall)
As with the previous batch of stuff, I’d prefer to give them to local people, but I can probably post one or two of the books in exchange for beer at a future date. Feel free to drop me an email if you want further info about any of the books – I will put links up to their Amazon pages at some point tomorrow.
March 08, 2010
--> Update to Site, Microblogging
y personal Web site has been neglected for a while — neglected in the sense that it gets almost no updates anymore. The main issue with this ought to be out-of-date information that can easily deceive people despite the date stamps at the bottom (some pages are 8 years old). So today I updated some [...]
March 06, 2010
--> Section 28: The Voting Record
I've spent the day researching Section 28, an infamous clause in the Local Government Act 1988 which banned local authorities from promoting the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship
. This was clearly contraversial, but trying to find out the voting record has led to an awful lot of problems.
As far as I can ascertain, the clause was introduced during the committee stage of the Bill on 2nd December 1987 - the committee debate doesn't have a transcript on TheyWorkForYou. Michael Howard, then Tory home secretary, said during the third reading on 15th December that there had been no vote on the clause during the committee stage; the opposition MPs leading on this issue (Jack Cunningham for Labour and Simon Hughes for the Lib Dems) gave reasons for this.
Some amendments to improve the language of the relevant section proposed by Simon Hughes and Jack Cunningham, but all were rejected; the bill then passed its third reading and effectively became approved by the Commons.
It then went to the House of Lords where a further amendment was made - again, I've not managed to get hold of the House of Lords debate online but suspect I could eventually grab it from the Hansard Archive XML. Back in the Commons, an amendment to the Lords' amendment was proposed but voted down.
That means that the vote on the third reading of the Bill was the first and last vote that MPs in the Commons had on Section 28. Voting was on party lines; no Tories opposed the Bill, and no Labour or Lib Dem MPs supported it. Plaid Cymru and the SNP also came out against, with the Ulster Popular Unionist MP siding with the Tories.
The Hansard debate during the third reading is long, but interesting. It includes some really harsh language by today's standards (including MPs accusing other MPs of lying, which is very unparliamentary!) and gives an interesting insight into attitudes towards homosexuality in the mid 80s.
It also made me grateful for They Work For You and Public Whip; researching this stuff by reading raw Hansard text is painful, and having to calculate the divisions by checking which MPs were in which party twenty-odd years ago was time-consuming. The biggest problem I had however was not being able to see the state of the Bill at different points; when Simon talks about amending line 39 of the section, I don't know what that refers to, and can't compare the Bill before it went to Committee or the Lords with what came back.
Ideally we'd have some kind of version-controlling for a Bill as it went through Parliament, much like we have the Statute Law Database where we can check which laws have been modified or repealed by others (such as Section 28 itself, which we can see has been repealed)... it'd make life easier for us researchers even 23 years later!
March 05, 2010
--> Windsurfing at Glossop Sailing Club
Not so long ago I put together this short video of people windsurfing on a windy day at Glossop Sailing Club.
What do you think of it?
It's pretty much my first ever watersports video that I've spent any time editing and I know I've still got a lot to learn...
How would you improve it?
If you think you know an answer, please leave a comment.
The music comes courtesy of Red Light Rippers, with their song "Addicted".
Filmed on a Sanyo Xacti WH1 and edited solely with
All content licenced under: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
February 27, 2010
--> Mashup! - Episode Three
DOWNLOAD the podcast in MP3 format
DOWNLOAD the podcast in OGG format
This marks the release of, Mashup! Episode Three. This time we have a mostly guitar based episode with an Interview with local band, The Fayre, ahead of their gig at FAC251. I thanked Peter Cannon for his review and feedback on Mashup Episode One and playing the winning track from the Don't Disconnect Us campaign as well as playing some awesome freely licenced music.
Let me know what you think!
from The Fayre ahead of their gig at FAC251Many thanks to Peter Cannon for reviewing Mashup Episode one and providng loads of useful feedback.
Otra Dimensión - Atómica - CC-BY-SA 2.5 Peru P-F-M - FOXAPET - CC-BY 2.5 Inertia - Josh Woodward - CC-BY-SA 3.0 Exclusive interview with Eoghan
Exclusive interview with Barham
from The Fayre ahead of their gig at FAC251I mentioned the Don't Disconnect Us competition to find the best protest song against Lord Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill.
Stephen Fry judged the competition and said the following about the winning track:
I am insanely in love with Only Idiots Assume. It's got the anger, the wit, the musical skill - all in a wonderful package that reminds me of the high days of my youth when punk roamed the land and the young were angry and funny and spunky and spiky.
Track to download
Download Overjoy Dub - licence
Thanks for listening, I really hope you enjoyed the show.
Let Me Know What You Think:
Let me know what you think about the music on the show or pretty much anything else. If you are someone who makes music, or know people who do, by all means, feel free to send me suggestions or tracks. I'm very happy to listen to new music and share it with people. If you've got any fantastic awesome ideas, please do let me know.
Send all feedback and suggestions to – mashup AT tdobson.net
You can also find me on Identi.ca and Twitter.
Music Sources and Licensing:
A few of the tracks in this show are from the artists own personal websites and don’t contain licensing information. That’s why they are listed as unknown. The individual licenses are listed next to each track, where known. If there is no license listed you must assume all rights are reserved on that song.
Mashup! by Tim Dobson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
DOWNLOAD the podcast in MP3 format
DOWNLOAD the podcast in OGG format
DOWNLOAD the podcast in broadcast quality OGG format
February 19, 2010
--> Fac251 Gig/Clubnight ticketing FAIL
As some of you may know. I've spent quite a bit of time recently at the new FAC251 superclub located in the old Factory Records building.
I was there on the opening night, til well into the morning, I was at the White Lies gig (it was awesome!) again, I stayed well into the early hours and had an amazing time.
I was, therefore, amazingly excited that my friend's (unsigned) band, The Fayre, were playing FAC251 - I couldn't agree more with them that it was "one of the best things to happen to the Manchester music scene in years".
After my epic nights at the clubnights afterwards I was particularly pleased to see on the official FAC251 Facebook event page that entry to the gig also got you entry to the DysLEXIC students night:
"Tickets £3 Available at www.factorymanchester.com - Tickets also allow entry to DYSLEXIC @ FAC251 following the gig"
I was quite confused, unsuprisingly, when after the gig, the bouncers started clearing Space 1, the live venue, and asking everyone to leave.
I'd payed for entry to the DYSLEXIC clubnight hadn't I?
Why were we all being chucked out into the outside?
I couldn't understand. I tried asking the bouncers if I could get upstairs to the clubnight, but they were unhelpful, essentially ignoring what I was saying and pointing me in the direction of the door.
I tried asking other people why we were being directed out. They didn't really know either. Like me, they had thought their tickets were valid for the clubnight, but had been told that they were not.
We were directed outside the club, without having my hand stamped or being given a wrist band and let out onto the street. There was a massive queue of people waiting to get in for the DYSLEXIC clubnight.
I was extremly confused and annoyed. Why wasn't I allowed entry to the clubnight?
As I stood there in the damp and cold, I watched a group of girls try and reason with one of the bouncers. Instead of attempting to enlighten us as to the situation, or giving us any sort of indication as to why everyone had been kicked out or what was going on.
Eventually, as the girls persisted inquiring why they were stuck in the cold and rain, the bouncer got increasingly aggressive, unhelpful and confrontational and told them to all go away because they weren't going to be allowed in whatever happened.
Frustrated by the lack of information, and be deprived of what I had hoped would have been a good night, combined with the bouncers arrogant attitude.
Sadly, I walked home in the rain.
I'm a bit hurt that FAC251 have done this. It's made me a little more cautious about taking their word for things and has also deprived me of an enjoyable clubnight. I'm quite hurt really, that a brand I have had so much confidence in, over the past few weeks, has delivered such an un-enjoyable end to my night.
I've always believed that they can make a really venue, and I'm certain they still can.
I'm sure that this incident is not a frequent occurrence and certainly wasn't intended to happen. There has to have been a degree of confusion at some level. It's a fairly new venue and I'm sure the teams don't have everything planned and rehearsed as much as they will do in a few months time
I'm also confident that the FAC251's management will listen and accept feedback. Positively take it onboard and use it to make FAC251 run more smoothly in future.
At the end of the day, I want FAC251 to be an awesome place to go, and so do they.
From this...
...to this!
Please note: This article should not reflect badly on The Little Volcanos or The Fayre. I don't believe they hold any responsibility over this incident.
February 16, 2010
--> Platt Fields Tomorrow?
I'm off to Platt Fields Park tomorrow for the reinstallation of the boathouse clock at 12:30pm; does anybody fancy tagging along?
February 15, 2010
--> Free stuff giveaway clearout
I’m having an early spring clean at my flat in an attempt to free up space so that I can fit everything on my bookcase and see the floor for once. The following items are currently earmarked for good homes:
Stargate SG-1 seasons 1-5 (boxed sets).- Various Doctor Who videos, including Dalek and Cybermen boxed sets.
Boxed set of all the Hornblower DVDs.Free Software Free Society book.- Baldur’s Gate 2 + Throne of Bhaal Expansion (one pack).
- Throne of Bhaal Expansion CD (separate disk).
- Civilization II.
JavaStation Krups.
If you want any of the above and can take them off my hands without me having to post them to you (preferably at an event which I’ll be going to anyway, such as Currybeer), the best way to get in touch is to drop me an email. Anything which I haven’t managed to clear by the end of the month will probably make its way to Oxfam or the Warped Library.
(Yes, I know I could flog them on Amazon for a few quid, but I really can’t be bothered making all the trips to the Post Office and ending up having to refund people because the Royal Mail has lost, damaged or destroyed them).
--> London Meeting Venues?
Can anybody recommend a meeting venue in London for me? I want a quiet space where 10-15 people can sit round a table; I would like it to be accessible, and preferably not a pub.
I need it this Sunday, from noon to 5 or 6pm, and I'd like to pay under £150 for it. Any ideas?
February 10, 2010
--> Pub site progress
Thanks to Kirk, I now have a rough idea of the equipment I need to work on my pub site—in short it seems that buying a new digital camera and using my existing GPS logger and then syncronising the two will suffice. I’ve also registered the relevant domains (one with a short URL for redirects) and got a user authentication system working, with a simple registration form not far off completion. I was going to use a framework such as Symfony for the project, but I realised that it would take too much time to learn and I’d have more control by simply knocking together my own minimal framework.
Once the database schema is complete, the next step will be collecting and uploading the initial data. I don’t think this will be too difficult as there are lots of pubs near me to start with—I can probably cover most of Didsbury Village one Sunday, plus my usual haunts for Manchester Free Software, Currybeer etc. I suspect it will be towards the end of March before I launch the site, and it will probably look a bit shoddy to start with as my design skills are not that great, but it will at least be free of pop-up ads.
February 07, 2010
--> Sociable Weekend
I've had a weekend of attending to home life and being sociable, which was very nice. On Friday night I went out for regular Currybeer with Manchester geeks, and nattered about computers, politics and Northern Quarter sex shops. We went to Sangam, right at the top of the curry mile, and I had a very tasty dish heavily spiced with cumin, which was a pleasant change. We returned to Hardy's Well after curry, and I was so full I stayed off the beer, and had a brandy coffee to warm me up for the journey home.
It's about a year since ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tartful_dodger and I started seeing each other (though a few weeks shy of when we actually started going out), so on Saturday we headed into town for a pleasant lunch at Taurus, a little shopping, and jelly bear ice cream from Scoop in the Arndale.
I ran into some of my coworkers, which was a bit uncomfortable. They were out to celebrate two birthdays of people on my team. I felt a bit weird about not having been invited, but figured that nobody wants a spectre at the feast; I haven't seen them all for months, they've been having to do more work because of me being ill, and I don't really have much to say about what I've been up to other than the sheer day-to-day misery of what's been inflicted on me by our employers. One of the crowd who no longer works there invited me along, but I didn't go. Shortly afterwards, I ran into an old friend from Uni which was pretty cool.
When I got home, I had a nice evening in with greyeyedeve, watching Dorian Gray on DVD. It was not a bad film, though a little lacklustre. Some of the changes to the plot were good, particularly the generation jump. For once I got an early night and a good night's sleep, mostly by drugging myself up with anti-heartburn and indigestion pills.
Today, I got up, prepared breakfast, hoovered the flat, did lunch, and arranged socialness; Olly had been planning to invite people round to mine but ended up feeling very ill, so I took over. I went out to the shops after minnesattva arrived, and by the time I returned we had a softfruit and an emma_b79 too. Then Olly showed up with shinydan who brought eclairs and Coke. We watched Part Troll and I provided vegetarian Indian-type snackage. Towards the end, mr_parsnip joined us. Some people stayed behind for Dylan Moran afterwards.
All in all it's been great to see people, do stuff and generally have a bit of time to be sociable. I've crossed a few things off my TODO list in the process, but I've spent some time concentrating on me for a change, and feel better for it.
--> Bill Bailey in the next room
The Home Office are launching the expensive, intrusive, compulsory and life-long National Identity Scheme in London tomorrow morning (that's Monday) at Victoria.
Obviously, NO2ID needs to have a presence on the day to let everyone know that we oppose the introduction of the cards to Londoners.
What we'd like to do is hold the traditional NO2ID protest with NO2ID banners, large ID cards, leaflets etc and with half a dozen people dressed in the NO2ID protest outfit (a white decorator's suit and this facemask: http://www.no2id.net/downloads/speakUpMask.pdf). We'll provide all the necessary stuff, all you need to bring is yourself!
The official event will be at 8:15am, so NO2ID's photo-op will be at 8am and finished by 9am; hopefully people can make it on their way to work. If you can, please e-mail local.groups@no2id.net or call Matty on 07500 836 461
We'll be asssembling on Belgrave Road, on the corner just outside the passport office - map here.
Obviously this is another important step in the fight against the National Identity Scheme; if any Londoners can go protest then I'll love you forever - I was up at 5am on the day they launched it in Manchester!
Please repost this on your journals, Facebook, Twitter etc. to spread the word!
February 06, 2010
--> FAC251 Launch: Review & Photos!
I've just got back from the FAC251 Launch gig!
This is how my night went:
My ticket said it started at 7pm, Facebook advised a 7.30pm start so I rushed to get there and got in the queue at about 7.10pm.
TV crews were all over the place, rushing around, getting panorama shots of a queue, filming signs. It looked like dull work.
A reporter from Key103 came down the line and asked us all our thoughts on the FAC251. I couldn't really think of anything meaningful so I just blubbered out a few incoherent sentences about how Manchester would have great expectations of a venue with a background like this ones. I went on to speculate as to whether this would be the Hacienda of the nouties...
At about 8pm the line was really getting quite long but we were finally ushered in, had our printed out digital eticket (with 2D barcodes) scanned and had our hands stamped. FINALLY, we were in.
The stage!
On the ground floor we have the live space. It's quite a nice live space in my opinion. It's fairly small, intimate, friendly.
The stage basically fills the opposite end of the room to the end you come in through. There is a stone/concrete floor, a bar at the opposite end of the room.
Hooky!
I managed to get right at the front at the barrier, but the amount of people with SLRs or commercial-grade video cameras was almost stunning for me.
At times, I couldn't work out whether it was a press conference or a gig I was at.
All I had was my Nokia N900, no 3G and only 1/2 my battery!
It kicked off and I immediately realised that as I was behind the main speakers, I wasn't getting the sound quality I might have expect had I been stood in the middle 3 metres back. However, with people squashing me from 3 directions, the last thing I was going to do was move to get better sound quality!
Guitar!
Throughout the evening, I was microblogging persistently and my followers and subscribers had taken quite an interest. Some people's response was along the lines of "Lucky Git" where as others remembered The FAC51 Hacienda. Some felt that FAC251 would just be full of chavs where as others were really happy to see something rise out of the ashes of the Hacienda...
Guitar!
The crowd were loving it!
For me I think there were two highlights from a musical perspective - two times when I thought the music was absolutely outstanding (not including The Blue Monday Song).
When Rowetta started to sing (confusingly a Joy Division cover! )I was mesmerised. Although she only did two songs, it was clear by the crowd reaction that I wasn't the only one enjoying listening to her.
Hooky mentioned, that, before Joy Division's Ian Curtis killed himself, the band had been working on a song that had been left unfinished.
Hooky went on to explain that him and some others had gone away and finished the song and then proceeded to debut it to the wider world.
I couldn't believe how good it was. It really was all there, fantastically delivered vocals, catchy guitar riffs, a driving tempo. Yes, I'd quite like to hear that song again whatever it was called...
Rosetta and Hooky
They finished off the set with the pace getting ever faster. Finally, as an encore, the played The Blue Monday song. As New Orders probably most iconic track, it turned the the group of SLR wielding yuppies crowding next to me back into headbanging teeny-boppers again. Memories, hey!?
I really enjoyed the gig, and the subsequent club night, however details of the club night will have to be another post, as I now desperately need to go to bed.
Creative Commons
All my photos and videos of the FAC251 Launch gig are available on flickr.
Please reuse and remix and remember to attribute Tim Dobson as the photographer. :)
Any links to tdobson.net are always appreciated! :D
All content was taken on my Nokia N900 mobile phone.
All content is be licenced under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
February 05, 2010
--> FAC251 Launch
More than ten years since the legendary Fac 51 Haçienda closed it's doors and almost three years after the death of Factory Records boss Tony Wilson, you would have been forgiven for thinking that Manchester's "Madchester" era had all but died out.
However, it would appear this is not the case!
Peter "Hooky" Hook from legendary Manchester bands New Order and Joy Division is launching a new club with help and support from the Gary Manny "Mani" Mounfield (Stone Roses/Primal Scream) and former members of the Happy Mondays.
FAC251 as it will be known, is based in the original Factory Records headquarters on Princess street.
There is a slight bit of irony involved. In October 2009, Hooky released a book entitled "How not to run a club" detailing his experiences running the Hacienda and swearing he'd never run a club again!
FAC251 Trailor
Anyway, I've managed to get tickets to the official launch event which is tonight, .
Apparently this is what I'm going to be looking forward to:
PETER HOOKS 'THE LIGHT' Live gig
A special one off performance featuring PETER HOOK joined by MANI (Roses), ROWETTA (Mondays), HOWARD MARKS performing RARE AND EXCLUSIVE Joy Division and New Order tracks plus a WORLD DEBUT from Hooky and Mani's new project FREEBASS..
Should be good! Stay tuned to me on identi.ca and twitter and watch my flickr page for live updates!
February 04, 2010
--> Comparative publishing…
So that I don’t lose all this knowledge the moment something more relevant to my life, such as breathing, occurs; I will dump it here for all to marvel at the incredible complexity of something which claims its strength lies in its simplicity.
- Goal
- To publish a git branch on a colo box such that someone else can get a copy of it to look at, and so that I can push my changes there and they can update their copy easily.
- Complicating factor
- My friend can only use HTTP to get at the branch due to proxy issues.
Case study one; Git:
Now, I’m not claiming this is the best way to do this; nor that it is the simplest way. This is simply the result of asking the question to extant git users.
- First, on the server on which you want to serve from, install git.
- Next, on that server, mkdir -p /where/to/serve/branch
- …then cd into it and run git init—bare
- …followed by the highly obvious chmod +x hooks/post-update in order that the HTTP fetches work properly.
- Now, on your client, git remote add website ssh://myserver/path/to/branch
- …and then if you want git push to do-the-right-thing, try git config branch.branchname.remote website (where branchname is the name of your branch, typically master for me)
- …and then do git push or git push website if you didn’t do the config command.
Your friend can now do git clone http://myserver/uri/to/branch and rejoice in the clone of your branch.
Case study two; Bazaar:
Again, I’m not claiming this is the best way; just the way I happen to know, having been a bzr user for a long time.
- On your client, bzr push --remember sftp://myserver/path/to/branch (you can drop the --remember if you don't want it to be the default for the next bzr push you do).
Your friend can now do bzr branch http://myserver/uri/to/branch and rejoice in the branch of your branch.