last.fm
last.fm
Kal Lavelle – Shivers
http://www.last.fm/music/Kal+Lavellelast.fm
OST – Superstar
http://www.last.fm/music/OSTlast.fm
[unknown] – The Dresden Dolls - No, Virginia... - 05 The Gardener
http://www.last.fm/music/%5Bunknown%5Dlast.fm
Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl
http://www.last.fm/music/Van+Morrison
davblog
Week Notes 17 & 18
Another fortnight with no blog posts.
Health
Getting used to paying close attention to what I’m eating and how much I’m exercising. And for the first week of this fortnight that was starting to work and I shifted a few pounds. This week I’ve been staying in a hotel in Edinburgh and all of my good work has been undone. Just need to start again I suppose.
Last time I mentioned how my had suggested that I bought a Fitbit as it would encourage me to take more notice of what my body was doing. Turns out that this is a really good idea. And it also turns out that’s it’s a bit of a growing movement. O’Reilly have just published a book called Fitness for Geeks which looks at this whole area in some detail. I have a copy which I’m looking forward to reading. Once I’ve finished it, I’ll write a review.
Training and Speaking
As I mentioned above, I’ve been in Edinburgh all this week. I ran five days of Perl training for staff at Edinburgh University. Everyone seemed happy with the way it went and there’s a chance I’ll be invited back again at some point in the future.
But in the previous week I arranged another training course. It all happened rather quickly and, to be honest, took me a bit by surprise. It was a case of a few things all coming together at the right time.
Five years ago, the London Perl Mongers, with lots of help from the BBC, ran what we called a “Perl Teach-In”. It was a one-day, free Perl training course. It was a great success. The fifty places on the course were all booked in a couple of days and everyone who came on the day agreed that it was a great idea.
For a few months now, as we approached the fifth anniversary of the Teach-In, I’ve been thinking that it would be nice to do it all over again. I spoke to a few people to get a few ideas, but nothing really came together. A couple of months ago, I heard about Google’s new Campus venue in London and I contacted them to find out what they would charge to hold a training event there. For several weeks I got no reply.
Then, about ten days ago, Google got back to me asking what date I wanted to hold my event. I asked them what it would cost and they told me it would be free. So we set a date of 4th August for the second free Perl Teach-In. This time all the places were booked in just under 24 hours. Which seems pretty successful.
If this works, then there’s a good chance that I’d like to make it a more frequent event. But (obviously) I’d like to find some way to make a bit of money out of it. Perhaps I need to look for sponsorship.
perl hacks
Perl Teach-In 2012
Back in 2007 the London Perl Mongers ran a free one-day Perl training course at the BBC’s offices in White City. That was five years ago, so for a couple of months I’ve been thinking that it was probably about time that we did another one.
And then suddenly this afternoon a few loose ends came together and all of a sudden it’s been organised.
The course will be on Saturday 4th August at Google Campus in London. It will run from 9am to 5pm. As last time, it will be completely free to attendees.
Last time the course was aimed at intermediate Perl programmers and introduced them to advanced Perl techniques. This time I’m aiming at the opposite of the spectrum. The course is called “Modern Perl for Non-Perl Programmers”. It’s aimed at people who are comfortable programming in languages other than Perl and who are interested in getting up to speed in Perl as quickly as possible.
Obviously most of the readers of this blog won’t be in the target audience for the course, but I’m betting that you all know at least one person who might be interested in the course. So it would be great if you could send the link to the registration page to anyone who you think would find the course useful.
The link is: perltraining.eventbrite.co.uk
Update: All of the places on this course were booked in about 20 hours. In 2007, a similarly sized free course was all booked up in about two days. I guess it’s true that Perl is dying 
davblog
Week Notes 15 & 16
Another fortnightly week notes. That really wasn’t how this was supposed to work. Only one other blog post in that time too. I’m a lazy blogger.
Health
With my leg feeling much better, I’ve started to concentrate on losing weight. About a week ago I bought a Fitbit. It’s a bit like a pedometer, but it measures more than just the number of steps you take – it also measures the number of flights of stairs that you climb and monitors the quality of your sleep. There’s a USB transmitter/receiver thing and whenever you’re close to that, it uploads the latest data to the Fitbit web site. It was my wife who suggested it. She realised that the challenge of measuring things and having little targets to beat (can I walk further today than I did yesterday) appeals to my geeky nature. She’s probably right too. I’ve lost three pounds since I’ve had it.
Alongside that I’ve also signed up with My Fitness Pal, which I use to track the number of calories I eat and the the amount of exercise that I do. It also pulls data down from the Fitbit site and takes that into account when working out how many more calories I can eat in a day.
Calorie counting is a real pain. Who knew that calories tasted so good?
Technology
I’ve had a couple of run ins with technology in the last couple of weeks. Devices that were more complex than they needed to be to use with Linux.
The first problem was the Fitbit. it turned out that there was no way to do the initial set-up on Linux so I reluctantly booted my laptop into Windows for the first time in months. But having done the initial configuration I’ve been able to do the day-to-day data uploading quite happily from Linux. There’s a libfitbit priject on Github which seems to have stalled, but works pretty well in its current form.
Then there was a new printer. I got a free Dell P513W when I bought my new laptop recently but I hadn’t got round to setting it up until last weekend. Once again I needed to be in Windows in order to run the initial configuration. It connects to a wireless network and there was no Linux software to configure that.
But having got it up and running and working successfully with a PC running Windows it should have been simple enough to get it running across the network from a Linux system. For that to work I needed a PPD file for the printer. So I went to the Dell site to find it. This README file implied that the correct file was available, but it proved hard to track down. So eventually, I resorted to writing to Dell customer support who gave me some of the worst support I’ve ever come across and didn’t solve my problem. I don’t have space here to describe how incompetent they were. I should write a blog post.
I still don’t have that printer working under Linux, but I have a few avenues to explore.
Training and Speaking
Preparations are in full swing for my trip to Edinburgh. I’m going up next weekend and spending a week running training courses for Edinburgh University.
I’ve also been talking to another client about perhaps doing something up in the north of England later in the year. No firm plans yet. Not even sure if it’ll be public or private courses.
Gigs
Two gigs in the last three days. And both of them were at the Union Chapel. On Thursday night I saw June Tabor and the Oysterband and last night I went back to see John Renbourn, Robin Williamson and Wizz Jones.
I’ve been buying tickets for things coming up later in the year. One particularly mad event is the Crystal Palace Garden Party on June 23rd. Rick Wakeman, Hawkwind, Focus, The Strawbs, Curved Air and Barclay James Harvest. It’s like it’s still 1975.
Films
I saw and very much enjoyed Cabin in the Woods. Rather strange ending though.
Looking forward to seeing The Avengers (or as it’s now known, Avengers Assemble) when it opens next weekend.
davblog
Android Applications
For the last two years I’ve been using an HTC Desire. In the last few days I’ve upgraded to an HTC One X. Whilst I liked the Desire a lot, one thing that really let it down – the lack of space to install apps. I spent most of the last year with the “short of space” notification on. At times I was running a “one out, one in” policy where I could only install a new app if I removed one first.
The One X has a lot more memory, so I’m hoping that I won’t have so much problem installing apps and can try some new and interesting ones. I’ve started by installing what I consider the essential apps.
- Astrid – Todo list management. I sync it with Producteev
- Dropbox – The One X comes with this pre-installed and with an extra 20 GB of space
- Evernote – The One X comes with a rebranded version of this just called “Notes”
- Foursquare
- Gmail
- Google Docs
- Google Maps
- Google Reader
- Google Search
- Handcent – For text messages. Much better than the standard app.
- Hullomail – Visual voicemail. I use the free version.
- Kindle
- Last.fm
- London Journey
- My Tracks
- Street View
- Tasker
- Tweetdeck
- Voice Search
- WordPress
Then I installed a few apps that I used to use, but that I had to give up when I ran out of space on the Desire:
There’s one app that I used to use that I can no longer find. I think it was called Movie Finder and it listed all the films that were on at all the cinemas in London (or, perhaps, the UK). If anyone knows what it was – or can recommend a replacement – then please let me know.
I’ve installed some semi-random apps that caught my eye:
- Gigbeat – Who seem to have beaten Songkick to producing an app that uses Songkick data.
- Instagram – But it currently doesn’t support the camera in the One X. I’m sure that’ll come soon.
- Night Clock
- VirginMedia TV guide – currently just a TV guide, but it’ll be awesome when I get a Tivo as you can program it remotely.
That’s as far as it goes so far. But the Android market (sorry, I mean the “Google Play Store”) is now huge. I’m sure I’m missing out on interesting and useful apps. Or, perhaps, there are better apps available to replace the ones I’m currently using. Is Tweetdeck still the best Twitter client? Is there a better augmented reality app than Wikitude?
What am I missing out on?
davblog
Week Notes 14
Blogging
Just one blog post this week. Everyone was talking about Samantha Brick, so why shouldn’t I?
Health
Halfway through the week I noticed that my ankle was no longer affecting the way I move at all. It still aches a bit at times, but I seem to have lost my limp.
All of which means that I should get back to trying to lose a bit more weight. To that end I have just ordered a Fitbit from Amazon. It’s like an enhanced pedometer. It measures all sorts of movement and uploads the data automatically to the Fitbit web site. It should arrive in the next few days so there will, no doubt, be more to say about this next week.
Technology
Last week I mentioned that I had bought a Google Nexus. It didn’t last very long. It arrived on Saturday and at some point whilst it was being charged overnight on Monday, it died. I’m not sure what happened to it, but there was no way to turn it on. I’ve seen people on the internet claiming there’s a known issue with the battery in that phone, but I don’t know how accurate that is.
Of course, I was able to return the phone to Amazon, but the question was should I get a replacement or a refund? Then I saw news articles saying that the HTC One X would be available through T-Mobile (my current mobile provider) from 5th April. And the reviews of the One X all seemed to be very positive. So I returned the Galaxy Nexus, asked Amazon for a refund and bought a One X on Thursday.
My initial impression is that I did the right thing. The One X is even more lovely than the Galaxy Nexus. And it has already last a day longer and shows no signs of breaking down.
More detail (hopefully) in the next few days.
Programming
I did some more tweaks to a couple of my Perl modules. And yesterday I did more work on a new (and more substantial) project. I’ve put this new code on Github.
I’ve also had a brilliant idea for a web site. But I have no idea when I’m going to find the time to build it.
Books
I finished reading A Game of Thrones. I enjoyed it, but there’s an awful lot of it. And it seems that the rest of the series just get longer and longer. Need a rest before embarking on A Clash of Kings.
I’ve started reading Finding Moonshine by Marcus Du Sautoy. It’s about symmetry and group theory. Not far into it yet, but I’m enjoying it.
TV
Watched the first episode of the second series of Game of Thrones. It looks like it’s going to be as good as the first series. And I spotted Cassie (from the first generation of Skins characters) as one of Craster’s daughters.
We’ve finished our rewatching of Lost. And have started to rewatch Six Feet Under from the start.
Other Stuff
Due to an organisational mix-up we ended up eating in our favourite restaurant, Lamberts, to consecutive nights this week – which was great.
Our boiler has broken down. And it was clever enough to time its breakage to the only four-day weekend in the year.
cpan
WWW-Shorten-3.03
"{^özÚD»!¢»^)à²+^cpan
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Thick As A Brick
But your new shoes are worn at the heels and
Your suntan does rapidly peel and
Your wise men don’t know how it feels to be thick as a brick.
[Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick]
Yesterday was a fun day on the internet. It was one of those days where a Daily Mail writer writes something spectacularly stupid and the internet (or, at least, the small part of it that follows the UK media) spends a few pleasant hours taking the piss.
Yesterday it was the turn of Samantha Brick. She wrote an article called ‘There are downsides to looking this pretty’: Why women hate me for being beautiful. You’ve probably read it, but if you haven’t the summary is that she thinks she is really attractive and this means that random men often do nice things for her, but random woman often take an instant dislike to her.
There are so many holes in her theory that it’s hard to know where to start. I’d guess that a lot of women don’t warm to her not because they are jealous of her irresistible beauty, but rather because she comes across as a bit of a shallow airhead who defines herself by her level of attractiveness to men. Oh, and about that irresistible beauty. I don’t want to sound rude, but I think she’s slightly deluded there.
If that article wasn’t enough for you to form an opinion of her, I invite you to peruse the list of previous articles she has written for the Mail. Just reading the titles should be enough. No need to wade into the content unless you have a particularly strong stomach.
So the internet had its day of fun laughing at Ms Brick and her nonsense. And it would have probably ended there, but the Mail just wouldn’t let it lie. Today they bounced back with two follow-up articles. One was reporting on how Ms Brick had become an “internet sensation” (where the Mail sees a sensation, the rest of us see a laughing stock) and the other was by Ms Brick herself. In it she claims that yesterday’s reaction just proves that her original theory was right.
Once again she shows that logical thinking is not her forté. Let’s bring the argument down to the simplest level and see if we can spot any flaws.
Ms Brick: Most women hate me because I’m so beautiful.
The Internet: You’re wrong and here’s about a billion reasons why.
Ms Brick: See! Everyone hates me. My original theory was right.
I really don’t think that stands up to the slightest amount of scrutiny, do you?
The article includes a photo of Ms Brick standing next to her husband. She’s wearing the same purple dress that she wears in a lot of the photos from the last couple of days. But he’s wearing combat fatigues and carrying a rifle. Which takes on a slightly worrying meaning when you read what she wrote a few paragraphs below the photo when talking about her husband’s reaction to the furore.
At first, he shrugged it off, saying they were just the spiteful remarks of a few jealous women. But as the storm brewed . . . well, I’ve had to hide the worst of it from him; the tame few I’ve read out have riled him enough to want to take his own form of action.
Have you got that? Be nicer to her or her husband will come after you with his rifle.
Of course, Ms Brick and her delusions of superiority aren’t the real issue here. The real issue is the way that the Mail (and, in particular, Mail Online) have become so good at drawing in visitors who wouldn’t normally go anywhere near the paper. The Mail’s core audience obviously don’t spend as much time on the internet as the readers of some other papers. So the Mail have come up with a couple of strategies for getting readership from outside their core audience.
The first of these is the “sidebar of shame” so brilliantly reviewed by Steven Baxter recently. And the second is the liberal outrage strategy that we all fell for yesterday. I guess this was a lesson they picked up from the Jan Moir/Stephen Gately sage a couple of years ago. If you print things that annoy the (still largely liberal) Twitterati, then they will tweet and retweet their outrage. And every tweet brings more clicks. And every click brings more advertising revenue. As long as you don’t go too far (as Jan Moir did) and end up having to remove adverts from the page everything is wonderful. This morning I read an estimate that Samantha Brick’s article could have made the Mail £100,000 in advertising revenue.
This is what istyosty was about. Allowing people to read Mail stories without giving the clicks. And that’s, of course, why the Mail had it closed down. It hit them in the bottom line and they really didn’t like that.
I don’t have any solutions. I’m as guilty as anyone of passing round Mail links in order to spread the outrage. I wish I could just ignore them, but they’ve got under my skin. I even run a site which exists purely to link to Mail stories. I’m addicted to the outrage.
[Note: I wasn't planning to blog on this topic. But a friend pointed out the Jethro Tull link and I knew I just couldn't resist. Thanks Gareth.]
Update: Chris shares some thoughts about reading (and sharing) Mail content without giving them the clicks.
flickr
The Shard from Borough Market
Dave Cross posted a photo:
It wasn't raining. The camera in the Desire is just a bit crap in low light conditions.
perl hacks
How Well Can You Read Documentation?
(I was going to call this post “How well do you understand context?” but I think this title is more accurate).
I just saw someone recommending this code:
$reversed = reverse(split //, $string);
Looks sensible enough, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. What’s the hidden inefficiency?
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