Sun, 28 May 2006
Brick - Short Review
I saw a description of Brick when I was looking for the X-Men 3 release
date and it grabbed my attention pretty quickly. "A modern day film noir
sit in a high-school" seemed very Whedon. And now that he's got nothing on
the air I'm finding it harder to get my regular dose of Joss.
The film itself was great, very stylishly shot, featured a solid performance from the "hero" and had great dialogue. Well worth seeing. 7/10.
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Posted: 2006/05/28 12:05 | /movies | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Web 2.0 Service Mark
I'm not a lawyer, so this is based on my uneducated understanding, but
from what I can gather, if you use the phrase Web 2.0 in the name of a
conference then O'Reilly and CMP are within their rights to send you a
Cease and Desist. Even if it's a
non-profit Web 2.0 conference like IT@Cork. Who now have coverage of their event I'd
kill for :)
I think what's annoyed a lot of people is that they've been dupped in to promoting a clumsy, easy to mock, phrase that's never been more than a marketing term. The fact that the mark registration process started in 2003 and people are only now aware of it makes them feel like idiots. And they're lashing out. The fact that some mistakes were made when dealing with the incident (lawyers before chats and the "they can use it this year" line) has just given them some real issues to rally around.
On a tangent, I wonder what the O'Reilly response would be if Jesse James Garrett suddenly declared that he'd be sitting on a trademark for AJAX in conjunction with books or conferences.
This whole incident should be a wake up call for a lot of OpenSource and Free software people, corporate interest is great (the money is better!) and it's helping us do things that'd take more money or time than we've got available at the moment but we should be checking those gift horse teeth to see what's behind them. Caution is never a bad thing and we should occasionally question what we're supporting. Especially if it's a tacky phrase like Web 2.0!
The one image I can't shake is Tim O'Reilly sitting on a beach somewhere on vacation: "Wow, I know it's warm here but my ears are REALLY burning..."
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Posted: 2006/05/28 11:57 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Tue, 23 May 2006
Mozilla Europe and M4D Conference Skills
I've seen two posts today, each of them about technical events, that caught
my interest and deserve a comment.
The Farm on the Rails Seminar Admissions Test is something I've thought
about in the past and never come to a conclusion about; how do you do an
advanced event without pissing people off?
The Pragmatic Studio's Advanced Rails Studio approach is to ask for demonstration code, a site or a decent write up of previous experience. I don't think it'd fit my need, I want to organise a peer group of experienced Linux sysadmins for more frequent meetings, but I'm interested in seeing how people respond to the entry criteria.
The second post was Gervase Markham on a European Mozilla Conference. I'm not a heavy Firefox developer but I've written search extensions and Greasemonkey plugins, I've made a couple of trivial extensions and I'd love to go to a one day developer focused event, if it happened in London, to see what else I can make it do. So how about it guys? I'm willing to help with venues and promotion...
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Posted: 2006/05/23 23:30 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Fri, 19 May 2006
Last Minute Demands
If you say, "I need this by the end of today. At the absolute
latest!" (or some close variation) which of these do you think is
most likely outcome? I admire your spontaneous creativity and
willingness to "motivate" people in to achieving your goals or I
think you can't plan for shit and have no ability to manage your time
or projects? Want a hint?
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Posted: 2006/05/19 07:56 | /nottech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
(Bad) Pulling Tactics as Security Attacks
Booty Call:
"Booty calls can be used by one partner of an ended relationship to obtain
sex from the ex-partner, due to lingering emotions and feelings of a need
for continued physical connection."
This one's pretty obvious, it's a replay attack. You've already gone through the authorisation and authentication processes and now you're reusing previously obtained credentials to obtain access to a resource.
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Posted: 2006/05/19 04:35 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sun, 14 May 2006
Linux Journal - Advert Delivery System?
While I'm thinking about magazines I'm going to complain about Linux
Journal. I've been a reader for over six years now and apart from the
horrible "Cooking with Linux" columns (where Marcel Gagme badly pretends
to be a French restaurateur) I've been happy with the content. Mick
Bauer's "Paranoid Penguin" and "At The Forge" by Reuven Lerner have long
been highlights.
Recently the magazines tone seems to have changed a lot. It's now almost impossible to find a two page spread that doesn't have an advert in it. The graphical layout makes it hard to tell where the articles begin and the magazines physical dimensions have altered, making it a bugger to stack.
I'm giving it another issue to find its feet and if it's no better I'll stop reading it. When I started looking for Linux information my reading options were pretty limited. Thankfully, these days, there are other sources of Linux information.
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Posted: 2006/05/14 15:32 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Event Signup Emails - What I do with them
I've had a couple of people ask what I do with peoples emails addresses
once they've sent me a request to sign-up/register. In an attempt to
prove I'm not making millions with them (but if you know a way, I'm
open... :)) I thought I'd document the reasons I ask for email addresses
and what I do with them afterwards.
The reasons I ask for them are pretty simple: so I can adjust the venue if we need somewhere with a bigger capacity. The original Frameworks night venue held 40 people. We ended up with 207 people in the audience. Without knowing how many people were going to turn up I'd have turned a lot of unhappy people away.
Secondly, some venues require a list of attendees before they'll let anyone in. If we go somewhere that does this I give them names but not email addresses. This way they can check you off their list but they can't spam you.
The last real reason is so that I can send interested people last minute updates/amendments. If Murphy bites I'd like to let as many people know as early as possible. Most people read their personal mail before mailing lists so having your address available may make the difference between a cold night on your own outside a locked building and sitting indoors watching Firefly.
After the event I nuke the mailbox I stored the sign up emails mails in, and the sent mails about the event. I keep a tally of how many people registered, for future planning, but I don't keep any specific details on individuals. Hopefully, making the why more transparent with ease suspicions. Yeah, right.
PS: The most amusing one so far was a man complaining (via email) that he didn't want me having his email address...
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Posted: 2006/05/14 15:10 | /unixdaemon | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Magazine Collection Rules
I've recently had to get rid of a bundle of magazine back issues, some of
them from as far back as November 1999 (sysadmin mag, an article on Expect
that I've still not read...) and I've decided to put a couple of rules in
place to help keep things sane:
- Any magazine over three months old goes.
- No more than 20 magazines in the pile at any time.
The first rule serves two purposes, it stops me saying "I'll read that on the weekend" month after month, and it helps keep my information up to date. We're in an industry that never slows (we'll ignore the irony of me having so many dead tree publications) and while working through my backlog I found whole issues that were now completely redundant to me. In-depth articles on IPChains, Kernel 2.2 and similar don't really deserve the shelf space anymore.
The second rule will hopefully stop me buying too many magazines that I never get much out of. I read, well buy, 8-10 technical magazines a month. And a lot of them ain't much use anymore (*Cough* Linux Journal *Cough*). By making myself conscious of how many I've got at home hopefully I'll start dropping this number. Which'll save me money, shelf space and from getting annoyed at the quality of the articles. It's not anal, it's proactive!
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Posted: 2006/05/14 14:49 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Mon, 08 May 2006
Jeff Barr (Amazon Web Services) in London - May 15th!
When you think about Web Services you think about Amazon. And that's how
good a job Jeff Barr, web services evangelist at Amazon, does!
Speaking in London on May 15th, for one night only, we're fortunate to have Jeff presenting on their stable of Web Services: AWS, S3 and the mechanical turk.
Come along and listen to the ideas, views and experiences of someone uniquely positioned in one of the biggest and most advanced companies offering developer access to Web Services.
Attendance is free (email me, dean.wilson at gmail.com, if want to attend so I can let you know of any last minute changes) and after the event we'll be heading to one of the local pubs where you can chat with your peers and fellow audience members.
== Details-: Times: Start at 19:00 on May 15th, 2006. End (and to the pub) by 20:30. Address: New Cavendish Street Campus Westminster University London (nearest tubes Great Portland St; Warren St; Goodge St.) United Kingdom Announcement: http://blog.unixdaemon.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.pl/events/aws_jeffreybarr.html Map to the venue: http://tinyurl.com/9299b (Streetmap). Detailed View: http://www.wmin.ac.uk/page-7679-smhp=4459 Detailed Campus Map. Signup: Send me an email (dean.wilson at gmail.com) if you're interested in attending.
I know this isn't a huge amount of notice so please feel free to forward this announcement or link to it from your blog.
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Posted: 2006/05/08 23:07 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Wed, 03 May 2006
Slither - 4/5
I finally got around to seeing Slither. It's (a small) part
horror, (large) part bad comedy and an enjoyable hour and a bit. The gore
isn't as bad as I thought it'd be from reading interviews with the director
and it reminded me of Eight Legged Freaks, another funny bad B-movie that I
enjoyed.
Oh, and it's got Nathan Fillion in it. It's not the role that's going to make his career but he does put on a respectable showing.
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Posted: 2006/05/03 22:41 | /nottech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children DVD
I'm pretty sure I had a reason for adding Final Fantasy VII - Advent
Children to my Amazon DVD rental
queue, but when it arrived in the post I couldn't think of it.
I've never played the game so I went in to the film cold and have to say that it was actually a decent watch, even for a newbie. The plot makes a little sense, the voice cast were forgettable but some of the animated fight scenes were amazing. Part Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and part pure technology demo it's hard not to come away liking at least the fight scenes.
While looking at the extras I did notice a "Reminisce about Final Fantasy VII" link that sped the viewer through the game. With hindsight I should have watched this first so I'd have more of a clue what was going on... Still I enjoyed it for the sheer technology and fight scenes if nothing else.
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Posted: 2006/05/03 08:38 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Tue, 02 May 2006
Blosxom Plugin - Google Maps Tag
Linking to Google maps is nice. Jumping through the hoops to get the target
URL isn't so much. This
plugin allows you to use either a raw postcode (it's built for the UK) or a
named location that will get expanded out to a full Google Maps URL.
You can use any of these short cuts:
- <gmap "office">
- <a href="gmap:EC1V 3QR">
- <gmap>EC1V 3QR</gmap>
For full details have a look at the Google Maps Tag Blosxom Plugin source. Note: The links generated by this plugin use maps.google.co.uk, if you don't like this (if you want to use the American site for example) then hack the source.
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Posted: 2006/05/02 23:58 | /tools/online | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Mon, 01 May 2006
London JavaScript Night - Thursday 25th of May 2006
I seem to be partly involved in the first London JavaScript Night,
there's not much to say about it really, other than we've got two top notch
speakers. The full details are online and if you want to attend then sign up!
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Posted: 2006/05/01 14:32 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
