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Here is where you can catch up with the latest writing talent coming out of Birmingham's own Community of bloggers. If you want to be part of it, click here to add your name to the list. Enjoy! (We're currently just getting up and running with this feature, so please direct your comments to brummie@brumspace.org) |
by bsag (butshesagirl@rousette.org.uk) at November 22, 2008 05:25 PM
Do you remember, sometime in the mid 1990s, when the baked beans war began? Supermarkets slashed the price of their budget beans to absurd levels. You could buy a tin for 3p, but a few tins as they had to stop the local cafes clearing the shelves to stock up.
Prices soon stabilised at something closer to cost price but were still substantially cheaper than the name brands. 12p or so for a tin of beans was pretty good value really.
But no longer. I noticed in my local supermarket the other day that their value beans were now 30p compared to the branded variety at 35p. It’s over. After over a decade sanity has prevailed in the baked beans market. Farewell absurdly cheap meal substitute. You will be missed.
Photo by Su-Lin on Flickr.
Mac artists — a website for the nine artists invited to make artworks on the site of the Midlands Arts Centre in south Birmingham, currently being rebuilt.
Subs’ Standards blog reports on Thursday’s Press Club meeting in Birmingham on the future of the mainstream media in the West Midlands…
“The first 10 minutes were given over to a DVD compilation of Birmingham’s glorious print and TV past — featuring, bizarrely, images of New Faces, Pot Black and Basil Brush”
Despite the free open-access event being trailed on D’log last Monday…
“There were no pure bloggers represented in the audience — in the straw poll of around 70 attendees”
Pics from the event here, along with Steve Dyson’s account of the panel debate…
“For me, the biggest ‘debate’ occurred with a local government PR who claimed she was trying to stuff press releases into our hands, but no longer knew anyone at the papers because they had left. I think I upset her when I quipped that any decent PR would make sure they knew one of 100+ journalists at our new premises in Fort Dunlop. She did not like that…”
Meanwhile, Dave Lee comments on the BBC’s scrapping of plans to offer local video news, and he starts monitoring the Birmingham Mail website to see if they take advantage of the breathing-space the BBC’s just given them.
Not that I actually need such local online video news, though, when my BBC local radio station already offers 1) extensive and exemplary local news and events coverage, and even 2) “behind closed doors” featurettes. The only problem is that such coverage isn’t indexed or made searchable and then made available again online via a pinpoint-accuracy ‘listen again’ archive. Instead, almost all of that detailed historical record of the inner-life of a city just fades away into the ether, after a few days on iPlayer.
Six video interviews from Wolverhampton’s recent FLIP animation festival.
I got a Wii for my birthday a couple of months back. It's great: I love Zelda, got tennis elbow playing Wii Sports, and like playing Super Monkey Ball (Banana Blitz) with Nicola and Madeleine.
I also bought the internet channel (basically Opera browser) for it. This means that sometimes you can watch stuff on the BBC iPlayer (but it's generally unwatchable due to long pauses on my internet connection), and YouTube works OK. Also discovered YouTube now has a specialised Wii interface, which is much nicer (though buggy).
But no Last.fm. I use Last.fm a lot, and it now has so much data about the music I like, I frequently use it as a personal radio station. So a bit of a blow it doesn't work on the Wii.
Instead, I went in search of a way to browse from my Wii to some kind of mp3 server on my laptop, so I can play my mp3 collection from my Wii. (Ideally, I'd have my mp3s out on the net somewhere, with a web app to play them, but maybe one day.) In the meantime, I discovered Wiisic, a little Java application to play mp3s out of folder on your computer and stream them over HTTP, to a Flash client in the Wii browser.
To get it working, I downloaded the jar, then did:
sudo java -jar wiisic.jar
A little GUI pops up so you configure a couple of options. I found that I had to run it as root on Linux so it could run on port 80: the Wii didn't seem to like port 9999. And had to turn off Apache as a consequence. The GUI also shows you the address you need to browse to on your Wii to get to the Wiisic server (10.0.5.3 in my case). So I fired up Opera, browsed there, and got the simple but functional Flash interface and started playing my mp3s, served off my laptop. Neat.
Here's what it looks like (on my paltry TV). I christened it with the epic The Anal Staircase by Coil.
Ideally, I'd like to see this as a PHP app. (perhaps) using S3 as its backend. Should be possible...
by PoliticalHack (noreply@blogger.com) at November 21, 2008 10:15 PM
After over a year of talks with the Crescent Theatre I’ve finally got them blogging. Ok, that is a slight exaggeration as they have set up Wordpress and Blogger blogs before, but now they have one central blog which benefits from traffic from the main website as well as from services such as Google Blogsearch.
I also hooked the theatre up to Twitter. Since Twitter was forced to change how it operated in the UK many potential opportunities are going to be missed. Still, it’s up there to serve as an alert of new blog posts. Maybe there are other ways in which it can be used?
They also now have a page on Facebook. There is already a group for this on Facebook, and members do sometimes create the events themselves, but this’ll now serve as a prime location for everything Crescent Theatre related on Facebook. Also note that the blog posts are automatically imported into the page. There is a danger of just producing echo, but this’ll attract Facebook users to the website and blog.
All of this effort will give the theatre a more transparent feel and let the public Get Closer To The Performance!
Nesta asked some of their contacts what they thought were the best business areas to be working in to weather the storm of the recession, and they’ve used a Wordle to visualise the results:
Interesting to see Parents, Families, Childcare, Facebook and Enjoyment in there, especially because I’m building a social network for dads in the middle of it all!
Related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
The sensible money is being bet on President Elect Obama shutting guantanamo bay early on in his presidency. (I don't tire of saying Preisdent Elect Obama and am looking forward to being able to say "President Obama".)
A judge in Washington ruled yesterday that five Algerians had been detained illegally for the last six years. It was an important case to test the legality of the whole camp and a great step towards the restoration of habeas corpus (the concept that a prisoner can challenge the basis of their confinement).
These are exciting times we live in!
Today's award goes to the Plough Email announcing that "The Plough is reopen".
Bless.
Does someone need to hire a proof reader?
Dear Mr. Tony Cochran,
Yesterday was Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day in which transgender victims of hate crimes in the previous year are memorialized. Alas, last year had no shortage of names. The killers don't often face justice. When they do, they often argue that the "deceit" of the victim as a motivation for their crime. In other words, they say that transgender people deserve to be hated and murdered for who they are.
The comic you ran yesterday almost perfectly illustrates the thought process of hate and bigotry. The comic would have been transphobic on any day of the year, but your timing was exceptionally insulting. Probably, more kids yesterday saw your comic than heard about the memorial services. But the ideas it participated in promoting will grantee that they'll have many more chances in future years.
Sincerely,
Les
The comment form is at http://www.creators.com/write/comics/agnes.html. Background information is at a previous post. If your newspaper runs Agnes, I encourage you to write a letter to the editor.
I'm really tired of the cultural background noise of anti-trans hatred. Normally, I just ignore it, but this timing was crap, and I think it's worth speaking up.
The author of the comic left a comment on my previous post:
I assure you, until just now, I had absolutely no idea there was such a thing as Transgender Remembrance Day. My wall calendar only lists days like Easter, Christmas, Flag Day, etc. All my strips are written 6 months in advance. I apologize for the coincidence, and only for that.Agnes is just upset that a young boy was trying to sneak into her girl group. That's all. No inuendo. No mean spirited transgender hate.
The comic has somebody who is passing as a girl. When s/he's outted, the main character of the strip calls him/her a "deceitful little creep." What's the difference between trying to pass and trying to "sneak in?"
by C Hutchins (noreply@blogger.com) at November 21, 2008 05:47 PM
This looks sumptuous.
Can't wait to catch it on DVD or on the big screen. It's what's needed... stop the hate!
Have listened to a couple of the songs and their either Shakespeare set to music (gorgeous) or improvised asides on a guitar (glorious).
*claps hands*
Adam from Looks Can Kill sent through some info about Kings Of Neon, a new venture he’s starting:
Kings of Neon is a concept brand offering a personalised footwear service. Our service is completely unique in that we are able to print footwear in colour and detail with any supplied graphic and with short lead times. Photos, names, band names, company logos, an illustrators favourite piece, a sports team, a dance team; everything and anything can be branded onto the most popular styles and brands of footwear.
We produce one off pairs (perfect for presents) through to supplying band merchandise and corporate events. Individual personalised pairs are £29.99. For prices on larger orders contact Adam Duffy.
Cinnamon Aitch emailed to say their range of hand-made Christmas cards is now for sale to tenants. Please pop into Studio 203 in Scott House, 8.30 - 4.30 Monday - Thursday. All cards are £2.00 each.
I couldn't help noticing the number of local blogs which take a seemingly long time to load pages. Curious why, I decided to take a few of my favourite blogs and run a tool called YSlow on them. YSlow is a performance test you can run on a website through your browser which will identify weak points and provide a score to a website. It requires Firebug to be installed in to Firefox. With the vast majority of blogs scoring a big fat F, I thought these three tips might help bring up that score to a more respectable C/B grade. Two of these techniques can be performed using the .htaccess file - a hidden file used in Apache setups (which I assume hosts the vast majority of local blogs) that contains configuration data for directories on a website.
Caching is supported by nearly all modern browsers, and is a process through which your browser will store content from a website on your computer so that it doesn't need to download it again next time you view. This can be applied to your CSS, images and the pages themselves. It requires the Apache expires.load file to be in the mods-enabled folder - If your hosting package doesn't have it available drop an email to your hosting company and ask them to enable it for you. In to your .htaccess file in the main folder containing your website add the following lines.
FileETag MTime Size ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault "access plus 7 days"
This will tell browsers to cache anything from your website for 7 days after downloading it.
Caching will save you a lot of bandwidth and make your pages load far quicker by not requiring a user to download the content on every click. The following tip, which you can learn about on HowToForge, will enable you to compress any data being sent from your website. Again in your .htaccess, paste the following.
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ \
no-gzip dont-vary
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
\.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|bz2|sit|rar)$ \
no-gzip dont-vary
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.pdf$ no-gzip dont-vary
This may appear complicated at first, but essentially what you are doing is telling Apache to compress any file that is not an image or an archive (both of which already have their own compression). This means any text documents, XML and RSS feeds will be compressed.
The final quick method to save a small amount of loading time is to remove all comments, line breaks and white space from your CSS and JavaScript.
Remember to save a copy of your originals for future editing though! On a CSS file over 1000 lines you will see a massive decrease in file size.
Implement these three tips and you should immediately notice a huge decrease in your page loading times, and over a longer time period see your bandwidth (and thus cost) drop considerably.
Fiona & Bernie from World of Homoeopathy send this for publication after chatting with Frankie on reception. They have a shop on Gibb Terrace.
Hi All,
Frankie tells us that a lot of you in the Custard Factory, are not aware of us and what we do, right on your very doorstep! So below is a short description of what Homoeopathy is about, and other things that we cover in the service we offer.
What is Homoeopathy?
A complete system of alternative medicine , which reminds the body how to get back to its natural balance, without the need of addictive drugs. And no side effects!!!
What is Hair analysis? What can it tell me?
For whatever reason: Stress! Grief! Job change or loss! Marriage and partnership breakups! Our bodies can start to get tired, weary, drained of energy, and what energy we do have seems to be going round that same old thought process. Sleep can be restless, un-refreshed or in short supply, then other things start to happen; constant coughs, colds, headaches, mood swings, aches and pains, indigestion , IBS, depression, etc. All of these are signs the body is becoming more imbalanced. Hair analysis is a good place to start, it will show if there are simple foods draining the system. Deficiencies of vitamin and minerals that can also be creating excessive tiredness .
What is Reiki?
A relaxing form of healing , which unblocks stuck energy both emotional and physical to aid a more stress free approach to life.
Reiki (Wednesday & Saturday afternoons – by appointment only)
Tuesdays only from November 25th to December 16th, from 12.30 to 2.00pm, we are offering free 10 minute consultations. To give you a better idea of how Homoeopathy can help you to maintain a healthy more stress free approach to the problems we all encounter within the home and work environment.
Christmas Gift Vouchers
£5, £10, £20 (available now)
Treatment gift vouchers :
Reiki £30
Hair Analysis £35
Homoeopathic Consultations £50 & £35
Ready made or tailor made remedies (tablets):
Coughs, Colds , Flu, Coldsores, Stress, Tiredness, Headaches, Toothache plus much more
Also a range of remedies for babies teething, colic, bumps and bruises and temperatures.
We also stock oils for burners etc
Well after eight years at The Birmingham Post (five as picture editor) I am on the verge of leaving to pursue a career as a freelance photographer.
Prior to joining the Post I have worked as picture editor, staff photographer and freelance on everything from weekly and evening regional newspapers to national and international newspapers and magazines, as well as for PR clients. In total I have about twenty years experience as a photographer.
After five years on the picture desk I am now looking forward to doing what I enjoy most, taking pictures.
After all the activity of the last couple of months (sorting out equipment, computers, communications, etc etc etc) the reality of being self employed is coming home to me and....I am really enjoying it !
I am certain everyone will be very pleased to hear that I am going to continue with my blog posts, I know that they have been quite sporadic so far, however, now that I am freelance I may have more time to do them.
Of course anybody who would like to hire a highly skilled and experienced photographer please get in touch. Here is a link to my website which contains my contact details and a portfolio of my pictures..www.simonhadley.co.uk
It’s been years coming, and the vote is soon to go ahead on the Manchester Congestion Charge.. with the results due on the 12th December.
I currently live in Manchester, just off the Oxford Road - reputed for being the busiest bus route in Europe. It links the students of Fallowfield to their University.. and workers like me to the City Centre. It’s a fantastic route, and although prices have gone up a bit recently (£1.20 to get to the City Centre) - it’s still a great and easy way to get into the City… and it runs 24 hours a day.
However, I don’t work in the City Centre all the time. My office is two suburbs across Manchester in Levenshulme. Again, there’s a Bus service that links just outside my flat to Levenshulme, which is great. However, there’s also the “Fallowfield Loop.” It’ a disused railway line that links Chorlton-cum-Hardy to Gorton, and most mornings I cycle the 1.6 miles to work. It’s well kept, swept of leaves weekly by Sustrans.
I also cycle into town, though you’d think with all the buses, this wouldn’t be too enjoyable. However, there are clearly marked cycle routes and the bus drivers are the most ‘cycle-aware’ of any Bus drivers I’ve had the pleasure of cycling past.
So the congestion charge.. I live within the M60, so as soon as I take my car out of the drive I’ll have to pay it. However, improvements are promised to the cycling infrastructure, and to the public transport. I think it’s only going to improve other areas of Manchester, and help reduce people’s dependencies on their cars when travelling in the city. However, I do think the ‘boundary’ of the congestion charge needs to be revised in some Industrial Areas.
For example, near the Trafford Centre, and just inside the ringroad, there is alot of industry. These Estates have lots of lorries heading in and out of them, many of which head straight out onto the M60 and off onto their journies. Now, one company was quoted as saying they’d be paying £70,000 a year Congestion Charge.. despite not causing any congestion. From an environmental aspect, that’s probably indicative of the pollution their causing - so charge them. However, a more realistic solution for them would be to move to the other side of the M60, onto GreenField land, and pollute just the same. Surely it’s better to keep them on their current brownfield site - modify the congestion charge zone - and then set emissions reductions targets within the zone.. which is precisely what London have done for Lorries within the M25.
Use your vote.
If Twitter restricted the number of updates one could post within a month, would that make its users more selective?
Before Twitter knobbled its mobile access, the number of tweets users could receive via SMS per month was limited. Fair enough really, for a free service. But what if Twitter were to limit the number of messages a user could send in each month?
Not only would this be a useful way of making money (allowing unlimited tweeting for Pro users), but it would force people to ask themselves whether that particular “me too” message or cross-post was worth it. (Yes I know I did tweet this particular post, but that’s only because it relates specifically to Twitter.)
The question is, would it enhance or hone the community and remove posts that could be more useful on other platforms, or would it stop people from replying?
Today, Rhubarb Radio embarked on a quest to better understand their own use of and effect upon Twitter, and whether they were in fact doing it right, as demonstrated by the following tweet:
View rhubarbradio&rsquos tweet
The response so far seems to be both positive and constructive, with no sense that the station is abusing or misusing the community. Would a tweet limit have diminished that response?
Personally I think it would have, but the responses that did come back would be from those who are actively engaging with the community and want to help shape it. If people feel strongly enough about a certain topic, they very often don’t need a prompt in order to begin a rant! (And yes I speak from personal experience.)
I think a tweet limit could be an interesting pilot. I should point out that this isn’t prompted by anything I’ve read online: it was just a bit of naval gazing.
What do you think? If you could only post, say 50 tweets in a month but you could get unlimited tweetage for, say £3 a month, would you cherry-pick your thoughts and save the rest for your blog, or tweet as normal and figure out what to do once you hit the 50-post wall? Would you disable that auto-posting WordPress plugin or ditch TwitPic in favour of a Flickr stream?
It would definitely make me change the way I tweet. But is it a good thing?
On Wednesday 26 November a free bus will travel between three of the city’s galleries - the Ikon (which will feature Harminder Singh Judge’s new exhibition), the Barber Institute of Fine Arts and the RBSA Gallery. There’ll be free guided tours of the exhibitions.
Here’s the bus timetable:
On the evening the Ikon Shop will be open until 9pm offering mulled wine, warm mince pies and 10% off in their shop. Mmm, warm mince pies.
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This new website is going to play an important part in helping the individual crafts people of Moseley flourish – great work from the Moseley Community Development Trust – which is also investing in co-working space for creatives in Moseley. I’ll quote the press release in full:
This Christmas shoppers are turning away from high street mass-produced gifts and clicking onto Made in Moseley (http://www.madeinmoseley.co.uk), a new online shop launching on 22nd November 2008 stock full with the finest art, jewellery and fashion hand-crafted by independent artists and designer-makers residing in the south Birmingham borough.
From a small, £4.50 comic book by cult illustrator Sarah Ray to a hand-made, 18 carat gold ring, set with two cognac diamonds and boulder opal priced at £1,530 by internationally-renowned designer-maker Michele White, Made in Moseley has something special for everyone, and currently features the work of nine talented local artists.
“The site looks fantastic, it combines an easy to use interface with a secure payment system via PayPal,” says Suzanne Neal, Studio Manager at Media Content Lab. “It’s one of the first artist-driven, shared ecommerce sites in Birmingham, buying from the shop directly supports Moseley’s artists and designer-makers.”
The result of a partnership between Birmingham City University’s Media Content Lab and charity the Moseley Community Development Trust, the site creates a supportive platform for the burgeoning creative community thriving within the Moseley district of Birmingham – and is continually looking for new artists to expand the website.
Deaffest 2008, the tenth annual deaf-led film and TV festival will be held in Wolverhampton at the Light House 28-30 November.
The weekend of festivities will include screenings of films produced by UK and International Deaf filmmakers; Young Deaffest, which showcases work produced by young Deaf filmmakers; and a conference on Opportunities for Deaf Filmmakers, with panel discussions on how to pitch for funding for a short or feature film, a new Deaf TV channel and content for new online and mobile platforms
The programme looks quite impressively stuffed. Tickets are free, save for the Saturday night’s gala event (£12.50 and available from www.theticketsellers.co.uk).
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Moselely Arts Market will be on from 9am-3pm on Saturday with 40 or so designers, artists and makers. I think it’s somewhere pretty central - not far from Moseley Green.
As well as this, the farmers market will be on and there’ll be a chance to find out about the Moseley Exchange in case you’ve been wondering about it.
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The next instalment from the peope behind the speak-easy cinema takes place on Sat 6 December and this month they promise:
science fiction treats culled from the Outer Spaceways. Our Prime Directive will be, as ever, Lost Movies, Cult Obscurities and Films You Probably Shouldn’t Be Watching!
and
SubAtomic Sounds by TWIGGY AND THE K-MESONS and MICRONORMOUS, and 99.9% probability (and rising…) of an improvised Theremin set!
To get upfront info and money-saving invites ask them nicely be sending a text 07887 956297 or an email to outersight@live.com
Here’s the flyer:
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I was asked to write a blog post about "living under Thatcher" to which I commented that I was born in Feb of 1979 so it wasn't so much living under Thatcher as Toddling under Thatcher.
I grew up in Calne which is part of the Tory safe seat of Wiltshire North. Can you picture it? A little Wiltshire market town, rolling south downs, chalk hills, the river marden trickling through the town centre which is dominated by a bacon factory. Everyone knows everyone else, it's quiet. One of my relatives, Henry Eatwell, cut the Hackpen White Horse in 1838 to celebrate the coronation of Queen Victoria. Fox Talbot invented photography down the road in Lacock. Joseph Priestly invented Oxygen in Calne. Calne had one secondary comprehensive school (good old John Bentley!) and St Mary's School (notable for having the Jagger daughters attend). The town station was closed as a result of the Beeching Axe in September 1965. The bacon factory was closed and then demolished in 1985 and that's when the heart of the town seemed to die. People just didn't know what to do with themselves. The town lost it's soul and become just part of the commuter belt for Swindon- and that's a name that just reeks of glitz and glamour.
The 80's were notable in that I was attending a Church of England Primary school and in my spare time I wore some clothes that now I'm not sure is fashionable or cringe worthy. Reversible tops, day glo green socks and fingerless gloves. It was like we were responding to the bland seriousness of the government. Drab blues and greys gave rise to a technicolour riot in the streets and fields around where I lived.
As I became more politically aware in the 90's Thatcher had gone but her spectre loomed over the Tory party, section 28, the arts sector on their knees, fear and loathing of Europe, The Tories greatest hits and they just seemed to get greyer and more like the ranks of the undead. The town where I lived was a hotbed of crop circles and UFO sightings (I really hope this starts to explain some of why I'm the way I am), Avebury Stone circle was just a short jaunt up the A4.
I turned 18 in 1997, my first vote, full of hope and promise was a tactical one. Calne being such a safe seat meant that I didn't want to "waste" my vote. So I popped a cross in another box and stayed up with fingers crossed that Blair would swoop to victory.
My parents still eye me with caution to this day due to my politics. I often imagine my mother shutting her front door after I've visited and silently wondering to herself "How did we produce that?". My parents are quietly supportive of the Tories but read the Guardian and have a gay son- how they've not been elected to anything with the Tory party is beyond me. My mother has always threatened that if I ever ran for anything with the labour party she'd attend all my meetings and challenge my every move. Which I'd welcome but I'm not sure you're all ready for naked baby photos just yet. As a premature baby I can say that most of my baby photos look like some stills from an alien autopsy.
My most vivid memories are probably things she did after she left power- expressing her friendship and support for Augusto Pinochet. All too often I hear supporters of the Tories say that Thatcher was a revolutionary figure who revitalized Britain's economy, impacted the trade unions, and re-established the nation as a world power. Apologists and those too young to remember some of the darker days of the 80's and early 90's tend to over look the fake war, the crucifying of industry in The North and how she manoeuvred like a man. There seems to be a wish to retouch history as she gets older and closer to the grave. I don't wish the woman ill but I want there to be an honest recording of her actions and hearing 18 and 19 year olds bleat about how spiffing they thing she is makes my blood run cold. Cold as a little quarter pint of milk.
Looks like my next big job’s been delayed until early next year, so I have some time free between now and then to get my teeth into some new projects.
Do let me know if you’re interested in working together on anything digital - my fortes are digital production, concept development, user experience design, and I’m pretty happy doing consultancy too.
I’m especially interested in socially focussed projects, social media, user participation and community-based projects, and have worked across a wide range of sectors including broadcast, education and the third sector.
Email me for a CV, or check the Linked In page for more info!
Last night John Pinner gave a talk at SBLug covering Search Engine Optimisation.
Here is an exceedingly random collection of points, as a collective, we came up with.
That is all...
Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. Once a year, there’s a candle-light vigil for every transgender person around the world in the previous year who was killed in a hate crime. Alas, there is never a shortage of names on the list. Shakesville has a list and some other background information in a thoughtful post.
One thing she mentions is that often, the killers of trans people, if they’re even brought to trial, try a “trans panic” defense, where they claim that discovering the other person was transgender was just so traumatic that murder is acceptable. It's the old "gay panic" defense, resurrected. In Philadelphia, in just August of this year, in the 21st century, this worked.
Which brings us today’s very timely Agnes: 
What a fitting newspaper comic for today, eh? What could be better than a kids comic which depicts rage against a trans person for "keeping secrets"? How fucking great. Fuck you too, Agnes.
by C Hutchins (noreply@blogger.com) at November 21, 2008 02:23 AM
Iran must cease to be our quirky ally and we must seek change in the way they run things.
The 20th of November was Universal Children's Day and also philosophers day.
On this day in 1989, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
Like every country on earth – except the U.S. and Somalia – Iran is a state party to the CRC. Yet Iran continues to execute child offenders, including at least 7 this year, and there are around 130 juvenile offenders awaiting execution in Iran right now.
On October 16, the government of Iran seemed to announce that it was no longer going to execute child offenders. But on October 18, Iranian officials "clarified" their position by stating that the ban on child offender executions would not apply to those sentenced to retribution for committing murder. The apparent ban on child offender executions turned out to be virtually meaningless.
I'm not sure what it's claimed these children have done.
I know that earlier this year two young men were executed for being gay. It's terrible. Surely this is something we can gather around and condemn together?
So I've got a computer constantly reminding me of its age, a fear of breaking stuff that already works, no real desire to buy lots of new kit, and (if I'm being honest) a big case of the lazies. I know I'm going to have to rejig my various machines, ideally bringing all their functions together onto one box running a reasonable recent Linux, but I don't want to break anything that already works in the process.
Using Linux for your home server really isn't something you need to think too hard about. It doesn't cost anything, for a start, and it works with pretty much any hardware you throw it at. More importantly, everything you can control through a shiny GUI you can also control through the command line. This means your server doesn't need to have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor connected to it. You can just login in as and when you need to, do whatever it is, and clear out again. Anyone who tells you that you can remotely administer a Windows box with the same ease had never had to troll down four flights of stairs, sign for a key, and proceed with a minder through two sets of security doors to gain access to a server, solely to spend thirty seconds dinking round with a mouse.
As a further block to my actually doing anything, Etrigan, the box that I would use as the all-in-one server was running Windows. Installing Linux alongside an existing Windows installation tends to involve repartitioning the disk. When I read words like repartitioning what I hear is potentially destructive low-level disk voodoo. Now while I know lots of people have done this kind of thing without a problem (indeed I've done it myself in the past), these days I take a rather more conservative view. It's not data loss I'm worried about here, it's (as I'm sure you've gathered by now) utility loss. So I didn't do anything.
I briefly considered virtualisation. Running a Linux server inside a virtual machine running on the Windows box is entirely possible, and even rather useful. However, I'm not sure it really makes for a sensible long term solution. Not for an amateur sysadmin, who'd really rather not touch anything ever again once it's all up and going.
And then one day, while I was reading about something entirely unrelated I saw a reference to a something else that reminded me of yet another a thing, and suddenly all the dominoes were in a row and the magical inertia busting piece of software I needed revealed itself to me. That software is Wubi.
Wubi is ...
an officially supported Ubuntu installer for Windows users that can bring you to the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application, in a simple and safe way.Linux installed onto a Windows filesystem, with only the boot record updated. OK, modifying the MBR still smacks of potentially destructive low-level disk voodoo, but it's significant lower risk than repartitioning. If a repartition goes wonky you've probably had it, but an MBR should be repairable.
So I downloaded Wubi and had a go. There's not a great deal to tell after that, because it did exactly what it said it would. It installed Linux onto my machine, adding a new boot option. If I boot into Windows, the machine is just as it was before. If I boot into Linux, I get a shiny new Linux box to prod and poke and configure.
And that's really bloody marvellous. I can take as long as I like to configure the Linux personality, because the Windows personality is always there to fall back on. If I get a bit carried away with apt-get and screw up the Linux install, I can flip back to Windows to uninstall and just start again.
I did, in fact, have to do that. The current Ubuntu release didn't play nicely with my machine and its AMD Athlon 64 processor. It would run for a little while perfectly normally, then completely freeze. I'm assuming some kernel strangeness. I had another go, this time using the previous release, and it's been absolutely fine.
A few hours fiddling later, I was viewing everything from entirely the other side. Before, I considered myself pragmatic and careful. Now, I saw myself as having been conservative to the point of paralysis, and wondering what on Earth it was I'd been worried about. With Etrigan now handling the email and serving up Subversion repositories, I took a bit of breath, gave Animal's power switch a firm push, and everything carried on working. Only much more quietly.
Executive summary: Wubi - remarkable piece of kit.
Since sometime in 2003/4 I’ve been posting links to this blog and putting them in the category “Links“. There are now over 4,000 links in the archives. Which is nice. But they’re just sitting there. Wouldn’t it be great if you could hit a button and be given a random link from the last 5 years? Wouldn’t that just be the neatest thing evar?
Well now you can. At the top of every page on my blog you’ll find the following:
Enjoy!
I don't feel engaged on the Prop 8 thing. Some of this is distance, certainly, but not all of it. I mean, I have benefited personally from Same Sex Marriage. My (now ex) wife and I got married in Canada in 2003. And then, alas, got divorced in California in 2005, in what was likely the state's first ever same sex divorce.
The value of divorce as a civil institution is extremely high. Unfortunately, things don't always work out and couples need a structure to disentangle their finances and lives. As divorce is usually an adversarial process, having things like precedent and laws protects both halves of the divorcing couple. Otherwise, the stronger half of the ex-couple would steam roll the weaker half, whether that strength be emotional or financial. Divorce is an important right for that reason and also for tax consequences. If you own property, as in land or a house, it's going to most likely change ownership status during a divorce. If it's a divorce, the state doesn't ask for taxes on this transaction, which is good because splitting up is already incredibly expensive.
So my disengagement with this isn't because I don't see the value of gay marriage. I'm very much aware of how it has helped me. But when they started same sex marriages in California, the larger gay rights groups put out word that a ballot measure was coming and asked gays to please look presentable. Which meant: no men in dresses. Because people like me are embarrassing.
Obviously, LGB people should have all the same rights as straight people. But this battle for marriage is incredibly normative in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable. No, I am not just like you, Mr. Cis Hetero, and I refuse to pretend that I am. Which means that I'm not really invited to the party. And despite that exclusion, we lost anyway.
We can't have ENDA protection for trans people because we're too weird and gays come first. We can't have marriages for visibly-trans people because we're too weird and gays come first. Not that we have either of these things, mind you, but just in case let's make sure trannies are out.
The support-gay-marriage "cause" on Facebook, which is a pseudo charitable thing one can join, is attached to the HRC, a gay rights group which actively lobbies against trans people and gives assloads of money to Log Cabin Republicans. Are you fighting to be included in the right wing? Is it your dream to be an oppressor instead of oppressed?
I want our side to win. I want the State Supreme Court to decide that narrowing the Equal Protection clause of the state constitution, or declaring marriage not to be a fundamental right, would be a major revision and not a minor amendment, as this would seem logically to be the case. I want marriage for everybody, including me. But can we stop pretending that all queers are just like straight people except we happen to fall hopelessly in love with people of the same normative gender? Because I'm tired of being told to keep quiet and these kinds of normative lies leave too many of us unprotected.
by C Hutchins (noreply@blogger.com) at November 20, 2008 08:30 PM
Claire Farrell of EC Arts sent through a load of information about a public art project she’s involved with in Digbeth. Here’s the artist’s sketch:
The final piece, she says, will be “181 linear meters spanning Mill Lane, Bradford St and Rea Street, standing at lowest point 2.2 meters per sculpture/haunch and rising to 6 meters tall” and is due to be finished next Autumn.
Here’s the artist’s statement by Rob Colbourne & Stuart Mugridge:
Digbeth Public Art Artists Statement
Here’s a photo of the prototype being built and tested:
And a video:
Here’s another one for that book I’m working on - I’m trying to think: what have been the most significant events in the history of journalism blogging?
Here’s what I have so far (thanks Mark Jones and Nigel Barlow):
What have I missed? This is a horribly Anglo-American list, too, so I’d particularly welcome similar moments from other countries.
Related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
I often use the phrase “the adults are using the Web now” in response to naive spam emails or unsolicited instant messages, but author Andrew Keen appears to have taken this a might too seriously.
In an interview on BBC’s Digital Planet programme, Keen paraphrased a section of his book in which he referred to bloggers as “monkeys with typewriters”, mistaking the Borel/Eddington theorem regarding the nature of infinity for something that can be applied to creative writing or journalism.
Keen believes that we as media consumers have forgotten what the media is “for”, using Lord Reith’s largely anachronous mission statement which suggested that the BBC must “inform, educate and entertain” and applying it to the wholly democratic medium of the Internet.
I often say that if someone does not understand social networks such as Facebook, they should not engage with those media, but I wasn’t prepared for the idea that there are still some people who don’t understand what the entire Internet is for. I think even the most ardent technophobe would understand the idea that the Internet is a discussion rather than a broadcast medium.
I sympathise with Keen’s view that unchecked articles labelled as pieces of journalism can be damaging to media trust, but by not crediting Internet users with appropriate nouse to disseminate and judge accordingly the information they read, you’re playing into the hands of the misguided few who believe that video games and hip hop music is somehow responsible for cultural decline. The medium is a mouthpiece, a dumb terminal, a pipe between one person and another, so if you don’t like what’s on the end of the pipe, blame the source, not the medium.
The barriers to entry that Keen is so fearful of losing – the only things that allow his blinkered rhetoric a platform – are characterised by money and education. You have to spend a lot of money to setup a newspaper (presumably the only legitimate medium) and be fairly well-educated in order to write for one. But don’t those who don’t know how to use an apostrophe but have interesting and challenging opinions deserve a voice? Not in Keen’s world it seems.
So naturally, unqualified as I am to post within my own space and allow you to read my ill-educated rantings, I’ll be suspending the Bluemilkshake blog until such time as I have secured an appropriate qualification from a pre-approved University.
(Blogged by David Bailey and Caroline Chapain)
This week we launched our report into what has happened to the MG Rover workers who lost their jobs so suddenly back in 2005. The research was a joint effort by The Work Foundation and the Birmingham Business School and was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Richard Burden, MP for Birmingham Northfield, kindly hosted the event in Westminster.
A short webcast summarising the research can be found here. (you need to scroll down and click on 'download swf file').
What we found was that three years on from the historic collapse of MG Rover in April 2005, 90% of workers who lost their jobs have found new employment, but most have taken deep pay cuts.
We interviewed over 200 workers out of the 6,300 workers ex-Rover workers who lost their jobs when the Longbridge plant closed, and found two thirds have suffered wage falls. Overall, on average wages had fallen by £5,640 per year in real terms. A third of the former workers reported an increase in their salaries. Those out of work the longest suffered the largest drops in income.
Some 31 per cent of workers have stayed within the manufacturing sector and are earning broadly similar amounts, but the 60 per cent who have moved into the service sector are mostly earning less. So these people who used the same skills and stayed within manufacturing more or less did OK financially.
In contrast, people who found work in service sectors - like wholesale and retail, real estate and business services, education, and health and social work - have seen cuts of more than £6,000 in annual income.
Almost a quarter of respondents said they were in debt or in need of drawing on savings; 36 per cent said they were just about able to manage on their current incomes; and a further 38 per cent said they were in a position to save some money.
As the threat of a serious recession mounts, the report carries political and practical lessons for how to handle large-scale plant closures and avoid regional crises of unemployment. It's true that fast action by local agencies as part of a co-ordinated response by policy makers to support, inform and retrain the workers who lost their jobs can be called a 'success story' in that large-scale, long-term unemployment in the south Birmingham and wider West Midlands area was avoided.
A total of 90% of the ex-Rover workers were in some form of employment by April 2008. Almost three quarters were employed full-time, 11% were self-employed and 5% were part-time; another 5% were unemployed and looking for work and 2% were unemployed and not looking for work. This represents a labour market activity rate higher than the West Midlands average.
Some 28% of the ex-workers said their current job was better than the one they had at MG Rover, 21% that it was about the same, and 46% felt that it was worse (the remainder were unsure). Nevertheless, a majority still said they liked the work they did and expected to be doing it for the foreseeable future.
The report follows the third wave of research into the fortunes of the ex-Rover workers and comes after previous surveys in July 2005 and December 2005.
The collapse of Rover is rightly termed historic because it marked the closure of the last volume car maker in the UK. The finding that many workers are in what they see as worse jobs may confirm people in the view that the 'newer' jobs in services are just not quite as good as the 'older' jobs in manufacturing they have come to replace - though there are significant numbers now doing rather better than they were.
However, it needs to be borne in mind just how calamitous the sudden arrival of very large numbers of skilled, unemployed people could have been for the region. For almost all the workers to be in work three years on must count as the central positive finding.
Michelle Mahdon, a Senior Researcher at The Work Foundation who worked with us, said: 'The jobs at Rover were high quality manufacturing jobs paying above the average for the West Midlands region so it was always likely that workers would not be able to find directly comparable work - over half the respondents are now doing completely different work and using completely different skills.
'In general, people's health and well-being was positive three years on and people claimed reasonable job satisfaction and reasonable life satisfaction, although the research was done prior to the recent downturn in the economy. But judged against national levels, it does appear that the ex-Rover workers are now in jobs with slightly lower levels of autonomy, challenge and skill use, and fewer opportunities for progression than other workers in the UK.'
In total some 60 per cent of workers have undergone training and education. Two thirds took up the offer of free training places offered by local agencies and many others underwent training by their new employers. The types of assistance and support that people found most helpful were free travel to a training course or job interview; a free place on a training course; being sent on a training course by a new employer; and help with setting up a business. However, most people who found a new job did so through their own initiative or through personal contacts.
Overall, there are some important policy implications for the new Regional task forces which have been set up recently and which have been modelled on the Rover Task force. We would suggest a mix of proactive and 'intelligent reactive' policies to become a 'permanent capacity' in order for policy makers to address large-scale redundancies in the future.
In addition, the government and agencies need to ensure that employees have the necessary skills to cope as industries change, with access to high quality, flexible education and training programmes, and with support through information and mobility programmes. This is especially important as the short-term economic climate worsens.
Involving the community also seems to have been vital - in this case what later became the Rover Community Action Trust came up with lots of good ideas to help workers and their families - ideas like renegotiating the car loans that workers had so that they could keep their cars and stay mobile. This seems to be crucial as another key finding of our study was that those who travelled furthest to find new work reported higher levels of satisfaction.
More generally, the report points to the need to support and develop high quality manufacturing jobs.
And given the need to rebalance the economy away from consumer-led debt fuelled growth towards export-led growth, interventions to support manufacturing seem vital. Add in the green agenda and the need to develop new environmental technologies, especially in the car industry, this points to the need for a new, green industrial policy that backs the environmental industries of the future.
David Bailey and Caroline Chapain work at the Birmingham Business School.
'Life After Longbridge': Three Years on. Pathways to Re-Employment in a Restructuring Economy' is written by David Bailey, Caroline Chapain, Michelle Mahdon and Rebecca Fauth and the full report can be found here. The research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and was carried out by researchers at The Work Foundation and Birmingham Business School.
My standard changes to a free Wordpress.com blog - Chris Unitt walks you through the first five minutes of using WordPress.com. I agree with this 100%.
only 5 per cent of the party’s members live in areas with high Asian populations and only 2 per cent in areas with larger Afro-Caribbean communities. Eighteen per cent are from white working-class areas... BNP membership is higher in areas that have average or above-average deprivation. As opposed to the 22 per cent of BNP members who live in areas with above-average deprivation, only 16 per cent live in the least-deprived areas
by PoliticalHack (noreply@blogger.com) at November 20, 2008 12:50 AM
We finally managed to get Jake a drumkit. It’s in the garage, which we’ve sort of carpeted (up the walls as well as on the floor) and it’s all set up. It looks and sounds the business. So great to hear him practising at home again.
That’s birthdays and Christmasses taken care of till he’s 18, then.
Every time I set up a new wordpress.com blog I make the same changes before I even start thinking about writing a post. The following is really just a crib sheet for myself, but someone may find it useful.
A couple of notes first:
Ok, on with it…
Quick list of changes
Making the changes
I’ve ordered this part as per the tabs at the top of the Wordpress dashboard, only I’ve gone right to left (NB - no need to change anything under ‘Comments’). There’s method to my madness though.
Users
Settings
Remember to click ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom of each page where you alter settings.
Design
Themes and widgets are really a matter of personal preference, although I’d always recommend getting rid of Snap Shots (the link previews that pop up when you hover a cursor over some anchor text) and ‘related posts’ (the rarely relevant list of posts on other wordpress.com blogs). They’re both irritating.
Manage
Write
