Archive for the 'Geekery' Category

 

The government on Twitter

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

The Central Office of Information run a rather good website called the News Distribution Service, formerly the Government News Network. Below the fold are the RSS and Twitter feeds in three groups – aggregate, departmental and regional. Unfortunately, no-one knows about it as the COI doesn’t do much to promote it despite being “the Government’s [...]

 

The Draper-Staines mudfight: Staines won

Friday, March 27th, 2009

I wasn’t going to comment on yesterday’s very unedifying willy-waving contest between Derek ‘Labour List‘ Draper and Paul ‘Guido Fawkes‘ Staines as it was, predictably enough, a deeply unedifying slanging match. Everyone has pointed this out and a few people have pointed out that it did particular damage to political blogging and that we don’t [...]

 

Tell Phorm to phuck off

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

A company called Phorm looks like its going to be used by major internet providers like BT and others to read your web traffic and decide what adverts to give you. This means they will be reading web content from all kinds of people – many of whom won’t even be their customers. If Facebook [...]

 

Ada Lovelace Day: the remarkable Lynne Jolitz

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Not many people are able to say that they’ve taken out a patent. Lynne Jolitz (homepage) has three (here, here and here, since you asked). But that’s just the start of it. Lynne Jolitz invented 386BSD, an OS also known as Jolix. Aside from the achievement itself, it introduced something we all use in our [...]

 

That Facebook announcement…

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

Facebook is a wonderful idea. Unfortunately, the people behind it seem pretty poor at communicating with their members. There have been a series of decisions that have caused ructions – Beacon, the news feed & mini-feed, the new layout and ongoing privacy issues – not necessarily because of the decisions themselves but because of poor [...]

 

Twittering away…

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

You can follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/davecoleDOTorg, if you are so inclined. I’ll add a chiclet to the side bar at some point. xD.

 

Pi second

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

On March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m, it will be Pi Second – if written in the American format, it would be 3/14 1:59:26, the numbers of which give pi to seven figures. xD.

 

IE vs Firefox et al. redux

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

If you’re viewing this under Internet Explorer, you should see a little line right at the top with a link to this page. If you’re using anything else, you shouldn’t. If anyone sees something happening that shouldn’t, I’d appreciate it if they could leave a comment. xD.

 

Installing Linux on a dead badger: user's notes

Sunday, December 14th, 2008

Well, it made me laugh. xD.

 

What does Norman Lamont think about privacy?

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

I wonder, because he’s joined Phorm as a non-exec director. Story at the Guardian. Background at the Political Penguin. xD.