I love jet engines. I love computers. I love snowboards, drag racing, encryption algorithms, dark matter and even the finer points of the phenolic ring.

But there’s also a part of me. A big part, that loves the slow, traditional stuff. Always have. Maybe it’s growing up in the midlands. Maybe it’s having grandparents in the Cotswolds. Maybe it’s just my genes. Whatever it is, I have an irresistible draw to traditional English pastimes and peculiarities.

I’m 37 and every year, I get excited at the prospect of conker season. I know how to make stuff out of rope. I love playing lawn bowls. I love all that nonsense where people roll cheese down hills and break bones for fun. However, there is one thing that has been weighing on my mind. Why doesn’t East Finchley have any Morris Dancers? Ok, East Finchley is a suburb of North London nestled next to swanky Highgate and media-luvvie Muswell Hill and certainly isn’t in the Cotswolds, but those of us that live here refer to it as our village. We love N2… and have the t-shirts and recycled shopping bags to prove it. It’s ripe for it. Quick Google search… no results.

I was watching the Edinburgh Tattoo a few years back where all the armed forces get together and celebrate, re-enact battles and generally show off. They had a drum corp that literally blew me away. They were from Switzerland and called the Top Secret Drum Corp. Bonkers stuff if you’re into drums. Still bonkers if you’re not.

So a few weekends back, we had our street summer party. We close the street, bring out food and drink, light the brazier and chat the night away. As I looked around, I couldn’t help notice there were enough blokes around to form a Morris Dance group. But like the Top Secret Drum Corp, it couldn’t be just any old Morris Dance. I’ve got plans to take Morris Dancing to the next millennium. There are several attempts at subverting the noble art of Morris Dancing… the funk remix, the slapstick, weird outfits and even dances with Darleks! Oh, I’ve got plans. Even the bells will be WiFi. That fat kid with the light sabre won’t know what hit him!

Of course, I haven’t asked them yet, so I may be looking for members…

I posted a blog a while ago about hacking and general goofing about with Oyster cards (see below). Some Dutch hackers have only gone and done it! Check out a surprisingly in-depth BBC news article or various articles about the ensuing finger-pointing and legal ramifications.

Given the plans to roll out various ‘pay for real stuff using your Oyster card’ schemes, it doesn’t inspire confidence to say the least. Having said that, what better way to make a name for yourself. I suspect the applications for the computing course at the Radboud University in Nijmegen will be up this year!

Original article…

Been getting paranoid recently. Every time I go through a tub barrier, I swipe my Oyster card and it lets me though. However, as soon as I’m through, it starts beeping like mad. I assume it’s telling everyone behind me to ‘Seek Assistance”. But I’ve never managed to see it. It happens EVERY time.

I got a new card. Same thing. I went to the kiosk. No problems with the card. Same thing.

I asked the man on the barrier yesterday and he tried it, no problem. After a quick chat we concluded I was a tad too flamboyant on my swiping! I moved the card by about 1cm as I touched-in. This was enough to worry the machine.
I now firmly ‘slap’ the card down and whip it up in a clinical execution. No more beeping.

Thought I’d Google it to see if anyone else was having problems. Of course they weren’t. Or at least they weren’t sad enough to blog it! However, It did throw up a few (relatively) interesting issues…

• The new Arsenal fan club card has the same RF as the Oyster card. Doh!

• Put foil around your Oyster card when not in use to avoid being RF-jacked.

• TFL freely give Oyster card details to the police

• Get tour own Oyster hacker
• Can you hack an Oyster card?

made this daft Christmas countdown timer last year thought I’d better get with the times and add some embeddable goodness courtesy of Gigya. This allows you to take it and put it on your site with only a few clicks. The ‘Gigya-iastion’ process is very simple, create your flash movie, pass it through the Gigya site and it spits out an embed tag at the end. Paste it into your blog (like I did below) and hey presto, a little tab appears (bottom right) allowing you to post it to all sorts of social networks and blogging sites. ClearSpring also provide a similar service. Both provide tracking. Both allow non-commercial applications to use it for free. However, both don’t allow for different languages and both don’t acknowledge local social networks. It’s just the biggies for now.

Give it a try now, it won’t bite. You don’t have to have a blog to see how it works!

Google and various other ad technology providers also provide sharable ads. The idea being then ads are created more as ‘content’ and therefore have a value to their target audience. Said audience can then choose to shere the ‘content’ on their own site. In reality, the ‘ad’ has to be an ad FOR the embeddable content, so in the end, the thing you were advertising in the first place tends to bet pushed to the back of the queue. Still, the principle is there. Check out Google’s Gadget Ads or Pointroll’s (Clearspring enabled) Widget Ads.

Of course, it should go without saying that it’s good practice to make content embeddable whenever possible. However, it can all seem a bit overwhelming sometimes. There is a simple way though. Visit AddThis, create a free account, choose you button style and it too generates a small bit of code. Simply paste it into your page and it allows the page link to be posted to all kinds of blogs. Bit crude but it works… like so…

This one opens a selection window…

This one is even cuter with a dropdown panel…

Now there’s no excuse for not sharing! Oh how my junior school teacher would be proud to hear me say that!

I was trying to prove to a colleague that I was clearly correct in my understanding of the difference between ‘third-person;’ and ‘first-person’. Long story, but I was concerned that the ‘Second person’ didn’t get the attention he/she was deserved.

Anyway, during my ‘research’ I came across this interesting experiment. Essentially a rig to hijack your normal ‘first person’ view and turn it into a video game style ‘third person’ view…. but in reality… with your eyes. It’s nothing more than a camera on sticks and a monitor in front of your face, but it poses some interesting questions.

“The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment.”

Have a look at the video from Marc Owens… and check out the other things in the left menu on his site, like the voyeur. Interesting stuff.

Or find out how it’s done here… http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/avatar-machine.htm

There’s an old saying “Show me a designer than can spell and I’ll show you a liar”. Ok, I may have just made it up but there’s some truth in it. I’ve a hunch that many people in the visual arts gravitate towards it because the academic focus of schools just doesn’t work for them. Maybe it’s mild autism. Put bluntly, some people just don’t do academia very well and they can hide in the arts, where logic and being precise aren’t vital.

Personally, I write a lot and enjoy it. My spelling is what I’d describe as ‘ok’. My punctuation is ‘ok’ too (even if I do use too many ellipses and exclamations). But then again, I’m a coder too so I’m hardly a good test case. I do however notice the same traits in myself and others. I get by, mostly thanks to my friend the ‘wiggly red underline’ that helpfully plays dead under words it mistrusts. It seems my wiggle is American but I’ve learnt to ignore my wiggle at times. You can’t see it, but there’s one under ‘learnt’. According to Dictionary.com, it’s only a UK term. Apparently it will leave if I use ‘learned’, which does irritate somewhat. Anyway, I digress.^

There is no logic to why some words just don’t stick. Simple words like ‘vehicle’ or ‘label’ can cause trouble for me yet other humdingers seem easy. The upshot is that I have to resort to some fairly silly techniques and mental gymnastics to help me remember some of my nemesis words. It basically boiled down to not grasping the basic building blocks like when to use ‘elly’ ‘illy’ ‘ley’ and ‘ly’.^

Here are a few (and I know my wiggle is going to go nuts on this one);

• Label – I always forget so I imagine a bell ringing to remind me. Not lable.
• Restaurant – Somewhere I can have a rest then rant about the bad service. Not restraunt or restrant.
• Receipt – the classic “I before E except after C”
• Weird – the usual “I before E except after C” goes weird for this one. Not wierd.
• Michael – Imagine Mikhail Gorbachev saying it “Mik – A – il”. A comes first when it’s a man’s name. Not Micheal.
• Amend – if I put too many ‘m’s in, I’ll have to amend it. Not ammend.

Those are just a few. Others around me do the same and I’m sure there must be some equally weird techniques out there.

I’m keen to collect them so drop me a comment if you have any that help you out…

^

Really didn’t think they thought personalised numberplate through…

* I should point out that this person, to the best of my knowledge, isn’t a paedophile !

300 the Movie… brilliant! Can’t quite remember why I made this at the time. Still, few minutes of silliness to brighten up your day!

Just click around to find all the sound…

I was walking down the road the other day with my 7 year old daughter. The houses on this particular street had windows in the shape of a quarter circle. Where each of the terraced houses joined, the windows were reflected, effectively making a half circle.

My daughter mentioned this and said she liked the shape. We usually have fun chats about things we see so I casually asked “what shape would four quarters make?”.

Of course, she was obviously going to say ‘a circle, daddy’ and I would feel rightfully smug at my well educated daughter. Her answer was “Well, it depends how you arranged them… it can make a sort of lumpy line like a dragon’s back”.

Never underestimate a 7 year old!

Noticing a underground trend for ‘word association’ threads on forums. Not new but noticing it more of late. These kind of threads are a cunning way for forum owners to bring ‘lurkers’ out of the woodwork. I.e. People happy to view but not to reply. This is low-barrier way of having a say, and when you input, you’re more likely to check back. An interesting way to see who is actually on your forum and drive activity etc.

Anyway, here are some examples, see the one at the bottom too ‘Three Word Story’.

http://www.motorcyclenews.com/MCN/community/Forums/Categories/Topic/?&topic-id=320078

Average posts: 20 replies. Word Association post 4,600 replies

http://www.golfmagic.com/forum/forummessages/mps/dt/3/UTN/4834/last/1/V/1/SP/364232436629450466692

Average posts: 20 replies. Word Association post 14,409 replies (90,091 views)

http://forums.mirror.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=1253486

Average posts: 70 replies. Word Association post 1,581 replies (23,370 views)

A variation with a ‘Three Word Story’ …

http://forums.mirror.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=40749

Average posts: 70 replies. Word Association post 10,494 replies (108,640 views)