Open Tech 2005

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I’m sat on the train back to Bradford (another direct one with wifi, woohoo!), ready to leave King’s Cross. The verdict on Open Tech 2005? Possibly the best £5 I’ve spent in a very long time.

There was wifi at the event (and indeed lots of geeks with Powerbooks reading their Bloglines subscriptions) however for some reason I couldn’t get it to work with this PDA. Damn Windows Mobile…

Anyway, what follows is my take on the days events.

Despite it being only two days after some wannabe terrorists tried to blow up the tube, the underground seemed surprisingly normal and I had no problems getting to where I needed to be. The event was being held in the Reynolds Building, part of the Imperial College London’s medical school in Charing Cross Hospital, and the talks were in a couple of the teaching rooms there. The first talk I went to was by Danny O’Brien on the issues surrounding privacy amongst those in the public eye, especially bloggers. It was very interesting (even if it did take a while to start due to internet access problems, eventually sorted with an impromptu SSH tunnel); Danny is a good speaker and kept the audience interested.

At 12:30 I moved over to the seminar room where I saw a Linux-powered iPod for the first time (and even watched a video on it), learned about scripting in iTunes and about MythTV, along with the BBC’s open source project Kamaelia. I also bumped into Sven from Blogwise and Gia who vaguely remembered me from the London Geek Dinner last month.

During a much needed lunch break Phil Wilson came to chat to me (it’s great to be recognised :) ), and we then headed back to the lecture room for the official launch of BBC Backstage – effectively the Beeb’s developer network, with APIs and syndication feeds galore (see BBC News Online article). There’s already some people doing cool stuff with it, like taking the BBC’s travel news feed and plotting the problems on a Google map, or a ‘changelog’ of the BBC News Online home page – Ben Metcalfe, who was presenting, used the archives from July 7th as a good example of why this was so cool. Ben Hammersley was the ‘master of ceremonies’ – he’s even more mad than his blog depicts him as. He was wearing a skirt…

Ben H also MC’d the next session which was with Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo!. Jeremy’s talk focused on openness in technology – RSS, APIs etc. and how it benefits companies (and the problems it can create). Obviously being from Yahoo! the focus was on Yahoo! and Flickr but it did show how Yahoo! is ‘getting it’. While it didn’t make me as excited as the BBC talk it’s still good to see big companies opening themselves up, as it were.

It was at this point that I found out I’d won the third prize in the prize draw, so I picked up an O’Reilly USB flash drive (256MB!), along with a 1-year subscription to Make magazine. I also bought a copy of Ben’s ‘Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom‘ (sponsored link), which he signed.

The next session I went to was called Blogs and Social Software, and was chaired by Gia. Tom Reynolds, who works for the London Ambulance Service, did a talk about how to blog and not lose your job, which included lots of cat pictures, as any blogging talk should. He was followed by Paul Mutton, creator of the PieSpy IRC bot, about creating diagrams showing how individuals interact. He used data from Digital Spy’s Big Brother site to create an interaction map of the Big Brother housemates, which was pretty cool. Finally Paul Lenz talked about his Who Should You Vote For? site and his new project What Should I Read Next?, which lets you type in a book you have read and recieve suggestions for other titles to try. You can also add books that you like and help to extend the data set.

There was one final set of sessions after that but in tne interests of getting home at a reasonable time I left early so as to catch the 18:30 train from King’s Cross. All in all I had a great day and it was well worth the journey – I just wish I could have gone to all the sessions. That would have required some kind of cloning device though.

As well as those that I met (I also met Lloyd Davis in the last session), I saw but didn’t really have chance to meet Cory Doctorow, Tom Coates, Simon Willison and Matt Webb, amongst others.

Yikes, it’s taken me over an hour to write this. If I ever buy a PDA (this one is borrowed) I’ll be buying a keyboard for it. I’m in the Lincolnshire wilderness between Grantham and Newark now, by the way.

Update: Back home, so I’ve added links to some of the stuff I was talking about.

Good things come to those who wait

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PICT1418

It’s taken me almost two weeks but my photos from Edinburgh are finally up. Not all of them are very well annotated or tagged though since I’ve not really had an awful lot of time lately nor been near enough to an internet connection.

I also have photos taken at Diggerland from last Saturday as well as some from central Durham which we popped into on the way back since we had some time and it was a nice day.

A few weekends ago I also went out and took some photos around Little Horton Green, a road in Bradford that seems to have got stuck in an 18th century time-warp. It’s really nice down there, actually.

I’m now only 155 images away from my 1000th photo on Flickr – not bad for less than a year.

Post-birthday notes

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  • It’s the morning afternoon after the night before, and I’m actually feeling okay. I did drink a lot (by my standards) last night – mostly Southern Comfort, which, had I drank neat, would have seen me consume half a bottle of the stuff. I am somewhat hungover but I’ve been much, much worse than this before having consumed less, so, yay.
  • I went into town today to put a birthday money cheque into my account at the bank. This is the first time I’ve had to put any cheque in for about 2 months now; normally I have my Google AdSense cheque and rent from my parents to pay in, however thanks to Google introducing EFT and my parents embracing the joys of online banking the money now comes through electronically.
  • On the subject of money, now that I’m 21, I get access to a savings account that my grandmother has been keeping for me. I’m not quite sure how much is in there but it’s not an insignificant amount of money. I don’t need it desperately so I’m probably going to bung it into an ISA for a year or so to amass some interest.
  • There’s a surprisingly high number of Liverpool supporters in Bradford, as I found out last night. Trust me to have a birthday that coincides with one of the most gripping cup finals ever. Well done to Liverpool by the way.
  • I haven’t yet got all of my presents yet, but so far I’ve had a box of Celebrations from work, a blue drinking t-shirt from my parents and some birthday money. And money to buy the TFT screen which I’ll be ordering next week.
  • And now I’m off to the pub for a much-needed cool, caffeinated, non-alcoholic beverage.

To be 21

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I’ve just got back from my 21st birthday celebrations, which, as you can probably tell by me being able to post here, means that I haven’t managed to totally inebriate myself. I am pretty well-plastered, but on the other hand I have been much worse before. I’ll blame it on the fact that we got kicked out of a club due to one of my friends reproducing the contents of her stomach, after which we decided to go home.

Thanks for all the ‘happy birthday’ comments and the TFT screen recommendations; I think I’ve decided on one now so I’ll be ordering it in a few days time. But right now, I really, really need to go to bed.

Oh, on a totally unrelated note, congratulations to Lucio Buffone on getting a Sony Award and a contract with XFM. Lucio is a former University of Bradford student and was Communications Officer of the student union for a year as well as being a DJ on our radio station, Ramair.

Quickly compress PNG images

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Before posting any PNG images on here, I use the open source Pngcrush tool to compress the images as much as possible first. Even when I set the compression to its highest value in programs like IrfanView, Pngcrush is still able to make most images even smaller.

Unfortunately, Pngcrush is a command-line tool, so it’s not the easiest tool to use in Windows. So here’s how to add a ‘Crush’ option to the context (right-click) menu in Windows Explorer for quicker crushing.

Firstly, you’ll need to download Pngcrush, which is availble at Sourceforge. You’ll want the win32 version. Download it and unpack it somewhere.

The instructions that follow are for Windows XP; for older versions they’ll be a little different.
Open Control Panel and choose Folder Options. Select the File Types tab, and scroll down to the ‘PNG’ entry. Click on ‘Advanced’, then click on ‘New…’.

In ‘Action’, type Crush, and in ‘Application used to perform action’, type the following:

C:\Downloads\pngcrush\pngcrush.exe -e 2.png "%1"

The first portion should be the location of the pngcrush.exe file that you extracted from the archive. The ‘-e 2.png’ bit specifies what the outputted PNG image will be called, which in the case it’ll be the filename with ’2′ appended to it (so the crushed version of ‘catpicture.png’ would be called ‘catpicture2.png’). You could also use the following:

C:\Downloads\pngcrush\pngcrush.exe -brute -e 2.png "%1"

This does the same as the above but does a ‘brute force’ crush – rather than use one of a few common methods to crush the file, it will use all of them. It’ll take longer, especially on older hardware, but may result in a smaller PNG file.

And you’re done. Now, when you right-click on a PNG file, you can select ‘Crush’ and have Pngcrush your image for you. Remember that the compression is lossless – you won’t lose any quality by using the tool.

Picasa 2 Rocks!

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A screenshot showing a before and after image that has been enhanced by Picasa's 'I'm Feeling Lucky' tool

Thanks to Chris G for letting me know that Google has just released Picasa 2, a new version of their photo editing tool that they acquired last year. It’s really worth the download – it has a superb auto-adjust mode called ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ which can instantly fix bad photos, like the one above which was taken using the flash in a very smoky environment. It’s also good for managing photos, such as categorising and tagging them. My father would really like this.

(It’s Windows-only, I’m afraid)

End of year quiz 2004

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Here’s a quiz I took this last year updated for 2004. Should be interesting when comparing answers. Read on…

1.What did you do in 2004 that you’d never done before?

Go out every night of the week – and by that I mean stay out later than midnight every night for 7 days solid. I’ve almost managed it before but this year was the first time I’d done it fully. I was totally knackered afterwards, as you can imagine.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Well, my resolutions for 2004 were:

  • Drink less alcohol. Hmmm. No, didn’t keep that one somehow. I’d say my consumption patterns have changed – I’m having one or two a day rather than binging on a lot a couple of times a week, which is probably better for me in the longrun. But hey, I’m a student – drinking alcohol is in the job description 😉 .
  • Eat more healthily. Some improvement. I’m having fresh salad in my sandwiches more often and drinking more pure orange juice, but having a supermarket at the end of the road that does two pieces of Kentucky-esque fried chicken and fries for £1.19 is off-putting.
  • Do more work. Took me until the end of June but I have done a lot more work this year. Yay!
  • Do more exercise. A big fat no. Been as lazy as ever this year. Ah well.

For 2005 I’ll probably do more of the same.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Not this year. My cousin’s daughter Eve is growing up fast – she’s learned to walk and is eating solid food now. She’s still adorable though, and very well behaved.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Thankfully, no.

5. What countries did you visit?

If it counts, Wales (for a day in December). Haven’t really had the chance to go abroad this year.

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?

A girlfriend? Although I’ve lacked that in 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999…

7. What date(s) from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

The Beach Party in June for the sheer insanity of the whole thing. We’re having another one this year which promises to be bigger and better than last time – hopefully we’ll actually get some sunshine this time too!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Either getting a summer placement or doing much better in my resits than I did on my first attempt. I was also pretty impressed at getting asked to co-author a book about Movable Type, even if I didn’t get time to contribute in the end.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Having to do re-sits, and having to pull out of the book.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

No injuries, but I had the odd cold. Not as bad as last year though.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My iPod Mini, without a doubt. Although I’m pretty pleased with my Family Guy DVDs too.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

All my friends, as I said last year. They’ve been brilliant this year and really made my life worth living.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

Like last year I’ll say a Labour politician, though it’ll be Charles Clarke and his bill to make students even poorer than they already are. Though that doesn’t mean Blair is off the hook either. He’s better than Howard or *shiver* Kilroy-Silk but that doesn’t mean I like him or his ideas.

14. Where did most of your money go?

The pub. And Apple Computer.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Christmas, the beach party, my iPod Mini.

16. What song will always remind you of 2004?

“In The Shadows” by The Rasmus.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

happier or sadder?Probably about the same, maybe happier. thinner or fatter?Fatter, alas. richer or poorer?Richer in that I have quite a lot more money in the bank, poorer in that I owe far more than that to the government in student loans.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Exercise.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Playing Solitaire and Freecell.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

Yep, once again, I’ve taken this a few days too late.

21. Who deleted question 21?

The meme monster.

22. Did you fall in love in 2004?

Yeah, I wish.

23. How many one-night stands?

Yeah, I wish.

24. What was your favourite TV program?

Family Guy, although I’ve been watching that on DVD so I don’t know if it counts. Otherwise either 2DTV, QI, Have I Got News For You or Dead Ringers. From the radio I’d choose The News Quiz or The 99p Challenge.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Not really no.

26. What was the best book you read?

Books? I read blogs! In which case I’d name Dooce as my favourite – Heather’s a brilliant observer and her writing always makes me chuckle.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I hadn’t realised I liked Ash and Green Day so much. But they’re not really discoveries.

28. What did you want and get?

A new watch, a pen drive, a new mobile phone (twice), a DVD player and that iPod Mini again 🙂 .

29. What did you want and not get?

World peace and lots of money.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?

Of those that I saw, Spiderman II.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

Get drunk on Turboshandy (avoid it, please). I was 20.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

A girlfriend and more cash.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?

Eh…? Same clothes I usually wear – subdued casuals.

34. What kept you sane?

My friends and having lots of stuff to do.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Kirsten Dunst.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Top-up fees again, followed by equal opportunities/diversity, the Iraq war and hunting with dogs. I’ve been somewhat more political this year than in previous years.

37. Who did you miss?

A friend of mine who is on placement.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Too many to mention.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004.

If you’re going to live with some mates of yours, make sure it’s only for a year at a time. I like my housemates and get on well with them, but I really don’t want to live with them next year…

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

“Girl! I’m gonna take you to a gay bar!” . Because I went to one (well, a gay club night) and my life, like the song, has been a bit insane at times over the year. All in all, 2004 was a good year for me, but hopefully 2005 will be better.

Present-ing…

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Hope you are all having a good Christmas! I got lots of presents this morning, including:

My dad also got a DAB digital radio, although it only gets a digital signal upstairs for some reason (and even then can’t pick up all the channels), which is a pity because he wanted to have it in the kitchen.

Update: It would appear that the radio itself is actually faulty – it also has FM and while every other radio in the house gets perfect reception this one seems to pick up interference from somewhere.

My grandparents got a Freeview digibox and a DVD player, along with some DVDs to go with it.