Month: March 2011

2011-3-23

No-one reads these stupid adverts and they just frustrate the next person who uses the ATM. Related posts: 22/100 If I Were an Advertiser Today AR – Openness and Interoperability Mobile/Portable Computing Caveats Twitter: so how does it make money?

No-one reads these stupid adverts and they just frustrate the next person who uses the ATM.

Related posts:

  1. 22/100 If I Were an Advertiser Today
  2. AR – Openness and Interoperability
  3. Mobile/Portable Computing Caveats
  4. Twitter: so how does it make money?

Some things don’t change.

Image and article credit: The Irish News, March 23, 2011. When I was in the OTC (Officer Training Corps – the Territorial Army for University Undergraduates), a similar display of paramilitary force was pretty much the norm every time we went to stay in a camp – be it Ballykinler, Garelochead or elsewhere. The senior … Continue reading “Some things don’t change.”

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Image and article credit: The Irish News, March 23, 2011.

When I was in the OTC (Officer Training Corps – the Territorial Army for University Undergraduates), a similar display of paramilitary force was pretty much the norm every time we went to stay in a camp – be it Ballykinler, Garelochead or elsewhere.

The senior cadets would stand at the top of the billet, dressed in fatigues and black balaclavas and pose with their SLRs in front of Union Jacks and Red Hand flags. They’d belt out verses of the Sash and be very critical of those of us who didn’t know it – demanding that we perform The Soldier Song instead. Another song I didn’t know. Or ignore jibes about how they knew I was a Taig because I looked like one.

It even got to the point where I’d volunteer for guard duty in the evenings. Which was the most boring activity in the world.

Was it all intimidating? Yes. As a Catholic in the early nineties who had dared to join the British Army (even just as a weekend soldier) it was intimidating because it damaged the trust that the training was meant to instil.

I was raised as a Catholic but consider myself an atheist. I’m a proud British subject and an Irishman by nationality. I love my country and I’m proud of the Cross of Saint Patrick in the Union Jack.

I loved being in the British Army. We learned about first aid, orienteering, took trips in RIBs and helicopters, camped in the pouring rain in Scotland and the blustering, freezing gales in the North West of Ireland. We learned about rifles, how to shoot, make them safe and how to respect their power. And I appreciate the work our military does – even though I may not agree with the government which directs it.

And every now and then I am re-introduced to one of the balaclava-wearing bigots in my day job and I do my best to forget. Unlike the children in these photos, these bigots were adults. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Related posts:

  1. O2: upgrades GPRS -> EDGE nationwide
  2. Jonathan Gems on the abolition of the UKFC
  3. 2011-5-16
  4. Money for nothing and chicks for free

City of Tomorrow

I launched a new blog today: City of Tomorrow designed to help capture ideas for the development of cities in the near future. What is City of Tomorrow? City of Tomorrow is a Civil Imagineering (as opposed to Civil Engineering) project to have individuals imagine the city of tomorrow and then explain this from the … Continue reading “City of Tomorrow”

I launched a new blog today: City of Tomorrow designed to help capture ideas for the development of cities in the near future.

What is City of Tomorrow?

City of Tomorrow is a Civil Imagineering (as opposed to Civil Engineering) project to have individuals imagine the city of tomorrow and then explain this from the point of view of an observer in the future. We want to think of, and describe, features of our future cities and hopefully imagineer dates by which these things will be achieved.

What do we hope to achieve?

We’re at the Imagineering stage so we’re just looking for ideas. As we get closer to the dates mentioned, then we’re going to look for ways to implement these things.

When?

For the purposes of this web site, the date is now 2025 AD or later. We all live in magnificent cities which have witnessed more than a decade of revolution in architecture and design, in transportation planning, in social re-engineering and a complete re-write of the planning laws.

The writers here will provide a retrospective look at what happened in the past to get to where we are (in the metaphorical) today. We’ll provide important dates of when things happened, attempt to give links and credit to people who made the greatest changes and at some point in the future (in real time) review how much we got right, how much we got wrong.

Part of this comes from attending a CityCampLDN (CityCamp London) in February and meeting some of the “civil entrepreneurs” who attended.

CityCamp LDN brings together city leaders at all levels from government, business and community organisations to reimagine the way in which technology can help to reshape the future of London.

I know we have more folk who are interested in this – and this is definitely not a Belfast-centric piece of work – but we have to think about our cities first just due to the population. I hope that progressive town and borough councils will steal these ideas – I hope even more to get them engaged.

Later in 2011, I’d like to hold a City of Tomorrow event in Belfast and/or Derry-Londonderry to see if there are others interested but for now I’d appreciate any comments or tweets you have.

Related posts:

  1. London, City of the Future
  2. The Realm of the Possible: Inventing a New City
  3. The Broadband Blueprint (re DETI Telecoms Consultation)
  4. Hang a TIC: Technology and Innovation Centre possibilities in Northern Ireland

2011-3-22

I find Pokémon to be morally repugnant. Semi-sentient beings which fight for our pleasure. It was pointed out that it’s a teamwork thing – Pokémon love their trainers – but that’s really how people justify dogfighting isn’t it? Anyway. I find the whole thing scummy. Related posts: The State of the Union Fight or Flight? … Continue reading “2011-3-22”

I find Pokémon to be morally repugnant. Semi-sentient beings which fight for our pleasure. It was pointed out that it’s a teamwork thing – Pokémon love their trainers – but that’s really how people justify dogfighting isn’t it?

Anyway. I find the whole thing scummy.

Related posts:

  1. The State of the Union
  2. Fight or Flight?
  3. 2011-3-12
  4. Stab and twist…stab and twist

I Want A Facetime Availability Tool

I really like FaceTime but it has two major issues (not including the “Works only over WiFi” thing. Closed protocol. I’m not really an Open Source advocate – I’m an Open Standards and Formats advocate. The fact that Skype has been permitted to gain such a stranglehold pains me because of their lacklustre support for … Continue reading “I Want A Facetime Availability Tool”

I really like FaceTime but it has two major issues (not including the “Works only over WiFi” thing.

  1. Closed protocol. I’m not really an Open Source advocate – I’m an Open Standards and Formats advocate. The fact that Skype has been permitted to gain such a stranglehold pains me because of their lacklustre support for platforms and their poor UI. Look at Skype 5 as a perfect example.

    FaceTime is based on numerous technologies:

    • H.264 and AAC – video and audio codecs respectively
    • SIP – IETF signaling protocol for VoIP
    • STUN, TURN and ICE – IETF technologies for traversing firewalls and NAT
    • RTP and SRTP – IETF standards for delivering real-time and encrypted media streams for VoIP

    While FaceTime is based on open standards, Apple’s FaceTime service requires a client-side certificate. I.e. while the protocol might be open, access to Apple’s FaceTime service is controlled by Apple.

    I don’t mind access being restricted (helps prevent spammers, prank calls) but it should be open as we’re 9 months now since it was released.

  2. Lack of Availability Notifications. As FaceTime only works on WiFI, it would be nice to have some sort of notification of availability. Maybe a third party could work with Google Latitude to detect where a client was and the app could have some locations set as “Available, With WiFi”. I know we’ve coped in the past with phone calls but this is a little different. Add a little flag for “Please don’t call now” and you’ve got the makings of a great little service. Of course, that would only work if FaceTime has some sort of URL schema which brings me back to the first point.

What would improve the service for you?

Related posts:

  1. iPhone. 4.
  2. Wherein I ridicule silly people
  3. The Broadband Blueprint (re DETI Telecoms Consultation)
  4. The Ultimate Tool of Technical Freedom

Broadband

My broadband has been falling down a lot recently. It’s a standard BT Home Broadband, running at the fastest it can run (which means it’s running a lot slower than advertised). I pay about £30 a month (when you include the line rental for the land line – which I don’t use). This is a … Continue reading “Broadband”

My broadband has been falling down a lot recently. It’s a standard BT Home Broadband, running at the fastest it can run (which means it’s running a lot slower than advertised). I pay about £30 a month (when you include the line rental for the land line – which I don’t use). This is a fixed line broadband product and where I am (BT5, 3 miles from the city), I cannot get Virgin Cable or the new BT Infinity product that DETI just paid for.

As you can see, while the download is not too bad (though I rarely get throughput of over 2 Mbps), the upload speed is really poor. Compare that to a Speedtest result on my phone on the Three 3G network.

and lastly, compare this with $30 a month in Korea.

Good broadband infrastructure is important for our developing economy. It doesn’t matter what fat pipes are added if the problem is still last mile access for home and business users alike. It’s not that our broadband is expensive or cheap – it’s “competitive” – competitive being the world they use after they compare their product to the acknowledged worst in the market (cf “competitive” salaries).

There is an issue that the folk deciding on what “good” broadband is, evidently don’t have a use for it.

Related posts:

  1. The Broadband Blueprint (re DETI Telecoms Consultation)
  2. Your definition of broadband is wrong.
  3. Mobile Phone Operators are shit. All of them.
  4. For the cost of a bulb, multi-gigabit broadband

2011-3-19

Arlene and I attended the Irish Blog Awards in the Europa Hotel. It turns out this will be the last Blog Awards (under the current management anyway) so I’m glad we didn’t miss it. And yes, she’s fabulous! Related posts: Irish Blog Awards H is for ipocrisy Turning PR on it’s head. Irish Blog Awards … Continue reading “2011-3-19”

Arlene and I attended the Irish Blog Awards in the Europa Hotel. It turns out this will be the last Blog Awards (under the current management anyway) so I’m glad we didn’t miss it. And yes, she’s fabulous!

Related posts:

  1. Irish Blog Awards
  2. H is for ipocrisy
  3. Turning PR on it’s head.
  4. Irish Blog Awards ’09