crowsty's journal

Open Meetings, Society Structures etc.

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:45:30 GMT

It is curious just how inefficient JCR Open Meetings/JCR Politics is. We have a good starting point - the JCR is elected via. STV, the JCR are required to meet 4 times a term, and have an Open Meeting every term.

Then we have people independently writing motions and submitting them. Not unexciting or particularly inefficient so far. But then you get to the Open Meeting. You discover that actually, quite a few people object to the wording of point 3.4, but otherwise find it agreeable. So you waste time arguing about pointless things and actually not getting to the point of discussion.

We also have an annoying point. A clear, precise motion takes time to write. So if there needs to be someone keen enough on writing up the problem, otherwise it doesn’t get raised.

The “Solution”

A good start would be to have the drafting of such items public. Several of us used a wiki for drafting motions, and this seemed to work rather well. Combine this with a discussion forum, where issues can be discussed in a more informal form, then many minor issues should reach the meeting in a mutually agreeable state. Where there are things to be discussed, they will be more obvious and should be reached quicker.
I think next term I’ll advertise a publicly-accessible UseModWiki for this purpose.

Documenting JCR/Generic Society Activities

In the longer term, Societies (JCR, Universities Societies, University student unions) need to look into how they can make themselves more transparent and accountable. In some respects internet/e-mail has removed transparency from the system (for example, a lot of e-mails sent which are not recorded, previously some of this would have been recorded in committee meetings). It is now the responsibility of the organizations involved to use the technology to improve communication. It isn’t difficult - organization and discussion can usually take place easier via. a wiki then lots of e-mails. This material just needs to be then stored offline regularly and we’re done. There are obvious advantages internally as well as for those observing. The main example being continuity and efficiency of learned processes - it will be recorded how/when people were found to speak/perform/rooms were booked, which the new committee won’t have to research afresh. In the case of College JCRs who are having to deal with college authorities who have been in their roles several years, this can only be a good thing.

Generalising

This is of wider importance to general government. Quite a lot of the ideas about transparency and openness can be scaled up. Why can’t local councils by default make information available on what they’re up to more easily available online? Informal discussion of planning applications by residents, trying to achieve changes that solve the problem before a formal objection has to be submitted.
A political party have an internally-editable, public-viewable working version of their manifesto on display. Members/voters could comment on what parts of the policies they agree with, discuss points of dispute. I’m sure the reader can think of better examples. Most importantly, if openness was improved at a student level, then hopefully we can get new politicians who are interested in openness continuing.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of an incentive for politicians to act in such a way, openness will lead to embarrassing things being released more often, which the public are likely to be less-than-forgiving about.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Archimedeans

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:20:03 GMT

I’m now no longer involved with The Archimedeans. Even better, we have a new webmaster, so I haven’t got anything to worry about.

In departing, I thought it would be a good idea to change to the New Frontend (the old frontend looks like this), and the backend code relating to the choice of the front end has been tidied up, so it is now much easier to redesign the front end design with a separate test version, and then instantly deploy. The update also makes the bookshop and past newsletters consistent with the rest of the site.

The only slight exception that still exists is the forums, the header here has been copy-pasted, but the alternative would be a lot more hacking. The left hand menu has been removed for the fora, since it would require some effort to even implement it at all, and then the hacking just mentioned to ensure it dynamically updates. This solution is much simpler.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Sainsbury Basics Chocolate Sea Shells

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:07:16 GMT

You may have come across this product before:

<--- Guylian' s Chocolate Sea Shells. Quite good but expensive.

Now, what do you do if you enjoy a branded product, but don't like the price? You buy a supermarket own brand. Too expensive, buy a supermarket basics/value own brand.

With that in mind, Sainsburys are selling their Basics version of this product, so if you don't want to spend about £5 on the original, you can buy this version for only £2.

But Valentines Day gets close, money is already being stretched by buying a quality card, and you want to buy chocolates as well, but don’t have £2. Say you only have £1. What do you do?

A potential replacement? —>

You might start running through some alternatives. Chocolate is chocolate after all, and who doesn’t like chocolate digestives dipped in tea? Well, those who don’t like tea for a start. But otherwise, Tesco chocolate digestives could be a good replacement. You get a lot more mass for your money after all (or, for mathematicians, why not a copy of your favourite theorems. You’ll get a lot of maths for your money).

Unfortunately, you may have a fussier girlfriend/boyfriend/girlfriends/boyfriends/whatever, who may consider your Chocolate digestive purchasing as just being cheap, not fully appreciating the beauty of your optimisation of their enjoyment. Luckily, Sainsburys know their market. The day before Valentines Day (well, this offer was probably running for a few weeks), they were selling the Basics version for only £1. Nothing says “I love you” more than a guy who optimizes how much enjoyment you get per £ spent on them.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there - 1 Comment(s) made).

Cambridge Lindy Hopathon!

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 01:37:47 GMT

Yay! The Lindy Hopathon was brilliant - lots of money has been raised (over £5,750 at the last look of the justgiving page), and we had a great night! The amazing Ros had done a fantabulous job organizing the event, and she clearly knew we were coming, as she had baked some lovely cakes (well, some other people also baked some cakes as well I think)!

We even managed to get on Anglia News:

Then we had Matt and Lotte’s leaving thingamajig at The Snug. Colin Hazel providing music, and generally fantastic company.
What could be more fun?

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

When Open Source Development “Just Works”

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:46:16 GMT

I opens a ticket for some minor corrections to the hpodder documentation. 3 hours later, it is fixed in the source. Oh yeah. Further, looking now, I probably could have made it as a patch in about 5 minutes, and sent it to the developer, which would take them no time at all to accept/reject.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

KDE4

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:46:00 GMT

From bugs.kde.org:

bugs.kde.org temporarily offline
bugs.kde.org is temporarily offline to celebrate KDE 4.0.0 launch.

Insert spontaneous applause

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

BBC Flash iPlayer

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:37:56 GMT

The BBC Flash iPlayer has been launched.

Estimates for time until it is reverse-engineered and we know how to get hold of the lovely video files? Well, I say lovely. Probably FLVs.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Roll a fair dice, you need a 5 or 6…

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:28:12 GMT

“Weldon’s dice data” (mentioned in Real Analysis & Probability, Dudley p.273, but he references Feller, 1968, pp.148-149),
give the probability as 0.3377 plus/minus 0.0008 (presumably this is on a ridiculous confidence interval, maybe I’ll follow up the reference sometime), due to the fact that the faces are made with hollowed out holes for the numbers, making the 5 and 6 sides lightest, placed opposite 2 and 1, which are the heaviest sides).

This clearly implies that I have to change my strategies in dice-based games.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

What'SUP

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:12:53 GMT

I for one welcome our new Russia overlords

Useful command of the day

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:36:57 GMT

sudo lsof | grep /dev/snd

Finds what is hogging the soundcard for no sane reason.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Cambridge Lindy Exchange

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:51:12 GMT

This weekend we had the Cambridge Lindy Exchange. Lots of dancing with great dancers, clips of some random phrases and blues steal dance, along with lots of live music, some Blues Dancing, Pub Lunch, Tea Dance. What more could you possibly want? I will probably go into Evangelizing mode about Lindy soon. Cantabrigian - Monday nights, 7:30pm, at the Man on the Moon, or Wednesday 7:30pm at Centre at St Pauls are the places to be.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

NRICH Materials

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:44:31 GMT

As some are probably aware, I worked with NRICH over the summer (NRICH basically tries to help increase learning and enjoyment of maths through the regular problems (themed each month) and articles on the website, which can be used as resources for teachers, or anyone visiting the site (this isn’t the official description, since I can’t find a short version of it, but I think I have explained it well enough)). Anyway, this page should contain a list of articles/problems I have written or was heavily involved with as they are published on the site. There are a few things I have written which are unlikely to get published for a while, either because they align well with a monthly theme quite a few months in the future, or because I want to tidy them up/add to them/write some related material. Enjoy.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

New Coke analogy

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:48:12 GMT

Windows Vista is just like New Coke - it will remind them of how good XP was, and then everyone will return to it and skip and jump in a couple of years time.

Also, maths is fun. As is dancing.

—–BEGIN GEEKY NOTE—–
(quick note to self and anyone else: the mood plugin being used is moody, which is spectacularly broken and badly coded (too much PHP that would work for them, based on the assumption that you work on a 28-hour day, live on the equator and only go shopping on odd numbered days together with lots of good old copy pasta), but it now works for me, and since there isn’t a bug reporting system, and the last change appears to be almost 3 years ago, I’m not really keen to do anything about it. I’m happy to point out in more detail to anyone developing it the problems, but it would probably be nicer to create a new system, with the option of abstracting to arbitrary things. Then link it in with the lj-crosspost plugin for profit.

Also, the plugin helpfully doesn’t include any information on the licensing of the code. Or images. I’m taking the publishing and distributing of the code and images as a sign that the author gives permission for their use for the purpose of displaying moods. Your house may get hit by a meteor if you use them for other purposes. Or the RIAA will sue you. Or something. Maybe.)
—–END GEEKY NOTE—–

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Share Icon Project

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 16:00:00 GMT

The Share Icon Project, quite a while back suggested their “Share Icon”, an icon to click and share the site on your preferred site (facebook, del.icio.us, etc.), to replace the large sets of buttons that people have:

I think this is a great idea - but why not take it one step further, and have a browser-recognized URL, or some script, such that clicking the button says “hey, I want to share this URL” to the browser, at which point the browser can either reply “yeah, that’s cool. My user likes this social networking site. Here is the dialog for the user to enter their tags/other information”, or if the browser is incompatible, give something negative/no response, at which point a fall back system of an ugly popup with lots of choices appears.
Just a thought.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

HOP! Lindy Time!

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 23:45:59 GMT

A mini-rant, and a few random comments:

- 8 times 3 equals 6 times 4

- Yes, I know I’m not that good yet, and have been liable to get into an endless loop of the Charleston, but If you are going to back lead, please do it properly. IMO, the best way to back lead is to go off the back of something boring that I’m attempting (so basically do something after the first beat, at which point you will have some sort of idea of what I was thinking of for the next 7), or when you have gained enough intuition about what I’m about to do (which should be quite easy, I managed to work out when you were going to back lead). Trying to back lead when I’m about to do something interesting, and doing something less interesting instead is just annoying. (Lotte demonstrated how to perfectly back lead)
- Otherwise Lindy is going well. I’m thinking of some people as newbies now, which implies that I no longer really define myself as a newbie, which is slightly strange. Quite a few of the newbies haven’t been scared off, so that’s good.

- A killer Raccoon didn’t make an appearance.

- Apparently I’m slow on ideas. I just thought there should be some “Open Source Dance” thingy. Sadly someone already came up with the idea.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

A few random things…

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:18:12 GMT

In Soviet Russia, Linux installs you.

SCO pwnd.

I also liked this from Microsoft website - my definition of freedom has certainly deviated from the form that Microsoft was using. For a split second, I thought Microsoft was going to GPL Windows or Something.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Platform lock-in and Web 2.0

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:46:39 GMT

I think it is generally accepted that Platform lock-in is generally a bad thing in terms of software. For documents, you are forced to buy Microsoft Word if you want it to appear exactly as it was to the author, for example (leading to the need for well documented standards), or the much nicer example, the IE vs. Netscape Battles, the need for HTML to be a single well defined standard - things would be much more awkward otherwise (yes, I know IE7 lalala, but there is a defined open standard).

An aside before I have started: I believe software should be open as well, and the whole operating system. Running a closed operating system is locking your skills into something which could then be made expensive or you could be prevented from accessing it.

Problem 1: Lack of Ability to move between sites

I think a similar Scenario will soon apply with the social networking sites - and the same reason why one site prevailed within a particular group - everyone else using it - will soon be the main problem. Facebook have been cunning with their Apps - it will help to ensure that people won’t be pulled elsewhere due to lack of features. But they, like every other site, now face the problem of pulling people in from *other* social networking sites. But all their friends are there, all their data is there and so they’re not going to be able to move very easily. So:

Problem 2: Friends on a Different Site

This is the exact problem which caused one site to dominate, if all your friends are using site FaceSpace, you move to site MyBook. If your friends are split between sites FaceSpace, MyBo and BeBook, then you either have to make decisions, or have accounts with duplication of data etc. on each site.

Problem 3: Lack of features on a site

Self-explanatory - you may be using FaceSpace, all your friends use FaceSpace, but MyBook has a really cool Pirate Ninja Poke game.

Entirely Theoretical Solution - Distributed Social Networking

In order to define the solution, we have to decide what information does a Social Networking site consist of?

A unique ID for that site (so this can be translated into site+unique id) - I’d suggest merging this with openID
Personal Information (including picture) (most of which have probably already got vcard defined for - although the XML version would probably be better)
Information about connections between you and others
Information about what photos you are contained in, where you are in the photos
Information about what other random things (Notes, blog entries, etc.) you are contained in
Events you are attending, events you are hosting
Ignorable things for the moment

There are a few routes we can go down. I would like for it to be possible for you to be able to view any profile inside any system, although I’ll settle for a system where you are forced to redirect in a not-too-dirty way (which should be defined).

So, all we need is for your server to store your details in a transferable format, and for other servers to be able to access this data, and refer to your unique ID. The first two are easy to store and obtain, you enter it into the site in question. But what about the others:
Connections can be stored easily, just a list of (Open)IDs, with information linked to each. In order to claim ‘friendship’, a friends request can be sent to the other server, and only when details are confirmed by both parties are the details displayed (which of course, can be verified by cross-checking if the end user wishes, and can be cancelled from either side if required)
Photos can similarly be dealt with - a traceback should be sent to foo.facespace.com/photoconfirm, the user is notified, they can send a removal request back. Similar deletion can workt he other way
Random Things:The standard can be extensible to deal with any other things in a similar way. Of course, defining a standard for things that are already being used would be sensible.
Events can be stored as calendar objects, with a list of attendees (verified as above), everything works nicely.

So, I think this is a real theoretical possibility.

Weaknesses

I should quickly point out the weaknesses:
Single point of failure: You are relying on the site you choose, but you would be anyway. The other thing you rely on is the ID being tied to your service provider. Since you always know when you have been referenced, we could have a change ID thingy, where you can inform all sites of the change (this would have to be standards-required for obvious reasons). This makes risks of hijacking greater (since the hijackers could push control to any site).
Lack of Search: Search across platforms is likely to be much weaker, and restrictions to Networks across sites will be more difficult/impossible.

Why this isn’t going to happen in the foreseeable future

In order for this to happen, the big players in the market would have to implement it first. If you were facebook, would you implement it? Of course not, one of the big pulls is the need to be on the same site as your friends. If you have a large market share, there are lots of people who already have lots of friends on facebook, but few on other sites.

Other Web 2.0 things…

… have the same problem. Blogging and commenting is pretty lame distributed, in terms of maintaining the community (this does happen through the planets a bit). Similar arguments can be applied elsewhere. The main problem is the one of defining links between people and identifying yourself, which is exactly what a this/OpenID combo will solve.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there - 1 Comment(s) made).

RSS Feeds Improvements

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 00:09:34 GMT

Two improvements have been made to the RSS 2.0 feeds (I have left the RSS 1 feeds alone because I can’t be bothered implementing the changes twice):
- The ‘author’ field is now set to the author of the comment, which will then be displayed nicely in supporting clients
- You can add ‘&ignore=foo’ to the end of the address, and comments by foo will be removed from the feed (i.e. you can remove your own comments.
- adding cat=-n generates a feed/page with everything but things in category n (hover over each category to find the number; this was an already implemented feature in wordpress I have only just found out about)

Enjoy
(the original comment, which due to my broken code, was orphaned from whichever post it was made for, which prompted this is included below)

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

ZOMG the Linux Community is divided and fragmented, maybe

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:01:09 GMT

I have read quite a few articles recently going on about the weaknesses of the open source community for being too fragmented (I think the most notable one being the claim that we have two many distros, hence linux will lose, how can he possibly decide), and hence felt like ranting.

Guess what? The free software communities has always been fragmented. There have always been differences - differences Philosophies towards freedom, preferences over the style of the User interface, Vi vs. Emacs. That may be a weakness at times, but it is also its biggest strength. If I don’t like the way someone implements something, I can provide my own version, and the community can decide. The fragmentation based on opinions on what are relatively minor details are good. Lots of Distros are good - if someone comes up with an idea within one distro it can be easily added to all the other distros.

So where is free software weaker? Probably marketing. Most people will be using a free OS for at least on of the two reasons:
- Cool Features
- Freedom
The problem? Jo Bloggs doesn’t care that much about Freedom, if things currently work. So the main selling point would have to be the Cool Features. But we aren’t good at marketing these, and often these aren’t enough of a ‘pull’ for the effort required anyway.

The free software communities are not going to die because of this. Yes, if you stick two users of free software in a room, even if you picked them from the same group(s) (so both KDE users for example), they will find something that they can argue about. That method created good logic and mathematical reasoning. There is no reason why it can’t create great software as well.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

SCO vs. Novell - and the winner is…

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:57:40 GMT

Novell: “The court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.”

OK, their are some other things still to clear up, and the rest of the world had moved on about half a century ago. But it’s a cute story

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Bad Dell. Bell.

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:39:26 GMT

So, time to celebrate Dell’s Ubuntu UK launch? Maybe not. If you upgrade the relevent components for the laptop (Inspiron 6400n) you save a massive £18.12 over the price of the Windows PC (mainly caused by offers on the windows PCs only). For the Desktop, Ubuntu is £18.24 more expensive than Windows. Now, I know Dell Windows is subsidised bloatware, but that is just silly, and worse than the US offering.

The fact they are offering them is good though, and competition is increasing in this market.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Twitter

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 22:05:40 GMT

In a feable attempt to be a 1337 Web 2.0 user, Social Networking, , I’ve decided to try using twitter for a bit. How it is going to be that much different from the facebook status apart from line length limit I don’t know. But everyone’s using it, so it must be good. The cool kids will probably want the RSS Feed. Or there is some crazy followers thingy.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

At least Cambridge University are sane

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 17:51:04 GMT

The University have endorsed the statement by Universities UK with respect to the boycott attempt of Israeli universities by the UCU.

Horrah!

Also, I’ve found a good enough solution to the konqueror+del.icio.us problem - I’m using the bookmarklet, which konqueror likes to call a minitool. So my del.icoi.us is getting used.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Cool Things

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:08:03 GMT

mplayer -vo caca /your/url/here.mp4

It has got some use when you are just stuck in a terminal, but surely there are style points for being used when X is working?

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there - 1 Comment(s) made).

STOP! Gentoo Time - U Can’t install this?

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:05:23 GMT

I’ve decided to try out Gentoo Linux. So, my thoughts? Firstly, don’t install Gentoo as your first distro. [psuedo-footnote: Go with Ubuntu (its got a nice pretty install system, live cd so you can try it before installing, doesn’t take several hours to compile etc.) - more precisely go with Kubuntu] Anyway, once you get over the compile times and such, everything is pretty painless. I made the mistake of installing kde-meta instead of just the kdebase-meta, which would have helped things, and messed up the kernel configuration initiallly by forgetting to select alsa (sorts out sound), and then finding that the alsa code wouldn’t compile (I think it was an update which finally solved this). Patience is also required in just setting the compilation going and then going and doing other things.

Overall though, I’m pretty impressed. Portage is handling dependencies well enough, and I’m starting to like the USE flag system now I’m starting to understand it. The only difficult thing is knowing what you want at the start (for example, I forgot to install libraries for some audio/video formats, and mplayer assumed I didn’t want support, and so needed a recompile - ubuntu just installed the whole lot. But that is the point of Gentoo, so I’m not complaining. Everything else works well. Ease of proprietary software installation (I was going to add a comparison to the difficulty for a novice ubuntu user - but that would be silly) is nice. Flash is very easy to install, and the konqueror importing from firefox works. So I now have youtube videos in sync. (woo(t))

Oh, I probably should download some decent fonts sometime as well, mplayer still isn’t behaving perfectly, but generally it is working pretty well.

Finally, a general interesting idea which I might look into sometime - we currently have youtube-dl to download youtube videos, and then your favourite encoding method, discovered after much googling to encode the video, which hopefully will still be in sync. It would be a better idea to be able to have a link to download within konqueror, even automatically when you view something, and also download the video name+description and put this to good purpose.

Just a thought, something I’m not really going to look into right now, but it would be nice, and probably not a difficult task (the most awkward parts are the methods of integration and extraction of data).

On an unrelated note, watch MC Hammer’s can’t touch this video, but to the angle dance song. I think it could work.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there - 2 Comment(s) made).