Palegoldenrod

Welcome to the first “Peek @ World”, where I snapshot something weird and wonderful in the world that needs no explanation. Thus the absence of an explanation

Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe – Wired 21-Aug-2007

They have blogging, they have a chat client (and chat functionality built into web-based gmail) they bought Blogspot, Youtube… it was bound to happen that Google looked in the direction of social networking.

They have released OpenSocial – no, its not yet another social networking site. Google has rightly realised that that particular market is well saturated (whew!). OpenSocial is an open API for social networking applications – an interface for accessing and providing information in existing social networking services. It is aimed at forming a common base between the already existing thousands of social networking sites and applications.

The rest of this article is available over at Kleencode.net where Amos and I are now posting all of our tech posts. You can read the rest of this article there.

Since when did using a loudspeaker indoors become OK?

I imagine some very quiet little corner store where a grandmother is buying a loaf of bread. She is having a polite chat with the shopkeep when for whatever reason he decides he needs to contact the boy in the back room. Instead of going there he pulls out a loudspeaker and yells out “Gary, you are required at the checkout… Gary”.

It didn’t happen when grocery stores were small, surely. When did it start? Was it some revolutionary thing when the first store did it? Did we, the consumer, think it was cool to have harsh orders blared out across the entire supermarket while we carried out our shopping?

When the first store had it, did the shopkeepers hesitantly and shame-facedly whisper into the loudspeaker for a while, until it became “normal”? Or did they get a buzz that they had finally found a place in the world where they can yell amplified and crackly orders at a shy 14 year old, box-packer 20 metres away (the military wouldn’t have them, but by God, the supermarket is just as good!).

I heard an order broadcast today, one I’ve not heard often. I was examining the entire aisle of balsamic vinegars, wondering on whether the world really needed that many varieties, when “(some unintelligible alien-speak) express alert! Express Alert!”. What the? I looked around to see my fellow shoppers continue about their business as if nothing had happened.

Two checkout minions scurried past me towards the front of the store. A battalion of customers were waiting at the express checkouts – decisive action was required. Extra troops were deployed to additional checkouts, someone began encouraging customers to change aisles to neutralise the threat as quickly as possible. And there, in the middle of it all, stood The Manager. An 18-or-so year old, rapidly firing off orders to his staff, producing accompanying gestures faster than a machine gun eats a chain of bullets. Clutching his little radio microphone I see a determined glint in his eye as he raises it to his lips “Express Alert!”. I guess he didn’t get to do that very often, and he was enjoying it a lot.

I watched in fascination as his tactics bore fruit. Within 15 minutes the battlefield was once again quiet, strewn with the bodies of empty shoppings baskets, and the occasional littered docket. Weary emergency checkout staff began closing their checkouts and returning to their other tasks, and the basket collector came out to collect the dead.

The other customers remaining in the store were oblivious to the battle that had occurred. When The Manager breathed a sigh of relief and relinquished his radio mouthpiece with a satisfied smile, none were there to congratulate him. He surveyed the cleanup operations one last time and returned to his work as if nothing had happened.

Supermarket Managers – unsung heroes of today.

The FreeRice website is a cool little project where you match up words to their meanings – for every question you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.

While that is a very, very small amount (and obviously is very cheap for the sponsors) it is something, which is great.

Its a really cool idea – there seems to be something for everyone: companies get publicity (and probably a tax write-off); the UN gets funding for food; the user gets to improve their vocabulary – and even if they don’t aim to learn, they can use in with competition in mind and try to outdo their friends, either by the amount of rice they donate or the level of difficulty they reach.

It is somewhat addictive too – I found myself thinking “just one more – I know this one!”. I guess if you are going to be addicted to something its better that it be something that benefits both you, and those in need. Rather than, say… err… World of Warcraft. D’oh.

By the way – who wants to have a stab at how many grains of rice are in a kilo? And how can we verify it? I’m interested because the site claims that about 30 million grains of rice were donated yesterday and I am wondering how much that really is. Is it 10 kilos – a pittance?

Anyway, go over and check it out. Its cool.

Hi guys.

I just had some massive downtime. I’m not entirely sure why or how but all of the files in my site decided to disappear. Handy, wot?

I think you may have an idea whose fault it is.

Anyway, I’m thinking of setting up a new incarnation of palegoldenrod to reflect my newfound love of Ruby on Rails (awww yeah). OR shifting to another .NET host. What do you think? Do you have any recommendations for hosts? If I stay .NET I think subtext has to use an MS SQL backend, but if I can find a host which will allow SQL Express databases and multiple sites that would be awesome (because then I can have a bunch of sites each with their own database).

I may even select a new skin. If you want to make some suggestions, take a look at http://www.oswd.org and post your suggestion below.

Happy days.

Carly

Tonight I’m leaving to go camping for the long weekend with a bunch of friends. No doubt shenanigans will ensue.

I hope those of you taking a break from work have a great time

Carly

Well, no thanks to Yahoo and all praise to the Flickr staff for helping me out with my recently ranted issues with access to Flickr via my Yahoo account.

I found the Flickr help contact page and asked them (instead of Yahoo) – in one last half-hearted attempt to resolve this thing – if they could unhook my Flickr account from my Yahoo account so I could attach a new Yahoo account. I was rewarded with a resolution (not a vague email – a resolution) within 24 hours.

They unhooked my account for me, and sent me a link which allowed my to log straight into the flickr account and hook it up to a new Yahoo ID.

So, Yahoo still sucks (and I am still disappointed that Flickr went over to them) but the Flickr staff are still awesome, and I send out a big “Thank you” for their help.

In terms of photo storage, I’m still not sure where I will leave them – Flickr limits you to 3 sets, Picasa limits you to 1GB of storage. Both have paid versions which expand them. Flickr has more functionality and is more popular, but is a bit more expensive and has the stinky Yahoo-ness. Picasa is (slowly) getting cool stuff like geolocation of photos on Google Maps, and I already use a lot of Google stuff, but I’m not sure that Google is very intent on displacing Flickr as the Photo Place On The Web – so maybe it will go nowhere. Picasa’s paid expansion expands only storage (but of all Google tools for your Google account).

Hmmm. Who knows what I will do?

Anyway, I thought you all know how things turned out

Aaaarrggh, ye scurvy dogs! Today is the day ye must join with us, or walk the plank, as it is International Talk Like a Pirate Day .

I dare ye! Answer the telephone with a sea shanty, or find a parrot to rest on ye shoulder. Patch yer eye and regale yer companions with stories of yer years upon the open sea on board the Black Pearl. Enjoy the day while ye have it, for tonight surely will be ye last if ye choose not to join us. <pirate-y chuckle or something />

Software Freedom Day is on the 15th of September 2007 (yes, that is this weekend!). To quote the Software Freedom Day site:

Software Freedom Day is a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of software freedom and the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software. Local teams from all over the world organise events on the third Saturday in September. The most recent event involved over 200 teams from all over the world.

There are events happening near you – have a look on the site. Newcastle is actually going to be quite active (we’ve a great group of developers up here) so Amos and I will be wandering around at the Newcastle Uni event on Saturday, which should be pretty cool.

I am a supporter of open source software community, so I’m going to encourage you all to have a look at the Software Freedom Day events near you. If you don’t really know what Open Source software is – or even if you are a software user and not a developer – you should still check out the weekend. You will learn a lot, and will probably end up with some legally free (and cool) software to boot (I think the groups will be providing Ubuntu and some other bits and pieces where possible).

Hope to see all you Novocastrians there

Resources

• Software Freedom Day
• David Williams has written an IT Wire article about Software Freedom Day
• Newcastle’s page for Software Freedom Day

Last night Amos and I returned from our long weekend at the Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival. It was great!

We left Friday morning and wandered down the coastal route – past Sydney and Wollongong – right turn at the town of Berry and into Kangaroo Valley.

The road soon led us to Kangaroo Valley proper – a small town in the middle of the valley. One pub, one small corner grocery store, a few little restaurants, cafes and stores and a surprising amount of accommodation. I guess a lot of city-goers come down to the Kangaroo Valley farm villa’s for some R&R?

But the most important thing for the weekend was the showground, right next to Glenmarck Caravan park which we quickly made our home. The town was busy – mostly the festival, but also due to the APEC weekend – a lot of Sydney-siders were in town too.

I enjoyed the weekend a lot: the drive down; exploring Kangaroo Valley and Fitzroy Falls; the shows at the festival; the people gathering everywhere to make their own music; the food; the friends we made – all of it was great.

I’m a little ashamed to say that we had not even heard of most of the artists on the program, but I am happy that we heard a lot of awesome music and met some really cool people.

Pettibone

Now… what can I say about Pettibone except that I love them. Amos has also declared as much. Pettibone is a Wollongong band of four very talented young people, who play anything from modern folk/roots to jazz, bluegrass, and everything in between and around and on the other side. They play range of instruments between them: double bass; guitar; violin; clarinet; banjo; flute; cello. Most of them played two instruments in that first show. They all have great voices – Jamie especially (the lead singer) and seems to be able to play any instrument she puts her hand to. If ever you have the opportunity, check these guys out. Beautiful music, beautiful people, beautiful personalities.

After we caught our first Pettibone show we wandered around for a while and ended up at the Session Tent, where any old musician can sit down and play and have a beer. Some of the Pettibone guys were in there playing some bluegrass with some others, and we were standing outside the tent while Amos was having a smoke. We got talking to another young guy called Ryan, who was really amiable – one of those guys you sort of instantly get along with.

It turned out that Ryan is the beloved of Jamie (Pettibone’s Jamie) and he had come down to watch her play. So, with our new friends Ryan and Pettibone (and a few others we picked up along the way) we had some pretty awesome evenings

Tony Eardley

Tony sings what I guess you would call modern folk (or folk-roots music, maybe?). Two thumbs up for our first Festival artist.

Wheeze and Suck Band

Character! Ian “The Pump” Macintosh leads this group – some lively, rousing songs, some softer and moving. I really like these guys.

Mothers of Intention

Amos was a little disappointed that these guys (gals, actually!) didn’t turn out to be a Frank Zappa cover band (hehehe) but they made some beautiful music. I like them.

Black Joak Morris

I stumbled onto some Morris Dancers in the middle of town and was lucky enough to pick up some sorta cool photos of them doing their thing. These guys have a great sense of humour – the fun they were having was infectious and the crowd gathered around them were sharing in it too.

Poet’s Breakfast

Saturday we had breakfast at the Cafe Bella – it was a Poet’s Breakfast. Now, I’ve never been to a Poet’s Breakfast before. In fact, I’d only attended my first poetry reading a week ago at a Newcastle pub. I’ve since learned that a Poet’s Breakfast is a fairly common thing, and I’m glad we had a chance to catch it. It was hosted by Vic Jefferies, and was much more enjoyable than I found the recitation in Newcastle. The Poet’s Breakfast reading was not recitation – it was reading. The speakers were animated, expressing their poetry rather than reading it. One even dressed up and put on a voice to better present his story. In fact, he even got the crowd to chime in with sound effects on cue

The food was also pretty sweet, which added to the experience, of course!

Other things

What else did we get up to? Amos went to a Guitar Finger Picking workshop. We caught part of a songwriter’s workshop where I heard some beautiful songs from a few people who are so early in their journey that maybe they had only sung to themselves up until then. We went for a drive to Fitzroy Falls. We explored a nearby riverside campground (free) that turned out to be so great we declared we would have to come back sometime. We cooked lunch there on our camp stove, and spoke to the grazing wombats.

We bought some hippy clothes from a stall at the festival – I bought a shawl to ward off the cold, Amos bought a shirt. We listened to a few guys playing some Celtic music in a small room in the pub; we sang and danced with a few guitarists out front of the pub – and the 30 or so others that we doing the same until the wee hours of the morning.

We decided to try a different way back. Without consulting a map. We got there… eventually

An awesome time was had by all.

Kangaroo valley Folk Festival is held every year. Go there! Photos of the 2007 event can be found in my picasa gallery