geirmund

In praise of TextPad…Agility Ad Infinitum

geirmund — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 12:44:20 +0000

In a small corner of the vast space of the web, unbeknownst to most but the fortunate and mildly geeky few, lives TextPad. This most magical piece of software is as agile as it is light. Weighing in at less than 3MB it still turns the user into a martial arts master of text editing. Once the idiosyncratic shortcuts have been tamed (e.g. F8 to replace), text is slavebound to you for life. TextPad has been a trusted friend for many years and is usually the first software I install on a new computer.

Which other application allows you to select blocks?

Which other application allows you to search across multiple files in a folder?

Which other application allows you to replace with Regular expressions?

The answer to all the above questions (and many more) is without doubt: TextPad. But I have one more question, and this one is for you: In which small corner of the web can I find the equivalent software for Apple Macs?

In praise of feedly…Curate Ergo Sum

geirmund — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:32:53 +0000

807 days after I shared my first item via feedly.com, it is high time this splendid service receive my praise:

Curate Ergo Sum.

With instant apologies for pretence (I know little Descartes and less Latin), this praise still captures my feeling about feedly:

I curate, therefore I am

How else would I be able to stay on top of 385 different sources spanning traditional news providers, individual bloggers and predefined searches? Feedly and the underlying RSS aggregator Google reader allows me to create my own information channel. Neatly organised into categories, I scan headlines and opening paragraphs at a speed unimaginable a few years ago. I save whats grabs my attention and then I read:

Curate first! Then consume.

This dictum is our imperative now in a space bursting with information. It is what I followed to get up to speed on the topic of ‘data visualization‘ (or ‘information graphics‘). Once installed, feedly allows you to subscribe to syndication feeds (e.g. RSS) which you then select/create appropriate categories for (i.e. curate). I named mine ‘dadaviz’.

Picking any thread of a topic fabric (like data visualization) will unravel great parts of it due by hyperlinks – one feed leads to the next. I soon had more feeds in dadaviz than I cared for, so I created ‘dataviz2′:

Sources in feedly

This was where I relegated the feeds I was less interested in. My own topic fabric was emerging. I still curate first and then I consume. And with a nod to the feeds in my top flight, thank you to: Adrian Short and CASA Blog and Caseorganic Blog and Chart Porn and Cool Infographics and countculture » openlylocal and Crowd Simulation and Data Driven: Data Analytics, Dashboard Design and Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media and DataViz and Density Design and Digital Urban and FlowingData and GENeSIS and Guardian Datastore Pool and Impure Blog and Infographics news and information aesthetics and Information Is Beautiful and Juice Analytics: Agile Analytics and kasabi and LOD2 and London DataStore blogs and Matthew Ericson – ericson.net and News: Datablog | guardian.co.uk and nicolasrapp.com and OkTrends and Open Knowledge Foundation Blog and Periscopic Now and Peter Ã˜rntoft and Placr News and Spatial Analysis and Strange Maps | Big Think and Strata 2011 and Suprageography and The Mapping London Blog and UrbanTick and Visual Business Intelligence and visualcomplexity.com and WallStats.com The Art of Information and Well-formed data and xkcd and ZAVEKA INFOGRÁFICA and …

G20 a peaceful movement.

geirmund — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:13:51 +0000

For all the bad press on violent G20 protests, here are a few clips from the fringes that tell a different story:

Sanjuro

French music with the demonstrators leaving Grosvenor Square (US Embassy) in the background for Trafalgar Square.

http://www.myspace.com/musicsanjuro

Sax in the Park

I love this couple who were entertaining us in Grosvenor Square (US Embassy).

(No myspace site as of yet!)

CND’s Bruce Kent

Bruce Kent agrees with my opening sentence on media: sensation-chasing and celebrity-driven.

http://www.cnduk.org/

UK Tech Recruiters are Behind the Curve

geirmund — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:43:02 +0000

A quick survey of recruitment agencies in the technology sphere (IT and telecom) shows that the power of XML has still not made a sufficient impression on most of them. Out of the 32 recruiters I looked at, nearly 2/3 offer no XML feed (e.g. RSS or Atom) for the jobs they wish to market. In an economic climate like today’s, this difference will only be amplified.

This is how they break down:

Feed NOT offered

Feed offered but INVALID

cwjobs.co.uk [element wrong format/element must be an RFC-822 date-time]
totaljobs.com [element wrong format/element must be an RFC-822 date-time]
reed.co.uk [element wrong format/element must be an RFC-822 date-time]

Feed offered and VALID

The individual RSS feeds of the XML “graduates” above are all combined into one SUPERFEED that can be followed here: twitter.com/ITJobsLondon.

Note: If you are a recruiter that want to be added to the SUPERFEED, add a comment with your URL.

Light in the Bulgarian Toilet?

geirmund — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:44:41 +0000

After a week of media focus on the hoax EU artwork by David Cerny, it is worth mentioning a story that has gone virtually unreported since December of last year. Rather than associating Bulgaria with toilets, as in Cerny’s Entropa, this event will hopefully be fondly remembered by every European as the historic turning point in the current battle for his or her civil liberties.

In the centenary of Bulgaria’s independence (Ferdinand I), and less than two years since her European Union accession, a recent ruling made by the country’s Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) should wake up the rest of Europe to what real integrity is as regards the protection of people’s privacy. What is known as the Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC) is to be implemented in EU and EEA member states by 15 March 2009. This looks less likely to happen in Bulgaria after part of the legislation (Article 5 of Regulation #40) that were to put this directive in place was rejected by the court.

Not Constitutional

According to the SofiaEcho.com:

“Article 5 envisages that entities that provide public electronic services and or maintain public electronic information networks would provide police with access to their data whenever this access meets the Interior Ministry’s needs when conducting investigations.

The SAC ruled this definition as too vague, as it did not provide any kind of control over the ministry’s access to citizens’ personal information and did not answer to Bulgarian constitutional principles of protection of personal information of people.”

The Complaint

In January of last year the Bulgarian government issued Regulation #40, which would ensure compliance with EU’s data retention directive. Two months later, on March 19, the NGO Access to Information Programme (AIP) filed a complaint with the SAC, arguing that the regulation not only violates the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria, but also the European Convention on Human Rights, and the actual text of the EU legislation itself. This complaint was first rejected by a three-member panel of the SAC (a lower instance of the court) in July, before a five-member panel of the SAC repealed this decision and also Article 5 of the challenged regulation:

“Article 5 provides for a “passive access through a computer terminal” by the Ministry of Interior, as well as access without court permission by security services and other law enforcement bodies, to all retained data by Internet and mobile communication providers.”

This, the court found:

“contradicts the provision of Art. 8 of the ECHR, the texts of the Directive 2006/24/EC, and Art. 32 and 34 of the Bulgarian Constitution. “

The Challenge

Speaking to Heise.de, AIP’s legal representative Alexander Kashumov believes the Bulgarian court’s decision could be significant for the rest of Europe:

“The decision not only protects the privacy of the Bulgarians, and especially the work of investigative journalists that are most threatened by surveillance and interception. It can also be used for the benefit of the citizens of the rest of Europe.” [translated from German]

Less than two months away from the stipulated implementation date of the EU directive, can light be seen in the Bulgarian bowl? The challenge, then, to all who care that we do not “break the back of freedom“, is to find out.