polytechnic - the online brain dump of garrett coakley

At the book fair

garrett — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:56:28 +0000

The first shots from the Zeiss Ikon I bought earlier in the year have been developed. I think I have a new favourite camera.

Police face prosecution for obstructing photographers

garrett — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:59:36 +0000

From the Press Gazette.

Police were warned today about wrongful use of anti-terror laws to stop photographers taking pictures of officers.

Lord Carlile QC, who reviews anti-terror legislation, said officers who use force or threats against photographers to make them delete images could face prosecution themselves.

Section 58A of the Counter-Terrorism Act, which came into force in February, bans photographers from taking pictures of the police if the photographs could be useful to terrorists.

Lord Carlile said this was a "high bar" and should not be used to interfere with day-to-day photography of officers which is "as legitimate as before".

…

It is inexcusable for police officers ever to use this provision to interfere with the rights of individuals to take photographs.

(Hat tip: John Naughton.)

Keep libel laws out of science

garrett — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:11:28 +0000

Simon Singh is currently being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association. Sense About Science has launched a campaign asking for reform of the English libel system so that it does not stifle scientific debate and journalism in general. Please sign the statement of support and encourage others to join the campaign. This is an issue that affects anyone who cares about science, journalism and free speech.

Fallen down

garrett — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:02:21 +0000

This is how Social Media really works

garrett — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:42:24 +0000

Matt Haughey points out the obvious flaw in the logic of bandwagon marketeers and companies who just don't get it.

So maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need "social media marketing" after all.

Concentrate on what you do well, give great service, and people will talk about you and evangelise you. Do it badly or try to game the system and people will still talk, but for all the wrong reasons.

(And while I'm on the subject, if one more account with the phrase "social media expert" in their description tries to follow me on Twitter heads are going to roll. Seriously, just piss off will you.)

I can't believe we still have to link to The Cluetrain Manifesto 10 years after it was first published.

Agile development is more culture than process

garrett — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:23:55 +0000

The coolest thing about a waterfall process is that it allows me personally to succeed, to demonstrate skill and competence, while the end result of the process is a dismal failure. Cleverly built into a waterfall process are a variety of scapegoating mechanisms that allow us to blame other people, or outside influences for failure.

- Jeff Patton.

Preparation

garrett — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:48:05 +0000

JP composes himself before the start of Oxford Geek Night 11.

The power of the Creative Commons

garrett — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:23:03 +0000

Thanks to Creative Commons licensing a throwaway picture that I took four years ago, whilst bored at work, ended up being used for an article on the BBC News website this weekend!

Flickr and neighbourhood

garrett — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:45:46 +0000

Have you ever wondered what Flickr does with all that geolocation data it gathers from our pictures (apart from pinning them to a map and working out the ratio of kittens to sunsets in a given area)? Well one of the things it does is is generate shapefiles of regional neighbourhoods to better work out where your picture was taken.

Now Tom Taylor has built a tool which allows you to visualise the boundaries of these neighbourhoods and see how Flickr views your part of the world.

Cool stuff.

How true

garrett — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:03:30 +0000

Jessica nails it yet again. If you don't already subscribe to the Indexed RSS feed, then you really should.