tumbled thoughts

TextMate

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:38:06 +0000

Final post of the evening, and I may have to disconnect my tumblog from Facebook to stop annoying people with my explorations of P2PU and Web Making 101.

I have chosen TextMate as my editor of choice on the basis of using it daily to take notes (usually in markdown), compose blog posts, or badly destroy Python scripts. I like the simple interface and the tab-correct, and find the automatic syntax highlight colours pleasing.

Also, I bought it years ago, and don’t see the need to try out yet another text editor to create html files :)

Writing HTML by Hand

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:10:45 +0000

As part of the Webcraft 101 set of tasks, I’ve written my first HTML file by hand. I should clarify, that this is the first bit of html I’ve ever written into a notebook (proof below), not the first bit of HTML I’ve ever written.

It’s an interesting task, as it made me think about what I was putting onto the paper, and also took ages because I’m not used to scribbling with ink and paper. The task is supposed to be legible, and I hope I’ve managed that. I have to admit being virtually entirely dependent on keyboards for arranging text.

I’d be interested in how others find this process, and how it’s beneficial above simply creating text documents.

Webcraft 101

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:39:21 +0000

I’ve landed myself in it now, haven’t I? After spending 5 years on and in the web, I realise I’ve missed out on many of the building blocks of the web itself, and believe it might be time to go back to school.

I am also keen to explore the world of the Peer to Peer University project (P2PU), and have signed up to the Mozilla-backed School of Webcraft. This introductory post is both a way of highlighting the P2PU, and also to fulfil one of the first tasks in WebCraft, which is to introduce myself in a post.

So, I am Zach, and have written here and on Blogging Perspective for around 5 years, working for the web as a journalist and community manager in the UK. I studied linguistics in London, and consider myself to generally be a writer and communication strategist.

I’ve spoken about the web as an enabling technology, and delved deeply into the world of the Semantic Web, but would like to spend some time reviewing the basics of the web I may have missed here.

I tweet, flick, and undertake other webby verbs too.

Why not utilise use?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:13:00 +0000

I know pedantry is unbecoming, but i would like to discuss a phrase or two and try to explain why I think they are usually bad choices.

utilise
leverage (verb)
action (verb)

I am not alone in finding these words annoying, and they seem to live with many others in the company of corporate jargon. They create a strong impression, and bring to mind ideas of competitive pretension, and impersonal inhumanity. Choosing a word with extra syllables seems like a kind of one-upmanship over drab, simpler words like: use and do. Is this a form of snobbery even more unbecoming than non-standard, corporate English?

I’m not entirely sure, but let me lay out a few reasons for disliking this kind of English.

The three in this list are marked, that is: they stand out from other words. They display a kind of ornamentation that doesn’t add much value in encoding ideas. Let’s look at utilise. Taking the definitions from Wictionery:

Verb

utilise (third-person singular simple present > utilises, present participle utilising, simple past and past participle utilised)
To make useful, to find a practical use for.
To make use of; to use.
To make best use of; to use to its fullest extent, potential, or ability.
To make do with; to use in manner different from that originally intended

Each definition here makes use of a particularly useful word in defining utilise: use.

No matter which way you look at it, utilising something means using it. So, in what way is it more preferable to utilise something, than to use it?

Utilise does bring to mind more than just “use,” but does it improve the meaning being conveyed? I think the extra little syllables draw attention to the word itself: highlighting it within your other words. I am surely guilty of choosing gilt words which draw the mind to them, but I do hope they at least make sense on their pedestals. Does it make sense to highlight the word “use” in a sentence?

“Our service utilises this new technology!”

Wouldn’t it usually be more appropriate to draw attention either to your service, or to its new technological wizardry?

A simpler, bolder:

“We use this new technology”

seems to emphasise the active nature of the statement by making the agent personal (we instead of our service), and naturally points toward the new technology.

I suppose utilising feels less active than using. If I use a stick to bash your car, the emphasis is on me, and my action of bashing with a stick. If I were to utilise a stick, it feels like I had less choice in the matter of bashing your car, and more in choosing my implement. It’s along a similar vein to choosing the passive over the active voice: your car was bashed, and I’m too ashamed to admit to being the basher.

Leverage and action follow utilise. Attacking the verb leverage has added pedantry points because that final bit at the end (the morpheme “-age”) changes a verb into a noun in English. For example, I might spill this beer and create spillage, I have never yet spillaged anything. I will leave leverage here, but you can read more about it in Gabriel Smy’s “Are you stupid enough to use leverage as a verb?”

To action something, makes my mind contort into funny shapes trying to follow the logic. It follows utilise in its attention-seeking added emphasis, but it also feels like a completely wrong-fit for any sentence. Here’s how it goes for me:

Generally, language works in terms of agents, actions and objects. “I do a task” is a simple sentence in which I’m the thing performing an action on an object. Using the word “action” (which is a noun meaning “to act”), makes me wonder exactly how I’m supposed to act out the action of actioning something. If it’s a task, I could perform other actions on it (complete, delegate, begin, ignore…), but what action does “to action” imply? I’d rather just do tasks and save the mental gymnastics of attempting actively to undertake an action by actioning them. I’m sure someone better at logical reasoning than I could find a way around it, but they won’t alleviate the headache.

There is more “corporate jargon” out there (misuse of reflexive pronouns, “going forward”, “solutions”… ad nauseam), and no doubt other writers are actioning a list of words to attack, leveraging additional words and utilising blogs, tweets, and postings, so what is one more?

Well, I hope it’s shown that there are real reasons for some of us not liking the words some others choose, and to poke around a tiny bit into the details. An entire book could be written on this, and I’m sure it could be done without being bullying or entirely pedantic, but I’ve got to go now and find something to mop up the beer I just spillaged.

First published script and repository

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 01:42:33 +0100

First published script and repository:

I’ve been up very late, and have been fighting off a bug all week, so I thought it best to stay up and try out some coding. I have very little background in the grit of code-writing, and I’ve been finding it very interesting, and a bit addictive. It’s also been helpful to think more like my technical colleagues, though I’m beginning to feel the geekiness creeping up :)

So, this is my first properly commited git repository, using Python to tag people in a customer relations manager—Highrise—using a csv file of tags I’d like to use.

Push that trolley past me

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:34:47 +0100

Buying relatively healthy food is difficult.

We’ve built up a framework to sell “what people want” as cheaply and quickly as possible, and in the process, began processing every ingredient until it seems to match nearly any recipe. Instantly-edible (if barely nutritious) food is abundant, surrounding an option which would more likely be good for us to eat. It’s cheaper to buy the stuff that’s quickly produced and processed, as everything’s geared up for its creation, dispersal, and marketing.

The side of the shelf with relatively healthy food seems less interesting, more expensive, and to involve more work in preparing, so it’s difficult to make a healthy decision when you’re tired, hungry, and have little time to cook, or are on a budget—all important and ubiquitous nudges in the wrong direction.

There’s a branding around “healthy” “wholesom” “organic” food, which is often no better than its cheaper counterpart, and makes it a statement of your class, intentions, and income when pushing a trolley full of brown-paper, leaf-grean wrapped, Organic-branded produce which is supposedly less produced than the processed, pimary-coloured boxes for the poor.

So buying food is a challenge. It’s a challenge to your purse, to your diary, and to your identity.

Society vs I

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:53:41 +0100

Reading this post is making me think quite a bit about cultural/social influence. I’m starting to think that individuals need the sense of responsibility, and an understanding of what works (i.e. via training and education), but there’s a strong social factor which needs challenging too.

I guess we’re not the sum of our parts as a big group, because the group dynamics influence us too. Just like peer pressure and bullying in kids can so strongly influence individuals and be partly the cause of a nice kid ending up hurting another; I think a huge social pressure to become fatter (and I don’t know how else to put it) is also influencing individuals who would like to be fitter, and would generally make decisions which in a different culture would keep them slim.

So things which work on a large group of people need changing if they’re causing damage (i.e. the population is changing into one in which it’s acceptable to live an unhealthy lifestyle), and individuals need empowering with understanding of what to do to change their own lives, and a sense of responsibility for their state of being.

The future of news: Back to the coffee house | The Economist

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:47:43 +0100

The future of news: Back to the coffee house | The Economist:

(via Instapaper)

a culture of things that make me like Berlin

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:37:15 +0100

shops

So many independent, and no feeling of corporate death-hold on expression

Plenty of variety, and far less pointless plate-glass repetition

Friendly people, both buying and selling in the shops

quiet curtesy

People give way on pavements

Cars give way and watch out for the crowds of cyclists

People speak in soft tones: it doesn’t feel repressed, just not boisterous

Simple respectful gestures

dogs

Many people walk a dog with them

They seem normal in a big city

kids

Families seem more normal than in London

Many children, shouting in German and pointing at dogs while their folks are dressed for work, they seem to slot into their lives

Swapping gaming for training

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 22:33:00 +0100

I’m excited about the trade I just made by selling the PS3 and ordering a cycle trainer. I’m not mended enough to get out on the roads yet (right-arm still meant to be alung and I’m prone to dizziness and fatigue), but cycling in the living room while listening to audiobooks sounds like a rather excellent way to move about a bit.

It’s one of these things: http://isza.ch/mrcPLA, which looks fairly impressive thanks to the black-background photo and silly but fun high-contrast lighting.

Kasabi has moved to Public Beta! W00t!

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:08:41 +0100

Kasabi has moved to Public Beta! W00t!:

Kasabi is the project I work on as Community Manager. At the start of June, we’ve moved from the weeks of private beta testing, to a public Beta project. So, have a poke round, find out what it does, and drop me a line if you have ideas or need help.

My fumsi article introducing Linked Data

Fri, 06 May 2011 16:00:30 +0100

My fumsi article introducing Linked Data

Testing Audioboo for recording impromptu djembe playing.

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:41:00 +0000

Listen!

Where is the best place to walk dogs in Northamptonshire?

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 01:35:01 +0000

Where is the best place to walk dogs in Northamptonshire? Write an answer on Quora

Where is the best place to walk dogs in Northamptonshire?

How can I find out about developer networks, based around particular topics?

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 19:55:32 +0000

How can I find out about developer networks, based around particular topics? Write an answer on Quora

Developers build many different kinds of application, service, site and tool and they are often focused on particular topic areas or technologies. Are there good ways to get in touch with them?
Edit
How can I find out about developer networks, based around particular topics?

Open Data Musing

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 21:17:18 +0000

http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/dec/03/national-rail-enquiries-data-charging-developer-protests?cat=technology&type=article

So the line between public and private—or should that be “owned”—data is not straightforward. In a complicated democracy, the responsibility and ownership of information is likewise complicated.

It is vital continuously to test the principle on which legislation and policy is based without causing the whole system to come to a complete standstill. It’s hugely important that policies relating to data openness be made based on fact and efficiency rather than political instinct or convincing rhetoric.

Having said that: there are principles here of public subsidy of these data. If we’re paying for them, and society benefits more from their publication: the “business model” argument of exploiting access to these data is on shaky ground.

It doesn’t just appear unenlightened and unprogressive, but is also liable to the accusation of exploitation. In this case, NRE would have no data without the public infrastructure that’s paid for by general taxation as well as fares and private investment. I don’t pretend to understand the niceties of part-privatisation, but the remit of rail companies, and their supporting infrastructure, is certainly closely tied to public and governmental responsibility.

NRE’s business model is certainly based on having and making available timetable data, but who pays for the creation of this information? It seems that if the public pay involuntarily—I.e. via general taxation—then the use of information crucial to the service should be made available for free reuse.

How is America perceived?

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 19:44:00 +0100

This is a very rough and un-formed note I sent on Facebook to an American friend who asked how America is viewed from a foreign perspective:

I think that’s an extremely complex question to answer, and it’s also far from straightforward. I only really understand the perception from the UK, and even that isn’t simple.

Previous foreign affairs have been viewed with extreme discomfort and apprehension: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were extremely controversial in the UK. Tony Blair’s decision to take the UK into combat without the remit of the UN was seen as following too closely in America’s wake—a lot of the satire here from a few years ago featured Tony Blair as a self-conscious lacky to George Bush’s violent and bumbling foreign policy.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about the way the US is understood is that it isn’t, but people feel they do to a greater extent than I’ve found to be true. Through TV, music, film and multi-national organisations (Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC etc) many people in the UK feel they are familiar with American culture. (To a far greater extent than most Americans would feel, but in a similar way to feeling a familiarity through British music, film and TV genre which the US imports very freely too). America is seen as a straightforward culture: rich, racially-tense, belligerent, generous, loud, capitalistic, and untraveled are all words which I think are fairly associated with the British view of “America Inc”.

It’s difficult to explain that the US is extremely heterogeneous, with political, racial, cultural, historical and geographic differences that would make the average European’s head spin. It’s hard to express adequately to a British audience how far apart say: Seattle and New Orleans are culturally, or that New York City is hugely different even from the rest of New York State (though this does resonate with London, which is also very different from, say: anywhere else!).

The social divide is seen but not understood, I don’t think. Coming from a poor part of the US, it’s difficult to hear people talking about Rich Americans, but I don’t know if this is something that’s completely part of the stereotype. But, the strong, unifying feeling of being American is strangely potent and difficult to explain.

These are very, very broad strokes, and do not apply to everyone by a huge stretch. They’re more like social short-cuts, really. By that, I mean stereotypes and over-simplistic caricatures that are sort of collectively used when mentioning America. There are elements of truth in the characterisation (American culture probably is louder and more straightforward than British culture—but even British culture is more heterogeneous than that implies), but they’re over-extended.

It probably doesn’t help that the US culture does have something that’s difficult for the British to grasp: it takes itself very seriously. I think that Americans, generally, take themselves more seriously and have a higher opinion of their own culture than the British do of theirs. That’s not to say that Brits aren’t proud to be so, but that they seem to be more tempered and also make light of the foibles they know about. A lot of British humour, for example, is self-deprecating and makes fun of itself for how it’s perceived to a non-Brit.

Some truths are better understood, but still only partially: America is seen as not caring about its poor because of its system of non-public healthcare provision and social services. It’s shocking to people that anyone would have to pay for emergency medical treatment, or be saddled with debt through misfortune. The American misunderstanding of socialism is seen as silly: anything socially beneficial is seen in the US almost instantly as socialism (this is something that’s at least true in the conservative parts of the US) and therefore evil.

It’s probably true, though, that the average Brit knows far more about America than the average American knows about most other nationalities. I heard, in a pub this very week a conversation which ended with the old standby of fireside pub bollocks-merchants which unfortunately happens to be true: most Americans don’t have passports. America is hugely introspective, and, in my experience, even more prone to stereotyping than the UK—which itself probably fits into the British stereotype of an American.

People who travel to the US, or who meet many Americans are likely to say of them that they’re generous, hospitable, friendly and gregarious, as well as shockingly ignorant of the rest of the world (there are some hugely funny stories I’ve heard about americans, one of which happened to me when a relative asked my wife what language she spoke coming from London). British travellers to America often talk about friendly waiters and portion sizes being shockingly huge. This happened to me on my last trip, as I tried to work out how they’d mistaken my order for a single meal for a request to feed a family of four.

I hope that at least hints at an answer to an extremely difficult question. People can only see through the lenses they have access to, I guess, and the lenses that point to most Americans come through pop music, movies, TV and news.

Resonance

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 11:53:05 +0100

For the past seven or eight years, I’ve not listened to much music; and I have no idea why. Music is so much a part of the way I exist—it’s a way to express and experience raw, abstract thought; passion; and sublime, simple joy. And it’s been sparse for years.

I’m not sure what happened, exactly, but it’s as if I subconsciously put the part of me that resonates on hold for a while, while I got on with emigrating, university, jobhunting, married life etc. It’s only when I popped on some good headphones, switched off my audiobook, and started listening again that I suddenly remembered the balance—the resonance.

I have the kind of mind which doesn’t let me concentrate on a single issue for long unless I’m immersed in it. It’s not really a deficit of attention, but a sort of over-active mind that won’t quiet down unless it’s more or less entirely engaged. Playing music—especially immersive, raw, melodic music—somehow lets the distracted (and distracting) parts of my mind hum along and engage with the music while I focus the rest on the task at hand. It’s a huge relief.

Some music immediately feels familiar, as if it’s something I’ve always felt part of. It’s like listening to myself feel sometimes.

There’s something about this metaphor of resonating, of moving with and influencing the flow of how I think and feel—two things I tend to keep very separate.

What makes you resonate?

Science Silos

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:20:42 +0100

NB: This Tumblog is for rough thoughts. It’s not polished, and is incomplete. For slightly more polished thoughts, see my blog.

I think I’m beginning to have a problem with science. It’s not because I disbelieve anything particularly, or have a difficult time understanding the scientific method. I don’t equate published papers in academic and scientific journals with the latest advert claiming: “Science has shown!” or think that global warming is a myth.

No, my growing problem is with the community of scientists as a system.

It’s quite an exclusive group, really. And, I don’t want to claim to be a scientist, or to steal credit away from the hard work of researchers by diluting the body of scientific publications with my own poorly thought-out writings. I don’t want to add a scientific slant to my blog, buy a PhD from America, obtain a white coat from eBay and style myself “The blogging professor of Shropshire”.

What I would like to do, however, is read some of your papers. You know, like I was (kind of*) allowed to do when I was at university?

I was watching an interesting twitter fight between Dr. Ben Goldacre (@bengoldacre) and someone working on a project to model economic advancement in seemingly run-down towns. I’m not entirely sure what it’s about, and despite my innate curiosity, I’m very unlikely to find out. When I tried to read the report, I was faced with a short abstract and a paywall. My curiosity on this matter doesn’t quite justify an outlay of $28 plus tax. I’d have liked to have read the article, or at least, to have scanned it and got a fuller picture of what was being discussed.

Sometimes, my curiosity gets the better of me, and I do my best to find another way to read about a subject. Google Scholar and Wikipedia are great companions in insomnia! But, that means I need to find my facts on Wikipedia. Wikipedia, where I can change articles, delete citations, correct grammar and add my own opinion to any topic. There’s no way I’d claim to understand something if I’d only read about it on Wikipedia. There’s no way scientists would want Wikipedia to be seen as the authoritative source for scientific knowledge—it can’t be!

Now, I see a couple things wrong. First, as I’ve just touched on, as an outsider to the scientific community (my uni access to online journals expired years ago), I am not allowed to read the authoritative sources for myself. I’m not trusted with the actual scientific findings, with detailed methodologies, results, literature reviews and the rest. If I’m curious, I need to find my answers elsewhere or pay quite a lot per article. On my budget, this isn’t an option. It’s as if the community of science thinks Wikipedia is good enough for the likes of me. My initial reaction to this situation is to say: “Well! Forgive me if people like me (journalists, writers, and industry folks) get it wrong. In many of our cases, it’s not necessarily from lack of trying!” **

The second thing here is that science needs to be open in order for the whole system to work. It needs to publish openly for the whole community to read, critique, polish and reject bad ideas. If I don’t publish my findings alongside my claims, I’m essentially asking the world to take me at my word and trust my results as accurate. A scientist reading such a publication would not accept this, that isn’t how it works. Other researchers need to be able to test the claims of published ideas, and be free to comment on them.

But, in the same way that an individual researcher publishing claims without the backing of evidence cannot scientifically be taken at his word; the scientific community seems—to an outsider—to be asking the rest of the world to take the community at its word. “We’ll sort out the science, and let you know what we come up with, folks. Trust us.” That’s not the authoritative model for scientific advancement. Scientific authority is based on the strength of claims with evidence. The better the research, the better an idea stands up to the scrutiny of the community.

I don’t think this is how scientists want to be seen, and I fully understand their frustration when “science” is applied to marketing and twisted to fit an agenda. But if the only authority I can see comes from a shampoo commercial, and when I want to find out whether it’s true that washing my hair twice is scientifically better than only doing it once, or eating this tub of Omega3-enriched fatty-acid yogurt (and it’s bloody amazing that fatty-acid yogurt could ever be a marketing strategy, isn’t it?) will actually help me in some meaningful way, I have to pay six times what the whole pack of yogurt is worth for a single article, and many times that for a fuller picture by reading others; forgive me for not having a good grasp of the science.

*I say “kind of” because my uni often seems to have allowed us access to unhelpful—to us—journals while oddly neglecting to sign us up to useful ones… like “Linguistics” if I recall correctly.

** I think many journalists really should know better than to write the scientific drivel that passes for cutting-edge reporting in many papers. The traditional tabloid journalistic tactic of publishing poorly researched articles about scary topics like cancer is not acceptable. Also, their publication, if they’re reporting on science, should have a subscription to the journals, right?

ebooks notes

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:54:04 +0100

Ebooks are doing rather well, with Amazon announcing them outselling their print counterparts in bestsellers lists. I’ve enjoyed using the Kindle app for various reasons including:

Instant purchase/download (even Amazon Prime can take too long!)
One device, not many books
Reading in the dark (on the iPad, any way)
Searching and smart(ish) bookmarking

Now I’d love to see various improvements, and a novel things I’m not sure I have a fully-formed idea around yet (I’d like new things with the power of computing devices, but I’m not sure yet what they might be.)

But something has interested me a lot with a piece I read in ReadWriteWeb. The piece talks about various ways in which ebooks are better than paper ones, and it mentions “social highlighting”, that is: the ability to share electronically highlighted text and notes. Richard MacManus goes on to suggest better features and improvements, and I’m fully in agreement here: the social aspect of ebooks has yet to be developed much at all, it seems.

Now, these social tools could follow a very predictable path, taking in the evolution of social tools elsewhere: multi-site sharing options, tweets, facebook connecting (I “like” the Kite Runner) etc. No doubt they will. But the thing that really grabbed me was the little gem of a site showing the most highlighted passages in the Kindle bookstore. This means that Amazon knows what’s being highlighted. It means—I’m just guessing here—that publishers could begin to know how much books are actually read. You know that copy of A Brief History of Time you bought?

That’s a very straightforward metric, but one that’s immediately useful to amazon, publishers, and authors. What else could be gleaned from vey simple and anonymous data like these?

What other data are Amazon using, and what else could be done with finer-grained data from users? Imagine language studies over tricky phrases in intralingual dictionaries! Finally, how can this be turned directly over to consumers?

I’d love to know my own reading patterns, which words and phrases I highlight.