The folly of programming closed source after opening up WWW.
Over a year ago there had been some excitement in the August 2009 what with the Open Source Awards being announced and a certain software house offering “free software up to 100k”. The software isn’t really free though as you can be restricting yourself to their file formats and paying for it later.
On the 1st of September 2009 I went along to hear Robert Calliau talk about the internet at the Runrev conference.
The talk was entitled “Tale of two Revolutions”.
It was a very interesting talk that resonated with a high percentage of the audience. Robert summarized the pre-history of the web and how it got to the inital stage of hypercards, the World Wide Web etc.
However the most important part of the speech was about what Calliau did that was most important for the world wide web. He spoke to CERNs Lawyers and persuaded them to let the protocol and development be opened up. So that every one could develop tools to use it and access the data on it. When Robert told us this, a sudden rousing round of applause came up. Mr Calliau was gratified by that. I’m not entirely sure he understood why he got that round of applause though. There were a number of Open Source users and developers within the room. More than a few were ruby developers who had heard of the event from Techmeetup.
So later on when Robert Started talking about how programming language syntax can be a real bind and how good runtime was caused a bit of disquiet among some of the developers. RunRev is a natural language programming language. You can get free compilers for it, however the underlining engine is closed source. Runtime is a small edinburgh company with over 20 employees. Within any propriatory language there is always a danger that the company can get taken over and the language or product disappears after aquirement by another company..
At least with Open Source you can look at what’s under the code. You have a freedom of choice as to whether you develop a program using that code your or paying a developer to do it for you.
I’m concerned that we are going to repeat 30 years of history again. I’m all for making computing easier for the masses and helping start ups. But perhaps instead of using tools like runrev and offers of propriatary software for free for a long trial period we are locking in the next generation again to only having a few very expensive choices. I do not mean just in terms of expense in cash, but expense in time with trying to get old formats to talk to new formats. Especially if the standard that they are based on is locked up within Intellectual property. Free Software does not just mean free as in no cost. It means the freedom to do what you want with the information that you are using.
Look back to my post about the user who was very excited about Open Source. It was not the cost aspect. It was the possibility of being able to access her data in a meaningful way to her. Not what a programmer thought was meaningful.
The Dangers of Easy Electronic Communication
I have just created another twitter account so that I can post to LinkedIn using Twitter. There are a few reasons for this. But it’s mainly to enable me to update my network status for LinkedIn from Tweetdeck.
I like Tweetdeck. Admittedly Tweetdeck is not Open Source. I got introduced to it at Social Innovation Camp Scotland 2009. I run multiple Twitter accounts from it, some personal, some organizational. It’s an extremely powerful tool enabling you to follow mentions of a subject or users. Plus I can be logged in to multiple accounts at once. It’s running nicely on my upgraded Karmic Koala Kubuntu Laptop as it runs on Adobe Air so it’s not a tool dependent on the operating system, you just have to make sure that you can run Adobe applications on your chosen system.
The trouble is that so many social networks are actually trying to connect to each other now. Since I am trying to be more accessible to groups that I am professionally socializing with I want to connect up with them in anyway that I can. Although then there is the worry of posting the wrong thing, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience. Admittedly this could still happen on Tweetdeck, I’ve added in my Facebook and Myspace accounts as well. You trade off on a higher risk for more convenience.
I have a net-name that I have been using for years. For the non business socializing, it was used at first for all of my on-line interactions. It’s easy enough for someone to google that and know that it’s me. Which is not always a good thing. I’ve been using the onepict blog to post about Open Source and how it affects my and my dealings with other people. I’m very easy to find on-line now. I don’t however want to pollute my on-line CV (which LinkedIn effectively is) with my social tweets. Especially the ones from down the pub.
So I have created a new twitter account @onepict. My LinkedIn profile points at this website and I have a LinkedIn button on here. People will still know who I am and will connect my other on-line identity to me. In-terms of what people can find on the Internet, a mildly net-savvy person will find you. They will be able to join the dots. I don’t however have to put a great big light bulb flashing sign on my CV about my past net history though. They need to work a bit harder than that.
Once I have some more tweets that are appropriate I will change the Twitter feed from my @shandydann one. I’m planning a more personal website that’s for the non Open Source part of my life anyway so the @shandydann Twitterfeed will sit on my shandydann.com site anyway.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone too far with the on-line mullarkey.
Using the Internet Classifieds to Rent out a flat.
I’d recently finished doing up the flat so that I could rent it out. I had considered using a factoring agency to fix the flat and rent it out for me. But in the end I ended up getting the flat upt o spec and arranging for it to be rented.
I managed to get the flat rewired up to standards which included a mains wired smoke alarm and the carbon monoxide detector. I also got my gas fire looked at as I had been informed when the kitchen was put in, that it needed to be fixed or replaced. As it turns out the person who had condemned the fire was wrong to as I got another qualified gas guy to look at it and he did not understand how it was condemned in the first place. Brett also did up the bathroom by tiling it and replacing the shower head and rail.
With this done we put up an advert in gumtree and waited. At first we did an advert without pictures. We managed to get some responses. However we re-posted the advert with pictures, which got some more attention.
The advert was roughly worded like this:
Bright Spacious 1 Bedroom Flat with Dining Kitchen.
10 minutes minutes walk to the city centre and 5 minutes walk from the beach. Close to two supermarkets, two cinemas and 3 gyms. 5 minutes walk to King Street for easy access to Bridge of Don and Altens. Also handy for Buses to Garthdee. Easy distance for Aberdeen University and The Robert Gordon University City Centre Campus.
Rent £amount per month short Assured tenancy with option to renew, 1 month deposit, plus 1 month in advance. Bills and council tax not included.
I also included a few of these pictures:
In the end we ended up filming a walk through of of the flat.
Gumtree has an option to embed you-tube videos. I would advise anyone thinking of renting out their flat to do a video walk through. It gives a good impression of the layout of your property. Keep yourself out of it, otherwise it may look a bit cheesy.
It does look really cool with a video option in the advert.
It also sorts out who is seriously interested.
We got a phonecall from a tenant who is currently in Austria. They haven’t set foot in the flat, but on the basis of that video the flat has been secured by deposit. Ironically on the same day someone else was interested in renting the flat out as well. However the Austrian tennant got in there first.
So to summarise:
To rent out the flat using gumtree
- Clean your flat from top to bottom. Get the most unsightly jobs fixed.
- Take pictures of your flat, ideally on a bright sunny day, but failing that with some light.
- Take a video of your flat and do a walk through
- Upload the video to youtube, take a note of the embed link details
- Create an advert on gumtree, choose 3 pictures and include your video.
- For the text tell people about the flat and the advantages of your location. (E.g Close to the shops and leisure facilities. )
- Include useful details like council tax bands.
Extras to remember:
- Register as a private landlord at http://www.landlordregistrationscotland.gov.uk/. This is not optional. You are required to do this by law. Even if your flat is not multiple occupancy. You will get fined heavily if you are not registered.
- Get the electrical wiring checked and certified, arrange for this yearly.
- Get a Gas Safety Certificate. Arrange a check yearly.
- Take a copy of all of the manuals for the appliances. Give the tenants a copy.
- You can get copy of legal forms and advice from the city councils. Edinburgh Council has a fairly helpful website and some form templates for the legalities.
Usefull Broadband/Telephone Exchange Tools
A friend of mine just posted a couple of ADSL tracking links on his blog. So being the curious sort I clicked on a couple of them.
Sam Knows Exchange mapping is a tool that maps out what telephone exchanges are in your area. It’s another google maps based application. Just type in your post code and lo some little blue monoply houses appear! (Well that’s what they remind me of.) If you click on the blue houses a bubble will appear listing what broadband services are available on that exchange. What the really handy part of it though, is that you can show the coverage of that particular exchange. The coverage shows up as blue as well.
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/mapping/mapping.php
Plusnet seem to be trying to be more open with it’s customers with an Exchange Status checker tool.
After typing in your postcode, you can see the various states of whats available for the exchange. This includes Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC), and you can also get an rss feed for it.
http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/
Another tool had also been suggested by the the guys who run Open Source For Business that you can use to monitor adsl performance is l8nc (Latency). It gives you nice little graphs of your latency etc
Which means that you can see when your line drops, if you have packet loss. Plus it’s pretty.
A Couple of Firefox Monitoring Extensions
I tend to be dreadful for adding on extensions for firefox, it’s a problem that also extends to finding addons for wordpress and joomla. Occasionally though you can find a couple of really handy extensions.
One such extension is nagios checker. We use nagios at Gladserv it emails us when something goes wrong. Still that relies on my email client alerting me when I happen to be at the screen. Of course you can set Nagios to send a text or even go and look at your own nagios site.
However this little plug in can be set to play a beep when there is a problem and give a short summary of the problem. It will colour code the messages according to nagios settings. You do have to configure it’s sensitivity as well. Here’s a few configuration shots.
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Some useful Resources for Ubuntu beginners
Those of you who decide to take the plunge to try Ubuntu might be wondering where to start to get advice and to get the most out of your system. To this end I thought that I would give you a few links to some on-line resources and some books that I’m reading and using as any issues come up.
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