Unix Spiders

Monday Blue Cure

2012-01-09T07:14:00.000Z

Caught this late Friday night, Bob Marley and the Wailers on the Old Grey Whistle Test, Concrete jungle:

Jaguar

2011-12-25T09:27:00.000Z

Ode to Thessaloniki

2011-12-25T09:21:00.000Z

Happy Xmas

2011-12-25T09:19:00.000Z

To all my readers!

Monday Blues Cure

2011-12-19T19:47:00.000Z

Wasn't going to post today, but since the atheist Christopher Hitchens passed away recently, I couldn't resist this sketch:

Very funny all round!

Monday Blues Cure

2011-12-12T08:05:00.001Z

Last post of the year (probably) so here's something festive and involves social media:

(h/t: Steven)

Monday Blues Cure

2011-12-05T10:43:00.000Z

Whoops nearly forgot again! More Seth Lakeman, from Freedom Fields - 1643

Monday Blues Cure

2011-11-28T08:31:00.000Z

Some while back I posted a video of Seth Lakeman on this series, having attended on of his concerts at the Union Chapel. Was in the West End Wednesday, and dropped into fopp in the University Bookshop - and bought 3 cd's of his for £3! Here is scumpys set, from the album I'm listening to at the moment - The Punch Bowl.

Also found this one for the Webb Sisters (see last week).

Monday Blues Cure

2011-11-21T07:21:00.000Z

Been to busy to post recently, so here is a double header to make up for it.

Saw the Webb Sisters @ Union Chapel on Saturday. They were very engaging and it was a very pleasant evening! The songs are: Words That Mobilize

and Savages:

(h/t: Mike Bateman)

Future Signals – where next for mobile data?

2011-10-30T15:33:00.000Z

I attended this event in the afternoon of Wednesday 19th October 2011 at City University London. I found it a very stimulating and thought provoking forum, so here are my thoughts based on the notes I took. Mike Hawkes from the MDA introduced the event and we had four speakers, 2 focused on more technical issues (Lee/Guest and Garner), two focused more on content (Holden and Reynolds), although by the very nature of the subject discussed there were overlaps between the two in the talks.

Paul Lee and Matt Guest – Mobile Data Consumption Trends

The focus of this talk was a look forward to what the trends are in mobile to the year 2030. Two aspects of mobile were highlighted: networks and devices. These were tackled in turn. The methodology used to gather the data was briefly described e.g. inputs from a variety of sources, both organizational type and geographical. The focus on the talk was very much on what people want rather than what the technology can do (perhaps the latter has been more prominent in the past than it should have been).

1. Networks

A number of problems were outline, and tensions between various aspects were stated. Mobile networks are likely to be become much more congested, and there may not be sufficient scope to increase bandwidth due to constraints on the spectrum (i.e. available) and planning permission (putting up more poles). A wide variety of different types of devices is likely to become available, meaning that the network will increasingly need to deal with device heterogeneity. However there is also the potential that 4G/5G will allow networks to carry even more data with faster upload and download speeds. Users will be able to use their devices more seamlessly than previously with blending of wi-fi and cellular networks and web/wi-fi bypass. An example of this would be a device which can move between cellular, wi-fi and short range networks. The type of applications on these three levels will differ, as speed effects choice. Due to the business model of mobile operators, there may well be resistance against seamless use of devices. Most people use their mobile broadband at home, therefore some usage may move back to DSL/Cable. There are positives and negatives in using wi-fi, but the former outweigh the latter. It's a pretty complicated picture to me.

It is clear that mobile data usage is increasing at an exponential rate, leading to increasing competition for bandwidth. This is because of more data usage and many more types of mobile devices available (see above). This problem is clearly going magnify with time.

2. Devices

As stated above the numbers and types of mobile devices will increase substantially, and will become more specialized. Ubiquitous computing is becoming quite common. The ideal of a single integrated device will never happen in the speakers view. Single device ownership dominates, however users will accumulate more devices due to various factors such as Moores Law, falling average selling price (ASP’s), groovy new technology (who will be the new Steve Jobs?) etc. Differing user needs for mobile also contribute to this diversity. New ways of connecting devices will become available. However users will still aspire to owning fewer devices. How this tension will work out in practice remains to be seen. Devices will improve in a number of different ways, however battery technology is holding things back (as I found recently with my MacBook - battery is knackered and it would cost me £100 to replace it). When oh when will we do something about batteries! Speed will therefore increase, but users are focused on cost and power consumption. Not all devices will be connected e.g. your fridge (why!!!!???). It is suggested that with the increase in ubiquitous devices, each person will have around 50 devices. This is contestable.

Martin Garner – Phones and tablets usage

Martin focused on tablet usage in terms of mobile devices (e.g. the iPad). The tablet is regarded as a key device, one that may well be the driver for future mobile device usage (if not computing usage). The evidence for the talks was taken from a sample of early adopters of the technology.

What is a tablet computer? What is it used for? It can be a mobile internet device, a companion to the TV/living room (for entertainment), as a PC substitute or a new category of computing (according to 45% of the survey). User behavior is adapting to ownership of these technologies. The PC is the main device for web usage, however the range of devices which are available is beginning to change this behavior e.g. using email, social networking, twittering etc. According to the evidence the PC is beginning to suffer because of this change. Which rather raises the question – will tablets take over from PC’s? Not IHMO – unless they come up with a 27 inch screen tablet (like my iMac), which could fold so I could fit it in my pocket…. Goodness me its Minority Report all over again! That never happened did it…..?

The tablet market is growing very strongly, and there is a strong burst of sales around xmas. The iPad2 dominates currently (70% of sales August 2011), however sales from other manufacturers are starting to pick up. In Europe the UK, is the biggest market. It seemed to me that sales figures for countries who have a very serious debt crisis are substantially diminished e.g. Ireland, Greece – this could partly be due to the crisis and partly due to the fact that these countries tend not to be early adopters like the UK (established by me after I noticed this in the figures presented and asked Martin a question about it). There is no argument on how big the market is – 47 million devices now, increasing to 80 million shortly to around 1 billion over next four years. This means big money! See below in my notes on Steve Reynolds talk on cross-platform computing for mobiles, and who might win.

Tablets therefore could be the future of mass market computing. Tablet sales are not quite at the level of PC sales, but are increasing rapidly (see above). Microsoft better be worried about this. In terms of who is buying the ratio is 65% male to 35% female. Unsurprisingly as tablets are more expensive than smartphones, ownership maps to wealth. Younger people tend to dominate smartphone ownership (the digital natives). Why to people buy tablets in the first place? Brand (i.e. apple) dominates, but other factors include bigger screen with more light. Other manufacturers are beginning to take this seriously and have a chance (see above). Both wi-fi and 3G tablets will available, the choice of which will depend on infrastructure and running costs. Around 60% of users have 3G, but around half do not use all of the functionality. Tablets are used mostly as leisure devices, but around 40% use them for work. There appears to be a barrier set by mobile operators (obviously defending their territory), which prevents more tablet usage – the current tariff model for mobile devices does not work for tablets.

The outlook is as follows. There will be a huge increase in supply and uptake. Users will continue to be frustrated with 3G tariffs, so wi-fi will continue to drive the tablet market. Apple dominates, and will continue to dominate. We are in the first stages of a whole new market, and there is some evidence that other manufacturers will grab back some of the market share.

Windsor Holden – Mobile Publishing

Windsor gave a talk more focused on content, e.g. using eBooks or eNewpapers through mobile devices. He explained the drivers for the ePublishing market, such as eReader growth (Amazon Kindle uptake) and availability of content (Amazon has around 1 million eBooks available for purchase and download at the time of writing).

He said a few words on the EPUB standard, which is heavily used by Amazon, and allows for the access to content in other ways (other than the Kindle in this case).

The rise of Apples App Store is having a significant effect on the sector. There is a wide diversity of applications including eBook readers and ePrint for Apple devices (such as the iPad). Users are happy to pay for applications, outlay per user is around $14 per head. There is a market for users to consume content through App Store applications. Therefore there is the potential to access content across devices. The following value chain was outlined:

Author -> Publisher -> Retail Platform -> Device -> User
Windsor’s talk focused on the “Retail Platform -> Device” part of this value chain, with the App Store/iPad and Amazon Kindle given as examples. These technologies/platforms are having a significant impact on the publishing industry. Local newspapers are dying on their feet, and bookstores are closing at an alarming rate – from June 2010 to June 2011 there has been a 26% reduction in bookstores.

This in part can be explained by business models used so far. Amazon Kindle made a loss initially, but is now beginning to gain market share and hence a profit. Retailers are therefore looking to move into the eReader space e.g. W.H. Smith, Waterstones as well as Barnes and Noble with their ‘Nook’ reader. Many publishers are moving toward a digital only environment. Producing books/newspapers costs money, and if folk don’t buy them anymore then something else needs to be done e.g. new business models to support such content providers.

A number of business models were outlined:

Pay per download: e.g. Kindle. This is the prevalent method.
Subscription: academic publishers providing online access to whole journals.
Free: this includes open access journals and author pays models.

Publishers are really worried about how they can make money in the new digitized environment. The web as a disruptive technology initiated the process of undermining current business models, and it seems to me that mobile will exacerbate this.

A good example of this is newspapers. Sales have been in decline for a number of years, but this is accelerating with the uptake of smartphones. This is impacting on advertising revenue in a very big way - less readers means advertisers are less willing to shell out money to newspapers for ad space. Google started this with adwords and searches – why pay out for a newspaper ad (with little data to collect) when you can get information on click-throughs for searches and pay according to how many users have actually viewed your ad. There is a direct relation between click-throughs and you income and you can measure it. Can’t do this with newspaper/magazine ads. The rise in cost base is impacting of resource issues – a double whammy!

Windsor talked about the price point conundrum. Users are used to getting news free of charge. There is clearly a negative impact in losing eyeballs on your site (see point on advertising above). When the times put up their paywall in June 2010 they lost 90% of their online readership – they are not getting payback on this. It is the view of a number of observers that print newspapers may not have much of a future, if at all. However it may be possible to sustain digital only editions.

How can publishers successfully migrate to the new environment? They will need to offer something extra, over and above what can be made available on print versions e.g. audio/video (which actually does happen now). It did make me wonder whether the lines between media outlets e.g. broadcasters such as the BBC and publishers such as News International will blur somewhat. Publishers will need to leverage the strength of existing brands e.g. the times. These will need to available on all kinds of mobile devices e.g. smartphones, tablets etc.

Newspapers will need to compete with something called the NeoNewspaper – first time I’ve come across this term. If eBook sales continue to rise, the range of devices will increase – perhaps this will be an opportunity rather than a threat?

Steve Reynolds – Consumerisation of IT: the mobile perspective

Rob Bamforth was due to give this talk, but could not do so due to personal reasons.

The focus of the talk was on how consumer technology such as tablets and smartphones can be used in the enterprise. If your workforce already have the devices, you don’t need to shell out money for them. Its very costly for the employer to buy this technology in – and why do if your employees already have it? From an employer point of view, why not use it therefore? A bit more problematic from an employee point of view – particularly if you want some rest after a hard days work! It seems some employees are happy to do this, and ask their employers if they can use their mobile devices for their jobs.

Private and enterprise use of mobile devices are worlds apart – home use focuses on entertainment (e.g. the football scores), while enterprise use focuses on information use and dissemination.

In particular the use of cloud computing needs to be factored in to enterprise use. Applications to support data access using a wide variety of devices is necessary e.g. tablets, smartphones, mobiles. CRM will be in the cloud and needs to be accessible. The cloud must assist the uptake of mobile devices for use in a variety of circumstances. Increase in Network bandwidth will be essential for encouraging use (see notes on the first talk above). The will be an auction for 4G networks in 2012 – this will be an important event in the UK. The cloud can provide support for all areas of business activity e.g. sales.

In terms of working life, it is clear that UK workers are becoming more mobile, which is noteworthy compared with the rest of the world. However this does vary between sectors e.g. the marketing/media sector uses the technology quite a bit compared with retail/transport (I suspect that transport accounts for most of the mobile figures in that rather artificially create sector). Bottom line users are increasing the percentage of time using smartphones for work purposes.

A really big issue here is the multiple operating systems challenge. This was regarded as the biggest challenge to the use of mobile devices in the enterprise space. Cross platform applications are a must if a wide variety of devices is to be supported in the enterprise. The question posed was will HTML 5 be the enabler of this cross-platform compatibility? Flash is dying on its feet. What technology stack will be used to write applications? No one size fits all. It struck me at this point, that the mobile space is very much in the same state as the PC market in the early 1980’s before Microsoft emerged as the winners. Given this I posed the question - who will be the winner this time? Will it be apple with their lead in mobile devices – Google Android or Microsoft again? How will Apple cope without Steve Job’s direction? Steve was quite enthusiastic about Microsoft’s ability to provide the necessary platform, although he felt that the company has missed Bill Gates direction and have made some pretty serious errors since he stepped down. Will Windows 8 deliver the required functionality? Personally I’d prefer an open source solution using common standards, but this isn’t likely to happen for various reasons (open source is driven by nerds, who’s idea of interactivity is the UNIX command line prompt). Its clear that ‘Minority Report’ style interactions are needed for mobile devices. Only time will tell what the outcome will be!

There is evidence of the increase in people’s intention to get tablet computers at some time in the future, particularly (and not surprisingly) the iPad. Although more interest in smartphones was expressed e.g. 51% would be more likely to buy this type of mobile device. Problem is that 4/7 applications on this platform are considered to be malware. This has to be dealt with if these devices are to be used for the benefit of the enterprise. Steve talked briefly about the connected car, and his vision for the car as a mobile device, getting travel information, congestion coping, assisting the drive with better more economical styles of driving (erm, not for me – I like to be in control of the car!).

Acknowledgements

Many thanks for Martin Ballard of the Mobile data association and the ICT KTN for organizing the event.

The Lighthill Debate

2011-10-25T21:28:00.000+01:00

This took place in 1973, between Prof. James Lighthill (arguing against AI as a discipline), and Prof. Donald Michie, Prof. John McCarthy and Prof. Richard Gregory (arguing for). It is a very stimulating debate, with views from Prof. Lynton Strachey (a colleage of Michie's at Bletchley Park) and Prof. Roger Needham. They discussed a report which lead to an AI winter in the UK with very little research done, apart from a few Universities. Here is part 1 of 6:

Part 2 of 6

Part 3 of 6

Part 4 of 6

Part 5 of 6

Part 6 of 6

A small anecdote - the only person in this debate who I met personally was Roger Needham - a really great chap, and sadly missed. I remember his description of AI as 'that part of computing which doesn't work', which I found very amusing. I'm sure I saw George Coulouris in the audience as well.

(h/t: Eduardo Alonso)

Monday Blues Cure

2011-10-24T20:45:00.000+01:00

Bit late today, but better than never! He is an old favorite, Chris Spedding Motor Bikin':

Monday Blues Cure

2011-10-17T08:21:00.000+01:00

Here's a favourite of my from the late and lamented John Martyn - One World:

Monday Blues Cure

2011-10-10T07:50:00.000+01:00

Here's quite a nice number from Bert Jansch, who sadly passed away last week:

He used to be with Pentangle, so here's something else I found that I really like:

Enterprise Search

2011-10-09T17:00:00.001+01:00

I attended the Enterprise search meetup on Tuesday 4th October 2011, and here are some brief notes from the event. We had two talks and a 'fishbowl' discussion. I'll concentrate on the talks, and bring in any issues from the 'fishbowl' when it is necessary. The talks were from Iain Fletcher and Charlie Hull.

1. Iain Fletcher - Search Technologies. Data Quality, the Missing Ingredient for Enterprise Search

The essential problem introduced in the talk was the poor data leads to poor search and dissatisfaction on the part of the users in the service they get from the deployed system. Problems increase with time, search administrators need to constantly update their systems to cope with growth in data. Failure to tackle these problems leads to increasing users dissatisfaction - evidence shows that half the time or less, users do not get what they want. Relevance ranking has come along way over the years, however many ranking algorithms need to be tuned to the collection they retrieve on, optimizing on constants such as B and k1 in the BM25 matching function. I've done some of this type of work myself, and had some success at the Web Track @ TREC.

A possible solutions is auto-personalisation, however Iain suggested that this may not work well, and there is evidence for this in the academic literature.

Iain stated the search engines tend to rely on meta-data, and he gave the example of Google who rely on well written pages from which meta-data can be extracted. Thus classification using the meta-data extracted can narrow down the search for the user providing the user with some ability to improve their search result (as always with search, this must depend on the user's ASK). When writing web pages to be retrieved it is best to remove non-relevant text from page to increase the chances of the page being retrieved - this is the process of 'cleaning' the data. An example would be to have a bio of an author on every page of their website - this would impact on search negatively. A process of normalization can be used to ensure that relevant text is put together on the same page, increasing the chance of better search results.

Iain then talked about complexity management, which can be a real problem in search. He advocated the use of TQM (Total Quality Management) for search, using a black box method to find problems. Optimizing on one variable is problematic, as one does not know the effect of doing this on other variables - a holistic approach needs to be done if this is going to work in any sensible way. I myself used a brute force approach to optimizing tuning constants on the BM25 matching function, but you could think of using machine learning to do this - Microsoft have used Gradient Descent techniques for this kind of work (I can dig up the reference on request).

Iain concluded with a number of suggestions as follows:

Data needs be thought about properly. Focus needs to be on the data, rather than the search engine.
A formal model of data is required, and a data model design is needed. In the discusion later, it appears that in my circumstances no formal document is available to provide this information or the requirements for search. Transparency is a very important factor.
A process to keep search working is essential, and adapt to changes in the data, as it grows with time. Otherwise the search will break!

2. Charlie Hull - Flax Search. Just the Job - Employing Solr for Recruitment Search

Charlie gave an interesting talk on the practical application of search technologies to a real world case study, in this case Reed Recruitment. Reed recruitment has significant data problems with 3 million job seekers in their database, and around 300 end users dispersed throughout 350 offices the UK. Their search before the new system was implemented on a transactional system using Oracle, the relational database system.

To say the oracle search was clunky would be something of an understatement. The user had 20/30 fields to choose from, and had to wait a significant length of time for the results as 100's of millions of database records were processed. Data was held on salaries etc as well as unstructured information such as CV's and job specifications. Oracle is fine for data, but very poor for unstructured data IMHO.

In order to create the new search, data had to be extracted from Oracle and transformed to a format which could be used by a search engine such as Solr. Based on XML two processes are defined:

Indexer: extract and process the data from Oracle.
Config: builds and verifies the data for the search engine.

Charlie describe the process using a diagram, which I don't have but was illuminating and helped understanding (I won't try and replicate it here, my drawing skills are rubbish!). Reed did the interface part of the projects, as they know their users well.

Overall I found this a very useful case study of applying open source software to real world problems. Later on in the discussion, there was an interesting interaction on using open source vs. propriety software. Largely this is due to policy according to Iain Fletcher, which invariably means Microsoft. I was reminded of the old adage "nobody ever go sacked for buying IBM", these days its "nobody ever go sacked for buying Microsoft"!

The search is now live and working well - Reed are satisfied with it. On interesting fact that emerged was that there is considerable resistance from users who have got used to using the old system. This is normal, and reminds me that the only reason Dialog is around is because information scientists using it demand access to a command line interface (power users who want to retain control of their world, and prevent disintermediation). These problems to not appear to occur with new members of staff, not yet initiated into the ways of the old system.

Monday Blues Cure

2011-10-03T10:07:00.001+01:00

Here is an old favourite, Patti Smith doing 'horses' with 'hey joe' thrown in!

A classic from the 'Old Grey Whistle Test'.

Monday Blues Cure

2011-09-26T07:38:00.000+01:00

Here's "Twin Soliloquies" from the musical 'South Pacific'. Saw this at the Barbican last week, really excellent production. Rather like this particular video as you see the process of how the singers learn the song.

Monday Blues Cure

2011-09-19T08:05:00.000+01:00

This cheers me up no end, Surfin pooches, to the tune of the Beach Boys Surfin USA.

Monday Blues Cure

2011-09-12T07:36:00.000+01:00

Here's a rather dramatic piece of music, The Ride of the Valkyries:

I remember it from this:

Monday Blues Cure

2011-09-05T07:30:00.000+01:00

Caught quite a nice programme on BBC TV last Friday, which included the wonderful Joni Mitchell's Chelsea Morning - quite appropriate I thought! Enjoy.

Monday Blues cure

2011-08-30T10:05:00.002+01:00

Late, because of the bank holiday - Tuesday is the new Monday (at least for this week!). Anyway here's a load of old Jacksons:

(h/t: Mick Hartley)

Monday Blues Cure

2011-08-22T07:33:00.001+01:00

I'm back, been to lazy over the summer to post anything! Anyway here's something I really like - Luck be a lady tonight from 'Guys and Dolls'.

Updated 24/8 - typo :(

Monday Blues Cure

2011-06-20T07:35:00.002+01:00

This is such a hoot - the Arty Bollocks generator! Feel free to generate some nonsense, even if your not a humanities academic.

Monday Blues Cure

2011-06-13T20:25:00.000+01:00

Been really lazy wrt my blog recently, to busy with project proposals to think of anything else. Anyway, heres something that I quite like, don't normally like this particular style of music, but this track is ok - 808 state "Pacific State":

Monday Blues Cure

2011-05-16T07:57:00.000+01:00

Double header today! Here's "All Along the Watchtower" sung by Sacramento State Jazz Singers:

(h/t: David Thompson). Also here is Seth Lakeman doing his song 'Kitty Jay', saw him on friday in concert at the Union Chapel - he and his band were fantastic!

Monday Blues Cure

2011-05-09T09:02:00.000+01:00

Here's The Walker Brothers - The sun ain't gonna shine any more - can't seem to embed any videos of this song!

RIP: John Walker.

Filter Bubbles

2011-05-04T08:56:00.000+01:00

Here's a rather interesting talk on personalisation and the internet, and problems associated with such:

(h/t: Robert Stroud).

Monday Blues Cure

2011-04-18T09:42:00.000+01:00

Here is another example of crowdsourcing music by Eric Whitacre, entitled Sleep:

See also Lux Aurumque, a previous Monday Blues Cure post. Nice.

Monday Blues Cure

2011-04-11T07:20:00.000+01:00

Break from my Yardbirds theme (will be returned to later), heres a scene from Mrs Browns Boys, the funnest thing on telly for a long time:

Erm, best not view it at work...

Monday Blues Cure

2011-03-28T07:46:00.000+01:00

Further to my Yardbirds theme, this week I concentrate on the work of Jimmy
page, particularly with Led Zeppelin I Can't Quit You Babe:

Also with Robert Plant, Gallows Pole:

Video for DL Session 10

2011-03-21T08:48:00.000Z

Ah the problems of trying to resolve the needs of all stakeholders in Digital Libraries...This video pretty well sums it up!

Monday Blues Cure

2011-03-21T07:30:00.001Z

Continuing on my theme of the Yardbirds, for the next few weeks I'll concentrate on the legacy of the band - which is considerable!

First up is Eric Clapton - Here is him playing with Cream "White Room"

With Robbie Robertson, playing "Who do you love":

And on his own, playing "Behind the Mask":

Supermoon

2011-03-20T17:12:00.000Z

Taken last night - didn't quite work out, but its a lot more interesting than the others I took!

Monday Blues Cure

2011-03-14T07:23:00.000Z

Continuing on my theme of The Yardbirds, here is some videos with Eric Clapton playing with them. First up Louise + one other track:

Next up still i'm sad (audio only):

Video for session 09 Digital Libraries

2011-03-13T14:42:00.002Z

This is a repost, as the orginal video I used no longer works.

Here's another video from Vimeo:

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at London's Barbican from The Wire Magazine on Vimeo.

Monday Blues Cure

2011-03-07T07:47:00.000Z

Last week I posted some videos of Jeff Beck playing with the Yardbirds, so this week I'd thought i'd find some videos with Jimmy Page in them - later of Led Zeppelin fame. So here's a few with Jimmy playing:

Shapes of things

I'm a Man.

Train Kept a rollin.

Monday Blues Cure

2011-02-28T07:49:00.000Z

Been finding and listening to The Yardbird's music on youtube, largely because they are very influential - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page all played Guitar for them, which show just how influential they are. This week I concentrate on Jeff Beck, starting with his version of "Heart Full Of Soul" with the Yardbirds:

Next up, For your love:

Finally, Jeff with his most recent band, Led Boots:

Heaven, shear heaven!

Monday Blues Cure

2011-02-21T07:37:00.002Z

Here's The Kinks Lola:

Monday Blues Cure

2011-02-14T07:34:00.000Z

Heres The Selector's On my Radio:

Monday Blues Cure

2011-02-07T07:56:00.000Z

Very lax in January, so here's a bumper February start for the Monday blues series:

(h/t: Mick Hartley). Secondly, all you need to know about Romford, but were afraid to ask:

(h/t: Andy T). Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson get all minimalist on us:

...doing Steve Reich Clapping Music.

Monday Blues Cure

2011-01-31T07:27:00.000Z

Feeling a bit sleepy in January, so haven't posted much. Here's Imelda May's Mayhem:

Monday Blues Cure

2010-12-20T09:15:00.002Z

Happy xmas to any reader out there!

and a happy new year - last post of the year!

Monday Blues cure

2010-12-13T07:34:00.000Z

Here's a nice tune from the 1940's, by Duke Ellington:

(h/t: Mick Hartley)

Monday Blues Cure

2010-12-06T07:41:00.002Z

This is just wonderful!

Phrase search in Movies and TV programmes

2010-12-05T11:23:00.000Z

Subzin is a fun site - you can search the scripts of many Movies and TV programmes to find the a phrase which you remember, but can't quite remember which Film/Show it comes from.

Phrases are specified with the usual double quotes "", otherwise words are search as is. Stop wording is obviously not done, which makes sense if you are providing search for words actually spoken. Unclear as to the type of indexing being used.

Advanced search provides the user with the opportunity to search for a phrase in a particular title, and to restrict search by popularity, Genre, Type (Film/TV) and language (but English is only available at the moment).

(h/t: David Thompson).

Value Networks in Open Source

2010-12-03T11:47:00.000Z

Lorraine Morgan of National University of Ireland Galway gave a talk entitled "Open Source as Open Innovation: Creating and Capturing Value in Value Networks", at the BCS Covent Gardens Offices on Thursday 2nd December 2010. Despite the weather restricting attendance at the talk, it was a very lively and interesting evening, with lots of views and discussion from all that attended. A very engaging and interesting evening. Here are a few thoughts on the ideas presented.

Lorraine started off by examining the issue of Business models. Most people think in terms of how do you generate revenue, forgetting that non-monetary benefits are also valuable. She introduced the concept of Open Innovation (OI), and idea first introduced by Henry Chesbrough. From her perspective, and my understanding, external ideas and knowledge have equal value as internal ideas and knowledge. This immediately made me think of the importance of Choo's Enviromental Scanning in finding external ideas and knowledge and absorbing them in the organisation. Its clear to me that information seeking must be an important part of the process of OI, particularly at the imitation stage. We talked around SWOT analysis and Porters Five Forces, and Lorraine pointed out that OI cannot work in terms of these (opening up is not a threat for example), as reputation and trust needs to be built up in the network for the concept to work. There was actually quite a discussion about this. Later on the issue of repuation came up, something that is clearly important in OS and on which Eric Raymond has written about in Homesteading the Noosphere.

OS is a from of OI, The business model used in OS is therefore essential, and needs to be rethought if OS software development is used. We need to think in terms of value creation. There are different definitions of value creation, Lorraine quoted the following "worthiness of monetary and non-monetary benefits of products and services". Stakeholders (CATWOE client, actor and owner) have different perspectives on value.

OS creates value by creating 'Networks', or 'Value Networks' (see my comment on Homesteading the Noosphere above). Traditional approaches to Value Creation need to be rethought, as they tended to neglect innovation and created networks. Some examples were given from enterprises to support this view e.g. employee/team of the month, which creates competition between teams and creates barriers for setting up networks. Different perspectives are needed - different from 'how do we keep ideas in the organisation'. With value capture therefore we need new theories of the firm. Made think about Raymond's 'The Magic Cauldron'.

Lorraine stressed the importance of Value Networks in Value Creation. There exist both internal and external Value Networks, and OI is needed inside the organisation. Competion is not the key. Sometimes members of the network need to make sacrifices in order to gain benefits from the Value Network. Reputation and trust is essential here (see above). Symbiosis can bring benefits from the Network, which outweigh the loss in competitiveness. A good example of this is reducing in costs when sharing the development of infrastructure software. Access to complementary skills are gained from the network (the whole is more productive than the some of its parts). Some important questions to be asked are: what is value and what kind of value are we capturing. I mentioned social networks, and Lorraine differenciated between Value Networks and Social Networks - the latter tend to be closed, whereas the former must be open.

Lorraine briefly described her research findings so far. She talked to a Medical supplier who had gone 100% open source in order to avoid issues such as vendor lock in etc. Costs were much reduced and they were able to spend more on training for internal staff. There was some discussion on lock in from vendors, and it is my view that its easier to create lock in's if the software license is BSD, more difficult for viral licenses such as GPL. One interesting point she made was that staff who are recruited to support particular open source products demonstrate high levels of commitment to the code than to the organisation - if the organisation shuts down their project, the developer will move on. There was quite a bit of discussion on actors e.g. pro vs. re-actor.

Overall a very useful talk, and I very much enjoyed it together with the discussion.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-11-29T16:09:00.001Z

I found this while browsing YouTube - The Zimmers version of Firestarter:

Truly wonderful! Original.

Current trends in Software configuration Management

2010-11-28T15:21:00.002Z

I attended a very interesting talk on Thursday 25th November by Dan North of DRW Trading entitled “Is DVCS ready for the enterprise”. There are some important trends in open source software configuration management/source code control (SCC) that I would like to highlight. Here are my thoughts from the talk.

There is increasing interest in Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS), in both the commercial world and in open source software development. Dan suggested that actually a more interesting question to ask is ‘Is the enterprise ready for DVCS’? His view in the talk (my interpretation) is that DVCS is ready for the enterprise, but are there work patterns in the enterprise that can use DVCS?

The initial problem he outlined is that more and more code is being version controlled, with much bigger teams over a wider geographical area in different time zones. Developers can be in the same floor or building, or be in different continents and time zones. Put simply the centralised model of SCC just isn’t working any more.

He provided a brief history of SCC and showed the development of open source tools:

1972: SCCS – the first SCC tool (file oriented)
1986: RCS – introduced the concept of multiple file access
1986: CVS – built on RCS by providing current access for distributed users
2001: SubVersion – repository oriented.

The key issue here is the problem of file oriented SCC methods (the focus up to CVS). CVS tags all files. This leads to various problems including tagging new versions (its all or nothing for all files) and problems with atomicity (file oriented methods are problematic for resolving conflicts) etc. SubVersion tries to get round the problem by focusing on the repository level, and tagging only at that level.

There are a number of commercial players who are better able to tackle these including: ClearCase, StarTeam, PerForce, VSS etc. There were some strong views from the floor on the ability of these systems to tackle the problems above, and Dan agreed, but pointed out that is focus was on OS SCC systems. However all systems mentioned so far have a centralised file base.

Dan mentioned some alterative systems which are distributed or peer to peer (p2p) based:

1997 – Code Co-op
2001 – GNU Arch (now defunct)
2003 – PARCS (Haskall based – for reasoning on ChangeSets)

However everything changed in 2005 with the ‘BitKeeper’ incident. BitKeeper was a propriety but free program which was used by the Linux team for SCC. BitMover (the company who developed BitKeeper) decided end free access and started to charge for their product. This lead directly to the Linux community spearheaded by Linus Thorvolds developing a DVCS called ‘git’. Concurrently another group started another DVCS system called ‘Mercurial’. Very much a case of ‘Scratching an Itch”, something that Feller and Fitzgerald pointed out in their book in 2002 when pointing to that CVS was rather behind the times in terms of SCC, particularly with respect to propriety systems. In contrast, Dan’s view is that propriety systems did not take notice of these new developments, and OS now has the lead – this tends to happen if OS developers get the bit between their teeth and people annoy them! Things can change very quickly in the OS world.

More interestingly OS development is now being driven by two new websites:

Gibhub [https://github.com/] – based on ‘git’
BitBucket [http://bitbucket.org/] - based on ‘Mercurial’

Dan contrasted these websites with ones that have been around for a while, FreshMeat and SourceForge code repositories. It was his view that FreshMeat overtook SourceForge and that these new sites will take over from SourceForge, and will be the focus OS software development in the future. The most interesting thing about Github and BitBucket is that they are based on the social networking model, as embodied by sites such as FaceBook and LinkedIn. So while there are similarities of Github and BitBucket to FreshMeat and SourceForge, there are some very important differences.

In order to illustrate the significance of these developments, Dan contrasted the Centralised model of SCC and compared it with the p2p model (DCVS).

The centralised model consists of a Hub and Spoke. The master copy of the SCC data is held on the Hub, while the spoke represents the local copies held by developers on their computer. The model is very much ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’. Working copies are shared via the Hub (Master). Nothing gets past the master! In the centralised model is easier to control:

User access: through the http protocol
Build and Release: single point of access

In contrast the p2p model makes all copies (repositories) equal, and copies are just a series of clones. You either have a clone or don’t – each developer has their own clone with all information provide, and full access rights to the code base. Network operations are local, and therefore faster. Branching and merging – a big issue in SCC – are also local. ‘Diffing’ on copies provides more information. Committing is done locally.

In terms of data repositories share ‘ChangeSets’ in the p2p model, rather than changes on individual files and directories in those directories as in the centralised model (CVS has a tree, and changes between tree’s are what drives that SCC system). What is significant about this issues is that publishing is decoupled from committing. This raises the question – isn’t this a recipe for chaos?

There are a number of issues to consider here:

Build must be deterministic and repeatable
Configuration management audit and traceability: who did what, when?
Organisational structure of the team: central model allows access to trees, various parts of a team can access their part of the tree, but you can’t do this in the p2p model. How do you cope with team structure in DCVS?

How do teams integrate their code together to create a coherent software build? The modular style of development is the key to success in any software project, for example by allowing specialists to concentrate on their own particular area of concern. This development style is very prominent in OS projects. One way to this is to centralise by convention. Dan gave an example of the Linux Kernel, were many developers are involved in the development (1000’s). This project very much drove the development of git and Mercurial. One repository is ‘Canonical’, as master copy of which there is only one, and only one person can commit to. Other uses can only download this Canonical copy. Different specialist groups have their own Canonical and a hierarchy of commits is created, with different levels of peer review appropriate for each level. All releases come from the central repository. Commits are done locally, where synchronisation is done globally. Centralising by convention makes synchronisation much easier. The Bazaar model of development is clearly influential in the p2p model of SCC.

Dan talked about the fundamental difference between the centralised and p2p models in terms of the data they process. Centralised SCC systems (such as CVS) are file oriented, whereas p2p DVCS systems (such as git) are ChangeSet orienated.

In the ChangeSet model, there is no concept of a file. Renames and deletes on files and directories are no longer special. Only changes are recorded – this decoupling is important. The advantage of ChangeSets is that we can use ChangeSet Algebra on ChangeSets to find the differences and act on them e.g. to restore parts of the code previously deleted. With ChangeSets only the changes are stored, which is much more efficient than changes on individual files and directories (in the CVS tree for example), and saves a substantial amount of storage space and is easier to reason with. This then is the big advantage of ChangeSets, and hence the p2p model.

In order to illustrate the advantage of the p2p model and its data storage model, Dan talked about the incremental merge problem. In centralised systems, incremental merges can cause the multiple initiations of delete commands (for example), leading to inconsistencies in the repository from actions taken on them. Various members of the audience asserted that this has not been a problem for propriety systems, but Dan countered that CVS/SubVersion did not deal with the problem, and git/Mercurial are significant advances over the former.

Dan also talked about the difference in release from centralised and p2p systems, the former branch per release, whereas the latter branch per feature. He talked very briefly about migrating to DVCS.

Dan outlines some barriers to adoption:

git has a significant learning curve
its easy to overlook the synchronisation issue
it is much harder to enforce central control.

Dan concluded that the technology works and DVCS is most definitely ready for the enterprise. I found this talk extremely illuminating, and will be revising my session on OSS tools accordingly.

Update: Audio of the talk is available on the BCS streaming server.

References

J. Feller & B. Fitzgerald - Understand open source software development, Addison-Wesley, 2002.

Image Search by Example

2010-11-25T15:47:00.002Z

Relevance feedback is a very useful tool to either modify or expand queries according to user needs, or to provide an example with which to start a search. The former tends to be used in text retrieval, the latter in image retrieval.

An example on the web is TinEye, provided by a company by the name of Idée.

It works by finding an exact copy of an image you specify, either via upload or via a link. It does not find near images, the result is binary - either the image matches or it doesn't. Some small differences are allow for example, searching for Mona Lisa in curlers will bring up the original version of the Mona Lisa. One interesting part of the service is that if you provide a web page, it will load the images, and allow you to click on them to conduct a search. The service is useful for tasks which require known item search - e.g. I've got this image, has someone used this before on the web, I need an original image.

(h/t: Tanya)

Monday Blues Cure

2010-11-22T07:43:00.000Z

Been watching quite a few of Dennis Potter's old programs, available on 4od's youtube channel. More recently I saw Lipstick on your collar, and rather like the end credits, the name is taken from 'The Man with the Golden Arm':

Jamendo free music website

2010-11-15T14:58:00.001Z

Jamendo is a website that allows musicans to upload their music, providing they are happy that listeners can download and use the music for free. Music is released under the creative commons license. I can't use my 'David Bowie Berlin' query set on it, but there is a couple of interesting music search facilities on the site:

Browse by Genre, using a tagcloud: examples include electronic and downtempo.
Search and browse for music which is similar to well know artists: examples are David Bowie and Metallica

You can also create your own widgets of music you are interested in, but I could'nt see how it worked, so here's one of the playlists they supply:

Free music for professional licensing

Monday Blues Cure

2010-11-15T07:29:00.000Z

Here's Henryk Gorecki's Totus Tuus:

R.I.P.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-11-08T08:28:00.000Z

Here's a rather pleasant song from Alison Krauss, who has had a little more prominence recently after working with Robert Plant, but she is a wonderful artist in her own right.

The type of music is called Bluegrass, on which I've posted before. I've just got to repost this:

Monday Blues Cure

2010-11-01T07:43:00.000Z

This is very funny, and brilliantly put together:

Monday Blues Cure

2010-10-25T08:12:00.001+01:00

This is from Dennis Potter's "The Singing Detective", a wonderful version of 'Dry Bones':

You can also catch up with some of Dennis Potter's other stuff such as 'Karaoke', 'Cold Lazarus' and 'Lipstick on your Collar' on Channel 4's YouTube channel.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-10-18T07:26:00.000+01:00

Here's Blur's Death of a Party:

Monday Blues Cure

2010-10-11T07:34:00.000+01:00

Norm had a poll on the best loved Beach Boys songs. Didn't send anything in as I found it difficult to make up my mind, but here's a particular favourite, Help me Ronda:

Monday Blues Cure

2010-10-04T19:13:00.000+01:00

'What difference does it make' you might ask! Here is your answer:

Courtesy of The Smiths.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-09-27T07:44:00.001+01:00

Theres some interesting programs on Jimi Hendrix, on the iplayer, including one on his life through his eyes, and one on his time in London. Both are time limited and restricted to the UK, some here's a classic from youtube - Hey Joe/Sunshine of your Love:

Twitter!

2010-09-13T12:58:00.000+01:00

I've got an account! You can see my feed on the same page as the blog.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-09-13T12:51:00.000+01:00

Continuing a theme from last week, here's The Carpenters 'We've only just begun':

Monday Blues Cure

2010-09-06T15:58:00.000+01:00

Here's something more recent, Rumer's Slow:

Nice....Does remind me of...

Monday Blues Cure

2010-08-02T08:26:00.002+01:00

Found this on youtube while messing about with my iPod touch, 'maya beiser kashmir':

An orchestral version:

Trusting Googles rankings

2010-07-28T10:20:00.003+01:00

Students trust it to much apparently. My view is that for informational, as opposed to navigational or transactional searches, you need to look at more than one page of results (users tend to view only the first page of results, and in fact very rarely scroll down to look at all of them). Students take note! Quality and source of information provided in your assignments is very important (e.g. try not to use Wikipedia to much). Academic study is available here.

A handy and short evaluation of blog services

2010-07-27T11:07:00.001+01:00

Here.

Challenges in Building Large-Scale Information Retrieval Systems

2010-07-20T15:32:00.002+01:00

Jeff Dean of Google provides a very interesting talk on the companies infrastructure and its development on a video recorded at WSDM'09. It rather annoyingly stopped on several occasions, but you can go back to the slide you were watching as the video and slides are presented slide by slide - keep with it, its very well worth it (particularly if you are a techy)!

Monday Blues

2010-07-19T08:36:00.002+01:00

Here's a double header of Lenny Kravitz:

Are you gonna come my way?

(no embedding..) and:

Fly away.

no .......

Monday Blues Cure

2010-07-12T16:02:00.003+01:00

In celebration of Spain winning the World cup for the first time, here's a video of the magnificent Paco De Luca:

Digital Preservation - A different View

2010-07-05T09:07:00.000+01:00

Here.

Monday blues cure

2010-07-05T07:21:00.002+01:00

Remembered lighting seeds lucky you from this advert:

This is the context:

Lucky You
Watch the ad...

England vs. Germany

2010-06-27T09:27:00.001+01:00

Live tube map

2010-06-23T07:42:00.000+01:00

With constant updates of where trains are in the network.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-06-21T07:24:00.001+01:00

Here's the Clash's 'I fought the law':

Monday Blues

2010-06-14T08:45:00.002+01:00

Shout is apparently back at the top of the charts, but I've posted that before so here's another good track from Tears for Fears, Sowing the Seeds of Love:

Monday blues cure

2010-06-07T07:45:00.001+01:00

Amazing what you can find if you type in a random word such as 'rubbish' in google (video):

Never give a baby booze

2010-06-02T16:14:00.003+01:00

Searching for 'young boozer', yields an interesting search result for a prospective Treasurer in the State of Alabama. You couldn't make this up!

UPDATE
There's even a video...

Monday Blues Cure

2010-05-31T09:35:00.002+01:00

Here's some robots:

Eclectic Method - Robots from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

Reminds me of this.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-05-24T07:31:00.003+01:00

Here's Rainbow's 'Kill the King', from 'Long Live Rock 'n' Roll':

RIP Ronnie James Dio.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-05-17T07:32:00.002+01:00

Here Lena Horne, singing stormy weather:

RIP.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-05-10T07:53:00.003+01:00

Amazing what you can do with your hands if you put your mind to it:

Guess what he is playing - answer is here. No cheating now!

(h/t: David Thompson)

Monday Blues Cure

2010-05-03T17:10:00.002+01:00

Here's Jethro Tull's Living in the past:

Dead Computer Society

2010-05-02T18:39:00.001+01:00

see here.

Spotify Upgrade

2010-04-27T12:59:00.002+01:00

Spotify has upgraded their service to utilize social media techniques, you can find out more in the The Guardian and The Register. Here's a video explaning the changes:

The effect of dyslexia on information retrieval: A pilot study: Journal of Documentation

2010-04-26T08:53:00.000+01:00

Available here.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-04-26T07:32:00.004+01:00

Here's two versions of Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. Firstly the classical version:

Secondly, Emerson Lake and Palmer's version:

Election Blues Cure (or Monday Blues)

2010-04-19T09:42:00.003+01:00

In case you want to be elected:

Search on youtube 'Alice Cooper elected'.

Digital Decay

2010-04-18T13:24:00.001+01:00

Interesting post on Digital Decay by Nick Carr.

Robin Milner RIP

2010-04-18T13:10:00.005+01:00

I recently found out that one of the greatest computer scientists of all time - Robin Milner - passed away recently.

He is best know for 'Calculus of Communicating Systems', a theory for parallel and distributed computing.

Only met him one, very nice chap. Will be sadly missed.

Democracy and Technology

2010-04-18T13:06:00.002+01:00

Vote Geek is a site dedicated to building up a picture of the view of candidates on technology issues for the upcoming general election in the U.K. on 6th May 2010.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-04-12T13:23:00.003+01:00

Crowdsourcing as applied to choral music:

(h/t: David Thompson)

Monday Blues

2010-04-05T11:53:00.002+01:00

Not really! Its easter Monday...

However, here's 'fleetwood mac green Manalishi'

Herding Cats

2010-04-01T18:11:00.002+01:00

Ever had the this problem? You might related to this video on Youtube:

More cat madness:

Here's a cat you wouldn't want to mess with:

The Tail Gunner from tokyoplastic on Vimeo.

Here's an even scarier one:

Catzilla from tokyoplastic on Vimeo.

Last two (h/t David Thompson)

Monday Blues cure

2010-03-29T08:00:00.003+01:00

Here's another on the theme of Fleetwood Mac 'oh well':

Plus an extra today. The Beeb repeated Synth Britannia over the weekend, great programme, this one by Japan called Ghosts, is somewhat esoteric:

Monday Blues Cure

2010-03-22T07:21:00.002Z

Heres 'fleetwood mac man of the world':

Digital Economy Bill

2010-03-18T16:31:00.003Z

Ed Parsons refers to this, silly idea, its a bit like the dutch boy putting his thumb in the dyke, to prevent a tsunami coming his way at 500mph. Bad law, it will fail. Nice video on this:

Related article by Victor Keegan, which is bang on IMHO. My suggestion - invest in MIR tools. Ride with the tsunami, don't try and stop it. You can't.

Art Finches

2010-03-16T07:53:00.003Z

I've seen this before, but wanted to find it again on youtube, a simple 'art finches' search found it on the first hit! Dig the Guitar solo man.

If you're interested, you can visit the Barbican.

Monday Blues Cure

2010-03-15T07:41:00.004Z

Saw a couple of documentaries about Detroit over the weekend, Requiem for Detroit and Martin Freeman goes to Motown. Note: these videos are only available for a limited period, and in the UK only. They also replayed Motor City is Burning, which I've seen before. Anyway, reminded me of this:

Also if you are interested in Beards, have a look at this lot!

I can understand this

2010-03-10T13:29:00.001Z

Showing my age :(

(h/t: Andrew Tuson)

Monday Blues cure

2010-03-08T07:24:00.003Z

Double header today - firstly an animation I saw a while back, and wanted to find again. Called blind spot, found it by googling 'blind spot animation':

Blind spot - Animation Gobelins from tiry_73 on Vimeo.

Also some music, had this going through my mind over the weekend for some reason - 'the wind cries mary hendrix':

Very - reflective.