Photographer, software developer, sysadmin, startup-founder, atheist Buddhist, vegan and Green. Wears a hat.
This blog reflects my personal opinions only, although most posts are so old they might not even do that anymore.
Another bit of Manchester under threat from corporate mundanity: Afflecks Palace might have only a few days left.
Link: The MEN’s archive on this sorry saga
I tend to blame Manchester City Council for problems like this, but at least Marc Ramsbottom (LibDem, City Centre) is offering support.
AOL, owners of the AIM and ICQ instant messaging services, may at long last be opening them up properly, using XMPP. They’ve got a beta/test XMPP service running (which is a good sign) but haven’t announced anything yet. I think we’ve definitely passed the tipping point now. Google set a good example.
This is very unlikely to mean that AOL’s dropping its own proprietary protocols, or even encouraging the use of XMPP over their own: AIM has some features that aren’t yet present as standards in XMPP. It’s possible that they could implement their own extensions as Apple has done, or they may simply implement XMPP as an alternative connection method and gateway to the XMPP Federation. No doubt they’ll be some official announcement soon - the news has reached Slashdot.
I’ve not been active in the Jabber dev community for a couple of years now, but I’m still an enthusiastic user, and this makes me gleefully happy.
Next: Yahoo and Microsoft. Who’ll give in first?
Link: AOL adopting XMPP aka Jabber
(In other news The USA’s Marines Corp have adopted XMPP too, and Jabber/XMPP is nine years old already.)
Vienna (open source) is great software, but NetNewsWire (now a free download) works much better on my little old PPC Mac, so I’ve switched over.
Link: NetNewsWire vs. Vienna - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
I’ve started to include the words “as it were” when talking, far more than I should, and often for no apparent reason. By saying this when there’s no apparent metaphor I’m making some sentences vaguer and other seem like baffling innuendo. I don’t know where I’ve picked this up from (my vocabulary is easily influenced) but the phrase is already irritating me, never-mind any unfortunate people trapped nearby.
Using a swearbox asitwerebox has been suggested.
Another walk around an almost deserted Manchester, relatively early in the morning, with a little fog this time.
Two surprises: rather unseasonal roses growing in Castlefield, and seeing a kingfisher in Castlefield. Earlier this year I thought I’d seen a kingfisher zipping down the Ashton Canal but almost convinced myself I was mistaken. This time it was quite definitely a kingfisher. Their feathers are bright seen against a rural background, against grey concrete and black canal water they’re almost dazzling. I failed to photograph the roses (A. managed it) and the kingfisher was almost impossible to follow with the eye, nevermind a camera.
In about 20 years of living in Warwickshire I saw one kingfisher. This year in Manchester I’ve seen kingfishers twice. I suppose Manchester’s post-industrial canals are now much cleaner than the rural rivers of 1970s Warwickshire, even if they’re rather less verdant.
The flash-lit fog over the cobbles in this photo reminds me of a painting or pencil sketch I’ve seen somewhere, but I can’t find it. Maybe the image resembles a faded century-old photo. I like the effect.
I’m in the photo taking a picture of The Palace Hotel’s sign glowing in the gloom.
Arteth’s mention of Vallette led me to his painting of Albert Square and this drawing by Lowry.
(Trivia: The white dog poo interrogation scene in ‘Life on Mars’ took place just to the left of the picture.)
Perl is 20 years old today, and Perl 5.10 has been released, the first major new version for five years. Read Perl 5.10 for people who are not totally insane for a summary of the neat bits.
I can’t mention Perl without feeling compelled to mention Ruby (the guilty conscience of a lapsed Perlist - I spend much more time with Ruby nowadays) so I’ll add that Ruby will be 15 next year, a couple of years older than Java.
Enigmatic Manchester legend ( and Flickr star). There’s even a Sabi Rock map!
Listen to Sabi Rock at
“grey… monotonous…”
Link: Alan Parker covers The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds (Via D-Notice)
’Little Fluffy Clouds’ would be on my Desert Island Discs selection, at least once.
I can still vividly remember how much I wanted a computer, and how happy I was to eventually get one*. For some children today a computer would cost their parents’ annual income. It was rather moving to read about the first real deployment of the One Laptop Per Child computers, and see the photos of the children:
Link: ivan krstić · code culture » First OLPC deployment: now it’s real
There are going to be disappointments, and problems, and scandals, but the project is marvellous and will improve people’s lives - not just the children’s but their families and communities. The “give them food instead” argument is both astonishingly ignorant and somewhere between patronising and downright racist. Most people in the world have enough food, and have enough clothes - they need access to education, information and communication, tools to create things, and a voice.
*Although technically I got the tape player, joystick and software, and my eldest sister got the computer.
