I know that there are about a million things I ought to be writing about; I’ll try to get time at the weekend. In the meantime, I thought I’d share with you this snippet from Outline, the internal newsletter of the Bodleian Libraries:
Welcome to Dan Q: a snippet from Outline, the Bodleian Libraries internal newsletter. Click to embiggen.
What does this tiny appearance on page three mean? Well; it means that the many libraries that I’ll be visiting over the next few weeks (I have a surprising number of meetings set up!)
will know I’m coming, for one.
The article mentions geocaching, because the editor asked me for “something personal about me”, and it was the most
family-friendly thing I could think of on the spot. I was also asked “what I did”, which I struggled with a little because, despite having been here a week, I’m still not entirely sure
what it is that I do. That said, I achieved the first productive parts of my work, yesterday, helping a user with a self-inflicted (probably!) bug in the Libraries’ CMS
system. Apart from that, I feel like I’ve spent most of my time running around the city meeting people and networking! Lots of new faces and names to learn!
Two things keep coming up in conversation with people, upon discovering that I’m new here:
Several people have asked “What university I worked for before?” The majority of people here were either Oxford undergrads or worked at other universities: to have somebody
come in from the private sector is a little… unusual, it seems.
People keep telling me that I shouldn’t expect (or be expected) to achieve anything for the first six months or so. Six months! It’s taking a while to get started, certainly (I’m
still finding my way around all of the systems I’m now responsible for), and I still don’t have logins on half of the computers and services that I’ll need them on, yet, but that’s just
ludicrous!
The main Bodleian Libraries website; one of about 32 websites for which I now find myself responsible.
On the other hand, I’m seriously enjoying the comparatively-relaxed attitude that everybody seems to have, here. And I’ve been given a bugs-list as long as my arm that I’m sure they’ve
been saving up for me to arrive, so there’s plenty to sink my teeth into even if I will have to go through half a dozen committees before I can implement any of the new features that
these websites so desperately need.
With all of the rush and busyness of this last week, wrapping up a great number of projects, it’s been easy to forget that these are my very final days as an employee of SmartData. As I mentioned last month, I’m soon to start a new job with the Bodleian
Library here in Oxford, and my time with SmartData must come to an end.
This, then, is my last day. It crept up on me. In a teleconference with my boss and with the representatives of a client, today (a regular weekly “check in” on a project I’ve been
involved with for some time now), we came to the point in the call where we would set an agenda for the next meeting. It took me a moment to remember that I won’t be at
the next meeting, and I had to stop myself from saying “Speak to you then!”
In accordance with tradition, we SmartData boys should knock off early this afternoon and go down to the pub to “see me off”. But, of course, I’m not with the rest of the SmartData boys
– they’re back in Aberystwyth and I’m
working remotely from here on Earth. Instead, I shall try to arrange to
visit them – perhaps on one of the upcoming long weekends – and we can go out for our traditional “goodbye pint” then.
I shall be knocking off early today, though! There’s nothing like taking a few days off between jobs, and what I’m doing… is nothing like taking a few days off between jobs. My weekend
will be spent in Lancaster at the North-West Regional Conference of Samaritans branches, representing Three Rings. Three
Rings now represents the rota management interests of over half of the branches in the North-West of England (and getting-close to half around the UK and Ireland in general), so I
managed to wing myself an invitation to go and show the remaining 47% what they’re missing! Then it’s back down here in time to start my new job on Monday morning!
It’s a good job that I’m of the disposition that would rather be busy than bored!
There’s a man in the house. He carries a hammer in his toolbelt and shows the crack of his bottom over the top of his worn workwear even when he’s not crawling around on the
floorboards. He’s been sent to repair a few bits of Earth, our perpetually-falling-apart house, and to quote
for a handful of further improvements that he’s hoping to persuade the landlord to let him install after we’ve gone.
He repairs the wobbly floorboard in my office while I try to get on with some work. The floorboard sinks considerably when it’s walked over, and feels like it might at any moment send
me plummeting down into Paul‘s room. It’ll be good to have it repaired, even if this does occur only weeks before we are
due to move out.
I’m listening to a Radio 4 program about disenchantment with contemporary financial establishments and cyber-trading and the recent growth of interest in gold trading as a “safety net”.
A panellist says that for the first time in recorded history, the majority of gold is held by private investors, rather than by central banks. At some point, another panellist describes
the expertise required by financial traders and a post-capitalist economy as being esoteric.
The builder pulls his head out from below the floorboards and speaks. “Ee-sow-terick?” he says, “I don’t even know what that means!”
“That’s subtly ironic, then!” I reply, not sure whether or not he’s being serious.
The builder makes a grunting sound that I interpret as being a derivation on the word “Huh?”
“Something esoteric is… something known only to a few; to an elite minority, perhaps,” I begin. “Like the word itself, it turns out,” I add, after a pause.
The builder grunts again; a sound that expresses his disinterest even more thoroughly than did his last utterance. He rolls the carpet back to where it belongs, and – by way of
demonstration – jumps up and down. Somehow, in the last two minutes, he’s managed to repair the fragile floorboard. I didn’t even see what he was doing: one moment there was a hole in
the floor, and now… everything was fine. I’d have been no less surprised if he’d produced the Nine of Spades from behind my ear. Perhaps I was merely distracted by the radio, but I’ve
got no idea how he did it.
Ah, it’s that time of year again. Here’s a quick round-up of some of my favourite pranks on the web this April Fools’ Day:
ThinkGeek can always be relied upon for a good April Fools’, and this year is no exception. Of their prank products, my
favourite is clearly the Anti-3D glasses, which completely filter out the left
channel from 3D movies, allowing you to watch them in 2D.
Geocachers amongst you might be pleased by the Nano Alarm
container, which sounds a high-pitched alarm when a human body comes near it, making it easier to find. Actually, I’d have found it a more-amusing prank if they’d claimed it detects
interference in GPS signals caused by a nearby GPS receiver.
An article on IPv4.5 claims that we ran out of
IPv4 addresses completely this morning and, with IPv6 still far from fully-deployed, we’re having to implement IPv4.5 as an emergency measure. IPv4.5 shares IP adddresses between
people at opposite sides of the globe, giving priority to those on the “day” side, so there’s a slight risk that some traffic might be mis-directed… but it’ll only be by nocturnal
websurfers who are probably just on Facebook or Twitter anyway.
I’ve found Gay Monopoly on BoardGameGeek, and I’m not sure if it’s a joke or not… BoardGameGeek’s already an April Fools in which they become search engine “Geekdo” (try
searching for “Catan”… or any other board game… on it). The photos of Gay Monopoly look
remarkably believable, but it’s hard to take anything seriously today.
The Pirate Bay has become The Pirat eBay, and has released a blog post claiming that they bought the rights to eBay on eBay and have since re-branded.
Google are well known for their April Fools’ Day pranks, and there are a good number of fantastic ones this year, but my favourite is GMail Motion, motion-sensitive controls based on body movements by which you can interact with your email. Well-worth a look.
Have a great April Fools Day! Play a prank on somebody for me. And, if you don’t want to get caught out yourself, why not install the Do Not Fool add-on for Firefox, which passes a Do-Not-Fool header to every web site you visit, requesting that the site
does not display to you any prank content but only genuine pages.
It’s World Backup Day, folks. That means it’s time for you to look at your data and check that you’re backing it
all up to a satisfactory level.
Have a look at the computer you’re sat at. If it’s hard drive(s) broke, irrecoverably, or if it were stolen: what would you lose?
Me? I like my backups to go “offsite”, so I use online redundant storage to shunt my important stuff to (I use a personal Amazon S3 bucket and some software I’ve written for that purpose, but you don’t have to be that geeky to use online backups – just check the
World Backup Day website for suggestions). If you’re not quite so paranoid as me, you might make your backups to CDs or DVDs, or onto a pendrive. It doesn’t take long, and it’s
worth it.
Backups are like insurance.
Now go celebrate World Backup Day by making some backups, or by checking that your existing backups restore correctly. You’re welcome.
However, in the meantime somebody’s one-upped me and has put in a Freedom of Information request, which – of course – the law mandates that they respond to. I should’a
thought of that. Anyway, you can read the request here, and there’s options to follow it by RSS and/or email if you want updates.
Update (27th April 2011):Still no word in response to the FoI
request.
If anybody’s interested, I’m lugging around a sackload of Diaspora Alpha invitations. If you’re the kind of person who’s
likely to want one, then you’re probably the kind of person who already knows what
Diaspora is, so I shan’t go in to any further detail here.
Leave a comment if you want one, being sure to fill in the “Email” field of the comment form with the email address you’d like your invitation sent to. See you on the flipside.
If you see me in person, you’ll know that this is something I rant about from time to time. But that’s only because people consistently put themselves and their friends at risk,
needlessly, and sometimes those friends include me. So let me be abundantly clear:
If you’re reading this, there is at least a 95% chance that your passwords aren’t good enough. You should fix them.
Today.
Let’s talk about what what we mean by “good enough”. A good password needs to be:
Long. Some of you are still using passwords that are shorter than 8 characters. The length of a password is important because it reduces the risk of a robot “brute
forcing” it. Suppose a robot can guess 1000 passwords a second, and your password uses only single-case letters and numbers. If you have a 4-character password, it’ll be lucky to last
quarter of an hour. A 6-character password might last a week and a half. At 8-characters, it might last a few decades. Probably less, if your password makes one of the other mistakes,
below. And the robots used by crackers are getting faster and faster, so the longer, the better. My shortest password is around 12 characters long, these days.
Complex. Remember how long an 8-character password lasts against a “brute force” attack? If you’re only using single-case letters, you’re reducing that by almost a
third. Mix it up a bit! Use upper and lower case letters, and numbers, as standard. Consider using punctuation, too. There’s no legitimate reason for a website to demand
that you don’t have a long and complex password, so if one does seem to have unreasonable requirements: write to the owners and threaten to take your business elsewhere if they don’t
get with the times.
Random. If your password is, is based on, or contains a dictionary word (in any language), a name or brand name, a date, a number plate or (heaven forbid) a national
insurance number, it’s not good enough. “Brute force” attacks like those described above are usually the second line of attack against properly-stored passwords: first, a robot will
try every word, name or date that it can think of, with and without capitalisation and with numbers before and afterwards. Many will also try common phrases like “iloveyou” and
“letmein”. WikiHow has a great suggestion about how to make
“random” passwords that are easy to remember.
Unique. Here’s the one that people keep getting wrong, time and time again. You should never, never, use the same password for multiple different
services (and you should be very wary of using the same password for different accounts on the same service). This is because if a malicious hacker manages to get your
password for one site, they can now start breaking into your accounts on other sites. Some people try to get around this by keeping two or three “levels” of passwords, for low-,
medium-, and high-security uses. But even if a hacker gets access to all of your “low” security sites, that is (these days, frequently) still a huge amount of data they have
with which to commit an identity theft.The other big reason to make sure your passwords are unique is that it makes it safer to share them, if the need arises. Suppose that for some
reason you need to share a password with somebody else: it’s far safer for everybody involved if the password you share with them works only for the
service you wanted to give them access to. Every person you trust is one more person who might (accidentally) expose it to a hacker by writing it down.Even if you have to memorise a
complex “master” password and keep in your wallet a list of random “suffixes” that you append to this master password, different for each site, that’s a huge step
forwards. It’s also a very basic level of two-factor
authentication: to log in to your Twitter account, for example, you need your master password (which is in your head), plus the Twitter suffix to the password (which is
written down in your wallet).
There’s been a wave of attacks recently against users of social networking websites: an attacker will break into an insecure web forum to get people’s email addresses and password, and
then will try to log in to their webmail accounts and into social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) using those same credentials. When they get a “hit”, they’ll explore the
identity of the victim, learning about their language patterns, who their friends are, and so on. Then they’ll send messages or start chats with their victim’s friends, claiming to be
their victim, and claim some kind of crisis. They’ll often ask to borrow money that needs to be wired to them promptly. And then they’ll disappear.
In this interconnected world, it’s important that your passwords are good not only for your benefit, but for your friends too. So if you’re guilty of any of the “password
crimes” above – if you have passwords that are short (under 8 characters), simple (don’t use a mixture of cases and include
numbers), predictable (using dictionary words, names, dates, etc.: even if they include a number), or re-used (used in more than one place or
for more than one site) – change your passwords today.
SuperGenPass – a very good way to use a strong, unique password for every website without having to remember multiple
passwords. Free.
KeePass – a great way to use a strong, unique password for every site and service without having to remember multiple passwords.
Free.
LastPass – another great way to use a strong, unique password for every site and service without having to remember multiple
passwords. Free (or cheap, for the premium version).
I’ve just sent a letter to the Office of National
Statistics, about the 2011 census. In case you’re interested,
or if you’d like to send a similar letter to ensure that your own living arrangements will be correctly recorded, you’re welcome to use it as a template. My letter reads:
Census Customer Services
ONS
Segensworth Road
Titchfield
Fareham
Hampshire
PO15 5RR
10th March 2011
Dear Sir or Madam,
Re: Households containing people with multiple romantic relationships in the 2011 census
I write to you to ensure that the data that will be provided by my household for the 2011 census will be properly recorded and processed. I am a supporter of the census and understand
its importance, but I am concerned that my response, and the response of others in my position, is at risk of being misunderstood or misinterpreted as a mistake.
I live with my partner and her husband in a three-way committed relationship. We have attempted to express this on the census form: my partner has checked the “husband or wife” box in
reference to her relationship to her husband, and she had checked the “partner” box in reference to her relationship with me. Like many people in this kind of relationship, our family
is the victim of unfair discrimination, and it’s important to us that we can be counted so that future lawmakers, armed with the statistical evidence, can pass policy that is fair to
all: including those who choose to be romantically-involved with multiple people at the same time.
Please give me your assurances that our data will be correctly recorded. If this is not possible, please advise me to whom I should write to put the case that this should be changed.
Yours sincerely,
Dan Q
If the census isn’t the time for a little Poly-activism, then I don’t know when is. I’ll keep
you posted if I get a response.
Me: Hello?
Caller: Hello. Is that Mr. Wilburn.
Me:Steve Wilburn?
Caller: Yes.
Me: I’m afraid I don’t know anybody by that name.
My, she was confused when I knew the name of the person she wanted to get in touch with, and then claimed not to know them! I’d had a call the previous week from the same number, and
the caller then had asked for Steve before identifying him by his full name.
If I get another call, I fully intend to cut out the “checking that they’re looking for ‘Steve'” part of the conversation and just state that I don’t know a Steve Wilburn. They’ll get
the hint eventually.
And Steve? If you’re out there, mate – somebody wants you. I have no idea who they are… but then, I have no idea who you are, either. But if you could let them know the correct number
to reach you on, that’d be appreciated. Ta.
On the evening of Saturday 26th March, Earth will host it’s latest Murder Mystery Night: Murder… Way Out
West! It’ll be a rootin’, tootin’, barrel of fun, with gunslingers and prospectors and natives scheming and dealing and trying to catch a murderer: or to get away with murder!
Whether or not you’ve been to one of our murder mystery nights before, here’s a great
opportunity to come visit, catch up, dress up, and act like a fool. If you’re free, get in touch! The more, the merrier:
but let us know so that we can assign you a character!
For those of you that care about the setting and plot of these things, here’s what you need to know:
It is the spring of 1884. America’s west coast is slowly being populated with small towns full of settlers, come to prospect for precious metals, set up ranches and run dubious
saloons and now the railroad is coming! Cactus Gulch is one such small town, founded 20 years ago and tonight it has a festive air as the townsfolk get set to start their
20th anniversary celebrations.
However, all is not running smoothly. Land disputes, disreputable card games, strange folk from out of town and hostile Indians all add to a tense atmosphere. Join us in the Silver
Dollar Saloon as celebrations begin and find out how the evening unfolds…
If you’re not following Castle, yet, you should be. I can’t believe that I’ve not
recommended this more loudly by now, but seriously, this show is awesome. And I’m not just saying that because the episode I watched most-recently was the single best bit of Whedonverse fan service outside of the Whedonverse. And would be great even if it
wasn’t.
Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle as Nathan Fillion as Malcolm Reynolds. This show just got meta. Click on the image for animated version.
The ten second-summary for those of you with short attention spans: Nathan
Fillion (of Buffy/Firefly/Dr. Horrible fame) plays Richard Castle, a crime fiction writer who’s drafted into helping the NYPD on a murder case. He then
continues to hang around (thanks to his connections with the mayor and the chief of police) with detective Kate Beckett – played by Stana Katic (she was in Quantum of Solace, but we remember her most-fondly from the third Librarian film) – in an
effort to use her as the inspiration of his next fictional crime fighter, Nicky Heat. Its cleverly-spun mysteries will appeal to mystery lovers and its comedic elements – generally
quite dry but sometimes verging on the silly – prevent the show from being “just another crime drama.”
CTRL-ALT-DEL comic from 28th Feb 2011
The third season’s broadcasting right now (and you can also watch it on Hulu, assuming that you’re in the USA or you know how to Google
for how to “watch Hulu without a proxy or VPN”), and the first two seasons are available on DVD. You’ve got my recommendation; now go try it.
Microsoft recently tweeted: “It’s not
often that we encourage you to stop using one of our products, but for IE6, we’ll make an exception”. This coincides with the launch of The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown, a website that tries to encourage people to drop this hideously old and awful browser in favour of better, modern,
standards-compliant ones, thereby saving web developers heaps of work.
Internet Explorer 6 usage stats, from IE6 Countdown. I'm honestly shocked that the number is still as high as 12%. Where are they getting that from?
That’s not strictly true; they’re encouraging people to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 and 9, presumably, which are still a little lacking in support for some modern web standards. But
they’re a huge step forward, and everybody who’d like to stick with Internet Explorer should be encouraged to upgrade. There’s no excuse for still using IE6.
They’re even providing a tool to let you put a “Upgrade now, damnit!” banner on your website,
visible only to IE6 users. It’s similar to the IE6Update tool, really, but has the benefit of actually
being supported by the browser manufacturer. That has to count for something.
Will it make a difference? I don’t know. I’m frankly appalled that there are modern, high-tech countries that still have significant numbers of IE6 users: Japan counts over
10%, for example! We’re talking here about a ten year old web browser: a web browser that’s older than MySpace, older than Facebook, older than GMail, older than YouTube.
Internet Explorer 6 was released into a world where Lord of the Rings that would take you a long time to read, rather than taking you a long time to watch. A world where in-car
CD players still weren’t universal, and MP3 players were a rarity. Do you remember MiniDisc players? Internet Explorer 6 does. The World Trade Center? Those towers were still standing
when Internet Explorer was released to the world. And if that’s making you think that 10 years is a long time, remember that in the fast-changing world of technology, it’s always even
longer.
Just remember what Microsoft (now, at long last) says: Friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer 6.
This will be the first time I’ve ever written an On This Day post where I haven’t been able to link
back to a blog post that I actually wrote in the year in question. That’s because, in 2002, I was “between blogs”: the only thing I wrote about online that I still have a copy of was
the imminent re-launch of AvAngel.com, my vanity
site at the time. In that post, however, I did mention that I’d re-written my CV, which was relevant to what was going on in my life in March 2002…
Looking Back
On this day in 2002, I first began working for SmartData, my primary employer for the last nine years. A few months
earlier, Reb – my girlfriend whom I’d moved in with in 2001 – and I had broken up, and I’d recently found the opportunity to visit Aberystwyth and visit friends there (the trip during
which I first met Claire, although we didn’t get together until a little later). On that same trip to Aber, I also met
Simon, who at that point had recently accepted a voluntary redundancy from the Rural Studies department of the University and was getting started with the launch of his software
company, SmartData. He’d recently landed a contract with the National Dairy Farm Assured Scheme and needed an extra pair of hands on board to help out with it.
Sorting out premises was coming along somewhat slower than he’d planned, though. As part of the SpinOut Wales scheme, SmartData had been offered cheap accommodation in a
University-owned building, but they were dragging their feet with the paperwork. On our first day working together, Simon and I crammed into his tiny home office, shoulder-to-shoulder,
to hack code together. The arrangement didn’t last long before we got sick of it, and we “moved in” to the room (that would eventually be legitimately ours) at Peithyll, a former
farmhouse in the village of Capel Dewi, near Aberystwyth.
The entrance to Peithyll, where SmartData established itself for much of the first six years of its life. It was quite a cycle to get out there every day, but in the summer it made
for a great office: not many people can sit at their desk and watch red kites hunting outside, or go for a lunchtime walk up a hill with a picnic.
Over the last nine years since, as the company has grown, I’ve always felt like a core part of it, shaping it’s direction. As we transitioned from developing primarily desktop
applications to primarily web-based applications, and as we switched from mostly proprietary technologies to mostly open-source technologies, I was pointing the way. By working with a
wide variety of different clients, I’ve learned a great deal about a number of different sectors that I’d never dreamed I’d come into contact with: farm assurance schemes, legal
processes, genetic testing, human resource allocation, cinema and theatre, and more. It’s been a wonderfully broad and interesting experience.
Looking Forward
When I began making plans to move to Oxford, I initially anticipated that I’d need to find work over here. But Simon
stressed that my presence was important to SmartData, and offered to allow me to work remotely, from home, which is most of what I’ve been doing for the last year or so. Thanks to the
miracles of modern technology, this has worked reasonably well: VoIP phones keep
us in touch, tunneling and virtual networks allow us to work as if we were all in the same location, and webcams help us feel like we’re not quite so far from one another.
But this wasn’t to be a permanent solution: just a way to allow me to keep contributing to SmartData for as long as possible. Last week, I was offered and accepted a new job with a new
employer, here in Oxford. Starting in April, I’ll be managing the administration and the ongoing development of the website of the Bodleian Libraries, the deposit library associated with Oxford University.
My new office, right in the heart of Oxford. It looks a lot less green, and a lot more prestigious, than Peithyll.
It’s a huge change, going from working as part of a tiny team in a West Wales town to working with hundreds of people at one of the largest employers in Oxford. I’ve no doubt that it’ll
take some getting used to: for a start, I’m going to have to get into the habit of getting dressed before I go to work – something I could get away with while working from home and that
might even have been tolerated in the office at SmartData, as long as I threw on a towel or something (in fact, I have on more than one occasion taken a shower in the SmartData offices,
then sat at my desk, wrapped in towels, until I’d dried off a little).
This feels like a huge turning point in my life: a whole new chapter – or, perhaps the completion of the “turning a page” that moving to Oxford began. My new job is a brand new
position, which provides an exciting opportunity to carve a Dan-shaped hole, and I’ll be working with some moderately-exciting technologies on some very exciting projects. I’m sure I’ll
have more to say once I’m settled in, but for now I’ll just say “Squeee!” and be done with it.
Oh: and for those of you who follow such things, you’ll note that Matt P has just announced his new job, too. Although he’s a sloppy blogger: he’s actually been working there for a little while
already.
This blog post is part of the On This Day series, in which Dan periodically looks back on years gone
by.
