Oxford Station. Catching a train to Manchester for a get-together in memory of the Nightline Association, which will sadly be closing this year (although individual Nightlines will
doubtless soldier on just as they did before the Association).
Carrying a big ol’ bag of Three Rings swag to give to basically anybody who expresses even the slightest interest. 😅
Three Rings has been supporting Nightlines since before the Nightline Association and nowadays underpins voluntary work by hundreds of other charities including helplines like
Samaritans and Childline. Feeling sad that the Nightline Association is going away and looking for a new and rewarding way to volunteer? Come chat to me!
A lunchtime dog walk was made especially delightful by the growing warmth of the approaching British springtime. It’s really bright and pretty out, this afternoon!
Here in Oxfordshire we’re nowhere near the epicentre of Storm Darragh, but we’re still feeling the effects. A huge tree came down and blocked the Thorney Leys road in Witney near
Burwell Meadow and the kids and I needed to take an ad-hoc diversion.
🤞 Fingers crossed for all my friends and family in worse-hit places!
Not quite ready for wintering indoors, our village’s hardy sheep are enjoying pasturing in the large field near the school this beautiful but chilly morning.
Ever wondered why Oxford’s area code is 01865? The story is more-complicated than you’d think.
As a child, I was told that city STD codes were usually associated to the letters that appear on some telephones… but that
wouldn’t make any sense for Oxford’s code!
I’ll share the story on my blog, of course. But before then, I’ll be telling it from the stage of the Jericho Tavern at 21:15 on Wednesday 17 April as
my third(?) appearance at Oxford Geek Nights! So if you’re interested in learning about some of the quirks of UK telephone numbering
history, I can guarantee that this party’s the only one to be at that Wednesday night!
Not your jam? That’s okay: there’s plenty of more-talented people than I who’ll be speaking, about subjects as diverse as quantum computing with QATboxen, bringing your D&D experience to stakeholder management (!), video games
without screens, learnings from the Horizon scandal, and whatever Freyja Domville means by The Unreasonable Effectiveness of the Scientific Method (but I’m seriously excited by that title).
Anyway: I hope you’ll be coming along to Oxford Geek Nights 57 next month, if not to hear me witter on about the
fossils in our telecommunications networks then to enjoy a beer and hear from the amazing speakers I’ll be sharing the stage with. The event’s always a blast, and I’m looking forward to
seeing you there!
There are two junctions at which I can join the A40 trunk road from my house. When I drive East, I use the Easternmost of the two; when I drive West, I use the Westernmost; but I almost
never drive the stretch of road between them!
A few years ago I generated heatmaps of my movements based on my long-running personal location log and, indeed, it shows a “cool spot” along this
section of road too:
The week before last I had the opportunity to deliver a “flash talk” of up to 4 minutes duration at a work meetup
in Vienna, Austria. I opted to present a summary of what I’ve learned while adding support for Finger and Gopher protocols to the WordPress installation that powers DanQ.me (I also hinted at the fact that I already added Gemini and Spring ’83 support, and I’m looking at
other protocols). If you’d like to see how it went, you can watch my flash talk here or on
YouTube.
If you love the idea of working from wherever-you-are but ocassionally meeting your colleagues in person for fabulous in-person events with (now optional) flash talks like this, you
might like to look at Automattic’s recruitment pages…
The presentation is a shortened, Automattic-centric version of a talk I’ll be delivering tomorrow at Oxford Geek Nights #53; so if
you’d like to see it in-person and talk protocols with me over a beer, you should come along! There’ll probably be blog posts to follow with a more-detailed look at the how-and-why of
using WordPress as a CMS not only for the Web but for a variety of zany, clever, retro, and retro-inspired protocols down the
line, so perhaps consider the video above a “teaser”, I guess?
On Wednesday this week, three years and two months after Oxford Geek Nights #51, Oxford Geek Night
#52. Originally scheduled for 15 April 2020 and then… postponed slightly because of the pandemic, its reapparance was an epic moment that I’m glad to have been a part of.
A particular highlight of the night was witnessing “Gasman”Matt Westcott show off his
epic demoscene contribution Pharmageddon, which is presented via a “pharmacy sign”. Here’s a video, if you’re interested.
Ben Foxall also put in a sterling performance; hearing him talk – as usual – made me say “wow, I didn’t know you could do that with a
web browser”. And there was more to learn, too: Jake Howard showed us how robots see, Steve Buckley inspired us to think about how technology can make our homes more energy-smart (this is really cool and sent me
down a rabbithole of reading!), and Joe Wass showed adorable pictures of his kid exploring the user interface of his lockdown electronics
project.
Oh, and there was a quiz competition too, and guess who came out on top after an incredibly tight race.
But mostly I just loved the chance to hang out with geeks again; chat to folks, make connections, and enjoy that special Oxford Geek Nights atmosphere. Also great to meet somebody from
Perspectum, who look like they’d be great to work for and – after hearing about – I had in mind somebody to suggest for a job with them… but it
looks like the company isn’t looking for anybody with their particular skills on this side of the pond. Still, one to watch.
My prize for winning the competition was an extremely-limited-edition cap which I love so much I’ve barely taken it off since.
Huge thanks are due to Torchbox, Perspectum and everybody in attendance for making this magical night possible!
Oh, and for anybody who’s interested, I’ve proposed to be a speaker at the next Oxford Geek Nights, which sounds like it’ll be towards Spring 2023. My title is
“Yesterday’s Internet, Today!” which – spoilers! – might have something to do with the kind of technology I’ve been playing with recently, among other things. Hope to see you there!
Today my #distributed #remotework office is provided by @OCFI_OI, which provides me that most #Oxford of views: simultaneously containing architecture of the 1960s… and the 1160s.
This afternoon, the kids and I helped with some citizen science as part of the Thames WaterBlitz, a collaborative effort
to sample water quality of the rivers, canals, and ponds of the Thames Valley to produce valuable data for the researchers of today and tomorrow.
Our sampling point was by bridge 228 on the Oxford Canal: the first job was fetching water.
My two little science assistants didn’t need any encouragement to get out of the house and into the sunshine and were eager to go. I didn’t even have to pull out my trump card of
pointing out that there were fruiting brambles along the length of the canal. As I observed in a vlog last year, it’s usually pretty easy to
motivate the tykes with a little foraging.
Some collaboration was undertaken to reach a consensus on the colour of the sample.
The EarthWatch Institute had provided all the chemicals and instructions we needed by post, as well as a mobile app with which to record our results (or paper forms, if we preferred).
Right after lunch, we watched their instructional video and set out to the sampling site. We’d scouted out a handful of sites including some on the River Cherwell as it snakes through
Kidlington but for this our first water-watch expedition we figured we’d err on the safe side and aim to target only a single site: we chose this one both because it’s close to home and
because a previous year’s citizen scientist was here, too, improving the comparability of the results year-on-year.
Lots of nitrates, as indicated by the colour of the left tube. Very few phosphates, as indicated by the lack of colour in the right (although it’s still a minute and a half from
completing its processing time at the point this photo was taken and would darken a tiny bit yet).
Which colour most-resembles the colour of our reagent?
Our results are now online, and we’re already looking forward to seeing the overall
results pattern (as well as taking part in next year’s WaterBlitz!).
