marramgrass

(PAW2009 13/52)

When visitors ask me to name my favourite place in Northern Ireland, I usually say the beach at Downhill. I remember occasionally stopping there as a child; it was especially exciting because we took the car down onto the beach.

It was a great day yesterday — in Lisburn, at least — so we grabbed some sandwiches and loaded the dog into the back of the car to head for Downhill. On the way up, my wife remarked that we hadn’t been there since about six or seven weeks before we discovered she was pregnant.

The baby’s due in four weeks’ time.

Another from my dander around Portrush last week.

(PAW2009 12/52)

Well, it’s just beside the Portandubh, actually. I managed to snag an hour to dander around Portrush before the start of a residential over the weekend. Great weather, good company, excellent chat.

Google are famous for their (unofficial?) company motto: “Don’t be evil.”

Their fun Street View service eased its way into action in the UK yesterday, and then got picked up by the media.

The BBC has been following the story, and has published this series of images from and of the Street View cars — did you spot them anywhere last summer? You’d know if you had. (I spied the car in Dundonald, and it may have taken my picture. I was too far away to be sure that it’s my car in the photo.)

How do you feel about the whole thing?

The Daily Mail reacted pretty much as you’d expect them to, emphasising controversy. Junior was also quick to criticize the availability of imagery around Northern Ireland. I particularly like his suggestion that everyone who viewed a picture of a police station “should be traced by the security services.”

It is possible to ask Google to remove imagery, and they have taken some down already.

The main concerns seem to be that Street View invades privacy and that it may be useful to criminals.

Maybe I’m just not paranoid enough (which would be hard to say about me, really), but surely there’s nothing here that a determined criminal, or — dare I say it — terrorist, couldn’t find out pretty easily elsewhere? The fear of terrorists armed with photographs is almost totally baseless, and surely a simple street map is almost as (theoretically) useful. If you wanted to see what the Google Street View car saw, all you need to do is take a walk or a drive down that street.

The privacy question is more complicated. I was quite surprised, in a not altogether good way, when I saw how detailed the images of my parents’ house are. What Google says is true: they don’t show anything that isn’t in clear view of the public roads, which means technically there is no legal concern. Indeed, by my non-professional but I hope well-informed understanding, the contention in that Daily Mail article that this is using people’s likenesses commercially is irrelevant: “commercial use” generally refers to advertising, where you could be seen as endorsing a product, and Google obscure faces anyway. Making money using images is incidental to this sense of “commercial”. (Of course, IANAL, so don’t go by what I say.)

Legally it seems fine, and, according to the articles linked above, Google have been in dialogue with the Information Commissioner to make sure of that. That doesn’t make it completely comfortable, though.

That said, while I get uncomfortable with the accessibility of pictures of my family’s homes, I enjoy looking at other places on Street View. That makes it complicated.

It’s like many things Google does: they’re handling and controlling a frightening amount of information (they get all my email, my RSS subscriptions, my searches, everything any of us writes online), but they do it so well. Perhaps we’re alright, as long as they stick to that motto: don’t be evil.

(PAW2009 11/52)

This is left over from when we had all the snow the other month. I’m posting it after what was an almost balmy weekend. Yesterday afternoon we saw several (perhaps middle-aged) men taking their soft-topped and open-topped treasures out for the first sunny run of the season. A little bit of me did look slightly longingly at the bright yellow Caterham 7 (although can you imagine me trying to get in and out of one of those?). Walking the dog around the park, we noticed plenty of green shoots on the trees, and the daffodils and crocuses were blooming.

I love the winter and the cold, but spring is still welcome. When I wake in the morning now, I’m not in complete darkness, and there’s a little daylight left on the way home in the evening. Growing light and lifting spirits contrast harshly with the events of the last nine days. I haven’t commented here because I don’t know what to say. I suppose that when things in the past cast such long and such deep shadows, it can be difficult to tell between what’s distant and fading and what’s still here, now, lurking. Not that anyone has wanted to look too closely.

But, here is spring.

Diversity is a strength, apparently, so how’s this?

• There was a fire at the old courthouse on the Crumlin Road, yesterday. Zcott grabbed the photo of the day.
• The Guardian has opened up its data. Boy, do I have ideas for this.
• At FOWA Dublin last week, I spotted the guy beside me making notes with FreeMind. Davy Mac then pointed me towards XMind, which looks more powerful but maybe a little more involved to use. I will try them out and return anon with a comparison.
• The question came up of when the clocks go forward, so Google turned us up a handy list of holidays and so on.
• Is typing knackering your handwriting? For a guy who spends so much time with a pen in his hand, my scratchings are atrocious.
• I’ve been seeing this in all kinds of places, and if I had somewhere to hang posters, I’d see it there, too: Keep Calm and Carry On.
• Insight from a young man with Asperger Syndrome. Read it.
• And finally, a little something I made last week while I was sitting in a Dublin hotel room watching my wife study: all about me.

Enjoy.

Last Friday was the Future of Web Apps Dublin 2009. It was a packed day, with the venue as crowded as the schedule. There were ten sessions, plus the ‘uni’ workshops during the breaks.

By the time I got home on the Friday night I was knackered, and I was nursing my usual post-conference headache. I came away with a lot to think about: even though the content was aimed squarely at a particular field of endeavour, and there was a very strong emphasis on making money (fair enough — food and lodging are nice to have :), much of what was said was very (surprisingly?) transferable to just about anywhere, including the volunteer/support/community work/youth work/faith spheres. That’s value for money!

This won’t be for every reader here, so click on through if you want my brief (some briefer than others) thoughts on some of the different sessions (there were others). (more…)

(PAW2009 10/52)

What’s the biggest city in the world?

Two trips to the banks of the Liffey last week. The first was for an exam my wife was sitting (no results yet, but it won’t be long) and the second was for an intensive day at FOWA Dublin 2009. Maybe more on the second one later.

I’ve never been to Dublin much. I’ve shifted between train stations a couple of times on my way further south; the occasional day trip; a couple of times accompanying my better half on her way to exams. It’s a city that needs to be explored some more.

Of course, the current state of sterling against the euro doesn’t help. €2.30 for a Coke at Liberty Hall on Friday was even less fun after the exchange rate. At least I managed to get my train ticket for £12.50.

Dublin. Because it keeps on doublin’ and doublin’ and doublin’. Yup.

Whatever you think of Jeffrey Donaldson, he has a reputation as a decent constituency MP. My wife wrote to him a couple of years ago, and he regularly sent her letters updating her on what he was hearing about her issue. (“Her issue,” that sounds very mysterious, doesn’t it? The thing that she wrote to him about.)

Three days after firing him off an email from the Parliament website, I got a letter back saying that he shared my concerns with Harriet Harman’s comments, and would raise them with her. The letter was quite definite in its tone, which is nice. Speedy service indeed.

Of course, I doubt that it will actually change her attitude in any way, but there you go. Government can be at least slightly accessible.

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to my MP.

I say letter. You can send emails through the Parliament website, these days. It makes it very easy. Also, you’d think it would lead to getting ignored, but apparently not. I’ve done it once before, you see — only once, my wife’s more of that kind of agitator than I am — and I got a substantial reply. I may occasionally fill a pen with a nice green ink, but I don’t make a habit of writing as Concerned from Culcavy.

I am, though.

RBS goes from being one of the biggest banks in the world (whatever that means) to needing a barrow-full of money from the Treasury to keep going, so the head of the company did the decent thing and resigned — taking with him a pension that in any given year will provide him with quite probably more money than I will earn between here and my own retirement. The Government, as represented by Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman, are determined that he won’t get to keep it, even though that’s what he was promised, contracted and given.

Both Mr Brown and Ms Harman have been very vocal in the press, with the latter being quoted as saying:

It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract but it’s not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that’s where the Government steps in.

That’s what bothers me, and I’m of the sort of political leaning that tends to like government involvement in things.

It’s like this:

• Thing’s went really wrong on Sir Fred Goodwin’s watch, so he resigned. That’s as it should be.
• The amount of money he’s being given as a pension is horrendous, but it is what he’s entitled to by his contract (I am not a lawyer, of course, and this is based purely on press coverage).
• Nobody, except possibly the man himself, thinks it’s fair or reasonable for him to take it all, but the decision is his and he seems to want to keep it. Honour, justice, whatever, might suggest that he shouldn’t, but it’s his call.
• Prominent folks in Government are hinting at intervention to see that he doesn’t get to keep it.

It’s pretty objectionable in this case, but the contract of employment can be one of the major things that protects employees from abuse (assuming that contract is fair and just). Suggesting that an employee’s entitlements in a contract can be reduced after the fact, just because we don’t like them, is worrying. Even more so is the idea that Government will get involved in a specific individual case like this. After Sir Fred, who will be the next one to have the rug pulled out from under them?

The damage is done; learn the lesson (a clause along the lines of “If you make a hash of it then you don’t get quite as big a pile of money”?) and move on.