So, occasionally as a web developer you might be called upon to do some weird things. I don’t mean dress up as a marmoset for some strange European film studio, but more in the vein of working with binary files on OS X and trying to copy them to a different machine as part of your pseudo web app. Sometimes web development is just full of the crazy awesome in that way.
This also serves as a bit of friendly help from past!me to future!me – I hope this solves my problem again!
This is a short summary of any rants I’ve had over the last month, that I’d also promised to record.
The list of things I missed or forgot to do or didn’t know were happening until after the fact is at least as large.
Roll on Secret Garden Party 2011.
Today is not just the start of a new year – it is also the dawning of a new decade. I’m a big fan of symbolic events, and today is traditional time of year to create a fresh start.
Webhost failed.
Website moved.
Backups missing.
Film at 11.
These are all the links that came up during the presentation. Thanks to everyone for joining in; apologies for the insanely buggy application [last minute bugs are a killer! 🙁 ]
BarCamp NorthEast : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/462291
Creative Brighton Debate : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/466292
Sussex Geek Dinner : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/463325
Farm – Web Freelancers Networking : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/403315
School Assembly : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/471749
loch_lomond : http://www.flickr.com/photos/57054298@N00/795858203
mark s waiting for food.jpg : http://www.flickr.com/photos/57054298@N00/795972083
table at due south.jpg : http://www.flickr.com/photos/57054298@N00/796855336
10/04/2008 : http://www.flickr.com/photos/57054298@N00/2403239708
hut : http://www.flickr.com/photos/57054298@N00/2096482612
Endorphin – Free : http://www.last.fm/music/Endorphin/_/Free
Howard Shore – The Black Gate is Closed : http://www.last.fm/music/Howard+Shore/_/The+Black+Gate+is+Closed
Pete Namlook & Geir Jenssen – Sky Lounge : http://www.last.fm/music/Pete%2BNamlook%2B%2526%2BGeir%2BJenssen/_/Sky+Lounge
cachecard.html : http://www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/cachecard.html
Macworld | Mac Word | Opening up the Intel Mac mini : http://www.macworld.com/article/49653/2006/03/minicsi.html
Beastie Boys – Sure Shot : http://www.last.fm/music/Beastie+Boys/_/Sure+Shot
Guns N’ Roses – Dust ‘n’ Bones : http://www.last.fm/music/Guns+N%27+Roses/_/Dust+%27n%27+Bones
Install multiple versions of IE on your PC : http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
Senior UI Consultant- London- £45K PLUS!! – CWJobs.co.uk : http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/JobSearch/JobDetails.aspx?JobId=39236544
Front End Developer – HTML, css – JobSearch : http://www.jobsearch.co.uk/show_job.cgi?j=4932274&e=year&k=Front%20End%20Web%20Developer%20-%20Creative%20agency%20-%20Essex&lo=e.g.%20Greater%20London&a=31&radius=16000&ls=long
Wait till I come! » Blog Archive » Five things to do to a script before handing it over to the next developer : http://www.wait-till-i.com/2008/02/07/five-things-to-do-to-a-script-before-handing-it-over-to-the-next-developer/
Download Now : http://www.easyfrom.net/download/
Ditz : http://ditz.rubyforge.org/
zachleat.com {web} » Using Phing to automate JavaScript and CSS Minimization : http://www.zachleat.com/web/2007/08/11/using-phing-to-automate-javascript-and-css-minimization/
Working with PHP 5 in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) – Professional PHP : http://www.procata.com/blog/archives/2007/10/28/working-with-php-5-in-mac-os-x-105/
Python-by-example : http://www.lightbird.net/py-by-example/
ARC: ARC – RDF and SPARQL for PHP developers : http://arc.web-semantics.org/
Dopplr Raumzeitgeist 2007 by dopplr Fine Art Prints and Posters : http://www.imagekind.com/Showartwork.aspx?IMID=afa7b2e6-adda-4b0c-887e-2b322d2c5015
Extenuating Circumstances – SXSW: The Web That Wasn’t : http://danhon.com/2008/03/10/sxsw-the-web-that-wasnt/
San Diego Web Standards Group : http://www.sdwebstandards.com/
UIE 2008 | Links from Andrew DeVigal’s Presentation : http://andrew.devigal.com/show/08uie/
Twitter / Greg: @stefsull – ok. for the res… : http://twitter.com/garazi/statuses/765929392
washingtonpost.com | Veterans Report Mental Distress : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/28/AR2006022801712.html?referrer=delicious
mr hermano – Tambora : http://www.last.fm/music/mr+hermano/_/Tambora
Bill Evans – Some Other Time : http://www.last.fm/music/Bill+Evans/_/Some+Other+Time
mr hermano – Tambora : http://www.last.fm/music/mr+hermano/_/Tambora
Nick Drake – Road : http://www.last.fm/music/Nick+Drake/_/Road
washingtonpost.com | Veterans Report Mental Distress : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/28/AR2006022801712.html?referrer=delicious
this is a test : http://www.google.com/
website : http://www.guardian.co.uk/
this is a test : http://www.google.com/
website : http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Jacques Loussier Trio – Gymnopedie No 1 / Var.2 : http://www.last.fm/music/Jacques+Loussier+Trio/_/Gymnopedie%2BNo%2B1%2B%252F%2BVar.2
Scuba – Harpoon : http://www.last.fm/music/Scuba/_/Harpoon
Adriana Calcanhotto – Lig-lig-lig-lé : http://www.last.fm/music/Adriana+Calcanhotto/_/Lig-lig-lig-l%C3%A9
Paulo Flores – E Doce Morrer No Mar : http://www.last.fm/music/Paulo+Flores/_/E+Doce+Morrer+No+Mar
Jimi Hendrix – Red House : http://www.last.fm/music/Jimi+Hendrix/_/Red+House
The Deleted Scenes: F**k Travelodge, f**k them right in the ear… : http://oliverjeffery.blogspot.com/2008/07/fuck-travelodge-fuck-them-right-in.html
Faces of the Fallen: Iraq and Afghanistan Casualties | washingtonpost.com : http://projects.washingtonpost.com/fallen/
weird yahoo answers language thing : http://www.somethingawful.com/flash/shmorky/babby.swf
“your grandson is really important” : http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=87
Ian Forrester on “Techhub” : http://www.cubicgarden.com/blojsom/blog/cubicgarden/culture/?permalink=Yet-another-campaign-for-a-english-silicon-valley-techhub.html
Looks Good Works Well: Announcing: Jiffy Firebug Extension for Viewing Client Side Performance Data : http://looksgoodworkswell.blogspot.com/2008/06/announcing-jiffy-firebug-extension-for.html
GoateeSaver ::: Real Men Wear Goatees : http://www.goateesaver.com/
ROXIK | Physics : http://temp.roxik.com/datas/physics/index.html
Free Events In London – What’s On In London : http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/whats-on.php?show=FREE
ROXIK | Physics : http://temp.roxik.com/datas/physics/index.html
Color Whore : http://www.colorwhore.com/
antipixel : http://www.antipixel.com/blog/
Daring Fireball : http://daringfireball.net/
hicksdesign : http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/
mindgarden : http://www.mindgarden.de/
Rails Form Helpers Cheat Sheet : http://www.slash7.com/cheats/form_helpers.pdf
280slides online slide editing and presentation : http://280slides.com/
RubyForge : http://rubyforge.org/
A Designer’s Guide to HTML Email : http://www.sitepoint.com/article/designers-guide-html-email/
Magical Microformat Maker : http://www.tomtaylor.co.uk/blog/2008/07/05/magical-microformat-maker/
White Mischief “Around The World In 80 Days” – one night indoor festival with Oojami, Ebony Bones, 7 bands, 7 vaudeville acts, 7 DJs, 7 hours of madness : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/498369
From computers to ubiquitous computing, by 2020 : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/197924
Last.fm BBQ on Rooftop Terrace : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/211291
Radiohead : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/354378
FlashBrighton: Code-along-Genetic-Algorithm : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/686456
Tantek, sleeping : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2829358922
During the break : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2832099635
Brian : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2829352818
Pinxto people : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2829384358
Sophie and Trammell : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2829349270
Thriving Office : http://www.thrivingoffice.com/
Geeks Love Bowling : http://sxsw.geekslovebowling.com/
Viddler.com – Merlin Mann – Worst Website Ever – SXSW 2008 – Uploaded by rooreynolds : http://www.viddler.com/explore/rooreynolds/videos/17/
4 Technologies for Portability in Social Networks: A Primer – ReadWriteWeb : http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/4_technologies_for_portability.php
We Tell Stories : http://wetellstories.co.uk/
Pimp Trammell : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2832944368
The geeks gather : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2832091897
Ocean : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2828524525
Choosing a spot : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2829374304
Noodles : http://www.flickr.com/photos/74105777@N00/2808563129
Coding Conventions – Flex SDK – Confluence : http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Coding+Conventions
Scott Fegette: Silverback – Guerrilla Usability Testing : http://weblogs.macromedia.com/sfegette/archives/2008/07/silverback_-_gu.html
Method for classifying and searching video databases based on 3-D camera motion – Patent 6748158 : http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6748158.html
Show Us a Better Way : http://www.showusabetterway.com/
Handpresso – Produits – Wild : http://www.handpresso.fr/products/wild-EN.html
Main Page – Ubuntu Eee : http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/index.php5?title=Main_Page
Internet Memes : http://www.dipity.com/user/tatercakes/timeline/Internet_Memes
cachecard.html : http://www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/cachecard.html
Method for classifying and searching video databases based on 3-D camera motion – Patent 6748158 : http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6748158.html
hachoir-metadata – Hachoir – Trac : http://hachoir.org/wiki/hachoir-metadata
IMG_1264.JPG : http://www.flickr.com/photos/39039882@N00/2731540678
IMG_1448.JPG : http://www.flickr.com/photos/39039882@N00/2737156310
An Evening With William Gibson : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/234757
Bay Area Maker Faire 2008 : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/190362
San Francisco Urban Iditarod 2007 : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/148365
Charles Mudede on The Stranger, Police Beat, Zoo and Desire : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/758452
Create a Winning Tagline : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/370814
Web2Open (day 1) : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/167964
Where 2.0 2008 : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/320889
Nick turns 22: Sausage party! : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/64390
John Williams – Desert Chase : http://www.last.fm/music/John+Williams/_/Desert+Chase
Oh yeah, things I liked.
Firstly, I should note that I believe in the 360Flex concept. I flew all the way to San Jose to attend the first one, and even purchased replacement plane ticket when the first one went wrong due to booking complications. I was the first person to buy a ticket for 360Flex:Milan, before the tickets were even publicised. Also, I can see the need for a purely technical conference in contrast to more designer focused conferences. And finally, I can only commend their complete and utter transparency towards all aspects of their business including traditionally taboo subjects such as money.
Secondly, I should note that there are two factors that were completely outside the control of the 360 Conferences team:
However, with those mitigating factors out of the way, in my opinion 360Flex:Milan was a failure. Financially by their own figures revealed in the keynote, they lost about EUR 9 400 (EUR 15 900 with refunds issued for the first day). As far as the conference itself went, I don’t think it worked either – and it certainly did not meet the high standards already set by previous 360Flex incarnations.
There were minor problems with things such as Internet access, buffet food or even bottomless coffee, but you can always have those sorts of problems with any organised event. Specifically, as far as the conference went I feel there are three main areas where Milan did not match up to previous conferences: speakers, attendees, and less importantly, added-extras.
These three issues, in my opinion, boil down to problems with speakers and advertising. Speakers directly drive attendee numbers – attendees go to conferences to see speakers’ sessions. Attendees know about the conferences via some form of advertising, whether grass-root or more traditional. And of course, with enough paying attendees there hopefully can be enough of a profit to be able to have nice-to-have added extras.
On the final day of 360Flex, I noticed the large amount of Twitts from world touring UK based speakers attending the OnAirTour event in London. Why didn’t these people attend at least the first 2 days of 360Flex?
In a similar vein, why did I not hear any official mention of 360Flex:Milan at either the London Flash Platform or Flex London user groups? The London Flash Platform group has attendances between 50 and 100 people every month. The Flex London user group has 428 people signed up for the MeetUp.com group, a good proportion of whom are UK based. Where were these people?
I can only assume that the decision to only partially compensate speakers for their expenses meant many European speakers were unable to attend. I personally know of one speaker who decided to dramatically cut down on speaking engagements and concentrate on direct paid work, due to the amount they were out of pocket through speaking at conferences around the world – I fund all of my conference attendance directly out of my own pocket, so I can complete appreciate their position. And as far as US based speakers go, at least one of the scheduled ones was unable to attend, simply because his company just didn’t do business in Europe.
I can also only assume that 360Flex:Milan was not publicised as widely as it could be. Whenever I spoke to other Flex and Flash developers about attending 360Flex:Milan, I was either looked at in surprise, or they hadn’t even heard about it (and then I gave my spiel based on my experience as San Jose)
360Conferences stumbled a little when it came to Milan – I certainly don’t feel that the 360Flex team put as much effort into advertising and organising 360Flex in Milan, as they did for Seattle or even Atlanta. The sad consequence of this of course is, using their own numbers released in the keynote, if they’d managed to increase the number of attendees, then they probably would have ended up in profit, and other benefits would have flown from that.
In summary, I think that the core idea of a transparent, developer based, community focused conference is a good one. I also think that in Europe at least, the rest of the equation (speaker policy, choice of on-site location and subsequent costs, advertising) needs some reworking.
Sadly, I’ve now changed my opinions of 360Flex conferences. SanJose:2008 has too many things in its favour not to succeed – but my conference dance card is now full up for the year. I might attend Europe:2009, but I certainly won’t be signing up on day one, sight unseen.
This is a tidying up of my presentation from BarCampBrighton2 over the weekend. The notes I used for my presentation were were pretty much just these URLs with some memory prompts for any points I wanted to raise.
Introduction
My introductory point was simple: data + understanding == information. For example, when you know that the character string 011000010100001001100011 is in ASCII you will see that the string is really aBc.
Cholera in London
Jeremy Keith brought this one up during the talk and I always forget this one so I thought I’d just slip it in sneakily anyway. This shows plots cholera outbreaks and water pumps on a central London map and pretty much proved the direct relationship between the two.
Charles Minead – Napoleon’s Attack on Russia 
Since the last talk there has been an article in the Economist talking about the history of infographics, and there is a much clearer version of this map available. This chart shows six separate pieces of information fairly concisely – geography, time, temperature, the course and direction of the army’s movement, and the number of troops remaining.
Florence Nightingale – Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army of the East 
Similarly, Florence Nightingale’s chart was also referenced in the Economist article. It has been re-analysed by Henry Woodbury at Dynamic Diagrams and shown in different formats all based off the same data. It is interesting to notice how the choice of representation can influence the implied relationship of meaning. Sparkline
Another reprise from my BarCampLondon2 talk, Sparklines are a quick and easy way to compare changes in a single value over time. This particular grab is from the Wikipedia article, and provides a comparison between these two stock indexes.
This is a link discussion page for Sparklines, that also contains a couple of pages of the original concept as outlined in Edward Tufte’s book, Beautiful Evidence
Treemaps -Sequioa View
Treemaps were created by Ben Shneiderman as a way of discovering where the hard drive space on his server was being used. The size of the square indicates the size of the file – so a file several directories deep can still be noticed. This is a link to the Windows program SequioaView that can be used for the same task. O’Reilly’s State of the Computer Book Market 
Every year the team at O’Reilly produce a report on the rise and fall of the computer book market, using Treemaps. Rises are indicated by green colours; falls by red colours; intensity indicates the strength of the rise or fall. It is really easy to see what the big winners and losers for the year are.
Smart Money Stockmarket
A natural place for Treemaps to be used is in the stock market – this is a link to the first pretty one that I could find; the colour scheme is the same as the O’Reilly treemap.
Newsmap
NewsMap is an interactive news browser that consumes GoogleNews. This is plotting the number of distinct news articles (size), the type of article (colour), and the age (brightness).
HistoryFlow
HistoryFlow is an innovative approach to analysing the history of edits of any Wikipedia page. Using this tool you can clearly examine the influence of various authors on a Wikipedia article, contrasting edits over time, and over the number of edits. It also clearly highlights exactly how pointless wiki-vandalism is.
MySociety: More Travel Maps
I talked about the MySociety travel maps at BarCampLondon2, and they’ve updated their travel maps since then. One of the updates is a really cool RIA-let that allows you to contrast travel times to the Department of Transport with London house prices.
State of the Union
The State of the Union address is a good source to analyse for differences overtime. I couldn’t find the original webpage that I’d sourced, but in searching I found this one that is much better. This site allows you to compare the Union addresses, with particular keywords highlighted. You can compare speeches for key presidents going back to Abraham Lincoln. Unsurprisingly more modern presidents are a little more concerned with terrorism, although war does seem to be a constant.
GapMinder
GapMinder is a great site powered by UnData.org. This RIA allows various statistics to be charted against each other, while highlighting specific countries and looking at the changes over time. When I first found this site, I spent nearly an hour playing around combining different statistics – during which time I noticed a bump when the contraceptive pill was introduced to the US, followed a few years later by a bump in the UK. Of course, an important thing to keep in mind is that correlation is not necessarily causation.
Photo Analysis
I found this article referenced in New Scientist a few years ago. It describes a process where the hidden unique information in a photograph – the arrangement of buildings – can be used to identify where in the world that picture was taken.
Aphex Twin – Windowlicker
Richard D James is known for his weird electronic music and using his face as visual branding for his music. The music video for Windowlicker features a group of bikini clad models all wearing his face as a mask – but he has also hidden his face inside the music, visible only through the use of a spectrogram.
Year Zero
And finally, Year Zero. In conjunction with the new Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero, there was an Alternate Reality Game created by the team who made I Love Bees (a Halo promotion). Information for this game was hidden in all sorts of places – amongst others they include:
Yay, Flash on the Beach is nearly here!
This is all the stuff I’ve got more than a 50% intention of seeing. Everything else is up in the air until 5 minutes before hand.
Sunday
Game Development
Monday
9:00 – Keynote
10:15 – AS3 Particle Effects – Now 1000% Extra FREE! (or maybe 50 Reasons AS3 Kicks Ass)
11:30 – From Real to Virtual and Back Again
13:30 – Make Flash Games. Retire Early.
16:00 – Dynamic Abstractions
20:00 – If it aint broke – break it!
Tuesday
9:00 – Flex and Actionscript 3 Worst Practices (although I am tempted by Building Complexity)
10:15 – Perceptive Interactions + Alternative Interfaces
14:45 – Flashing Flex
16:00 – Breaking Away
20:00 – Beyond the Knowledge: The Art of Playing
Wednesday
9:00 – Adobe Town Hall Meeting
10:15 – Sound B(y)tes (or maybe Stylizing Flex)
13:30 – Visualizing Time (although I’d like to see Richard Leggett’s talk, just for all the Gizmos)
16:00 – Algorithms to Fill Space