David Davies: The View From Here

Gone to the Caribbean

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 17:28:52 GMT

If you want me, I'll be in the Caribbean, working and kicking back for a week...

AppleStore Bullring

Sun, 01 May 2005 23:29:29 GMT

Birmingham's very own and only Europe's second AppleStore opened last Friday April 29th @ 6pm coinciding with the release of Tiger, OS X 10.4. Emily queued for almost 3 hours to enter the store and get one of the limited edition T-shirts. Me and Matthew waited until after 9pm and queued for just a few minutes. This picture is of Matt's T-shirt. I've kept mine unopened in the box it came in. Who knows, may be worth something on e-bay one day! Click the photo to see more of my pics of the opening.

Apple at the Bullring

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:40:11 GMT

Well whadya know, Apple's second European AppleStore opens in my home town at 6pm on April 29th, timed to coincide with the release of Tiger. Thanks to another new release in the UK, Google maps, here's how to find the new Apple store. Just so that you'll recognise the Bullring when you get to Birmingham, here's the Flickr Bullring picture gallery.

Enjoying it while I can

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:58:24 GMT

Ok, so only a few more hours when I can say I'm still in my 30's. Tomorrow I hit the big 40. How do I feel? Fine. Why shouldn't I be, it's only another birthday :)

Happy vernal equinox

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 16:41:04 GMT

Today is the first day of Spring for all Northern hemisphere dwellers (first day of Autumn in the Southern hemisphere).

The devil is always in the detail

Sun, 07 Nov 2004 09:07:20 GMT

Robert J. Vanderbei has done a really nice piece of work to visualize the US election results county by county rather than state by state. Robert's map shows that America is not as geographically polarized in its support for Kerry or Bush as the state by state results (or indeed the media reports) would have us belive. There clearly are strong geographic preferences for Republican or Democratic politics but isn't not as black or white, or indeed red or blue, as appears at first. In order to understand the true picture you have to look closer to see sufficient detail. The county by country election results are available via the USA Today election results web site if you want to check or look up the results for an individual county.

Lilia Effimova has also spotted this map and has written a typically thoughtful piece on the dangers of binary thinking as a result of over generalization.

You can only see the picture clearly when you have sufficient detail

The people have spoken

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 21:41:46 GMT

So, after one of the biggest turn-outs in US election history, the majority of voting Americans want George W Bush to be their president for 4 more years. In fact more people wanted him to be president this time than last. Sure, a lot of people are unhappy about that, but you can't argue with democracy, and the people have spoken. If you are fortunate to live in a country where every citizen has the right to vote, remembering many people in the world aren't quite so fortunate, and where every vote is worth the same as the next, then sometimes it's hard to accept when not everyone in your country feels the same as you if your guy doesn't win but theirs does. At least you were able to cast your vote.

Democracy hangs in the balance

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 17:42:55 GMT

In 48 hours the world's most powerful democracy will set an example for the world's soon-to-be newest. Let's hope neither of them screw it up.

Spring forward, fall back

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 16:25:32 GMT

The UK falls back to GMT today. We gained an hour in bed this morning but will lose an hour this evening. It's now just after 5pm and it's dark already. In a week it'll be bonfire night and then we'll be counting down the days until Christmas. Oh yeah, and it's Halloween tonight too. How could I forget, we've just had our first trick or treaters.

Blogging may be bad for your career

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 22:50:18 GMT

Ellen Simonetti aka Queen of the Sky has lost her job because of posting to her weblog. It was allegedly because she posted pictures of herself in her work uniform and presumably her employer didn't like that kind of publicity. Although this is the first example that I've seen of someone losing their job because of their weblog, I expect it won't be the last. As employers begin to realize that their employees are publishing comments about their work to a wider audience, including potential customers and competitors, then we can expect them to be developing anti-blogging policies. Just as it took a while for the publishing industry to realize the extend of music sharing using P2P technology before it began to act, so businesses are slowly realizing that their employees are writing about their work online. It's naive to think that all employers will embrace the data mining or knowledge management potential of their employees by encouraging weblogs. In many cases weblogs will be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a threat. How they respond to that threat may have important implications for many webloggers.

John Peel

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 20:00:03 GMT

John Peel has died. It's a total shock. He was perhaps the most influential person in UK music having been personally responsible for breaking so many important and influential bands and showcasing new music. He has educated a generation of music lovers. Like so many others my own personal taste in music has been hugely influenced by his eclectic playlists. Much of the music I still treasure and bands who's music I most admire were discovered by listening to his shows. His voice is so familiar it's difficult to imagine not hearing it again. A truly sad day and a great loss to music.

Back from holiday

Sun, 22 Aug 2004 22:56:10 GMT

Back from a week's holiday in our usual haunt, Pembrokeshire. The pick of the pics will be online soon. While I was away I had no mobile phone signal and no Internet. I didn't miss either as much as I expected, which was good because it's a sign I'm not totally dependent. Even the TV didn't have satellite or cable so we just had good old 5 channels, which was OK because the kids needed a break from cartoons and MTV. Time instead for having fun with the kids and taking lots of photographs. This picture is Matt's sandy hand from the beach at Wisemans Bridge.

Not that David Davies

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 00:25:55 GMT

Ok, so I indulge in a little vanity surfing, I use PubSub to keep track of who's commenting on my weblog posts. I have one PubSub subscription for my weblog URL and another for 'David Davies', figuring that there aren't that many bloggers with the same name yet (though it is a popular name in the land of my fathers, Wales, so come the Welsh weblogging revolution who knows - although I'm only 1/4 Welsh myself). Anyway on a good day I may get maybe one or two entries in my PubSub feeds. But today, I got 33! Wow, did I suddenly get popular overnight? Sadly no, it's another David Davies, one that stepped in to temporarily replace the Chief Exec of the FA in the wake of the Mark Palios/Sven-Goran Eriksson fuss-over-nothing 'scandal'. So for the time being at least, David Davies is making the (sporting) news headlines in the UK. There are other David Davies' that jockey for top position in Google. Currently yours truly is top but I share the top 10 with a Welsh politician, a philosopher, a painter, a molecular biologist, and our friend from the FA - though from his old TV presenter days.

Back from California

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 23:51:20 GMT

Back from alt-i-lab 2004 and back from California. Lots to say about the conference and my first exposure to the inner workings of IMS. Fascinating insights into the standards and specifications world including the true nature of specification adoption after talking to people both inside IMS and out. Notes from the conference later. I had the unexpected but considerable pleasure of meeting some of the people I most admire from the weblogging world, notably Raymond Yee, Scott Leslie and David Wiley. I hadn't expected to meet any webloggers at this meeting let alone three such distinguished exponents. Raymond, Scott and David are really nice people and I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with them. It's a real treat to meet people from the weblogging world in the flesh and for me it de-emphasizes weblogs and weblogging per se and instead emphasizes the people behind the blogs. Scott and I along with Mark Stiles had a great evening out at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Redwood City and even the trip to Shooters bar afterwards was an experience (Mark has a great photo that I'll try to get a copy of). In the meantime, the accompanying photo is courtesy of David's camera, thanks David and looking forward to spending more time next conference.

The real highlight of my time in California though has to be my post-conference road trip around San Diego courtesy of Jack Mancilla. It was an incredible experience and I took lots of great photos. I am so indebted to Jack for being such a good host. I'm just getting the pictures web-ready so I'll post them soon along with notes from the trip.

First mobile phone virus created

Wed, 16 Jun 2004 19:21:12 GMT

It begins...

iTunes music store comes to the UK

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 22:23:21 GMT

Oh great, there goes the credit card limit. The Apple iTunes music store has hit the UK. Just tried my first purchase, Yello's "You Gotta say yes to Another Excess". The music store works beautifully. Simple one-click purchase and really fast download, 79p per track. Although I've downloaded maybe hundreds of MP3s it's not had a major impact on my CD buying, I still like to own a physical CD and I have no wish to deprive songwriters of their rightful royalties (for example I'm very happy to support an artist like Morrissey and his rather good comeback album "You are the Quarry" album especially as hits the stores after Morrissey was dropped by his record label so I'm sure he could do with a few quid), but downloading using something like Acquisition is just so darned easy. Well now I guess I've got no excuse as the iTunes music store is just as easy. I'm happy to use it and to pay for downloaded music, but will it change the fact that I like to own a CD? And will I hang up my copy of Acquisition? Time will tell.

Cry 'God for Harry, England and Saint George!'

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 15:37:35 GMT

It's Saint George's day and like many other proud Englishmen I'll be in the pub tonight! If you're near the Griffin Inn at Shustock stop by and I'll buy you a pint!

The title quote is from Henry V Act 3, Scene 1 as King Henry V addresses his men in battle against the French. The same speech also gave us "Once more unto the breach, dear friends". The quote is particularly apt as today is also Shakespeare's birthday.

View across Conwy Bay from Beaumaris, Anglesey

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 10:22:46 GMT

I thought this weblog needed a bit of colour. This is the view from Beaumaris on the island of Anglesey across Conwy Bay of some of the peaks in the northernmost range of Snowdonia on the mainland. Taken with my Nikon CoolPix 950 during a day trip on Easter Monday.

The whiff of life

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 19:51:49 GMT

I think we're getting close to something big, very big. The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe has confirmed earlier findings that the Martian atmosphere contains traces of methane. Apparently there are only two plausible sources of methane in a planet's atmosphere, volcanic activity and biological processes. What's more, as methane only persists in the atmosphere for a relatively short period, it must be being constantly replenished. As Mars seems to be devoid of any obvious volcanic activity, well, draw your own conclusions, at least until someone sends up another probe with a methane sniffer on board. Ironically, the doomed Beagle 2 probe had such an instrument on board. Perhaps the Martians knew we were getting too close.

Gia's got a new showreel

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 18:57:47 GMT

Head's up, Gia's got a new showreel. Watch, enjoy, employ :)

Mars attacks

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 17:22:36 GMT

The Martians have struck again as NASA have announced they've lost contact with the Spirit rover. Let's hope it's just a temporary communication glitch as according to the press release "similar events occurred several times during the Mars Pathfinder mission". If this is a major fault and the end of the Spirit mission then it's a poignant end because the last published image received from Spirit was a look back at the empty lander, an image entitled 'Empty nest'. Let's hope this Spirit has yet flown the nest for good.

Sometimes size doesn't matter

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 23:26:21 GMT

Few can be unimpressed by the quality of pictures coming back from the NASA Spirit Mars rover. But did you know Spirit only has a 1 megapixel digital camera? The CCD is just 1,000x1,000 pixels. When you compare this to the 6 megapixel cameras readily available in high street camera shops, just how does Spirit get such good pics? The answer is in the lens. In any digital camera the lens is one of the major determinants of picture quality. Most consumer digital cameras have relatively cheap lenses. Stick on a top notch lens and even the most modest of cameras can take better pics. True, Spirit also uses a CCD with a higher spec than those used in your average Sony Cybershot but it's still way below the maximum resolution of consumer cameras. The secret of Spirit's success are its lenses. If you're buying yourself a digital camera in the January sales then go for one that accepts replacement lenses. You might not be able to afford the kinds of hardware NASA uses but you can still improve the quality of your pictures by carefully selecting the lenses you can afford.

Don't forget Europe got to Mars, too

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 23:10:30 GMT

Europe shows that it's not just the USA that can wow us with stunning images (and serious science) as the European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite beams back its first full colour close-up of the surface of the red planet. The picture is of Valles Marineris, the Grand Canyon of Mars, a region of the planet thought to have been carved out by flowing water. You can keep track of the latest images from Mars Express by visiting the ESA's image gallery. So right now we have both NASA and ESA exploring Mars, reinforcing the need for a manned mission to Mars to be a collaboration rather than a race.

We choose to go to Mars

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 00:13:06 GMT

Above is the first ever picture of the surface of Mars taken by the NASA Viking 1 lander on July 20, 1976. I don't mind telling you that I'm really excited about all the space news we've been having lately, in particular of course the exciting NASA Spirit Rover exploration of Mars. I was 12 years old when Viking 1 landed on Mars in 1976. It was the most incredible thing to see the first images taken on the surface of another planet being beaming back into our homes. I still have a copy of National Geographic magazine from that time. Back then of course there's wasn't anything like the instant access to online libraries of pictures streamed to us via the Internet only minutes or hours after they were taken.

Now my son is 12 years old and the Spirit rover is starting to make its way across the surface of Mars. Scores of images are available almost instantly. The Spirit rover image gallery is a daily must-visit web site for me though I detect, not least in my own family and sadly with my son, a certain impassivity towards all of this Mars news. Maybe it's all the Space Shuttle generation (oh no, not another Shuttle launch) or maybe it's just because people today are bombarded with images and events that just wash over them in a mass of information that many people just give up noticing. To think the rover is out there trundling away across the Mars is for me mind blowing. A tremendous achievement for science and engineering.

Hot on the heels of NASA's success, and coincidentally just as the next US presidential elections get under way, George Bush has announced plans to send man back to the moon and ultimately on to Mars. Cynical electioneering aside this is great news and as many think, long overdue. Over the past two decades all of NASA's manned space programmes have been concerned with Shuttle missions which, while bringing us some way towards building a long-term space station (also long overdue), establishing countless satellites doubtlessly spawning the new era in mass communications and of course many unknown military missions, have done little to advance humankind's pioneering spirit and desire for exploration. Now we're getting back on track, though there are many hurdles to overcome before Bush junior's vision is realised (Bush senior's Mars mission got scrapped soon after it was announced).

Sending men and women to Mars won't be cheap. There are risks of course as two Space Shuttle disasters show but think how many lives were lost during the exploration of the world in the 15th & 16th centuries, or any of the other countless periods of exploration in human history. It's part of our nature to explore and the rewards are considerable. The rewards for sending a crew of humans to Mars are potentially incalculable. If live is discovered on Mars, even the most primitive life, it's be the single most important discovery in the history of human exploration. And even if life isn't found, discovering how Mars became the seemingly dry, desert-planet we see today could be essential for the future of this planet. But these are just a couple of the obvious big wins. There will be a great many other discoveries and breakthroughs along the way while developing a mission such as this, in science, engineering, communications, human physiology, not to mention international relations as a manned Mars mission will likely be a collaborative effort.

Gia's posted a long and thoughtful piece on the politics and economics of Bush's Mars plans. Should we pay for a Mars mission when there are people starving to death in the world? Gia says yes and I agree because I don't see it as an either/or choice. People are not starving anywhere in the world because the US is planning another space mission. We are not short of a cure for AIDS because the US spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Spirit rover. And we don't have global warming because the US chose to go to the moon. Most of us in the developed world have a choice in how we live our lives and what we choose to do, collectively as nations and as individual citizens. We allow 3rd world starvation when we over consume and demand lower prices to fuel our excessive consumption. We allow massive corporations to divert investment into drugs that treat our illnesses brought on by our consumptive lifestyles rather than finding cures for illnesses that kill millions of people who are too poor to pay for their medicines therefore aren't paying customers. We allow global warming because of the wasteful way we choose to live. We have a choice. We can make this world a better place to live while at the same time exploring other worlds.

Applescript Image Events application

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 01:00:43 GMT

Well Apple sneaked this one in when we weren't looking. The latest version of Mac OS X (Panther or 10.3 to you) has built-in ability to manipulate images using Applescript. You can flip, rotate, pad, crop, scale and convert images all using simple Applescript commands. Now here's the fun part, both Userland Frontier and Radio can speak native Applescript. Anything you can do with Applescript you can do with Frontier or Radio. So by way of a test my assetManager tool can now create thumbnails for moblog posts. I've built-in an Applescript routine into my Radio Userland tool and I'll release an update during Sunday for anyone who wants to give this a whirl. If you can't wait and if you are using Mac OS 10.3 click on this link to get a standalone Applescript file that scales images. As an aside, another cool feature of OS 10.3 is the ability to create Applescripts on-the-fly from an applescript:// URL action (try clicking the previous link)! Well done Apple and well done Userland for supporting Applescript.