July 2005

Halfway mark

by Suw on July 29, 2005

We've just hit halfway on our pledge drive to raise enough money to get a British version of the EFF up and running. The 500th pledger was Galen Gusdorf, who was absolutely not in any way harangued into it by me on IRC, oh no sirree, I didn't just spend the last hour obsessively hitting refresh to see when we'd reach 500.
*cough*

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A weekend offline

by Suw on July 29, 2005

I promised myself that, as part of my chilling out and general recovery from jetlag and exhaustion regime, I would spend this weekend offline. Not staring at my computer screen. Not answering email. Not writing blog posts. Not working.
Instead, I would go for walks. Read books. Watch movies. Sleep. Sleep a bit more. Sleep for just another half hour.
There is plenty that I should be doing, but I'm not going to do any of it.
See you Monday.

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Never run with scissors…

by Suw on July 28, 2005

… or on the London Underground.

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Euan manages to totally embarrass Andy

by Suw on July 28, 2005

By accident, via his blog. (Read the post then read the comments.)

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iChat driving me nuts

by Suw on July 28, 2005

iChat agent keeps crashing, for no discernible reason. Anyone got any ides for a fix? Or what might be causing it? Drives me sodding potty, frankly.

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The right to digital freedom

by Suw on July 28, 2005

Danny O'Brien writes about our UK digital rights project in The Guardian today. Hopefully this will get a few more people to add their names to our pledge. In less than a week, we've managed to attract 450 people to promise their support to us, we've had emails from individuals who want to do more than just give us money, and we've had both interest and support from journalists who see a clear need for an EFF-like organisation here in the UK.
Since Saturday, I've been obsessively refreshing the PledgeBank page, watching the count go up – sometimes in increments of one, sometimes in huge bounds. The response has, I must admit, surprised me as I rather thought we'd get pledges from a few dozen of the people who were there at OpenTech, and that would be that. Instead, we have reached nearly half our target within just five days.
I suspect, however, that attracting that last 550 people will be a lot harder than persuading the first 450, which is where you come in. Somewhere out there, in the blogosphere, are another 550 people who feel passionately enough about protecting their digital freedoms that they'll support our endeavour. We just need to reach them, so if you want to support us, please blog.
Additional links: my initial post; Cory's BoingBoing post; and Danny's post about how this got going, from which:

What can you do with a monthly budge of 5000UKP a month? Well, at the risk of sounding “Just Five Pounds Will Free This Poor DRMed Document And Let It Roam Free In One of Our Free Range Open Standards”, we did some back of the envelope calculations after the talk, and agreed we could do something: Probably two staffers and an office.
One would act as a media conduit. Half our problem in the UK right now is that the press just don't have anyone in their address books that they can confidently call about on these issues. As Rufus said, most of the time they just run music industry press releases as news. The biggest lesson for me with NTK was that your best way to influence the agenda, and generate support, is to generate stories, and point people to the right experts. Just having someone at the end of a phone, handing out quotes and press releases, and pro-actively calling journalists to make sure they know what's going on, putting them in contact with all the other orgs in this area in the UK, is half the work.
The rest of the job is actual activism (one person can do a lot, if they don't need to cram all their white paper writing, research, and lobbying between contract coding sessions, and finishing their university degree) and bootstrapping more funding.

UPDATE: We're also now on BBCi. Pretty good level of interest for a project that currently doesn't even have a name.

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Craigslist for bloggers

by Suw on July 26, 2005

Hugh's started up a wiki for bloggers looking for work, love, or blog consultants. Great idea – perfect for the hResume microformat too, once it gets up and running (microformat = way to format structured data online in a human readable form, so that we can read it but web apps do cool shit with it too).

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I'm really, really not looking for work

by Suw on July 25, 2005

I never knew that to some people, 'looking for work' == 'being a hooker', but apparently so:

“I just thot you might like some feedback from someone else w/ a lotta time on their hands. The Welsh emphasis caught my eye, tho I would imagine you're much better at singing than Geology. I was saddened (a little) to learn yu are looking for work, because it seems so universal & a lesbian I met yesterday, looked for work (she claims) only went to hooking to make ends meet. Around here, (mtns of North Carolina), there are tons, no wait, tonnes of young people looking for work, I think. They carry skate bds, and wear raggedy clothes, & appear to be unbathed, but you appear more employable in yr picture, I am past employment, soon to be 74 yrs, retired in '94 but if I hear of anything, you may be among the 1st to know.
“I don't think hooker is a good option.”

I'm touched that one of my readers, somewhere out there on the hinternet, felt moved enough by my plight to email me this caution, but can I just make it clear that on any blog posts or websites wherein I may have said 'I'm looking for work' I don't mean 'give me enough money and I'll shag you'. I mean, I'm a freelance, and I'm open to offers.
Oh, wait, that sounds worse…

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Burning out

by Suw on July 25, 2005

The funny thing about burning out is that in the past, I was never alert enough to see it happening. I suffered dreadful burnout after my start-up died, two years ago. For nine months, watching my business slowly disintegrate put more stress on me than I've ever felt before. The day I gave up, the day I knew it was dead, brought no real release or feelings of relief, just dread and numbness. It took me a good six months of near-hibernation for me to be able to function again on any level other than the totally superficial.
This weekend has been a bit of a warning shot across my bows, I think. I've been existing recently on generally not enough sleep, not enough food, with too much adrenaline, travel and stress. By the time I got to OpenTech, I could feel myself starting to slip a little into the semi-comatose state of the nearly burnt, and yesterday my hibernation instinct kicked right in – I slept twelve hours Saturday night, (which unfortunately meant my sleep last night was a bit buggered so I'm less rested today than I would have liked).
I have to get through the next few days, but after Wednesday I am going to basically shut down for a week, and do only essential work and nothing else. It's the closest I'll get to a holiday for a few months, but it'll be enough to forestall complete exhaustion.

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Ugliest dog ever

by Suw on July 24, 2005

Brace yourself. (Thanks Euan.)
Brace yourself again.

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Defending digital rights in the UK

July 23, 2005

I've had a few meetings with Danny O'Brien from the Electronic Frontier Foundation over the last few weeks, talking about the possibility of starting some sort of EFF-like organisation in the UK and generally volunteering myself to assist. At the moment, the digital rights activist community in the UK is somewhat fragmented and I believe […]

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The missing bits

July 22, 2005

Somebody somewhere has done this map of the London Underground with the bits missing after yesterday's bombings, and those of two weeks ago. Huge chunks were (and some still are) knocked out, including lots of the bits I'll be wanting to use later on. And I've forgotten my A-Z, so I'll have to buy a […]

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I had to write an essay on this at uni

July 21, 2005

The Moon. (Now zoom to maximum resolution.) Via Gary.

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More London alerts – breaking news

July 21, 2005

Warren Street, Oval and Shepherd's Bush tube stations have been evacuated, and large areas sealed off after smoke was reported coming from the stations. The Northern Line has been suspended, and reports of an incident on the 26 bus on Hackney Road although the bus itself doesn't appear damaged from the TV pics. There are […]

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Landed

July 20, 2005

Ensconced in Arundel now. Wine, wifi and a nice comfy bed. Lovely.

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