February 2007 Archives

I was listening to the report on Broadcasting House at the weekend on how the major drug companies in the world do not see it in their interests to create new general purpose antibiotics, they lack the ongoing sales of long-term illnesses. This seems pretty shocking and one of the demerits of providing shareholder value.

Somehow we all lose out and PVL (HPA FAQ on PVL), MRSA etc are serious threats. Probably more concerning than avian flu, this wikipedia article antibiotic resistance is striking reading.

Still the drive for shareholder value is not going to change, so why aren't the WHO going cap in hand to the major governments in the world and asking for a few billion to commission one of them to make some drugs. It would benefit us all and be more use than our efforts in Iraq etc.

It is a good role for the charitable benefactors of the world too, pumping money at HIV and Malaria is all well and good, but it seems we all need new antibiotics too.

Last weekend I gave a talk at BarcampLondon2, entitled "Time, History and the Internet". I covered a range of issues about how we are living in a very forward looking culture and how this makes understanding the past more difficult. I feel that this is a problem and one that is only going to increase as more and more of our content goes online.
I've slightly extended the presentation and written fuller notes to go with the slides. They are a 15.5MB pdf file Time, History and the Internet. Some people asked to see the slides and some people wanted an MP3, sadly I didn't get round to recording the talk, but the notes should help. I'd really welcome followups from people who heard or when you read the talk.

Yesterday was good fun, some great presentations and a bunch of interesting people and old friends. I'll be putting up a slightly revised version of my presentation tomorrow, I need to check the copyright on one of the images. I had a nice appreciative audience for my session on time, history and the internet, which was lovely.
Some thoughts for next time, better coffee would be appreciated, but there were several coffee places nearby. The free pay for wifi was actually a bonus, as there was sufficient infrastructure so that the wifi only got slower, it didn't crash. I only was there til a bit after 6pm on the first day, so I can't comment on the overnight and Sunday experiences, but catching up today it seems to have been really good. I missed the werewolf sessions, boo.
The quality of the talks I saw was really good, barcamp is open to all and free so on that basis it is to be commended, This was my first and I'd definitely go again. I think there is something about it being free that means people seem to try hard to make a good talk, as you can get in for free anyway. Maybe not the effect you'd expect, but I think the peer pressure makes people speak if they have something to say.

I'm going to be at BarCamp in London on Saturday. I'm planning on giving an updated version of a session I ran at EuroFoo last September on time and the web.

Searching for content in the past is difficult, finding content in the same time period as older content is almost impossible. I mean finding 1960s stories about 1960s events, rather than finding 1990s and 2000s reporting on the history of the 1960s. Part of this is that we are very focused on now and the future (rss, I blame you), part of it is that the internet didn't exist then, so the content online is patchy.

However publishers are starting to put this kind of content on the web, the New York Times (sample article on the moon landing); the Washington Post; and my employer Nature spring to mind, though as paid for services. Google are offering a News Archive search with filtering by year and links to pay for archive stories from a range of USA papers, (Oscar Wilde from 1895).

We've got immense amounts of content already, how can we delve back into the past and find out about a period in history as more and more of our world is documented online and not in libraries.

I'll talk about what the issues are in exploring our past and how we can keep hold of what has happened, before all the primary witnesses die of old age. Persistence, geodata, time formats, content disambiguation and the grand sweep of history, how can you resist...?

A common enough dilemma at the minute, can I wait til December to get an iPhone, or should I upgrade my 6630. I'm well out of contract with Orange, nearly a year out, but I'm very tempted by an iPhone. My 6630 is slow, and the once lovely camera now frustrates when trying to take lower light pictures of Oscar.
So do I get an N73 now, wait for Orange to approve the lovely looking N95, or change provider to get a contract with say O2? Any opinions of other UK mobile phone providers on monthly contracts appreciated. I use my phone for Twitter, Flickr and sending the odd email, plus normal phone usage.

• Learn How to Play the Djembe Drum
  This will hopefully teach me to play the drum Lucy bought me last year
  (tags: djembe video training)

Travelling by the Victoria line for the past year has been lovely, my travel is 16-20 minutes on the tube and only one tube-train. Last year it was at least a train and a tube and a longer walk to the station. I do miss being above ground, but with the Victoria line being entirely underground it is not affected by the cold weather.

One downside, I rarely get my PowerBook out on the tube, whereas I used to get it out and write stuff on the train. Still, I'd be loathed to swap back, I can usually get a seat on the way in so I read instead, the Economist sometimes, but more on magazines in another post.

• trex with the dome as umbrella
  there are some talented people on b3ta, this is lovely.
  (tags: trex dome london)
• Apple - Support - iMac G5 Repair Extension Program for Power Supply Issues
  yay, intermittent restarting problems will be fixed for free, not a memory or overheating problem afterall
  (tags: imacg5 restart)

• Steve Boggan on what to do in the event of a nuclear war | Guardian Unlimited Politics
  Starts as a simple look at the funny old things in the bunker story, then looks at the potential for terrorist attack and what planning exists to cope. Slightly chilling in parts, but a good source of fictional thinking.
  (tags: cold_war 1950s Britain terrorism)
• New Scientist Invention blog
  Odd snippets of invention, tied in with a New Scientist competition to win a trip to space, well 100km up.
  (tags: New_Scientist invention patent)
• Date for N95 emerges
  7th March in the UK, though who knows when on Orange
  (tags: orange nokia n95)

• Composite Primary Keys for Ruby on Rails/ActiveRecords
  How to extend RoR to support composite keys which can allow cleverer url structures
  (tags: ror database gem activerecord)