I’ve been reading the oohing and aahing about the Obama web operation (for example, here at the Linux Journal); all those individual pages and RSS feeds and iCals for every event. It strikes me that some of this can be generalised, and that we can probably improve on it. After all, as LJ points out,…
Read More OrganiseTim Ireland’s new project is more necessary than ever. It’s not quite achieved the same degree of punch and professionalism that the daddy of tab-bashing blogs, BildBlog offers readers of Germany’s biggest newspaper, but give them time. (This also bothers me. When I started this blog there were one million blogs, of which 50,000 updated…
Read More Blinded By The SunYou rock. It’s interesting that blockade-running is a lasting technique of protest; Joseph Conrad did a spot on behalf of the Spanish Carlists, Erskine Childers for the IRA (although he thought he was doing it for the other side), and then, there was the saga off Bilbao in the Spanish Civil War. It’s always worth…
Read More Outside the three mile limit in ’65…So I’m trying to make a little Google Map overlay, that will reload data from a remote server every time the page it contains loads. Obviously, I read the documentation, look at examples, sign up for a Google API key. But it’s not working, and I’m getting error messages that the API key is “for…
Read More Google Maps API IssueThis story; from China is predictably horrible: Chinese authorities have sentenced two women in their 70s to a year’s “re-education through labour” following their application to hold a protest demonstration during the Beijing games, a relative said yesterday. Officials said this week they had not approved a single permit for a demonstration, despite designating three…
Read More Can’t we be more helpful and appropriate?I’m about to propose something to make Daniel Davies cry. Specifically, it’s a solution to a problem we currently deal with by a cash transfer through the tax and benefit system. But I think I’ve made a good case that trying to deal with high energy prices by paying the poor to burn more energy…
Read More The Harrowell Plan (Or, No Christmas Card from Dsquared)I’ve been seeing some Click Airways CGK/Click Airways CKW flights going to Riyan again, where Air Bas’s UN-11007 was lost with its load of astonishingly inflammable “fish” back in 2005.
Read More RiyanSo, the Tories are currently making hay on the economy, while the black clouds are overhead. Unfortunately it’s all drivel, and specifically, it’s drivel because the current economic crisis is entirely the result of the Tory economic settlement. The promise of infinite free money from property was the core Thatcherite proposition, and its costs (specifically,…
Read More The grass is several shades of blue; every MP trips over you…Recently, our dear duckspeaker Philip Hammond MP had his local talking points cache refreshed. He’s now constantly saying that the Government is causing “uncertainty” in the housing market because they haven’t decided whether or not to cut stamp duty, and that this is a problem. Both statements are of course completely vacuous at best, and…
Read More Hammond’s Sauce Works BandOK, so I’ve been off line quite a bit due to a weird perversion called “moving house”. This means that my constituency MP is no longer Philip Hammond, which almost makes it all worthwhile by itself. Hammond was one of the most annoying features of living in wonderful Runnymede & Weybridge; an immensely self-satisfied and…
Read More I heard a rumour that someone got Philled in…