I agree with the enthusiasts – form factor is all-important

For this reason I believe a netbook is superior when veging out in front of the tele – after all, I don’t hold the remote continuously while watching a programme so why should I have to hold a computer to surf the web?

Ok so really I’m just a petty net troll who completely overreacts to criticism online. That aside, I still cannot understand how the answering army at stackoverflow come to the collective conclusion that every question on a close-to-the-bone programming issue requires some inane form of rephrasing or just outright blanking.

I get over the former as SO is a lightning quick method of accessing really knowledgeable people on demand – but I had to endure a case of the later a while back when someone obviously thought the answer to the question I asked was too blase and proceded to provide a solution for a completely separate issue. And this despite me explaining exactly why I didn’t want his solution in the preamble. So I went and got a workable answer myself, posted it and accepted it as the solution. Job done.

Except this caused numbnuts to vote down my answer without explanation. So I voted his down, and told him why. Despite this, he questioned why I’d want to know what I wanted to know in the first place and voted down the question. It was at that moment that I realised SO, while largely self-moderating, is still missing the last 20%^TM required to remove the clinically insane from the process. It gives me no pleasure to disclose the most efficient solution currently is to multiply your web leverage in traditional fashion; create multiple accounts and hit back with a bewildering array of counter-comments and down votes…

It is embarrassing though when apparently throwaway questions asked on your secondary accounts are rated higher than your allegedly thought-provoking and succinct real persona *whistles*

In true Bileblog style, programmers appear to be sarky contemptible bastards who like nothing more than jumping on the inaccuracies of accepted thought; hence phrasing a question along the lines of ‘My colleague says x is no longer a good way to do things…’ will likely stir the hornet’s nest of pedantry as each contributor seeks to provide a more arcane answer as to why x sucks than the previous response. Recurse until someone mentions lambda.

First the good one. I didn’t really know what to expect from Barcamp Derry and from the spiel delivered online was hoping that was the correct way to approach it. Half hour sessions organised in 3 concurrent ’streams’ meant the first 5 minutes of each was largely spent loitering in the doorway of each until one grabbed enough attention take a pew.

Although I missed the morning sessions the later half still produced a nice variety of topics – web media, drupal, startup and a few more. It was refreshing to see stuff happening locally that you usually only read about in front of a screen. Effectively it takes the form of a ’show & tell’ so you get to see stuff that is happening right now in NI. It is accessible and because of that you get an urge to participate and interact in a way you don’t get from say a lecture for example. You get the sense when people are talking they are thinking aloud and the wide variety of topics really gets you thinking.

The whole experience just seems more realtime.

I’m no expert on the philosophy of BarCamp but maybe it’d be an idea to have stream themes so less frantic checking of the timetable matrix would ensue between show & tells. So I could sit down in a room for the day and know I’d be learning about e.g. bootstrapping, but without necessarily needing to know who is going to speak on it until they begin. It’d make for a more open minded audience I reckon since they would have little time to research a speakers angle.

Anyway I found the whole thing an engaging and unique experience and am very much looking forward to the next one on 6th November.

Now the bad one. Facebook Dev Garages are as I understand them a chance for people using/thinking about using the platform to tap into the phenomenol viral power of FB’s network. If you’re not into developing apps solely for the Facebook platform, you’re looking to shoehorn the power of the ‘tell your friends’ social tsunami into your existing application.

The first point is it works. My 1st FB app was a simple little gamer gimic that reached 2k MAU (Monthly Active Users – the standard metric for FB app popularity) within a month, just by adding ‘invite your friends’ and ‘publish to stream’ components. This would not happen via say Google Gadget directory or dare I say it any of the current appstores. On Facebook, your app is actively pushed through your network by its users. Virality.

It’s a relatively new paradigm but unfortunately Facebook Inc has turned themselves into another M$, another cathedral: What we got at yesterday’s Garage was a staid marketing promo. It was a great disappointment – there is a rich dev ecosystem surrounding the FB platform – fbFund, the f8 conference and the Dev Garages elsewhere seem to have got the backing they deserved.

So the conversation began at a bird’s eye view and never really returned to earth.

It could have been so different: At the last minute James Leszczenski, one of the platform dev guys, was roped in. He provided an overview of FB’s crowdsourced translate app and how it could be used by developers to localise their own FB content. Good talk but again he skipped over the FBML and coding (aka the useful bits) I’m guessing to avoid glazing half the audience’s eyes over.

Also maybe it was the travel or whatever but I was expecting him to at least stand for some q’s at the end of his presentation. He just slunked into his seat. So with the other guys demo not coming off this was basically the end of the Belfast Dev Garage. Some marketing guy and a dev who didn’t really talk shop & wasn’t too interested in engaging the audience.

[I asked the InvestNI girl afterwards if there'd be another one in future, maybe with a bit more to it and the response didn't sound too promising. Maybe there isn't the demand currently but surely it's up to the marketing people to get engaging content. Not come here to give a talk on the history of the company and how to create a FB page for your business. There's a tendency for tech firms opening up in Dublin to adopt the shrinkwrapped M$ model of dev engagement. There is very little understanding of what makes a dev ecosystem tick.]

Anyways fair play to the audience at this point, questions were inevitably pointed in his direction and although a percentage of them were irrelevant in a dev context at least it was interaction.

Not of much value though. His answer to the unreliability of the MAU stat availability was publicly “I’m sure there’s a thread on it on the forum” and privately “There’s no reason why you can’t do your own”. Which is a load of balls: I could invent the Rutherford Active User tomorrow and you know who would be interested? Nobody that’s who. Why would they take the time to discover this brand new metric when MAU exists as a platform standard in every app out there? Just fix your own buggy stats thankyouverymuch.

I’ll admit to getting it wrong on the photos api not being open. Since 2007 to make things worse. But I’m also going to shift the blame on platform dev docs being an absolute maze to work through. I’ll stop digging right there. And I was more just pissed off at all the marketing chatter of open this connected that. hmph.

Although Leszczenski did seem a nice guy in person and at least laughed & agreed with my take on Google Wave still being ‘the app Google released the day Microsoft launched Bing’. Not the first time that’s happened he said, in his best FB disciple knowing look of indignation.

Cathedrals are everywhere.

All cool little diversions. And none requiring you’re friends to install any 3rd party contraption for the network dimension to be of use. And I’ve come up with my own – seeing how many of the rich and famous I can add to my network. I’m thinking start off with the Z listers then gradually build up my friend of the stars rep with a self-fulfilling trust network of media whores savvy celebs who crave a platform with the right connections. Why could that platform not be my friend network? ‘Any friend of Putin is a friend of mine’, etc, etc. Once your fellow average joe friends are in on the act facebook network top trumps could ensue: ‘I see your Matt Damon and I raise you Kevin Costner…’ or whatever.

Network Wars.

Surely beats the arse out of the ‘network’ features of Mafia Wars (amounting to nothing more than an endless time-restricted & turn-based cycle of ’send x, receive y’). I’ve had a shot at two people already. Although not famous outside of their domains, I’ve never met either personally and they’re well known to enough to kick this off. For now Putin will just have to wait.

No 1: Frank DeLise Creator, Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942
Let me tell you. DC for BF1942 was a great, great game. Basrah’s Edge, Nights, Al Nas, Bridge, Lost Village, Berlin… sigh. And this man is the man. And I told him as much in my friend request. ‘long time fan, big respect for what you did with DC’. Result? First celebrity (in my head anyway) in the clutches of the Rutherford network. Mhuahaha. Ha.

No 2: Pamela Ballantine Presenter @ UTV
Went local for my 2nd. At under 2million we’re a small (if sometimes stupidly violent) nation, but it’s still pretty impressive to get your bake on our TVs night after night. Again, playing the loyal fan card appears to do the job ‘long time fan of RPM and it’s great presenter!’ Although she did make me wait a week before accepting. Treat ‘em mean keep ‘em keen I guess.

So it’s onto celeb no 3 and I feel like going for a more adventurous target this time. Will keep you posted in the comments.

While I’m on the subject of Facebook, anyone else find it disappointing they removed the friend network info feature? You know – the breakdown of what networks people’s friends are from? Seeing the recent Friends Analysis app reminded me of it and now when I went hunting for it apparently it’s been dumped without reason. Shame, kind of liked seeing the at a glance cultural backgrounds of my own and others networks.

But.

Laptops still consume too much energy. For those of us who refuse to drop our netbooks in favour of phones, this presents a problem. Happily though there are free wifi hotspots that whether unwittingly or not also supply publicly accessible plugpoints.

Here is my attempt to map them out – everyone is free to contribute. Only add locations that have both free wifi & power points. Insert a green placemark if wifi is unfettered, red if there are restrictions such as site blockers or excessive time limits (instant arbitrary decision: anything under 12 hours). Give a description of wifi provider & location of plug point.

You’ll find FreeMap here.

Here’s my personal Webbys in no particular order and in no particular year – these are among my favourite sites on the web period:

finance – minyanville.com
sport – ourweecountry.co.uk
tech – slashdot.org
user content – flickr.com
hack – hackaday.com
gaming – escapistmagazine.com
tees – splitreason.com
books – amazon.co.uk

And to be frank, it’s total shite.

Dart board dates, non-existant routes & towns that are in a different country are all heavily featured. I should point out that when we originally planned this out there was no planning, nor was the future need for it planned either. This seems to us contrary to the ethics of the Mongol Rally and so having to actually think through such concepts as ‘routes’ beyond anything more detailed than country level just seems like rallying heresy.

So we haven’t really done it.

But whatever, we’re almost done writing words in boxes and inserting random numbers in correctly formatted date spaces. We’ll be sending them all off sometime this week and then biting our nails and ringing up the Adventurists every so often for progress reports I’m sure. Mostly though we’re just going to sit back and with the help of a few cold beers reminisce about all the old adventures we’ve had and discuss all the new ones we’re going to have.

To get me in the mood I’m going to repost something that showed up on the Rally forums tonight, from the 2nd year of the Rally back in 2005:

These interesting tidbits are from the first (proper) year of the Mongol Rally, 2005. Yes, they are all true.

43 cars left London.
27 cars reached Mongolia.
14 cars reached the finish in Ulan Bator.
2 teams were robbed at knife point.
1 car snapped in half.
3 engines fell completely out of the cars.
1 team was held for five days in no-mans land.
1 team cycled almost 100 miles to get to the finish when their car gave in.
100’s of tires were blown.
1 team got engaged.
3 teams attended weddings.
1 team found a 10 foot deep pot hole.
1 team found a 25 ton crane rolled by a pot hole.
1 team had to reverse up a mountain after losing all but one forward gear.
1 person spent 24 hours in a Kazakh jail charged with five crimes against the state.
1 person was stoned by a Mongolian nomad, who then shot at him with a gun (and missed).
1 team was rammed off the road after an argument over water melons.
1 person spent a day in a Turkish hospital.
3 people were banned from Turkmenistan for a year.
As a result of an incident with a cow, one person was detained by police in Azerbaijan and threatened with a beating from a dwarf.
2 cars flipped over in Mongolia.
3 teams were chased by armed bandits.
0 team members died.

We’ll be visiting at least one active warzone while we’re away so kind of hoping the last statistic isn’t bettered…

Team site can be found here.

Doing it with the “it’s for charity” cover story this time.  Namely Christina Noble Children’s Foundation and Mercy Corps, both active in Mongolia in some form or other.  Btw I was going to setup a JustGiving account so people could donate online, but did you know they take a 5% cut from all donations!?  No thanks, if anyone wants to kindly donate any funds please just get in touch with me and we’ll work something better out…

I was wrong.

24 hours into my first Chrome session it still only uses up 50meg of memory – and stayed at ~20 yesterday for most of the day.  It refused to choke in an IE-like manner over sites like Ebay, YouTube & Gmail.  Flash videos loaded up closer to my PS3 browsers speed (i.e. like something approaching acceptable performance), and as I say, no memory leak.  Internet Explorer would have hogged anything up to 600meg of space by now, thus requiring me to save all my current tabs on notepad/to memory kill it then start the shoddy thing up again.

Granted Gmail and other javascript-heavy sites did not seem to run any faster.  But they didn’t stall either.  It doesn’t come with Java support built in, but I don’t think I’ll risk adding it on – Chrome is my new speedy browsing experience from now on.  Firefox still gets the heavy-lifting vote due to the overwhelming array of plugins I’ve slapped onto it.I’ve been critical in the past towards Google and their useless feature-bloat, particularly in Gmail’s case.  But with Chrome they seem to have done good.

 Update:  Too much hope I guess.  No sooner had I posted this than I found a bug.  Over and above the annoying textbox glitch that seems to be posing quite a problem.  It’s treatment of textbox input is faulty when it sends to the server – It removes newline formatting in Wordpress 2.2.1.  Thus my blog post came out as one long blurb.  Bug report submitted.