Bristol

  • Are social media destroying the rest of the internet?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Social Media, Tech

    That was one question discussed yesterday evening over a couple of pints of Cotswold Spring’s Stunner ale in Bristol’s Seven Stars pub with a couple of friends from the Easton Cowboys. More specifically, it the question could be rephrased as: are the likes of Facebook and Twitter pulling in so much traffic that they detract from everyone else’s content?

    Two of us run websites, so the matter is quite pertinent and can be broken down into a couple of simple aspects.

    Firstly, some people thank that if they just post on their organisation’s Facebook wall, everyone in that organisation will see it. They are, of course, mistaken. Some people avoid Facebook for privacy reasons, in addition to which Facebook’s APIs are so obscure, it’s difficult for an organisation’s webmaster to scrape content from Facebook and place it on the organisation’s website.

    Turning to Twitter, is the ubiquitous 140 character tweet replacing proper debate on blogs? We noted that if one blogs and tweets a link to the post, feedback is more likely these days to come via tweets than from actual comments on the blog. One of the great aspects of blogging is that comments on posts can encourage debate. This debate has now been reduced to soundbites of no more than 140 characters. However, the situation is more complicated than that. Whereas at one time, the ability to comment was restricted to blogs, the traditional media have now started to catch up, allowing comments on articles and thus have more interaction with their readers instead of just broadcasting at them.

    In answer to the question of whether social media are destroying the rest of the internet, only time will tell and the jury is still out. You can help the deliberations by commenting below.

    Finally, note that this discussion took place down the pub. Don’t forget that pubs, cafés and their cultural equivalents elsewhere in the world are the original social networking sites. 🙂

  • Is spring on its way?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities

    Celandines (aka Ranunculus ficaria) are normally one of the first signs of spring, emerging around Easter time when the trees overhead have no leaves and the ground around is clear of competitors. Celandines usually flower between March and May each year.

    However, even I was amazed to find celandines in bloom in Bristol on 3rd January on the Bristol & Bath Railway Path at Clay Bottom while coming back from a shopping trip to Fishponds. Gilbert White, the celebrated naturalist who chronicled the natural history of Selborne in Hampshire in the 1800s, only managed to record them as early as 21st February

    A celandine in bloom on 3rd January 2013
    A celandine in bloom on 3rd January 2013

    Is this unprecedentedly early blossoming yet more evidence of climate change? Comments welcome.

  • Henbury Loop petition

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    It’s not very often I agree with a Tory – and even less often that I agree with an elected Tory MP – but Bristol North West MP Charlotte Leslie has started a petition to lobby for the inclusion of the Henbury Loop in any future local rail plans.

    Charlotte’s petition reads as follows:

    We, the under-signed [sic], believe that a Henbury ‘spur’ would be a disastrously missed opportunity of a generation; that a Henbury Loop Line would not only be well used, but transform Bristol’s transport infrastructure; and want to make the strongest possible case for demand for a Loop not a spur.

    Being a regular rail user, I’ve signed Charlotte’s petition.

    Perhaps you should too.

  • Bristol bus petition

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    Upon moving to Bristol from Wolverhampton many decades ago, the most striking immediate difference I can recall was that Bristol’s bus fares were double those of Wolverhampton and the service provided by the Bristol Omnibus Company was far more unreliable than that of the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive (WMPTE).

    Much has changed since those days: the Bristol Omnibus Company is now part of FirstGroup, whilst the WMPTE has been rebranded as Centro.

    What hasn’t changed over the decades is the exorbitant level of bus fares charged in Bristol and the unreliability of the bus service.

    image of a WorstBus vehicle
    Worst Bus: eye-watering fares, unreliable service.

    A Bristolian called Daniel Farr has now decided to challenge the high price and unreliable service provided by First Bus in Bristol by setting up a petition on the government’s e-petition site.

    The wording of the petition, with which I couldn’t disagree at all, reads as follows:

    The prices of First groups [sic] bus tickets in Bristol and the quality of their service do not match up. Their fares are the most expensive outside of London, but yet their buses are unreliable and often late. Local government does nothing to improve the service or lower the prices so we call on the government to force First to reduce their charges.

    Sign the petition.

    Finally, frustrated bus users in the city have also set up their own website – http://www.bristolbususers.co.uk/ – to campaign for better and cheaper bus services in the Bristol area.

  • The importance of local knowledge

    Steve WoodsBristol

    Bristol, for its sins, is afflicted with The Post as its (ahem!) newspaper of record.

    Yesterday’s online edition carries a glowing report of the opening of “a new £7 million care home which will treat patients with dementia has opened in south Bristol. Private firm Brunelcare has opened the new home in Whitehall after years of planning”.

    However, there’s one major problem with this story: Whitehall is a district of east Bristol, not one south of the river, a mistake which even the much-maligned Wikipedia manages to avoid.

    Needless to say, this absolute howler drew some very pointed comments from readers, of which this is perhaps the most sarcastic and biting:

    I suppose we must be grateful that the Post didn’t describe it as being in Plymouth. What a truly dreadful “newspaper”!

    Another comment drew comparisons with BBC Radio Bristol:

    Radio Bristol’s just as bad.

    Every weekday morning their travel woman tells of us of traffic queues IN KEYNSHAM on the A4 between Hicks Gate and Emery Road.

    This means that the Brislington Park and Ride, St Brendans College and the Brislington cricket and football grounds have all moved out of Bristol into Keynsham.

    Hicks Gate to the city boundary is a distance of 400 metres; city boundary to Emery Road is over 1200 metres.

    Another Radio Bristol presenter told us that Shirehampton is near Bristol and they all seem to believe that Avonmouth is outside the city too as it’s described as ‘near Bristol’ routinely on Radio Bristol and on the local ITV and BBC news programmes.

    Where do they think is it? North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Gwent, Greater London?

    Oh for the days of Roger Bennett and John Turner, two highly competent broadcasters with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Bristol. Nowadays we get people who aren’t very professional (with one or two exceptions) whose knowledge of the local area is nil.

    Clearly the Post hacks are no different.

    Of course, both The Post and the BBC have shed staff in recent years and the wealth of local knowledge that former staff or those with long service has vanished, as a result of which the quality of local media has clearly suffered.

    To conclude here’s a bit of free advice for Bristol Post journalists: just because the paper’s now printed in Didcot, don’t make it look as if it’s written there too! 🙂

  • Turnip Prize awarded

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities

    News can sometimes travel slowly in the West Country, so it’s only this afternoon that I’ve become aware of this year’s Turnip Prize – the antidote to the better known Turner Prize.

    The magnificent Turnip Prize trophy
    The magnificent Turnip Prize trophy

    The Turnip Prize is awarded annually at the New Inn in Wedmore on the Somerset Levels, far away from the glitz of metropolitan London.

    This year’s winner was midwife Sarah Quick, from Clutton, who was presented with the award’s customary winnner’s trophy of an old turnip mounted on a six-inch nail, as seen above. Sarah’s winning entry was entitled ‘The Three Tenas’ and consisted of a pack of women’s Tena incontinence pads with three sticking out of the top.

    Three Tenas - thias year's Turnip Prize winner
    Three Tenas – thias year’s Turnip Prize winner

    Competition must have been more intense this year with 86 entries, 17 more than last year. Popular rumour has it that Bristol’s famous son Banksy has entered in the past, but has been disqualified for making too much of an effort!

    Hat tip: Rich Higgs

  • News from the (male chauvinist) pigsty

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    Q: What do the Bristol University Christian Union and the village of Suderbari, in the Indian state of Bihar have in common?

    A: They both treat women as second-class citizens.

    The Bristol University Christian Union has passed a ruling that women are not allowed to teach at its main weekly meetings, as well as making it clear that women will only be able to teach as principal speakers at away weekends and during its mission weeks if they do so with their husbands, according to a report posted today on Bristol 24/7.

    This action has since led a Christian Union committee member to resign and prompted one CU member to write to Bristol University’s independent student news site Epigram, saying:

    On a personal note, I believe that Jesus was a feminist and that women should be allowed to teach.

    Up in its Clifton eyrie, the University of Bristol Union is examining whether this move by the Christian Union falls foul of its equality policy (hint: it undoubtedly does. Ed.)

    However, it’s not just the Abrahamic religions that are treating modern women as second-class citizens.

    In Suderbari, as today’s Guardian reports, women in the village have been barred from using mobile phones since mobiles “pollute the social atmosphere” by encouraging women to elope. If women are caught using a mobile, they risk a fine of Rs. 10,000 if they are unmarried and Rs 2,000 if they are married (so much for equality before the law. Ed.).

    The reason given by the village’s leadership was summarised by Manuwar Alam, president of the local social advisory committee, who stated the following:

    Unrestricted use of mobile phones is promoting premarital and extramarital affairs and destroying the great institution of marriage. We are extremely worried.

    However, the real reason is likely to be that traditional male authority in India is now being challenged due to improved education for women and, as Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army used to say: “They don’t like it up ’em!”

    Update 06/12/12: An item has now appeared on Epigram to the effect that Bristol University Christian Union has issued a statement which says they will extend invitations to both women and men to speak at any of their events without exception. However, this might just be a little too late to save their reputation.

  • Snooper’s Charter – my letter to my MP

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    Below is the text of an email I’ve written today to my constituency MP, Stephen Williams, regarding the coalition Government’s vastly invasive draft Communications Data Bill, also known as the Snooper’s Charter.

    Dear Mr Williams

    Subject: Draft Communications Data Bill

    I am writing to you express my concerns about the draft Communications Data Bill, also known popularly as the Snooper’s Charter, and how I regard it as harmful to the interests of the UK population in general. I understand that the joint Lords and Commons Parliamentary Committee examining the draft Bill will be reporting shortly.

    At this point I wish to point out that I’m also the Company Secretary of Bristol Wireless, a community co-operative that functions as a small ISP (which resells bandwidth to clients who are our network) and telecommunications provider (supplying VoIP telephony services) which is based in Bedminster. I have already written to Bristol Wireless’ constituency MP, Dawn Primarolo, to make her aware of the concerns of the co-operative.

    The draft Communications Data Bill raises significant issues connected with human rights, privacy, security and the nature of the society in which we wish to live. These issues are raised by the draft Bill’s fundamental approach, not its detail. Addressing them would, in our opinion, require such a significant re-drafting of the bill that the better approach would be to withdraw the bill in its entirety and rethink the way that internet security and monitoring are addressed.

    According to Liberty, the draft Bill will turn a nation of 60 mn. citizens into a nation of 60 mn. suspects. It won’t matter if citizens have never got so much as a speeding fine, personal information about them will be stored just in case it may prove useful one day. Put in another way, would you – as an upright, law-abiding citizen – be happy if the police popped by tomorrow to install a CCTV camera in your living room just in case they one day suspect you have committed a crime? Crime prevention arguments must not unquestionably trump the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

    The general public has been misled by the government and the mainstream media as to the purpose of the draft Bill. It is not about tackling serious crime, paedophilia or terrorism. Access to communications data is granted to local authorities and hundreds of other public bodies for a wide range of purposes that have nothing to do with crime fighting.

    The Government assumes too much in assuming it has an automatic right to keep track of all of citizens’ electronic communications with each other: what we’re looking at online and who we’re emailing, talking to on Skype or texting. It doesn’t. If this is HMG’s logic, why does it not demand that we all report to it every day, telling them who we’ve met for lunch?

    Stockpiling large amounts of data indiscriminately simply amounts to blanket surveillance. Experience shows that amassing large databases of personal information inevitably leads to discrimination. The retention process lends itself to the great temptation of “data mining” – fishing expeditions based on clumsy stereotypes rather than reasonable suspicion of individual wrongdoing. In addition, there are already problems with unauthorised access to sensitive information with existing systems such as the Police National Computer DVLA database and local authority and health records. These problems would be multiplied many times over with the amounts of stored data envisaged by the draft Bill.

    Furthermore, any increase in the level of surveillance would inevitably result in an increased use of encryption (and other circumvention techniques too) by ordinary internet users, thus rendering the surveillance useless, unless public sector technicians are skilled in the art of cracking encryption. Moreover, those alleged terrorists and organised criminals – if they are using the internet at all for their nefarious activities – are probably already using encryption and other security measures to obfuscate their activities.

    Finally, I’d point out that given the technology that’s likely to be needed, the Government may well end up building the technical infrastructure to intercept all our communications.

    I would be happy to discuss these matters in further detail with you should you so wish. In addition, there is plenty of other information available via the Open Rights Group website (http://www.openrightsgroup.org).

    Yours, etc.

  • Introducing Vinux

    Steve WoodsBristol, Linux, Open Source

    Yesterday evening I was down Bristol’s City Hall attending an event to launch Accessible Bristol (read my account of the event for Bristol Wireless).

    Vinux logo

    While there I was talking to the City Council’s Stephen Hilton and happened to mention Vinux – Linux for the Visually Impaired – which Stephen had never heard of, despite being visually impaired himself.

    Vinux is a remastered version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution optimised for visually impaired users. It provides a screen-reader, full-screen magnification and support for Braille displays out of the box! It can be run from a Live CD on an existing machine without making any changes to your hard drive. It can also be installed to a USB pen drive or to a hard drive; as a hard drive installation this can be done either alongside Windows (dual boot) or as a complete replacement for the Hell of Gates. 🙂

    The system requirements for the main (as opposed to the command line interface) version of Linux are:

    • 1 GHz x86 processor;
    • 1 GB of system memory (RAM);
    • 15 GB of hard-drive space (although this can be split onto 2 drives, a 5Gb / and a 10Gb /home partition fairly easily);
    • Graphics card and monitor capable of 1024 X 768 resolution;
    • Either a CD/DVD drive or a USB socket (or both);
    • Internet access is helpful though not vital.

    Vinux 3.2.1 is the current experimental release and disk images of various vintages can be downloaded from the Vinux project’s downloads page.

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