Daily Archives: Thursday, July 4, 2013

  • Bristol and birds of prey

    Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities, Social Media

    It’s always a good idea to keep one’s ears open walking around the city – or anywhere for that matter.

    Yesterday lunchtime when crossing St Philips Bridge (below) my ears heard a real treat – a peregrine falcon in the heart of Bristol.

    St Philips Bridge and the former Bristol Tramways power station.
    St Philips Bridge and the former Bristol Tramways power station. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    peregrine falcon image
    Peregrine falcon
    Following the sound, I spotted the peregrine perched on a ledge near the top of the old Bristol Tramways power station, the building whose end is covered in scaffolding in the picture.

    I’ve seen peregrines before near Bristol, particularly down the Avon Gorge, where I’ve spotted them nesting in the Gorge’s old quarries, but never before in the heart of the city.

    Naturally, I was quite excited by this and asked Bristol’s Twitter users how unusual this was. After a couple of hours, I received a reply from naturalist and broadcaster Ed Drewitt, who informed me there was a “family of 3 chicks around Cabot Circus way” (they might help keep the city centre’s gull and feral pigeon population under control. Ed.).

    Around my home patch of Easton I have over the years seen both sparrowhawks and kestrels, whilst moving further afield the patchwork of open grassland and woodland on Purdown and Stoke Park is ideal buzzard territory.

    Finally, there’s one bird of prey I believe I’d heard that I’d really love someone else to corroborate. Returning home some years ago, I could have sworn I heard a tawny owl hooting in the vicinity of the railway embankment between Stapleton Road and Lawrence Hill railway stations. If anyone else has heard hooting there too, I’ll know I wasn’t imagining things. 🙂

  • Version 2.0 of OGL released

    Steve WoodsOpen Data, Politics, Tech

    Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

    OGL symbolThe British National Archives announced last week that it has released version 2.0 of the Open Government Licence (OGL) following consultation on how the licence could be developed further to reflect new and emerging thinking on the licensing of public sector information.

    The OGL is an open licence allowing information to be used and re-used with virtually no restrictions. It is also part of the UK Government Licensing Framework (UKGLF), which was launched in 2010. A wide range of government and other public sector information can be used and re-used under the OGL, which also forms part of the UK government’s policy on transparency and open data.

    The basic terms and conditions of the Open Government Licence version 2.0 remain the same as the previous version in that it continues to:

    • permit use and re-use of information in any format for both commercial and non-commercial purposes without charge;
    • require re-users to publish an acknowledgment of the source of the information;
    • exclude personal information from the licence;
    • be compatible with other licensing models, such as Creative Commons, and conforms to the Open Definition*.

    What has changed is that National Archives have introduced a separate section of the licence headed ‘Non-endorsement’. This is designed to make it clear that the licence does not permit the re-user to suggest that their versions of the information enjoy any official status or have departmental endorsement.

    The National Archives is also introducing the OGL symbol, a simple way of identifying when information can be used and re-used under the terms of the Open Government Licence. The OGL symbol was developed by The National Archives with help from the Government Digital Service. The OGL symbol, at a glance, shows that information can be used and re-used under open licensing.

    * The definition seeks to define the terms “open”, “open data” and “open content” precisely in the context of data and content so as to ensure “interoperability between different pools of open material.”