December Dorkbot – on the move

Bristol’s December Dorkbot event has just been announced and features a change of venue, day and time just to keep people on their toes.

This coming month Dorkbot will be held on Tuesday, 12th December at St Werburghs Community Centre on the corner of Horley Road and Merstham Road (location map), starting at 8:30pm finishing around 10:00pm. Featured speakers this month will be Mike Harris (one of the founders of Dorkbot Barcelona) and Ben Green, both of Bristol Wireless, who will be talking about media streaming and open source, including Radio Vague and Vague TV. Demos are promised!

There is a bar at St Werburghs CC, but at about 9:30pm or 10:00pm we will be retiring to the nearest pub, the excellent Duke of York, a 3 minutes walk away (on the corner of Conduit Place and Jubilee Road – location map) for a game of skittles. No skill will be required, just enthusiasm and a sense of fun!

A hidden exclusive – or sloppy journalism?

The Evening Post, that great bastion of the Bristol media and the only evening paper to my knowledge to be published at 7 o’clock in the morning, has never let the checking of facts or the quality of English get in the way of a good story; and there’s a wonderful example in today’s edition of the Pest.

At first sight it’s an innocuous story allegedly penned by Simon Peevers about habitat management in the Avon Gorge. But read on… Is there a world exclusive here? Look closely at paragraph 10, which reads:

“The gorge was formed in the Jurassic period and contains plants growing today which date back to that prehistoric time.“

Am I reading this correctly? Does the Avon Gorge contain the oldest living plants in the world? Has anyone told the bristlecone pines – present holders of this accolade? Or is the more likely explanation merely that the Pest is performing to its usual low standards and doesn’t have either hacks or sub-editors that would even stand a chance of employment on a proper newspaper?

You decide.

NB: Such a sentence would never have got past yours truly unchallenged when he subbed the now-defunct Planet Easton!

Monkey business

Had an escape from Easton’s grime and crime the weekend just gone with a trip to deepest Devon to celebrate Monkey Mike’s 50th birthday. Mike’s played a big part in my life over the last 12 or so years; for that time I’ve been playing music and setting fire to large piles of wood at his various events, happenings and celebrations.

Anyway, I’d been told by Bubble to be ready to depart at 14.00 hrs; and so I was. After a quick cuppa, into the car went my gear – holdall of clothes and essentials, suit and tin box of CDs – and we’re off: to Bedminster. Some time and 2 visits later the load has been augmented by PA kit and lights and now finally we’re off… to Hartcliffe to load Master Bubble’s kit. By now the car is completely full to the gunwhales (well, the odd pair of socks could have squeezed in…) despite a couple of important omissions on both sides: some form of overcoat on my part and all of Bubble’s 7-inch singles. Are we finally off? Well yes, after a hole in the wall stop.

Bristol has been left behind as we potter down the A38, picking up the M5 to Exeter and A38 again to the Totnes road. After Totnes, we’re into the lanes, single track variety and usually best classed as typical Monkey country; there’s a difference today – we’re not hunting a field to camp in, but a posh hotel instead.

The hunt proves easy and Bubble and I are soon esconced in the bar at Fingals with a relaxing pint. We then find our digs and change into formal kit for an excellent dinner; in my case crab beignet for starters, black bream for main course and lemon tart for dessert, all washed down with good wine. With good company all round the evening settles into relaxed mode, so relaxed it’s 4.00 am before I head for bed.

Notwithstanding the late hour of retirement, I awake early enough for breakfast. As with the previous night, service is friendly, efficient and unobtrusive: stuff that should appear does appears whilst objects that should vanish likewise do so.

The PA kit is brought in after breakfast, then we’re off for a lunchtime pint in Dittisham before returning to set the sounds up. On hearing the sounds starting, I join Bubble to test the CD rig, eventually spending two hours playing jazz, latin and assorted reggae – mostly for my own enjoyment, whilst other preparations – both culinary and decorative – continue around me.

Dinner time arrives all too soon and a large part of the company have changed into fancy dress as elves, fairies, wizards and the like since I last saw them. I’m quite happy in civvies – something borne out later by having to scrabble around on the floor hiding wires.

Dinner is once again excellent – roast beef and chicken and a good selection of dessers – after which Bubble fires up the rig until cabaret time. The cabaret is arranged for another part of the site, where the company is introduced to an elegantly dressed type called Earl – billed as a musical genius and sex symbol. He goes down well, particularly the understated delivery, the bossa nova ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ and Mendelssonn reclaimed from Andrew Lloyd Webber. However, Earl shot off immediately after his spot; whether this was to avoid the stream of propositions from the occupant of Room 2 I have still to discover.

Bubble, Ayvin and I immediately leap into action to dismantle the kit for Earl’s show and stow it safely, meaning we miss the first part of the fireshow. Jennimental is busy twirling fire when we arrive. Monkey and James soon join in with the pyrotechnics. A compact but spectacular show only has one small spoiler – the wind directing the smoke towards the audience.

Once back indoors Ayvin takes over on the sounds, playing his usual varied mix of Latin, oldies and reggae that sees the floor full and staying that way. By this time yours truly thinks enough wine has been imbibed by him for the nonce and switches to water for a couple of hours.

Bubble’s back on the decks for an hour, after which Ayvin and myself go back to back on the sounds. This is a rare occasion; we haven’t played together like this for about 18 months so enjoy it immensely, whilst our efforts are also going down well on the other side of speakers. I’m particularly pleased that I can mix a couple of tunes seamlessly into Ayvin’s material.

At four-ish we retire from the hotel to Mike and Rosy’s quarters in the Outhouse for a nightcap, after which I head for bed just as dawn is coming up.

Thank heavens breakfast is served late on Sunday: a full English and plenty of tea and toast takes care of the inner man for the work of packing everything up. I now learn how Taff, the PA supplier, likes his leads coiled, i.e. sensibly. In the end by 3.30 pm, we’re all packed up, settled up and on the road… for the Waterman’s, a local alehouse some miles down the road.

Lunch arrives quick and hot and the IPA is very drinkable. The final remnants of the company now say their goodbyes and Bubble and myself are left with each other’s company back to Bristol via the A roads, not the motorway. Arriving at 8.30, we do some preliminary unpacking before returning the PA to Taff, after which I’m chauffeured home.

Exhausted, I drop everything in the hall, make a brew and head for bed until 10.00 am the following morning.

‘Twas a brilliant weekend and your correspondent would like to thank the following:

• Mike for being 50;
• Rosy for organising everything and everybody;
• Richard and Sheila, our hosts at Fingals;
• Eric the chef;
• the rest of the Fingals staff;
• Mike (again!), James and Jenni for the pyrotechnics;
• Geoff, for tolerating my snoring;
• Ayvin, for a brilliant back to back session;
• Bubble for chauffeuring and the usual Bubble harmonics;
• Anyone who bought me a drink;
• Anyone I’ve forgotten.

Let’s do some of this again sometime! Soon!

By haunted stream

Rivers have a hard time in the city: hemmed in by retaining walls, buried in culverts, their bends straightened out – and that’s before they get used as sewers and general waste disposal sites. Bristol’s River Frome, which runs through Easton, is no exception here. After entering the inner city after Muller Road, it’s confined in a narrow, steel-walled trough beneath the elevated section of the M32, before entering the flood control scheme and a culvert down in Eastville. It re-emerges into daylight down at the M32 Parkway roundabout. The pictures below show what it looks like at this point.

Looks disgusting doesn’t it? Filthy water, dumped furniture; look a bit further and you’ll see escaped supermarket trolleys and further detritus of modern society.

Locals have repeatedly tried to get the City Council and the Environment Agency to do something about cleaning the Frome up, all to no avail. The only bit of tidying up that has taken place can be seen if one turns round and looks at the reinforced concrete mass of the roundabout and subway walls, where the following sight greets the observer.

Obviously, there’s money in the kitty for cosmetic projects, but none for real environmental work. These alleged public servants are clearly not up to the job. As stated by Thomas Ingoldby: “A servant is all to often a negligent elf”.

Easton e-petition

News has just arrived on the RSS feed for the City Council’s e-petitions site that there’s one been posted for Easton.

This one reads:

“The petitioner request [sic] that Bristol City Council clear the land at the junction of Chaplin Road and Normanby Road, Easton, Bristol. To reinstate proper fencing and make safe the land for use of local residents. This land left unattended creates a rubbish and fly tipping problem, and is an eyesore for the local community. Used needles have been found; and food waste which will inevitably lead to a pest and rodent problem.“

If you care about the area, you may fancy signing it: I have already.

Look at Stephen Hilton’s piece on Connecting Bristol to read more about e-petitioning.

Foot in mouth disease reaches Thailand

If proof were needed that politicians are badly informed and have a tendency to approach every problem with an open mouth, the Thai ICT Minister, Professor Sitthichai Pokai-udom, proves the case admirably m’lud.

The Bangkok Post reports that, on the subject of open source software, he said the current Thai government plan was a case of the blind leading the blind, as neither the people in charge nor the people in industry seemed to know the dangers of open source software.

“With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated,” he said.

The Minister claimed that, with the exception of Linux, most open source software is often abandoned and not developed, resulting in lots of bug-ridden, low-quality software.

He has since resorted to another typical politician’s trick, claiming he was misunderstood or that he misunderstood, according to Thai blogger iTeau.

Mind your language

Standards of English at the BBC – formerly the presumed guardian of the correct use of English – are definitely on the slide.

This morning the BBC News Technology RSS feed contained the howlers in the feed below.

How many errors can you spot? There’s an obvious typographical blooper at the end. But a hyphen in gold standard? I beg to differ. You may like to read the piece itself to see how many further errors you can find.

My notion that standards are really on the slide are confirmed by an item on Bristol yachtsman Tony Bullimore on the BBC Bristol News site which states:

“Ten years ago Mr Bullimore was rescued from inside his capsized yacht in a remote corner of the Southern Ocean.“

Obviously, the illiterate hack writing the piece has never looked at an atlas. The Southern Ocean extends all around the southern hemisphere north of Antarctica. I have one question for the author: does a sphere have corners?

Greed versus green

Castle Park in central Bristol is a fortunate accident occasioned by the heavy bombing of Bristol by the German Luftwaffe during World War II. Today it is a pleasant oasis of mature trees, grass and shrubs: two ruined churches – St Peters and St Mary Le Port – stand as silent witnesses to the destruction of the last war, whilst ther park also houses memorials to the D-Day Normandy landings and the Spanish Civil War. Before the war the area of Castle Park was the thriving commercial heart of the city: it was where the city was founded in Saxon times and the site of Bristol Castle; today it offers quiet recreation in the midst of the concrete jungle.

However, the park’s peace is under threat. The unholy alliance of developers Deeley Freed and a supine city council planning department are prepared to sacrifice about one-third of the park’s present area to bricks and mortar. Admittedly, there is a small amount of unused old office space at one end (which should really be knocked down and the whole grassed over and incorporated in the park) and this is being used as the pretext for the developers’ plans.

These have met stern opposition from the local citizenry. There’s a Save Castle Park website and an online petition and a St Mary Le Port and Castle Park Users’ Group (which can be contacted by email), not to mention widespread coverage in the correspondence and editorial pages of the Evening Pest.

Developers Deeley Freed state, “Our aim is to provide a vibrant mixed use development featuring food retail, improve connections between Broadmead, the Old City and Redcliffe, enhance the setting of St Mary le Port church and provide benefits to the area.”

Wrong: that’s an excuse you’d like us all to swallow; we all know your aim is to make money. The only benefits I can see are bigger profits and fatter shareholders.

And just in case Deeley Freed forgets: the people of Bristol prefer their present mix of trees, grass and tranquility in Castle Park to your artists’ impressions of the future any day.

Another growth spurt

The Easton Bristol group on Yahoo, started some 4 years ago after discussions round a kitchen table and in local pubs, just continues to grow. We’ve now reached 113 members in total, with four new names signing up in the last 3 weeks – wonderful.

In the last 3 weeks too one new sign-up has had his membership terminated with extreme prejudice for spamming; don’t sign up to our little web forum to post spam links or you won’t last longer than a day or so. We don’t mind small, community events being posted, but commercial stuff and anything dubious is definitely off the agenda.

Way out Knowle West

Yesterday I spent a few hours over the other side of the city in Knowle West, former stomping ground of Tricky, as I’ve just taken on some work over there doing IT learner support and some development work for Knowle West Web.

Knowle West, like my own patch of Easton, figures high on the basket case scale if you read the official statistics, having high levels of poverty, crime, drug problems and so on – what is generally referred to as ‘deprivation’. Nevertheless, one thing I know is that people in Bristol are very attached to their communities – and Knowle West is no different.

I wasn’t the only strange character wandering the streets of Knowle yesterday: a couple of senior civil servants were doing likewise. The biggest cheese was Dr. Bert Provan, Chair of the panel of judges for the Government’s £7 mn. Digital Challenge. He was accompanied by Stephen Dodson, the Digital Challenge Programme Director. They were visiting the Knowle West Media Centre for a round table discussion with community and education representatives, local business people and others. More background on the visit can be read on the Connecting Bristol blog.

Anyway, back to my visit, which went less remarked. While up at the Park Centre, I dropped into visit Knowle West Web. It was lovely to see Kevin and Diane again; Diane seems to have the kettle on and biscuit box continually at the ready for when visitors drop in. It was lovely to see a couple of other people were busy there too; Kevin had a couple of young lads in their teens working on refurbished machines as part of the drive to have 40 or so refurbished computers ready for Christmas. They’re being advertised locally on posters and the Knowle West Web Computers site. Starting at very reasonable prices these machines are helping to bridge the digital divide. There’s also a prize raffle underway for Christmas with – no surprise here – a PC and printer as the main prize. I bought a couple of strips of tickets, but in the knowledge that I’d have to decline it if I happened to win. Can’t have outsiders like me winning!