Goodbye to my global status updates

May 21st, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »

Back in 2007 I created a centralised status updater that allwed me to post a short message to Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook at the same time. Later on I extended this to use Ping.fm so I could additionally post to Plaxo Pulse, Plurk and YouAre.

Now Jaiku have been swallowed by Google, Plaxo has closed Pulse, Plurk is still there but no one I know uses it any more, and YouAre closed down, there is little point in using this any more. Additionally Ping.fm is about to be closed down, so I would need to do some more coding if I wanted to keep it going.

As a result of all this I have decided to closing down my status updater and use Twitter and Facebook directly. I also am experimenting with the Twitter Facebook app that cross-posts tweets to Facebook that seems to be working well for my tweeting style.

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Posted in Tech

I have a Raspberry Pi :-)

May 11th, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald 1 comment »

Yes, I was one of those geeks who got up at 6am to order a Raspberry Pi. It has been a long wait since then but I now have my Pi to play with. This is a quick blog post to summarises what I have learnt from it in my day of playing.

Despite completing the RS form in the first minute and getting an order in on the Farnell site (in between it falling over) I was not quick enough in the first batch, but out of the blue I got an email from RS saying that I could now order one, and that I did, and it arrived yesterday. :-)

It is important to remember that the Raspberry Pi is at the moment just a development board that requires quite a few bits and bobs to get up and running. Fortunately I managed to scavenge…

  • Power supply with a micro USB connector (Normally used for myy Mifi)
  • A fast SD card (Spare card for my digital camera)
  • HDMI to VGA converter (Purchased from http://amzn.to/Lp2MGG for £15)
  • USB Keyboard and Mouse
  • Network cable and access point set up as client

Yes, I don’t have a TV or monitor with an HDMI input but the converter works well, and using the wifi access point as a client means I don’t need to run a cable through the house.

I downloaded the recommended Debian “squeeze” image listed on the Raspberry Pi web site using BitTorrent on my Windows machine. Creating the SD card was easy although it took an age to work out what was an advert and what was the download link for Win32DiskImager. Writing the image was easy but the the image was for a 2GB card and I was using a 4GB one. It worked fine but I was wasting half the card. In the end I needed to use a Linux machine to resize the partition to use all the card.

The Pi running squeeze boots quickly enough. Officially you can not run YouTube on the Pi yet but you can install Google’s Chrome (just type “sudo apt-get install chromium-browser” in to the command line) and that will allow flash and HTML5 videos to [just about] play. It manages a frame rate of around half a frame a second at best. The Broadcom chip set is capable of playing accelerated video but there is a little work to be done yet.

I have not been able to get the sound working yet but this could be because the sound is being sent to the HDMI port instead of the 35mm jack socket. I will have to look further in to this.

So that is as far as I have got. To summarise the Raspberry Pi is a lovely little computer. I don’t feel it is in a position for people to start really learning on until the operating system matures. In fact it is currently more complex than the average home computer, but we should remember that this is currently a development board and not pretending to be ready for the classroom yet.

Following several comments online I also note is that there are plenty of other board around and the Pi is not built of bleeding edge technology any more, but that is not the point. It’s success will be built on it’s community, and the media hype and low cost can only help broaden this community and make the Pi a success. It is not really challenging the Arduino as it is not comparable, and it is not going to take much business from other boards as it is creating a new market and not competing in the same market.

There is one thing that does worry me though. One key advantages of the BBC B microcomputer, that the Pi is frequently being compared to, is that you could programme it out of the box following a few simple instructions. This is not the case with the Raspberry Pi yet. This is not to say that this will not come, but at the moment you need to go out of your way to programme something and it appears we are relying on the community to rectify this. Much of the community seem more keen to make it do cool things instead of make it easy to programme and we can’t blame anyone for that.

Finally, like many, I ordered from both RS and Farnell and have already paid Farnell for one. Because of demand we are only supposed to have one Pi and I am planning honour this by selling the second one locally at cost to someone deserving. If that could be you let me know, but I am not expecting in until the end of June.

1 comment »

Posted in Reviews, Tech

New OnFilm4 Logo

March 19th, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »


After a request from Film 4 I have changed the OnFilm4 logo to make it less like the official Film 4 logo so people do not think it is an official service of Channel 4. As they asked so nicely and have a good reason I have no issue with doing this. Hopefully it retains the essence of Film 4 without being confused with the official logo.

If only other organisations (I have two in mind) would write polite emails instead of threatening ones with sudo legal bull they might have got what they want as well. There might have been a little rant sneak in there. Sorry about that.

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Posted in (Uncategorized)

On Film4

March 9th, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald 3 comments »

On the quiet there are a lot of good movies on Film4. This is now available for free through the UK on Freeview, on satellite and on cable. The problem is that I keep missing so many good films or turning on just at the end. Because of this I decided to come up with an over engineered solution to this problem. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you my hack On Film 4.

What this hack does is to take the Film 4 TV listings and tweets on @OnFilm4 10 minutes before the film starts. I also check if the film will be repeated and include that information in the tweet. This has already proved most useful and there have seen a few films that I would otherwise have missed, albeit on in the background while working.

I then decided that I needed a way of summarising the listings so I could easily scan the for good films coming up and set the PVR to record them. I did this by setting up the On Film 4 Google Group that sends an email a couple of times a week with the films that are upcoming on the channel. I try and sort these with the most popular first.

There are several sources of Film 4 programme listings but I have opted to use Andrew’s web site as it is simple and reliable. So I don’t put a load on Andrew’s server I only pull down any days I don’t already have listings for at random times of day. I also update listing for the day ahead in case it has changed. The result of this is I should have a complete weeks listing, accurate for the next day at least, but by only pulling a few KB in two files.

The system also looks up each film on The Movie DB and caches the film information. TMDB is a great community supported resource and I am now helping support it by identifying errors and unlisted films as part of this process. Currently I am not doing much with this information but I intend to do more with it in the future. I am experimenting with using the data to order the films in the email although I have found that going by user vote alone tends not necessarily identify the popular films.

I feel I should also say that this is not intended to be a replacement to the Film4 Twitter stream that is a far more rich and interactive service.

If you find this useful or have any suggestions on how I can improve it then please get in touch.

3 comments »

Posted in Apps, Tech

MakerSpace Arduino Day

February 28th, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »


This Saturday gone we held our first notable event at Maker Space, that being the MakerSpace Arduino Day. We had a good turnout to the point of reaching capacity. People were working on a few projects from laser games to wireless railway signaling, and a lot learning about the Arduino.

I spent most of the time not in fact working on Arduino code, but working on optimising and improving the development environment. My plan is to blog about this in the near future when I have finished my experimentation. The best tip I have is to turn off your virus scanner when compiling Arduino code.

We will no doubt be holding other maker gatherings and workshops in the future, and I suspect we will have another Arduino day soon so keep an eye on the email list. We are also continuing with our drop in sessions on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of every month. If you have something to show, need some help or advice with something, or just want to join in the chat then come along.

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Posted in Tech

I can give up BarCamps any time I want to…

February 12th, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »

…I just don’t want to yet. I have blogged before about the BarCamps I have attended, and then again about a few more, and now I need to bring the list up to date. So here is the list…

  • BarCampBlackpool2, 3rd June 2010, Geek event wifi
  • BarCampBrighton5, 2nd – 3rd September 2010, What apps should I install on my new phone?
  • BathCamp2010, 30th – 31st October 2010, Flash Talks + Duck365 replay
  • BarCampLondon8, 13th – 14th November 2010, HTTP: What it is and how it works
  • BarCampBournemouth3, 26th – 27th Feburary 2011, Can we do Backstage without the BBC?
  • BarCampSheffield2011, 16th / 17th Apr 2011, The low level details of QR Codes
  • BarCampNottingham, 23rd – 24th July 2011, Playing with GPS, DRM, and a World Service TX
  • BarCampNorthEast4, 13th – 14th August 2011, Organiser + PowerPoint Karaoke presentation
  • BarCampBrighton6, 10th – 11th September 2011, Building SmallQR.com
  • BarCampMediaCityUK, 17th – 18th September 2011, Be Happy
  • BarCampBlackpool3, 15th October 2011, Let’s make a pop video
  • BarCampLondon9, 29th – 30th October 2011, I am on a startup accelerator

There is the list, taking me to a grand total 41 BarCamps attended over 5 years.

I also hold a rather unusual record still, that being I am the only person who has attended all the overnight UK BarCamps. It is not a record I have gone out my way to keep, and sadly that is a record about to come to am end. BarCampBournemouth4 is scheduled for the 1st weekend in March when I will be assisting with the ThinkVis conference in Leeds. It had to end at some point and I am surprised it has taken 5 years, but end it must.

So here is to BarCamps in 2012! I hoping there will be lots of new and smaller ones as I am enjoying these a lot more than the larger ones. If you want to organise one near you then feel free to ask for help and encouragement. It is easer than you might think and unless we have new people put there hands up and say we want to do that then the movement is in danger of fizzling out in time.

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Posted in Events, Tech

How not to do Twitter support

January 25th, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald 1 comment »

Warning: This is a rant. I do it now and then when something annoys me. Call it therapy.

I have an xbox 360 that was kindly given to me by a friend who had a spar, and I am currently working through another friend’s game collection. I say working thought, I am still on the first game, but I am not the biggest games player and you can’t rush these things you know.

Anyway, I was wondering a while ago if the BBC iPlayer was available for it and when I checked I found that it was not because Microsoft insisted on charging for it and the BBC was not allowed to do so. Then last year it was announced that it will now be available on the xbox early this year. If it is available for free then I decided I really should wire up the console to the Internet, and it would make life easer if I know this before next week’s broadband install. It has not been clear if it will in fact be free so earlier this evening I thought I would do something radical and ask.

I was going to use the support section of the web site but as the xbox twitter support account claims to be the “Guinness World Record Holder” of the “Most Responsive Brand on Twitter” so why not ask them on Twitter? This is a transaction of what happened…

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 18:00
@XboxSupport When the iPlayer is released will it be free to use or will I need to pay like the other TV services?

Xbox Support 2 (@XboxSupport2) 25/01/2012 18:02
@alistair We don’t have that information, unfortunately. ^PC

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:01
@XboxSupport2 Thanks. Any pointers to find this out would be welcome.

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:04
@alistair Sorry, we don’t have any info. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:09
@XboxSupport1 Do you not have the ability to escalate queries you can’t answer?

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:11
@alistair We do, but that info has not been released yet. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:14
@XboxSupport1 Wait a moment, I thought you said you did not have any info. Are you saying it is secret at the moment? When will it be out?

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:16
@alistair We don’t have any info regarding that. Let us know if you need anything else. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:19
@XboxSupport1 If you could escalate my inquiry that would be great. Thank you.

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:23
@alistair Cheers! ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:24
@XboxSupport1 When and how will I get a response?

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:29
@alistair We are unable to respond with more info on that. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:35
@XboxSupport1 Sorry but I feel like you are sticking two fingers up at me. Can I make a complaint? Do you have an email address?

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:37
@alistair Sorry you feel that way, but we aren’t able to assist. We do have report card coming out, you can check your DM’s for those. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:53
@XboxSupport1 I have found the contact details I require through the web site and will take it from there.

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:54
@alistair Ok, sounds good. Let us know if you need anything else. ^PJ

It is true that I always got a response from Twitter, although I can’t say it answered my simple question. For reference I called the xbox live support number on the web site after this last tweet and got an answer straight away. The answer being yes I will need to pay for “gold membership” to access the iPlayer on the xbox, and that is just not going to happen. Why could they not tell me this on Twitter?

Now I don’t claim to be a Social Media expert, but I am an advanced social media user and I know how not to treat people on Twitter. Microsoft got a lot right here in fact, but the big thing they got wrong is treating a person like an idiot and not having a next step when the canned responses they have fail them. Even if they could not tell me then they should have taken the conversation off twitter and politely said that they were really sorry but we can’t tell you yet and why.

Okay, rant over (for now).

1 comment »

Posted in Rant, Tech

Broadband and line rental for £8.56 a month!

January 23rd, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald 1 comment »

It is a constant surprise to people that I have not had ADSL broadband at home, ever. In truth I do have a 3G Mifi that is essentially a portable wifi access point and at £8 / month for 5GB transfer (an old half price offer that I still have) and I use it when at home and away.

With last year’s VAT rise I was paying £12 a month for the fixed phone line with evening and weekend calls. I was looking for a cheaper option and considering going mobile only when I spotted a great deal from Plus Net. I sign up for an annual contract with the monthly cost is £12.73 (offer expires 14/02/2012). So now I can have an expected 16mbps broadband with a 10GB transfer limit for just 73p more than I was paying for just the line. I could have had a monthly contract instead of an annual one for a few more quid and a setup fee but I went for an annual one.

In the past I had a Plus Net business connection at my old office, and two family members use them, so I have confidence in there service. They are owned by BT (shudder) but run as a separate company with decent support. You might also find it amusing that they own the company I am moving away from.

What is better is that I used Quidco and got another £50 cash back (offer expires on 31/01/2012). I recommend checking Quidco for all big inline purchases as it has saved me over £200 over time. So now for the next year my monthly cost is the equivalent to £8.56, a whole £3.44 cheaper than I was paying for the phone alone. I am oddly pleased.

If you want to do the same then please consider using my Quicdo affiliate link to place the order. It will not cost you any more and I get a small kick back of you do. Also as part of the Plus Net signup process please enter that “alistairuk” refereed you for the same reason. If do not want to then that is fine, I still recommend taking the offer if you can.

1 comment »

Posted in Reviews, Tech

Port Designs Berlin Sleeve Review

November 6th, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »


It has been a while since I have been asked to review a product on my blog but if someone wants to send me something shiny then I am more than happy to do so. In this case I have been asked to review any laptop case from GearZap.

As someone who attends a lot of tech events I needed something that was going to protect the laptop form the usual knocks and bumps on the train, have handles to carry it with other bags in the same hand, and not look overly shabby.

I could chose any of these 15″ laptop cases but with some advice I selected the Port Designs Berlin Laptop Bag 15/16″ Sleeve. It met the requirements and looked smart enough to for most occasions without feeling odd at social occasions.

When unwrapping the bag I was quite pleased with with the look and feel as it came across as not overly cheap, but on overly posh. A middle ground I am most comfortable in. The case is designed to so you can open it up and the computer and function without it being removed. Annoyingly it appears that unless your laptop is the exact size required it will just pop out of the holders. Initially this was disappointing but I find myself slipping the laptop in and out with ease so much it is a feature I am probably best without.

My first outing with the bag was to a hack day where I already had another bag with the usual hack day bits and bobs in (mouse, power strip, external HDD, sleeping bag, etc) so the bag was just being used for the laptop and the power supply. The bag has a large zip pocket that holds my small power supply and UK power lead without loosing it’s shape, but squeeze in any more and it looks like it has been eating pies and not exercising. If you carry lots of junk with your laptop then this bag is probably not for you, but if you just need a small PSU like me then it is ideal.

There are also two open-topped pockets with Velcro under the handles. The handles fold neatly in to these pockets but I have not yet had cause to do this. They are convenient for pens, business cards, flash drives and other small items. The handles are also well padded so are not constantly digging in to your fingers like many bags I have had in the past. There is no shoulder strap as it is just not that kind of bag.

So in summery it is a good smart looking bag if you travel light and well worth the £30. If you need to carry more or need both hands then you are probably better of looking for something bigger. For me it is spot on and I will definitely continue to use it.

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Posted in Reviews

My no voicemail experiment

October 5th, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald 2 comments »

Yes, that is correct, as of last night I am no longer using voicemail on my phone so to leave me a message you will need to use email.

As of two weeks ago I have become very busy for reasons that I will no doubt be blogging about soon. As a result I can not take many mobile calls and a lot of people are calling me leaving messages. I am constantly finding several messages on the phone at a time, some already dealt with, most duplicated in an email, a few from the same person calling back multiple times, and a huge number of “please call me” messages with no hint as to why or if it is in any way important. It should also be noted I don’t have time to respond to all of the messages.

As a result I have decided to stop using voicemail all together on my phone. I looked at several solutions over time that will take the voice mail and convert it to an email for convenience, but this only makes retrieving the message easer and does not simplify me making my response so it is email all the way I am afraid. I am not the first to do this as some friends have already given this a go. So from now on if you need to contact me then please send me a VERY SHORT email me and I will respond by email.

Please don’t feel this is unfair. It is a common question “how can I reach you quickly”. Although people don’t realised it they are in fact asking how do I jump the queue to get Alistair to do something. The truth is that I can not do everything, respond to everyone, and be at your beck and call. Sorry but I need to prioritise and no matter how important you think your issue or question is it might not be top priority when combined with my list of things to do. Moving entirely to email helps with this prioritisation.

Also please be brief in your email. If it is a line or two and I can deal with it when it arrives then I will, otherwise it will be dealt with in the evening, the following day, or in the following week depending on what else I have to do. Things do get missed so feel free to email again, but only after a few days, and include all I need in the latest email as I will probably delete the older ones.

Finally let me know how this works out from your perspective.

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Posted in (Uncategorized)