traveller with a tale

I have somewhat of a penchant for barcamping. Not really sure what it is, but ever since my first barcamp, BarCampLondon3, in 2007 I have been totally addicted. I think the opportunity to meet so many fascinating people is part of the draw, it’s not every day that you can meet people from so many [...]

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At BarCampCork2 I gave a session about how to get the most out of barcamp as a participant, especially aimed at first time attendees. I came up with a 10 step guide, gave each step a title and wrote a few notes about them. You can see the original presentation on slideshare, but I’ve also [...]

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This weekend I shall be returning to Berlin for the first time since my eventful, some might say life changing trip there last year, so I thought it might be interesting to surmise some aspects of my life since Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2008.
I guess the biggest change is that I have actually become involved [...]

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Recently the media has been inundated with stories of looming economic doom and destruction. Recession. Bank Collapse. Inept politicians meddling in the socio-economic capitalistic nature of modern British life creating the new socialist state. Ok, I half made the last one up. But the fact remains that our elected politicians are directly effecting changes in [...]

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For those of you cut off from the outside world, Spooks Code 9 is the brainchild of BBC 3 Controller, Julian Bellamy, a so called spin-off series of the BBC 1’s BAFTA award-winning series Spooks. Set in the quasi-post-apocalyptic future in which London and the South East have been destroyed by an unsubstantiated terorrist group (presumably al-Quaida) during the 2012 Olympics, MI5 is forced to hire the most incapable, dim witted and immature spooks since Austin Powers. WARNING SPOILER ALERT IF YOU READ ON

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For those of you who don’t follow my twitter stream (and you really should), I held an impromptu barbeque the other night (pics), which was a massive success and will, at some point, be followed up. I provided all manner of goodies, included burgers and hot dogs (which tasted fantastic, if I might say so [...]

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Yesterday was the Big Geek Day Out to Alton Towers, and was, of course, a day full of drama and adventure. I was one of seven people to be accidentally culled from twitter (although now restored, thankfully), disastrous on a day when communication between people whose mobile number you don’t necessarily know is essential.

This started me thinking about how much we rely on services like Twitter, and how they control access to our data and communications channels. Even though my culling was only accidental, and was restored within 24 hours, whose to say that it won’t be longer next time, or that restoration might not be complete and data might actually be lost.

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There was a lot of talk recently from some apparently well respected bloggers about how users were going to abandon twitter if they continued to be presented with the Fail Whale as frequently as we were. At the time I thought to myself nonsense. I love twitter, it keeps me connected to entirely new groups [...]

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Image via Wikipedia

I had the pleasure of spending the day with one of my most long standing (not oldest, he’s younger than me, and really not very old) friends, Yosef Silver (t) who was on a stopover in London. I picked him up at Heathrow, we spent the afternoon traveling around North West London in [...]

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