aak's shared items in Google Reader

Ladies and gentlemen...

2008-08-27T06:00:00Z

Just another tube journey home, rattling steadily eastwards, and I'm slouching at the end of the carriage reading the paper. The train's not packed - it must be August - but otherwise it's an entirely unremarkable journey. At Bethnal Green the doors swish open and a few people storm off onto the platform, hurrying escalatorward. The train pauses, and those of us still aboard wait for the doors to close so that our journey can continue.

"Ladies and gentlemen..."

Hmm, that's not the normal platform announcement voice. He sounds somehow different, more posh, more precise. Normally we get to hear someone a bit chirpier, someone who sounds like a real human being you might meet in a pub and not just a stilted robot. Even the nannying lady who repeatedly nags you to take all your belongings with you has an air of the 21st century about her. This bloke could be straight out of a 1950s documentary, probably wearing a bowler hat. I wonder what he's going to say next.

"...because of a reported emergency it has become necessary to evacuate this station."

Ah. Hmmm. Ulp?

I look out onto the platform. There's no obvious sign of danger, no billowing clouds of smoke, no crack police team in gasmasks, not even a lonely looking rucksack. By now there's barely anybody left on the platform at all, just a silent tiled wall staring back at me. I wonder what the emergency could be. Is the world ending, is there a gunman on the loose, or is it just that the driver's radio is on the blink again?

It's not just me. Everybody else has stopped reading and is now looking up. Eyes dart nervously around the carriage in a flurry of reassuring communication. Some people smile weakly, others appear rather more nervous. We are all going to be alright, aren't we? Go on, tell us more.

"Please exit the station immediately."

Erm, how? Should we all rush off the train and head towards the escalator (not good if the unspoken emergency is up in the ticket hall)? Or should we all stay on the train and wait for the driver to zoom us out of here (not good if the unspoken emergency is in the tunnels)? There are no clues.

The automated message is not repeated. Mr Posh has no more information to impart. There's no obvious member of station staff around to ask, nor any human being speaking over the station's tannoy with specific evacuation information. Even the driver is staying mute, perhaps because he knows no more than we do. This might be a false alarm for all we know. Or there again it might not.

We sit, and stare at each other, and wait, and wonder whether anybody else in the carriage is going to react. Nobody does. The doors are still gaping open, tempting us to stand up and escape, but we ignore the opportunity. Come on driver, slam the doors shut and whisk us out of here. And quickly please.

It's strange, but even though the voice reading the announcement was firm and proper, everybody has ignored him. We've all heard far too many automated announcements on the underground recently and we've learnt to disregard them. Planned engineering works? Don't care. Take our belongings with us? Yeah yeah. Don't change trains at Bank? Not listening. So when a recorded announcement tells us to evacuate the station, we don't take a blind bit of notice.

At last, after what's probably thirty seconds but feels much longer, the doors finally close. We set off into what we hope is the safety of the tunnel, keeping a close eye on any potential nightmare unfolding on the platform as we accelerate away. No sign. A brief perturbed smile from everyone in the carriage - what happened there? - and then back to reading the newspaper. No worries.

BETHNAL GREEN STATION. Closed due to a fire alert. All trains are not stopping.

Nothing dangerous this time, but in the event of a genuine "situation" we'd have been buggered. The general public appear to have no respect whatsoever for someone pressing a button to play the emergency tape, because familiarity has bred contempt. The unexpected, it seems, has to sound properly unexpected to be taken seriously. And one day, on some train in some platform somewhere, I fear passengers may not believe it's the real thing until it's too late.

Build One to Throw Away

2008-08-22T09:00:00Z

This is a maxim from Fred Brooks’ The Mythical Man-Month. These days I’m thinking it’s the single most important lesson there is about software. It’s been brought rudely home to me by my recent work on mod_atom, whose design is terribly simple; but I still got the first cut wrong in important ways.

What I Got Wrong

mod_atom is about as simple as an AtomPub server can be; all the entries and feeds and collections are backed one-for-one by ordinary flat files, with entries scattered across a YYYY/MM/DD tree, just like here at ongoing.

I had two URI/filesystem hierarchies, rooted at atom/ and pub/, to separate the resources that exist for AtomPub, like Service Documents and Media Link Entries, from those that are there to be read, like feeds and HTML pages; the goal was to make access control easy. How could that be wrong?

What happened was, I went back, after a few months of ignoring mod_atom, to build in Meta-pubs, so you can do CRUD on whole publications, not just individual entries and media files. This ended up touching most pieces of the system, and I realized that a couple of the core ideas were leading me into all sorts of tangled-code complexity; in particular the double directory structure.

So I rewrote it with one filesystem tree routed at pub/, backing two URI spaces which were identical except for being rooted at pub/ and atom/. The mod_atom code forces all PUT and POST and DELETE requests to go through the atom/ subtree. This allowed me to slash literally hundreds of lines of code.

There was another design error, just as obvious in retrospect; its cleanup also allowed subtracting severe gnarl and great big chunks of code.

Programmers experience soaring joy when they can rip through code deleting functions and declarations, screens-full into the bit bucket, with the steady drumbeat of tests-fail-then-pass.

So maybe I didn’t build one to throw away, but I built one that needed major amputations out of the box.

And Your Point Is?

This is by most standards a simple system; at the moment, excluding various XML- and HTML-munging libraries, less than six thousand lines of code. I’m an experienced programmer, have written hundreds of thousands of lines of C code, know the internals of httpd pretty well, and understand AtomPub as well as anyone in the world.

I’m not a truly great developer (I know this is true because I’ve worked with some) but I’m not a moron either (worked with some of them too) so if I’m going to make this kind of misstep, a whole lot of other people will too.

And let me make a strong statement: I’m not sure there’s anyone living, including your five favorite programming heroes, who could tell you, without writing the code, whether one or two directory trees were going to work out better for this problem.

Given that, what hope is there for waterfall development? Or for any approach that doesn’t leave space for going back and building things right once you’ve learned what “right” is by building things once? Well, none.

But You Already Knew That

Probably true. But you know what, how about we all agree, all of us who write about writing software, to write about this once every year or so. Because there’s this terrible glaring conflict between what sensible managers want and what sensible programmers know. Managers, good managers, want a plan; they want to lock in design constraints so that work can be dealt out and progress tracked and promises kept. Programmers, good programmers, know that they’re not smart enough to get the core design choices right until they’ve built something that works.

The various techniques and disciplines gathered around the banner of “agile” are on balance more honest at facing up to this unavoidable tension. But there’s still lots more work to be done.

And the most important thing is, we all have to remind ourselves, all the time, that we’re not smart enough to get anything important right the first time.

Exceptions?

Yes, of course. If you’ve just written three driver-scheduling systems or foreign-exchange systems in a row, you’ll probably go into the fourth with a pretty good grasp of what’s important. And those kinds of systems matter. But the interesting software is by definition the stuff that isn’t the fourth iteration of anything. Perhaps it’s best to close with Brooks’ quote in full:

“Where a new system concept or new technology is used, one has to build a system to throw away, for even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time. Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.”

306 - The Genetic Map of Europe

2008-08-18T08:56:08Z

Genetically speaking, Finns and Italians are the most atypical Europeans. There is a large degree of overlap between other European ethnicities, but not up to the point where they would be indistinguishable from each other. Which means that forensic scientists now can use DNA to predict the region of origin of otherwise unknown persons (provided they are of European heritage).

These are among the conclusions to be drawn from a genetic map of Europe, produced by the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam (the Netherlands), published in Current Biology’s August 7 issue. In its Science section, the New York Times devotes an article to the study, and reproduces the genetic map.

The discovery that autosomal (i.e. non-gender-related) aspects of DNA may be used to predict regional European provenance of unkown individuals was made by prof. dr. Manfred Kayser’s team of forensic molecular biologists. In a press release, the Erasmus UMC stated that this might potentially be helpful in resolving so-called ‘cold cases’.

The genetic map of Europe was compiled by comparing DNA samples from 23 populations in Europe (pictured on the right-hand side map). Those populations were then placed on the ‘genetic’ map according to their similarity, with the vertical axis denoting differences from south to north, and the horizontal one from west to east. The larger the area assigned to a population, the larger the genetic variation within that population.

When compared to the actual map, the populations kinda sorta maintain their relative position to each other. Two observations spring to mind immediately: the fact that most populations overlap so intimately with their neighbours. And that Finland doesn’t. Some other observations:

The extent of genetic variation is greater north to south than east to west. This may be a result of the way Europe was colonized by modern humans, i.e. from the south, in three successive waves of migration (45,000 years ago, where before there had only been Neanderthals; 17,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age; and 10,000 years ago, with the advent of farming techniques from the Middle East).
The isolation of Finnish genetics can be explained by the fact that they were at one time a very small population, preserving its genetic idiosyncrasies as it expanded.
The relative isolation of Italian genetics is probably due to the Alps, providing a geographic barrier to the free and unhindered flow of population to and from Italy… Although Hannibal, the Celtic and Germanic influence in Italy’s north and of course the expansion of the Roman Empire would seem to contradict this.
Yugoslav genetic variation is quite large (hence the big pink blob), and overlaps with the Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech and even the Italian ones.
There is surprisingly little overlap between the northern and southern German populations, each of which has more in common with their other neighbours (Danish/Dutch/Swedish in the northern case, Austrian/Swiss/French in the other one).
The Polish population is quite eccentric as well, only significantly overlapping with the Czech one (and only minimally with the northern German one).
The Swiss population is entirely subsumed by the French one, similarly, the Irish population almost doesn’t show any characteristics that would distinguish it from the British one.
British and Irish insularity probably explains why so much of their genetic area is not shared with their closest European cousins, i.c. the Norwegian/Danish/Dutch cluster.

Many thanks the many people that sent in this map.

Fantastic Contraption, addictive Flash game

2008-08-26T03:07:16Z

Warning, addictive Flash game: Fantastic Contraption. You build a little machine to push, pull, drag, or fling a special wheel into the goal. The best part is that when you complete a level, you can see how other players completed it (and how unimaginative you are). Really, really fascinating. For a level requiring some stair climbing, one fellow built a Theo Jansen-like beast that walked right up those stairs. For another level, another person built a catapult. (via buzzfeed)

(link)

Japanese with common last name Yoda denied Facebook account

2008-08-26T19:21:13Z

Japanese author/translator Hiroko Yoda was having trouble signing up for a Facebook account. Every time she tried registering with her real full name, she got an error message. She suspected that it might be because of her last name was Yoda, so she tried spelling it slightly differently—Youda, Yohda, Yooda. No problem at all. When she e-mailed FB explaining her situation, she got this reply:

Facebook blocks the registration of a number of names that are frequently abused on the site. The name "Yoda," also being the name of a popular Star Wars character, is on this list of blocked names. I apologize again for the inconvenience. Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Hiroko explains her constant struggle with her last name in a blog post titled Life as Yoda:

I'm a Japanese woman, and my last name really is Yoda. It's a common family name in Japan. "Yoda" the Jedi Master is actually pronounced with a long "o" in Japanese, which makes it different-sounding enough that the connection only becomes apparent when you write out my name in English letters instead of kanji characters... People think I changed my name because I'm a crazy Star Wars fan, or that I'm just kidding around. Even people who know I'm not making it up are always giving me Yoda trinkets and keychains and figures, so I had this little shrine to him going on for a while.

Rumor has it that George Lucas named the Jedi Master after a Japanese film director he met in Tokyo. Still, Hiroko Yoda always triggers a good laugh when she comes stateside and introduces herself to people. Then again, people never forget her name. "I guess it's a double-edged...lightsaber? Ha ha," she says. Image by barron via Flickr (Thanks, Baker!)

( Lisa Katayama is a guest blogger.)

Red Light Cameras Don't Work

2008-08-25T18:19:23Z

Interesting: the solution to one problem causes another.

"The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don't work," said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health. "Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections."
Comprehensive studies from North Carolina, Virginia, and Ontario have all reported cameras are associated with increases in crashes. The study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council also found that cameras were linked to increased crash costs. The only studies that conclude cameras reduced crashes or injuries contained "major research design flaws," such as incomplete data or inadequate analyses, and were always conducted by researchers with links to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS, funded by automobile insurance companies, is the leading advocate for red-light cameras since insurance companies can profit from red-light cameras by way of higher premiums due to increased crashes and citations.

And, of course, the agenda of the government is to increase revenue due to fines:

A 2001 paper by the Office of the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives reported that red-light cameras are "a hidden tax levied on motorists." The report came to the same conclusions that all of the other valid studies have, that red-light cameras are associated with increased crashes and that the timings at yellow lights are often set too short to increase tickets for red-light running. That's right, the state actually tampers with the yellow light settings to make them shorter, and more likely to turn red as you're driving through them.
In fact, six U.S. cities have been found guilty of shortening the yellow light cycles below what is allowed by law on intersections equipped with cameras meant to catch red-light runners. Those local governments have completely ignored the safety benefit of increasing the yellow light time and decided to install red-light cameras, shorten the yellow light duration, and collect the profits instead.

The cities in question include Union City, CA, Dallas and Lubbock, TX, Nashville and Chattanooga, TN, and Springfield, MO, according to Motorists.org, which collected information from reports from around the country.

Comic for August 23, 2008

2008-08-23T07:00:00Z

Simon Calder: Rail companies ride the gravy train to utter nonsense

2008-08-22T23:00:01Z

Reassuringly expensive: that used to be the slogan for Stella Artois. The makers of the Belgian lager sought to make money by emphasising the beer's high price. Something equally strange is happening with Britain's train operators: they make more money by pretending they are slower than they really are.

Comic for August 22, 2008

2008-08-22T07:00:00Z

Stakeout Fail

2008-08-21T11:01:12Z

Submitted by Chrissy

Geography Fail

2008-08-19T14:01:44Z

Submitted by Nicola M

The Homemade Veggie Burger Experiment!

2008-08-18T15:01:54Z

In my quest to find healthy alternatives, eat my veggies and cut down on food costs, I have started trying to make pre-made foods that we enjoy at home, from scratch. One of those things are veggie burgers. We really love a good veggie burger in this house. It is a quick, easy meal that you can feel good about - and eat with oven baked fries!

Don’t get me wrong, we love the meat versions as well. But there is something lighter about veggie burgers, that we sometimes crave. They can be pretty expensive when you buy them at the grocery store and in keeping a balanced budget, we decided that store bought veggie burgers just weren’t going to make the cut. But that didn’t mean they had to be off the menu! Plus, finding a veggie burger at the store without soy products is becoming virtually impossible. Not to mention it is getting harder and harder to find veggie burgers with out a lot of additives these days as vegetarian food is also becoming industrialized at a frightening rate. So I got a crazy idea in my mind. I decided to do a veggie burger experiment. Try a few variations, using different beans, legumes and grains, until we got it right.

The first one I tried was a chickpea variety. I am crazy for these beans, so I knew we would like a “burger” made from them, even if they weren’t the “ideal” in terms of texture and taste for a “typical” veggie burger. I based this off of something I had cut out of a magazine somewhere.

Chick Pea Patties

INGREDIENTS

1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed
1 large egg
3 TBS all purpose flour
2 TBS olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
3 large cloves of garlic
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
salt and pepper
pinch of cayenne
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder

METHOD:

Puree the first 6 ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Fold the peas and breadcrumbs into the mixture. Season with salt, pepper and spices. Shape mixture into approx. 6 patties.

In a large skillet heat up some olive oil. Cook patties for about 5 minutes or until golden. Flip them and cook another 5 minutes. Enjoy with your favorite burger condiments or serve them like we did with avocado, salsa and Greek yogurt.

*************

Lentil-Mushroom Burgers

The next one we went for was a lentil and mushroom burger. We wanted to try something that was a similar color and flavor to a burger and with a more similar texture. So immediately my mind went to mushrooms. Mushroom are the standby meat alternative. For some reason lentils seemed to pair well with mushrooms in my mind. These burgers were good taste wise, and I think were the closest we came to that veggie burger feel. But they didn’t seem to hold together as well during cooking.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup dry lentils, cooked
1 /2 cup bulgur wheat, cooked
2 TBS olive oil
1 package baby bella mushrooms
1/2 cup onions chopped
2 cloves garlic finely minced
1 egg
1 TBS plain Greek yogurt
1/2 of breadcrumbs
salt and pepper
1 tbs cumin

1 tsp dried oregano
1tsp sumac
2 TBS water
flour for dusting

METHOD:

Cook the lentils and bulgur wheat and dump into the bowl of a food processor. Heat up a large skillet and add olive oil. Sautee the mushrooms, onions and garlic, until all are soft. Add the eggs, yogurt, breadcrumbs and seasonings. Pulse until mixed together, add the water if too dry. Fold in mushrooms, onions and garlic. Form into patties. Dust with flour. Add more oil to the skillet and fry the patties until golden, about 5 minutes. Flip patties and cook on the other side until golden. Serve with all your favorite burger condiments.

*****************

The third burger I tried was a black bean burger. I remember when I was in college, I used to LOVE the black bean burgers they served at Chili’s…man has that place gone down since then…I digress. So I thought that another great legume for a veggie burger would be black bean. I found a black bean burger version on Katie’s blog, Other People’s Food
Katie usually has a good eye for food, so I decided to try the recipe as is, minus a few things like apples, ginger and allspice - which neither I nor Roberto are big fans of.

Black Bean Burgers

INGREDIENTS

1/2 medium Vidalia onion - chopped fine
1/3 medium red onion - chopped fine
1/2 orange bell pepper - chopped fine
4 cloves garlic
1 jalapeno pepper
2 cans black beans
1 t olive oil
1 t cumin seeds
salt
a few drops of habanero sauce

METHOD:

Grind up the garlic and jalapeno into a coarse paste, adding a little water if needed.
Heat the oil in a saucepan and toss in the cumin seeds. Once they’re browned, add the onions and sauté them till translucent.
Add the bell peppers, garlic/jalapeno mix and cook for another 3-4 minutes.
Now add the black beans, salt and habanero sauce and stir. Lightly mash the mixture with the spoon, leaving half of the black beans whole. Cook, stirring, for a two to three more minutes. Remove from heat.

Once the mixture cools, take generous handfuls and flatten each into a chubby 4″ diameter patty.
These can be cooked in batches on a lightly greased pan till browned and crisp on both sides. Serve with your favorite burger fixings!

These burgers were really tasty and packed a lot of flavor. They are great black bean burgers for when you want that southwest feel.

Try with Avocado Dressing (also good for coleslaw)
adapted from A Celebration in Wellness

1 avacado
3 large TBS mayo
3 cloves garlic
2 tsp rice wine vinegar
juice of one lime
salt & pepper
2 TBS water

Whirl all in food processor! YUM!

****************

I can’t say that I have perfected the veggie burger yet. So I am going to keep playing. There are things I like about each of these burgers, but I have yet to reach veggie burger nirvana. I am still searching for a better texture - which perhaps with my sensitivity to soy, I may never find… Do you have a good recipe for veggie burgers without soy that you want me to try? Please email me at : queen at leftoverqueen dot com

Finding five numbers

2008-08-08T13:47:09Z

I like Tumblr. I like Pownce. They both make it very quick and easy to post discrete quanta of information. I use Pownce for posting audio files and links to videos. I use Tumblr to post quotations. But both services suffer from the same problem: refindability.

Magnolia and Delicious encourage tagging. Those tags can then surface some pretty interesting aggregate behaviour but first and foremost, they’re useful for the individual doing the tagging. It’s pretty easy for me to track down something I bookmarked on Magnolia even if it was quite a while back. I don’t need to keep a list of all the tags I’ve ever used: I just need to search for a word that I think I might have used when I was tagging a bookmark. While it would be very difficult for me to try to second-guess how someone else might describe something, it’s usually pretty easy to put myself in the shoes of my past self.

As my store of data on Pownce and Tumblr increases, I’m starting to miss tagging (or any kind of search) more and more. Then again, I can understand why both services would resist that kind of scope creep. Both services rely on their simplicity. Adding another field to fill in could potentially be a road block between the user and the task they want to accomplish (although it doesn’t feel that way with Delicious or Magnolia). Update: it turns out that you can tag in Tumblr but it’s hidden behind the “advanced” link. Thanks to Keith Bell for pointing that out.

Here’s a case in point. Over time I’ve been posting MP3 files to Pownce of a series of radio programmes by Simon Singh, author of The Code Book — a superb piece of work. The audio from the radio programmes is available from the BBC website but only in Real Audio which, let’s face it, is complete pants. I originally got the MP3 files from Brian but after a catastrophic hard drive crash, I realised that it would be better to store them at an addressable URL. Besides, I wanted to geek out with my mathematically-minded friends. Pownce’s raison d’être is sharing stuff with friends so it seemed like the perfect home for the Singh files.

But without any kind of tagging or search, there’s no easy way for me or anyone else to revisit just those files at a later date. As a temporary patch, I’m listing the URLs for the Pownce posts that correspond to each episode. If you want to download the files, you’ll need to log in to Pownce.

Tagged with numbers audio pownce tumblr findability refindability maths mathematics filesharing

How photos make video better | Technology | guardian.co.uk

2008-08-18T09:30:28Z

Shared by aak
Impressive tweaking of video shot on domestic kit.

Hotel art: sheep

2008-08-10T11:33:07Z

anna pickard posted a photo:

I'm going to start collecting hotel art, I think - photos of it, I mean, on flickr. Because seriously, so much of it is just mass-produced bollocks. But this was rubbish to the point of utter brilliance: they'd taken one black and white photo of some sheep, you see, and COLOURED ONE OF THEM GREEN!

For NO reason WHATSOEVER!

Brilliant!

Just fancy that! Criminal Records Bureau-cracy edition

2008-07-08T22:08:20Z

the first priority is to end the crazed obsession with paedophiles that means anyone who wants to help with grassroots sports coaching must go through an enormous Criminal Records Bureau procedure

– Boris Johnson, Daily Telegraph, 1 July 2008

Crucially, officials also declined to take the opportunity to request an “enhanced” [Criminal Records Bureau] check [on Ray Lewis]. That would have revealed details of his arrest over an allegation of deception. It would have potentially given the Mayor information about other concerns relating to Mr Lewis’s previous conduct.

– Evening Standard, 4 July 2008

(Mysteriously that article is now missing from the ES web site – its link takes you to the follow-up article from the following Monday, but The Bleeding Heart Show, linked above, quoted it before it vanished. The paragraph still appears in Google search results but the page is not in its cache. This Daily Mail syndication of the article is though.)

Well spotted, The Burbler (who alerted me here).

Update: The well-connected Wireman delivers the goods again – here’s the original article from the Standard, as quoted above.

ShareThis

One Web Day is September 22nd

2008-07-09T17:50:11Z

I’m writing to you as the One Web Day Ambassador for July 9th 2008. One Web Day is a once-a-year celebration of all that is good about the Web. It’s organized by a non-profit team in New York City, but the celebrations take place all over the world. The Ambassadors project is designed to help spread the word about OWD and subsequently connect the relevant communities into the celebration.

This year’s One Web Day theme is participatory democracy. Given the current American political climate it is no surprise that participatory democracy and the web is such a hot topic. In March, CSPAN decided to release their streams under a license similar to CC’s BY-NC license. As the primary season was heating up, Creative Commons’ founder and former CEO, Lawrence Lessig implored the television networks to release the political debates for free. Taking Lessig’s point to heart, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Christopher Dodd all urged the DNC’s chairman Howard Dean to release their debates under Creative Commons’ Attribution license. Finally, CNN announced that they would release the debates for gratis online “without restriction.”

While it would have been ideal to see CNN release under a Creative Commons Attribution license, the steps were made in the right direction: towards opening and freeing the media that matters in our participatory democracy. Moreover, the whole exchange demonstrated the central tenets of how participatory democracy on the web works, and would probably not have been possible without the Internet.

So when September 22nd 2008 rolls around, give some thought to why and how the web is influencing our participatory democracy, and how you can play a role in celebrating its success on One Web Day — and don’t forget to make it to one the many parties!

Londonist Interviews … Unchained

2008-07-09T11:45:00Z

We’ve just recently come across Unchained, a super cool and incredibly handy lil London-based website 'designed to help people find the very best Unchained shops’ in the London. By 'unchained' they mean businesses owned and run 'by real people with a passion for what they sell,' and let’s face it: those types of businesses are sadly becoming fewer and farther between at too rapid a rate. Here’s our interview with Dave Birss and Lea Simpson, two of Unchained’s three founders. We applaud their vision and look forward to any future tips they might provide us on living a more chain-free life in London.

What's Unchained all about? How long has your site been around and how did the idea of Unchained come to you?

We think great independent shops are sexy. And just sticking to the same old, big brand, multi-national chain stores is dull, dull, dull. Like eating an English breakfast on holiday in Spain. It’s predictable and something you could have anywhere.

Same goes for big retail chains. They’re just not special enough. We love quirk, originality and experiences that come from meeting interesting people. We started Unchained because we know we’re not alone. Everyone we know is bored of Clone Town High Streets.

What we didn’t understand is why, if this was the case, chainstores continue to report increasing profits every year, while more and more of the wonderful, independent shopping gems in the city – the Unchained stores – have to shut up shop.

We wanted to change that. So six months ago, our guide to the city’s best independent shops went live.

How is Unchained different from other London websites with shop and business listings?

We’re the only ones focusing on independent shops. No restaurants, cafes, or anything else, just shops that are independent and great. Also, we don’t do reviews. That’s because all the shops on there are awesome. In the next few months we’ll be launching our e-shopping site so you can buy from Unchained shops online. No one else is doing that either.

Why is it important to patronize local and independently owned businesses in London?

Because they rock. Seriously. If you’re buying cheese, you should want to buy it from someone who is so passionate about cheese that they set up a shop to only sell cheese. It makes sense.

And of course, Unchained shops play a massive part in their community too. We wouldn’t want to wake up in ten years time in a world where big brand retailers line our streets and grumble about it. But by then, it will be too late.

How does London's independent shops scene compare to other global cities as well as to the rest of the UK?

That’s an interesting question because there are so many different aspects to it. To start with, independent shops in London aren’t protected by law. In Paris, for instance, there are planning laws in place to make sure independent shops exist. In London, shops are there because people go to them. Simple as that.

London is also particularly vibrant because of the range of Unchained shops in different parts of the city. There’s something for yummy mummies, bohemian misfits and foodies. There is endless quirk.

Any tips for readers who want to support local and independently owned businesses but can't seem to find them for all the Starbucks and Tescos standing in the way?

Visit our site before you go shopping – you can create a shopping trip on the site with a bespoke map and everything.

Aside from that we’d suggest you get off the main drag. Independent shops can’t pay the rent on the massive streets in this city. Take a little stroll down the side streets and be sure to tell us if you find any gems that aren’t part of the guide already.

What's in store for Unchained in the future?
Well there’s the e-shopping that we mentioned. We’re also going to publish a couple of books, create special Unchained maps to the city, walks, talks and hopefully a whole bunch of stuff that we haven’t already thought of.

Is there anything else we should know about Unchained?

Yes. We do loads of stuff for independent shops behind the scenes. We give them access to a community of shops and everything that goes with being part of a big group – things like increased buying power for services and events. For them, we’ve built an Unchained package that replicates everything the big guys have in a special, Unchained way.

Visit Unchained online at unchainedguide.com/.

Photography by hedgiecc via the Londonist pool on Flickr.

Australian Drug Mafia to Sell Pirated DVDs?

2008-07-08T12:07:22Z

Shared by aak
I've always been skeptical of the piracy-funds-drug-running line.

If you ask any Australian what the most annoying thing is about TV shows or movies, a common response is that it can take a long time for things popular in the US and UK to make it ‘down under’. Apparently, the Mafia has picked up on this, as they have started selling pirated movies and TV-shows on the streets, or have they?

When you get in any sort of reporting, you start to see the same sort of stories crop up. We’ve been writing for almost 3½ years, and even in that short time, and in as narrow a field as I keep an eye on, we see the same things crop up. In that way, it’s like fashion, except instead of cycles of 20-30 years, its often only 3-4. One such example comes courtesy of yesterday’s The Australian. Under a headline of “Organized Crime gets into Video Piracy” is a number of claims.

“DVD and other piracy can now be more profitable than drug trafficking,” AFACT’s director of operations Neil Gane told The Australian. “That’s why crime organizations are going into it.”

It might not sound familiar to some of you, but a similar claim was made some four years and 9500 miles away, in the UK. Back then, during a campaign called “piracy is a crime” they made similar allegations (see the top of this page, court. wayback machine), allegations that didn’t stand up to scrutiny back then, when we first encountered them.

Do these? Well, the article in question makes use of the infamous LEK study, and even the MPAA knows it’s inaccurate (pdf). So, it’s not exactly off to the best of starts. Unfortunately, that’s also the only start. Despite a trawl of the websites and press releases put out by the two organizations (the other being Foxtel), there is only one recent link (doc) between drugs and ‘piracy’ and that is the prosecution of ONE MAN just over a month ago, for cultivating cannabis, and what is described as ‘multiple copyright offenses’.

So, we’ve gone from one guy, with 3,300 movies+TV shows and growing some cannabis (total punishment, 7 month suspended sentence, and a 2 year good behavior order) to Organized Crime. Despite the utter failure of the similar campaign in the UK years earlier (where the only thing remaining of the campaign is the ‘You wouldn’t steal a…” advert) Australia seems determined to try and make it work.

However, there is a plus side, in that AFACT have established a market price it believes consumers feel to be the worth of a DVD. In all their estimations of yearly capacity, they give a ’street value’ of roughly $5AUS, which is about $4.77 US (3 Euros, or £2.40). In this they differ from the campaign in the UK, where the value given was some 20 times greater. In this, while telling lies, they are also more truthful.

In the end, no ‘criminal gang’ will forego their drugs, weapons or other lucrative money-making operations for DVD piracy. The reasoning is as plain as it is simple. With drugs, or guns they have small, highly valuable goods that can’t be easily obtained elsewhere. As the world becomes increasingly connected, and peer-to-peer becomes simpler to use, more reliable, less time consuming AND more powerful, the potential returns on selling bootleg DVDs reduces, ask Tony. Ten years ago, people had dial-up, and hard drives were maybe big enough for 2-3 DVDs. Now you can buy terabyte hard drives, and even the TorrentFreak researcher, living in the middle of rural Georgia, 10 miles from the nearest shops, has an 8Mbit connection.

The reasons for comparisons become clear when you hear the comments of Foxtel’s head of Fraud, Mark Mulready (a ‘former police prosecutor and detective’), who told The Australian “Police should have all the same investigative tools to fight piracy they currently have for organised drug trafficking or money laundering,” so, as usual, it’s about not having to spend time and money on civil cases, but having the taxpayer foot the bill, and the ability to use law enforcement to patch their business model.

Rehashing failed campaigns is a sign that the industry has no new ideas, and is desperately trying to avoid dealing with the root of the problem – themselves and their greed. When even the police are so into ‘piracy’, that there are too many to prosecute, it’s time to stop sticking your head in the sand, and deal with the causes.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Australian Drug Mafia to Sell Pirated DVDs?

Clouds

2008-07-08T12:05:41Z

Shared by aak
Wow. (Via uli)

Kingcow posted a video:

Timelapse of the bizarre July weather we've been having.

Capture rate: 3 frames per minute
Total frames: 630

aak's shared items in Google Reader

Ladies and gentlemen...

Build One to Throw Away

What I Got Wrong

And Your Point Is?

But You Already Knew That

Exceptions?

306 - The Genetic Map of Europe

Fantastic Contraption, addictive Flash game

Japanese with common last name Yoda denied Facebook account

Red Light Cameras Don't Work

Comic for August 23, 2008

Simon Calder: Rail companies ride the gravy train to utter nonsense

Comic for August 22, 2008

Stakeout Fail

Geography Fail

The Homemade Veggie Burger Experiment!

Finding five numbers

Five Numbers

Another Five Numbers

A Further Five Numbers

How photos make video better | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Hotel art: sheep

Just fancy that! Criminal Records Bureau-cracy edition

One Web Day is September 22nd

Londonist Interviews … Unchained

Australian Drug Mafia to Sell Pirated DVDs?

Clouds