June 2010
1 post
Daily Fail (again)
BT, like any self respecting company not stuck in the dark ages, are evolving their approach to social media, reaching out to disgruntled customers and offering to help sort their problems. This was universally considered a good thing, until the Mail decided it was simply spying.
February 2010
1 post
5 tags
Interacting with your Social Graph
Today @fredwilson’s started a discussion over at avc.com about chatroulette.com. I’d never heard of chatroulette before today and I’m slightly taken aback by it’s simple freshness. There’s no signup. There’s no fee. You’re connected to an unknown other’s webcam, and they to yours, from there, you chat. Just head over and give it a go, it’s...
January 2010
1 post
Hello WSGI
I’m working on something that really doesn’t need the massiveness of Django, as a result I’ve been digging into a little FastCGI or WSGI as it seems best presented in Python.
def application(environ, start_response):
start_response(‘200 OK’,[(‘Content-type’,’text/html’)])
return [‘<html><body>Hello...
December 2009
3 posts
Apostrophes
I have issues, amongst other things, with apostrophes. In all honesty, I have many issues with the English language, but apostrophes cause me much trouble. I took solace this week in discovering that Lewis Carol, who was slightly more capable than I, spelt shall not, sha’n’t. Thus, fuck it.
Can being a vegetarian help save the planet?
No. Should a black hole come hurtling across our solar system, something I’m inclined to believe they don’t do but-it’s-a-nice-image-so-I’ll-continue-with-it, it’s unlikely it’ll stop to make a quick poll of the inhabitants dietary regime before handing down it’s justice and swallowing us up. Similarly, should a massive gamma ray burst hurl it’s...
6 tags
Amazon on the High Street?
The Times are reporting that Amazon is making secret enquiries to setting up shop in a couple of key locations in out cities!
There’s nothing official as yet, and it may just be that as a good company Amazon is keeping an open mind to its future options. Although as the Times points out, this is a definite departure from the tried and tested online retailing formula.
We lost the...
August 2009
3 posts
June 2009
5 posts
Fake Steve is back →
This is how it should finish.
Beer Pouch →
Stupid Yanks. You’re doing it wrong! Beer goes in a pint glass. Simple.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-6-14) →
Bruce Dickinson (47)
Jimmy Eat World (31)
Guns N’ Roses (15)
Linkin Park (12)
Jamiroquai (11)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-5-31) →
Starsailor (17)
Red Hot Chili Peppers (8)
eScala (1)
Eric Clapton (1)
Escala Feat. Slash (1)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
May 2009
9 posts
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-5-24) →
Manic Street Preachers (22)
Adele (5)
Starsailor (5)
Hypnotic DJs Ltd. (4)
Green Day (3)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-5-17) →
Stereophonics (62)
Red Hot Chili Peppers (37)
L.A. Guns (34)
Starsailor (33)
U2 (31)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-5-10) →
Razorlight (31)
Band of Horses (23)
A Camp (21)
The Ataris (20)
Ladyhawke (19)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
2 tags
Akon didn't go to school
On buying a diamond mine in South Affrica,
I always felt like if you get to a point where you’ve got enough money to invest in something real, you gotta invest in anything that’s related to a natural resource because that’s gonna be here forever - so you might as well invest in something that’s gonna be here, rather than invest in something that’s gonna wear out. I...
8 tags
More on the Apple-Whitehouse affair
Either Steve Jobs has been repalced with the ghost of Mary Whitehouse, or Apple are having real difficulties understanding the internet all of a sudden.
Just been pointed to this article from engadget.com:
Apple’s just reached a whole new level of stupidity in App Store approval shenanigans: the Tweetie 1.3 update was just rejected for displaying “offensive language” in its...
6 tags
Apple gets all Mary Whitehouse on Trent Reznor
Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor is one of a few artists who seems to be embracing technology to get his music out there. That’d normaly be a good thing, except Apple don’t see it like that.
Their latest application, which seem to allow you to stream the latest album to your iPhone whilst also providing some soical networking featurs has been rejected, here’s the response from...
April 2009
12 posts
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-4-26) →
Stereophonics (35)
Incubus (29)
Snow Patrol (26)
Iron Maiden (24)
Whitesnake (11)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-4-19) →
Nickelback (20)
Foo Fighters (17)
Starsailor (13)
The Libertines (13)
Jimmy Eat World (11)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
2 tags
BeautifulSoup
Wrote this a while back and never posted it. Update at the end.
I’ve been meaning to do something with this library for a while, but have never had the time, or suitable idea. I just wanted to get under the hood and find out what it was all about.
Last Friday I was talking to Simon who runs ticketsource.co.uk. It’s a dead simple service for selling event tickets. I was telling Simon...
5 minutes with Vince Cable →
6 tags
Less is moar
I had stopped using Facebook recently, Twitter provides me with most of what I need. But I do have friends on Facebook who don’t use Twitter and I still want to keep up to date with them. So, following what seem to be becoming a fashionable trend, I’ve pruned my Facebook friends down to 80. I expected to be closer to 50.
I don’t see that the new, real time Facebook, lends itself...
5 minutes with Ian Hislop →
Yes, Boris Johnsons documentary about Christianity and Islam was very good, although annoyingly not on iPlayer.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-4-12) →
Stereophonics (44)
Lady GaGa (44)
Soundgarden (33)
Starsailor (24)
Texas (22)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“In a statement, the Home Office said it was implementing the directive because...”
– BBC NEWS | Technology | Net firms start storing user data
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-4-5) →
Nickelback (39)
B.B. King (32)
Lady GaGa (24)
Eric Clapton (13)
Super Furry Animals (13)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
March 2009
16 posts
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-3-29) →
Stereophonics (30)
Kings of Leon (18)
U2 (18)
Dream Theater (17)
Ladyhawke (11)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-3-22) →
Eric Clapton (96)
Moby (41)
Stereophonics (26)
The Libertines (24)
The Killers (21)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-3-15) →
Pink Floyd (23)
Eric Clapton (21)
MGMT (16)
Kaiser Chiefs (15)
London Elektricity (15)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
4 tags
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-3-8) →
Pink Floyd (47)
MGMT (16)
The Black Crowes (16)
Avril Lavigne (13)
Nickelback (12)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
7 tags
Twitter as a database
Sometimes you’re writing a bit of code and you need an index, to keep track of where you’re at,
for i = 0; i < 10; i++:
print i
And that’s fine. We do it all the time. But sometimes we need to keep track of that index long term, across instances of a script. Enter Twitter.
I’m writing a tiwtterbot, for that is what it is, that’ll tweet a 3rd parties websites...
8 tags
Safe as houses
I’m seriously considering buying a flat in Cardiff. House prices are dropping and I’m in a fairly decent position to make this happen.
I’m not someone who gets stressed very easily, in fact I’ve began wondering recently whether I have much emotion at all. But this is the single most stupidly backwards industry in the world. There are far too many people involved and none...
“Facebook gets its own users to create local translations of the site, MySpace...”
– The Smart Execs Leave Before The Fall. - Tech Crunch
Takes the division of labour to a whole new level.
4 tags
“Beware geeks bearing formulas”
– Warren Buffer’s annual letter
3 tags
Media Temple pt2
MediaTemple are down again.. this is getting a little silly.
On an interesting note, apparently they use BlueArc kit for their gridsystem.. which looks mighty impressive. Pitty it doesn’t work.
Time to look for a new host. Tending to think Amazon AWS is the way forward.