#YearInReview What did you ship in 2010?

Seth Godin asked “What did you ship in 2010?” so here I go:

I took a trip of a lifetime to Taiwan.
I got my quill out and write a bunch of guides for the day job.
I spoke at PELC10 and am on the committee for the  2011 conference
I worked on ’10’ new projects including prodigal son and grew a great relationship with a client who keeps coming back.
I gave up 1 sunday a month to volunteer with Bristol Advanced Motorcyclists
I trained and ran in the  9-10 mile ‘fun’ run called the Sodbury slog
I started this here blog
She said YES – i got engaged

Oxford Chill out gloves

Riding in cold windy rainy conditions is completely fine save the trouble keeping the visor clear and wet hands.

Riding gloves keep my hands dry for about an hour but eventually they get very sodden which leads to cold hands and risk of an accident. My solution to date has been to switch to a dry pair but for long rides this is not workable as i’d need up to five pairs.

Enter the Oxford Chill out ‘inner’ gloves which claim to be waterproof and I hope so to keep my paws dry. I picked a pair up today for £11 in the sale.

They also claim to be comfortable but my first impression is that each finger feels like it has newspaper stuffed into them.

As an aside, the product photo on the website has to be one of the least attracting product photos I have ever encountered.

I will write about my success with the rain as soon as it rains next – shouldn’t be too long then.

Order is important for javascript

A note to my future self, the order in which you import javascript files doe’s matter.

When using javascript, you must load the jquery file BEFORE you load the scripts.
jquery.js THEN your scripts:
script1.js
script2.js

Huffduffer – my podcasts

Huffduffer is a web service that allows you to bring found podcast episodes together that you and others can subscribe to.

Already I have discovered ‘game theory’ and actually chosen to walk to work just so i can fit a episode into my day. My Hufferduffer account.

TV’s in the headrest

Image of a tv in the back of a train seat

Nas was rapping about ‘tvs in the headrests’ back in the mid 90’s. Fast forward to the present and a bunch of trains now have tvs in the headrests.

The only problem is they have introduced them at a time when nearly all new mobile devices provide the same service without the cost. I have yet to see anybody not using their own mobile device and using the train tv service.

Reminds me of those kiosks in the high street.

On the use of a BY-SA Creative Commons licence

Reading  the Implications of the NonCommercial (NC) Restriction for Educational Content this morning reminded me of a discussion at an OER workshop in November, during which the topic of which license to use naturally cropped up.

Skipping the discussions about the other licenses, the interesting point of discussion for me centred around the use of the licenses BY-NC-SA and ‘BY-SA‘.  The general consensus amongst the group was that ‘NC’ was used to stop the commercial world from looting from us.

However it was pointed out that in order for any item to be open then perhaps we need to revisit our thoughts on ‘NC’ and Derek Keats, writing on the use of ‘NC’ makes the following point that resurfaced the discussion for me:

“It is restricted culture. It is freer than it would be if it were subject to full copyright, but it is not free, and I am not free to use it to create free content. To use an analogy, it is free culture to the same degree that an inmate in a minimum security prison is freer than an inmate in a maximum security prison, but it is not free”.

the southern african journal of information and communication issue 7 2006 p77 keats, D

During the informal discussions it dawned on some of the group that perhaps something isn’t really open if it tied up with an ‘NC’ license.

So it was proposed that perhaps the use of the BY-SA is more appropriate as, and this is when the penny dropped – the use of ‘SA’ obliges  any content including commercial content to also be licensed as BY-SA, preventing pure commercial use without too becoming part of a creative commons license.  Thus, perhaps BY-SA is a better way to be more open with your content.

Being quite green with OER, It is a view that I am certainly leaning towards as my starting point until proven otherwise.