ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

Just a few comments on the all-round goodness of Wordpress 2.7.1.

What didn’t I like about wordpress?

I didn’t like the PITA that it was to upgrade wordpress when a new version came out. Previously you had to back everything up, download and extract the new files, overwrite your existing files in a particular manner, ensuring not to overwrite certain ones, and while it wasn’t exactly laborious in comparison to other installs and fixes, it was something that would be a considerable pain, particularly for those less technically-minded.

So when Wordpress 2.7 offered the ability to upgrade with a single-click (although you still have to carry out your own backups), this sounded ideal. And it was. If you need to upgrade, you just visit the tools menu, select Upgrade (now there’s a surprise), and it will carry out the upgrade for you automatically. Well dones all round.

Upgrading and installing new plugins — or deleting old ones — works similarly. Wordpress can do it for you through the administration menus. Granted, this means you’ve probably got slightly less control, particularly over stuff like fine-tuning, but it reduces the PITA quotient significantly, and that has to be a good thing.

I did have one problem with Wordpress 2.7, however, and this was to do with scheduling posts. I frequently write posts in advance (e.g. I will write a post one evening for publication the next day), and this suddenly started not publishing the posts at the set time, instead just giving me a ‘missed schedule’ message and there not being any way of actually publishing said post (basically, you had to cut and paste the text out of it into a new post, publish that now, and delete the old post). This was a major PITA.

I ended up working around it by simply leaving the posts in draft status, and then manually publishing them the next day. Not ideal, but it was probably the best compromise solution. Looking into the problem on the Wordpress forums seemed to suggest that they felt the problem was with the hosting platforms people were using. Many were sceptical of this — how likely was it that suddenly lots of hosts would have a problem at exactly the same time users were upgrading from Wordpress 2.6.5 to 2.7?

Blog Highlight identified the problem on the 30th of January. It does relate to the hosts to some extent: if your host’s server is even slightly off from “Wordpress Official Time”, the scheduling won’t work. This was obviously somewhat of an issue as I presume it’s next to impossible to co-ordinate millions of servers to exactly the same second, even if local time doesn’t cause added complications.

Fortunately, this issue was fixed in the maintenance release Wordpress 2.7.1. You don’t mind problems so much, provided that they are looked at and addressed promptly, and that’s what the Wordpress peeps have done here.

At this point, I also should give a ’shout out’ (sigh) to the Wordpress.com stats plugin, which I have recently installed, although I was initially put off by mistakenly thinking that it would only produce statistics for Wordpress.com blogs.

Nope. The stats are collected and recorded on Wordpress.com (so you need not only your API key but your wordpress.com account details to use it), but it will record the usual sort of things that these stat packages do — visitors, most popular pages, referrers, search terms and the like. It is not as comprehensive as most separate stats packages — the one provided by by hosting company gives a lot more information — but they key advantage that it does bring is that it is integrated with the administration of your blog, so it’s very easy to see and access.

And of course, whenever anyone views their stats, they are legally obliged to list a couple of the more unusual searches by which people have located their site.

• i need a man to help me uk
• the clap symptoms
• things beginning with letter c
• does harry potter die in the end

I am not entirely sure why I am seen as the foremost authority for these questions, but there you have it…

Continue reading Wordpress 2.7.1 Thoughts »

Breaking news (to me at least): the 33rd Newcastle Beer festival will be held from 1st to 4th April 2009, according to both Newcastle Council and Camra.

I’ll see you all there, then?

It is perhaps also worth pointing out that I discovered this as a direct result of being a follower of NewcastleCC’s tweets. Who says Council twitter feeds don’t provide useful information to the public…

Continue reading Newcastle Beer Festival »

Whew! Talk about a kerfuffle.

Facebook changed their terms about two weeks ago, the main gist of which was that Facebook could retain access to, and licence some of your user content, even if you have deleted your account. This upset quite a lot of people, who were working on the principle that their content was, well, theirs, and they ought to have the right to say what Facebook could do with it, and when.

The intention seems to have been that if you create an account, use it to post on someone else’s wall, or in a group somewhere, that you cannot expect these bits of content to be automatically removed when your content is removed — presumably because of the potential for completely buggering up the context for what people have posted after.

However, it didn’t come across like this. It came across as “you post your stuff on Facebook, Facebook has a right to use it forever, irrespective of what you say”. Not surprising therefore that this was a public relations nightmare.

Mark Zuckerberg’s blog post read:

In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want.Mark Zuckerberg blog

The main problem with this is that the terms use legalese to discuss granting a licence and suchlike, and are presumably expected to be binding. You cannot therefore assuage people’s fears by telling them that irrespective of what powers you are actually getting, you will only use them in a way that they would like. I would suggest that anyone who is entirely comfortable with handing over their rights and trusting people grants me power of attorney over their affairs. Trust me.

So there was a big kerfuffle, and when the dust had settled somewhat, Facebook temporarily reverted to their original terms. It’s important to note that this is temporary. It’s also interesting to note that this has been described with language such as “forced into U-turn” and “made to back down” where the equally appropriate but more positively-phrased “shows they will listen to concerned users” would presumably apply.

Indeed, they have actually set up a Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities group to encourage users to contribute to what they feel Facebook’s terms should be. A jolly good idea, even if some of those ideas puts forward “stop all advertising” are a non-starter.

Similarly, I’ve seen people complaining that other people are swearing on twitter and this shouldn’t be allowed, despite the rather obvious solution of well don’t follow them, then. Fuckheads. Whoops.

The complete non-starter idea that I would propose for this sort of thing wud B 2 stp txt spk thx. It really gets on my bleeding nerves. Although I am aware that by admitting this (knowing the ‘friends’ I have) that I have just created a rod for my own back.

Joking aside though, the idea that users can contribute towards the Facebook terms is a good idea. The balance has to be struck between what is reasonable — for example, unless Facebook are allowed to use your content, it’s hard to share it with other people — and what gives away too much information. But if you are using Facebook, you have an opportunity to contribute. Don’t waste it.

And while you’re on, watch your privacy on there. Just because you think you’ve got your privacy settings correct doesn’t mean that they are always going to be secure. Facebook are just as capable of data security breaches as anyone else.

…although given the frequency with which unencrypted personal data seems to be left on the bus / sent to the wrong person (did I ever mention that quite a considerable time ago I was once on the mailing list of an MP’s researcher for about three weeks before I finally figured out that she’d confused me with someone else and I probably shouldn’t have been being sent details about the MP’s appointments and suchlike?) I am tempted to think that the best security against ID fraud is the fact that the fraudsters will have so many details to work through before they get to yours.

Of course, that’s rather flippant and not a serious protection against ID fraud. We ought to be careful, and most of us — including me — probably aren’t as careful as we should be, particularly in regards to the information we make available online.

Continue reading Facebook Terms »

Over at ConservativeHome, there is a post entitled should councillors twitter?, which mentions the Cllr Tweeps website which keeps a list of all of the twittering councillors.

The post basically describes twittering as micro-blogging, the poster admits to being on twitter but using it mostly to follow what other people say, rather than taking much of an active role himself, and ends by asking the quite sensible question…

Have any councillors found Twittering productive so far?ConservativeHome: Local Government

As far as I can tell, the majority of the replies are from people who aren’t councillors, so not the sort of thing Harry was looking for specifically, but there are two key responses from people who are councillors, one of whom I feel gets it and the other… well.

Firstly, Paul Scully mentions his blog and his twittering, and points out that while this does not replace face to face communication, it offers him a way to communicate with commuters who he might not otherwise get the chance to see, and points out that with a small majority, every vote is crucial.

Now I suspect Paul and me are probably at different ends of the political spectrum on a number of issues, but on this one, I agree with him wholeheartedly. For me, one of the biggest problems facing our democracy is apathy. Voter turnouts are down because voters are increasingly sick of the ‘party machines’ (or at least ’tis my belief). For me, blogs and tweets allow voters to see the human side, to understand a bit more about the candidate they are voting for, rather than just his or her party.

And that has to be a good thing: that particular person is the one you are choosing to represent you, not the party they belong to. It also is a great way of getting a message over to younger voters who are unlikely ever to turn up to a constituency or ward meeting. It encourages engagement.

So, Paul Scully is my Politico WIN.

And with my Politico FAIL then — actually preceeding Paul’s comment — we have a message from Councillor Henry Lamprecht, of Enfield Council. Henry is again a conservative councillor, but with a somewhat different viewpoint

What on earth has Councillors got to twitter about? What they did at scrutiny panel last night? Cllr Henry Lamprecht

Well, yes, if it affects people in your ward. Why shouldn’t you tell them about it? Don’t you feel they have a right to know? Or do you feel that selecting and disseminating relevant information is somehow beneath you?

In the past these anoraks used to just bore the people around them but now they can bore absolutely anyone in the world. [...] It is like watching a mating ritual of Peacocks the way they display their dazzling qualities to each other. Cllr Henry Lamprecht

Ah, I see. Henry doesn’t like twitter. Or presumably facebook, or blogging, or anything like that, and therefore he is dismissive of anyone who does use it as being an ‘anorak’, and some sort of glorying smug idiot in need of a constant ego massage.. Still, it’s nice to know that Henry is happy to publicly dismiss all Twitter users as anoraks without worrying that it might make people not want to vote for him, isn’t it?

He appears to think that it isn’t his job to tell the residents of his ward what is going on, and all the people in his ward who are into technology are dismissed as anoraks. I’m glad he isn’t representing me, as I’d certainly feel I could do better.

He does however suggest that it is important to speak to people on doorstops etc — which it is, and I’ll concede that point — but seems to miss the point that many people will want to do business with their local council (or councillors) electronically. If I want to contact my councillors, I email ‘em. I don’t see the need for them to turn up at my house, or vice-versa. More and more people feel the same.

It’s about contacting and engaging with people the way they want to be engaged with.

Of course, the funniest bit is then Henry closes his remarks by saying…

Finally, just remember one thing… Every time you twitter, the person that wants your seat from another Party reads it too… Cllr Henry Lamprecht

Indeed. And every time you dismiss twitterers as anoraks publicly, someone can quote you on that and make the information available to others too, Henry. Perhaps you ought to have remembered your own advice…

Continue reading Politico WIN and Politico FAIL »

Now, it’s perfectly understandable that a spam comment slips through now and again, particularly when it is one that looks at least vaguely on-topic, doesn’t contain a boatload of links and just uses the author URL (or at most this plus one other) to link off to somewhere else.

However, I would have expected at least one of my spam filters to have spotted that a comment from someone allegedly with the moniker ‘penis enlargement pills’, who perhaps unsurprisingly wants to talk about penis enlargement pills and provide a link to them, was a spam comment.

Although this spam did at least answer the question which has been bugging me for some time. What exactly are penis enlargement pills for?

Penis enlargement pills are a way to enlarge penis size.Spam

Ah, thanks for explaining that. I had been wondering…

Continue reading Spam Filter FAIL »

The following conversation is made up of individual tweets. I have only posted tweets from people who released their tweets into the public domain, although given that I have cited people appropriately, I could also have used any with an attribution licence, although not without derivations also allowed, as I have removed @references to people who have not similarly released their tweets.

The following tweets are all real, but the assembly of these tweets seems to create a conversation which didn’t actually occur. I would presume that this conversation would comprise a derivative work, but if all of the tweets have been presented in their original format, I’m not sure whether it would be or not. This conversation was not real; please remember this. If anyone doesn’t want to be attributed, let me know and I’ll remove your attributions, but I’m hoping you’ll all be good sports about it, particularly since the tweets in question are all public domain anyway…

And this, of course is dedicated to @foamcow, for giving me the idea.

Valentine’s day is-a-coming. I’m getting excited!8q

my crunchy nuts tastes like weetabix this morning.daveredfern

you make it sound like that’s a bad thing!Cole007

Coffeeshop playing Mike Oldfield. WIN!relativesanity

only one thing for it - time for some G Love and the Special SauceCole007

@cole007 I’m calling that an awesome assistrelativesanity

acquired wife some super hot Viatnamese chilli sauce. looking at the bottle is making my eyes water so hoping will move things along nicelyCole007

However, it is perhaps important to be careful there, Cole…

@Malarkey rubbing your nipple in lighter fluid should not be attempted without adult supervision. also, smoking probably not advisableCole007

Okay, it’s not perfectly strung together, but that’s what I’ve managed to piece together with half an hour playing with about a dozen twitter feeds. If someone did really want to put together a serious effort at a comedy conversation, I’m sure that they could do a better job than this — particularly with all those public domain tweets allowing derivations…

Now I think I’ve made it perfectly clear that the context of each tweet as presented in this post is entirely fictional, and therefore I hope that no offense will be taken by anyone.

@ThePickards #pissoffCole007

Oh well… I guess I deserved that. He might be a bit annoyed with me…

But he is a God at code! : D Malarkey

Continue reading TweetCC Public Domain Fun »

Andy Clarke (@malarkey) and Brian Suda (@briansuda) have produced TweetCC, which is a scheme whereby people can list their twitterstream and their tweets as being licenced by Creative Commons, so that they may be re-used.

This came about because…

Andy wanted tweets and avatars for a new book. His publisher needed him to get permissions to republish and that meant asking everyone. This was, not to put too fine a point on it, a pain. Brian agreed.

It would be nice if twitter could allow for a CC or other license on your content, then people don’t have to ask.

TweetCC

That’s a fair point, particularly as theoretically, and re-tweet without permission may be a breach of copyright. Andy also wanted to look at the question of licencing avatars and so on — again so that they can presumably be printed in said book. This whole idea of licencing your tweets is a bloody good idea, with the most annoying part being that as usual I didn’t come up with it.

However, the implication of the homepage is that tweets can only be released under a public domain licence — this is not the case, and indeed the TweetCC ‘CC’ page states that you are free to use whichever licence you wish.

For example, if you want people to be able to re-use your tweets, but to have to give you the appropriate credit for them, not be able to change them, and not be able to use them commercially, you should use the Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works licence. Many people may be wary about giving away their rights as regards commercial use of their tweets — if someone is going to make money out of them*, shouldn’t they be entitled to a share?

*not likely, is it?

Of course, this is not really a help to Malarkey’s book project, but I rather suspect he sees TweetCC as something bigger than that, rather than just a means to an end. So what you should do is look at the creative commons licences and decide which is most appropriate for you.

It is also not clear (as yet) how someone can — or should — go about licencing use of their Twitter avatar, or indeed whether they want to licence any photos they post via Twitpic. But I am sure that the Modfather is on the case and a solution will be made clear soon.

Meanwhile, pick the terms under which you would like to licence your tweets — if of course you would, you are under no obligation to do so after all — and send a tweet to tweet CC as:

@tweetcc: I license my tweets under a Creative Commons [licence type] licenseTweet format from TweetCC

Update: although the @foamcow raises a valid point…

@Malarkey But how would I know if they HAD used them. It’s easy to take stuff out of context and I’d hate to be misquoted.@foamcow

Well, @foamcow, I’ve contacted you directly to mention I’m using this, so hopefully you won’t mind — and if you do object I’m quite happy to remove it. I think in this case the tweet is placed in the appropriate context and so makes sense…

Continue reading TweetCC »

WebAIM have produced a very useful screenreader survey (which they in fact produced a couple of weeks ago, only I’d not got round to looking at it before now).

For the full details, you should obviously refer to the survey. I’m just going to list a few points which I think are worthy of note. It’s important to note that totals may come to more than 100%, owing to rounding, and owing to the fact that multiple options aren’t necessarily exclusive (e.g. you can be blind and have motor difficulties; you can use JAWS and Windows Eyes).

• JAWS is by far the market dominant screen reader (74%), followed by Windows Eyes (23%). Nothing else even reaches 10%
• Most screenreader users (75%) update their version within a year of the new version coming out. A significant minority take longer than this, but this would seem to suggest that we no longer need to assume people are all running on very old versions of screen readers, although a minority (6%) may take over 3 years to update
• Accesskeys are more widely used than previously suspected — 22% use them whenever available, and only 10% never use them. We may therefore need to start treating accesskeys more carefully, despite the key-combination problems that they may cause.
• 76% of screen reader users use headings to navigate either ‘often’ or ‘all the time’. Properly marked up headings are therefore critical.
• Site maps are not used very often (51% seldom or never). Is it time to give up on site maps?
• 53% of screen reader users find pop-up windows either ’somewhat’ or ‘very’ difficult to deal with; so lets avoid them, in comparison, people don’t seem to have difficulty with frames.
• Despite frequent advice from accessibility people to the contrary, it would appear that screen reader users would prefer (by 80% — 12%) that the alt text associated with a photo be identified as “a photo of X” rather than just “X”. That one is a surprise.
• 71% of screenreader users report that Flash is ’somewhat’ or ‘very’ difficult to use, with only 3% finding it ‘very easy’.
• There is a relatively even split over PDF files — 44% say ’somewhat’ or ‘very’ easy to use; 48% say ’somewhat’ or ‘very’ difficult.

It’s important also to note that there are differences in the results which can be identified based on how experienced computer/screen reader users people are, and that in some cases these preferences — use of accesskeys, alt with “photo of…”, alt provided for decorative images — are contrary to what is frequently described as accessibility best practice.

It just goes to show: you need to talk to people now and again to find out what they actually do, or need.

Continue reading Thoughts on the Screenreader Survey »

Over the last few weeks, I have been watching two three part crime dramas. Moses Jones and Whitechapel.

Whitechapel appealed to me: the idea that there is someone out there recreating the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, and the present day police have to try and track the killer now by working out what Jack the Ripper then would have been doing is quite interesting.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve read quite a few books on Jack the Ripper, and there’s nothing like an unhealthy fascination with the ritual slaying of prostitutes to — well, I don’t know what it is but the Jack the Ripper case has a certain fascination. I think it’s to do with the unsolvedness of it: I might find it vaguely interesting to read “insights into the mind of a serial killer”, but no other murders evoke the same level of interest.

So that’s why I decided to watch Whitechapel.

It’s also easy to know why I wanted to watch Moses Jones. Matt Smith, scheduled to be the eleventh Doctor Who, is in it. This is a bit of a shame for Shaun Parkes, who plays the title role of DI Moses Jones, as I suspect I was from from being the only person who was originally watching it simply for the Doctor Who connection (although then again Shaun Parkes has been in Doctor Who before himself — in The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit).

Moses Jones is a program with a lot of potential. It delves deep into the problems of the Ugandan exile community in London, starting with the murdered body of someone’s grandfather being discovered.

It’s fair to say that it looked at the less pleasant side of things: people trapped by the fear of the Ugandan ex-military monster Matthias and his brutal henchmen; prostitution, murder, casual racism, and — of course — the mismatched cop pair of Shaun Parkes and Matt Smith. It’s also got Dennis Waterman in it, who I find it difficult to see as an ex-boxer thug, partly because I still visualise the Little Britain version of him singing “the feem toon”, and partly because as a staple of New Tricks, I think he must really be a retired cop acting undercover.

(Although I have to say, there is a beautiful moment when Dennis Waterman’s ex-boxer is being threatened by someone who “went a round with Muhammad Ali”, and Dennis floors him with one punch saying “one whole round? must have been a fucking short one…”)

Please note, the rest of this may contain spoilers. If you are planning to watch Moses Jones or Whitechapel, you may wish to look away now.

Continue reading Mosechapel »

…seems to be a commodity which is frowned on these days. You have to buy in to whatever the national mood is, else you’re a sicko and a freak. I remember when Princess Diana died. It was kinda sad, but I didn’t know her. I was more sad when my cat died. This is not because my cat had inherently more worth than her, but because my cat had a bigger impact on my life than she did.

Similarly, long-time readers may remember that I got a little bit shouted at by rabid people with a CAPS LOCK problem when I said that while I hoped she was found safe and well, I thought Madeleine McCann was probably dead. To be fair, more readers actually pointed out that I was being perfectly rational than made comments along the lines of…

YOU CRITISE THE MEDIA FOR ALL THE ATTENTION ABOUT MADELEINE, BUT WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR SELF LOVING SITE, YOU ARE DOING THE SAME !!! ONLY ITS YOUSELF IN THE MEDIA, AND YOU ARE LOVING IT!!!YOU ARE A VERY VINDICTIVE PERSON DEVOID OF ALL COMPASSION.j jay

This kind of brings me to the problem. I’m all for people getting a chance to have their say, and put their point across, but I am an intellectual snob. I try not to be, as it’s not a very nice thing to be, but when I see a comment like that, the following sorts of things start popping into my head:

• You obviously don’t understand netiquette: it is not considered polite to type in ALL CAPS
• You can’t spell
• You don’t seem to understand that people can make a perfectly rational point that is different to what you believe without them being somehow inherently evil

…and it becomes more difficult for me to take the point seriously because of the way it has been presented. That’s unfair, as it’s an ad hominem judgement, attacking the person rather than the argument. And that is the problem with being an intellectual snob.

Sadly, it appears that this rent-a-mob mentality is increasingly prevalent.

Continue reading Independent Thought »