Posted: Sat 6 May, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: General, Own Business, Thinking About..., Work-related |
OK, another in my “this is a slightly odd request” line of posts.
I’ve got an idea, involving setting up some electronics (nothing complicated – probably (bear in mind my lack of knowledge on this score) but I know sod-all about it) along with some ultra-bright white LEDs. Probably 4, or maybe 8, along with a power source (I’m thinking probably AA batteries) and ideally a touch-sensitive switch.
Although the touch-sensitive is the nice-to-have part, and a normal thumbwheel switch would probably do the job just as well – it’d just be slightly more work than figuring a capacitance-based touch-switch.
Anyway, if anyone who’s good at knocking up that kind of simpleish circuitry were to leave a comment, I’ll get back in touch with the idea, and we can see where it goes from there.
Thanks.
Posted: Tue 25 April, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Getting Organised, Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
OK, even though the site has now gone live, Where’s Good? is still having bits done to it.
Yes, as one person suggested, perhaps I should’ve waited another couple of days to fix everything. However, in some cases the bugs were ones I didn’t know existed – and never would until it got released into the wild. And on a couple of bits, well, I just forgot something still needed doing. Mea culpa on that one.
Also, I’d said I’d release it yesterday, and I don’t like going back on what I’ve said/promised I’ll do. It’s a flaw.
So over the next few days I’ll probably still be adding stuff, fixing bits, and generally keeping on working on it. Yes, in hindsight perhaps I should’ve waited, and launched the thing properly on May 1st. But I wanted a soft(ish) launch where people would log on, try things out, hopefully tell me if something wasn’t working, and carry on like that this week.
At the end of the day, everything’s got to launch sometime. Yesterday was the day for Where’s Good. And May 1st is likely to be the “full” launch – not that that’ll mean much, there’s not going to be champagne, fireworks, and celebrations or owt, but it’ll be up, running, and hopefully not too buggy…
Posted: Mon 24 April, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
OK, well, it’s time to do the deed. I’ve been working on this idea properly for a month now, although the URL has been in my grubby little mitts for a while longer than that.
So. The site is called Wheres Good, and (logically enough) it’s at http://www.wheres-good.com . Nice URL, eh? The basic idea is to build up networks of people reviewing pubs, restaurants, shops, hotels, blah blah, and to then be able to rate other reviews (and users), building up a decent reference model of what’s good, where’s good to go, etc. etc. Along the way, you can set up a “hotlist” of places you want to remember/bookmark, and also set up events and stuff, so in theory blogmeets and so on could be arranged, including where to go, all on one site.
It’s still in beta (hey, like there’s a shock) but should all be working, which is a good start so far as I’m concerned. Anyway, let me know what you think of it…
Posted: Thu 20 April, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
Well, I’ve decided.
As of Monday, [the site which has currently not been revealed] will no longer be unrevealed.
In other words, this weekend I’m going to be putting some finishing touches to it, fixing a couple of things, and hopefully sorting out a couple of other bits that really should be done, but I was thinking might not be immediately. However, leaving the launch ’til Monday should give me the necessary time to do so.
Obviously it’s still really going to only be Version 1.0 , and there’ll be improvements, additions, fixes and so on along the way from there, but it’ll be good to have it at least out there, and usable. Although I’m kind of edgy too about getting feedback and so on. But I’m sure I’ll figure it all out, one way or another. Should be fun, anyway…
Posted: Fri 24 March, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related |
Gah, sometimes I swear I’m my own worst client.
On The Other Site (and I promise I’ll be letting it out into the wild soon – promise.) I’ve been working out how to get the necessary information into the bloody thing, and it was becoming more and more complex. Countries, Regions, Towns, and at least two other bits of information before we got to the crux of the matter, and so the page was hellish.
Mainly this was because I was trying to do it all in a way that makes sense for the long-term, and minimises the amount of data that’s repeated in the database. For instance, if you’ve got an address table, you don’t really want a buttload of records with the same town, county, and country – you’d want to have a “location” table that will hold those, so you can say in the address table “location=10”, and then in the location table, record ten has “town, county, country” in it. Makes sense.
Anyway, the way I’d done this was becoming incredibly complex, and so this morning I’ve been looking at it again, and figuring out better ways to do it. Well, by “better” I mean, of course, “simpler”- both from a coding point of view, and a usability one. All the same, it’s enough to make my head ache quite a lot.
The annoying bit is that I’d got it all to a point where it was actually pretty much working. It just took too long to get anything done, so the re-plan was necessary. And maybe when I develop things a bit more, I’ll come back to this way, and do it all with AJAX or something to make it nice to use. But I’m not convinced…
Posted: Tue 21 March, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Thinking About..., Weirdness |
In today’s “local” news on the BBC, it appears that police are warning drivers not to leave sat-nav units in their cars when unattended. To me, this really isn’t rocket science. Apparently to a lot of people it is.
When I walk anywhere, I tend to notice what’s in cars. I don’t know why – I guess I’m just nosy, really – but I do pay attention. And it’s quite amazing the number of people who do leave expensive stuff out on view when they’ve parked up. Now yes, maybe it is “only for a couple of minutes” – although a lot are at least overnight – but still, you’ve got to be pretty bloody dumb to leave the sat-nav in it’s cradle, with only a window to “protect” it. Same applies for the people who strong leave their phones in their cars, and even their wallets.
All in all, the “don’t leave valuables in the car” message has now been circulating for at least a decade, if not two. As we carry more and more valuable stuff around with us, it would seem sensible to be more aware, but instead people seem to still make use of the “It’ll never happen to me” mentality that drives me utterly bananas.
So far as I’m concerned, if you leave valuable stuff like sat-nav, mobiles, money, cameras etc. visible in the car – and a lot of people do – then you should be prepared to lose it. And of course if you’ve been a numpty and left it there visible, the insurance won’t pay out for it either – in fact, it’s like a tax for idiots. Works for me…
Posted: Wed 15 March, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Security, Thinking About..., Thoughts |
Now here’s a scary development – BioBouncer (although it’s a bloody horrible name) Basically, it’s a facial recognition system for bars – it scans each customer’s face as they come in, and then can check it against a list of “undesirable” customers.
Using advanced facial recognition biometric technology, BioBouncer™ quickly and accurately identifies these potentially dangerous people as they walk in the door – so they don’t even have a chance to ruin someone else’s experience. Powered by a combination of patent pending performance enhancing software intricacies, BioBouncer™ captures facial images of all club patrons as they enter. These images are then matched against a database of individuals who have broken club policy in the past and who are not welcome anymore. Maybe they are known to carry a weapon, have been removed for violence, or violate the club’s illicit drug policy.
Should a match occur, an alert is sent to your security personnel via wireless network and informs them of the alert location, accompanied by a photograph of the individual. Depending on club protocol, your staff can react quickly and effectively to either remove the person or at least be aware of his location. And speed? BioBouncerâ„¢ matches against 1,000,000 faces in less than one-second.
And if you’re just an innocent punter, out for a night? Supposedly those images that aren’t needed or referenced are deleted at the end of the night.
As Bruce Schneier says in his Crypto-Gram email (which is where I got this from),
Anyone want to guess how long that “automatically flushed at the end of each night” will last? This data has enormous value. Insurance companies will want to know if someone was in a bar before a car accident. Employers will want to know if their employees were drinking before work — think airplane pilots. Private investigators will want to know who walked into a bar with whom. The police will want to know all sorts of things. Lots of people will want this data — and they’ll all be willing to pay for it.
And the data will be owned by the bars that collect it. They can choose to erase it, or they can choose to sell it.
It’s rarely the initial application that’s the problem. It’s the follow-on applications. It’s the function creep. Before you know it,
everyone will know that they are identified the moment they walk into a commercial building.