OpenTech 2009

I went to OpenTech last weekend, which was a very interesting day. I'm still looking for a way to somehow balance doing some work for a group like ORG, No2ID, or MySociety with the other commitments on my time. At the moment I have, as one of the ORG people put it, "outsourced my activism".

But I'm convinced this is the direction democracy should be going in - transparent communication of as much government data as possible, in open formats, and allow external groups to use that data to provide accountability, new services, whatever is needed. And conversely, the government needs to start taking seriously the problems of collecting masses of personal data and think about how to design systems that are more opt-in for data-sharing, while allowing criminal investigations to take place with appropriate authorisation.

Anyway, there were loads of interesting talks - from the journalist who did all the FoI legwork to get MPs expenses into the public domain, to an interesting session on using Open Source software in schools (particularly relevant to me as school governor, currently looking at rebuilding a school website), to the extremely disturbing talk on Intercept Modernization from ORG and No2ID, which was preceded by this wonderfully deadpan introduction by Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom:

Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom: "Three Pillars of Digital Britain", OpenTech 2009 from Richard Elen on Vimeo.

(there are some more videos on that site too from Bill Thompson, and Ben Goldacre - both worth a look).

After the conference, I went out with my old friend Kath, and we had several pints of what turned out to be very strong lager (or maybe I'm just not used to drinking so much lately) so it was a good evening, but I was not feeling at my best by the time I got on the train back to Cambridge.

Back from holiday

It seems to have taken most of the last week to recover from going on holiday - I've just felt really tired until the weekend. Still Weymouth was great - we had fantastic weather so we went on the beach quite a bit, which the girls really liked. We did a walk along the coast, from Durdle Door to Lulworth Cove - quite a steep hill, so I was impressed Ella managed the whole distance with no problem (and very little complaint). Lulworth Cove is beautiful - I'd like to go back there sometime.

I also took the girls to MonkeyWorld (Mrs F declined to come) which was really good - it's a rescue centre, so there is a good reason for the apes to be there, and the girls really enjoyed seeing the chimps (who were equally fascinated by the crowds) and the Capuchins. However the thing they really enjoyed was the enormous aerial playground, with big climbing nets and slides.

We ate out far too much - I'd particularly recommend the Statue House Tapas Bar on the seafront - great view, nice food, and pretty reasonably priced. There were some very nice looking expensive restaurants by the harbour, but it didn't seem fair to the girls to drag them out there in the evening, and not fair to us to rush through a meal. On the last evening we went to Rossinis, near where we were staying and had a really nice meal. Lizzie drew a portrait of H on the tablecloth, which was so good we've kept it.

Back in Cambridge, we went to a party on the Saturday at Guy and Susie's house, which was really good fun. I stayed quite late, and drank too much red wine. Didn't feel ill, but I was pretty groggy and slow on Sunday. Then on Tuesday we'd arranged a babysitter, and so we decided we'd go out while we had the chance! We were going to go to The Bridge at Waterbeach, but the service was pretty surly, and we were promised a delay of up to an hour for food, so we skipped it, and went back to the Crown and Punchbowl, where the waitress was incredibly friendly and helpful, and we had a really nice meal (albeit a somewhat more expensive one than we were anticipating).

This week I'm probably working in London one day, and then maybe back in London on Saturday for OpenTech.

European Elections

I went to the hustings in Cambridge on Monday organised by the local Amnesty, NO2ID, and Oxfam groups. Since I've been inactive in both the AI and NO2ID groups for a while, it was good to see quite a few people I know but haven't met up with for a while.

The panel was quite interesting - they had UKIP, LibDem, Labour, Green and Conservative candidates and there was a good selection of questions. UKIP fell at the first fence when David Campbell-Bannerman said that he wasn't convinced of the case for climate change. To me, this kind of statement now puts you outside sensible political discourse.

The Conservative candidate suffered from the problem set by the UK party to leave the centre-right grouping in the European Parliament and start a new one with various loony and disturbing groups. I can't take their positions on Europe seriously while they are taking this stance.

That leaves Labour, LibDem and Green. To be honest, I could potentially have voted for any of them. I thought the chap from the Green party was very articulate, although unfortunately he isn't the candidate for the EU election. The Labour guy seemed very genuine, and certainly seemed to have a record of achievements. I didn't take to him personally though, and to be honest, I just can't bring myself to vote Labour in this election*.

So Andrew Duff for the LibDems gets my vote. I am pretty much a natural LibDem anyway, but his answers to the questions on climate change, data retention (which Labour weaseled on), and the position of Britain in the EU were by far the closest to my own views.

Overall a good evening, and I hope we'll have a good turnout tomorrow, and that the extremist groups don't profit from the venality of some mainstream politicians.

* I'm making an exception for the council elections, for various reasons.

Caught Up again

I feel like I've managed to finally catch up with all my ideas about what I want to do. This seems to happen periodically - everything will get in a big mess, then I finally decide to sort it out, get back on the GTD wagon, and review it all. Of course the trouble is that knowing what you want to do isn't the same thing as actually doing it, and I have terrible trouble getting my non-work projects started, or sticking to them over time. Anyway this time, the main ones are to re-start learning Hindi, to write some kind of web project to learn more about Javascript and PHP, and to do some more swimming practice before I try to have any more lessons.

The weekend has been really nice - beautiful weather (although I have to be very careful in the sun). I took the girls to Cherry Hinton playground and we all had a nice paddle in the pool there. E met one of her friends from nursery, so that was good.

L has been out on her new bike a couple of times - I'm still just holding onto the back, but she is really close to being able to ride independently now. Annoyingly the front tyre has a puncture already, although it seems to be a slow one.

Went out for a bike ride this afternoon - round through Fulbourn, Wilbrahams, then up to Teversham and back through Cherry Hinton. It was good, although a bit too hot, and I finally remembered where I found a little path which I walked a couple of years ago, and which I then completely lost.

Morrissey at Cambridge Corn Exchange

Went to see Morrissey last night with my friends Ian and Clare. It was a really good gig, and we managed to get very near to the front (with all the squashing and jostling that entails). There's a set list here - pleased to see quite a few Smiths songs in there + quite a few more recent crowdpleasers.

There was a little incident when someone heckled Julia Riley after Moz gave her a birthday shout-out. Moz asked him to leave, and when he didn't really want to, Boz Boorer came over and gave him what looked like a pretty good line in verbal abuse, after which he went. To be honest I don't see how he could have done otherwise really - I doubt Morrissey fans are quite up to the standards of the Hell's Angels at the Isle of Wight festival, but I don't think I'd want to be surrounded by them when you've just pissed off the main man and his biggest fan in the middle of a concert.

May Update

Looks like it's quite a while since I wrote anything, so here goes with a quick update:

• swimming - I had another lesson, and I was able to do some full lengths swimming independently. I think a couple more should do it, and I need to work on being able to float and try going in a pool where I'm out of my depth.
• running - I've been doing gentle runs with walk breaks (1 min in 5 or so) every weekend, and so far no problems, so I'm going to start doing a run in the morning during the week again.
• last week or so I've had a nasty cold - felt quite grim + sinus pain - ugh. Seem to be over it now, but it was annoying to get it just when I was having a day off. Still I managed to go out with E and visit the Museum of Zoology, which I'd never managed to do before. They have a fantastic collection of skeletons of all kinds of animals - including whales, elephant, rhino etc. Went back to work on Friday to discover over 200 unread mails.
• I'm going to see Morrissey next week at the Corn Exchange. I saw him last year at the O2 festival in Hyde Park, which was great, so I'm really looking forward to it. As luck would have it, I just completed 5 years at my current job, so they gave me some Amazon vouchers, which I've used to buy the last two albums (among other things). Ringleader... didn't do that much for me, but I really like Years of Refusal - particularly All You Need is Me.
  

Finally Done...

I've finally finished re-posting all the material from Furthermore, except for a few bits and bobs I want to re-work, so hopefully I can get onto writing some new material here, and also taking down the old blog so I can do something new on that site.

What else is new: dining room is done, and everything is re-arranged - I'm now working at my new desk in the corner. Just got to put up my picture.

After last week's disappointment, swimming went well this week - my teacher was away, but he arranged for me to get a pass to Quy Mill, so I just practiced on my own. The thing I realised during the week was that I needed to get over my fear of going under the water when I started to swim. So I found a way to trick myself: I practiced quite a bit with just putting my face into the water and holding it - I don't like it so much, but I can do it if I feel prepared. So then the trick is kind of obvious: to overcome my fear of going under the water when I start swimming, I just start with my face in the water, and then I have nothing to worry about but getting it out! This worked really well, and I was able to swim several metres independently. I thought that was a good point to leave it, and I hope to pick up from there with Ed next week.

I also saw the physio again on Friday, and that went well. I cycled in with no problems, but annoyingly, I found cycling home triggered some knee pain again. Still I think I'm on the right track, so I did a short run this morning - some twinges but nothing major. I think I just have to take it gently and be more conscious of how I control my leg from the hip.