Wrote some REST code to access a site’s API and saw a job offer in the response

What an excellent way to advertise directly to your target audience

I was writing some code to get some info from a site from their REST api and saw an unusual header in the response from the API which said something along the lines of “if you’re reading this come and get a job” with a link. The clever thing about this is that it’s already only filtered in people who already have the right skills that the company is looking for and it was unusual enough for me to immediately follow the link. Excellent innovative recruitment!

And the site? wordpress.com although it’s changed now to “Oh, Awesome: Opossum”

I’m a big fan of wordpress.com for a number of reas0ns. First they host my blog, for free. Second the authoring experience is always awesome opossum.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

I’ve decided to rename my blog from “The MacDaddy” to the imaginatively titled “Mike MacDonagh’s Blog”.

When I first setup this blog I had no idea what direction it would go in and I’ve always been terrible at naming things. I decided on the MacDaddy as an ironic nod to Kriss Kross and because there’s a “Mac” in my name and I’m a Daddy. I don’t think anyone ever got the joke. Jump jump…

Anyway, I’ve known for a long time it was silly so I’ve finally  renamed it. I toyed with ideas such as “The Software Ninja” and “Software Kung Fu” in blatant references to mastery and the Kung Fu of Software Engineering but that’s a bit too software-y when many of my posts aren’t really about software. Putting “Business” in the title would make me want to give myself a good slap so I’ve ended up with an almost no-name name. Hopefully now I’ll get less confused visitors looking for a blog about Apple Macs.

If you’ve got a better idea for the name of this blog I’d love to hear it

Can you have an “agile” conference when the talks are decided by committee?

I was reading Jurgen Appelo’s excellent blog on What If We Started Organizing *Real* Conferences? which chimed with me. I’ve been to, and spoken at,  several conferences where the talks were selected by a mysterious elite committee which just seems wrong. It’s probably because big conferences cost a lot of money and so are sponsored or run by vendors/big companies who want to ensure that people stay “on message”. The alternative is something a bit unstructured that people aren’t sure they want to spend their time on…

I was once involved with a conference at a large customer site a few years ago, the conference organisers put out the usual call for papers and got a bunch of ideas back from people. Those ideas were then all published for the wider community to see, comment and crucially vote up or down. This led to popular topics being pushed high up the list and an prospective audience buying into the topics and therefore the implied value before the event. Commenting meant people could seek clarification and argue the value of things before the event setting up contentious questions.

I recall two particular topics that got into a bit of a debate in the voting round, one ended up in a detailed discussion and eventually a resolution in the the comments and then no one wanted to rehash the discussion at the event. In the other discussion someone said something along the lines of “all of this chatter about the problem means we should have it at the event”. In both cases the community got value from the discussions and their different resolutions.

Importantly, the community self-organised it’s conference. It’s not a perfect model but it was transparent, honest and got people talking to each other which are all good things from where I’m standing

Netflix UK Review 2012

I really like the idea of Netflix. You pay a flat fee of £5.99 a month and then you can stream movies and tv shows whenever you want them, over and over if you want, with no ads. So I thought I’d try it out (for free). The convenience of being able to watch whatever you want when you want is a great idea, and if it was ubiquitous I believe it’d cut down on piracy massively since it’s cheap and easy.

The bad news
Unfortunately there’s no linux client. Since most media servers are linux based this is a shame but it’s due to DRM dependencies. There was talk of there being a linux client and now talk that there won’t be, however a Chrome addon is likely to eventually support NetFlix on linux.

The other bad news
Although there’s clients for a variety of devices, including android tablets I can’t get the android client to work, I load it up and just see a spinning throbber endlessly.

The good news
The Wii client works well and was fun to browse. TV listings are well structured and programme fast-forwarding through thumbnails is great. Quality is ok and I loaded up a few FireFly episodes and enjoyed flicking around them. The quality wasn’t as good as my FireFly DVD though, so I turned off the Wii and put the DVD in my linux media centre to watch in my bedroom. If you’ve never watched FireFly it’s worth signing up for the free month trial just to watch it.

The really bad news
The choice is just terrible at the moment. I like rubbish movies, and even old rubbish movies which is good because that’s all there is. In terms of TV there’s just ancient stuff. Top Gear episodes from 2003-2009 (which is basically the Dave playlist minus QI) and some other things I can already get for free (or rather forced purchase) from BBC iPlayer. In terms of US tv shows the choice ranges from appalling to non-existent (Ok so there’s a couple of good shows but I’ve already seen them, notable popular shows not on Netflix UK include Bones, Castle, Supernatural, True Blood, Nikita, Eureka, The Mentalist, The Vampire Diaries, Glee, Game of Thrones, Fringe, Homeland etc). It is possible to pretend you’re in the US rather than the UK of course, since Netflix is just looking at your IP address, in which case the choice is much better but that’s probably considered cheating at best and is probably T’s and C’s violation. If you do proxy to the US you’ll find most of the shows I listed above are available.

The conclusion
It’s a bit like dusting off my own DVD collection of rubbish old films and old good tv boxsets. Maybe there’s a couple of things in there to enjoy during the free trial month but there’s no way I’ll be continuing my membership past the free trial which is a shame. I like the convenience, I’d like it even more if there was a linux client and the android client worked, but it all comes down to the library in the end which just isn’t good enough at the moment.

I’m hoping it’ll get better and I’ll happily sign up again.

Woooo Ubuntu Running On Android looks cool

I like the idea of using different interfaces on my data through different form factors

Rant: Get rid of Daylight Saving Time

I normally avoid commenting on political matters but this one annoys me from a purely selfish perspective…

I read recently that the UK Govt is considering a move to double sumertime, which it’s important to point out has nothing to do with double rainbows. I can’t quite make my mind up about it in terms of this change, it’ll make it easier to work with Europe but put use yet another hour away from the US.

I don’t see why we need to do it at all. Like Income tax, Daylight Saving Time (DST)  was introduced during wartime and never repealed (ok, that’s not entirely true, income tax was repealed and reinstated a few times as wars came and went, the last time it was reintroduced was to deal with a defecit in 1842). I don’t think we need to change timezone at all, if people in some industries want to use the daylight more then why don’t they personally adjust their sleeping patterns? I’m rubbish at dealing with time zone changes, jet lag and sleep generally. Changing DST just tires me out and makes me grumpy.

I’d like to see us dump DST entirely and just stick with the same timezone all year around, like the Russians are doing. Let’s look at the impact of dropping DST in Russia and then see if it’s worth doing here too.

/rant

Esaltamontes – the spiny katydid

Information found!

My 7 year old son recently had a school assignment to write a non-chronological report on a critter of his choice from the Amazon Rainforest. He choose the most interesting picture which was the Esaltamontes to research.  The problem is there were no google hits at all for “esaltamontes”. Persevering, translating and trying similar critter searches we eventually found some information on the beastie in question. So, in case anyone else is trying to find info here’s my son’s report.

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The Esaltamontes is one of thirty million insect types in the Amazonian Rainforest.

There are four names for it they are Esaltamontes, Spiny katydid, Longhorned grasshopper and Bush cricket.

Esaltamontes are the prey of birds, bats and other insects. The sharp thorns of this cricket

warn predators to stay away. Although the katydids are only 2.5 to 3 inches in length, scientists have observed these small insects successfully fending off monkeys and birds by batting at them with their spiny front legs.

Believed by scientists to be omnivorous, spiny katydids probably eat flower parts, insects and seeds.

Male spiny katydids, native to the tropical rain forests of Central and South America, attract females by singing a high pitched whistling song throughout the night. The females listen by moving their feet forward (ears are located part way down the front legs). Most tropical katydids sing only sporadically, spiny katydids sing their high pitched whistling song for most of the night.

Behringer iAxe + JACK + rakarrack = awesomeness

I like to play guitar. Not very well, but I enjoy playing. A while ago I added to my collection a Behringer iAxe which is basically a normal electric guitar with a USB port.  It came with a CD of impossible to setup properly and use Windows software for sound effects. Since moving to Ubuntu I’ve been wondering how I’d be able to still play with it but last weekend I decided to try and search.

1 google search, 1 ubuntu software centre search, no reading of instructions and 20 mins later and I had achieved marvellous noise! I installed QJackCtl which starts and stops the realtime audio driver and also lets you map the input to virtual amps and then speakers (without having to read instructions, it mostly worked out what to do for itself) and then rakarrack which is like a big virtual guitar effects board. Then I just plugged in my guitar and make all sorts of horrible noises

It all just worked and best of all it’s all free – well except for the guitar!

MMD WordPress.com FireFox extension v2.0

The long awaited v2.0 is ready:

• supports multiple blogs
• uses https instead of http to look up stats
• supports FireFox 4.0

Get it from addons.mozilla.org – please leave a review

More info, screenshots etc. here

How to deal with Telemarketers

Cold calling telemarketers typically have a script which is used to draw you in and sell, sell, sell. Time to turn the tables one them!

Bwahahahahaha!

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