coffee.geek.nz

allow me to look down apon those who see microbloggin as a place to discuss what they had for breakfast...

If that's the best you can think of, and the only thing you expect to see on such places, then I'm afraid it may be wasted on you. Unless you give it a go you'll never know.

in contrast, here's what microbloggin is *actually* used for:

Lobbying - anyone can publish, without massive funding and spare time needed. You can get a message out that otherwise would have never been heard.

Human Rights - as with above, human rights violations are exposed and discussed on twitter, 140chars at a time. You can hear about these if you read major news websites, but they tend to be one story and then gone. Twitter repeats and repeats over and over, that a video has been leaked showing US military personal laughing as they kill civilians.

Fixing things - I didn't realise the front page of http://wellington.geek.nz was broken. I not only found out, but someone sent me a link to a fix on twitter.

Helping each other - I need cardboard boxes to move house. I found a whole heap of them by asking on twitter.

Advice - "My two year old just put nail polish in her eye, what do i do?". "The baby won't sleep, what else can i try?"

Sending good vibes - love a service, send some love via twitter.

Torrent freak, a news site for those who participate in torrent networks (legal or otherwise) is claiming "Kiwi 3 Strikes Anti-Piracy Bill Receives Unanimous Support".
http://torrentfreak.com/kiwi-3-strikes-anti-piracy-bill-receives-unanimo...

However, that is incorrect. Support was not unanimous. Clare Curran, Labour Party MP spoke up on twitter that her speech was not 100% supportive of the new bill. (Labour is NZ's largest opposition party) Here's the speech http://tinyurl.com/2egf9sc
(It's a little bit tl;dr for me.. sorry Clare, i have way less time now in between changing nappies on a small person - can has podcast version?).

What is supported unanimous, is the removal of "guilt by accusation" that was in the 2008 amendment by the last Labour government and supported by the National party (the Greens and maori party did not support the 2008 amendment)

In the new 2010 amendment (still before parliament), a risk adverse ISP is finally not required to act upon accusations alone and disconnect their customers in order to avoid liability themselves. The new bill, as currently written, ensures that ISPs are never expected to judge the merits of any accusation like they were under the 2008 amendment. It was ridiculous to expect an ISP to know the difference between a song you bought, a song you stole, a song you wrote, and what "fair use/dealing" exceptions apply etc. etc.

So those not infringing copyright no longer need fear they're be disconnected.

a teacher turned up, and we demoed Sugar and the XOs.

we started on the long list of activities to test for the Peru deploymen t- this deployment will mean every child in Peru has a laptop.

I started my takeover of the OLPC twitter and identica account, with a link to a BBC story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/09/can_a_laptop_change_the_wo...

We interviewed one of our team: Tim McNarama. This is first in a series of interviews of OLPC volunteers around the world.

We got yet another round of free drinks again from the lovely people who run The Southern Cross bar

Twitter falls over -- i'm not sure how often as i'm not a daily user (anymore) but it's alot.

It's crazy everyone using twitter's service - it's like the whole world using one email provider. A healthy ecosystem needs diversity.

So, checkout Open Microblogging (OMB). It's the same thing but distributed.

That means you (or a tame geek friend) can set up your own twitter -- *AND* communicate / subscribe and publish to the timeline of other users on completely different servers.

I'm the only user of my server - yet i see all the people i've subscribed to on dozens of other OMB servers

check it out here: http://micro.br3nda.com/br3nda/all

If you want to move on from the central point of failure, then try out http://identi.ca, a free omb platform powered by StatusNet (an open source project).

exhibit A: the twitter fail whale image

You know what twitter is? It's a micro blogging application - the most popular one in the world.

Do you know there's an entire open specification / protocol for "Open Micro Blogging" (OMB for short)

The cool thing about the OMB protocol, is the remote subscriptions. SO you can be a user on omb.blah.com and still see notices from people you subscribed to on omb.haha.com. It's decentralised.

And most open source OMB applications also synchronise with Twitter.

I'm using my own installation of an AGPL licenced application called Laconica. I've installed it over at http://micro.br3nda.com

I'm the only user on there, but with a few mouse clicks i've subscribed to many people in other OMB platforms.

The most popular OMB website right now is http://identi.ca. It's full of people who contribute to opensource - and it can be refreshing to find such a good signal to noise ratio there. Unlike twitter you don't find people trying to sell you SEO or viagra or naked feet photos or lids for you missing tupperware or whatever spammers on twitter sell these days.

There's also an API that exactly matches twitter's. So you can take any old twitter client that you like, and tell it to talk to identi.ca (or your own installation) and you're happily using it with your favourite client.

If you want to try it out, create an account on http://identi.ca, and then point your browser at http://micro.br3nda.com/br3nda. You can then remotely subscribe to me.

Colin Jackson has a good read on his blog on APRA's assertion that the internet would be empty without the content industries

Let’s just pause for a moment and celebrate a few of the things that people get over the Internet. Wikipedia. Twitter. Email. Hubble Space Pictures. Skype. Travel Bookings. Banking. News. Maps. I could go on, and I’m sure you could too.

By saying something as stupid as this APRA is showing that it really doesn’t live on the same planet as the rest of us.

Things i did tonight on the internet
# wrote 2 blog posts
# Reviewed a Drupal patch
# accepted a calendar invitation from a friend
# topped up my prepay cellphone
# paid my rent and credit card bill on internet banking
# checked http://identi.ca
# sent a merge request for unicode tags on laconca
# chatting about git stash with a friend
# read emails
# reviewed miniconf proposal for #lca2010
# read about the locomotive act on wikipedia
# approved a friend request on last.fm
# synchronised my digital pen with the cloud
# searched for creative commons photos on http://flickr.com
# commented on a Labour party blog post

on twitter i made some jokes, that if you read a story aloud to your kids, you are STEALING from the publisher. You are performing the work, without permission, and need to obtain a licen$e from the publisher.

Alas i was only half joking. The move from paper to digital has meant software reading aloud text, and has opened a world of literature to the blind, the dyslexic, those unable to turn pages, or some other reason they cannot read from a traditional dead tree book.

Some forces in the world think that reading text aloud is different to reading, and therefore requires permission and maybe a fee paid to the copyright holder.

DRM isn't dead yet. Very weak DRM protects most pdfs you'll find published on the internet, in that they flag the document with "Read aloud not available". The PDF reading softwrae is then required to no allow the user to use text-to-speech to then read the document aloud.

This is often enforced by law - meaning only a very brave software writer would allow circumvention of this requirement.

A WIPO treaty seeks to allow those who physically cannot read visually to legally circumvent this artificial restriction.

quoting an anonymous representative at the treaty negotiations:

The proposal for a treaty is supported by a large number of civil society NGOs, the World Blind Union, the National Federation of the Blind in the US, the International DAISY Consortium, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D), Bookshare.Org, and groups representing persons with reading disabilities all around the world.

musician Amanda Palmer talks about life after ditching her record label.  

Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » E-Mail Of The Day

i had to EXPLAIN to the so-called "head of digital media" of roadrunner australia WHAT TWITTER WAS. and his brush-off that "it hasn’t caught on here yet" was ABSURD because the next day i twittered that i was doing an impromptu gathering in a public park and 12 hours later, 150 underage fans - who couldn’t attend the show - showed up to get their records signed.

the times they are a-changing fucking dramatically, when pong-twittering with trent reznor means way more to your fan-base/business than whether or not the record is in fucking stores (and in my case, it ain’t in fucking stores).

twitter is EVERYTHING that you explain in your rants: it is a MAINLINE insta-connection with the fans. there is ZERO middleman.
my fans hung out with me all day on twitter today while i unpacked weird tour shit, fan art, gifts and paraphernalia that usually just ends up in my closet or in the trash and took pictures of it for them. 

Read the whole email

How to make a git repo of a drupal cvs theme or module


CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal-contrib cvs login

password = anonymous

then, to get the zen theme you do this command

git-cvsimport -a -p x -v -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal-contrib contributions/themes/zen


or to get the twitter module you do

git-cvsimport -a -p x -v -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal-contrib contributions/modules/twitter


To resync with cvs later, you just run the git-cvsimport command again.

New Zealand Goes All Black Against Three Strikes | Electronic Frontier FoundationSource: www.eff.orgWhether you're following a New Zealander on Twitter, or have friended a Kiwi on Facebook, you will not have missed Net users from that country protesting Section 92A in NZ's new Copyright Act. Thousands are turning their sites and their icons black to mourn the coming enforcement of the provision, w...

The Creative Freedom Foundation has teamed up with Mike Corb and Luke Rowell / Disasteradio to produce the Guilt Upon Accusation anthem: The Copywrong Song.

The song is part of a week of action, launched by the Foundation, against Guilt Upon Accusation laws in NZ. The campaign, taking place from 16-23 February, is a reaction to Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment Act due to come into effect in NZ on February 28, and has already seen thousands of people, organisations, and major companies "blackout" their websites, blogs, FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter and Bebo accounts to show their opposition to the law.

Lyrics: Matt Hunt, Mike Corb, Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, Luke Rowell/Disasteradio
Music: Mike Corb
Produced by: Luke Rowell/Disasteradio
Vocals, guitar, guitar synth: Mike Corb
Synths and programming: Luke Rowell/Disasteradio

DOWNLOAD THE MP3
Info on the Remix Challenge

#blackout is now a top trending term on http://twitter.com

From Stephen Fry:

http://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/1213861623
Thoughtcrime in NZ. Make you weep. I HATE pipline throttling in the name of (c) protection. cf comcast.

From Leo Laporte:

http://twitter.com/LeoLaporte/status/1214144033
Blacked-out avatar coming up. If it can happen in NZ it can happen in the US.

Prominent NZers galore have joined the blackout

So have telcos:

@vodafonenz joined early this morning before it was even cool.

http://twitter.com/vodafoneNZ/status/1213610639
blacked out to support opposition to section 92

@orcon joined, with the following statement:

http://twitter.com/Orcon/status/1214232835
Would like to point out that we do still support the intent of Section 92A

@telecomnz made a statement but didn't blackout their icon:

http://twitter.com/TelecomNZ/status/1214050384
We recognise the importance of protecting individuals' copyright. However we don't believe #s92 in its current form is the best solution

Twitter / luvbotSource: twitter.comTwitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time

I asked the question:
what do we think of forcing people to take their annual leave at christmas time, instead of at their prefered time?

Some responses from New Zealanders:

check out this:
git clone http://git.shiny.geek.nz/twitter/generatus_auto/

a perl script - pass your username+password to it as first and second args, and it'll update your twitter with something from generatus.com.

Pass M as the third argument if you prefer male pronouns.

whack it in cron, and never need update twitter yourself again

So, you're at a conference and you want to tweet over the wifi.

except that's not a good idea to log into twitter, with your user+password sent plain text http over the conference wifi for anyone running a sniffer to record it.

Here's how i do it.

I use TTYtter - a command line twitter client. I have this on a server of mine (or a desktop PC runing at home). I ssh into this server (very secure) and then running the TTYtter there.. The path that my password takes is from that server to twitter, which while not especially hidden, at least is not across conference wifi.

I made a new twitter bot on the weekend:

http://twitter.com/meanbot

It's a little bit.... mean.

I've uploaded a perl module to cpan - Net::Twitter::Search

i needed it to fix up my twitter bot script - the first twitterbot to start using it is @tenz8 (Microsoft Tech Ed 2008).

The whole perl script that calls thIs module and powers the bot, it available in my git repo. To get a copy do this
1. install git (it's called git-core in debian distros)
2. git clone http://git.shiny.geek.nz/twitter/searchbot/

I made a little website, powered by twitter and yahoo's term processor.

It looks for the phrase "in wellington" on twitter, takes the text of the tweetand asks yahoo terms for a list of appropiate tags, and you can see the whole result on http://in.wellington.geek.nz/

Over time, the tags will build on on the left of the front page, and we'll see what humans tweet about in Wellington.

i'm home this week hacking on drupal contrib modules (watch my progress on twitter.)if only my laptop had arrived, i could be lying in the hamock inthe back yard, hacking code - instead of tied to the bleak living room.How long have i been waiting for my Lenova laptop to arrive? 24 days 20:55:45.531497

Last night, the eve of valentines day, the occured the annual lightning talks installment of Wellington Perl Mongers
Grant McLean spoke on "Why XML::Simple Sucks" - and advised fellow mongers to never put the word "simple" in a cpan module. He gave the following example of emails he gets for support:

Dear Mr McLean
I have downloaded your module and am having a little
trouble making it work.
I'm pretty new to XML and I've never used Perl before.
Could you please tell me, what's a hashref?