Sliver's Journal

Incarnation #3

theSliver — 2008-11-20T12:11:48Z

The first company that I ever started was called Support pc Ltd (cool name I know), but that really only lasted a year of consultancy as the business plan it was meant to carry out didn't get any financial support. The second was Objective 2000 Ltd after I'd been Objective Software as a sole trader for the longest time and that was only dissolved last year as all my time was occupied with Joost. So now I have the third and it was the simplest of all of them to start as I didn't do anything except choose an accountant to do it for me and take over all of the mess of running a company. I'm really very very bad at filling in forms and doing stuff like that on time so I was always in bad odour with some official body or other. I inherit the name with picking one up off the shelf but its not a bad name, probably better than Satis Superque Merce anyhow. I didn't even have to set up a bank account it was already done. Now I just have to send off copies of my id. As they've been so efficient at advising me and sorting it all out here's a free link to them Bailey and Associates I've bought the domain G30consultants.com but that's all so far.

Weekend reading and listening

theSliver — 2008-11-16T13:18:20Z

I've finally started Un Lun Dun by China Miéville which is another in the I suppose fashionable genre of fantasy for children that adults like to read. And after the weighty length of Anathem I skipped through Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book which I guess really is a kind of Jungle Book, though I must admit it didn't really strike me that way. But it did remind me of Pratchett's Johnny and the Dead if only for showing how accepting children are of whatever their environment gives them. Which precipitates the nasty thought that Baby 'P' probably loved his tormentors and only wanted to please them, which I guess he did in the end. First of my downloads for the month from emusic.com is Skeletal Lamping by Of Montreal, which is gloriously anarchic, Zappaish and weirdly Todd Rundgren in the liking for Beach Boys harmonies.

Vista Gadget for Joost

theSliver — 2008-11-13T17:00:39Z

Joost has just released the embed code for the Joost Flash player and I've been waiting for that so that I can show people the example Vista Gadget that I've been running for the past month. Its a very simple Gadget if not entirely crude but it does demonstrate how to use the Joost API to get information about what people are playing and then play it using the embedded Joost player. The current Gadget will pick up my (SimonL's) friend's playing of shows and display the most recent one, click the text and the player will fly out; click the (link) and it will open the Joost site at that show. I'll post a Gadget later with a settings form so the list can be changed along with some commentary as to how to amend it. Download Joost Gadget If you have enabled the Sidebar then you should get an installation from just downloading the .gadget, which is just a zip file of the whole set of files.

Anathem, Neal Stephenson's latest magnum opus

theSliver — 2008-11-12T08:52:05Z

I finished Anathem last night, and magnum opus it is. I was just a little daunted by the size at first, even if the print is elderly eyes friendly and it took me a while to get going. In previous novels Stephenson has taken the relatively familiar world and tweaked it in small ways, in Anathem he creates an almost entirely unfamiliar world and makes it familiar. Its a world of mathematical puzzles and the separation of academic thought from a secular society that makes do and mend. In the hands of anyone else the maths, geometry and physics would become heavy and leaden, Stephenson combines them with a narrative which somehow combines a driving plot and a leisurely narrative from a young monk like figure. The inside jokes, puns and giggly nurdiness under the surface are all there and part of Stephenson's trademark and although this isn't going to become a Snow Crash I think some of the neolgisms are going to insinuate their way into the language. I quite like the idea of being an Ita and I share his disdain of jeejahs. Read the book.

No more to Leiden

theSliver — 2008-11-02T13:17:48Z

No more to Leiden will I travel. No more the KLM commute from BHX to AMS. No more the mangling of Dutch directions To Taxi drivers in torrential rain. No more the 45 to Schipolwek. The coffee grinder is back home. The Italian leather bag is beneath the bed. All the gaily coloured mugs are now In one single kitchen cupboard, resting. The passport sleeps under the knickers. No more Skyping and cajoling. No more meetings of indefinable intent. No more joyous carousing to all Hours, celebrating the birth of new Soft children being battered each second.

I can smell a Kinnock

theSliver — 2008-11-02T13:01:09Z

On the night of the General Election of April 1992 David Dimbleby opened the BBC coverage with 'The BBC is predicting a Labour victory with a 10% swing' by 1am it was clear that this was the worst straw poll prediction ever and the Conservatives stayed in Government. There's something called the Bradley effect in the US, that people will respond to pollsters in one way and then vote another when confronted with the actual choice on the day. In the UK it was Labour and possibly the triumphalism of Kinnock that the voters rejected but you'd have been hard pressed to get people to admit that they wouldn't vote Labour ahead of time. So the softness of the lead that Obama has shouldn't be underestimated and it need not be a race issue. Certainly for some they may be uncomfortable with the idea of Obama's alien background but anyone overtly racist is going to be obvious. If there is a sudden change at the poll (and there is the expected high turnout), then the reasons will be much more complex. Will voters believe that Obama can represent all or will they suddenly convince themselves that the country will become divided against itself. I don't seriously think that most people voting for the Presidency consider the Vice President at all. There have been idiot VPs in the past and not just ones that couldn't spell potatoes. So for those voters that are conflicted when they meet the many weird methods that Americans use to vote will the comparison between Biden and Palin matter? Probably not, whatever voter effect that either was brought on to achieve has already happened. The result of this election again is in the hands of the uncommitted not the dedicated. So, will the undecided vote with the zeitgeist or will they vote for the familiar? The recognisable image of a US President for most people (whatever their background), is a middle aged to old white man with military service. Just hope his heart keeps going for the next four years...

How not to have another recession?

theSliver — 2008-10-17T15:23:52Z

Paul Graham makes a reasonable case (if only in his usual style of repeating the same point as if that alone will convince), that now is a good time for startups to start. What does seem to be true is that when recessions begin the number of MBAs that are begun also increases. Given the cyclical nature of expansion and recession that we go through perhaps we would be well advised to find these incipient management mavens something else to do with their recessionary period. Like raise pigs or something.

The Joost Juke box

theSliver — 2008-10-14T16:53:53Z

One of the little gizmos we have on the new site is something called a Zapper, kind of like a remote control cum mini epg. Kind of... Anyway, as I tend to watch a lot of the content we have (in a slightly not taking much notice kind of way I admit), I use the Random tab in the Zapper. At first it was just entirely random from the entire set of content we have and that was mostly good enough for me, I could pick and choose from a different list as to what to watch/listen to. For a lot of people though its the music library we have that makes us different from the rest and now the Zapper lets you roll the dice (we really need a dice animation in there), and play Music or Film as well as the generic Shows, and if you want you can just randomise Jazz or Action Films if that's your thing. So those of us that like running the music randomly all day (something we could do in the Desktop player), can now do the same using the web site.

Columbus touching a New World

theSliver — 2008-10-14T11:54:23Z

Its known I guess that I work for Joost and recently I've been shepherding the delivery of the new Joost website, front end and middleware and this morning we delivered part 2 of the new website which includes the Flash player. At Joost we're now bringing more of the social features that we started in a small way on the original desktop player (which still works its idiosyncratic magic by the way). Those social features are most obviously about seeing what other people are watching and doing on the site but you can befriend people (which is kind of following them) and see what they watch and favourite. A step beyond Friends is Groups which you can create and anyone can join. Groups aggregate the behaviour of their members and they form part of the social commentary on what those members do as you can add comments to the Group as well as on individual Shows. All of the activities on the site can be subscribed to as RSS/Atom feeds so to see what it is that I've been watching recently subscribe to: http://www.joost.com/api/events/get/simonl?fmt=atom Oh and the reference to Columbus in the title of this is an obscure in joke, Monday was Columbus Day and the project name of the Website is an explorer, it wasn't Columbus though.