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My Own Radio Station!

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Thu, 07/06/2007 - 4:58pm

If you haven't heard of it - Last.fm is a social-networking website for music lovers. It keeps track of music you listen to and suggests other music you might like, and links you to other people with similar listening habits.

One neat feature is that it creates a personalised internet radio station, using tracks that you have listened to. I must say, I think my radio station rocks!

Have a listen and let me know what you think...

Are Science And Faith Compatible?

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Fri, 06/04/2007 - 7:14pm

I came across this interesting article the other day on the CNN website: Collins: Why this scientist believes in God, in which Francis Collins - the director of the Human Genome Project - shares his personal experience on the matter. (He also has a book out: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief).

So we have possibly the world's leading scientist of the day sharing his personal opinion and experience that it is possible to pursue scientific endeavor and believe in God while maintaining intellectual integrity.

I think that's pretty hard to dismiss, however it seems (from some of the comments) that some of the naysayers will say nay no matter what.

EMI and Apple Launch DRM-Free Music

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Mon, 02/04/2007 - 3:52pm

Well since EMI announced a press conference featuring Steve Jobs a day or so ago there have been plenty of people quick to speculate what it would all be about. Some were guessing that there would be an announcement about the availability of the Beatles music on iTunes, while quite a few guessed correctly.

I just found out from the BBC News article about it, but you can see the official press release here.

So it seems that Steve Jobs is coming good on his statement of support for DRM-free music, however my bet is that he knew this was coming and wanted to maximise on the PR opportunity.

I think having better quality and unrestricted tracks is a great result, and may even start purchasing a few tracks on iTunes!

JavaScript function to check an email address conforms to RFC822

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Thu, 22/03/2007 - 11:51pm

A number of times I have been frustrated with simplistic verification of email addresses, not so much because they are incomplete, but because they actually get it wrong.

I did at one stage make a serious attempt understanding and implementing the perl regular expression for checking emails (in accordance with the internet specification RFC822) that is found in the Perl Cookbook, however after reading Cal Henderson's excellent write-up on Parsing Email Adresses in PHP, I realise why it wasn't a helpful place to start (it incorporates more than just the address spec).

So with Cal's advice there is no excuse for web developers to continue to guess at what an email address should be, just do it to the spec (RFC822)!

The original is in PHP, and others have rewritten it for Ruby, and Python...

Here is my contribution, a JavaScript version:

On Thoughts on Music

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Tue, 20/02/2007 - 11:48am

This is my brief response to Steve Jobs' (of Apple) Thoughts on Music.

Dear Steve,

You say that the “big four” music companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music, and that the reason iTunes uses DRM is because they force you too.

If you really do support the sale of DRM-free music, please support it in deed as well as in word. There is the remaining 30% of the world's music that could potentially be sold DRM-free - emusic.com manages to find plenty.

Please start selling some music DRM-free.

In the mean time, I will continue to show my support by only purchasing DRM-free music (yes, I have an iPod, and NO iTunes music).

Thanks,
Ross

Hearing is Believing?

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Tue, 09/01/2007 - 3:19pm

A short article posted on BeThinking.org: Is Seeing Believing?, relates to my earlier comments on knowledge in some ways.

The "science is knowing" and "seeing is believing" statements demonstrate the same basic attitude that is overly restrictive, and which misrepresents the real nature of human knowledge and belief.

openSUSE 10.2 Linux Has Been Released!

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Thu, 07/12/2006 - 1:31pm

Well, the day has come, and just like they said openSUSE 10.2 has been released.

One of the primary FTP mirrors for downloading SUSE has been GWDG, which I have usually found has the files ready for download before anywhere else. So even though the official openSUSE website has not yet made mention of the release, you can download the ISO images here.

So like many other enthusiastic openSUSE users, I have my bittorrent client fired up and busy downloading this new improved release. So while I am quite busy with work at the moment, as soon as I get a break I will have the DVD ready to test out :)

Watch this space and I'll post a note on how things go and what I think.

Website Accessibility Making the News

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Wed, 06/12/2006 - 1:42am

While the BBC headline might sound quite depressing: 'Most websites' failing disabled, I found the news quite encouraging - not because of the sorry state of most websites, but because high profile news items like this can help to raise awareness of this important issue.

While the article suggests 97% of leading websites don't even meet minimum levels of accessibility, I do think it has played the numbers up a bit. Firstly, setting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as the 'minimum standards', one would expect a pedantic interpretation of these guidelines to exclude most sites - even if many of the sites have made significant efforts towards accessibility.

Back Online!

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Tue, 28/11/2006 - 12:54pm

What an exciting day, just had broadband connected at our new address.

The last couple of weeks I have been trying to survive using (horror of horrors) dial-up! It was even more painful than what I had expected. Not having broadband internet felt about the same as not having running water.

Perhaps it did me good to share the plight of those still using dial-up. It did reinforce in my mind the importance of light-weight website design.

Moving to Scarborough

Submitted by Ross Kendall on Sun, 12/11/2006 - 12:17am

After a long wait, the time has finally come. From the 15th November, Amy and I will no longer be living in Cambridge. We have decided to make a lifestyle choice, and move up North.

Scarborough is a lovely seaside town located in North Yorkshire, in the north-east of England. It has friendly people, beautiful countryside, and a bracing sea breeze!

While Scarborough is more remote than Cambridge, I will be staying well connected thanks to the internet. With the fast train from York to London, it's no problem to make it in to the city for the day if needs be.

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