Fellow Kiwifoo camper Jo Eaton was in town on the weekend, spreading the good word about their mission to index all New Zealand’s digital content, and make the data available via their new developer API’s, with a travelling “Hackfest”. Fortunately It wasn’t too far for me to walk to take part – it was upstairs at CII, where Interclue is located.
Among the various hacks there was an iPhone app and a Drupal module, and I got most of the way through building a Search Plugin for Firefox and IE, which is a relatively trivial hack in theory but I’d never built one before so it was a useful learning experience.
Unlike fully blown browser extensions such as Interclue or Lazarus, search plugins are just an xml file that when loaded using a special javascript method (only available in certain browsers, such as Firefox 2+ and IE7+) will cause your browser to create another search provider for the search box, which by default in Firefox only has a few general purpose search engines such as Google and Yahoo available, and a few site specific ones such as Wikipedia. But anyone can create a new search plugin for the search on their website, and getting users to install it can mean that they come back to your website more often.
I found a few little niggles, such as that the xml file had to be served up with the right MIME type by the webserver, and that the best way to provide the icon was using a “Data URI” – essentially a way of encoding an image using text. Fortunately Hixie has a kitchen for that.
My attempt is here, and in theory it should install fine in IE7+ and Firefox2+ by clicking the link on this page, but so far, it doesn’t, and I’m not quite sure why. I’ll update this post once I’ve fixed it! [update: fixed]
DigitalNZ has a “roll your own search engine” system set up for their growing collection of Digital Kiwiana, and it should be simple enough to extend that system to build a search plugin for each derived engine, since they will share the same pattern apart from the target URLs. There are also standards for search completion (guessing what you want to search for) and autodiscovery. I’ll make another post in a couple of days once I’ve had a chance to figure it out properly.
[updated because I forgot their mission was only to index the metadata, the digitizing and putting online bit is up to the contributors and partner organizations]
Last night I had the pleasure of presenting at the 5th Christchurch “Pecha Kucha” evening, where I was invited to present 20 slides for 20 seconds each on my subject of choice. I chose “Pimping your Firefox”, and although it was a bit of a last minute effort to pull it all together, I managed a fairly good 6 minutes 40 seconds judging by audience reaction. Pretty sure I made a few Firefox converts as well, as my first 8 slides were mostly dedicated to explaining why you should be using Firefox if you’re not using it already.
The 3 big reasons I gave were (1) It’s way faster than IE (with IE8 that depends on how you measure it – but Firefox is certainly much faster for highly dynamic sites) (2) It’s the safest browser available, and (3) there are over 5000 free addons available to help you “pimp it” to the max. I also talked about Firefox being an open project and the fact that you could, in theory, fix any bugs you find yourself (I could have spent another 6:40 explaining why this almost never happens in practice, starting with the fact that unless you’re an expert, you’ll never be able to tell what is a bug in the browser vs a bug in the page markup, webserver, or network services).
My next 11 slides were mostly dedicated to the various types of Firefox add-on that are out there, and on the last one I promised to post links to all the examples I used, so here they are:
Foxtab: See all your open tabs in a coverflow like visualization. Personas: Radically pimp the look of your browser without even needing a restart. Foxclocks: A world-time clock in your status bar. ReminderFox: Tasklist with alarms etc. Trashmail: An addon that lets you use a different (disposable) email address for every website you visit (we recently redeveloped this for Ferraro Ltd in Germany) Flagfox: Information about the web server for this webpage, starting with a country flag icon in your status bar. Interclue: Our flagship; tells you everything you want to know about a link before you click (ok, maybe not everything, but we’re working on that). Lazarus: Our first major side project; securely & privately auto-saves content as you type, so you’ll never lose anything you enter into a webform again. SimSidekick: Fun animated Sim-companions for your surfing, who do whacky things when you visit various “cool” sites on the net. We redeveloped the addon version of this for Freestyle Interactive, who built the no-addon-required version for their client EA, as part of what (I suspect) is the largest game marketing campaign of all time (for the Sims 3, of course). Firebug, every web-developer’s must-have addon. Zotero, the academic’s add-on of choice Adblock Plus, the addon installed by over 50 million Firefox users, strips the ads from your webpages before they even get a chance to load.
My thanks to Vanessa Coxhead from Pecha Kucha Christchurch for the invitation to present, and for helping me sort out my slides at the last minute. If you’re in Christchurch and have something you want to talk about with 20 slides for 20 seconds each, I’m sure she’d love to hear from you. If you’re somewhere else, just google “pecha kucha YourCityName” and there might be one closer to home!
The ‘08 US election has re-drawn the American Political Map, put tears in the eyes of many (myself included), and surely changed the world. My father was pretty sure it couldn’t happen, and I think most Americans his age would probably have agreed, right up until the first results started coming in. Dissatisfaction with American politics was the major reason my parents ended up here in the early 70s, a year or so before I was born. History was made on the 4th of November, there’s no doubt about it. But enough has been written about Obama’s victory to stretch from hear to Mars if you printed it in 8 point Helvetica, so I’ll refrain from going on about that in this post.
In contrast, New Zealand goes to the polls tomorrow in what has to be described as a bit of an anti-climatic mood. Few seem to see a lot of difference between our two major parties – largely because John Key decided to adopt most of Labour’s policies, on the grounds that (a) they seem to be working and (b) the public seems to like them. The NZ public appear to have simply gotten bored of Labour, and frankly, I think they’re a bit daft because “boring and predictable” is about a thousand times better than what we saw from all the other NZ governments in my lifetime. But after 9 years everyone has managed to find at least one or two things they don’t like about Labour people or policies (Recent copyright legislation is a biggie for me and anyone else who cares about freedom and the internet), and since minor quibbles become more important when the other side isn’t promising to do anything much different, well, I can see how Labour is unlikely to get through this time. I’ll still vote for them, because they earned it, and I think, as Russel says, in years to come we’ll probably look back at the 4th Labour Government as one of the best we ever had.
However, one other notable point of difference lacking between our two possibilities for Prime Minister is their religion – or rather, their lack of one. In the last leader debate “Both said they did not believe in God or in an afterlife” – I quote from a report of the debate I read, because I missed the debate myself. Recently I’ve been regretting the lack of a TV at the office! So perhaps what they actually said was a bit more nuanced.
But if not, my assertion that this too is an historic election. I haven’t had time to research it, but it seems to me that Helen Clark vs Jenny Shipley was probably the first time two woman had fought for leadership of a western democracy, and this might be the first time that the fight is between a pair of atheists.
The reason this is possible is that the role of religion in NZ culture has been depleted to the point where no one really seems to have thought about the significance of such an election. Our separation between church and state is very much a “done deal”, and any talk of bringing the two back together is electoral poison. The fact that the last leader of a significant Christian party in this country is currently doing time for sexual abuse of multiple girls under the age of 12 probably may have something to do with that.
In America, on the other hand, it is almost impossible to win office, even at the state or local level, where they elect almost everyone from the local judge to the local tax collector, if you openly declare that you do not believe in God. It is a tragic, broken state of affairs and explains much of the pain that the country has gone through in the last few decades – through deliberate manipulation of their “flock” and of their favored politicians, the leaders of the religious right have prevented anyone from getting into power who was (a) smart enough to have decided there probably isn’t a God, and (b) honest enough not to have hidden their decision. And when you can’t elect a huge number of smart, honest people into even lowly positions of power, and it’s impossible for them to get into those particular positions of power through merit alone, well, what would you expect to happen?
TVIC is the second thursday of the month [2], but I’ve only just gotten the video I took off my Treo – I’ve been having problems with my sync softhardware, and with the impending launch of Interclue 1.5 [3], a bit too distracted to figure them out. Sorted at last, though.
For this particular TViC, Phil had inspired Marek to go hunting for dead CD-ROM drives we could take to bits in search of useful components. Unfortunately the call went out about a month after I threw out my own half dozen deaders, but Morris had a stack just as large, so the scene was set.
After dinner we went to the Bohemian, near the Incubator, got pints, and got out the screwdrivers. I’m really not sure what the rest of the clientel made of us, but the staff didn’t seem to mind us using their table as a workbench.
For a while it was “who’s got the 2nd smallest Phillips”, “did anyone bring one of those star-shaped drivers?”, and of course “who’s for another beer?”
The best things inside CD-ROM drives aren’t circuit boards (what sort of “boards” did you think I was talking about in the title?) but rather motors, gears, magnets, sliders, switches and LEDs. We found that the old drives were the best – less custom-designed plastic bits, more off the shelf components and metal bits.
The hardware hack of the night came after Morris used a DC motor wired to a CD-ROM tray slider as a DC generator to power a blinking red LED, when Phil suggested hooking up a green one with the opposite polarity…
Geektacular!
Marek took all the bits home afterwards. I have no idea what he’s going to make with them, but I’ll be standing well back when he demonstrates.
[1] Pssst! TVIC needs more girlgeeks! And well, more people in general actually. If you find this post amusing you’d probably fit in.
[2] Well, for the moment. It’s possible it’ll move back to Tuesday. Also, I think dinner needs to move to somewhere with an on-licence.
[3] It’s not too late to give us feedback on the new beta version
I played rugby when I was in primary school. The geek in me won out by age 11, all that running around a sports field in mid-winter just couldn’t compete with curling up at home with my funky new ZX81.
I guess I started watching again in my late 20s, mainly because my Dad is a rugby fan and I like hanging out with my Dad, but also because it’s hard not to become at least a little bit interested in rugby when your local team is the equivalent of Manchester United in the Football world [1]. The Crusaders aren’t playing at the moment, it being the International party of the rugby season, but tonight is Canterbury vs Auckland in the NPC, and the All Blacks vs Romania in France, so a big night and I’m up in Kaikoura with my parents to watch it.
It’s about bloody time we won the World Cup again, given that we supposedly have the best team on the planet, but come Cup time we keep, er, choking[2]. To give you an idea of how important this thing is to our national psyche, and how much kudos will go to the guys who bring it home, the only All Black captain to actually hold it aloft, has now risen up to become CEO of Fairfax NZ, the biggest media conglomerate we have – they own piles of newspapers and magazines, and after their acquisition of Trademe they probably receive about 85% of all pageviews from Kiwi browsers. In this country at least, Murdoch don’t got nothing on David Kirk.
So without further adieu, I give you our new National Anthem: “God Defend the All Blacks”
…because I’d hate to be the last Rugby watching Kiwi Geek on earth to embed it.
Trivia 1: My favorite agile development methodology is Scrum.
Trivia 2: TV3 has the games in a format suitable for importing into various calendar programs.
Trivia 3: Check out the Kiwi Architectural Invasion of Paris. Interclue got reviewed in Le Monde a couple months ago, I hope they don’t figure out we come from the place that inflicted that on them, they might never mention us again. On the other hand apparently the All Blacks are very popular in France right now so maybe it’s ok after all.
Trivia 4: I’m definitely expecting the All Blacks to win it this time, but I’m far from this confident. In fact, if it wouldn’t mean backing the team we all love to hate, I’d go the Aussies instead at the better than 10:1 odds offered on them!
[1] On the other hand, most Kiwi’s like a decent match-up as well as actually winning, so it’s been noted with some dismay that Christchurch fans can’t really be bothered going down to JadeAMI Stadium these days unless it’s, say, vs Auckland or Otago, or a Test match.
[2] And every time they have to deny that they choked, and talk about how it was just bad luck, the ref, or the other team played a blinder, or whatever.
Update: Well, so much for that. Knocked out by the French in the Quarter Finals! Just goes to show nothing is ever a sure thing. I guess the good news is that apart from a few inevitable whingers, the team, coach, and most the country took it on the chin. Sure, the ref had a bad game, but so did the All Blacks, they should have been winning by enough that poor ref calls wouldn’t matter. It helped that the Aussies got knocked out as well. Ah well, like Henry said, that’s sport. At least rugby is no longer distracting me from work! Could barely give a toss who wins it at this stage.
