My official blog has now moved from here to a new domain and everything. All my thoughts and musings going forward will now be posted at http://sam.clark.name.

This blog will remain as an archive of everything I posted between October 2005 to today. But from April 2008, all my blog postings will be using Chyrp on my new server over at http://sam.clark.name

Thank you all for reading and posting, see you on the other side!

As well as the journal, I will be integrating heavily with my digital persona’s on Facebook, Last.fm, Flickr and the ever-popular Twitter. In the future I will also add other services such as Upcoming, del.icio.us and Pownce. All of the site will be using POSH, Unobtrusive Ajax, CSS 2.1 and Microformats throughout or where applicable. All server transactions will be REST(ful) and it will all be coded using PHP (not Ruby on Rails as previously stated). So this will be a fully web 2.0 experience (what ever that really is!) and will be polished off with a new brand.

So that is what is coming. But what has been happening? Well as you may have guessed from the image at the top of this post, we’re now in London - East Dulwich to be precise. After two and a half happy years in Manchester it is time to move onwards and upwards and in the immortal words of Joe Strummer, “London’s Calling”. Apart from a slightly warmer climate, it doesn’t feel much different at the moment. I am sad that Manchester is now part of our past, but I look back fondly on our time there and I will be returning one more time this year for the GeekUp annual christmas dinner.

Meanwhile I have been busy in the work world too. A long and tiresome small claim battle is currently underway with a former client who just would not pay, needless to say that they have now been dropped. But greener pastures arrived simultaneously with several new projects, one for a marketing company called CDMS. The web site is a holding site for the new web site which I will start development on in Janaury 2008 if all goes to plan. But the holding site offers a little more than most, with Unobtrusive Ajax serving up contact details with embedded Microformats, plus some fancy jQuery action, nice! I am also working on a massive e-commerce project as well, but I can’t talk about that just yet.

So that’s it for now and that’s it for this blog. The next time I speak out it will be from the new web site sometime in the new year. Christmas in London is going to be fun and a trip through St Pancras international in the New Year is also on the cards. Much more about that and everything else next year on a new journal. But for now, this is me signing off once and for all. Good bye 2007, thanks for reading.

So as one language goes out the door, I thought it was time to learn another over the summer while on recess. But what to learn? Well I have chosen to learn Ruby on Rails because I have been hearing so much about it. PHP is a very nice language and I have been using it for over three years now. Here at Polaris Digital it is the defacto language of choice as we spit at ASP and have no reason to use Perl or Java.

So why Ruby on Rails, or RoR as it has come to be known? Well, I have been hearing so much about it recently and after talking to a few PHP developers at @media 07 who had used it, all I heard was good things. RoR is a framework, or scaffold or templating system for dynamic web sites. It works on the Model-Viewer-Controller (MVC) concept for programming which was first touted in the late 1970’s.

But what really makes RoR very agile is that fact that it is Dry, or Don’t Repeat Yourself. You only ever have to code methods and classes once, the system does the rest in terms of linking. Just to see how fast it is, I watched a demo on the Ruby on Rails web site that demonstrated making the first part of a basic blog in under ten minutes. Yes, I’ll repeat that; under ten minutes. This impressed me so much that I brought a book (Agile Web Development With Rails) and have started teaching myself the language.

At the end of my tutoring, I am going to rewrite this blog using RoR and say good bye to WordPress - albeit personally. More on WordPress later this week though.

I’ll keep you all posted of my progress.

I have also come to realise that since joining Facebook that I have been rather neglecting my personal blog somewhat. But I have plans for my blog and they won’t revealed quite yet. Polaris Digital and associated web sites including Soup of the Day are nowing going 100% professional and Facebook will take care of all my personal notes from now on.

Look forward to seeing you on either.

Well I have been waiting for various clients to call, I have been busy working on some new projects. One of these projects revolves around the wonderful world of social networking. Most of the good social networking sites have a public API, allowing third-parties to develop their own applications that can harness the tools and services provided by the likes of Flickr, Upcoming, Facebook, Last.fm and many more - noticeably MySpace doesn’t have have a public API and I feel it is only right to ‘out’ them on this sad fact!

The unfortunate side effect of becoming members of all these sites is that I felt obliged to add content, which in turn leads me to want to update the content and so the vicious circle begins. So I now have a Flickr picture profile and many others where you can find me, other than MySpace of course.

In other news. Siân and I are going do to London this weekend for the first Green Feet fund raising party to help fund the Crap At The Environment project. The party commences on Friday 29th June at The Clockwork in Islington, tickets are £4. Mark Watson (CATE founder and generally funny guy) will be performing alongside a number of other performers into the night. So please, one and all join us for what will truly be a variety event.

Also, I have had to postpone our European rail tour which we were due to embark on in three weeks time. This is for a number of reasons, but mainly due to lack of planning due to lack of time. So I am going to do the trip next summer and start organising it now, hopefully this will become part of the CATE experience and can be added to Mark’s book. Siân is bitterly saddened by this, and I am upset beyond decent words, but I think this energy will serve us well if we channel it into organising a massive trip next year.

Finally, on a lighter note, the first of my Chilli’s have broken through. Measuring at about four centimetres, the first green Chilli already looks good enough to eat, but I’ll let it develop properly into and use it in a home-make Thai Red Curry, Lasagne or Pizza - yes my culinary skills are improving!

This photo I totally forgot about. I don’t think I’m the most photogenic person around, but every once in a while one appears that I enjoy.

Here is me standing in Nice - Ville station in September 2006 waiting for our TGV to whisk us back to Paris before returning home. I am wearning my new hat and wasn’t at all trying to be anything even resembling India Jones - honest gov’

I was hoping to have it up much sooner than this, like January. But as usual work gets in the way and it is actually a good thing too. Between January and now I have learnt even more about accessibility and user experience issues and put as much of that knowledge into this site. ‘Keep it simple’; ‘Content is king’; and ‘The user is queen’ were the motos jotted on each page.

Just as it was ready to roll out the day after returning from @media ‘07, I decided to pull the launch for a week because of all the new stuff I learnt about accessibility, user experience and microformats. So this last week is now being spent adding some additional features, but in the mean time there is a pretty splash page.

Oh and by the way, the splash page design has no relation to the final site design. More to follow.

I have a lot to post about, particurly about the end of the debate on accessibility issues, or at least the end of Joe Clark’s debating, plus the great presentations from Jon Hick’s about how to be a “creative sponge”, Andy Clarke on western design and it’s detrimental effect on the rest of the world, Jeremy Keith providing a great talk about Ajax, HÃ¥kon Wium Lie on CSS3 (he wrote the first specification for CSS by the way), Dan Cederholm on Juggling Interfaces and many many more besides - not forgetting Jesse James Garrett especially for kicking off things so well.

However, one thing I enjoyed at the time and haven’t been able to leave alone since then is last.fm, which was presented by Hannah Donovan. I had heard of the service, but didn’t realise how great it is or how relevant it is to me until I had a demo of it, in front of hundreds of other attendees it should be mentioned. Last.fm is very hard to explain, so I”ll just give you my current radio station and let you join/play around as much as you like.

More on @media 07 to come…

For the un-initiated, @media is a global event for world wide web designers and programmers to discuss issues effecting web site design, especially accessibility and usability issues and how designers can overcome the so-called limitations this imposes on design.

Else where big players such as Adobe and Yahoo! discuss future issues and products that can aid user experiences on the web. It’s all very geeky, but “Geek Chique”.

If you’re there, I’ll see you there; if not hopefully see you next year.

I think this is one of the most shocking and frightening changes to UK legislation our government has announced in it’s ten year tenure of rule. There are many factors that are each as equally as disturbing as the other, so I will try and distill what worries me so intently into managable bite-size chunks.

The first detail that jumps out at me is exactly who these people are and why this information is lambasted all over the media. All of the media was reporting on information they received from the Government, not journalism or investigation from inside the media itself. This means the Government told the media themselves of the missing persons that they consider dangerous.

It would be easy to dive head first into conspiracy theories at this point about misinformation, but I don’t have too. As we have seen over WMD’s, the Iraq war, and David Kelly, this Government simply cannot be trusted when it comes to information they release to the public. Before Alistair Campbell resigned as Press Officer for 10 Downing Street, we all knew what to look for and when to doubt, but since [his] departure it seems as though the spin-doctors have gone into overdrive, releasing all sorts of snippets of so-called ‘intelligence’ much like a chicken running riot without its head (the aforementioned Alistair Campbell).

So the obvious course of action would be to request (under the Freedom of Information Act 2000) details of who these people were and what threat the British intelligence services thought they posed. But I know the Government’s response would simply be that this is sensitive information that cannot be released due to national security implications, even if I was to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The Freedom of Information Act is a joke when it comes to government anyway, as they’ll dismiss it for whatever reason. It is now managed by the newly created Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA for short), which is ironic as the last time I checked we do not have a constitution in the UK, or anywhere in Europe for that matter. So this department manages legislation that doesn’t even exist. But I’m getting off the original point of this article.

I have a lot of faith in our security services and I strongly believe they are probably up there as one of the best in the world. Hard to measure I know, it’s not like there is an annual Intelligence Awards although I think there should be, it would be great. With that glowing endorsement, I am very confident that if our security services actually thought these people were a threat, they would have kept tabs on them, not asked them to pop into their local Police station once a week to have a chat.

John Reid said that the security services did not have enough powers to stop or prevent suspected terrorists from doing all their terror work. Well we are told that they stopped a great number of attempts before July 7th bombings in 2005, at which point our laws were comparatively liberal when compared to todays. I think what he was suggesting was that he wanted the powers to lock people up if the security services believed they may pose a terror threat. Sounds good doesn’t it? Get rid of all the ‘bad’ people before they act. The problem is that our law states clearly that everyone is considered innocent until proven guilty, in a court of law and in-front of an impartial jury. So the actions John Reid wants to take completely rewrite our current laws, turning ‘innocent until proven guilty’ to ‘guilty until proven innocent’.

What’s the big deal with that? Well quite simply this means that anybody the government slightly suspects is a terrorist or involved in terrorism (even the receptionist - thanks Bill Bailey), [they] will be able to lock up in a UK style Guantanamo Bay prison. No trial by jury or any evidence presented to anyone; do not pass go; do not collect £200; go to jail! The removal of bad people before they do bad things seems like a wonderful idea in theory, but is rubbish in practice. Many books have covered the subject. Famously Philip K. Dick’s short story, Minority Report tells the tale of a state that prosecutes people for crimes they haven’t actually committed yet.The story examines the moral dilemmas surrounding whether you can actually incarcerate someone for a crime they haven’t committed, even if it is believed strongly they are going to commit it, mainly around the concept of free will (I use ‘concept‘ with caution). This is effectively what John Reid is asking for and what the US is doing with Guantanamo Bay.

The problem that our Government has is that we are a part of Europe and have to abide by the very European laws we have lobbied for and signed up too, along with every other country in the European Community. The European Law on Human Rights clearly states that like British Law, any suspect is innocent until proven guilty and authorities are only allow to hold suspects for up to 48 hours before charging them, or releasing them. This is the very law that our Government is now trying to change, but can’t without opting out of all of the previous EU Laws on Human Rights that we have signed up to. The anti-Europe lobby will love this as it is pointing out what they have been shouting about forever. I personally am glad that we are part of Europe and governed by pan European law, because it ensures that when our government (or any other European government) tries to inflict laws that fly in the face of freedom, they can’t. The larger the governing body, the more sensible it becomes, especially when there are delegates from all creeds and cultures involved. The only way John Reid can get this new legislation into UK law is to ignore current EU legislation, which will cause a lot of trouble and could bring even more problems in future - trade embargo’s being an obvious first step.

But the biggest problem is that terrorism isn’t really what the government is worried about. It may be true that the laws they are trying to pass will help the security services and although I severely doubt it, the government might think they are doing this for our greater good. But we have seen time and time again that powers like these are open to abuse and humans are easily swayed by all new powers given to them, causing corruption and abuse of power. What is to stop authorities locking up anybody under new terrorism laws for any offence? Sounds a little Orwellian, but think about it. Someone, like your humble author, who publishes or promotes ideas that hurt the government or highlights something they don’t want people to notice will suddenly disappear. Removed from society under terrorism laws with the authorities claiming they ‘were a threat to national security’. Any family orfriends trying to discover where their loved one is will get no information from the authorities and may never see them again. Does that sounds fair? You may think I am being blowing this out of proportion, but the laws the government are talking about introducing will allow them to do exactly that. Couple those laws with the other recent suggestion of giving Police more powers when stopping and searching and I can see a very scary future for UK citizens, sorry subjects, prisoners.

Going back to the three supposed terrorist suspects that have gone AWOL, I don’t believe they have without support from; or coerced by our Government. They may have been deported as failed asylum seekers! They may have been killed! In fact who knows? What I do know is that our Government has not released mug shots like this before, and looking at the photos they do not look anything like the pictures that Police take when they create an official record of a suspect. I couldn’t begin to speculate where the photo’s are sourced from. So what are [they] doing? John Reid said these people do not pose a significant risk to the United Kingdom, so why tell us about it in the first place. This is exactly the sort of thing the Government would usually keep quiet. Actually this is the sort of thing MI5 and MI6 work on every day and never ever tell us about until a resulotion. They have not, until last week, ever talked about on going operations. Especially if those operations had gone wrong, as would be the case if we were to believe the Government. All of this makes me suspect that once again we are being lied to, but why?

I believe the Government has released this information solely to try and pull public opinion behind their moves to create new legislation that will detrimentally effect our human rights, currently protected by EU law. To announce that the UK was opting out of EU Human Rights laws would cause a public outcry. But couple it with a fabricated story of about some medium to low risk terrorists that may or may not exist, suddenly everyone gets scared and blindly supports legislation without thinking of the consequences.

Hopefully all of this new legislation with either be laughed out of the House of Lords or Gordon Brown dismisses it when he comes to power as Prime Minister. But if neither happens, I am seriously considering my future in this country because 2008 is starting to sound like 1984.

If you are interested or worried by all of this, please go out there into the ether and find out more yourself, tell me about it using the comment box below. If you are opposed to this new legislation, you can help support a number of movements that fight for human rights;

• Liberty UK
• Amnesty International
  

If you feel strongly that John Reid is pushing the UK Government further over a line it has already crossed when it comes to basic human rights, please give to either organisations as they are fighting for our rights (or both if your pockets are well lined). If you do agree with John Reid, then don’t worry your human rights are safe in the hands of the Government.

Since the writing of this article, I have found a number of other resources that you should definitely read.

• Amnesty International report on fear tactics used by western governments to drive legislation : http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGPOL100092007
• Liberty public statement in reaction to John Reid’s commons statement : http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news-and-events/1-press-releases/2007/control-order-response.shtml
• Guardian Unlimited comment on Tony Blair’s article in theSunday Times trying to justify the new proposed legislation : http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2089459,00.html
• Guardian Unlimited story about new stop and search powers : http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2089685,00.html, http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2087867,00.html, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2087966,00.html
• Liberal Democrats official statement on John Reid’s announcement : http://libdems.org.uk/news/wholesale-review-needed-after-latest-control-order-crisis-clegg.12653.html
• The Times article on John Reid’s statement : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1835790.ece
• Another Times article : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1833037.ece, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1837662.ece, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1832355.ece,
  
• The Independent : http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article2588945.ece, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2588919.ece, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2581223.ece, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2578546.ece
• The Telegraph : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/24/ncontrol124.xml, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=F11&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2007/05/25/ublview25.xml, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/24/ncontrol224.xml