Lazesharp.net

I think I’ve finally settled on an idea for my final year project and dissertation. I won’t go in to the details right now but it involves a lot of work with audio files, quite possibly of different formats.

While researching the feasability of this idea as a project I hit a pretty big road block. I need to find an audio toolkit that will allow me to work with audio files, of different formats, in a fairly simple way whilst at the same time exposing enough complexity for me to do various mixing between audio tracks.

Fortunately, several such toolkits exist, the most attractive of which being GStreamer. GStreamer is the audio framework that the GNOME Desktop is built upon. It’s pluggable, allowing support for new formats to be added and removed independantly of the applications that use them and it’s very stable. However, traditionally, the language of choice for GStreamer applications is C - which I don’t know, so I decided to check out the various language bindings available.

Unfortunately, the only stable language bindings are all for dynamic languages (Python, Perl, Ruby etc.) - the bindings for both Mono and Java are unstable and deemed “suicide to use”.

This is a shame because I would really like to develop this project in a strong-typed language, especially C# - more specifically: Mono.

Unless the bindings for C# are completed and stabilize before I begin my project I’ll just have to make do with Python. Don’t get me wrong, I like Python. I would just rather have the debugging support of the Mono CLI behind me to help me iron out problems.

Since the launch of the Facebook Platform earlier this year many people have been writing applications for the social networking site. Some good, some bad and some very ugly.

However, something that has probably slipped most people by is exactly how useful the Facebook Platform is to Facebook themselves. Most of the core elements, the Wall, Groups, Events, Photos etc. (but not Profiles and Pages) are all in fact applications that run on the Facebook Platform. Most people don’t notice because they’re enabled by different, but it affords Facebook many advantages.

For a start it enables them to create the Platform using use-driven development. While I don’t know whether this is true, it’s certainly a brilliant opportunity to aid development. I also makes the entire system far more modularised - by decreasing the number of things that are part of the core of Facebook, they’ve reduced the amount of code that has to be maintained by the core Facebook team. Problems with the default applications, for example, a bug in the Wall, can be easily isolated and therefore fixed quickly and easily.

As with bug-hunting, modularisation allows them to very quickly create new features without having to dabble with the core code and potentially break one of the most popular websites in the world. New features can be tested by releasing it as a non-default application and, once it has been put through its paces, deployed en-mass.

All of this gives Facebook the opportunity to comepletely crush rivals like MySpace, and with relative ease. Obviously, they’re not there yet, but they launched “Pages” only 4 days ago, alowing groups/organisations to setup specialised profiles, and already around a quarter of my favourite bands have their own pages.

Together with the clean look and easy to use interface, Facebook’s extensibility and modularity has exactly what it takes to bury MySpace.

This has me thinking: Can this computing model of abstraction and modularisation be applied as a general business model to real world products? And if it can, can it with much success? The answer to both questions is probably “no”, but I’d certainly be interested in finding out.

I’m in the process of moving my blog over to Wordpress now that we’re with a new VPS provider.

I’ve mostly ported the theme and all the old posts, but unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to be able to post the comments.

The theme is pretty slap-dash at the moment. It hasn’t been tested in anything other than Firefox 2 on Linux so it’ll likely be a little broken, especially on ancient installations of IE.

Windows Vista’s UAC (User Account Control) has sparked much controversy on the internet. The simple fact is that UAC prompts the user far too much, something everyone agrees on, but is it really the fault of UAC?

UAC, in principle, is a good step towards making Windows a better and more secure operating system, unfortunately in practice it proves more of an irritation to users, who find themselves clicking “continue” out of habit. Reminiscent of software installation licence agreements.

OS X and most desktop Linux distributions have been using a similar approach to allow temporary administrative access for years to much success. However, both of these require more from the user than UAC, needing a password to “continue” whereas UAC merely prompts the user to click a button.

The problem is that administrative access is required by far too much on the Windows platform. Each time something requests administrative access. Want to delete a shared shortcut from the start menu? You’ll need administrative access for that! How about playing Battlefield 2142 online? Sorry, Punkbuster requires administrative access (why!?).

The truth is, it’s not UAC that’s the problem. It’s all the various programs for Windows that assume and have always assumed that they have full administrative access to the machine. It’s a long standing loop-hole that Microsoft have finally closed and now developers have to actually put some thought in to their software before coding.

Of course, Microsoft themselves have this lesson to learn as many actions in Windows Vista require administrative access when they probably shouldn’t.

Hopefully, in time everyone will learn that they’re not in charge of the computer. The user is.

One of the goals for Firefox 3 is to use native cocoa widgets for it’s user interface. Great, it’s about time because at the moment, it looks out of place on OS X. But why stop there?

Where’s my native GTK+ widgets on Gnome? Qt on KDE? Or, dare I ask, native widgets on Windows, which is by far their largest demographic. I admit, Firefox looks worse on OS X than it does on any of the above, but that’s no excuse.

At the moment, on Gnome, it’s a toss up as to which is better, Firefox or Epiphany. Epiphany, with it’s native GTK+ user interface, is much faster and integrates well with the desktop, but Firefox, with it’s add-on system and huge development community is much more powerful.

We need a clear winner. We need a GTK+ build of Firefox.

There is a decades old stereotype of students. We party, we drink, we sleep and generally do as little work as possible. The Young Ones depicted a comical view of student life on the breadline, but it seems that many people have forgotten just how little money students really have.

The goverment appear to think that students have a lot more money than they do, made evident by the introduction and steady increase of tuition fees. They say this helps poorer students by subsidising them, while charging students from a wealthier background. However, as with most tax systems, the middle class end up paying a premium they cannot afford.

This misconception goes further than individual students. The Evangelical Christian Union at the University of Exeter have recently filed papers against the Students’ Guild in the High Court and are demanding that the Students’ Guild pay their legal fees, which are apparently in excess of £10,000.
The reasoning must go something like this:

• Students have money
• Student unions are made of lots of students
• Therefore student unions must have a lot of money!

Of course, this simply is not true. £10,000 would be a massive blow to the Students’ Guild and would detrimentally affect all students across the Exeter campus. Ironically, since the Evangelical Christian Union are partially funded by the Students’ Guild and their members use the many Guild facilities every day, they would suffer as much as the rest of us.

Recent research has shown that with inflated living costs, increases in duty on alcohol and economical victimisation of students through schemes such as tuition fees; student drinking and partying has declined significantly, the number of students in part-time employment has risen significantly, as has the average debt level upon graduation.

The decades old stereotype of The Young Ones is beginning to disappear, being replaced by a student population that is working around the clock to pay the rent and too penny-less to party. I think it’s time to give students a break.

I remember going to school and knowing, without a doubt, that the teachers knew what they were talking about. After all, that’s their job. This feeling of security continued throughout secondary school and college, but after just one term at University, I had lost faith in the entire higher education system.

I’ve been at University for a year and a half now and, ignoring the social aspects, I have to say I feel cheated out of my money. I think that my three years here will be the longest pause in education of my life.

Before University, I took a year out doing contract work using my somewhat limited knowledge of PHP. The fact that I had a job doing something I knew little about forced me to learn more than I ever thought possible. This, along with some very long train journeys and some excellent books on design patterns, allowed me to learn more about PHP and object-oriented programming than some learn in the 3 years it takes to get a degree.

Of course, this should not be. My time in higher education is supposed to be a rewarding experience (that reward being a degree). So what’s the point of a degree if you don’t actually learn anything useful?

I know several people who would shoot me down, saying I am too complacent and should attend more lectures. This may be true, but people who actually do work still come out of their final year with a poor understanding of the subject.

Some good has come out of this. Inspired by authors, both electronic and in print, I have recently become quite keen to go in to lecturing myself and hopefully publish a book or two to help future generations of students graduate with more than just a piece of paper.

It’s also a great opportunity to take a few years out of my life, kick back and relax. After all, what else is a student loan for?

1. Work for a large organisation
2. Pretend to represent affiliated organisations
3. Repeat

Apparently professional journalists these days are becoming sloppy in their ability to sniff out the truth. Either that, or they just don’t care unless it involves late Princesses or Z-list celebrities.

Since October the ECU issues that have arisen here in Exeter have begun to hit the news everywhere. Not in a big way, but generally appearing as small articles in papers or deep in websites. Being in charge of the Student website here has opened my eyes to the ineptitude of journalists around the country, not only in researching the facts but also in attaining quotes.

In almost every publication covering this story you will find a quote from “Emma Brewster, CU worker”. Only thing is, she isn’t who everyone thinks she is.

Emma Brewster isn’t and has never been a student at the University of Exeter. So how can she be a worker for the (E)CU here? Simple, she’s not!

Google her and you’ll quickly find that she’s actually the South West regional representative for the UCCF (Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship), an organisation that the ECU here are affiliated to.

So, given that she doesn’t in fact represent the ECU, but instead the UCCF, how can she make statements on behalf of the CU claiming to be a worker for them and implying she’s a student here?

Further more, is the current action being taken even the will of the Exeter ECU? After all, with Emma doing all their talking for them, how can we know what it is they really want, especially since the President of the ECU stated to the student newspaper Exepose that “we will respect the decision of the student body that we should be called the ECU”.

Sounds like the UCCF are starting a fight no one here wanted in the first place, lets hope the ECU do the right thing and tell them where to stick their wholly unchristian, anti-democratic bully tactics.

On the flip-side, the UCCF and ECU aren’t entirely to blame for the cock ups of the countries media. Sure, they may have purposefully mislead them, but its the responsibility of journalists to check their sources and get the facts right, otherwise, how can they expect people to believe them? I’m seriously considering sending a letter to all the news organisations at fault with nothing more than the dictionary definition of “research” written on it. After all, it couldn’t hurt.

The Evangelical Christian Union have this week filed a “Letter before Action” with the Students’ Guild of the University of Exeter.

My position within X-Net (for those who don’t know, the online student media for Exeter University) has forced upon me the pure facts surrounding the issue. This is essentially a good thing as it has meant that our News team has been able to cover the story without bias, however, other news websites have not been so fortunate.

Interestingly, it seems that almost all of the websites covering the story are Christian news sites. Not particularly unexpected, however, it seems that almost all of the reporting of this story by Christian news sources either manipulate the facts or get the story almost entirely wrong.

In fact, the most balanced and in fact correct coverage I could find on this issue, beyond X-Net of course, was the BBC News coverage.

Not only are news sources getting the facts wrong but the Exeter ECU themselves don’t seem to know what’s going on. During the recent referendum over the final name, the president of the ECU, James Harding, was interviewed by our News Editor, Kathryn Nott. Some of his initial statements were flat out lies; at one point stating “It is a myth that the Christian Union are affiliated to the UCCF”. After phoning the UCCF, we confirmed that they most definitely are affiliated. To which we got an apology and an excuse: “I forgot that we were affiliated to the UCCF”.

Yeah, we believe you.

Couple this with the inaccurate reporting of various Christian news sites and I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that large Christian organisations will only promote virtues such as equality and morality when it benefits them. So, just like any other organisation really.

I for one sincerely hope that the Students’ Guild don’t buckle under the legal pressure being mounted on them by the ECU, after all, it should be fairly obvious to them that they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.

I’ve now moved by blog over to Mephisto, a powerful new Rails blogging platform. Generally, it seems to offer a fair amount more flexibility over Typo and is a lot faster, although I need to use it for a while longer before drawing any real conclusions.

I very much doubt that I’ll get much on here in the coming months, University and in particular, X-Net, are keeping me very busy. Hopefully I’ll be able to write the odd reasonably insightful entry here and there, but frequent updates are a few months off at least.

I’m hoping to come up with a half-decent non-default design at some point in the next few weeks, Mephisto seems to make theming fairly painless so it’s not something that’s likely to demand too much of my time.

In other news, I’ve discovered that our VPS host Adiungo, has finally upgraded their virtualization software to allow the 2.6 series of Linux kernels to run. It’s about time.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to backup and reinstall everything on the server right now, a task made more complicated by the two people I share it with. Still, we may get around to it eventually, hopefully then we’ll be able to see the back of Fedora Core 2…