Diary

I always forget to update this thing. Current news in a list:

• I am working on a tour of unconventional venues. Hoping to perform in: an office, a lorry, a radio station, a workshop, a rugby club changing room, a garage - looking for other places to play. Recording stuff at each one for a web series which is in the pipeline. If it works out, it could become a regular thing.
• The beard endeth soon (for 7 months).
• I'm doing a show at Mach comedy festival.
• I'm doing 2 shows at Edinburgh festival (the computer show I'm working on and a silly surreal song show (Twisted Whimsy).
• Work at JCB is going well, almost been there a year - done some pretty cool stuff - will share when I can.
• Started a new company with some new friends I met at JCB - more to follow when I can share.
• Gig-A-Tron (the conversation engine part of the project) came second in the world's funniest computer competition.
• I'm still schlepping up and down the country doing burlesque gigs. Got some new ones booked in for later in the year - should be fun!
• Jazzy is funny. She takes after her Mother.
• It'll be my birthday soon. Buy me cake.
• I finished the Wheel of Time books - they were good. Brandon Sanderson did an amazing job finishing it all off.
• We should have got planning permission for our fence - planning lady doesn't like it and says we're unlikely to be granted permission. We're fighting it but it's a pain. More on this once the application is in (I'll be asking people to support the fence! :))
• Lists should always have 13 entries to be truely taken seriously.

EOF

Man from Three: "Blah blah blah"

Me: "Please give me my PAC code".

Man from Three: "Blah blah, why? blah blah".

Me: "Please give me my PAC code".

Man from Three: "Mutter mutter, phone you got rubbish, blah blah".

Me: "Please give me my PAC code".

Man from Three: "Waffle waffle, here's a better deal than I offered you when I didn't think you'd leave, waffle waffle".

Me: "Please give me my PAC code".

Man from Three: "Blah blah, with a phone you don't even want, blah blah".

Me: "Please give me my PAC code".

...and so on

I did eventually get my PAC code although a 2 minute conversation took 20 minutes.

P.S. I'm loving my HTC One SV despite what the reviews say. In your face Mr Man from Three.

So it's that time of year again (the beginning) and this year I've decided to make a few resolutions. One of which is to blog more (hence this post!)

Make my family my priority

I can be a very driven man. I have a long list of things I want to do with my life (a very long list) and sometimes in my drive to achieve these things I forget to commit enough time and love to the things that really matter in my life. This year, I'm going to try and put J&J first - there'll still be time for everything else - I just need to get my priorities right.

Gig more

I'm going to be concentrating on Mach & Ed festivals again next year but I also want to do more Music Festivals, Burlesque and Cabaret gigs. I've already started with a database of Burlesque promoters - next is the festivals for the Summer. Festivals are good - because J&J can come (see above :))

Blog more

Aiming for once a week - alternating between Diary, Pooters, Comedy & Music.

Write more songs

I miss writing songs with Jem - so it scratches several itches at once (fnarf).

Start on my book

I've been planning a novel for a few years now (and wanting to write one for over a decade). I've got an idea I really like and some notes, just need to start writing the damn thing. I imagine it'll take me another 10 years to write but I want 2013 to be the year I start.

Drink less coffee

Hahahaha - yeah right.

There are lots of other things I want to do, I want to sort out my website, I have a business in the early stages (very early but very promising), I want to sort the house out in Wales, I want to win the Funniest Computer Ever competition (I came second in 2012). So much to do! Not everything this year - but as much as I can without neglecting my family.

Happy New Year everyone.

It's been far too long since I last updated this. One of my New Year's resolutions will probably be to update it more often. So what's been going on?

Well - I got a contract working for JCB for 6 months (now 12 months) so have been away from our beloved Wales for ages! Should be back next year at some point - hopefully *after* we sort the house out. I'm working on some really cool stuff, all APIs and technology.

I bought an iPad. Please don't judge me.

I did a show at the Edinburgh Festival - it went well. Not spectacularly well but well enough. I should be back next year.

I have a todo list as long as my arm:

1. Write todo list
2. Finish website for kumquat computing
3. Work on secret Edinburgh project (shh)
4. Resurrect my email list and actually send emails to fans/friends/family (basically my Mum)
5. Book more gigs in 2013 (started on this one)
6. Add code formatting to my website so I can have a code-blog bit
7. Various app things
8. Finish setting up Windows 8 so it can replace Win 7 for all of my dev
9. Do something with a little photo project I started the other day
10. Write a novel (this has been on my todo list since 1999)
11. Get a tattoo (maybe)
12. Tidy house and all that stuff
13. Take Jazzy swimming

There's more but 13 will do for now (lucky for me). It's hard finding the time for other things between being a professional geek, an unprofessional father and a unmitigated disaster of a husband :) but if I work hard it'll all get done. The last year or so has taught me that:

1. I'm OK at geeking
2. I can be good at this comedy lark - put some effort in
3. I like lists

Time for bed, I'll try and get back to updating this with a bit more frequency - hopefully if I have more to say!

Now I've had a bit of time to play with it - I thought I'd sit down and write out how I'm getting on with Google+. I have to say, so far, I really like it. They seem to have learnt a lot from their previous mistakes and even at this early stage it feels much more like a product than Wave did in the early days.

The thing I really like about it... The people who are on here so far. I'm sure that'll change as it gets more and more popular - but if you look at the list of people in the UK on http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/ I'd say 90% of them are in the geek business in one form or another. It's like a playground for geeks (long may that last!)

I've not tried the Hangouts yet - but if they can up the number of people watching a Live video that would enable some cool live comedy broadcasts (something I'm very interested in at the moment). I recon being able to share a live streaming video with 50 other people would be enough for an online comedy-club type experience.

So - quick round-up of my experiences so far...

The Bad:

It was very quiet to start with. In order to pick things up a bit I went on the findpeopleonplus site and added a few random people who looked like fun and spent a bit of time looking at friends of friends and adding people I knew. I still need more people in my circles but it's certainly helped make the G+ experience more fun. However - this did highlight another issue (which I believe will be fixed in a new release). When one user in your circles is very noisy or popular - they often drown out the others, the solution is going to be the ability to disable certain circles from being displayed in your stream - so I'd be able to create a "Noisy Buggers" circle rather than having to mute noisy posts I'm not interested in.

I don't find the Sparks that interesting or useful - perhaps this will mature over time. At the moment I just don't get it. Maybe it's because it's very USA-centric or maybe I'm just not its target audience. If anyone thinks this is cool and I'm overlooking something amazing - I wait to be taught :)

My Android App doesn't work. It won't let me log in. Keeps telling me I can't until I have an invite. I clearly have an invite. Being honest, Google+ will never replace Facebook & Twitter as my network of choice unless I can use it on my phone. I know other people aren't having this problem, but I am. So there.

The Good:

The UI is lovely, intuitive and nice and clean. I really hope they don't give too much control when the API comes out so that it stays nice (rather than MySpace which went messy fairly quickly as everyone tried to make their profiles "stand out").

Creating Circles is so much easier than Facebook's friend lists.

It's easy to share posts on Twitter & Facebook with the following Chrome extension:  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oenpjldbckebacipkfbcoppmiflglnib#

It's early enough that if you join and do something cool - you may be able to build up an audience. It feels like the start of something special - people are going to make their mark using Google+ and it'll be really interesting to watch that happen.

It's full of geeks!

The Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. Being able to post directly from my site to Google+ would be nice (roll on the API release!)
2. The next lot of improvements & fixes.
3. The mobile app to work (please please please!)
4. Proper sharing to Twitter & Facebook (so it doesn't take a couple of clicks - I'm lazy!)
5. My wife deciding that she'll join after all (I think she'll like it).
6. The battle that will undoubtedly happen once Google+ goes mainstream and whether it will rival Facebook (I think it will).
7. Being able to search my GMail contacts (I don't have an @gmail but an @mydomain.com and it won't access those for some reason).
8. Where is Stephen Fry? ;)

I'll do another update in a month or so I recon.

I finally got my invite to Google+ (which I am referring to as Google++) Thanks Kim! I was in two minds about joining as I was an early adopter of Google Wave which I liked (and look what happened to that!)

So I joined. Because I'm a sucker for new tech. however the problem I have at the moment (and the problem I know a lot of people had with Google Wave) is that I can't find many people I know on there... Possibly because I have no friends, or possibly because I'm lazy and want it to tell me who I already know based on existing contacts within Facebook, Twitter etc.

I'm guessing the reason why you can't search your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts is because they won't let Google do so? Which is annoying as I'll have to start manually building up contacts on there.

The other thing which is frustrating is that I can't see any way to get a simple link to my profile (like www.facebook.com/owenniblock) which would be nice for posting to other places. However I will make one with my url shortner - so there (when I work out what the actual public url for my profile is?).

The big question is, what does Google++ give us that we can't get from Facebook? Well it's probably better written and the UI is certainly very nice. I'm guessing Google learnt a lot from the initial usability and slowdown issues on the Wave and it all seems pretty responsive so far. The video stuff looks exciting (not used it yet) and so it's no suprise that Facebook have announced a Skype deal recently...

I guess the other thing they're trying to show is better/different is the privacy stuff. The concept of Circles is smart and the UI is great (loving the drag and drop). Much better than the Friend List concept in Facebook. I'm pretty sure this will become a feature I love (much like the Labels concept in GMail).

That's my first reaction to it. Google++ seems cool, very well written and slick however time will tell whether (a) It gets enough users to rival Facebook and (b) They sit it out and commit enough to it that people commit to them. If they give up on it like they did to Google Wave I won't be back on the Google train in a hurry!

Will report back after I've been using it a while.

I would like to put forward a theory. The more time you deal with a particular builder, the greater the probability is of telling that builder to fuck off. I have recently experienced this and to illustrate, I decided to draw a graph:

There are a number of noteable features of the graph:

(0) The starting probability is > 0. This represents the latent desire we all share when dealing with a builder for the first time. Do I trust this person? Should I just tell them to sod off? Will they be reliable?

(1) This is the the point in the graph where the rate of change of the probability of telling the builder to fuck off is at it's greatest. You feel manic, constantly up and down, you're still trying to maintain a polite and professional front but various things the builder does is starting to annoy. You begin to seriously doubt the decision to hire this workman in the first place.

(2) The probability approaches 1. You reach a zen-like calm and at that point you tell the builder to fuck off. He seems suprised. You no longer care if they finish the work. Maybe you can do it yourself (you can't) or maybe you can get someone else in to finish off (you won't). This is the point at which the job either gets finished or it remains unfinished for months until you get a different builder in to do some other work so you can entice him to finish the original job at the same time.

The process repeats ad infinitum.

I feel like I should keep up the posts on here as it's been over a month since I last added anything to the diary section. However I also feel like I've started too strong and now whatever I write will not be as interesting as being cut open or creating geek.tl!

However, what have I been doing lately? Working, Dadding and Gigging really. I've taken on the role of Technical Architect at Sequence for the Contracts Finder government site. So been spending a lot of time working on that. Jazzy has a cold and is back to teething (finally got more teeth coming through!) so I've been trying to help Jem out as much as I can and then I've been doing a few gigs here and there. Got a Burlesque gig in Plymouth tomorrow (Grosvenor Casino if you're interested).

Doing a thing for The Outhouse Movement soon and really pleased that Jem's going to get up on stage and sing again. She's a great singer and it'll be nice to see her getting back into it.

Last week was mostly spend on a Microsoft .Net 4 training course. I've got to take the test now although I think I'm going to wait a little while until my work-load eases a bit so I can at least do some revision. It was nice to get some formal training (I've never had training beyond my degree and Google-learning) although we could have taught it to ourselves given the same amount of time and a book.

In other news, I've decided that I'm going to do a computer show next year (hopefully leading up to a show in Edinburgh). This has mainly been spurred on by the computer list and going to Mach Comedy Festival again. So I've started thinking about that and what I'm going to do. Have loads of ideas, just have to try and simplify them, write them and write the material. Hoping to get all the coding done by the end of this year and then spend my spare time (ha!) working on material from the start of next year.

And finally, got a few festivals booked again this year :D back to Green Man and Farmer Phil's and festival I've not been to before (Blissfields).

Hope you're all good. Drop me an email and keep in touch.

For some reason this got deleted! Must not have added it to my local dev system. Readded thanks to Google Cache :)

I recently turned 30 (I shan't say exactly when because then you'll know my date of birth and be able to clone me or something). I had a lovely day. Coming up is a "here's wot I did on my holidays" type diary entry...

Jem squirrelled all of my presents away in the car the night before (because she's clever and normally I open all of my presents when I first get up in the morning -- Ok, that's a lie, when I first get up in the afternoon). This was my first birthday with a child and so there was no late afternoon lie-in in the offing unfortunately. Anyway, we had things to do! So I could get to open my presents.

First up was the long drive to the Midlands (only my second time in the car since my op and the first was a little test drive). Went OK. Herbert behaved himself and everyone was happy. I also wore prescription sunglasses (that's important -- they are the first and only pair of sunglasses I've ever owned which I can see with. Amazing!) We stopped off in Balsall Common (boy racer city) so Jem could have her hair cut and dyed. While we waited, Jazzy took me to the park to have a play for my birthday. First we walked around a bit, then we walked around some more and then came my birthday suprise. A massive Jazzy-poo! After I had unwrapped my first present of the day (and hastily re-wrapped it) we went back to see if Jem's hair was dead yet (in the words of Jazzy: "Deaddeaddeaddeaddead"). She was almost ready so we sat and waited and Jazzy cried. Possibly because I hadn't said thankyou for my present.

Jem's new deaded hair looked lovely.

We went to Hoar Park near my parents. Not whore park as I prefer to refer to it as. Everything was closing up when we got there but I got a bottle of beer and we sat and had a drink, then took Jazzy for a walk. She must have tired legs by now!

Eventually we were allowed to go to my parents -- by this point I figured something suspicious was happening. This was confirmed by the number of cars outside my parents house. Someone had broken in! Or maybe it was a suprise party? Or my parents had forgotten and were having a bbq (they weren't -- they were in Malta).

The party was lovely, lots of people there who I hadn't seen for ages. A lovely polypin of Goat's Milk from the wonderful Church End Brewery and lots of nommy party food. Jazzy spent much of the time walking.

I didn't even get round to opening my cards and presents until some time around midnight!

I also got an amazing and humbling number of messages on Facebook and Twitter. It really made my day. So thank you all for making it a really special day.

Clearly, what every geek wants for his birthday is his own personal url shortner (a la bit.ly) with the work "geek" in it. So I got myself that for my birthday and I'm enjoying it greatly (even though my birthday isn't until Saturday - shh!) It's http://geek.tl - because I'm worth it.

Using my usual technique of jumping in and doing something before I've researched it properly I have used http://yourls.org/ (It's got a short url, how could it be bad?) It didn't really take a geek to set it up - although as I'm running a Windows server I had to do a bit of fiddling about to get it up and running (you lucky lucky Apache guys can ignore some of this).

Here's wot I did to make it werk:

1. Downloaded the source from the website.
2. Uploaded them to my website without reading the instructions.
3. Wondered why it didn't work whilst muttering.
4. Read the instructions.
5. Added the config with the right values in the right place (duh).
6. Wondered why it didn't work whilst muttering slightly louder.
7. Read the bit about it not working on Windows servers.
8. Swore at smart-arse Apache users.
9. Set up http://www.isapirewrite.com/ to make it work like it should.
10. Edited the url rewriting ini a bit to make it do what I want.
11. I have an Uncle Bob!

Things I would like to do in future but will never find the time:

1. Add some sort of Url shortening automation to my Umbraco stuff.
2. Also have an image uploaded a la TwitPics.
3. Write some Android Appage to use the API.
4. Learn to beatbox.
5. Visit my Uncle Bob.

It seems OK so far - the only thing I've noticed that is decidedly different to bit.ly is that Twitter doesn't do the "look ahead" so when you hover over the bit.ly url it tells you the full url, whereas geek.tl doesn't - if anyone knows why that is, let me know.

Why do we shorten our urls? Because we are communicating in ever smaller shorter sentences due to lack of time and interest leading ultimately to the destruction of our language and returning us to communication in mono-syllables.

Duh.

If anyone wants their own url shortner (perhaps as a gift) I can sort that out for you (I won't even charge you much). Just get in touch.