I ran into my normal problem of discovering the uni doesn't subscribe to the journals I want to read articles in today.  I mumbled about it on Twitter, and was sent a copy - which has some copyright issues associated with it as a mechanism for getting hold of things, but which was also very useful.  The author of the paper has also responded very quickly to an email, so I have a legitimate copy now too, so I can use it without feeling (or being!) guilty.

I'm in two minds about this.  I firmly believe knowledge shouldn't be locked up in repositories for some crime it hasn't committed (or has it? duh duh duuuuuuuh) but on the other hand, I have no desire to breach other people's copyright (though, I have to admit, I am morally much less concerned about companies' copyright).  I don't even provide staff from other universities who get in touch via TurnItIn with copies of material I know are copyrighted, and if there is one thing I hate more than knowledge being incarcerated it is plagiarism.

But the thing is, when I want access to a paper, either for studying in general, or as in this case so that I can do a peer review properly, I want access now - I don't want to wait for ages, and I certainly don't want to (and can't afford) to go around paying for access to something which, let's face it, may or may not be worth $n.  Yes, I could order it through Uni channels, but not on a Sunday, and the Uni is feeling a little strapped for cash too.  

And while I am on the topic, what is it with the permissions issues when ordering a copy of a paper via inter-library loans?  It is for personal use only (fair enough) but you can't order it if you think your colleagues may have had a copy recently.  But... their copy will have been for personal use... so presumably you have to order everything that might be vaguely interesting before team mates do if you want to read it.  Is this a way of enforcing us to use 3rd party filtering mechanisms rather than read things ourselves?  It confuses me...

So, anyway, once again I have managed to foil the mechanisms in place to stop knowledge from being shared.  Now I guess I will have to also review the resource I managed to get hold of (it was rather good) so that others can get more of a gist of what it is about than is provided in the abstract.  Now where did I leave that spare month/year I need so I can read as well as code, and write, and meet, and think... and, ideally, play occasionally?

You are now able to import feeds to RedGloo again.

Recently, ITS removed the requirement to go through their proxy, and RedGloo hadn't been told not to try the proxy anymore -  resulting in it trying to authenticate but being denied.  This is now fixed, and you can use RedGloo as a feed reader.

Today, Google has had a bit of a problem.  All search results are 'improved' by telling you that the page may harm your computer.  And the links are sent to a page which tells you they are, but because of server demand, you can't get to the diagnostics page to find out why.  You have to edit the URL to get rid of the Google bit to be able to see perfectly innocent pages.

 So is this a knife in the back for the University of Google? Not really, they will fix it soon, I guess, and it has provided me with the impetus to go back to using other search engines - Yahoo, for instance, is giving rather good results these days.

I should be asleep.  But instead, I am playing with the Thunder screen reader, and realising just how hard it is to get information from a web page using freely available tools if you can't see the screen well.

Accessibility is something I want to try to design the MeAggregator(TM) front end for.  But I also want to have a pretty, snazzy, front end.  And I want to use AJAX to make it as responsive as possible.  And I want users to be able to drag and drop tags onto resources, or vice versa.

At the moment I am favouring a two prong approach.  One will be the flashy front end (well, that is the goal) and the other is effectively a command line driven application running in a  browser window.  Hopefully I can combine the two.

Now, to try the sleep thing again - have an exciting meeting tomorrow in which we are going to try to come up with fun ideas for This Is Me related games - entertaining ways to help people learn about their Digital Identities and how to create the right image to employers, partners, voters, customers, etc. Hope I am awake enough to make the most of the opportunity.

Or, actually, I may be going to Barcelona next week to take part in a W3C on the Future of Social Networking.  We (Shirley, Karsten and I) submitted a position paper.

On the topic of social networking, I was playing with SproutBuilder  the other day, which lets you build widgets to introduce yourself to others (well, it lets you build widgets; one of the uses of this is to make a business card type of affair) and with Google Friend Connect which allows you to superimpose a social network over a static web site.  Although my personal website is based on Drupal so can support social stuff, I thought it would be fun to add GFC to it as an experiment.  I might get round to adding a wall or similar there sometime too.

Hope you have a great day and get lots of presents and much food, whether you celebrate the festival or not ;-)

RedGloo is based on a system called Elgg.  Elgg has changed direction somewhat, but the new Digital Identity project, This Is Me gave me the opportunity to try out the new version.  We are collecting stories about your Digital Identity over there - why you should manage your identity, what the pros and cons of having an online presence are. 

Whilst it seems an increasing number of people are deciding that they want complete web anonymity, it is not clear whether they have really thought this through in terms of future employability and reputation (although obviously this depends on the field they are planning to work in).  Others do not seem to care what others think of them, based on their online profiles, and are happy to post all sorts of things on the web.  

We think people should probably try to find a compromise path - and This Is Me is about finding ways to raise people's awareness and offer advice on how to go about managing their online identities.

If you read this, you are cordially invited to pop over to This Is Me and either sign up and leave us your story, or leave a comment on the stories or bookmarks.

Some people may be experiencing trouble logging in.  We are looking in to the causes of this.  You migh find the login form on the right side bar more useful than the tool bar one (the toolbar one is returning a log in page, whereas the right side bar one is either succeeding to log you in, or returning an error message - which might be regarded as a little bit better!)

Sometimes, I just give up...

Halifax apparently not only have major problems with their ability to do the core banking business of looking after money (according to various news sources...) but it turns out they can't actually manage to keep account details properly either. One of their machines kindly half-ate my card a couple of weeks ago, so I rang and got it cancelled (it was after bank closing time on a Saturday, and with pliers it may have been possible to get the card out) and got put on hold for ordering new one.  Having waited over 10 minutes with the family's fish and chips getting cold, I decided to pack that in, get the food home, and rang again the following day to order a new card.

"No problem, Mr Parslow".  I knew that wasn't going to be true, after the last time I had ended up waiting weeks for a new card only to end up having to collect it from  the branch.  So I asked if I could just collect it from the branch.  "No sir, we have to send it to you".  So I explained that the problem last time was that because they insist on having the wrong village name on my address (this is the post offices fault, apparently, as our postcode is listed on their database with the wrong village.  Halifax cannot change the village in their address entry on their database, so...) the card had never been delivered (the Halifax insist it had been delivered to the right address and marked as "not at this address" - though they are unable to explain how they know it was delivered to the right address - makes me wonder if they tried by hand, or have people living in the garden to check... or whether they are just liars) and so they had marked my account dormant.

Now, slightly odd, "dormant" apparently means "still having money paid in, and still allowed to have money withdrawn, but not allowing th client to correct the mistakes we have made on their account" rather than, you know, maybe "a little bit sleepy" or "nothing to see here, move right along".  Idiots.

Anyway, silly man in Halifax call centre tells me he has ordered the card for me and it will take 7 working days.  I point out that this is a Sunday and that both he & I am working, but we establish that 7 working days took us up to the following Tuesday (today! yay!).

So I wait.  Previous experience tells me there is no point in geting in touch before the artificially long delay as they will just say you have to wait, despite the fact that the last time they then criticised me for having left it so long before trying to find out why my card hadn't arrived.  Anyway, the post comes, and I get no card.

So I rang them up, to ask where it had gone.  Now, to be fair, I expected something like  "oh well it's the Christmas post" or "sorry, my asparagus has wilted in the extreme heat" as an excuse, but to their credit the response was "No, there is no record of you ordering a new card".

I explained the long and detailed conversation I had had with their idiot about confirming my address, and that the idiot had said that my address was now confirmed, and my card ordered.  And I foolishly forgot to refer to the idiot as 'the idiot', sticking instead to euphemisms such as 'your colleague'.

So, the female idiot I had on the phone this time took me through the same process.  We need to confirm your address. OK. I have ordered you a card. "Oh, only it says your account is dormant".

So I asked what I had to do to get a card, and whether there was any chance before Christmas.  You have to go to your branch. So, I go to the branch, where I have exactly the same conversation with the girl in there.  Only she suggests I should try and do it by phone.

Eventually, she is persuaded to send a message to HQ. Despite having my email address, they need to contact me by phone. Idiots.  When will they contact me?  Probably about a week.  And they will send me the card?  Oh no, when they get in touch in about a week, then they will try and fix the problem and then they will be able to send a card.

So... coming up to Christmas, and in order to make any purchases I have to use cash. Cash, by the way, that I can get out using just my driving license.  I wonder if they can adapt the cash machines to take driving licenses? And maybe let me order stuff online using it... 

Perhaps I should just give up and open a new account somewhere where the competence level is at least marginally greater than zero?

I do hope this was ironic... an overheard coment from one student to another.  No idea what School they were in or anything.

"Thing is, yeah, when you get someone to help you, yeah, you gotta get your sheet signed first, yeah, so they get done, not you, innit, yeah"

*sigh*