Imagine July 30, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : internet , comments closed
“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”
Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds to 12 of the highest moderated (sort of voted on) questions selected by members of Slashdot
Here is a man with a mission who pulls no punches when explaining it, for example:
“Was wondering if you view the Wikipedia as a competitor or an additional tool compared to a World Book or an Encyclopedia Britannica?
Jimmy Wales:
I would view them as a competitor, except that I think they will be crushed out of existence within 5 years.”
Every organisation aspiring to change the world needs a charismatic leadership figure, willing to put an arbitrary timescale onto events, one which is easily within grasp. But Wikipedia really is phenomenal.
I’m going to live in a Pod July 28, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : transport, London , comments closedmissing body
see frankie’s blog for some info
Canterbury July 27, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : London , comments closedI spotted this plaque on the wall while researching good pubs for the jellyARTsocial.
JellyART Social 31st July July 27, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : London , comments closedLast Saturday was spent doing the research and dry run for the JellyART Social, which made for a pleasant day and should ensure that the real thing on Saturday July 31st runs smoothly for all.
I took some photographs along the way, to capture information and provide a visual guide. Hopefully, this will make it so easy to find the right place to be at the right time that everyone will be able to just get on with socialising and having a good time without any fuss or panic. Many people won’t have done this sort of thing before and may be wondering what to expect. What happens when you meet a bunch of people you have only ever ‘talked’ to via the Internet? Well do come and find out for yourself….but one thing that is likely to happen is that they talk and talk and talk…and there is one thing we all have in common — ultraversity
Thatcher July 23, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife , comments closedPhotos of the roof which Evan is helping to thatch this summer. The images arrived from his new mobile phone cam.
Business idea July 23, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Uncategorized , comments closedI have a meeting this afternoon with the satsuma consultancy to discuss my business idea. So what do I hope they can do for me.
* general advice about new startups
* sole trader, partnership, small business or charity - pros & cons
* How do I learn to make sucessful project funding applications
* to take advantage of postcode specific incentives for new business startups
The old internet is still there! July 18, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : internet , comments closedI’ve just had an experience which can only be likened to discovering an old box of family photographs up in the loft which for years had been believed lost.
I was reading through the blogs after manually transferring feeds from NetNewsWire Lite’s OPL file (at work) into Opera 7.5 ( home) when I came across yet another furl advocate who mentioned in passing the web archive. This is something which I’ve imagined, but never knew actually existed and it blew me away. I found old archived copies of my own websites from the last century, some early stuff of Frankie Roberto’s and best of all - a page of collaborative links which I’d build up on a free online bookmarking system but then became defunct.
So I’ve been taking an enjoyable trip down memory lane and carefully Furling everything as I go. I still can’t really believe it, because this changes the way I have to think about the web from now on - it is less ephemeral than I thought.
Furl
My Furl
Wayback Machine
Passing Notes
Weblogg-ed
Spiney Norman July 14, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife , comments closed
I discovered I have a hedgehog who patrols my garden every night, paying a visit to the barbecue in case any tasy morsels have been left behind. Being somewhat shy and nocturnal, hedgehogs are quite difficult to photograph but once he’d done the curling up in a ball thing, i could get quite close so if you are interested in examining the spines, click the thumb.
Interesting hedghog facts:
“Hedgehogs can swim, climb almost vertical walls, and run at speeds of up to two metres per second.”
according to UK Safari
How I bought My SAZ July 13, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Music , comments closed
I was in Turkey on holiday, and I took an old guitar along. I carried it around with me because there wasn’t much to do all day in the heat except sit around sunbathing and swimming off the Gulet boats that toured around the islands. Anyway, Turkish people are very friendly and would see the guitar and ask me to play, or invite me in to have a drink. A few older guys told me they played the SAZ, but never seemed to have one somehow. Then one evening, I spotted a retaurant which had two musical intruments hanging up on the wall. It turned out that one was a saz and the other an OUD. I asked if anybody played them and was told to come back the next night at 10.pm
So I did, ate my dinner there and waited. Eventually an old man took the saz down from the wall and started playing. Another man sang. So I sent them over a drink which made them very happy. They came over and I watched carefully as a couple more tunes were played. Well they must have noticed that I was following the left hand and offered to pass the instrument over to me. Kind of insisted really. I had drunk enough wine to think there was nothing unusual about attempting to play an instrument I’d never touched before in public!! But the thing is, the saz is really quite simple, and I’d been listening to a lot of eastern style music so I just held down a random note on the highest string and strummed the chord. That soundeed ok so I started to experiment with a tune, just keeping to the one string, and strumming the rest occasionally as a drone. They were absolutely astonished and so was I. I was enjoying myself and the rhythm got faster and faster.
What a fabulous instrument, I just had to have one.
Because I was in a tourist resort it was really hard to find a Saz shop. I asked around and everyone told me to go to this bigger town an hour’s bus ride inland. I tried that but the taxi drivers who claimed they could take me to a saz shop just dumped me off at their cousin’s restaurant all the time.
Back at the beach, I asked the man in the water shop and he offered to take me somewhere on his moped. We went into a bakery, but then the baker showed us upstairs. There were about a dozen instruments for sale, of which about 6 were the type of Saz I wanted. I tried a few and then settled on one and agreed a price. As it’s quite a fragile instrument I nursed it carefully on my lap all the way home on the bus and plane.
Here’s a photo showing the body of my 7 string saz:
alt.cooking.chat July 12, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning , comments closedWhile fiddling with googlegroups, I fished out my first ever newsgroup post from November 1997.
From: andyrobts@aol.com (Andy Robts) Subject: Re: Butane Fuel Date: 1997/11/11 Message-ID: #1/1 References: X-Admin: news@aol.com Organization: AOL, http://www.aol.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.cooking-chat
Chinese supermarket.
Just the two words, then.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
