Snow after Easter April 6, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : randomness, wildlife, UK , 2commentsIt was difficult to take the severe weather warning seriously on Friday when the forecasts indicated serious snow over large areas of the UK for the weekend but here it is on Sunday morning. White stuff. Lots of it.
More pictures added to the Flickr set Snow after Easter
Is it snowing where you are today?
New UK statistics authority web site April 2, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife, politics, UK , add a commentUK Statistics Authority
A new independent body to oversee the quality of UK quantitative statistical data publication was launched yesterday.
The UK Statistics Authority run by Sir Michael Scholar is outside of government control, (like Torchwood) being answerable directly to the elected Parliament, not to ministers or any single government department. The USA has a remit to restore public confidence in the neutrality of government statistics, an urgent task since a survey revealed that only one citizen in five actually believes them! A poll by the European Commission about public trust in 27 member countries’ government statistics ranked Britain 27th out of 27.
USA can issue and take away a “kite mark” of quality assurance to each of the 28 UK Goverment departments which issue statistics, and will also act as a central reference for the vast amount of data which gets published. The website at www.statistics.gov.uk publishes a link to any new statistics which have been released daily at 9.30am, which is also available as an RSS feed
As another gesture towards open government, the USA will publish the minutes from their monthly meetings onto the website as well. Other plans for the website appear to include a new taxonomy and some kind of maps mashup.
What new figures are out today?
Today’s new stats include a tour of emergency services in Wales, Scottish manufactured exports for the last quarter of 2007 and a survey of construction industry materials but the one which caught my eye was a publication of UK Sea Fisheries Statistics for 2006.
United Kingdom Sea Fisheries Statistics
UK Sea Fisheries Statistics provides a compendium of statistics relating to the UK fishing industry. It includes information on the size of the UK fishing fleet, the number of fishermen, key economic indicators and the quantity and value of sea fish landings, imports and exports. Comparisons are made with the fishing industries in Europe and the rest of the world. The level of exploitation of the main European Union quota stocks is also considered.
It’s interesting to me for example, to see how Newlyn in Cornwall compares with other large fishing ports but there’s also an overview of the world fishing industry:
The world catch figures from marine fishing areas fell by 2 per cent from 85.5 million tonnes in 2004 to 83.7 million tonnes in 2005. In 2005 China caught the largest volume of fish, 14.7 million tonnes. Peru had the second largest annual catch at 9.3 million tonnes. The USA, Japan, Indonesia and Chile each caught between 4 and 5 million tonnes. Of the 83.7 million tonnes of fish caught in 2005, 63 per cent were caught in the Pacific Ocean, 26 per cent were caught in the Atlantic and 11 per cent in the Indian Ocean. Marine catches from the Pacific Ocean have shown a long-term gradual increase reaching a maximum of 53.6 million tonnes in 2000. Landings in 2005 were 52.5 million tonnes, a decrease of 1 per cent on 2004. In the Atlantic, the 2005 catch is 12 per cent lower than in 2001.
Here are some more tasty extracts:
In 2006, the UK fleet landed 21 thousand tonnes of cod (26 per cent of the 1996 level) and 40 thousand tonnes of haddock (44 per cent of the 1996 level). This represents a combined decrease of 109 thousand tonnes. Landings of the relatively low value blue whiting have increased over this period from 14 thousand tonnes to 82 thousand tonnes.
Herring landings by the UK fleet were higher than mackerel landings for the first time in over 10 years. Since 2002, mackerel landings have decreased by 49 per cent while herring landings have increased by 50 per cent.
In 2006, 41 thousand tonnes of nephrops were landed, a 35 per cent increase in two years. Landings of cockles fell to their lowest level for over 10 years.
This is all fascinating stuff but some of the vocabulary is unfamilar so I welcomed the opportunity to learn:
Nephrops are lobsters, langoustines, dublin bay prawns, scampi etc
What are Demersal Fisheries?
Demersal fisheries target species which live on the or near the seabed and feed on bottom-living organisms and other fish. Although fisheries may be directed towards particular species or species groups, demersal fish are often caught together and comprise a mixed demersal fishery.
In 2001 the total landings by the Scottish demersal fleet were in excess of 130,000 tonnes and had a first sale value of around £150 million. Cod (Gadus morhua), haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus), whiting (Merlangius merlangus) and monkfish (Lophius
What are Pelagic Fisheries?
Oily fish generally swim in the pelagic zones of the oceans.
So to the consumer or cook, roughly speaking demersal = “white fish” and pelagic = “oily fish”. The oily fish live in the deep cold waters (clue) and the demersals are more coastal, except that the continental shelf extends a lot further out from some coastlines than others. And the Mackerel do come in close to shore in large numbers at certain times, as witnessed in Lekeitio recently:
Back to the UK Statistics authority website, as you can see it has the potential to provide considerable distraction as well as having great educational and informative uses, quite possibly marketing and business use as well. Perhaps one day it will also be considered to set up an authority site for aggregating national qualitative data in a similar but appropriate way.
Three dead swans in Dorset had Bird Flu January 10, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife, Bird Flu, UK , add a comment
Join the RSPBThe Swannery at Abbotsbury, down on the South Dorset coast has been hit by the deadly H5N1 virus which causes Bird Flu, with three dead swans testing positive for the deadly disease.
This latest case is worrying because it suggests that infection may be originating in wild birds, whereas the outbreak at the Bernard Matthews turkey factory in Suffolk last year looked more like human error with contaminated trucks or feed.
Indeed, the only reason for not beginning a cull of wild birds in the area is given as “because such a move could disperse birds and spread the disease.” according to Guardian News this afternoon
Christmas day 2007 December 31, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife, Music , 3commentsIt was a bit special this year, as the morning began with a clear blue sky, empty beach and calm sea. A walk around the rocky side of the little bay, then a short trip into town to sit on the cafe terrace in the square, drink a cold beer in the sunshine and watch the world go by.
We ate our dinner on the little jetty, watching the jellyfish below and flocks of cormorants above. An aged Rioja and Galician pie.
By late afternoon a breeze had started up and waves were breaking on the previously calm shoreline, leaving thousands of jellyfish washed up at the high tide mark as the sun sank magnificently between the twin peaks.
Asturian cider, Iberico ham and Manchego cheese.
In the evening, Mars was again the brightest object in the sky after the just past full moon, and Orion was clearly distinguishable, with the Plough curiously absent.
Song: Winter in Andalucia
More pics : lindah
Song thrush October 6, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife , 2commentsSong Thrush Pair on my Rowan Tree
I think this is going to be the first bird blog here since A flock of Geese or Blackcap Warbler, because there’s rarely news and seldom photographs related to the appreciation of wildlife and birds. This morning I was delighted to have a brand new visitor to my garden, well new to my observation anyway. A beautiful yellow cream and brown spotted song thrush came and perched right outside the bedroom window for about ten minutes, and then was joined by another. So a pair of these territorial little snail eating machines has probably moved into the neighbourhood, and could well breed in the vicinity next spring.
“So what is so special about a song thrush, we get them all the time” you may be thinking, depending on where you live. They were certainly very common in gardens I knew as a child, both on the edge of the countryside and in the suburbs and parks of the city. I moved to my present house in 1991 and after a while I became aware of the lack of diversity in the wildlife population. I think I counted only seven different species of birds, which is pretty poor even for an urban garden. The song thrush was not amongst them. They must have been around once, but I know they are particularly susceptible to moluscicides, so maybe they were all wiped out by the type of gardeners who administer slug-death in a vain hope to protect their hostas.
About ten years ago a neighbour planted a silver birch tree right near the boundary, and this very quickly shot up to become a tall, mature tree which had an enormous positive impact on the bird life. Finches, wrens, warblers and other tit species arrived. Slowly my little oasis of urban garden environment has become more wildlife friendly with the addition of a pond, larger shrubs and climbers, native plants and trees. Having a pond leads to providing a home to frogs toads and newts, and toads tend to stick around and eat slugs, which is great, but they haven’t mastered the art of extracting snails from their shells yet. Only thrushes can do that, so the absence of thrushes makes for a flourishing snail population. That is until today.
The little rowan tree which I bought as a whipling helped provide a source of berries through the autumn and winter to blackbirds, bluetits and robins, which always brings a cheer to weekend morning lie-ins, but the arrival of a pair of thrushes was the best. I’m delighted. They don’t hop about so much like common blackbirds, they like to stay motionless, taking advantage of their spotty camouflage to break their own visual outline. A male blackbird is shiny black with a bright yellow beak so there’s not many places they can dissolve into the background but a thrush has a more sedentary habit and can be easily overlooked unless seen on arrival. A grand entrance indeed.
Song thrush
Originally uploaded by bramblejungle
Blackcap warbler March 21, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife , add a commentI spotted a new bird species in my inner-city/suburban garden recently, one which I couldn’t identify. I had a good view of it, so I could describe it very accurately. Eager to find out what it was, I raided my dusty bookshelves and pulled out a small, cheaply produced bird book. Flicking through a book full of pictures is a very powerful way of searching to match an image, and it occurred to me that this is one of the properties of physical books which cannot easily be replaced by any website, whether community edited and 50 times as big as Britannica or not. It would not have been much use typing “medium sized garden bird with a grey body, lighter coloured throat and distinctive black head” into google or something simpler into google images either. You have to know what you’re searching for, and all I had in my mind was a recollection of what the bird looked like.
The book worked, and I quickly found a page featuring the “Blackcap warbler” the illustration for which was a very close fit. But then I read the blurb which told me it was a “summer visitor” apart from just a few individuals which may overwinter in the westcountry, where I am not. It’s definitely not summer here, and I’d never seen one before, so was this some very rare visitor, blown thousands of miles of course by freak weather? perhaps I had misidentified it. Without the internet, I would have been left with considerable doubt and no positive identification. But having found the vital information keyword “Blackcap” I could quickly check out the RSPB site and discover that my little book was innaccurate, being hopelessly out of date.
“Although primarily a summer visitor birds from Germany and north-east Europe are increasingly spending the winter in the UK”
I just hadn’t noticed any before.
Technorati Tags: blackcap, searchengine, rspb, google
Frankie Roberto - Citizen journalist January 22, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : london bloggers, social media, wildlife, internet, Flickr, London , comments closed“All in all, a good few days for citizen journalism, if not so great for the whale.”
So concludes a lengthy blog from Frankie Roberto who has taken a big interest in citizen journalism and wikinews recently. No doubt he has his reasons for doing so.
frankie roberto blog - Citizen journalists report on the London whale
photo by Mr Jaded
Tags: London, blogging, citizen, journalism, media, news, websites, whale
Emergent path June 13, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Memetics, hi res photos, wildlife , 2comments
A steep rise on part of a popular walk.
Many human footsteps begin to wear away the turf.
At some point it became slightly easier to walk in the same footprints as previous walkers, and then the effect magnified and the pattern locked in.
Of course a few awkward people will still walk to one side or the other, but these strays are treated with suspicion - and then disdain.
Finally, a sign is erected:
“Please keep to the path”
Expert Ants in Wikiworld February 6, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning, wildlife, internet, Wiki , add a commentPart of the pedagogical philosophy at Ultraversity is against the idea of teachers
as "experts", which is probably just as well. So when we do need an
expert, we have to go out and find our own. I managed to engage in email conversation
with a Professor in Sydney for one assignment, and in another I made use of
the services of a local entrepreneur. For the current module it seems to be
my family who are coming up with the goods. One of the recompenses for being
a single parent is that you try to teach your children everything you know and
then in no time at all they are teaching it all back to you again! I would have
really struggled with the wiki hosting and installation without the experience
and technical support from Frankie, but then he is a Linguistics student so
obviously he would know more than a professional helpdesk forum.
Then last night, I had the attention of Evan during an insightful online chat, and it turns out
that he has recently accumulated some experience and wisdom about the social
side of wiki community building, which nicely complements the technical knowledge
of the other one. What Evan is saying, in a nutshell, is the antithesis to the
old "build it and they will come" argument, slightly changed to "organise
it, and they will join in". I had failed to spot that tendency from myself
in the current circumstances, despite having been on the receiving end of the
idea that you can build a community by first imposing a tightly bound and pre-conceived
structure all over it and then letting in the crowds and expecting them to populate
it. So definitely a critical incident for me there, and one which you, dear
reader, may now benefit from.
Take a look at this ant house for example:
The ants have made their own passageways, rooms and connections through the blue jelly.
Now imagine if you suddenly took the Jelly away and replaced it with a set of opaque steel tubes, organised in a way which you have already decided will make the most logical anthouse.
How do you think the ants will feel about that?
Anyway, here’s the formatted transcript from the highly useful discourse I had with my 19 year old son yesterday. It contains a fair amount of detailed exploration of syntax, but worth persevering for the generalised theory of participation and structure development.
Evan speaks in blue, Andy in dark brown. (My retro-highlighting in bold)
Been up to much so far this weekend?
Not really, slowly developing the wiki
You need a new logo for ukcider
Oh dear, do I?
But I want continuity from the old website for now, until I have a wiki community
Yea old graphic isn’t good enough. Font is horrible,
lines aren’t smooth
Ah, you mean a new graphic to the old design -
good idea
Something smarter looking thats all
What do you think is the key to getting people to
contribute?
Ttricky question
Sense of ownership perhaps, or a good initial
structure to add to. They need to be able to see the vision
Get people to create a homepage for themselves
on the wiki
Ah, identity. So people who don’t have a website
of their own can have a presence
Then encourage the practice of putting your name
before any comments you add
Have a look at http://senseis.xmp.net/?UltimateGoServer%2FProtocols
, and you can see the differential between information and comments
Ok that page wasn’t the best example
Since we already have a well established mailing
list, I was thinking of the wiki as a place for information, but it could develop
the other way as well
Well I think you’re going to have a hard time if
you discourage discussion on the wiki
Mediawiki seems to have seperate pages for discussion
So does senseis
I just want to get a few people started on it,
that’s all so I’ll be posting messages to the list saying "hey look, we’ve
got a wiki" and "how about putting all the local information on it"
Yes, but if the wiki isn’t alive people will stop
caring for it, which is why you need to have people discussing entrys on it
though that can be done on the mailing list, but I doubt that will work very
well
Is that right? So it needs a big impetus to get
it going then, not a slow build up
well I wouldn’t say that’s the point really
I reckon two communities will develop. Some will
stay only on the list and new ones will join the wiki
It needs to be able to keep going even when it’s
quiet
what’s the problem with quiet times, if a few
people are subscribed to RSS
There is no problem
ok
that’s why I don’t think you should get into the
mentality of worrying if it suddenly gets quiet
people need to feel attached to the pages, that’s the key
I’m only really worried about getting something
started in time for my degree module, the real growth will be over years to
come
Well often you need to get things going yourself
to start, then when you see others helping, start slowing down
but you know all this
Yes, so I carry on making seed pages in the hope
that someone will join me, and making suggestions on the list
No, don’t make seed pages
oh
seed pages are bad
seed structure then?
wikipedia came to the same conclussion
empty links?
empty links occasionaly
I don’t know much about how wikis develop at all
but most of the time, just leave it blank
I’ve tried two by myself so far, the first one
failed because the server was often inaccessible, the second one didn’t get
enough support
he he, I remember our first attempts
Well I’ve got a month to try and gather some evidence
to show what happens when you introduce a wiki to a COP
I guess I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to the ukcider members, plus there
are all sorts of political shenanigans going on between Another Organisation
and some of our members
Shouldn’t be to hard. I have a lot of confidence
in wikis at the moment
does mediawiki put a line under every heading?
seems to
seems to, and allows partial page editing
yea, same on senseis
I haven’t checked out the syntax properly yet
that feature comes in very useful
means you can have bigger pages
yea, big pages are good
syntax is a bit different from that at senseis it seems
ah, only major headings are sectioned
now it looks much neater
you can use bold for subheadings
no, just use === subheading === or even ==== super
subheading ====
thanks
that way you can still edit them but you don’t
get thousands of lines going across the page
what tag was it before?
just ==
Ah. I think I selected it from the wysiwyg tool
button
ah it has wysiwyg
not really, but a few formatting buttons at the
top of the editing window
seems you can’t use [/discussion] to link to the
discussion
saves looking up syntax when learning in a hurry
there’s a discussion tab
I know
but it’s veryuseful to add at the bottem of a page "see /discussion"
there probably is a way, just don’t know the syntax
I’m trying to work out how to link to a user page
http://ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/User:Andy_Roberts
[[Andy_Roberts]] doesn’t work
ah
that’s because the page is called user:andyroberts
silly name for a page
why didn’t you just name it andy roberts then
no idea. might have been frank
you can rename links though [user: andy roberts|andy
roberts]
agh! you named a page introductiontowiki not introduction to wiki
putting words together is a bad idea
I like CamelCase
no, it’s a silly way thought up by silly programmers
who are used to it
but you can move the page if it bothers you
worth getting things right at the outset
yea definitely
hmm I see user: creates a special page
maybe it’s best to use it then, just means you have to rename the links using
[link|description]
then it doesn’t get listed in "all pages".
There must be a shortcut
if you use user: then it gets listed in a users
directory
yep . probably worth doing then. All I need now
are some users
I’ve put a more prominent link on the old site
ah, discussion isn’t a subpage, that’s why it wasn’t
working
it’s Talk:main_Page
yea, how would you link to that. [[talk:]] doesn’t
work
[[Talk:Main_Page]]
ah, ok, no shortcut then. Mediawiki is a fair bit
more complicated than PHP wiki
yes a bit, but longer lasting I hope, and generating
more interest at the moment, so maybe people will arrive in time who are more
likely to have used the same
yea maybe. I changed http://ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Talk:Regional_Producers
to how I would have it
but then I probably wouldn’t have created a blank stub page in the first
place
hmm, I thought it simpler to have the initial
suggestion on the page, then overwrite it with the real thing
yea probably is, but it’s even better to have
the discussion on a existing page, otherwise people are constantly clicking
on stubs
I see yes, think about the readers not just the
developers
but it’suseful to link to the discussion pages
at the bottem of the page, to tell people something is going on in the discussion
ah
you could post advice to me on my 43things pages
subscribe to the RSS then add comments
senseis has a page called "wiki etiquete"
which would be auseful page to discuss it
I mean you should create a similar page
they also have one called wiki conventions
they kind of overlap
I don’t like the only link to the users guide on your wiki, is at the bottem
of the main page
unless I’m missing something
there’s a "help" link in the main navigation
the help page isn’t veryuseful at current though
but ok, I missed that
The main thing with wikis is to only create new pages when you have content
to fill the page
like all the info on pubs http://ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Cider_Pub_Guide
could all be on one page at current
it’s intended to be printable as a page for each
region
could be a large part of the wiki eventually
I see
yes, but at the moment it’s small
it’s all small, it’s only a week old !
if it’s all small then it should only be a few
pages
is that the only way to grow it?
It makes things optimal in terms of browsing, so
is important
It’s the only way it should be
at the moment it suffers from a kind of over organisation
I think it’s suffering from lack of content and
participation myself, but then it is only a week old
so you don’t rate my plan to create organisation first, then solicit content
It’s like a biologist who is sorting his collection,
having a draw for each genus, despite his collection only being about 100 objects
no, that’s a bad habit in my eyes
applies to life in general too
I’d be grateful if you’d comment that here:
http://www.43things.com/entries/view/13328
sure,
I take your general point.
maybe in the morning though
but how do you kick start something that doesn’t
exist yet?
just announce it and hope someone is interested,
have enough content at the beginning to show that atleast you are going to participate
in it
but creating a structure is just presumptious, doesn’t really show any real
intent to do things, doesn’t give the project any real momentum, small concentrated
contennt is better
I didn’t really want to duplicate everything from
the old site but maybe I should do that instead
then I’d have content, and it would be editable
start off making a few pages, maybe using information
from the old site, but make them good
quality
yes quality over quantity
well thanks for your advice. I’ll copy and paste
it somewhere
also, people like organising, and the people
who do the organising are more inclined to feel closer to the project and contribute
more in general, so by organising all the structure yourself, people won’t feel
so inclined to help out
I think that last point of mine is particilarly important now I remembered it!
I kind of sensed that, but you have explained
it better
good, then get rid of all the stubs!
I don’t want to spend too much time shrinking
the structure do I
well it’s hard to change the past, but if probably
is worth it
you’re not that far off the correct balance though
I’ll make some changes
is it possible for users to delete pages
doubt it , but you can just leave them orphaned
he he http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Perfect_stub_article
suggests putting misspelled words in stubbs to get people to edit the page
well, you could deliberatley put in false information
as well but…
they must have the most experience
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_Stub_Pages
interesting
"No page is better than a stub page"
too right!
sounds a bit evangelical to me
it sounds spot on to me
what about a link to "no page" is that
ok?
or should it be no link as well
well yes, no link
that’s what it means
ah. so not even the suggestion of the possibility
of a page then
most of the time, no
creating templates for new pages are ok
I did that on senseis libary
but that’s quite different to the concept of a stub
also having no content makes the link indicate that there is no content
but generally no link is better again
"On the other hand, stubs represent content that someone was willing to
donate, and why should we discourage people from contributing what they can?"
This is wrong, stubs represent content that people aren’t willing to donate
any time soon!
that’s the irony of it
I suppose they represent the hope that somebody
else will do it
yea, that isn’t a good thought to send out!
hope is a negative idea
hope is the antithesis of being productive
so the way to attract contributions, is to only
add good content yourself
Lead by example, not by organising
yes, discuss future direction, but don’t just create
stubs just hoping
yes, lead by example
Winter Sunset December 21, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : hi res photos, wildlife, London , 1 comment so farlast Sunday it was clear and cold, and I ventured out to make the most of the daylight, noticing that the sun was already low on the horizon. At this time of year, instead of setting in the West somewhere near the twin towers, it surprised me how much further South it was. I wondered if the planet may have finally spun off it’s proper axis, perhaps through 3billion people in the East all jumping up and down at the same time.
Here’s a selection of photos from the last half hour of the day, spent walking around the duckpond on Wansted Flats, the nearest place with any approximation to natural beauty within walking distance.
( also published on Manor Park Blog )
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
