Local People, Local Clothes, Local Schools, Local People

A few things are happening over the next two weeks or so to encourage people to give away things they don't need. At the 1st April, welivesimply encouraged people to give away things they don't use or need any more - it was then captured under the twitter #tag #foolpurge.

I can only report getting rid of a few old t-shirts that were surplus to requirements. We handed a few bags of clothes into our local Help the Aged shop.

Then I saw that this event was happening in the United States: Give your stuff away on 15 May. That's this weekend.

Pretty cool. If you are in the US: GET INVOLVED!

Then I read that there's something similar happening in the Scotland: Pass it on day on 5 June. That's in three weekends time.

In the meantime, our local school, Broxburn Academy now has a textile bank and a collection due on 23 June with all funds going to supply planners for the kids. Interestingly, the company involved are Rag Bag, based in Denny and employing 200 people in Scotland. Which is pretty cool too.

Clearly, the more we reuse, the less we waste and put into landfill. The less we need to buy new *stuff*. So, get involved wherever you can and see what you can give to someone else!

A week to go.

And I've no idea who I am voting for.

I'm not really convinced that I am voting for a party because I agree with everything they stand for. In fact, I know I'm not. We don't elect presidents. We elect representatives.

However, I'm not naive enough to suggest that there's not an element of tactics needed to decide who to vote for, particularly in this election. Hung parliament and all that caper.

Please, don't believe the hype. Hung parliaments are *not* the end of democracy. Far from it.

Back to the plot. I mentioned earlier that I had a conversation with one of the candidates and they were unwilling to get into these new media stuff. I'd challenged Lis Bardell to commit 20 minutes a day to share what she's doing, where she's been and what she's thinking about the campaign and see what happens. Make herself more human for more people.

This is her campaign website:

I quote:

"I look forward to a continuing conversation with you – whatever your age - through the website"

How can we do that?

"I’ll also be glad to hear from you about issues that matter to you and I can be contacted at lis.bardell@livingstonsnp.org"

So I've to send you an email... okay. But what if you get 100 emails on the same topic, surely better to publish your response online.

" As we develop the site I’ll be highlighting important issues at Westminster as they affect Scotland and the Livingston Constituency"

But this page hasn't been updated for weeks. Oops.

Let's have the conversation, Lis, but can we please make it open and honest and not in the depth of email. Sure there's stuff you don't want to broadcast, but there's the opportunity for SO MUCH MORE!

Maybe we could do it on Google Wave? Or just start a blog and say hello to your consituents who ARE online.

UPDATE (22:28) a comment on my previous post from "anonymous" (!) pointed me to Lis' campaign site here (and I love that there's photos of her favourite holiday views!) and her Facebook group here. Check them out for yourself and form your own view!

And lest you think I'm having a go at the SNP candidate on her own.

Many of the others aren't up to much in this space either...

Labour (yay, it's a blog. With one post. A twitter account, with no posts.)

Lib-Dem and Lib-Dem (erm, is he actually standing...?)

UPDATE: Charles Dundas commented on my previous post - and is out there. Even on twitter here.

Conservative (just a biog and the same chat as their leaflets)

BNP (I'm not linking to their content, but actually, there's a blog and it does allow (some) comment! Puts the others to shame).

UKIP (who are at least trying, with a forum on the page, but I had to hunt to find it...)

Scottish Socialist (A full-on blog, sharing existing content, shame about the design ;->)

So, all in all, no-one is online speaking about the area, about the people, about the local issues - except (dare I say it) the BNP?!

Hoots, Mon!

PS - the excellent VoteGeek has the full candidate list and contact details. No idea who Jim Slavin is tho...

theWhat?

JL recently asked me why I use the moniker "theWeir".

My first response? Because when I registered for twitter around 18 months ago, the username AndyWeir was taken. As were more sensible variations on the same. So I thought "theWeir" would work. Especially as there can be only one Weir. Yeah, right?!

But this wasn't the only possible reason why my online interactions (particularly outside of Facebook) are under this identity.

Curiously, some people at work who've caught up with me online outside of work are known to use that moniker is person. Which is fine, good and proper, but still feels a bit strange. Maybe a bit like a recently married lady hearing her new surname being read out?

So, working back in time, from twitter, I started my blog here in November 2008 (moving from my old iWeb blog here), I called it "weir online". See what I did there? So I was theWeir online.

But it all started back in early 2000s. I met the Mighty Quinn. Not the song, but the man. He signed his email & sms with a "Q". He was (and forever shall be) Quinn. I liked that. I liked his style. I like theQuinn.

At the same time, our good friend Mr Clive Parnell does a proper London boi accent. Mainly 'cos he's got family there. And when we played in a band together (IndigoEcho) it was around the time when speaking in a mockney accent was a bit cool, like.

And there was a phrase used (often) "easy for the [insert object here]". On seeing you, CP was often prone to hailing with "easy for theWeir" or "easy for theFrancis" (Bass player) and "easy for theQuinn". I guess it was *inspired* by Ali G being all over pop culture at the time...

And so, it just kinda stuck in my head.

theWeir

Apparently, there's a play called The Weir. There are a few resturaunts called The Weir. Infact, there's plenty of Weirs around the place.

But none of them are why I chose "theWeir".

At least that's my (not very interesting story) and I'm sticking to it.

Isn't it cool how these things weave together during our lives?

Opening the floodgates?

The Guardian reports that Tesco, everyone's favourite Evil Corporate Giant, is making an API available for it's online store. (here's what an API is).

While this might seem a little of a "so what", there's a few things that makes this powerful for me:

1) Tesco are crowd-sourcing ideas and technology. a brave move for a Corporate? I'd love to know how they're legal teams are feeling right now...

2) It means that Tesco might not try and develop their own apps for iPhone/Android/Firefox but allow the wider development community do this for them. Especially when you see they are doing TJam

3) If it takes off (and if third-party apps for a communication tool like twitter are anything to go by then it will) then we may well see the continued de-centralisation of information from the Corporate to the user. if this becomes mainstream, then you can see Tesco looking to exploit it (and that means across all their product lines) and also that people will expect it. If companies don't provide the tools for Third-Party apps, will they look like cave-dwellers?

That's my first thoughts on this a few minutes after I read the article. What do you think?

Can you see other uses for this or challenges we might face as a result?

twenty years

Listening to Digital Planet on the way to work this morning (podcast available here) I was thinking about 20 years of the World Wide Web.

In just twenty years the way we catalogue and find data has been radically changed - and the way that people communicate is completely different.

So, here's my earliest memories of computing and communication.

An Olivetti 386SX, 33mHz desktop computer bought for Christmas one year (1993, maybe?) by my Dad as a *family* tool.  I got to use it to play games, create documents for school and all that jazz.

I remember when Dad got Compuserve  - dial-up internet, email and the internet.  I had NO IDEA how it worked, what it could do or what the point was, but hey, it was there.  If I'd paid more attention, maybe I'd be more of a geek than I am now.

I remember trying to use webpages that were full of text (bad layout, crummy images and generally hard to interact with) and simply not really getting the point.  Was only 15 or so... I guess others are more entrepreneurial and I think I can see potential better now than I could then. 

Anyway, I do remember using his email to send messages to people (his email address was a collection of numbers @compuserve.com - and I think he paid a fee every month to have access as well as paying for the dial-up call time.  I remember making up flyers for my band using the PC and putting the email address on the contact details and then wondering if that was too geek-like?!

And how times have changed, and some things haven't.  Sure, Moore's Law has brought us the equivalent of 90's supercomputers in our pockets and we can buy most PC hardware for a fraction of the prices of the mid-90s (thank you, China), but we still pay for access.  Not sure that's a bad thing, but it does have limits.

I wonder what things might be like twenty years from now.  Will connectivity be included in the price of the device - pay £200 for an iPhone 10.0 and do as much as you like?  Will technology fail us and we get back to writing on dead trees?  Will we think that this text-based interface is so old-skool now that we use video to interact and do everything (ordering your shopping by leaving a voice mail?).

I quoted Heraclitus when editing content for David Thomson the other day: Change is the only constant.

What are your earliest memories of the World Wide Web? How has this technology changed your life? What do you think the future might lead to?