The UK government publishes lots of spending data now. Let's do cool stuff! ScraperWiki is one of these new-fangled cloud services, hosting code that scrapes websites. You can throw some python (or ruby, or php) together to download all the CSV files for a department. Google Refine is like a spreadsheet on crack, with features ideal for cleaning up messy data sets. I saw it for the first time at OpenTech 2011 a few weeks ago in London. You can take the government data, clean up the worst typos, and integrate it into the scraperwiki scraper. ...

I've been promoted - my job title will now be 'Software Architect'. This seems to mean I'll be writing documents rather than code - any higher-level, and I'd need Mark Shuttleworth's spacesuit. Is this a good thing? Anyway, I celebrated by opening my last bottle of Debian wine. <spam>Unfortunately, I can't take up my new role until we have hired a replacement. UK-based developers who know Perl and ideally PostgreSQL might want to look at the job description, although I'd recommend sending your CV and covering letter to me directly. I don't get a referral bonus, it's just that I don't like what that agency does with your carefully-crafted application.</spam> ...

A new release of Gnash, version 0.8.9, is due in the near future. Plenty of bugs have been fixed, but some users are still going to have problems playing YouTube videos. Here's a short explanation. At some point last year, YouTube started setting HTTP cookies in your web browser, to keep track of which of their video servers is nearest to your machine. This lets them provide a better experience for you (I guess). Here's a diagram of what goes on in your browser: ...

My employer moved offices to Park Gate about a year ago - there's a coffee/sandwich place just down the road, which I generally walk past to get my lunch. And it's got a sign outside: I can't believe I didn't notice that swirl sooner. It will join my picture of the FreeBSD naughty toys machine from DebConf7. In other news, Debian squeeze is being released as I write this. It's been a fun two years. :) ...

My paternal grandmother died a month ago today - I may have been quieter than usual since December. The most vivid memory I have of her is helping to collect runner beans from her garden - apparently this had been going on since the World War II "dig for victory" campaign. Her funeral was in Hastings on 10th January, and she was buried in Fairlight, in the Roman Catholic area of St. Andrew's - it was a very peaceful setting.

If anyone mentions Dropbox to me one more time, I will scream. I'm sure it's a wonderful solution, but I have deep misgivings about handing my data over to someone I don't trust. Besides, my synchronisation needs are not that complicated. Here are my high-level requirements: Two way synchronisation between multiple clients and a central server. Automatic syncs - no requirement for manual triggering. Graceful handling of network outages, suspends, etc. If using ssh, running from within my X session (so that it can access my ssh-agent) Some assurance that my data will not be passed to other people (e.g. by running everything on servers I control, or encrypting all the data with keys only I hold) Regular backups of the central data. ...

For those who are not aware, The Archers is a soap opera about rural life, broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Its website has recently been revamped. Unfortunately, I appear to be served the mobile version when I visit the front page (in all of Chromium, Iceweasel and Epiphany on Debian - admittedly not the most mainstream of browsers). BBC Mobile is doing some over-zealous useragent sniffing, it seems. Also amusing: there's a "Who's Who" database of Archers characters, and several of them share the birthday "1st Jan 1970". There was I thinking that Harry Mason and Fallon Rogers had a 15 year age gap... but no. ...

Mwahahahaa, just a few moments ago, my local copy of gnash actually got past the RTMP handshake, and got a response from iPlayer. I need to be at work in around 8 hours, though, so no time to push this until tomorrow... and it needs some cleanup. Obviously, no audio has yet been played. Don't be silly.

Having studied librtmp over the weekend, it doesn't drop into gnash as neatly as I'd hoped. Gnash already has classes to implement NetConnection and NetStream, which it makes sense to use - but librtmp is designed to replace the need for such classes to exist. So it implements certain higher-level responses to various calls from the server, that are necessary when downloading a stream. Gnash probably needs to hook in instead, and let the flash application decide what to do in these cases. ...

Of course, now everyone wants to hate Flattr, and ban its buttons from Planet Debian. You can't coerce effectively over a network connection - unless you wave the DMUP at them. It's an interesting exercise to square this approach with the promise at the heart of free software - freedom. We let people sell our software for a profit; we're a billion-dollar industry now. (Red Hat alone is worth $1bn.) That's before we start counting the money made by the businesses whose servers rely on us. But a developer advertising for €25 per month in donations? They must be banned! ...