bob-ak.com

While browsing for a JavaScript question, I happened to come across stackoverflow.com, a site out there that deals only with programming questions. Brilliant! One to remember when you’re stuck with one of those annoying bugs in the middle of the night…

This is a fascinating insight into what our media call modern-day pirates in the Somalian seas.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave.

And then

They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century”.

It’s written by Johann Hari and was publish in the Independent on-line magazine. Read the full commentary here.

There was a lot of hype surrounding the Christmas speech made by Iran’s president on UK TV’s Channel 4.

I didn’t get to see it on the day but spent a little time searching the Internet and found a few useful links:

• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad & Dr Anthony McRoy – The Islamic extremist and the Christian academic
• The double-hype of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

I personally think it’s a great idea to give people who don’t normally feature in main stream media, a chance to voice their opinion, specially if they’re misunderstood. But, to let Mr Ahmadinejad, a president who allows injustice and numerous killings go on in his own back yard, may be questionable.

To Ahmadinejad’s defence, here are some links that show he was misquoted by the big media heads:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14733.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12790.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18471.htm

Let’s hope things get better in Iran and whether this man gets elected the next time or not, I wish him better understanding of human values (Islamic or not).

I got most of these ideas from trippermap.com and earthalbum.com:

Some cameras and phones set the geo data in the EXIF part of a JPEG photo. This is very handy but far from common. To get around this Flickr have developed their own mapping tool (go to the Organizer and select the map tab). This tool will allow you to drop your images anywhere on the world map. It’ll then obtain the geo data of the point dropped and adds it as a tag to your photo.

Once your photo has this information in it, you can submit it to various sites (or build you own) to place it in its correct location in the world map (can use Google or Yahoo maps who provide APIs for this).

In Flickr you can also add geo data tags manually provided you know the location yourself. Simply add the following tags to your photo:

geotagged
geo:lon=xxx.xxx
geo:lat=xxx.xxx

Another way to get geo data is to look up the location the photo was taken in a database (try Google maps or geonames.org). This is a little harder as you need programming knowledge on how to get the info back from these sources.

Finally you can use a host of desktop tools which will allow you to write EXIF data directly into your image.

Here’s a list from trippermap.com:
WMMX Location Stamper (Win)
GPSPhoto (Linux)
GPSPhotoLinker (MacOSX)
iMagine Photo (MacOSX)
EXIFutils (Command line)
itag (Win)

This is part one of an awsome progressive house mix by our good friend Stef. It was recorded in December 2006 in one of our House Groovez parties @ the Southside Bar in Brixton London.

Let us know how if you like it – I’ll publish the second half next month.

A short film called “Generation Tehran” beautifully captures the thinkings and lifestyle of a group of the younger generation in Tehran. Directed by Sara Bavar.

Let’s say you are a boss of some developers. And you’ve got this one guy who is way too motivated. He is making everyone else look bad. You want to force him to quit. I have no idea why you’d want to get rid of your one motivated good programmer, but you boss-type guys pull this kind of crazy stuff all the time, right? Anyway, let me explain how you, the boss, can suck the ever-loving life from this programmer and make him hate his job.

Some valid points made in this article. If you’re a programmer and love/hate your job, read the full post here. From lbrandy.com

Have finally deided to do some sports! This is a great thing as I’ve been talking about doing daily/weekly exercise for ever.

The plan is to play sqaush with Max twice a week starting this Wednesday.

Here are a couple of links I found useful for playing squash at beginners level:

– How to Play Squash and other Squash Tips from SquashClub.org

– Essential stretching for squash from ScottishSport.co.uk

Ahmadinejad accepts Israel’s right to exist

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made a remarkable announcement. He’s admitted that Iran might agree to the existence of the state of Israel.

Read the article here. From the Guardian, written by Peter Tatchell.

New radar to calm Israel-Iran attack fears

The United States has deployed a sophisticated long-range radar system in Israel capable of providing crucial early warnings in case of missile attacks.

Read it here. From theage.com.au written by Jason Koutsoukis, Jerusalem.

‘Song of Sparrows’ Representing Iran At Oscars

After a critical misfire with the moralistic melodrama The Weeping Willow, Iran’s only Oscar-nominated director, Majid Majidi (Children of Heaven), returns to the dramatic territory he effectively mined in earlier works with The Song of Sparrows.

Link – from radiojavan.com

GREAT tune – read about the man here.