Steve Woods

Written by a human.

  • Top Bristol Post headline today

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Today’s online edition of the Bristol Post features a great headline to this story, as per the screenshot below.

    Post article screenshot

    There is however one thing wrong with the headline: it isn’t true since male tortoises – being reptiles – don’t have a penis, but a cloaca (which is the Latin word for sewer. Ed.) – an opening that serves as the only opening for the intestinal, reproductive and urinary tracts of certain species.

    To be fair the fact that male tortoises have cloacas is indeed mentioned by the Post’s unnamed author in paragraph 2:

    The four year-old spur-thighed tortoise is suffering from a prolapse of the cloaca which requires immediate treatment.

    “Never let the truth get in the way of a good headline” seems to be a maxim of the British press at both local and national levels.

    Finally, this blog wishes Cedric and his owner every success in remedying Cedric’s problem. 🙂

  • Crapita and the MoJ: still wasting public money

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    Crapita’s mismanagement of the courts and tribunals interpreting contract for the Ministry of Justice may not be getting as much publicity now as previously (posts passim), but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t stopped wasting public money, as the tweet below from yesterday reveals.

    As Leisha doesn’t mention the type of court involved, there’s no certainty how many thousands of pounds this laxity has cost, but once again justice is being delayed, contrary to one of the few clauses of Magna Carta still in legal effect (posts passim).

    One might even think that the one organisation that should be concerned about this – the Ministry of Justice – seems to be less concerned with justice and more with covering up its own and Crapita’s serial incompetence.

  • ORG meet-up at St Werburghs

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    ORG logoThe Open Rights Group (ORG), an organisation which exists to preserve and promote your rights in the digital age, is holding a meet-up at 8.00 pm on Thursday 24th April 2014 at St Werburgh’s Community Centre, Horley Road, Bristol, BS2 9TJ (map).

    Following the Snowden revelations on GCHQ’s role in Prism, Open Rights Group, Big Brother Watch, English PEN and Chaos Computer Club spokesperson Constanze Kurz are challenging the UK government at the European Court of Human Rights.

    The European Court has completed its preliminary examination of the case and has asked the British Government to justify how GCHQ’s practices and the current system of oversight comply with the right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

    The court has also given the case a rare priority designation. The British government now has until 2nd May to respond, after which the case will move into the final stages before judgement.

    Join ORG in Bristol to hear from Dan Carey, the solicitor for the application, as he explains what the challenge hopes to achieve and how it will progress from here.

    We’ll also be hearing about the Don’t Spy On Us campaign from ORG’s Policy Director, Javier Ruiz, as ORG asks the public to sign its 6 key principles on mass surveillance.

    The event will provide a fun and informal way to meet with other local ORG supporters, as well as an opportunity to learn about mass surveillance.

    Please join the meetup group if you’re interested in coming along.

  • OPW’s success partly to blame for GNOME expenditure freeze

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Gnome logoAccording to German IT news site Heise, the financial cushion of the Gnome Foundation -non-profit organisation that furthers the goals of the GNOME Project, helping it to create a free software computing platform for the general public that is designed to be elegant, efficient, and easy to use – has declined so sharply that the organisation has frozen part of its expenditure. The success of the Gnome Outreach Program for Women (OPW) is said to be partly to blame for this situation (posts passim).

    The situation was explained in an email to Foundation members over the weekend.

    Dear Foundation members,

    Due to a shortfall in the budget, the Foundation board voted on 2014-04-08 to freeze all expenditure which is not essential to the running of the Foundation. This freeze affects sponsorship expenses
    which are unpaid at this time, but it does not affect the funds which we hold for other organisations.

    By keeping our expenditures to a minimum while we regain some delayed revenue, we aim to have things back to normal within a few months. All Foundation members who expect to receive reimbursements within the next three months have already been informed of the issue and most have responded positively. The board will prioritise these pending reimbursements over other expenses.

    The issue has been caused by a number of factors. These include increased administrative overheads in the last few years due to the increased turnover which has been caused by to the Outreach Program
    for Women (OPW), and the associated payments going out while the associated income has been slow to come in.

    The board expects that you may have some questions or would like to know more details about the problem, please read https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ and contact the board at board-list gnome org if you have any further questions.

  • BBC employs greengrocers

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    The BBC – and Radio 4 in particular – is often criticised for being the voice of middle England speaking to itself.

    However, it seems that Auntie is now making great strides to improve the diversity of its staff, as shown by the Tweet below, which was posted during last night’s broadcast of Any Questions.

    Yes, Radio 4 is now employing greengrocers (shouldn’t that be greengrocer’s? Ed. 🙂 ), or at least people who know how to use superfluous (or greengrocers’) apostrophes.

  • LibreOffice 4.2.3 released

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The Document Foundation has announced on its blog the release of LibreOffice 4.2.3, the third minor release of the LibreOffice 4.2 family. Codenamed “Fresh”, LibreOffice 4.2.3 is the most feature rich version to date of this free and open source office suite. The release itself is described by The Document Foundation as being suited for early adopters. For enterprise use and more conservative users, The Document Foundation recommends the more mature LibreOffice 4.1.5 release.

    People interested in this release’s technical details and bug fixes can view the change logs as follows:

    In addition, the released version of LibreOffice 4.2.3 adds a security fix for the Heartbleed bug (CVE-2014-0160).

    screenshot of Calc spreadsheet program
    LibreOffice’s Calc spreadsheet program running on Ubuntu Linux

    Downloading LibreOffice

    LibreOffice 4.2.3 and LibreOffice 4.1.5 are both available for download from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions and templates to increase the software’s functionality and add specific features are available at http://extensions.libreoffice.org/.

  • Political proofreading failure

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

    Below is a picture of part of an actual election leaflet delivered recently to somewhere in South Bristol by the local Liberal Democrats.

    Lib Dem leaflet with the wording Anywhere Council
    Is it a three horse race too, Lib Dems?

    Note that local party hacks have omitted to change this generic national leaflet’s wording from ‘Anywhere Council’ to the name of the relevant local authority.

    I for one would like to wish the candidate involved – [Insert Name Here] – every success.

    Hat tip: Bristol Red.

  • The importance of the space bar and proofreading

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

    The Wig and Pen public house in Truro, Cornwall had some unexpected publicity earlier this week when a badly temporary temporary sign was snapped by an amused regular before being hurriedly removed by embarrassed staff, according to yesterday’s Western Daily Press.

    By the time the sign came down, its fame had spread round the world by social media; and it’s easy to see why.

    sign saying The Wig & Penis Is Open For Business

    However, according to the Western Daily Press article, the sign itself was not the only linguistic clanger involved in the episode:

    But a remember [sic] of staff named Georgie-Tim later took to Twitter to say: “Well, it got you’re attention!

  • ODF recommended for Galicia’s public sector

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    Galicia's coat of armsJoinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website, reports that the government of Spain’s autonomous region of Galicia is recommending that the region’s public sector organisations adopt Open Document Format (ODF, ISO 26300) for editable electronic documents and PDF for non-editable electronic documents.

    “This will facilitate the re-use of documents and the creation of derivative works”, the government writes in a guide which was published on 26 March, Document Freedom Day (posts passim). Public sector bodies are also being advised to make their documents available using a copyleft licence, such as Creative Commons’ CC-by-SA.

    The guide ‘Boas prácticas para a liberación de publicacións da Xunta de Galicia‘ (Good Practice Guide for liberating Galicia government documents) has been written by Galicia’s free software resource centre, the ‘Oficina de Coordinación de Software Libre’ (Ocfloss). The report is available in both ODT and PDF formats is also published under the CC-by-SA licence.

    The guide also contains advice for the public sector on how to manage intellectual property rights in respect of its documents, images and multimedia files, as well as guidance on the creation of derivative works.

  • Progress

    Steve WoodsOddities, Tech

    Technology is advancing at a pace that’s blistering.

    If anything can illustrate the progress of technological change, it’s the picture below: a smaller footprint and a massive increase in storage capacity in under 10 years.

    tech_advance

    It’s not just capacity that’s changed. Prices have changed too. Back in 1998 I paid £140 for a 3.5 hard drive with 8 GB of storage. Nowadays I can buy a USB device with an equivalent capacity for £10 in most large supermarkets.

    Hat tip: OpenSure

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