Peregrine falconYesterday it was a joy to discover that the peregrine falcons which nested on the old generator house by St Philip’s Bridge were nesting there again (posts passim). Talking to a gentleman on the bridge who’d been watching them through binoculars, it would appear our urban peregrines are also adapting to our urban environment and are also learning to hunt after sunset using the city’s streetlighting.
A couple of weeks ago, my attention was caught by peregrine calls when walking down Redcliff Street. They weren’t emanating from a falcon at all, but it’s taken your correspondent until now to track down their source. Looking up at the roof of the old, soon to be redeveloped Patterson’s building, I saw the sight below.
Note the electric wire and turntable. It’s a plastic peregrine which looks very realistic to the local gull population. It rotates on its turntable, flaps its wings and also calls like a real falcon from time to time. It won’t fool me again.
Today is Document Freedom Day, an annual international celebration of open formats and open standards and an opportunity to promote their use.
The use of open standards is definitely gaining ground, particularly where it matters, such as in dealings with government bodies. This was amply illustrated last year by the UK Cabinet Office’s announcement of the adoption of open standards for collaborating on government documents.
Why do open standards matter?
Open standards are vital for interoperability and freedom of choice. They provide freedom from data lock-in and the accompanying vendor lock-in. This makes open standards essential for governments, companies, organisations and individual users of information technology.
What is an open standard?
An open standard refers to a format or protocol that is:
Subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties;
Without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an open standard themselves;
Free from legal or technical clauses that limit its use by any party or in any business model;
Managed and further developed independently of any single supplier in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties;
Available in multiple complete implementations by competing suppliers, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.
How do open standards affect you?
April, the French open source advocacy organisation, has produced a handy graphic in English to illustrate the difference between open and closed formats. Click on the image below for the full-sized version.
Examples of open standards
Many open standards are in wide use. Here are 3 examples:
ODF, the default file format of free and open source office suites such as LibreOffice and OpenOffice. ODF can also be handled by Microsoft Office versions from Office 2007 onwards.
Document Freedom Day is being promoted on social media by the use of the #DFD2015 hashtag.
A week ago yesterday, there was a meeting of the TidyBS5 task force with council officers and Councillor Marg Hickman at the offices of Up Our Street.
It was a good opportunity for the officers to update community volunteers on what the council has done, is and will be doing.
Jane Street in Redfield earlier today
For Stapleton Road a deep clean is planned for this year; this will mean giving the footways a thoroughly good scrub and removing chewing gum from their surfaces. In addition, hanging baskets will be provided on approx. 30 lamp posts to help make the street a bit more colourful and attractive.
The city council’s streetscene enforcement team has now moved into the area and has already had some success: 5 traders have been issued with £300 fixed penalty notices for abusing the communal bins intended for household waste only. In addition, some minor offenders have been fined smaller amounts.
Turning to communal bins, task force members have been invited to assist in devising the communal bins consultation that the council is organising for the Stapleton Road corridor. Two task force members, Hannah and myself, informed officers that we were monitoring clearance times after fly-tipping had been reported. From my own monitoring since then, communal bins seem to be implicated in some 60% of sites notified to the council.
After the update from the offices, it was pointed out to them that, while all this attention being lavished on the Stapleton Road area was appreciated, it should not detract from equally bad problems along the Lawrence Hill/Church Road corridor, home to the infamous Jane Street (see above).
During my discussion on social media with BCC’s Chief Enterprise Architect Gavin Beckett about open standards (posts passim), he invited me to submit feedback on using the council website; this will be done from the aspect of reporting street cleaning matters, where the website still has a couple of interesting foibles.
Up Our Street is organising a community litter pick on Saturday 28th March from 11 am to 1 pm. Volunteers are asked to assemble at Lawrence Hill roundabout (map). For more details, contact Lorena on 0117 954 2835.
Following the post on Friday on Bristol City Council‘s response to my open standards FoI request (posts passim), more information has come to light.
It was all sparked by a discussion on Twitter between myself and Alex, a leading member of the Bristol & Bath Linux Users’ Group (BBLUG).
It all revolved around what was really meant by the phrase “not fully digital” in respect of PDF files.
My speculation was that if text documents are scanned, these are usually converted to image-based PDFs with which the screen readers used by blind and visually impaired people can have problems.
It turned out this was a good point, but not the real reason.
The latter was supplied by Gavin Beckett, BCC’s Chief Enterprise Architect, who actually responded to my FoI request. It seems Gavin’s main reason for describing PDFs as “not fully digital” is that PDF is basically an attempt to make electronic files emulate paper. The move by the council away from PDF to HTML when responding to citizens is that more mobile devices (tablets and smartphones) are now being used by the public to communicate with the local authority and the latter wishes to provide the same – i.e. “fully digital” experience to all.
Finally Gavin promised to follow up with his colleagues my gripe about using MS formats for responding to FOI requests. He conceded this was one example where PDF would be better.
Yesterday, 5th February, was National Voter Registration Day.
Many political parties, civil society organisations and others were yesterday encouraging the disenfranchised to register to vote for the forthcoming local council and general elections on 7th May.
One of those parties campaigning was UKIP, which doubtless was ignorant of the hypocrisy of its message in the tweet shown in the following screenshot.
That’s right! A party actively opposing immigration to the UK is actively encouraging UK citizens who’ve become immigrants in other countries to register to vote in elections in the old mother country.
Social media has responded quickly to the horrific attack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris today, which resulted in 12 deaths and 5 injured. Four of those killed were Charlie Hebdo cartoonists Charb, Cabu, Tignous and Georges Wolinski.
The press office of Amnesty International in France has described that attack as “A black day for press freedom”.
Many Twitter accounts changed their avatar to the Je suis Charlie image shown below, whilst many tweets were also tagged with the #JesuisCharlie hashtag.
Some of the harshest condemnations of the attack have come from the attackers’ co-religionists. The imam of Drancy, Hassen Chalghoumi, is reported to have said: “Their barbarism has nothing to do with Islam”.
My deepest condolences to the victims and their families.
This morning residents living around Gaunt’s Ham Park in Barton Hill became the latest to add their support for the TidyBS5 campaign to rid the streets of BS5 of litter and fly-tipping (posts passim).
The picture below was posted online earlier this morning by Up Our Street.
Picture courtesy of Stacy Yelland
The more support, the more chance there is that Bristol City Council will take the residents of East Bristol seriously when the raise their voices, something they have not always done in the past.
These awards are presented every year to people who make a difference in the part of East Bristol where I live. Nominations all come from the local community, i.e. friends and neighbours.
This year the awards were presented by local MP Stephen Williams, whilst the event was compèred by local broadcasting husband and wife team Pat Hart and Sherie Eugene Hart. Those honoured ranged in age from people still at school to pensioners.
The biggest cheer of the night was for Lil Stiddard, who received a standing ovation. Lili’s citation read:
It was 32 years ago that Lil and her husband became involved in setting up a club for older people in the community. Before Easton Community Centre was built, they met at the Chelsea Road Old Co-op. The floor collapsed with all the dancing the first time they used a temporary venue. At the age of 97, Lil is still active in the club, setting out the tables and chairs, bringing the tea and assisting the treasurer. “We are all human beings,” she says, “and need to learn to pull together.”
All the winners were photographed together at the end of the presentation.
Here’s a short film of vox pops shot at the awards.
Zero Waste Week, now in its seventh year, is currently taking place in the United Kingdom between 1st and 7th September 2014.
The aim of Zero Waste Week is to “an opportunity to reduce landfill waste & save money“.
The theme of this year’s event is “One More Thing“.
Jane Street in Redfield, Bristol, shows in the picture below just what can be achieved with “One More Thing” in Zero Waste Week, in this case, one more instance of fly-tipping!
Image courtesy of Amy Harrison
As part of the campaign to clear up Easton and Lawrence Hill wards (under the #tidybs5 moniker. Ed.), I recently attended a meeting with Marg Hickman, my local councillor, and council officers (news passim). At that meeting I was informed by the officers that the problem of fly-tipping in Jane Street had disappeared since a local mafrish – a café used for chewing khat – had closed down following the UK’s outlawing of khat. Obviously the council officers concerned hadn’t bargained for the persistence of Bristol’s filthy fly-tipping community!
a third party smartphone app, such as My Council (which is available for both Android and iOS; and
telephoning 0117 922 2100.
The most direct reporting route is using the fly-tipping form as the report is sent directly to the department concerned, whereas the other methods require the report to be forwarded by its original recipient.
PSV Eindhoven supporters launched a vehement protest against the introduction of wifi at the their Philips Stadion ground during their side’s 6-1 home victory over NAC Breda in their opening game of the season, according to yesterday’s Guardian.
Fans displayed one banner reading: “F*ck Wi-Fi, support the team”. Placards with crosses running through the wifi signal were also held aloft before the match. Supporters’ groups believe the introduction of wifi is just the latest of a series of decisions by the club intended to gentrify the crowd at home matches.
However, the club’s website has a slightly different take on the introduction of wifi. The game against NAC Breda marked the test phase of the ‘Connected Stadium’ project. All visitors had free access to the internet, social media and email via the ‘PSV’ network. This is the first time in the Netherlands that a stadium has been equipped with a wifi network. The club is also asking users for feedback.
Today is 
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