. on nostuff.org archive | Chris Keene

Top UK Universities : Combined Rankings

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:05:07 +0000

There are various league tables out there for UK Universities. I’ve collected the results from a number of them, a league table based on league tables. This should hopefully help to remove any biases or weaknesses in particular methodologies. The results are further down this post.

I collected results for just 53 Universities, not the full 120 odd that exist in the UK. This was due to laziness, and to be honest I’m more interested in the higher end of the numbers. However I’m fairly sure no university I’ve excluded would come higher that those I’ve included In fact it was originally going to be 50, but as I collected from the various sources I added a few more around the cut off point.

Brighton New England Quarter

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:30:35 +0000

A few years a go I created some new pages on the ‘New England Quater’, on the site of some old railway works next to Brighton station and near me. Originally the pages just had some photos of how the site looked before work started, and at various stages since (stupidly I normally took this late in the day as the sun was setting which produced poor photos), however at the time I couldn’t find any website providing general information on the project so provided some background and useful links. Since then there has been much more information put on to the web (and lot of information removed as well).

News Quiz

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:12:01 +0000

On a Saturday, I’m prone to remembering the fantastic News Quiz (or equally fantastic Now Show), which starts at 12.30 (why am I saying that, you know that right?), at exactly 1pm. At this point I dash to listen again (now the radio iplayer) to listen to it there. At this point I’m often frustrated as it is still playing the show from the previous week. Do the BBC not understand by problem!

Welcome back

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:07:49 +0000

In August I signed up with Dreamhost.

Until now I have used Freedom2surf’s web hosting service. I originally signed up with them as they seemed a good company (and still do, though now owned by pipex) and were cheap, £25 a year. When I first started using them they transferred my domain to them (it was all a bit new to me so I just presumed this was a required step) and their domain name costs were not cheap (£10). A few years later I wanted email as well (another £25), and the cost started going up. The service was stable, but I was started to need more. They offered just one database, not much when you are playing around with different software, such as Joomla, running WordPress and trying to experiment with your own silly web apps which require a DB, plus the quote for the database was tiny (10mb). Plus their web stats were crappy, and the log files were fiddly (kept for a few days on a secure website, no ftp and wget didn’t seem able to get them which made automating difficult, plus each file would download with the same filename by default).

Analog web statistics

Tue, 08 May 2007 14:54:41 +0000

I use the wonderful Analog for web stats. Unfortunately it hasn’t been updated for a while (2004 in fact).

However I noticed that some kind soles on the mailing list have updated analog so that it includes Vista in the OS report.

I’ve put a copy here, just download the zip (Windows), extract and replace the original analog.exe.
See this mailing list message (and the thread that follows) for more information and credit to those who produced this new version.

UK has second highest level of debt in the world

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 09:18:10 +0000

List of countries by external debt – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (see also CIA World factbook). This is not good.

Branson in Gatwick Express call

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:34:36 +0000

BBC NEWS | England | Branson in Gatwick Express call
This is just one article covering the plans to make changes to the Gatwick Express service, as part of a wider review of use of the line capacity between London and Brighton.

The basic idea is the line is at full capacity, the trains are full and over crowded, especially at peak time, and with no major boost of cash in the near future, the only way to ease over crowding is to try and make best use of the track capacity.

there’s a high chance you might not actually be me

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:57:05 +0000

Tom Roper knows everything, reads clever stuff, seems to have an impressive range of music taste and gets technology. Generally the sort of the stuff that makes illiterate uncultured un-witty people like me really hate him. He also posts things to his blog. Which is all a bit too much like work for me (blogs are like breadmakers… like the idea of having one, but never actually use it).

Anyway. He posted some stats and bits about his blog over the last couple of years and I thought of commenting and pointing towards the bloglines ‘number of subscribers’ feature as another little gem. In the comment, my brain thought, I would also point out that my blog only has one subscriber as a comparison (and hence ‘accidentaly’ end up linking to my blog from his comments…fame would then by mine). Oh, and that 1 subscriber is me. But here’s the but. But when checking this it turns out I actually have 3 subscribers.

whitney music box (or: pretty coloured dots that make noise)

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:20:01 +0000

whitney music box (look they move and everything)

2026 update: archive.org link

O2 website contacting my PC

Sat, 13 May 2006 10:25:03 +0000

I was on this Mobile Reviews – O2 page just now, when I noticed firefox showing it was trying to contact 127.0.0.1, that for those who don’t know, is a special IP address which points to ‘localhost’, i.e. the client computer which is viewing the page. the line is question is:

< script language='javascript' src='http://127.0.0.1:1030/js.cgi?ca&r=4675'>script>

It appears as if this o2.co.uk page is trying to connect to port 1030 on the user’s computer and request a javascript file. This is vary strange and I presume (in good faith) that this is a mistake, but o2 should not have this on their website, people do not expect a website like this to be contacting an obscure port on the local computer.
O2 have had much worse security issues in the past (as reported on jibble.org)

Ask Yahoo!

Tue, 02 May 2006 08:04:57 +0000

Ask Yahoo! – Best of 2005

The link above goes to the ‘Best of 2005’ page. Only just found this site, but seems useful for future work avoidance.

West peer

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 08:44:33 +0000

I want this

Library 2.0, web 2.0 and Talis

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 21:01:50 +0000

Really just pointing to other places on the web regarding Talis’ recent talk and paper on the idea of library 2.0, based on the ideas behind 2.0. I found most of these after doing a search on Technorati.

ALA techsource: Do Libraries Matter: On Library & Librarian 2.0
‘Infomation takes over’: Library 2.0 at Talis Insight 2005
The shifted librarian: Prepare Yourself for Library 2.0
Library Crunch: who controls it?

The original paper can be found here.

Can Europe still compete in technology? – The Practical Futurist – MSNBC.com

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 19:18:37 +0000

Can Europe still compete in technology? – The Practical Futurist – MSNBC.com. Interesting view from the colonies. In a way it is no suprise that the main stream US media is downplaying Europe.

But perhaps there is a point, are we living on borrowed time. Should we in Europe be worried that we lack innovation (especially relating to new technologies), when it is claimed that is where the future lies for sucessful first world countries?

Davis (and Keene) wants England-only voting

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:01:55 +0000

BBC NEWS: Davis wants England-only voting. Something I agree with (I’m agreeing with David Davis??). Having a seperate English parliment for issues that only apply to England (due to other parliments/assemblies deciding on the same issue in Scotland, Wales etc) would be a waste of money.

Far simplier to restrict who can take part and vote in a commons debate if it only affects one or more country within the UK.

Why can’t we just copy them

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:34:43 +0000

I’ve always been impressed with the way Sweden and other nordic countries seem to balance a successful economy while providing very high public services and social care.

UpMyStreet.com

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:29:20 +0000

UpMyStreet.com‘s neighbourhood profiles are pretty good.

Here’s what they say about my area:
_Neighbourhoods fitting this profile are found primarily in Inner London in Westminster, Camden, Islington, Haringey and Hackney as well as in Brighton, Bristol, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Here is an overview of the likely preferences and features of your neighbourhood:
Family income Very high
Interest in current affairs Very high
Housing – with mortgage Low
Educated – to degree Very high
Couples with children Very low
Have satellite TV Low

Government cuts teacher training places

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:19:59 +0000

So, a couple of years a go we had a teacher shortage crisis, today we are still short of teachers, recruiting from all over the world to fill the shortage. With such a high demand, those who do not really have the right skills (even if they have the qualifications) to teach, inspire and control a class are finding jobs. Oh and add to that a large number of teachers are soon to retire. You are the government, what do you do? reduce the number of teacher training places of course. Obvious. That’s why mere mortals like us will never be able to come up with such great ideas.

Google my master

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 20:51:57 +0000

Time to take stock on how much I rely on my google drip of goodness and tools. What happens if they take it away from me. Cold turkey like. I would die dear reader. die.

Any way, So for work I use Google Scholar, and I’ve set ‘Google University search as our University departmental website search engine. Then there’s my gmail account (which I can not mention without slipping in that I was one of the first to get one, and was invited by Google themselves, yes, I’m on first names terms with Larry and Sergey… um sort of) and my ‘google groups’ account for newsgroups.

blog crawlers and searches

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 11:08:44 +0000

Added this feed of dribble (hereafter called ‘my blog’) to technorati, bloogz and Feedster… which is nice (why do you read this thing?)

We’ve got a what?

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 22:11:07 +0000

Apparently we (‘we’ being the mightly and superior south of england, not to be confused with north of england backward types) have a regional assembly. When? why?

Actually I’m slightly interested in this idea. I believe that the English Counties are too small to have much power/responsibilities delegated to them from central govenment, and yet there are issues which are best addressed at a fairly local level (especially on issues where different parts of the country have different needs). Maybe these regional assemeblies are the answer, big enough to run complex public services but local enough to address different needs?

Library catalogue searching

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 21:57:32 +0000

While I’m on this subject (which is a stupid thing to say as anyone reading this – ‘anyone’ = ‘me and only me’ – will be reading top down, ie newest first, ie will be unaware I was on the subject… what subject) ah yes, the subject of library catalogue searching.

Nothing too exciting really (this post has the word ‘library’ it in, so that was a pointless fact) but I’ve been reading with intrest how Talis – who supply the library management software for the Universit of Sussex – have been playing with A9, and how to get it to play nice with their web catalogue.

UK Union catalogue

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 21:30:19 +0000

a million years a go (1999?) M25 came along with a union search for most academic libraries in my part of the world. which was good, especially when looking for something obscure.

At the time, I thought it was only a mater of counting to ten before a union catalogue of all uk libraries would turn up. Where is it? I want one.

In the mean time we have a number of other options which can help for looking for odd stuff that only one or two places might have.

Google maps now for the UK

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:19:34 +0000

Google maps UK (niiice), in a higher league than multimap and streetmap and the lesser know map24

so to just be clear, I’m not johnny-come-lately

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 00:43:38 +0000

About 15 billion years a go things kicked off, like Continental drift, big nasty meteoroids killing poor fluffy dinosaurs, general world-being-created stuff, and of course blogging becoming trendy. (I say trendy, real trendy people don’t have blogs, like Kate Winslet, though actually, she might have one, just not admit to it, maybe she’s the http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/ answer me this, have you ever seen them in the same room at same time? ha!).