I’ve been using the jQuery Javascript library a lot recently, although this website is actually done entirely using jQuery’s biggest competitor; Prototype+Scriptaculous. A few things have convinced me that jQuery is better:mainly jQuery UI (particularly the theming), also the level of abstraction is nice – you’re almost not writing Javascript anymore, you’re writing jQuery – that’s a good thing (Javascript smells bad). jQuery’s documentation is better too, and there seems to be a bigger community surrounding it.

Furthermore, jQuery UI’s widget “factory” makes it very convenient to create standard web controls that can be easily used by anyone.

I therefore thought it would be appropriate if I ported the cool image gallery slider thingie from the gallery part of my website from Scriptaculous into jQuery, and released it as an opensource jQuery UI widget that anyone could use. That is what I’ve done, it’s called MediaSlide, licensed under my 1-clause Javascript BSD license. Visit the MediaSlide project page now for more details (including the code you need to add a MediaSlide to your website), or have a play with the example below to get an idea of what it does:

The widget you see above is a minature version of MediaSlide – it loads the image list directly from my Flickr feed – the images and thumbnails themselves are loaded directly from Flickr too. You can use Flickr feeds to populate MediaSlide with images, or you can use your own XML or JSON feeds. Consult the comprehensive MediaSlide documentation for more information.

It occurred to me that the 2-clause BSD license doesn’t really apply anymore in a web environment where PHP and Javascript are the languages of choice. The two clauses of the license relate to source and binary distributions – this fits well for compiled programs in languages such as C or C++, but it doesn’t make much sense for Javascript libraries.

Instead, I moot a 1-clause BSD license for Javascript libraries – the Javascript BSD license (or 1-clause BSD license). Here’s my suggested template wording:

Project Name - Version 1.0
Copyright (c) - Author Name

Redistribution and use, with or without modification, are permitted
provided that the following condition is met:

 *  Redistributions of this code must retain the above copyright notice,
this condition and the following disclaimer.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR
CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY
OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Everyone’s talking about the riots, condemning the chavs for mindless violence etc.

It seems to me that to dismiss the riots as pure criminality is a bit of a cop-out. The riots are clearly symptomatic of a wider problem with society. Increasing numbers of people are feeling a disconnect between the establishment (the government, companies, shops, whatever) and the people on the street. Peaceful protests have happened regularly in the last few years, and I think the perception of a lot of people is that those protests have been largely ignored and that in some cases the police exercised undue force to control protesters who weren’t really doing very much wrong.

Of course the people who attended the anti-war demo before the Iraq war, and those attending the peaceful “stop the cuts” protests are probably not the same ones who are now terrorising the streets, but the point is the government has created a generalized distrust of the establishment. The police haven’t helped by allowing themselves to be filmed apparently beating innocent protesters during peaceful demonstrations. The kids on the streets now weren’t at those demonstrations, but you can bet their parents and friends probably watched them on the news. What’s happened is that society as a whole has tried to change government peacefully, it failed, and now those with a lower intellect and a penchant for criminal damage and petty theft have taken over. This is what happens when you ignore the people and deal with them using undue force. They will rise up – the police will be outnumbered.

This is why I’m reluctant to support the Met Police – they’ve kinda brought it on themselves, and I kinda do want the government to be made aware that the people are not happy. I wish the moronic thugs would do a better job of voicing the concerns of the populace, and of course I don’t support petty theft and mugging – it’s terrible the destruction that’s being caused, but if someone threw a brick through the window of number 10, I’d probably be cheering them on. Don’t take that to mean I’m on the side of the rioters, I’m not, but I’m sure as hell not on the side of the government or the pigs either.

I’m just on the side of the communities who’ve got together today to start clearing stuff up.

The government bailing out the banks hasn’t gone down well either – it’s seen as the government taking from the poor to give to the rich, and people aren’t happy about it. They’re right not to be.

I’m not blaming it all on the Tories or the Lib Dems either – this is mostly Labour’s fault, the majority of this has built up over Tony’s rein. The Tories have just pushed things over the edge, I think Tony is the one who’s really to blame, for ignoring the people and going to a war nobody wanted.

Here’s some protest songs to accompany the riots:

Here’s a relevant link from the Guardian.

Lisa is now 7 months pregnant with our baby, a little boy. He’s due August 28th and we’re really excited

The scan pictures are below.. in the first scan the sonographer got a bit trigger happy with the photos so we ended up with quite a few more than we’d asked for (for free). In the second scan we only got 3 pictures, but one of them shows his little feet very clearly!

We’ve not decided for definite on a name yet although we have one likely contender – I think we’re going to make the final decision after we actually meet the little guy, who we’ve temporarily nicknamed ‘Pickle’, due to Lisa craving all things pickled in vinegar early in the pregnancy.

pickle scan 2011-02-10 1

pickle scan 2011-02-10 2

pickle scan 2011-02-10 3

pickle scan 2011-02-10 4

pickle scan 2011-02-10 5

pickle scan 2011-02-10 6

pickle scan 2011-02-10 7

pickle scan 2011-02-10 8

pickle scan 2011-02-10 9

pickle scan 2011-04-12 1

pickle scan 2011-04-12 2

pickle scan 2011-04-12 3

3 of my photos are currently on display in the Celebrate Cuckmere exhibition in the Pump Barn at the Seven Sisters country park, Exceat. Check out the website for more details of the exhibition (Lisa and I did it – in fact I credit Lisa with most of the hard work, I just supervised and pointed in the right direction). Scroll down to see my images on the wall.

Lisa and I also helped with the marketing a bit – seems to have gone fairly well, there’s several mentions of it on the BBC website:

Cuckmere Valley future to be decided
Cuckmere exhibition will mark changes to valley
Cuckmere Valley future to be decided at meeting
Cuckmere community calls for restoration of meanders

The exhibition also marks the end of the “Pathfinder project” – the government’s bullshit “public consultation” exercise aimed at deciding the future of the Cuckmere Valley (bit weird to hold this after they’d already announced they were going to withdraw maintenance of the flood defences right?).

Anyway, as far as I can tell the Pathfinder project can be summed up thusly: lots of people care very much and argued a lot about what should be done, everyone got rather stressed and frustrated with each other, and ultimately the conclusion of the project was that there’s a fair amount of support for reconnecting the river flow to the meandering section of the river (which is currently effectively a lake) – however nothing can really be done until there’s been feasibility studies and costings for this, so for now they’re going to basically do sod-all – continue maintaining it as they have been, and then go over the whole thing again in a couple of years once they’ve properly assessed the options I guess.

This is good news, I think – I would generally support the idea of reconnecting the river to its natural path, but only if it can be done without completely destroying the meanders – I reckon if you reconnected the meanders right now, they’d probably just all get washed away – they need re-planting with deep rooted plants or something rather than the thin layer of grass that’s there now..

(this is, assuming government don’t decide to go back on their promise to listen to the conclusions of the Pathfinder project)

Personally, I’m just glad I kept a distance from the whole thing – I’m not hugely interested in the impassioned arguments of locals, and from what people have said to me it sounds like the whole thing ended rather acrimoniously – everyone’s certainly being very careful not to be too controversial in public now.

I would certainly look forward to the day they may finally restore flow to the meandering section of the river – I think that would be an interesting thing to photograph.

Anyway, here’s my photos in the Celebrate Cuckmere exhibit:

(photos coutesy of North Laine).

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by Alessandro Falcone at dBustle mag (an Italian free magazine) asking if he could use one of my photographs of the Full Moon Calling fire party on the beach on the front cover!

Well, here it is; I think it looks rather good:

dBustle magazine cover

dBustle at Hellnation record store

dBustle at Friends Cafe

dBustle at Windsurf Paradise

dBustle at Powder ProShop

dBustle at Roma Rock School

dBustle at SSH Snow Surf House

dBustle at Urbanstar

dBustle at Pifebo Shop

dBustle at PAC Proietti Art Creations

dBustle at The Northern Rome Barbeque - Gone

dBustle at Gone

dBustle at Chakra Cafe

dBustle at Fisheye Skate Shop

dBustle at Untitled Concept Shop

dBustle and Rude MC at Street Maphia

dBustle at The Butcher

dBustle at Kokoro

dBustle at 146 Street

dBustle at GPoint Store

dBustle at Sin Valley

dBustle at Superstylin Shop

dBustle at Paraphernalia

dBustle at King Size

dBustle at Vinyl Refresh

A while ago I posted an entry containing a complaint I made about North Laines Dental Practice in Brighton and my dentist Ilias Triantafyllou. (Incidentally, this entry is now on the first page of results for North Laines Dental Practice and all related search terms – yes, if I feel like you’ve screwed me over, I will drag your name through the mud, visible for all to see on Google). So anyway, I’ve had a rather disturbing comment posted on my original entry. I’ve copied it here so you can see:

I used to go there too but left after I caught the dentist stroking my child inappropriately. I instantly assaulted him and broke his nose and dislocated his sholder because of this I did not go to the police since I did not want to get a record and my daughter was fine since she didn’t understand what was going on. The dentist is a pedo!!! Avoid!!!! – Ralph

This is just from some member of the public who’s found my website by searching for the dentist (either the dental practice or Ilias himself). Obviously I’ve no way of verifying whether it’s true or not, but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me. The guy’s a fucking creep! I really feel like I should be doing everything I can to warn people to stay away from this place – it’s not just Ilias, the entire surgery is grim. Don’t go there unless you like being surrounded by arrogant (and potentially evil) cunts who think they can treat people however the fuck they like!

Pork in Ginger Beer Casserole

Ingredients

• 4 Pork chops/fillets
• 1 Knob of Butter
• 1 large Onion (sliced into rings)
• 4 Sticks of celery (diced)
• 2 Cloves of garlic (crushed)
• 1tbsp Garlic olive oil
• 2 Carrots (thinly sliced)
• 25g Flour
• 450ml Ginger beer
• 1 cube Beef stock
• 3tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1tsp Lemon juice
• 1 Tin of peeled plum tomatoes (chopped)
• 4 Fresh tomatoes cut into large chunks
• Salt and pepper to season

Method

1. Start by frying the pork in a frying pan with garlic olive oil and two crushed cloves of garlic, throw in a knob of butter, cook until golden brown then place the pork in a casserole dish.
2. Using the same pan, add the onion, celery and carrot; stir-fry until tender.
3. Make the stock by disolving the stock cube in the smallest amount of boiling water needed to make it disolve, then add the ginger beer and mix thoroughly (don’t worry it looks a bit disgusting at this point).
4. Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables, then gradually add the ginger beer and stock; bring to the boil stirring continuously.
5. When the sauce has thickened, stir in the Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and tomatoes along with seasoning to taste (it normally takes a fair bit of salt).
6. Pour the sauce over the chops, cover the casserole dish and cook in oven 180°C/350°F/Gas 4 for 45-50 minutes until the pork is tender.

Ingredients:

4 cans of Scrumpy Jack
3 clementines
1 apple
6 cloves
1 cinamon stick
1 tea spoon of apple pie spice
4 table spoons of granulated sugar
1 table spoon of vanilla sugar
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 cup of Copella apple juice