Alexia Blogs

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” is an oft-quoted line attributed to Voltaire, and it succinctly expresses how I feel today. Last evening Damien Mulley changed his Twitter updates to be protected in an attempt to stop people from allegedly harassing him. I say allegedly, as this incident may find its resolution through legal intervention.

One of final messages, before switching his account private made claims that certain members of the UL branch of Young Fine Gael were behind the harassment.

“With the continued harassment and stalking online and off I’m getting from members of Fine Gael in UL, I’m making this account private”

Now, I have no reason to disbelieve what Damien is saying, but I wonder what the Fine Gael party executive would make of certain members of its youth movement allegedly harassing a citizen practising his right to free speech.

The scary thing, is that trying to stamp on the right to free speech of one of us, is an attack on all of us. Every blogger in the country. How long is it before you say something that does not defame anyone, but rubs them up the wrong way so as to result in harassment?

There are many bloggers whose opinions I disagree with. People who challenge my views. They make me a better person and I hope I help them too.

Aside from this case, how long before one of us is next? How long before someone stamps on your right to free speech? How long before you are the object of harassment? Clamping on free speech is intolerable, and harassment to the point of outright stalking is unacceptable.

Note: If the allegations against members of Young Fine Gael are held up in a court of law, I would like to make the point that nowhere in this post, do I allege that this was an organised campaign sanctioned by the Young Fine Gael branch at UL.

I’m looking at performance testing at work this week and I came across the ‘Ten Commandments of Killing Server Performance’. It’s an oldie, but a goodie - especially if you are working in testing.

Here’s the abridged version:

1. Thou shalt allocate and free lots of objects.
2. Thou shalt not think about processor cache.
3. Thou shalt never cache frequently used data.
4. Thou shalt create lots of threads. The more, the merrier.
5. Thou shalt use global locks for data structures.
6. Thou shalt not pay attention to multiprocessor machines.
7. Thou shalt use blocking calls all the time; they are fun.
8. Thou shalt not measure.
9. Thou shalt use single-client, single-request testing.
10. Thou shalt not use real-world scenarios.

I command you to FART. Via Matt.

I haven’t bought into the 4 Hour Work Week idea, but author Tim Ferriss has some hints to help stop you from checking your email in the evenings or at weekends.

There’s a lot of buzz among my nerdy pals about LINQ.

Map of an Englishman

My Bloody Valentine ‘Only Shallow’, because I’m still celebrating that they are coming to the Electric Picnic.

.. to my commenters. I’ve lost some while porting over the export file. XML denies all knowledge despite the interrogations. Sorry. I’ll do my best to right things.

So, I wrote a post yesterday about how licensing content as Creative Commons is good thing. Robert also had a piece about how rights holders ought to think seriously about sharing before they license their work as Creative Commons. My stance hasn’t changed a bit. Sharing is good. I won’t demean the intelligence of rights holders by telling them what to share and what not to share. We all draw the limit somewhere. Knowing where that limit is and sharing still, benefits everyone.

Or does it? I find that some web designers revile Creative Commons, instead of celebrating it. Why? Because some view it (wrongly) as a disruptive force in their business model. Community sharing of graphics and themes is like landing a tonne of pile of bricks outside someone’s house when they want to build an extension. Yes, the raw materials are there, but some serious planning, designing and building needs to be executed. Done with taste and skill. That’s where web designers pop in. The site isn’t a product, rather it’s a side-effect of a web design service. What does it say about the skill-level of a web designer who is scared of Creative Commons? If their business is threatened by the proliferation of free site content, not much. And just to be clear, I speak specifically here on Creative Commons content that is licensed for usage in commercial products.

Wouldn’t clients that dabbled in the past with Creative Commons solutions and have reassessed the professionalism of their web presence, find it much easier to sign-off on improving it by employing web designers? The psychological barrier to entry is lower for them. Good design is not seen as a money-pit, rather as a tangible benefit to their branding story. More business for good designers and great sites for clients. Bad designers sulk in the corner.

It’s awfully nice to see social dinners being kicked off to bring together fresh techie faces around a table. If you are a girl geek and around Dublin next week, Wednesday night the 27th, why not consider coming to the Girl Geek Dinner that Martha is organising. More details here.

Tom is doing some great work organising a blogger dinner in Cork on the eve of the BlogTalk 2008 conference. He’s got some interesting people registered already. Locals, tech heads and a nice mix of international faces too. In Cork on March 2nd, why not go?

Time to bin the well-known relational DBMS model for databases says expert.

Love it. A bus driver is blaming playing the Wii for ‘crippling’ him. Claiming a month of sick leave too.

Ooo - flag burning is no longer a criminal offense in Norway, it appears. Scandinavians are awfully fair-minded

Google Tech Talk with sexpert Violet Blue on how ‘Abstinence Does Not Make the Heart Grow Fonder’

A Northern Chorus ‘Winterize’

What would you think if you were being publicly castigated on the web by vitriolic anonymous posters? Would you take it with good grace and ignore the scratchings of the loonies? I came across JuicyCampus over the weekend. It’s a site aimed at college students, enabling them to post comments about their class mates in an anonymous way. It’s growing at a massive rate in campuses stateside.

Some of the comment on the site are sick and deplorable. One of the very interesting sub-sites to visit is the Air Force hub. To a legal novice like me this stinks to high heaven.

They’re back.

Kids in America, get your doodle on Google. Can’t we do something similar here? Perhaps a rude Sandy Kelly doodle for Twenty or something with Ryan in it for Damien.

The Marry-Me iPod Touch, especially for ladies proposing this leap year.

Worldwide pasta shortage on the way?

Suzy watched the boring old IFTA’s like me and spotted yet another Gibson gaff.

Nice NYT piece on charisma and US presidents. Interesting, as we watch Election 08 heat up.

Au Revoir Simone with ‘Dark Halls’. They sound like the Go-Gos with happy keyboards to me.

One of the best parts of interacting in online communities is the way that people produce content and share it. Creative commons licensing of all sorts of digital media really does open doors to kicking off the idea juices of users.

I’ve changed my blog theme thanks to the sharing spirit of the Wordpress theme producers. Yes, I’ve added pieces here and there, but without the sharing process I’d probably still be tearing a little hair out.

So, why not have your designs with the community. Share your snaps on Flickr, your handcrafted Wordpress themes and anything else you’d like to produce. You’re enriching the community. And many more people will see your work.