tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56581910711326429012024-03-07T21:37:36.521-08:00Seakayak WalesAnglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-68488770279094161212013-03-25T08:56:00.000-07:002013-03-25T08:56:39.884-07:00A blizzard idea<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
March 25<sup>th</sup> looked like a pretty good bet to launch the <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/Login.aspx">Sea Kayak Wales</a> beta trip planning service when we were looking for a good launch date a
few months ago. People should be thinking about an Easter paddle we reasoned.
The weather will be enticing people who generally did not paddle in the winter
we surmised. We did not expect that people would have to be planning on taking
snow chains with them when running their sea kayaks down to the coast.<br />
<br />
So all in all we now expect a fairly quiet response to our launch this
morning.<br />
This does give us some more time to research and prepare some of the
extensive underlying data required to extend the reach of our trip planning
services to more of the Welsh coast. This will open up additional opportunities
for the sea kayak Wales community to add their own private trip plans for more
of the Welsh coastline.<br />
<br />
Community members can already add their own private trip plans for Anglesey
and have them included in the trips considered by the suggestion service. You
can keep private trip plan ideas private (we promise not to peek) or you can
offer to share them with everyone else. Either way around, the same trip
suggestion process can factor in tides and winds to decide when to offer your
own trip plans alongside those generally available to everyone else.<br />
<br />
Entering a private trip plan is a pretty simple process using the prepared
“wizard” that takes you through each step of the process until a plan is
complete. Give it a try and add to the variety on offer.</div>
</div>
Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-60849893985053391982013-02-27T07:08:00.000-08:002013-02-27T07:08:01.491-08:00Sea Kayak Trip Plans Just A Click Away<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The <a href="http://seakayakwales.com/">Sea Kayak Wales project</a> is launching a free, automated service that presents sea kayakers with customised plans for day paddling trips. The Beta service launches on 25th March 2013 with an initial focus on the popular sea kayaking coastline of Anglesey, North Wales.<br /><br />Paul Griffiths, who came up with the idea and built the initial proof of concept, has a clear vision that he describes as follows. “The intention is to get more people paddling sea kayaks and to open up new stretches of the coastline to paddlers. Planning a trip in a new area can be a daunting task, the Sea Kayak Wales project takes care of the detail leaving the individual sea kayaker to just decide when they want to go. Our web service will deliver detailed trip plan suggestions for paddlers to choose from.”<br /><br />The web based service can be found at <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/">www.SeaKayakwales.com</a> Signing up is a breeze as you can use an existing Facebook, Twitter or Google log-in to join the service. The trip plan service just requires the paddler to choose the day they want to paddle and optionally set a preferred start time and skill level. The service does all of the rest. Taking tides and wind forecasts into account it runs a calculation that will present trip plan suggestions that fit the forecasts for the chosen day. A sea kayaker can then get an overview of each of the suggestions with a detailed paddling plan available for each.<br /><br />The primary service is aimed at paddlers at the <a href="http://www.canoe-england.org.uk/media/pdf/BCU%203%20Star%20Sea%20Guidance%20Notes%20V2-0.pdf">BCU 3</a> star level and above. However the beginner has not been forgotten and the service will also take tides and weather into account to suggest suitable paddling venues where a newcomer to the sport can build their skills in suitably sheltered and safe surroundings.<br /><br />While safety is an important factor in selecting trip plan suggestions, the importance of retaining an element of acceptable challenge has not been forgotten. The Sea Kayak Wales service makes trip plan suggestions and it is up to paddlers to ensure they have the skills and appropriate equipment to tackle any of the trips proposed. Paddlers should double check wind forecasts and general condition prior to departure.<br /></div>
Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-69627348330949257062013-02-14T01:17:00.000-08:002013-02-14T01:17:26.218-08:00Launch Date<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Anyone who visits our home page at <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/">SeaKayakWales</a> will see that we have announced our launch date – the 25th March.<br />
<br />“What happened to the service in 2012?” you might ask. Well by the time we had everything tied down and running well enough to invite some initial testers to give it a try the days were shortening – sometimes to the point where if the tides did not co-operate there were precious few paddling trips we could suggest. Rather than disappoint, we decided to put off the public launch until more paddlers were likely to be looking for trip suggestions and when the days were longer – giving our service more suggestions to make.<br />
<br />One positive aspect of this is that we have also been able to add a facility to support relative sea kayaking beginners by suggestion great paddling venues where they can develop their skills in relatively sheltered and secure surroundings. Just as with the main trip plan suggestion service, winds and tides are taken into account to ensure that we can provide full details on times as well as places. Plus we can eliminate some venues when conditions are likely to be adverse.<br />
<br />We have also been working to extend the capabilities of the service to provide support for paddling areas beyond our initial launch focus on Anglesey. These will come on stream as quickly as possible and with the help of the community will allow the site to grow quickly to make <a href="http://seakayakwales.com/">SKW</a> the default answer to the question “Where shall we go paddling tomorrow?”.<br /></div>
Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-57239393040584653952012-09-21T02:30:00.004-07:002012-09-21T02:31:18.372-07:00Strange Web Hosting from Easily.co.uk<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">We have been long term users of the
services of Easily - initially to buy and maintain domain names and then to
provide hosting for a set of small but important web sites. We noticed a while
back that they were reducing their offerings – virtual servers are no longer
available and yes, to be honest, their own web interface is a bit clumsy and
very dated – but things worked once you were used to them. Thus when we started
a new Windows based web project we were happy enough to set up the public test
web site with them. This site makes extensive use of an SQL Server database.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This week we found that we could not access
the database from SQL Server Management Studio to make adjustments to one of
the tables and the related stored procedures.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">First off a wise developer always suspects
his own set up – what had changed that might block remote access from our
Windows 7 desktops and laptops? Fortunately we maintain web sites hosted
elsewhere and were able to attach and manipulate SQL Server instances at those
service providers. So no problems at our end.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Rang the Easily 0800 support number and
after a reasonable wait was able to explain the problem. The support person
dropped off the line for a bit to “check on something” and then said the issue
would be raised as a problem at their end. I asked for a “ticket number” and
was told (strangely) that there was not one yet but it would be sent to me in
an email shortly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">An Email arrived a hair under an hour alter
– and this is it: (names etc. elided)</span></div>
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Thank you for contacting Easily.</span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The reason you have not been able to connect to the
MsSQL database using your database management software is because<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></span>we
have improved our security and require IPs for users to connect from now on.</span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Please can you confirm the IP address you are trying
to connect from, please confirm whether it is a static or dynamic IP address
you are connecting from.</span></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Now, I don’t know about you but I don’t
work from a location with a fixed IP address and I like to be able to maintain
web applications I am responsible for even when away from my normal desk.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">There is another issue here as well –
Easily introduced a breaking change without notification and without putting up
any sort of a notice on their support page. This has probably left many others
to undertake unnecessary work trying to resolve the issue – it certainly burned
up a chunk of my time that should have been dedicated to project work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">In case you were wondering about the Easily
support page – this is what it shows this morning (Friday 21<sup>st</sup>
September):</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #333344; font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.5pt; line-height: 115%;">Wednesday 19th September 2012</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #333344; font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333344; font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Some customers may be experiencing a problem
viewing their Easilyme websites.This issue is being looked into by our
engineers and has been classified as extreme high priority.<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">We hope to resolve this issue as soon as possible
and would like to take this opportunity to apologise for any inconvenience
caused.<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></span></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #333344; font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Is that issue still open do you think or do they just not
keep the support page up to date?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #333344; font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">My response to the Easily email was as follows:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Nice
to hear you guys are keen on security - but it makes good sense to contact
customers in advance of changes that break things - or perhaps to put a
notice on the web site where folks check for ongoing issues - just a thought.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I
do not have a fixed IP address - it is assigned by my Internet provider BT or
(when I am out and about) by Vodafone - or perhaps by any kindly wi-fi visitor
provision at sites I and visiting on business. I might even from time to time
change my Internet providers as well.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Even
my local office network IP address is supplied dynamically when I connect to
the local network.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I
very much doubt that many of your customers will have fixed IP addresses or
that they would be keen to only manage their databases from a fixed location if
they have such.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Demanding
fixed IP addresses to connect<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> from</span> does
not look like a very sound idea.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">How
do you suggest that I (and probably most other customers) continue to manage
their databases? Or are you suggesting we "up sticks" and move
elsewhere?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">No
response so far except an automated acknowledgement of the email to their
support email address.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Interestingly,
the SQL server in question has a URL<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of
xxx.netbenefit.com</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Netbenefit.com
seem to be another hosting company. They are owned in turn by Peer<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1 Hosting while Easily are owned by Group
NBT. Thus I assume that Netbenefit or Peer 1 are providing the SQL server
resources for Easily. Thus it is perfectly possible that it is Netbenefit who
have implemented this barrier to our web site database – who knows?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">I just
need this to be resolved quickly with access to our database fully restored.</span></div>
</div>
Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-31079704258479020032012-06-21T04:25:00.002-07:002012-06-21T04:25:33.359-07:00Progress report<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This blog has been rather quiet of late as we have been working hard completing the “All Wales Trip Plan” service design and writing the code.<br /><br />Our primary objective has been to get a service up and running for the Anglesey coast. Anglesey is a popular destination for sea kayakers and is as challenging in many ways as it is beautiful. Our service will present trip plan suggestions matched to a sea kayaker’s skills but selected with a close eye on the forecast winds and tides.<br /><br />Effective trip planning can be a fairly time consuming (perhaps daunting) task that is sometimes rushed or even not done at all. The SKW project has taken on the challenge of automating the process of creating custom trip plan templates and then serving up detailed trip plans for a specific time and date. The trip selection process itself is complex and has to crunch a lot of values to come up with a suitable list.<br /><br />So how are we doing? We plan to invite a group of experienced paddlers to act as alpha testers around the end of this month. We will be looking to them to assess our trip suggestions and trip plans and give us some expert feedback. They know the waters around Anglesey very well and have a good feel for the capabilities of kayakers at a variety of skill levels. If that does not result in too much additional development work then we should be able to open our doors to all comers shortly thereafter.<br /><br />The service will then be in a public beta. We have a massive list of features to add to the site and we will be rolling those out on a continuous basis – helped on (we hope) by suggestions and constructive criticism from paddlers trying out our service and the suggested trips.<br /><br />Why are we calling the public service a beta? Well partly because there are lots of extra facilities we have yet to build but also because we have the rest of the Welsh coast to include. Once we are satisfied that we have the facilities that the majority of our users need in place and we have started to “roll out” to the rest of the coast then we will probably be confident enough to declare Sea Kayak Wales properly “live”.<br /><br />Right from the start we will be encouraging Sea Kayak Wales members to record their own trip plans so they can be included in their personal trip suggestions lists. Such private trips will remain private to individual members unless they choose to share them with the community. Members will be able to build their private paddling routes taking advantage of the Sea Kayak Wales database of launch points and key coastal waypoints.<br /><br />The Sea Kayak Wales web site service is free – so sign up now, if you have not already done so, and be one of the first to access our trip planning service as soon as it is available.<br /><br />To sign up, just click the login link towards the top right of the page at <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/">SeaKayakWales</a>. If you have a Google or other OpenID account then just click on the appropriate icon but if you need to set up an account just for SKW then follow the link on the page.<br /></div>Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-48676450865347869242012-02-10T09:53:00.000-08:002012-02-10T09:53:05.260-08:00Who owns a Sea Kayak News poll?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When working up the new facility on the <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/NewsFrontPage.aspx">Sea Kayak News page</a> that allows members to present a poll of options to the community for their votes we had to make some decisions about ownership. The problem arose while we were working on the facility to edit a news post. Normally the edit function would be used to correct typos in the title or web site URL. In parallel with the ability to edit a comment (available for all comments created by any user) the new ability to edit a poll potentially made it possible for the person that posed the poll to change the results after other members had voted.<br /><br />
We decided that the originator owned the poll overall and had the right to edit the title and to delete the poll if they felt they wanted to. However we also decided to restrict the poll’s originator from deleting or changing the text of an option that had attracted one or more votes. The idea being that votes belong to the voters and not the pollster. Clearly, there will be occasions where a poll originator will want to clarify a poll option even after it has attracted some votes – we feel that this can be handled by adding text to the available section above the poll options that allows for additional details.<br /><br />A feature of the page that allows <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/Default.aspx">Sea Kayak Wales</a> members to post a poll is a checkbox that (when checked) will automatically add an option to the poll with the text “Other (please leave a comment)”. This is a deliberate ploy to encourage pollsters to keep their poll open. I, for one, am often frustrated by polls that do not allow for my opinion or circumstance in the options available. Now, should that checkbox default to be checked or unchecked?<br /><br />
So – now you can poll our sea kayaking members on just about any relevant topic which is a nice extension to the option to ask questions that had already been added to this dedicated social bookmarking facility.<br /></div>Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-36681629274777320112012-01-27T01:27:00.000-08:002012-01-27T01:27:41.475-08:00Markdown<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Strangely, Markdown is a markup “language” and was created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz. The idea is to allow anyone to generate plain text and have that text re-formatted into valid HTML giving it some structure. The basics are very simple to learn and allow anyone applying this technique to add emphasis and style to their words in a very simple manner.<br />
<br />We thought it would be a great idea to allow members of the <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/">Sea Kayak Wales</a> web site to post comments using markdown. We encourage our users to comment and discuss items posted to the news page (a social bookmarking facility for sea kayakers). Anyone can just enter their comments as plain text and that is (more or less) how they will be displayed.<br />
<br />
Keen observers might note that when a web URL is entered then it is automatically converted into a link to that URL. They might also notice that some attempt is made to organise what is entered into paragraphs and that whitespace is often trimmed. This is all done by the Markdown processing supporting the discussion pages.<br />
<br />Markdown can be used to emphasise text. Putting an asterisk before and after a piece of text will have it rendered in italics [ *display in italics* ].<br />
Put two asterisks before and after a section of text and it will appear bold [ **this will be bold** ].<br /><br />
Lists can be displayed in a “bulleted” format using this markdown:<br />* List Item 1<br />*List Item 2<br />* List Item 3 etc<br /><br />
Headings can be denoted with hashes or in a more literal manner:<br />### A Level 3 Heading<br />or<br />A level two Heading<br />--------------------------<br />
<br />Full details of Markdown can be found in the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) or on the Daring Fireball web site (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/basics)<br />
<br />Have fun but please don’t overdo it.<br /></div>Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-17469842381348533982012-01-20T01:34:00.000-08:002012-01-20T01:34:07.857-08:00Bookmarklet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The word Bookmarkelet, correctly, has all of the hallmarks of being made up. “Book mark” – fine I use those when reading – sometimes the ones bought for me by family and friends but more often just corners of envelopes or till receipts found quickly when needed. We are also familiar with “bookmarking” web site pages with the co-operation of our browsers so we can find a web resource again without another major search and filter operation. I suppose we have also seen the use of the term “social bookmarking” where we share gems from the web with others. Which certainly brings me along nicely to the <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/NewsFrontpage.aspx">Sea Kayak Wales News Page</a> which is just such an Internet resource.<br />
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<br />Where though does the “let” bit come from? We at the Sea Kayak Wales project came across the term when we were looking for ways to make it easy for others to post those very web gems (of particular interest to sea kayakers). Turns out that wrapping a line of JavaScript into a smidgeon of HTML creates an object (called a bookmarklet) that can be dragged onto the bookmark bar of a modern web browser. Once there, it can be left in place until the user of this natty little tool comes across a web page or blog post that they would like to add to the Sea Kayak Wales news page. When that happens then all they have to do is click the SKW News bookmarlet and that line of JavaScript will leap into action and take the user to the Sea Kayak Wales news insertion page and pre-load the web page address (URL) and title into the form there ready for submission. An amazing time saving utility. The “let” presumably indicates that this is not yet a complete bookmark but that it will become one as soon as you let it.<br />
<br />Anyone interested, can find the SKW News bookmarklet on the SKW News submissions guide page ( www.seakayakwales.com/WhatToPost.aspx ). If you are using a first class browser such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) then you can make use of this simple but effective widget. You might need to make the bookmark bar visible on your browser, if it has not been previously used, before dragging the SKW News bookmarklet into position.<br />
<br />The bookmark bar can be activated in Firefox from the View/Toolbars menu option list. In Chrome, click the spanner to get the tools menu, click bookmarks and then select the first option “show bookmarks bar”. In IE9, (simple but harder to find) just right click on a space in the browser top area to the right of an opened tab and select the “Favourites bar” option from the pop-up menu.<br />
<br />Happy bookmarking<br /></div>Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-41064355947318111712012-01-13T02:17:00.000-08:002012-01-13T02:17:06.617-08:00I Don’t know<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I read a <a href="http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/01/04/why-is-%E2%80%9Ci-don%E2%80%99t-know%E2%80%9D-so-hard-to-say-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/">Freeakonomics blog entry</a> on “Why is ‘I don’t know’ so hard to say?” the other day – you can catch it as a podcast as well.<br />
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It was pertinent because we were just launching a new facility on the Sea Kayak Wales news page to allow our members to ask questions of the sea kayaking community. We were aware that for some people asking a question is hard – in some fields and circumstances it is hard to let others know that you don’t know something.<br />
<br />We know from having run a support forum for a product dedicated to a specific field of knowledge that many professional practitioners (in that meadow at least) are reluctant to reveal any chinks in their armour. They would avoid asking questions in a public arena and always try and elicit a private response. <br />
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These experts were very reluctant to ask their peers for help – although (we divined) they were collectively grateful when we published an anonymised answer for all. This always felt strange – we thought not knowing everything was the normal.<br />
<br />I have an almost endless list of things I don’t know. I enjoy finding out though – and then in many instances promptly forgetting the answers again. Modern technology allows the comfort of just having to remember where you can find a given answer - not the detail of the answers themselves. You might be amazed at the trivial data I just can’t be bothered to commit to memory.<br />
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More importantly though – any software developer is very aware that it is impossible to accumulate expertise on everything – in any case “everything” grows at what feels like an exponential rate. People who work with technology (and software in particular) get used to not knowing the answers. <br />
<br />Some Internet Question and Answer sites are of a questionable value – indeed many are simply designed to flood the search engines and to catch up the unwary into a flood of advertising (and worse) – they truly “don’t know”. Others are supported by a community of users who are happy to share their ideas in the knowledge that others will help them in turn.<br />
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We aim to make the <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com%20/">Sea Kayak Wales site</a> just such a resource – not just for Welsh coastal trips but for every aspect of sea kayaking anywhere. We hope that Sea Kayak Wales (well the site users) will know and will be happy to answer your questions – beginner or expert without prejudice.<br />
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We also hope that questions that have no answer are identified by the community as such – we can debate them, perhaps decide on some effective strategy – but if we don’t know, we resolve not to pretend to know.<br /><br /></div>Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-27163407301412278222012-01-08T05:58:00.000-08:002012-01-08T05:58:43.397-08:00Standing on the shoulders of giants<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This handy expression can be used by anyone shamelessly incorporating the work and experience of others into their latest project – it even sounds a bit humble.<br />
<br />In fact anyone building a modern interactive web site like us at <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/">SeaKayakWales</a> is going to be humbled by both the quality of what is already out there and the generosity with which so much skill and experience is shared with those that follow.<br />
<br />We know that we have some unique problems to solve in devising, presenting and then evaluating the sea kayak trips we will be presenting to users during 2012 and beyond. However, many of these problems can be broken down into sub-problems that have been successfully solved elsewhere. While we have to ensure that our style and processes meet the needs of our intended audience we will always be happy to learn from best practice elsewhere. We don’t want to be “the same” but we do aspire to be “as good” as the best.<br />
<br />There is a potential conflict between the aspiration to be as good as we can get and the desire to ship. “Ship early and ship often” is a great mantra for getting things done but it does mean that the polish might get left behind. We have come up with a new phrase that might cover it – “pragmatic perfectionism”. <br />
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We will keep trying to improve the way everything works but not at the expense of shipping new stuff – we will have to see how we get on.<br />We will be acknowledging the primary influences on our user interfaces and technology stack decisions in due course – once the bugs and worst errors have been removed from our efforts.<br />
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It would not be a great compliment to others to say we built upon some of their ideas if all we had to expose was our incompetence.<br />
<br />In the mean time, if you have some web sites, blog posts, photographs or what have you likely to be of interest to sea kayakers then please pop over to www.seakayakwales.com sign in and add a link to our news page. While you are there, take a look at the other items being posted – they might well entertain you.<br /></div>Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-85343029693881556412011-12-31T08:57:00.000-08:002012-01-01T03:33:36.313-08:00Don't just sit there, start doing something useful<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Start being useful?<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p6JovPKXqxw/Tv8_7l7MKHI/AAAAAAAAAcg/oFqGC-bLRuY/s1600/skwface.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p6JovPKXqxw/Tv8_7l7MKHI/AAAAAAAAAcg/oFqGC-bLRuY/s1600/skwface.jpg" /></a></div>
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We were keen for the <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/Default.aspx">Sea Kayak Wales</a> web site to move on from just being a placeholder on the Internet and to start being useful. We have quite a bit of work planned to bring the prototype into the hands of the sea kayaking community but we wanted to get something out there to mark the start of our launch year 2012.<br />
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Every web service needs some infrastructure and it made sense to build our initial offering in a way that also allowed us to explore some of the techniques and facilities that will be needed in the long term We will need facilities for people to “log in” to the site and we will need mechanisms for sea kayakers to provide feedback on the detail of our service. Thus, the idea of a news service was born.<br />
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We sort of recognise that the interval between Christmas and New Year (with near continuous gales around the UK coasts) is probably not the best time to launch a news page but then again a slow start will help ensure that everything is working in the way we expected – and gives an opportunity to collect ideas on how the facility might progress.<br />
So do feel free to pop over to the <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/NewsFrontpage.aspx">news pages</a> for a taste of what we can do.<br />
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Whats there?<br />
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The first challenge was the dreaded web site “log-in”. We wanted to make this as painless as possible while making some efforts to exclude the automated spam “bots” trolling the web. OpenID was the obvious foundation for this. OpenID allows our potential community members to access the Sea Kayak Wales site using credentials from another web service they might already be using. Anyone with a gMail or Facebook account (to pick just two) can log into our site without having to create yet another username and password combination. Sea Kayak Wales never gets to see the user’s account details – we just take advantage of the OpenID facilities offered by these service providers – all we get is a unique “token” to identify each user plus (we humbly request) an email address.<br />
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For anyone who wants to use our web site but who does not have an account with an existing OpenID provider (or perhaps folks that are not comfortable with the OpenID concept) we also offer the more traditional facility to create a Sea Kayak Wales account to use to log-in. We take a lot of care to protect SKW passwords and will be offering a fully encrypted sign up link (like the UK banks do) in 2012 so this is not a second class option should anyone need it.<br />
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Once Logged In<br />
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Now, once users are logged in, they can post Internet links (web sites, blog posts etc. ) as news items. They can also vote for news posts that strike them as particularly interesting. They can’t vote for their own posts and can only vote once for any given item but it is a way of showing interest in a given item.<br />
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Site members can also comment on news posts to share their thoughts on a given item or to provide additional information or feedback. Users who are logged in, can also reply to individual comments and vote for comments they feel make a contribution.<br />
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All of these new facilities have direct relevance to our future services and also provide (we trust) some great functionality in the mean time.</div>Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-29748072781518938782011-09-07T04:18:00.000-07:002011-09-07T04:18:35.924-07:00Up and Running<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The SeaKayakWales <a href="http://www.seakayakwales.com/">website</a> has gone live, with more detail to follow</div>Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5658191071132642901.post-27723916435874457822011-08-23T08:54:00.001-07:002011-08-23T08:54:50.461-07:00Project News<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Project 'SKW' is about to start</div>Anglesey Stickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02310879365704799700noreply@blogger.com0