How to noble a village you are account sitting

Checking the back-end of my blog I found a strange search term that has been used a lot to get to my blog:

“How to noble a village you are account sitting”

The answer: Not

AskAPhD.org

Using Twitter I found a user named AskAPhD, as a PhD (to be) that seemed interesting so I had a look at what this was all about. Turns out that the guys at this website have launched a forum where PhDs can sign up to answer questions from each other but also the general public.

I reckon this is a cool concept and although still in infancy stage now, it deserves recognition from the research community. I hereby ask all of you that are doing a PhD, or are generally academically inclined in one way or another to sign up at: askaphd.org. Thanks!

P2P and TalkTalk

This is a rant. It is a rant about ISPs and their bizarre, out of fashion policies.

I switched from British Telecom (Money-Eating-Ex-Government-Mega-Corporation) to TalkTalk (Cheap-and-Cheerful-ISP-with-Limitations). And the switch went remarkably well, no problems at all in fact.

I am even happy with the performance, my Speedtest data shows a significant increase in performance compared to two months ago. So far so good!

When the salesguy came round, I asked him about throttling, and he didn’t know. I took the gamble, knowing about ways to get round it if I really want to. But that is besides the point, it now turns out that he should have known, as it is a TalkTalk policy to cut down P2P (Peer to Peer) traffic to an absurd level. This is fine when P2P means Gnutella, Napster, Torrents or other popular (ex)-means of downloading pirated software, movies and music. But when P2P means BBC iPlayer, Spotify or Ubuntu DVD-downloads, it is a different story.

The fact is that in the recent year P2P has grown up to become a mature and stable platform for distributing data among a large usergroup. Legally! TalkTalk is clearly basing its policy on the 2-5% of users that still use old-fashioned P2P downloads to satisfy their needs, but the fact is that the majority of P2P use these days is completely legit and should not be limited.

Besides that, there are far superior alternatives to getting quality “illegal downloads”! If you happen to work for TalkTalk, read this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jun/09/games-dvd-music-downloads-piracy

In the mean-time, just make sure my iPlayer and Spotify work again, both services I pay for, or am prepared to pay for!

Spotify playlist: Relaxed

Spotify is a great service for people that love music, normally download it for free… and decide they want to try a legal variety. It is also a great tool for discovering new music, I have found lots of new acts through my few weeks on Spotify, and will use this blog to talk about some of the playlists I am putting together.This is apt because Spotify allows you to share playlists with other people, so if you want the playlist I describe here, you can click on this link (after installing Spotify) and this playlist will be added to your Spotify automatically!

This is the first list I made, based on music I like. I called it relaxed as all songs have the ability to calm me down. Feel free to give me feedback!

The Fun Loving Criminals

First up the Fun Loving Criminals. These guys from New York are well known in the Festival scene for producing some of the most distinctive and soulful Blues/Rock whatever you want to call it. Smoke em’ was their key-song on Dutch festivals, wonder why…, and is still great after all these years.

Fleetwood Mac: Albatross

I never really knew Fleetwood Mac, they were from well before my time, but when I heard the Chain on the radio I knew I had to find out what else they made. Although the Chain is my favourite FM song, Albatross is the one making it onto this list. When I hear it I can just see tropical beaches!

Jamiroquai: Seven days in Sunny June

What better follow up to tropical beaches than a song about Sunny June. Although Jamiroquai is by no means an artist I would consider part of my “favourites”, this particular song is both uplifting and soothing.

Iam: Sans Issue

Iam

Iam is hardly known at all outside of France, which is odd as he is a great hip hop artist. Recent collaborations with Beyonce and other American commercial drab proof this, but in my opinion this guy doesn’t do himself justice by collaborating with ’superstars’. Sans Issue is one of his masterpieces and it is both soothing and impressive. Not a clue what he sings about though

Blof & Heather Nova: Mooie Dag

Blof are definitely in my favourite bands top ten. This Dutch band has been changing the Dutch pop-scene since the mid nineties and are going from strength to strength. This song is about the day their drummer died in a car accident. It is beautifully written and composed, and in this version Heather Nova actually contributes to the strength of the song.

Pearl Jam: Gone

Another band with a knack for writing great songs. Their album Ten, which triggered their breakthrough, is one of my favourite albums, but this song from the album Pearl Jam is up there with Alive and Jeremy in terms of strength and lyrics. Oh, and it is relaxing in a weird way.

U2: With or without you

I doubted this song should be on this list, but the underlying guitar riffs and the pace of the song warrant a spot anyway. I don’t think I need to say a lot about U2 do I?

Lenny Kravitz: I belong to you

Spotify does have a quirk in that it only plays what the record labels allow it to play. That means that a classic Lenny album with some great songs is missing. Fortunately this track has made it to the Greatest hits album and is well worth listening to.

Mellon Colly and the infinite sadness.

Smashing Pumpkins: Tonight Tonight

One of the best bands of the nineties, which fortunately have decided to reform some years ago, publishing the great Zeitgeist album. Tonight Tonight is a massive song, with brilliant composition and strength.

Nirvana: Something in the way

My musical taste is revealing itself rapidly in this list I suppose… Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins… Bush is missing of Spotify but would have made it otherwise. Grunge really got me going in the nineties! But it is still music that stands out from the rock-crowd. Eventhough over the past decade we have been blessed with a raft of great bands coming through to the top of the charts.

Roykssop: Eple

Another festival favourite, although I don’t like all of their work, Eple (with the famous melody that keeps floating in and out) is a classic and manages to free my mind from any thought.

Prince: Sexy Motherfucker

Prince is an icon, unfortunately he sank away into oblivion but to me his music is still ten times better than anything ever produced by that other eighties icon, Michael Jackson. This song brings lots of different influences together into an orgy of gorgeousness.

The Prodigy: 3 Kilos

At the end of the album, Music for the Jilted Generation, tucked away from the rougher and tougher side of the album, are three electro tunes that never interested me earlier. But the more I listened to the album, the more I fell in love with these jewels. I could have picked any of them, but 3 Kilos is great.

Wax Tailor: Positively Inclined

This guy I discovered through Spotify and boy am I pleased I did! French trip-hop producer Wax Tailor is a gem, one of many to be uncovered by me using Spotify I hope!

Tribalwars: Running a forum

Introduction

Tribalwars Forums. Useful interaction platform for people with a common goal: To discuss the game they love. This post is all about the behind-the-scenes of the forums at Tribalwars with an aim to give regular posters a bit more insight into the dealing and wheeling that happens behind the scene.

My background

I come into my latest role as the forum moderator for Worlds 17 and 18 with a long Tribalwars history, I started playing when W2 was relatively new, by now that makes me one of the longest-playing people in Tribalwars (although I just deleted my W35 account!) I joined the TW team shortly after starting to play, Hoodoo liked my application and pulled me in from a large group of applicants. I started on the forum but soon moved into the role of multihunter and have had various positions on the TW team since.

Spirit of the forum

I have witnessed many changes to the game, but one thing remains stable throughout, the problems of making sure the forum is a level playing field for everybody, from newbie to noobie to decorated war-veteran. To ensure a standard the code of practice, or rules, for posting on the forum has evolved over the years, but in the end it is the moderators’ responsibility to ensure that his/her forum is operating in the spirit of the rule and the game.

Some mods prefer to do this by infracting everything that goes into the rule, sometimes taking the written word a bit too strict and upsetting people which results in regular posters abandoning the forum and a reduced activity overall. Other mods, like me, interpret the rules for specific situations. Sometimes resulting in swift banning, but frequently ending in a warning for poor understanding of the rules, warnings that usually end up in a “thank you for not infracting” message from the recipient.

This result is possible because regular posters know that the other category of mods (the strict ones) exist as well, together we form a team that ensures optimal performance of the moderating. Balancing this is down to Wim, aka Lord-Haste, who does a great job in supporting and managing a large group of mods, compared to when I started the team of mods is now at least ten times larger!

The forum-moderators now operate in a hierarchy, a so called elder-mod ensures that when I am not able to fulfil my role, it still gets done, the elder-mods in turn are managed by Lord-Haste. The elder-mods are experienced hands, guys and girls that have been around TW for a long time and know the game inside out.

Things to do and not to do…

The things I look out for when modding are numerous:

Language

The forum is frequented by children, this is something that should be in the back of minds when posting at all times. Unfortunately it frequently is the case that the children we aim to protect are the ones that think swearing makes them look tough. It doesn’t and when I spot it I will infract. Thinking that hiding swearing by using alternative characters is OK, is daft.

Spamming

Spamming comes in different categories, I don’t object to the occassional off-topic remark in a thread, it adds to the liveliness of the forum and I will only warn if it is out of context entirely. Usually, when a thread derails, I will notify the posters in that thread that I expect it to get back on track, when that fails I will lock it. The sort of spamming I detest, and for which I will ban without exception, is when two or more people think it is fun to derail topics on purpose and go off on a so called spam-fest. As four people in the last week will testify, a two month ban is on offer for those that think they can get away with it.

trolling

People that make it a hobby to haunt other posters, to wind up other posters and to be derogatory to other posters. This is an image that builds up over time, as a mod it is impossible to read all posts, but certain names will keep coming up and this results in building reputations with mods. A mod can easily see all posts by one poster, a useful tool to find out what the overall tone of the poster is. If and when I identify trolls, I will warn them to alter their attitude, if that does not work they will get banned.

Flaming

Two types of flaming: one is when one tribe is at war with another and tries to get the moral upperhand by fiery posts that trick the other tribe into losing their cool, fine. The other type is when a single player is continuously singled out by one or more posters, not fine. There are different ways to deal with this, but frequently this will end in a warning with a follow-up ban.

learn to speak English!

I thoroughly detest people telling other people that their English is not good enough. Frequently this is done by people with a superiority complex that fail to see that other posters can have a variety of backgrounds which cause them to not speak English well, dyslexia, poor education, or most often, not being a native-speaker. I will warn for this as it is unsavoury, however there is no rule against it, merely a moral etiquette. Please adhere to it!

Reporting

Our most effective way of finding posts that have gone bad, is by other posters reporting them, please do! It helps us keep control and it helps you keep a forum that is worth visiting! There is always a group of ‘core-reporters’ these are the names that will end up being nominated for functions as mods.

Appealing

If you do not agree with an infraction or a warning and you want to appeal, please feel free to do so. Contact the infracting mod, if the answer is not satisfactory, contact the elder mod and if that is not conclusive contact Lord-Haste.  But remember to keep your argument clear and fair. Appeals from people that reduce themselves to a swearing and insulting heap of pity will get ignored.

I hope you gained some insight in the way modding the TW-forums works, feel free to PM me on the forum with questions or ask them in reply to this blogpost.

Responsible data policies in Universities

Now that Google is getting a foot in the door at British Universities, offering far superior mail-systems than Universities are able to offer, the question of data policies is becoming a real one. Universities have a tradition of care and diligence when it comes to research data, but that tradition does not necessarily extent to the way e-mail is managed and governed. Not only e-mail, but data released through Virtual Learning Environments is increasingly hosted on servers that are outside the property-domain of Universities (and colleges, schools etc.).

Squeeze on data security?

This move is understandable, external parties can offer specific advantages unatainable by the University. Each student an e-mail box with gigabytes of storage? It is only possible through using a service like Google which has petabytes of storage available all over the world.

But it does beg the question: What happens with potentially confidential data? Google will scan the Gmail account to build a profile of the account-holder so they can target their ads specifically. But what else do they do? Do they ensure a bulletproof safety from hackers?

The simple answer is no, it is impossible, therefore Universities will have to educate their students and staff to understand the risks involved with online storage. A new age of responsible information literacy is dawning and Universities better make sure that they embrace the challenge.

I am in favour of outsourcing services like e-mail and hosting of low-grade sensitivity. But when it comes to research data, grades and personal details there has to be a significant red line between internal and external hosting.

Furthermore, Universities will have to start thinking how this material (whether it is of high or low sensitivity) is protected under intellectual property laws. Are we signing off part of that responsibility? How about a Creative Commons model where the end-users decide?

Plenty of questions, few answers (yet).

Craoibh Haven Scottish Weather

Craoibh Haven Scottish Weather, originally uploaded by tzijlstra.

Having set up Flickr properly to share my latest pictures with you I feel it is time to send a few to my blog! This is one of my favourite shots taken in Scotland (Argyll to be more precise, Craoibh Haven to be too precise) I didn’t edit it, it came out of the camera as you see it here. Cool huh! If you have suggestions for editing it somehow, I would like to hear from you!

Help! Dissertation coming up!

This guide aims to help you, the Masters student, to get going properly with your Dissertation. It is aimed at students of the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield, but a lot of the advise can be applied generically at any level, department etc.

Lets start with a disclaimer: This guide is not perfect, last year I did my own dissertation and felt there could be more support out there which is why I made this guide. As I work as a librarian for the University of Sheffield it will contain practical pointers specifically for this Library Service, but if you are at another University I am sure your Library will be more than happy to help out! I also work as a Research Assistant at this University, which gives me a growing knowledge of Research Methods (One hopes!).

Getting Going

Your primary concern is to choose a topic that interest you, and gosh, there are many of those, or maybe there are not. You might worry tremendously about your topic, but really, all you need to worry about is whether it is something that truly interests you. After three months of hard work you will be grateful for having chosen something you wanted to do, rather than something you thought might be better for your career or because you wanted to do a dissertation with a specific lecturer. I assume you are doing a Masters because you are interested in the topic, if you came in with a certain idea about what you wanted to achieve, the dissertation is the ideal time to capitalise on that.

Talk to lecturers about it, they are researchers as well as teachers and have experience in the field you are studying. If you like Web 2.0 go talk to the lecturer that taught you about it, if you are interested in Knowledge Management go for that appropriate lecturer. Tell them about your ideas, conceptualise them and get something down on paper, even if it is only one A4.

Got the idea, what next?

Once you have the general concept it is time to start thinking about ways to move forward. This is a good moment to start reading on your topic. If you did a module on it, or are doing one on it now, go through the reading lists. At the UoS they are available through Muse (provided your lecturer put them up). Frequently you will be able to work out which authors are important in the field, based on this list. For example when you talk about the Internet, you have to read Manuel Castells “The Internet Galaxy” (1999), which is generally accepted as one of those seminal works about the impact of the Internet on our lives.

Start reading Journal Articles on the topic, ask your lecturer for advise on which articles to read, or alternatively go to the Library and ask your Subject Librarian for their advise. There is also an excellent Library Guide available for your department which contains further links to the various sources appropriate for your field.

The reason you should read Journal Articles is because they reveal potential ways of doing research. If you read Qualitative and Quantitative (more on this later) papers you will discover which type suits you best. You will also get an idea of how to structure your dissertation, this is actually very valuable. It would pay off if you sat down and analysed the structure of a (number of) previous dissertation(s) or paper(s), just so that you get a feeling for the way Academic Literature is structured.

Method: Aaaargh!

Choosing how you go about your research is difficult. Effectively there are three options, Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Method. The ethos of Qualitative and Quantitative is fundamentally different, with Qualitative research you will generally not have a pre-conceived hypothesis that you want to test, with Quantitative research you generally will want to test what you think. I say generally because that is not always the case, but I don’t want to confuse you too much so we will leave that out of the picture. Each approach has a different set of tools to achieve the end-result, in practice students choose a method based on these tools, if you want to do a questionnaire you are likely to be doing a Quantitative study where the numbers of responses have to proof your point. If you want to do interviews, you will be taking a Qualitative approach, interviews offer open endings by default (if you design them well )!

Don’t be put off by either methodology. You will have a natural inclination to one type anyway, if you are assertive and chatty you will probably prefer interviews, if you are mathematically minded, good at numbers and methodological, you will probably prefer questionnaires. There are other things you can do as well though, you could choose to do Focus Groups, a full Literature Analysis, Bibliometric analysis, Surveying and so on! The key is that you choose the methodology that suits your topic and you.

To be continued!

Google Homepage

This post is a bit of a test really, but it could well generate a new topic for the coming weeks as well. I am currently playing about with the Google Sites functionality, and I have to say, it looks like a half decent way of getting a website sorted in a short time.

I am a bit of a Google-holic I suppose, discussing it with a friend the other day we concluded that we would probably even pay for the suite of services on offer, but that should not make the potential any less appealing for other people.

Shortly I will publish the site address, if you are curious already (not that there is anything there) feel free to Google me…

Knowledge and e-mail: Codification pur sang?

In the OrganiK project we have finished most of the data collection to assess criteria for the new Knowledge Management system we aim to develop. One very interesting factor kept coming up during various visits, the use of Outlook to store work-related knowledge.

Several interviewees send e-mails to themselves with working tasks, snippets of information they picked up on and links to websites they find useful, they also send these mails on to colleagues when they think this is useful.

In essence they are using e-mail as a codification tool, effectively making knowledge available in written down format with the aim of recovering it when appropriate.

This is by no means a new ‘discovery’ MS itself is aware of the potential of Outlook as KM tool, the question then of course is; why do they not exploit that potential further?  And, as a Thunderbird user, why is Mozilla not all over this weakness in Outlook and trying to improve on it?

The interesting player in this respect is Google who, with an ever expanding toolkit, are offering brilliant ways of using Gmail as a codified information repository. Time to steal ideas Mozilla!