Sam Lewis
I am here.
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Tweets
- @billyhayward I'm a huge fan of @snugn16 and what they've done. People just seem to object to the travellers more than to everyday mess.
- There didn't seem to be too much widespread interest in keeping the common clean and tidy before they turned up.
- (Un)surprising to see the instinctive negativity in the tweets about the travellers on Stoke Newington Common.
- First glass of wine as a father, after a boozeless fortnight. Very nice.
- Some new non-avian neighbours have arrived, in their small white houses. I wonder what their plans are.
- I think they're swifts rather house martins, but I'm not sure. I wonder which they're more likely to be in cloudy Hackney.
- Outside, the magpies leave their nest and the swifts (or house martins) wheel and swoop overhead. Inside, @minalewis chirps in her cot.
- Thanks @NikeA_. Now the fun really starts...
- I am quite tired, somewhat hungry, and definitely sitting in a chair. This state of affairs is likely to continue for some time.
- Today's run: warblers and another open-air rave on Walthamstow Marshes, grizzled crows and fluffy ducklings in Springfield Park.
- @p_potto And let me be the first to congratulate you!
- I am lacking order in my sock drawer. I am also lacking a sock drawer.
- Listening to @ThisAmerLife episode #461, and wondering what people might claim the difference is between lobbying and bribery/extortion.
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Posts
- Apr 27, 12
Cycling home from work today, I saw one or more of the following:
- Feral pigeon
- Wood pigeon
- Magpie
- Starling
- Crow
- Mute swan
- Canada goose
- Greylag goose
- Moorhen
- Mallard
- Common gull
- Black-headed gull
- Cormorant
- House sparrow
- Robin
- Blackbird
- Egyptian gooseI also heard some rose-ringed parakeets and ate a variety of unidentified flying insects.
I <3 Hackney.
- Apr 10, 12After finding that things weren't quite managing to autopost to Tumblr (and then ignoring this fact for a few months), I've switched back to flavors.me to gather my various feeds together in one place, and to use Posterous for things that don't fit in any of those feeds.Of course, I'll probably abandon it all (apart from the autoposting) after this brief surge of enthusiasm, but it's probably a good move on the whole.
- May 15, 10
- Mar 13, 10
Another walk in in the country, this time in following the 'Daylight Saving in Chislehurst' walk in the AA's book 50 Walks in London. I think we took a wrong turn in leaving the wood and walking down Manor Park, but it gave us a chance to marvel at the houses we could never afford or want to live in.
View A walk around Chislehurst in a larger map - Mar 09, 10
Having slightly misjudged the time when bluebells would be appearing (should have left it a week or two), we set off for a walk from Coulsdon South station. Great views, but very cold and windy. You can find the route in Time Out's book Country Walks near London vol. 2.
- Feb 27, 10
When I post anything to this blog (which is not often, or at least not regularly), it tends to be a link to something I've found on the web, not something I have created myself. Having decided to change this, I will in the future post links to my Delicious account, with perhaps a small comment but nothing more. If I have anything to say publicly, I will say it here without the surrounding noise of links.
These links, along with this blog and some other things, can be found at a new site I've created: http://flavors.me/samlewis. - Feb 27, 10
I recently came across a competition that, in association with TalkTalk, offered the chance to win a year's subscription to Spotify in exchange for entering your email address and a Spotify song to a collaborative playlist. You can find the competition here if you want to enter, but when I first saw it it was only possible to sign up to be notified when entries were being accepted. So, I entered my email address and promptly forgot all about it.
I was reminded of the competition when I received an email telling me that I could now enter it, but my concerns were raised by one or two things. First, the email contained only a .jpg, and no link to click. Second, although it was mailed from the spotify.com domain, the sender was listed as an @gmail.com address, so I was suspicious about replying to ask what had happened. But the main problem was that my address was surrounded in the To: field by a large number of other email addresses.
This email faux pas is often committed by email users, through carelessness or a lack of understanding, and it certainly is annoying. When a business does it, however, it gives a particularly bad impression. People don't want their email addresses unnecessarily exposed to others, and I received several group replies to the original email saying just this. There was talk of the Data Protection Act, people demanded compensation (in the form of a year's Spotify subscription, which was the competition prize) and someone even set up a Facebook group to indignantly complain about Spotify's breach of data protection law.
It seems that this law may well have been broken, and distributing email addresses in this way certainly goes against the standard "sign up for this and we won't give out your address" spiel that (I think/assume) was included on the registration page. But what information was given out? Email addresses? Well, yes, but I googled a random selection of the addresses concerned, and found quite a few of them on the web, ready to be crawled by any nefarious email-gatherer out there. More to the point, most of the email addresses of those most loudly demanding compensation (including that of the guy who set up the Facebook group) are there to be found on the web, in plain text. I even found that one address was given to offer help with the PC game torrent the user had seeded via the Pirate Bay. And this was one of the people who had threatened legal action against TalkTalk.
If you're going to demand compensation, you have to have experienced a loss, injury, or suffering. For most of the people making this demand, this did not happen: their email addresses were already freely available online. For those who had not previously chosen to publish this information in this way, some damage certainly was done, but exposing email addresses (and nothing else) is far from the worst that could happen. I didn't like it, but I understood that it was a mistake – a human error. Spotify apologised, somewhat half-heartedly at first, and it has now provided a month's subscription as compensation. The outcry may well have played a part in encouraging this move, but these people's anger seemed somewhat unfair, and based on a poor understanding of online privacy. A human made a foolish mistake, which, while annoying, caused little or no real damage; some people overreacted; and now I have a month's worth of advert-free Spotify. Not the end of the world, and even slightly positive. I don't think I'll bother entering the competition though.
- Feb 21, 10
A few months ago, I voted 'yes' on the proposal to build a wind turbine on Hackney Marshes. I didn't hold out much hope of it eventually going ahead, but I did what I could and placed my vote.
And it turns out that 87% of the people who voted agreed with me!
It will now be built (if it gets planning permission), and should be providing the power for Hackney's street lighting and council offices for about 25 years.
I ♥ Hackney.
- Dec 01, 09via boingboing.net
Shame it's for the Sun, and also that it's supporting the wrong side in a losing battle (see buzzmachine.com for why), but I like this advert.
- Nov 29, 09
It seems that the videos I included in an earlier post on this subject were an edited version of the debate, not the whole thing. Here's an unedited (or at least, less-edited) version. If you've already seen the shorter version, I think this one's still worth watching.
- Nov 26, 09
I've just finished this book, and on the whole enjoyed it. It does seem slightly lacking in structure, with a rather unfocussed stream parts of the overwhelming evidence in favour of the 'theory' of evolution. Those pieces of evidence are fascinating though.
One important point Dawkins makes at the start of the book is about the confusion over what the word 'theory' means, quoting from the Oxford English Dictionary:
Theory, Sense 1: A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed.
Theory, Sense 2: A hypothesis proposed as an explanation; hence, a mere hypothesis, speculation, conjecture; an idea or set of ideas about something; an individual view or notion.Those who reject evolution often do so in the belief that evolution is a theory in the second sense, when it is in fact a theory in the first sense, just like the 'theory of electromagnetism' or the 'theory of relativity.'
If you want to read the book, you can buy it here.
- Nov 23, 09
Killing Babies, Saving the World
By Radiolab
November 17, 2009
To get this podcast started, Robert ambushes Jad with a question … a question we’ve all been dying to ask him since June 10th, 2009, when Amil Abumrad came into the world. But fear not, we didn’t do a whole podcast just to give the new dad a hard time. Robert talks to Josh Greene, the Harvard professor we had on our Morality show. They revisit some ideas from that show in the context of the big, complicated problems of today (think global warming and nuclear war). Josh argues that to deal with those problems, we’re going to have to learn how to make better use of that tiny part of our brain that handles abstract thinking. Not a simple proposition, but, despite the odds, Josh has hope.
Photo by: Flickr/ connieth
via wnyc.org - Nov 23, 09
- Nov 21, 09
I strongly recommend you listen to the latest three episodes of Radio 4's Thinking Allowed programme, on the subject of white collar crime.
While you might be worried about being stabbed or robbed in the street, the crimes you should really care about are the ones committed by people wearing suits, not hoodies. These criminals affect the lives of everyone and yet they are rarely punished, let alone censured. If you're not angry, you're not thinking hard enough.
Programme 1 | Programme 2 | Programme 3 - Nov 18, 09
Read a book you liked and want to read other things like it? Want lots of recommendations but refuse to visit more than one site to get them? A fan of Victorian-style facial hair?
The Book Seer might be for you. - Nov 16, 09
It seems that the very handy (but somewhat misleadingly-named) TVCatchup is even handier than I thought. The site, which lets you watch live British TV via the internet (but not "catch up" on things you've missed), has an iPhone-compatible site too!
- Nov 16, 09
Iain (M.) Banks' recent books have not impressed me nearly as much as his earlier work, but I'm always hopeful that he'll get back to form one day. His latest work, Transition, might be different in that it appears to be somewhere between the usual science- and, er, notscience-fiction, being published in the UK as by Iain Banks and in the US as by Iain M. Banks. (See here if you're not sure about the distinction.)
If you're interested in checking it out but are not sure if it's worth your money, the book is available in abridged audio form as a free podcast in iTunes.
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Checkins
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- Itsu41-44 Great Queen Street
- Fat Cat CaféStoke Newington Church Street
- Busaba Eathai22 Store St.
- UCH Elizabeth Garrett AndersonGrafton street
- Thai Cafe3 Northwold road
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Photos
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Recent Tracks
- This Is Heaven To Me by Madeleine Peyroux
- Careless Love by Madeleine Peyroux
- I'll Look Around by Madeleine Peyroux
- Weary Blues by Madeleine Peyroux
- J'Ai Deux Amours by Madeleine Peyroux
- Lonesome Road by Madeleine Peyroux
- No More by Madeleine Peyroux
- Between The Bars by Madeleine Peyroux
- You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go by Madeleine Peyroux
- Don't Cry Baby by Madeleine Peyroux
Sufjan StevensFleet FoxesSea of BeesBonnie 'Prince' BillyCat PowerBBC Radio 4Belle and SebastianMúmBlurSigur RósMax RichterBon IverThe BeatlesBBC World ServiceThe CardigansNeutral Milk HotelSigur RosElliott SmithDeath Cab For CutieDavid BowieMumFlight of the ConchordsThe ShinsOkkervil RiverSongs:OhiaBeirutBroken Social SceneSongs: OhiaBand of HorsesMy Morning JacketFeistMuseRilo KileyTerry PratchettDepartment of EaglesRegina SpektorMagnolia Electric Co.BeckInterpolBelle & SebastianGrandaddyIron & WineColdplayWeezerPortisheadM. WardR.E.M.Tom WaitsRay LaMontagneRadiohead- 95 plays
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- Fyre by Sea of Bees39 plays
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- -Sleep/Swim by Múm29 plays
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Reading
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Posts
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Posts
- May 24, 12
#NowPlaying Genesis by Grimes on #Spotify http://t.co/AlaK8Gp9
- Apr 23, 12
Introducing the new, lightning fast way to share with @Dropbox — just send a link to a file or folder! http://t.co/1kPXHvId
- Apr 17, 12
Just completed a 8.71 km run with @RunKeeper. Check it out! http://t.co/GwIqBxwB #RunKeeper
- Apr 17, 12
Ultra-runner Micah True found dead in New Mexico - http://t.co/VLaRTIqd #running #marathon
- Apr 09, 12
UK government's design principles surprisingly elegant and wise: https://t.co/Upx339mq
- Apr 09, 12
You have to see this. 3bn pix 360 deg panorama taken at sunrise from St Paul's. Don't forget to zoom in. Unbelievable. http://t.co/MEQuMH3M
- Apr 09, 12
Etymology of the word 'haywire'. http://t.co/EJpccF9A
- Apr 09, 12
Anatomically correct papercraft torso with organs http://t.co/ZMFBy9m1
- Apr 09, 12
RT @kottke Amazing HD time lapse taken from the International Space Station http://t.co/F29T1lbX
- http://boingboing.net/2011/08/29/two-ai-chatbots-attempt-to-have-a-conversation-with-each-other.htmlApr 09, 12
Two AI chatBots attempt to have a conversation with each other: http://t.co/VhEEA3Z
- Apr 09, 12
Kevin Kelly states everything interesting about the Net right now in a single blog post. http://t.co/tfJZFi8
- Apr 09, 12
Go to http://t.co/W42tb9V, install the plugin, and be impressed.
- Apr 09, 12
The Illuminated Edel-Silmarillion: http://t.co/Q5vBdQN via @AddThis
- Apr 09, 12
Wow. Nissan catches Top Gear red handed, faking facts on a test of their electric car http://t.co/ac7qtDZ (via @chrisfloyduk)
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Videos
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