Aquarionics

I have ejected Three from my life.

Three are my mobile phone company. I switched to them last year because they were cheap, I wanted a snazzy phone, and they promised me I could go onto the interweb on it.

This was a slightly inaccurate communication on their point. In fact, it was a barefaced shiteating lie. I could go onto teh interweb, but I could only go onto teh bit of teh interweb who were paying Three to do so. This means I could download as many videos of Britney Spears as my bank account could handle, but couldn’t get at, for example, Google.

This is Not On, but they were cheap, and I could phone people on it, and I am well used to the moronities of mobile phones, and they promised, faithfully, on their mother’s life that they would be opening up the walled garden by December. It would all, indeed, be over by christmas.

People don’t want open access, that’s not what our customers tell us they want, [..] Anyone in their right mind who tries to do anything on the Internet with a screen that size has to be nuts. (Gareth Jones, chief operating officer, 3, NMA, Late 2004)

This was, apparently, another slightly inaccurate communication then. I slightly agree with that statement, for the record. I’m not really interested in surfing the web on a 2” screen. I am, however, very interested in using my mobile to connect my Powerbook to the world wide supernetwork.

That would be Neat.

And so, this afternoon, 24 hours after my contract with Three expired, I walked into Phones4U (who remain my Phone dealership of choice) and signed back up with Vodaphone (3G, this time).

I’m keeping my old number, but it’s going to take a little while to seep though, so for now I’m carrying two phones, which is odd.

The new phone is a Samsung Z500. I like it lots.

First, moon.google.com

Then, zoom right in.

Idea: Wonderful.
Execution: Genius.

The Lipson-Shiu Corporate Type Test

fun, office

As of this morning (About 5am this morning. Who needs sleep when you’re never gonna get it?) Aquarionics’ Journal archives are subject to a rolling blackout. Everything older than three years old doesn’t work anymore.

Currently, that’s just a pithy message. Comments are still displayed, response codes are inaccurate, archive pages are streams of “You can’t see this” messages, all things I intend to fix at some point soon.

This has been a long time coming, and a couple of recent events have made me reconsider the benefits of not having all five and a half years of archives online. They go though some less-than-sane events, and are liable to get me prejudged under certian circumstances (Like any employer who would do that kind of thing, not that I’m looking for work). Plus, a lot of the stuff in there is inaccurate, or doesn’t reflect modern reality, and too many people coming in from Google will automatically assume that because it’s on the web it’s gospel.

Journal entries were – and are – never designed to be timeless. Things I feel should remain around for reference should be Articles. This means that some Journal entries will be turned into Articles over the next few weeks, as I go though the archives looking for things I don’t want to be blacked out. For those, redirects will be in place.

As for the time, I spent a while playing this morning. Originally it was going to be six months, then a year, but both felt too revisionist to live with. Five years seemed right, but would mean that the stuff I want to avoid being judged on stays online, which defeats the object. Three years is the balance.

The announcement is here, the motion has begun. Stuff is well and truly going down.

The Web Action Standards Project DOM Scripting Task Force has been announced (The title is something of a mouthful, but Javascript Cabal is quicker, and WaSP DOM TF is more accurate) and I’m on it, representing the views of people with little time who want big web sites to do cool shit. This means at some point I will do contributory stuff (which is first going to require me getting access to a mail-server that the WaSP mail server hasn’t blocked for being deviantly dynamically IPed) and write articles and stuff, and probably be slightly embarrassed when someone points at a web site that I did (some of) the code for and points out how it’s all been done wrong.

In my defence, part of my reason for being involved in this is that I learnt JS when you were recommended to use document.write() and so I can write articles from the perspective of one who as Seen The New Light, rather than coming out from the darkness.

It’s about doing it right, it’s about doing it so that the users don’t have to notice, and it’s about enhancing the experience of most of your users whilst never ever blocking out the rest of them.

The new age of client side scripting is wandering in. Pay attention at the back.