a lot of stuff and nonsense from eclectech

Hysterical new site online today from Phorm, a corporation behaving like a small child in a playground calling people names. The people they're calling names include the Open Rights Group, Alexander “The Angry Activist” Hanff and, well, have a look yourself here... phoolish anti-anti-Phorm site.

I don't have time to have the full rant I'd like to have here, but how a company that gathered information about individuals' web activity without getting their permission can call those complaining about it 'privacy pirates' is incomprehensible to me.

There was some research done recently* which showed that you could identify a large number of people from their surfing habits and searches; you don't need their IP address or other standard personally identifiable information, you just need to know that the web sites were visited and searches were performed by one individual. Think about what you search for and where you go online... do they give hints about who you are? I'll put my hand up here and say I Google my own name (both real and online pseudonymns) and look for information about local events and shops and a ton of other stuff that could tell you alot about me. Tie that together with a Facebook or similar profile and you're away...

Anyhow, more reasoned pieces will appear elsewhere I'm sure but in the meantime have some related links...

EC starts legal action over Phorm
Home Office 'colluded with Phorm'
Phorm: Does its stroppy campaign site signal the beginning of the end?
Phorm chief labels critics 'serial agitators'
What the Open Rights Group have to say about Phorm.

* reference will follow when I can find the thing, sorry!**

** Found it. De-anonymizing Social Networks. There's a news report about it at the BBC too.

Labels: disgruntled, news links, open rights group

I've been having a delve up at archive.org. I like making odd little loops from film clips (with a few additions of course) and they have a number public domain films to explore. Someone pointed me at Freaks which has been a suitably rich source of interesting moments.

I totally messed up the placement of the eyes in the top piece, but decided I rather liked their ominous floating so I've kept them.

As you can see from the sidebar I've been toying with Twitter recently too. I'm not a reliable blogger. Every now and then I get the urge but I'm fairly busy, will tend to choose pictures over words, and my recent blogging performance has been poor to say the least so... maybe something that only lets you write 140 characters will be better suited. If nothing else it's a way to get something changing here. Anyhow, if you're a twitter type you can follow* me here.

A quick couple of links before I head back to film mangling...
ID cards are here but no-one in the UK can read them. Oh, good grief.
390,000 to access child database . Well, I suppose all their data is already out there after the government lost all the child benefit details, so maybe I'm being alarmist thinking this is a disaster waiting to happen.
Government plans travel database . This Government has got to go. I don't like the alternatives, but really...

* Something rather stalkerish about it really, isn't there? Hmm.

Labels: flash animation, open rights group

A short, snappy, funky, punky animation of festive frustrations.



Hmm, looking back over the last year I'm barely managing one post a month. Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of it all again next year. It's been a year of changes for me, so I'll have to see how it settles.

In the meantime I'll just have to keep battling against the plastic tat.

Labels: flash animation

Happy holidays and all that.

Love e. x

Labels: blether

A little something I made earlier in the year with DogHorse, only just released to go online along with the new Worksmart toolkit.

Labels: flash animation

The Open Rights Group is 3.
This is a good thing.
You can read about what they've been up to here.

UK organisations keeps having problems protecting your data.
This is a bad thing*.
You can read about some of them here.

* Yes. Even when it's the BNP. Guilty schadenfreude aside, I can't pick when to apply my principles. If I say it's OK because it's the BNP and I don't like them, I lose the argument when someone who doesn't like me (or what I stand for) does the same. Bah.

Labels: blether, open rights group

It's finished! An animation for a delightful ditty about the database state from Mr Mushroom.

Watch The Database Rag!

Labels: flash animation, NO2ID, open rights group

... featuring Mushroom the Marmot here, but as it's running a little late I thought I'd spend 10 minutes clearing the rest of my bookmarks out. It's a little bit of a "I'm back online" frenzy from my point of view.

First up, I do rather like the atheist adverts being run on London buses, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." A worthy message and a nice change. I also found this photo great. Well, that's not quite right, I can't bear the hatred shown in the demos, but the protest placard is wonderful. Hooray for that.

I've had a big moan in the past about the quality of comments on YouTube. This Firefox plugin was obviously made for me. Fantastic.

This is definitely the best BBC headline in a long time... Military penguin becomes a 'Sir'. Frankly all a bit nuts, but still a great headline. A slightly sadder headline involves my first penguin love. Berke Breathed has said goodbye to Opus. Again. This time for good it seems. It's a bit of an odd one for me. I've not kept up with the recent Opus cartoons, to me he belongs to the eighties when, along with Calvin and Hobbes, he was my cartoon favourite but I've always intended to catch up. There's something sad about knowing he's gone for good. On the plus side Mr Breathed is about to delve further into kids books, and as a new parent this makes me quite happy. I can't express how much I'm looking forward to reading "A wish for wings that work" to the techling this Christmas.

More books... I strongly recommend Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. I've always enjoyed the blog, but I 've just finished the book and it's tops. Well written, entertaining and informative. A great defense against the horror of "well I read in the newspaper that..." He also mentions me. I was quite chuffed about that. Unfortunately it was because that awful poo woman threatened to sue me, but he called me funny too. Rah!

Finally, Scaryduck has rewritten Romeo and Juliet in txt speak.

Jlt: Rmo Rmo WTF art thou Rmo?
Rmo: Here 4 am I art LOL
Jlt: Oh, you is so lush

Read it!

Back tomorrow with Mushroom the musical marmot in action.

Labels: blether, neat links, news links, penguin joy, poo woman

I'm making a new animation about the UK government's frenzy to put every bit of information they can get their hands on in a database before leaving it scattered around the country, so it seems like a good point to clear out my bookmarks on this topic.

First up, can I just point out how irritated I am that just as we put together a spoof site (assuming that a site the government spent 70-odd grand on would be around for a while) the original site gets pulled. Apparently the community has now finished. Pfft!

So, now a few examples of why I don't trust them with my data...

UK gov't loses 4 million citizens' personal info
‘Fakeproof’ e-passport is cloned in minutes
Firm 'broke rules' over data loss
Personnel records stolen from MoD
Probe into data left in car park
Malicious gossip could cost you your job
The verdict is out on DNA profiles

However, despite all the data losses and incompetence apparently people 'can't wait for ID cards'*. Yes dear, of course. Let's hope that fingerprints aren't replied on too much, because it looks like Jacqui's are about to become public. Arf!

Finally, US elections and all that. Splendid. Have a dancing Obama to represent my cautious optimism.

* Update: I rather like the Daily Mash's take on this.

Labels: disgruntled, news links, NO2ID, open rights group

So George W. Bush is finally leaving the Whitehouse. I thought we should see him out in style...

Labels: flash animation

I was asked to make something fun about Rubik's Cubes. When the cube came out first time round I battled with it and got so close, but don't remember ever completing it. These days there's loads of information about how to solve it, but I can't be bothered... I prefer to find more interesting things to do with them.



Music by the ever splendid DogHorse at the Audio Mangle.

And yes, the title is a big fat lie. We only got to 53 uses but we'd started using the 101 title and it stuck.

Labels: flash animation

The credit crunch has hit my nappy pixie and it's gone bust. It is a sad day.

I don't like disposable nappies* and have been quite happy to only use them minimally for the techling.

I also don't like doing the washing. Laundry is the worse of domestic chores for me. It's dull, dull, dull and, if dirty nappies are involved, a little too stinky.

I found a solution. We used cloth nappies and once a week the nappy pixie** arrived, took away the stinky nappies and left clean ones. It's been great.

And now they've gone.***

[Sob]

House eclectech is currently taking bets**** on whether my principles can hold their own against the stinky nappies.

*Well, they're marvelous things in their own way, but when you get through so many of them I prefer to reuse.
** might not be an actual pixie
*** my own selfish moaning aside, I'm rather upset for the folk working there too. The people I've dealt with there have been splendidly friendly throughout. Boo.
**** not really, I think I'd need some kind of license for that

Labels: blether

My web site is 8 years old.

To celebrate I have made a silly game. Take snap shots of my odd creations and get points for composition and originality (i.e. the scoring system is a bit, erm, unpredictable on casual inspection).

Go play Snap Attack!

Labels: flash games

One of the many things I'm enjoying following our move to the country is the local squirrels visiting the garden. I like squirrels and they're providing me with fine photo opportunities, even if they do seem to be stealing nuts and seeds from the birds.

A day after the first squirrel photo op I got an email asking if I'd be interested in creating a Frank Sinatra squirrel and animating to Come Fly With Me. It was a sign! Squirrels are our future! Anyhow, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Sinatra Squirrel - Come Fly With Me!

The llamas, penguins and giraffe are not, I'm afraid to say, currently part of the local wildlife although they are all Scottish. 100% fact.

Labels: flash animation