Last night’s episode of The Secret Millionaire focused its cameras squarely on my home town of Peterborough.

Peterborough rapidly expanded in the 70s and 80s by adding ‘townships’. Some of these townships have fallen into disrepair and there are some very unsavoury parts of our city. However, on balance, I’d say that generally Peterborough is a prosperous place to live with many green areas and good local amenities. There has been a rejuvenation of the city centre areas and there’s been quite a substantial investment in developing industrial areas. Indeed, in this past few years Peterborough has attracted flagship gardening centre Van Hage (and in the same shopping complex an Edinburgh Woollen Mill and a Le Creuset), several chain restaurants such as Nandos and Chiquitos. Not to mention a Dobbies gardening centre and an ambitious extension to Queensgate, our shopping centre.

I moved here several years ago and I’ve always been impressed with how Peterborough manages to balance green space with good road systems and the availability of restaurants and shops.

The Secret Millionaire’s agenda is to make sure the setting looks suitably deprived and ‘urban’ as possible to underline the drama. This was achieved by cutting from different shots taken from around the city: overgrown garden; rusty fence with broken sign; rough looking pub; a bus; a walk through Bretton ‘spine’. These vignettes formed an impressive montage of misery. Anyone that lives here though knows these shots were collected from several locations within a 12 mile radius of the city.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The best the team could do to highlight the youth crisis was to briefly interview four work shy lay abouts knocking around a kid’s park on a summer’s day. These late-teens wearing their designer t-shirts and expensive hair cuts sported the iconic iPod headphones and declared everything as “shit”. One bespectacled youth sensibly attired looked about as street as a luxury Range Rover.

Some of these so-called destitute areas are a stone’s throw from where I live. Indeed, one lingering shot of a rough pub set the scene nicely. Though if the camera did a 360 pan it would have taken in Sainsbury’s, Next, Boots and a Laura Ashley.

Of course, I’m not denying that Peterborough has some troubled areas. Government funding cuts have left several charities facing closure and the millionaire Mike Greene – originally from Peterborough – embraced his experience and did some real good with his cheques.

Shame then that most will write Peterborough off as a hell-hole when it has so much more going for it. I really hope that outside investors looking to move into the city won’t be put off by such inspired editing.

It’s Monday. Here’s a few of my current favourite songs.

Peter Bradley Adams: Los Angeles

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The Maccabees: Kiss and Resolve

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Villagers: The Pact

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The Boxer Rebellion: Spitting Fire

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Yuck: The Wall

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

I can barely believe that it’s almost ten years since 9/11. I still remember being at work before IPS was my full time job and hearing over the news that a plane had accidentally crashed into the world trade centre. Immediately Charles appeared on AOL messenger and we chatted as it developed. We ended up closing up the print shop and going home early as the world stopped to stare in shock and horror.

It seems apt, then, to upload a few pictures that I took when I visited NYC in 2004 with my family.

I’ll never forget just how sombre ground zero was.

I love Twitter. Not true love like one loves their children or spouse. It’s more like the love one has for a favourite sandwich or fruit. But obnoxious similes aren’t the reason for writing. No. I’m writing because I just experienced a wonderfully prescient example of why Twitter is just so darn awesome.

I sometimes find it hard to extol Twitter’s virtues to non-believers. They usually throw out the same old complaints: “But I don’t care what you’re watching on TV or what you’re eating”; “I don’t want people knowing what I’m up to”, etc. All good reasons for not joining Facebook. But Twitter is different.

You see, the real value — the killer feature — is the real time search. Search giants like Google and ..er.. Bing have the search market pretty much sewn up but even they are looking to add real time search results to their sites. Indeed, Bing did just this yesterday by adding live search for Twitter into their interface.

But why should you care about that?

This morning while performing her usual billing reviews, Debbie noted that all VISA payments were being declined. Nothing too odd in that. We get cards declined all the time. However, this was every single card. Like your meaty five toed appendage, something was clearly afoot.

I spoke with Charles as I ran my own card through our system and it was declined. The next step was to process my card directly on Authorize.net’s website. Only the website wouldn’t load. Was it my connection? I get the odd issue like that with my connection. A few weeks back I couldn’t connect to the staff chat room although I have a sneaking suspicion I was actually banned.

What was the quickest way of confirming that the website was down? A Twitter search for ‘Authorize’! Sure enough, there were hundreds of tweets from angry, frustrated and nervous Twitterers all wailing about Authorize.net being down. A few even offered that they had lost power to their data center in Seattle. Like a swarm of angry wasps this information was spread through thousands of Twitter accounts making it easy to find. This was breaking news. Sure, in a few days time Google would link to blog entries like this if you searched for it but I wanted to know what was happening right now.

Now, this is where web savvy companies sign up to Twitter and start tweeting status updates. All of Authorize.net’s national call centers are bogged down with thousands of recession-hit merchants weeping into their handsets as their customers visit a competitor with their allegedly declined VISA cards. Surely a few tweets would spread just as quickly and bring reassurance? They do seem to have a Twitter account but at the time of writing it has yet to make a single status update.

There you have it. A perfect example of why live search is the way forward.

And if you’re interested, I just ate a cinnamon and raisin bagel. It was nice.

I’m almost certain that regular readers will have seen that IP.Board 3.0.0 was officially launched alongside our new website.

This single event is the culmination of over a year’s work from a small but incredibly dedicated team. IP.Board 3.0.0 has evolved from the internal roadmap we drew up in 2008 and so much has happened since then both professionally and personally.

I started work on the framework back in February 2008 before my son was born. It seems impossible to think that there was a time where I didn’t have him in my life. I wrote a few prototypes for the framework which evolved over a month or so. The work didn’t really start until May when I got back to work pretty much full time. The pace really picked up when Brandon, Josh and Rikki came onboard and it has been a real team effort since then.

Development really tested us in all areas both externally and internally. We underwent a major transformation in how we communicate as a company that spans two continents and we’ve gone from strength to strength since. A new phone system means that the phone that is on my desk is just an extension from our US number which has paid dividends in the hours I’ve spent on it. A new internal intranet has streamlined pretty much everything else. We have a great system where we can share ideas, files and more importantly write up tasks and milestones.

The real fun began late last year when we revealed a late alpha ‘preview’ board. We had a lot of feedback and continue to do so and we’re incredibly grateful for that. Even though this release is labeled as 3.0.0, it really is much further advanced than that. Thanks to the collaboration between development and community we’ve managed to take out unpopular bits, add in commonly requested bits and streamlined the interface into something most find acceptable. Without this symbiotic process we’d not have such a rounded product, of that I am sure.

Blowing one’s own trumpet is usually frowned upon unless you own a trumpet and know how to play one. But I am incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved. IP.Board 3.0.0 is an excellent product. I make no excuses for such a bold statement. It’s extensible, customizable and you can add in your own stuff without needing to edit a single file. I’ve found the new framework to be very useful in refactoring the subscriptions manager – something I wish to blog about separately soon.
And the new website is just awesome. When Rikki casually slung me a link a while back my jaw hit the desk and it remained there for some time. He nailed it, quite frankly. On reflection, we’d all agree we went too corporate back in 2.2/2.3 when we were trying to put across that we’re a professional outfit and no longer a freebie vendor but now we can relax a bit and show that we’re all about communities; yours and ours.

If you own an IP.Board license then give yourself a pat on the back for making an excellent purchasing decision. It is a very exciting time for us all. We’ve hit our stride and we’re taking no time to rest. We’ve got Brandon’s Community Content System up next along with 3.0.1, the subscriptions manager, MSSQL and a few little things we’re working on in secret.

Michael Jackson died last night.

Whilst I do offer my respects to his family, I’m not here to write about that. I’m writing to reflect on how the online population has responded to this event. As one would suspect it brings out the good in some and the bad in others.

I would never label myself as a fan. I don’t own a single album and neither have I scoured for live tickets. Of course, like most, I’ve heard most of his songs. Like most old enough, I remember seeing the MTV changing Thriller video and being utterly terrified and amazed. He was an icon. He was someone that almost everyone was aware of. His music influenced generations. His videos helped launch MTV and the music video concept. His work and name was constantly drip fed into the public consciousness. A star of unparalleled wattage.

It’s a shame, then, that he transcended fame and became infamous. Rabid media curiosity exposed his eccentricities as ‘wacko’, his beaten and broken mentality as ‘sicko’ and his obsession with his image and surgery filled more tabloid inches than any other single subject. The last few decades were overshadowed by child abuse accusations with people quick to point the finger and label him as a pedophile. This damning judgement from the public and not the gavel of a judge.

It’s a shame, then, that many remember him for his oxygen tents, surgical masks and baby dangling and quickly forget what a talented artist and performer he was. How can any of us know what its like to have lived under the media microscope for so many years? What would that do to any of us?

News channels and websites have this story on repeat and many are using the internet to grieve or to leave tributes and that’s a wonderful thing. In our digital age we have the power to add our own social commentary. Sadly this is not always so positive. It hasn’t taken long for the first batch of ‘jokes’ to start circulating. Apparently some individuals find his death so incredibly hilarious that they can’t resist sharing a pun; to distill his life and work into a sick punchline; to feast on the remains of his career with venom and spite; to sign off his life with a “lol”. How anyone can be so viciously derisive of someone they have never met escapes me completely.

I don’t expect you to shed a tear for his passing but I would appreciate some respect. If not for him, for his family.

Rest in Peace.

As blogged previously, I was impatiently awaiting the release of the 2 DVD set “Heima”; a documentary on their recent free Icelandic tour and their new double CD “Heim / Hvarf” which has a CD containing some re-recorded acoustic tracks and a CD of new recordings (including the hard to find Salka).

The re-recorded “Von” (originally on their debut album ‘Von’) is nothing short of stunning. The longer intro features Amiina (the string quartet that record and tour with Sigur Ros) at their most beautiful. Likewise the re-recorded “Hafsól” (again, originally from ‘Von’) fares much better now the band have matured.

The real gem is the DVD. The first DVD ‘Heima’ covers their recent tour along with interviews with the band. Their music set to the frighteningly stunning Icelandic landscape is quite moving.

For such a huge band with such a devoted following, they are incredibly down to earth. Jonsi, Georg, Kjarri and Orri all seem bemused by their popularity and seem happiest playing beaten up equipment in threadbare tatty sweaters.

In a world where bling is king and children aspire to be a saggy panted hip hop stars showing off their houses and cars to MTV, it’s refreshing to see four friends creating such beautiful music for the villages and hamlets in their own country.

I’ll save a more verbose review for a later blog entry, but I wanted to get some information ‘out there’.

First off, the new metallic look is pretty nifty. It gives a nice “new” feel to the standard menus and toolbars. The new ‘Coverflow’ is very nice, too. It provides a quick and easy way to scroll through your files to find what you’re looking for.

The new 3D dock is pretty to look at but it’s very hard to see which applications you have running. All you have is a tiny little white arrow (or is it a ball?) underneath the running application.

“Stacks” are fun to play with. I dragged my Application folder into the dock to create a ‘stack’. Handy to launch applications without rooting through finder. I can probably remove a lot of infrequently used applications from my dock, now.

Time Machine is very fancy to look at but it has limited usefulness to me. Most of my daily work is web based and versioned using SVN. This makes Time Machine pretty much redundant for day to day work. I also use iBackup to archive my photos and music daily which takes up much less space. For this reason alone, I’ll most likely turn Time Machine off. The two hour backup is slightly distracting when it runs, also.

I’ve not played much with ‘Spaces’ as I have a two monitor set-up but I can see this being very useful for my MacBook.

As with any new OS X release, there are a few teething troubles with existing OS X applications.

The first is with Adium. MSN wouldn’t connect this morning. This post fixed it.

You have to do some jiggery-pokery to get PHP and MySQL running. I usually use the excellent Entropy packages but these don’t work yet with 10.5. You can get the OS X version of PHP running using this post, but it is a bare-bones installation without GD, etc.

I received a warning message when I launched mail about the plugin ‘SpamSieve’ being disabled. If you use this plugin, then read this to get it working again.

So far, so good…

Debbie and I have known since the end of June that we’re pregnant. We wanted to keep it pretty much to ourselves until we had our 12 week scan and told all our family.

We had decided very recently to start a family after years of ‘thinking’ about it. I’ll spare you the graphic detail but we didn’t have to wait too long for a positive pregnancy test.

It’s been a bit of a bumpy road so far which a lot of stress and a lot of worry but we both hope that’s behind us and we can look forward to March when our baby is due.

We’ve both been keeping blogs of the experience so that we have a true record of our adventure. Feel free to read them, although you should note that they are a very personal experience and full of things like feelings and emotion. We’ll continue to update them as we go.

My blog…
Debbie’s blog…

Here’s our 12 week scan picture, showing our little baby ‘Flump’ at 11 weeks and 2 days.

We’re both excited and words cannot describe what it feels like to have created a life.

I’m a huge Sigur Ros fan.

They’re releasing some new material over the next few months. A compilation album featuring some previously unrecorded songs (including the beautiful Salka) is due out in November and the band have a website up for their ‘Heima’ project which is a DVD of their recent Icelandic tour.

They’ve released a trailer for this which showcases a song that I’m not familiar with. If the hairs on your neck don’t stand up during the key change at around 3:00 minutes then you must have just had it waxed.

The website is already up.