Watch your Language: Andrew Marr interviews Theresa May

Minor rant alert!

In this interview Andrew Marr makes the point of “language is important” when discussing how immigrants are referred to by those in government and/or parliament. He later then seems to forget this point when Theresa May makes 2 statements. Both of which seem to be in the standard MP playbook whenever discussing Brexit. Those statements were, (4:15) “the majority voted for that” and “the democratic will of the people”. When it comes to language being important I find these phrases somewhat triggering. Perhaps I’m alone?! Here’s why:

The majority of the people in the UK - those who are registered and have a right to vote on such issues - did NOT vote to Leave the EU. 

The instinctive reaction to this statement may leave many angry, frustrated, confused, agreeing or all of these plus more besides. However, let me explain why this is true. For reference, see the Electoral Commission for the numbers but you’ll clearly see that of those who turned out to vote the majority of those voted to Leave the EU. Plain as day. However, the problem I have with the language in this interview is the inference that this represents the will of the 46,500,001 people at that time in the UK that were able to vote i.e. the electorate.

Only 33,551,983 of voters cast their ballot. 12,948,018 of voters didn’t. Of course, it is their democratic right to choose not to vote but to infer that they were represented - as the phrases “the majority voted for that” and “the democratic will of the people” seek to do - is an insult and a perfect example of how non-democratic this so call “democracy” is; not to mention how broken voting is in the UK.

Fascism is taking over the UK and the Unions are the defence

The rise of fascism in the UK has been an alarming development in recent years. The far-right, nationalist and anti-immigration political movement has grown in popularity, supported by an increasingly vocal online presence. This has had a damaging impact on workers’ rights and the quality of life for many in the UK.

Fascism has impacted the UK labour market in several ways. It has led to an increase in exploitative employment practices, such as zero-hours contracts and unpaid internships, which disproportionately affect vulnerable workers. It has also led to an increase in hate speech and discrimination against minority groups in the workplace, creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity.

Furthermore, fascism has been linked to the decline of union representation in the UK. Unions are essential for defending workers’ rights and setting the standards for wages and working conditions. However, the far-right’s hostility to unions has undermined their ability to protect workers from exploitation and unfair treatment.

The rise of fascism in the UK has had a significant negative impact on workers’ rights and quality of life. It has led to an increase in exploitative employment practices, hate speech and discrimination, as well as a decline in union representation. It is therefore essential that workers remain vigilant and fight back against the far-right’s attempts to undermine their rights.

The strikes are a last resort defensive move. Support the Unions and don’t allow the fascism movement to grow any further erode what good still remains in the UK.

Find out more: https://wesayenough.co.uk/

Living with Inbox by Gmail

Day 1

So far Inbox has enabled me in getting my email in order. Initial thing of note are the brilliant snooze feature. This has allowed me to snooze an email about an order from Amazon that was delivered to work but I forgot to take home. I snoozed it until I got to work, yes, you're able to snooze by location which is an immensely useful feature and seemingly works perfectly - I now have the order I forgot yesterday, sat on my desk ready to take home, brilliant!

Inbox makes it easier to get emails out of your face either in bulk or individually. I naturally found myself compelled to click the tick that archives the email - this isn't as easy in Gmail since you have to have opened the email first or select it from...yawn! Click the tick and you're done.

I particularly like the way that the web app is a single page app. There's no opening emails and being taken to a different page - the email just expands in the window you're in, taking full advantage of the full width app. That's right folks, there no pesky permanent side bars taking up valuable space.

Which leads me on to the design. Obviously inspired by Google's new Material Design guidelines it's an immensely clean interface with pop-out menu's when you need them. Clean, simple and user-friendly.

So, that's day one. So far, I like it. More to come...

Problem streaming DLNA content on XBOX ONE?

After owning an XBOX 360 for many years I've grown quite fond of the interface and the platform Microsoft has built in XBOX Live. My XBOX plays a huge part in our family's entertainment and with all the features XBOX ONE brings to the table I went ahead and ordered the Day One Edition.

One of the most common features we take advantage of is streaming DLNA content from our home server. Yes the method of accessing that content has changed somewhat with XBOX ONE but personally I prefer it. The Nexus 7 is a great companion device! Recently we encountered a problem streaming this content and for whatever reason the XBOX disappeared from the list of available receivers. I scratch my head over this issue for a day or so - it was shutdown and restarted a number of times to no avail, or so I thought. I'd totally forgotten that I'd set the XBOX up to sleep - to enable the 'XBOX On' voice command. This prevents the XBOX for shutting down completely and thus doesn't fully close down any applications, including XBOX Video, which is used to play the DLNA content.

I wanted to document my experience with the possibility of helping someone with the solution. Given the situation explained above, to solve this issue turn the XBOX off and disconnect the power. Once reconnected turn the XBOX back and you see it run through the full boot-up routine. This will confirm to you that the XBOX and all application would have been shut down fully.

When you attempt to stream DLNA content again, all being well it should work normally. Good luck!

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any damage or further problems that may occur as a result of performing the actions explained in this post. Actions taken with your property are your own responsibility. That said, I hope the information provided helps!

Clickable links in your Twitter feed

I recently had a request from a client asking to make the links in their Twitter feed clickable. Now for many developers the first thing that pops into their mind is something like:

"Oh, you're gonna need regex for that..."

Judging by my research on the subject it seems many developers have indeed taken that approach. However, as many will know regex is a pain to maintain - not to mention time consuming to create in the first place. There's usually a performance hit associated to regex too.

The solution? Handily Twitter has this concept of 'Entities' which groups URLs, Hashtags and other such things together. In this post it's URLs we're interested in so I'll stick with that but the code can easily be extended to serve up Hashtags as hyperlinks too.

When you request a feed from Twitter the data you receive contains all sorts of information about each post. Right from the post itself to who replied/retweeted. Within the detail of the tweet you'll find a section containing 'Entities' - as mentioned above, you'll find all the URL's posted in the tweets text. Now here's the really useful part, Twitter also provide the character position within the text where the URL begins and ends - handy, eh? So this is what I used to wrap the URLs in <a> tags and here's my code...

Usage

Note that this is a PHP function but the concept could be converted to any language. If you need help feel free to comment and I'll see what I can do.

Pop this function into your class (maybe called Twitter). Once in place modify the function that obtains your feed and pass the json decoded array to this function, simply:

Twitter::_applyEntities($feed);

Note the function doesn't return anything as you're passing the array by reference. In effect the _applyEntities() function is a modifier/decorator function so there's no need to catch its result. Also, if either the feed is empty or no URLs are found the feed won't be altered in any way.

Final Notes

If you convert my code or use a similar method in a different language please post a comment and I'd be happy to add your Gist to this post - share the wealth!

Competency based interview techniques

Recently I've been invited for interview with a number of prospective employers. I always find interviews highly stressful to the point where once the interview is over I end up with a severe head-ache. However, in preparation for my most recent interview I adopted a method called the STAR technique.

Rather than repeat what can be found on the internet in the matter of seconds I urge you to check this link out: http://www.interview-skills.co.uk/competency-based-interviews-STAR.aspx

Briefly, it helps you break down your example to a particular question (see here for what a competency based interview is: http://www.wikijob.co.uk/wiki/competency-based-interview) into meaningful categories. These categories, in turn, help you structure your reply and give a more rounded answer.

After the actual interview I still felt a little groggy but no head ache! Hoora! Honestly, though, it made me feel more confident in the interview and I now feel I gave the best I could. At your next interview, why not give it a go - maybe it would work in non-competency based interviews too!

Oh, and of course, GOOD LUCK!

Just one reason why I don't like/use Facebook!

It is extremely rare I even look at Facebook, let alone share or just use it. Yes, I have an account and it does have a fair amount of content on it from my University days. Now, it's a site I rarely frequent.

My girlfriend on the other hand likes to pop the odd photo up there and generally peruse her friends comments and make the odd comment herself. Like this past weekend, for example, our cat was making a humorous pose so she decided to take a photo and post it on Facebook.

As you're probably aware Facebook has a little feature akin to Google+'s re-post feature and Twitters retweet feature - called share. Aptly named, it allows someone who can see your post to share said post on their 'wall'. When someone took advantage of this feature and shared the photo of our cat it got me to thinking:

"Hang on! What if your privacy settings stipulate that you only want your friends to have access to your content?"

I conducted a little research, as my girlfriends privacy settings DO stipulate that only her friends can see her content. There appears to be no way to control if anyone can share your content like there is on Google+. Google+ gives you the option to 'lock' posts to prevent anyone from passing your content on. So, if someone was to see her content and either 'like' it, 'share' it or anything else possible to have said content feature on their 'wall' those privacy setting become null and void, totally useless, pointless, FAKE!

It seems Facebook have a very different opinion on what the word privacy actually means or they've had their ass kicked and decided to implement a half assed solution. My advice is, if you want to share something with your friends and still maintain control over your property - invite them round for a drink or dinner, then show them. Don't use something like Facebook!