Some women deal with loss by hitting the hairdressers, what does a girl geek mourning the exit of her country from a football tournament do? Migrate a domain. As the great philosopher Doris Day once said “Que sera sera”. OK I left scottishlass.co.uk as the last domain to move over to the VPS. I held off doing it sooner because I could see a few hits from people looking for the Runrig Loch Lomond link and had landed on this blog. If you can read this then you should be getting served by the American VPS host. Next step close the old hosting account…and make sure they cancel the recurring billing. The whole move’s gone amazingly smoothly so far, suspiciously so. Just a few cron jobs to set up for RSS gubbins.
Comfort geeking…
November 17th, 2007
Scotland vs. Italy. Good luck Scotland!
November 17th, 2007Scotland will be a nervous wreck tonight. The whole country will be chewing its fingernails. To recap, Scotland *have* to beat Italy at home at Hampden to qualify for Euro 2008. Don’t bother phoning anyone in Scotland between 5 and 7pm – the country will be at a standstill.
Good luck Scotland! After the draw was announced no one would have given us a prayer of still being in contention at this stage so many thanks to Walter Smith for turning the team around and current manager Alex Mcleish for keeping us in with a chance. Alex has handled the whole media side of this campaign brilliantly.
We have some of the best football fans in the world in the shape of the Tartan Army they’ve been exceptional. Let’s hope the team gives the fans the chance to follow them to the bigger Euro stage.
UPDATE Scotland 1 Italy 2. Alas not to be but by Christ we gave it a go
Buy Loch Lomond by Runrig and Tartan Army for Children in Need
November 16th, 2007Come on all you Scotland fans, put the swirling saltires down for a few seconds and go to the iTunes store and buy the special Loch Lomond (Hampen Remix) EP. Rousing rendition of Runrig’s finest backed up by the silver tonsils of Scotland’s own Tartan Army – recorded at Hampden during the Ukraine match.
The direct iTunes link is
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=268083976&s=143444
Busy *doing*, gonny be movin
November 13th, 2007Just a note to self and subscribers that I’m in the middle of faffing around with my portfolio of domain names, nameserver changes and moving all sorts of ancient shite between servers across the globe. UK visitors may find things a wee bit slower when it all settles down as I’m abandoning my UK hosts. Plan to do most of the donkey work this week/weekend so disruption may occur. If it all ends up looking as it does now then everything’s working well – the lousy design is, cough, ‘normal’ 
Glasgow Airport terrorist attack
June 30th, 2007A relative commented earlier today that there were traffic jams …turns out this was related to vehicles being diverted due to an apparent terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport where men in a car tried to ram through the customer entrance of the terminal, the car was on fire at the time.
Raw footage from Glasgow Airport Terror Attack (contains audio) [liveleak.com]
Thank God: No one killed. This looks like a pretty clumsy attempt at terrorism or even the plot of a lousy Hollywood action film, even so it could have been much, much worse. Thankfully there’s no loss of life a pundit reckons if the propane devices had exploded inside the terminal there could have been deaths into the hundreds. This should have been one of the busiest weekends of the year at Glasgow Airport as local schools have just finished for their holidays so many family holidays would be commencing. With the recent activity around the investigations into the Lockerbie bombings it brings terrorism to Scotland once again. Talk about a baptism of fire for new leaders Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown.
Thanks to:
- The bravery of Strathclyde Police who were on the scene immediately and apprehended the suspects. Following a press conference they released a Strathclyde Police statement with details of a phone number for witnesses.
- The Scottish “have-a-go” heros like Stephen Clarkson who along with others helped knock one of the men to the ground when he was resisting arrest. watched United 93 for the first time a few days ago, very good,moving and thought-provoking, what would you do in a terror situation? I’m proud that folk intervened.
- The courage of the Strathclyde Fire and Rescue again on the scene promptly and tackling an unknown situation where further incendiary devices/explosives might be present.
- Medical staff at Royal Alexandra Hospital treating a suspect for serious burns – it was feared that he had a suicide belt in his possession when he arrived! (Update: suspect device later found to not be explosive)
- Mohammad Sarwar who is already making moves to quell racial tensions in relation to this incident. Race relations in Glasgow have been uneasy in recent years, the last thing we need is any reprisals by numpties.
One of the stranger aspects has been the relative lack of news coverage on the main UK TV channels BBC1 and ITV1 other than normal bulletins. Both stayed with their normal evening programming with the exception of the sensible postponing of latenight screening of the “Die Hard 4″ premier. There was of course rolling non-stop coverage on BBC 24 but that’s not much use if you don’t know something has happened to warrant switching! I can’t help but thinking that in the days before 24hr news channels the BBC would have broken into normal shows and gone to the newsroom for a substantial time instead. I’m sure there’ll be a large number of British people who only watched their normal evening entertainment in blissful ignorance who will be shocked tomorrow morning picking up their Sunday papers.
SNP Win in Scottish Parliament Elections. Is hell freezing over somewhere?
May 4th, 2007Just had to look out the window to see if there were any pigs flying. Little did I guess that when I sat down to watch the start of the election coverage that I would be awake for over 30 hours now. I tried to sleep but I was just too excited. This one came right down to the last regional vote announced. If I had a heart condition I think I would have been carted away with a coronary by now. I’m pretty stunned by the result. Putting all the ghastly spoiled ballot problems to the side for a moment. Labour lose an election…in Scotland? Jesus. I have to be honest I didn’t think the Nats were going to pull it off. It’s going to take a while to get used to. But who’s going to form our government – that’s still from certain. I think if I was Annabel Goldie of the Conservatives I would be chuckling with glee – they quietly beat the LibDems, noone was expecting that but she’d already said her party wasn’t up for coalition so if parties want Conservative support they’re going to have to say their pleases and thankyous. Sad though to see the smaller parties and independents squeezed out by the SNP/Lab fight. It’s like spinning a roulette wheel, no body know where it’ll stop.
Annoyances trying to get official regional vote counts – think the web editors have buggered off from the council sites Aberdeen City/Highland and Lothian – they’re probably on one hell of an overtime bonus so still some details of names to fill in at Election Scotland.
I’m away to crash out. Tell me I’m not dreaming all this?
Scottish Parliament Election Results – spoiled ballots
May 4th, 2007Story of the night, drama, but not quite what we were hoping for. Very high spoiled ballots and as dawn breaks…so do the electronic systems used to manage the results. Some shocks that the number of spoiled papers in some seats has been bigger than the majority of the win. Real concerns about whether people have been disenfranchised. Personally I also wonder what role literacy played in the chaos, it was a new system, people had to read a set of instructions on the paper. As any geek will tell you, users don’t read instructions, so either people were ignoring them because they didn’t realise anything was different about this election or more worryingly maybe they didn’t have the reading ability to understand what was being asked of them, really high levels of spoiled papers in the most deprived areas like Glasgow Shettleston. (Update: loved Christines: “Bottom of the class” – perspective from a teacher).
Results-wise, it’s not over by a long shot and still too close to call. Most of the Regional results cannot be tallied until all the constituency seats for that region come in. It sounds like most of the spolit papers were *empty* papers being returned, I wonder if people didn’t realise that inspite of the colour difference the parliament ballot papers constituted two different votes, people might have say filled in two boxes on one side of the paper closest matching their intentions and thought they were finished so didn’t need to look at the other side. Also claims of postal ballots not being received and problems consolidating results between the data centres. Representatives of the voting equipment were adamant that there was no technical problem recording and counting the votes at the local centres. Morning after the night before and it’s still too close to call. Labour largely held on in it’s central belt heartlands but lost totemic seats like Glasgow Govan. The regional results will be crucial only Glasgow has declared it’s regional vote so far and the small parties on the left imploded like Solidarity/SSP. No more Tommy Sheridan or Rosie Kane & co, it’ll be a less colourful place.
Scottish Parliament Results
May 4th, 2007Ach, I canny stop masel. I’m posting election results over on the Election Scotland, http://www.electionscotland.co.uk/.
Two results in Labour holds but with big reductions in majorities in Labour heartlands, what’s going to happen in the marginals? It’s going to be an interesting night folks.
Scottish Parliament result – Wishaw Labour hold
May 3rd, 2007Ist result – Jack McConnell Labour hold Wishaw constituency.
Totals: Lab 1, Con 0, LD 0, SNP 0
Scottish Parliament Elections 2007
May 3rd, 2007Now the polling stations are closed and the counting should begin in the 2007 Scottish Parliament Elections. I toyed with doing an election night results site but the usual sources of official data haven’t been there this time around so it will be a retrospective analysis instead. Point is it looks like one of the genuinely closest elections in Scotland for over half a century and for the first time in ages there’s a chance that the Labour Party will not be have the largest share of seats in Scotland’s elected govenment. Latest estimates I saw were that the SNP were about 5 points ahead which would give them the lead – but only by a tiny number of seats.
Much to add to the confusion is that this time there were *two* votes taken today Scottish Parliament and Scottish Councils (Local Authorities). Even more so is that there were *three* completely different voting systems being used on the same day. First past the post for parliament constituency seats, Additional Member System for the regional list MSPs and STV for the council vote. I have a great deal of difficulty believing that this is in the best interests of the electorate. Standing in line at the polling station we were fortunate that the two polling station staff took the time to explain the differences to every single person individually so maybe that’s partly to explain why for the first time I can remember I had to queue before getting my ballot papers. A pensioner in front of me looked appreciative at the explanation but still frowned in puzzlement. It’s not good if people are only finding out at the last minute the time of voting. This election has had by far the greatest media attention I can remember in the last couple of decades. For at least a month before polling day there were items every day in radio/TV, opinion polls closely scrutinised by the press, the unfamiliar territory of Labour fighting from behind has added a frisson of excitement. I’m the kind of wierdo that finds election nights exciting anyway but the results this time will be especially intriguing.
Anecdotally one pensioner relative voted for the same party on all three ballots constituency, regional list and council…by adding a single cross…however the council election was uhnder the Single Transferable Vote system where you’re supposed to add numbers next to the candidates names in order of preference 1,2,3 etc. – so will her council vote be a spoilt vote? A steady stream of older folk turning out to vote – is that good news for Labour (old-timers less likely to jump ship to new parties)
Another informal canvassing of younger folk of around 4 twenty-somethings their main votes seemed to be scattered among Labour,LibDems and the Green party…bad news for SNP both now and longer term if the youth aren’t warming to their platform.
Disappointments -
- considering how much electronic communications have advanced in recent years I’m pretty startled that they’re not being used more effectively by officialdom, the parties and media have made a much better job of this. I asked the Electoral Commission if they had an official list of candidates – they said sorry no but pointed me to the BBC website! I *really* don’t want the UK to go down the American route of media companies being the only easily accessible information service. What I was really keen to see was who my candidates were in my council election – I couldn’t find this before I went to vote so seeing the ballot paper was the first time I knew who I might be voting for. Yes there were ‘election communications’ but it was mostly the larger parties that took advantage of that leaving the smaller parties/independents less well documented.
- Local authority websites. I give them alot of kudos for mostly having election pages with council/other info reasonably well signposted on their sites (there are a few exceptions) but what I find difficult is the inconsistency with which details are reported between authorities. Some plain HTML others PDF, some list full details of candidates others just a name and party. Surely there should a common set of fields of data,formats that are mandatorily released?
- Talking of STV. Shockaroony. Scottish Television having had great and more light-hearted coverage in the run up to the election aren’t going to be providing any actual results service on the night other than in news bulletins leaving the field clear for BBC Scotland to be the sole analysis and results service as the results come in. Again this doesn’t seem healthy. Not that I have anything against the BBC it’s just again the principle of only having one source of information/presentation, there are subtle biases in each, a plurality helps balance these out.