Jed (10) has been experimenting with stop frame animation using my old still camera. Most of his movies so far have been short and sweet, and totally barmy. With the girls at the ballet, I took the chance to steer him into telling a story, but in the end much of my input was confined to developing cargo cult behaviors to keep the truculent Windows Movie Maker gods happy. Happy Christmas!

Update: YouTube seems to be up the spout, so flipped to Google Video.

Marc tagged me. So here are 5 interesting, but little known things about me:

1. My grandfather completed an apprenticeship as a boat builder but could only find work as an itinerant coal trimmer. He and my grandmother lived in a house without a fridge, inside toilet or bathroom, washing in a tin bath filled using saucepans in front of the fire. On the odd occasion I think I might not be enjoying my occupation I only have to think at least I didn’t have to line up for the promise of a day inside a boat, up to my waist in coal, shoveling. He died when I was 8 of pneumoconiosis.
2. I’ve never met my father, or indeed the man who was married to my mother for 10 years. For all I know they may or may not be the same person. This has never bothered me, but now I have children of my own, questions are being asked.
3. My nickname at school was “Meat” and then later “Errol” and friends from those days still call me “E” and address my mother as “Mrs E”. The lack of any really obvious reason behind these names tell you more about my school friends than my physicality.
4. I knew I was onto something with my wife when we put our TinTin books on the same shelf and realised together we had a complete collection, the only duplicates being the same book in different languages.
5. I never feel at all festive until I see or hear a A Christmas Carol during which I’ll suffer from extreme and involuntary lacrimation. Last night we took the kids to see a cheesy production in a tiny hall which involved audience participation. Not quite Legs Akimbo, but you get the idea. I blubbed like a newborn when Scrouge ordered the turkey.

Now the tricky part. As much as I love a good meme, this one does feel a little like a chain letter. On the other hand it was fun to write and could be interesting to study later. So with little thought, absolutely no expectation especially given the time of year, but with the aim of spreading the meme more widely, I’ll tag Jonathan, Hugo, Danny, Otu and the amazing JP Rangaswami (go read his blog!).

Technorati Tags: meme, Five Things Meme

My blog seems to be under a heavy comment SPAM attack clocking up lots of CPU, and I suspect as a result 1and1 has decided to periodically serve an alternative page containing the single line CGI-limits reached, please try again later! and a 200 OK HTTP response. Yes, they think that’s ‘OK’! As a result Google’s cache no longer has my real content, and I’m looking for an alternative host. Update: Yesterday this blog received over 3000 comment SPAMs, all trapped by SPAM Karma2, however 1and1 still continue to periodically inject the 200 OK error messages and don’t see the code as an issue. I’m hoping that moving to a more savvy hosting company will give me more options. See you on the otherside!.

On one level Google deprecating their SOAP Search API is vexing because it means a lot of people will have to change their hacks. On the other hand it’s such an obvious step in the right direction; I’ve never understood why it wasn’t a simple GET of an XML document. It seems that Paul has been proved right at long last. Update: Looking at the alternative AJAX Search API, it requires hosting their Javascript inside a Web page. That’s quite limiting!

Technorati Tags: Google, SOAP, WebServices

Good luck to Jon in his new job at, drum-roll, Microsoft:

The most powerful mashups don’t just mix code and data, they mix cultures. I hope this will be an opportunity for me to do that in a way that benefits everybody.

Sounds seriously cool.

Stefan has written a nice wrap around some questions he asked via Email on the Databinding WG. While you’re there, watch the video of Stefan being interviewed.

Technorati Tags: databinding, Schema, w3c, XML

Fun quiz, poor score (63 after a couple of attempts). My excuse is that maps have changed quite a bit since my day (where’s all the pink gone?). I honestly didn’t know Burma had been called Myanmar since 1989!? What saved me more than once were strange half-remembered names from my childhood stamp collection Hellenic Republic, United Arab Emirates, United States of America ..

Technorati Tags: quiz

I trust the water piped directly to my house, but I’m more careful when it comes to packages which flop through my letterbox. A signed-sealed envelope delivered by a courier boosts my confidence, but helps a lot more if I know who sent it. So whilst WS-Security offers a little more than just TLS, it’s the thought and effort being expended to establish and exchange identity that currently gives WS-* the security edge over REST. It’s great to see that RESTians are starting to at least see the issue, triggered by Pete Lacy and Gunnar Peterson’s great posts. But don’t panic: I suspect the establishment of Trust and exchange of Identities may indeed be answered by SOAP/WSS, only it’ll be baked-hard and packaged into something like CardSpace. That way the slippy stuff won’t prevent us from continuing to use the Web and getting shit done.

Technorati Tags: CardSpace, identity, infocard, REST, Web Services