Alex Muller

Lots of seemingly-different-but-actually-related thoughts coming together these last few weeks. What Gruber said at dConstruct seems to be underlying everything. Spoiler? It all comes down to taste.

Aside: Listen to the talks. All of them.

This email from university today made me think about this more. On top is the email I received, below is how I would have written it.

If you’re going to be given the ‘power’ to email several thousand students with one click, somebody should be ensuring that you have the level of taste required to do that properly. This person does not. Seriously: that’s the entirety of the email she sent. No indication of who she was, why I received it, where it came from (except the from: address). This isn’t rocket science, it’s just that some people clearly have attention to detail approaching zero in some situations.

This is something that’s coming up time and time again for me. It sounds elitist and snobby, but I can’t think of a way around it: in situations where lots of people can affect a single thing*, there needs to be a gatekeeper.

* A thing can be a project, website, brand, or any number of other things.

In this case, her email is affecting the Halifax college or university brand – and not in a good way. YUSU is an organisation who really look like they get this. Everything that I’ve seen come out of there has been beautiful. From their weekly emails, to logos, to building signage and their website. All the way down to whatever rubbish they’ll give out to new students in a few weeks (key rings, calendars, pens, etc). It all looks stunning. This is so important.

Taste, and attention to detail. I’m going to be thinking about them far more than ever before.

These two years I’ve spent at the University of York have been absolutely fantastic, and it’s impossible to overstate how big a part the media societies have played in me having so much fun. I’m working away from university on a placement this year, but before I start in the big and scary world of “real work”, I wanted to write a little about the things I’ve done at York that have totally completed the experience.

Nouse Website, Spring 2009

This was the first time I got involved significantly in something society-based at university, in the second term of my first year. Working with Ali and Mike, under direction and with massive effort from Chris, we recreated and iterated on the theme for Nouse, the student newspaper (if you know what’s right for you). It meant a load of late nights in the office, fixing things up and getting them ready for launch; my favourite tweet of the early morning “office HTML cluster-fuck” (after one such launch) has to go to Henry.

YSTV Video Production & Website, October 2008 – Present

Looking back, over the last two years YSTV is the best thing I’ve done at York. I’ve met so many more people there than I would have anywhere else on campus and I couldn’t be more pleased that I decided to get involved. From being Matthew’s bitch in the very first term (filming footage for the York Sport Show) all the way up to last term, working on the website with more people than I’ll be able to mention. Mark and Simon somehow managed to get me in front of the camera, though I’m not sure how that even came close to happening. Hopefully I’ll be staying involved in the website this year, from about two hundred miles away.

York Students In Schools, January 2009 – May 2009

I’m not sure why I decided to join YSIS, but I’m so glad I did. In the second term I was helping one afternoon a week in a primary school (Dunnington Church of England), and this year I’ve been assisting with ICT at All Saints RC School. All the teaching has been valuable experience, but seeing the ICT curriculum being taught in a real school, to real kids, has made David’s somewhat different approach so much more important. The teaching quality that I saw at All Saints was amazing, but when the syllabus dictates that you need to teach pupils how to print from Microsoft Access and exactly what that obscure button in PowerPoint does, there’s only so far you can go.

Do More Stuff

If there’s one thing that it was important for me to take away from here, it is this: you might not get on with every single person you come across (can you ever?), but there is absolutely no reason you won’t get along with most of them. You might even have fun.

I did a pretty decent job of calling last year’s YUSU election results well in advance of the night (which was fantastic from a YSTV coverage point of view), so I thought I’d give this year a go too.

A Recap

Last year, I said it was between Langrish and Ngwena for President, and Ngwena took it. Student Activities was won by Rhianna Kinchin, so I called that one totally wrong. Democracy & Services was won by Bretts, Charlie won Academic Affairs, Ben grabbed Welfare and Emily got York Sport, so I got those four right. Still, what’s that? ^4½-ish/₆ ain’t bad.

President

This year, there are six candidates for President. We remove the joke candidate, David Hansen (whose two minute hustings video is absolutely superb, by the way), and we’re left with five. David Levene is too boring, Matthew Freckleton is too unknown and Roberto Powell is (in my own honest opinion) too much of a dick.

Down to two, Ollie Hutchings and current President Tim. I reckon it’ll be fairly close between these two, with Tim getting it as student apathy leans toward the incumbent-who-hasn’t-destroyed-our-union.

Student Activities

Of the four candidates, this will go to either Luke or Nick; they’re the two most visible and involved with campus day-to-day. Nick Scarlett will probably just get it. He seems to have had quite a large ‘following’ (well, of sorts) for as long as I can remember.

Democracy & Services

Chris Etheridge is the safe, stable, normal—and boring—choice; but there’s no way he’ll win. As somebody on Nouse commented during hustings:

Dear Chris Etheridge,
Please return my personality forthwith.
Yours,
John Major

So it’s between Sam Daniels and Dan Walker. This will be the closest of the sabbatical candidates, with Sam just edging it.

Academic Affairs

Jason Rose has too much YUSU-goo attached to him (which desperately needs wiping off), and Matt & Elanin are too unknown, so I think current Welfare office Ben Humphrys will get this.

Welfare

Of the three candidates, one (Andrew McIlwraith) has pulled out – or wasn’t running to start with; so we’re down to Laura or Peter Warner-Medley. Pete took part in York Come Dancing last term, and is generally better known, so he’ll get it. He also has the only other hustings video truly worth seeing.

York Sport

Another close one, but I think Sam will take this over Rob. No real reason, just a gut feeling; possibly more charismatic, slightly easier to imagine getting on with it.

…and who do I want? What, me?

I’d like Tim to be President for another year. He knows what goes on properly now, and everybody knows him; so there’ll be no time wasted and he can get the most out of the year for us.

I want Nick Scarlett to win Student Activities for his policies, Dan Walker to win Democracy & Services, any of Elanin, Matt or Ben (preferably) to be Academic Affairs Officer and Peter to be Welfare Officer.

I’d like to leave you with another comment from ‘Ernie Goldberg’ on Nouse, left during the Presidential Debate from this last week. It’s since been removed, but luckily I grabbed a screenshot at the time:

God why don’t you just all stop wasting everyone’s time. Trousers down, let’s see who’s biggest

Voting opens midnight Monday (in about twenty minutes time) and probably closes at some point before the results next Saturday night, for which YSTV will be providing live coverage all night long.

During my first week at uni I posted about how I thought it was really cool that York were considering moving email, calendar and collaboration services to the cloud; EC3.

Tim pointed out on my original post today that the proposal was totally rejected, which is confirmed by the university’s own page:

The recommendation was that cloud computing services should not be taken up as a means of delivering central email, calendaring or instant messaging services for the University. The main factors contributing to this recommendation were concerns around issues of data protection, privacy, security and contractual arrangements.

They dumped it? The March 2009 issue of Keynotes (I’m a bit behind on this news, then) leads with:

The Cloud Computing project which has seen extensive work both within and without the Computing Service, and which has attracted much attention, has now concluded. The Project Team, writing on page 6, give an overview of the reasons to reject the use of cloud computing services at this time, a decision which, judging by the results of the extensive user consultation, will attract both disappointment and relief from amongst our users.

I’m disappointed. But not for me, for everybody else. The vast majority (80, 90%) of my friends use the university’s webmail service to get their email. I’ve posted about it before, and why it sucks. Because it looks like this. It’s 2010, and we’re still dealing with webmail that looks like that? Webmail that shows only fifty messages at a time and doesn’t group conversations? As we know, most users leave the default checkboxes, don’t bother to configure things and don’t dive into options. Sure, you can forward your email to a different, personal, even Gmail account. Do most people? Of course not.

It’s a shame. When I first arrived at York, that flyer gave me hope that things might be different here. I’d grown up in a world where my school used an ancient version of Internet Explorer and blocked access to Google’s Gmail & Microsoft’s Hotmail. But it’s fine, because now I can see this university is just like any, and every, other corporation. Ah well.

Addendum

Tom, last year’s (2008–2009) YUSU President, comments via Twitter:

I was part of that consultation last year. Their reasons are compelling – data protection and research privacy being the big two

That’s good to hear, as I trust Tom’s opinion over that of an IT department that I’ve never met.

Lewis Bretts was elected to the Student Union at the University of York last summer, beating Ed Durkin, Dave Sharp and George Papadofragakis. Recently, the student newspaper has been having issues with his promises. At first glance, this seems like student politics and student journalism mixing and turning a little crazy, as normal. Except, then I had a look at his manifesto.

I’ve generally got a pretty good idea of what’s going on on campus (I read YUSU’s blog, watch most of Lewis’ video blogs, etc), though I obviously don’t know what’s going on inside the Union 24/7. So if I’ve got something wrong, like Lewis I’m “human and fallible”, do let me know.

This post shouldn’t just be taken as having a go at Lewis. I read all the sabbatical officers manifestos after his, and they all offer a fairly similar theme. Come elections this year (a few weeks to go now), I think I’ll be looking for the most sensible candidate with the simplest manifesto.

It strikes me as funny that there’s a huge need to get more people involved in campus at the moment, but we can’t really trust what the only people we have a choice in actually say. Hmm.

Figured it’d be useful to have a list of people actively using Twitter who are somewhat related to the University of York. I’ve never been a great fan of “groups”, so this is my way of getting the information out there.

Groups, Societies and Other Things That Aren’t People

• @yusu: Yep, our student union’s on Twitter. Oh, and they’ve got a shiny new site to go along with the start of the academic year.
• @UniOfYork: The main official account, as far as I can tell. @infocentre, the university information centre, is also on Twitter.
• @ChemistryatYork: In case you happen to be doing… well, Chemistry at York, I guess.
• @ystv: York Student Television, a society at the university.
• @yorknouse: Nouse, the student-run newspaper, and its sister account @nouselive.
• @theyorkeruk: The Yorker, another student media group at the university.

Some People I Like

From the student union: @tfngwena, the student union President for this year, as well as the other account, @yusuprez. And @lewbee, Democracy and Services officer at YUSU this year.

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p>From Computer Science, there’s a whole load of people: @jalada and @x5315, @miketomasello, @amit_sinha, @aJanuary. And from YSTV, @njhowell, @brehonia and @annabucks .

And Finally…

Some people who technically aren’t related to the university any more, but they’re pretty funny. And hey, they used to have lectures and seminars and whatnot…

• @tomscott, last year’s SU President. Mainly because he makes things which somehow all happen to be quite cool.
• @unnamedculprit: I guess he could be described as Tom’s partner in crime. I’m not sure that definition’s accurate, but oh well.
• @pearfalse: See, now I can’t decide where the line between being a university student and not being one is…
• @cnorthwood, technical director for the student newspaper last year.
• @AliceBartlett: a graduate with a job. I feel like I should be surprised that I know a graduate with a job.

If I’ve done this right, everybody most people linked to above should have an unprotected account and be relatively active on Twitter. Most of them will make you laugh, which is just a bonus. Sorry for how spammy-looking this post is, but hopefully it’ll be useful to someone. Don’t think I’ve forgotten anybody, but it wouldn’t surprise me… let me know if I have.

I’m a big fan of making pretty maps, so when I thought up an idea yesterday morning, I had to see it through. For those who weren’t aware, last Thursday was exam results day for loads of kids all over the country, the day they found out where they’d be going to university. More than a few announced this via Twitter (as you do these days, I guess); and as they were copying and pasting from “the results site”, they were fairly easy to find.

So I stitched together a Google map of the UK, and set to work putting the points on a map; it made sense to do it by hand seeing as the sample size wasn’t massive. And here’s the result (click through for a massive version if you really feel like breaking your browser and my Amazon S3 account):

For reference, the blue dots map number of undergraduates against location. Both maps should be scaled sort of properly (there’s the same amount of red as there is blue, if my Maths hasn’t failed me). It was interesting to see how the many more results came from the universities in the middle the country when compared to their size.

And as though that wasn’t enough, I went and made you a Wordle of what subjects people are studying:

Oh, and I don’t claim that any of this is 100% certified guaranteed scientifically accurate™. It was just a fun little project for the day. My messy data’s available as a .csv should you wish to inspect it.

Last night, my redesign of the internal Maths department VLE at the University of York went live. When I started at the department in October last year, it looked a little like this:

Click the image to view it in all its glory. I'm not going to draw your attention to some of the things I've come to love most about it, because frankly it speaks for itself.

As you might expect, looking at that got boring and started to hurt my eyes pretty quickly. In May, I went to see Henning Bostelmann, the guy who looks after all things Maths & website there, and offered to try my hand at creating something. This is what's happened over the last couple of months:

Leaving Henning's office last week, he remarked how there would now be “600 happy users” in the department – thank you, Henning, for your help testing, fixing, testing, updating, and more testing.

I love university; there's so much freedom to do anything and everything to improve departments, societies, colleges, the list goes on. I hope I don't sound too much like a naïve little first year, but I really do think it's the case – here's something which will (hopefully) outlast the time I spend at York, and that means something to me.

The boring interesting stuff: it's a fairly hacky CSS job (so no judging my [lack of] coding skills from here, please), using the gorgeous Silk icons from famfamfam – so many thanks to Mark James for providing his icons free of charge, they're such a great resource. Moodle, the open-source (!!, ♥) learning environment that we're using, is actually impressively easy to mess about with. This seems to be one of those “20% of pages used 80% of the time” situations, so it's nowhere near finished and there's always room for improvement; might do the same thing again next year to just tidy it up.

What follows are a few parts that I'm really happy with…

Rumour (well, the YSTV quotes board) has it that I once said, when asking for confirmation on something television-related: “I have the attention span of a raccoon!” I think I've started to have problems with the tiny length of time I can keep focused on a task…

Something that I've been noticing increasingly lately is that the more “stuff” that gets thrown at me, the more I’ve reduced the amount to which it can bother me. When I started out with a Mac Mini and 4:3 display a couple of years ago, I had Google Notifier set up to make an obscene noise, show me my unread email count and display an overlay with the new message summary. I had system wide notifications set up for IMs, tweets, iTunes changing. In short, my computer was really annoying.

Since then, I've switched off pretty much everything. Tweets appear in the background, and I'll read them if I want. New instant message conversations show a tiny exclamation mark in the menu bar. Google Notifier… well, I actually just quit Google Notifier. I want to see how long I can do without it, but hope this is the start of something productive. Honestly, didn't realise how much all that stuff pained me until I got rid of it, and I don't think I'll be going back.

So consider this a poke for you to do something about your pain-in-the-arse computer; the revelation that the world won't implode if I don't reply to email just hit me, and it feels good.

I've wanted to write this for a while, but have only really felt like doing it today, after the ten of us who are living in this house have been forced to share one tiny toilet for 24 hours (and counting). Since arriving at university last October, I've had a great time – but the accommodation has been a complete headache.

So I got here late last year, just as the weather was starting to take a turn for the worse. After a few weeks, it became obvious my radiator wasn't working – everybody else's in the house was fine, but mine never got hot. I reported it to the porters lodge once (as we were told to), and somebody came a few days later (when I was out, though my housemate saw them). Apparently they did nothing though (it still didn't work), so I reported it again. Nobody came this time. It was left until I got hold of a radiator key, on the advice of my dad, and bled it myself. Full of air.

Since January, I can't keep track of the number of things that have gone wrong. We lost power on the top floor for a day (it was a fuse, but of course health and safety meant we were told not to touch it). The doorbell didn't work for about two weeks. The microwave was removed and we were left without one for about a week. The part I find funniest about that is that we're not allowed our own microwaves because they might catch fire, but we were apparently running that risk with the one we were given anyway. With all these things, we report them just like we're told to – and nothing ever gets done.

I don't have experience with university accommodation in general, but I do know other people at York – and I know that none of them have had problems like the ones we've come across. Sure, Vanbrugh has its pigeons and Eden's Court has its damp… but this has been continually going on for seven months.

To quote a college porter yesterday “the whole place is falling apart.” He's not wrong. We're waiting for somebody to come and fix the stupid loo. So here's what you need to know: don't let this put you off the university if you're considering coming but, for your own sake, do everything you can to avoid Halifax College in your first year. It's not worth it. I can't be alone in thinking that it's pretty ridiculous we've paid quite a bit of money for this place, and nobody seems to give a crap.

It's midday on Thursday the 28th, and we're back to sharing two toilets between ten people. Life is good better again!