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February 18, 2006

Falling 190ft

On March 12th 2006, I'll be falling 190ft off the tallest building on the University of Nottingham campus, held up only by a couple of piddly bits of rope. I believe this is normally called "abseiling". Cancer Research UK are organising the event, and, inevitably, I'm collecting sponsorship money for them. CRUK have asked that I try to raise at least £75, and I'm already over halfway to this target. If I raise £250, I'll get a voucher for a free helicopter ride, although to be honest I'm not keen to use it — if it's possible, I might auction off the voucher on ebay and give the proceeds of that to CRUK, or something.

No donation is too big or too small! If you'd like to sponsor me, (and assuming you won't see me in person at some point), the best thing to do at this point is to email me. I'll need to know your name, address, postcode, the amount you wish to sponsor me, and whether or not you are a UK taxpayer — if you are, CRUK can get a further 28% on top of what you sponsor me, courtesy of the government's Gift Aid scheme (assuming you're happy for them to do so).

My most generous sponsor so far has pledged over £30. Thanks, Carl!

Posted by James at 13:55 | Comments (0)
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Purely selfish point of view

You should all go and sign the Petition for Public Access to Geographic Data in Europe. I won't even try explaining why, because Jo Walsh has done a better job of it already on the openstreetmap mailing list.

From a purely selfish point of view, of course, better access to free geodata in Europe would make running The Open Guide to Nottingham both easier and more useful, since at the moment three different types of data need to be entered independently for a given location, even though the data to calculate all 3 from just 1 is out there — the 3 types being postcode, address and co-ordinates.

Posted by James at 12:32 | Comments (0)
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February 16, 2006

Many ways to determine richness

Everybody knows that Chelsea are the richest club in English football today, right?

Obviously there are many ways to determine richness, but according to this one, they're not.

Posted by James at 17:09 | Comments (2)
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Discover new bands

Recommendation systems are all the rage these days. Last.fm has been particularly successful, and, at least in theory, lots of people use it to discover new bands they didn't know they'd like. Frankly, I've never really had much joy with it, perhaps because I'm not willing to splash out on a CD by a band some website thinks I might like. So what to do instead? Simple. Go to gigs, listen to the support acts, and observe what bands are mentioned on the t-shirts of other people around you.

Three bands I quite like, I would never have discovered except through this method, I'm sure -- the Wildhearts, the Yo-Yos and the Editors.

I don't have good alternatives to the Amazon or LOVEFiLM recommendations yet though. Suggestions welcome! :)

Posted by James at 16:08 | Comments (2)
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