Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

I noticed this optical illusion when I was siting in Druckers in Birmingham’s Bullring. I was looking at it absent-mindedly for a while before I spotted it.

Directly outside the window, which looks out over the pedestrian area and down towards St Martin’s Church, are wrought metal railings. Their bars are squared rather than rounded, giving them a flat edge.

Gradually, as I gazed out of the window, I became aware that I was apparently looking straight through these solid metal bars: through them, not between them. As people walked by outside, it seemed I could see them walking behind the flat, rigid metal.

A view from Druckers. If you look carefully you can see 'through' the metal bars.

My guess is that the glass of the window reflected the scene outside onto the metal.

I assume that as the proximity of the two was so close, and given the angle of my gaze, the reflection was such that the resulting image was seamless.

Another view from Druckers.

The illusion vanished if I moved my head, and could only be seen through those bars in the photograph (ie those directly in my line of vision).

Which means, presumably, that I would not have seen it had I not sat in that exact location and in that exact position.

Ramblings

I am very sorry to have had to cancel my cookie law event in Birmingham. Please accept some links as compensation.

The cancellation is a big disappointment. The key speakers could no longer make it so we tried to find someone else at short notice to give a neutral, authoritative overview of the legal situation. Sadly, without success.

And I know, from bitter experience, that clear information about this law is hard to find.

So I’ve pulled together some key documents, which I hope will help you to make sense of the situation.

Guidance on the use of cookies

• Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO; the enforcing authority)
  • Guidance on the rules on use of cookies and similar technologies
• International Chamber of Commerce UK
  • ICC UK Cookie Guide

Enforcement

• Enforcing the revised Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) [ICO]

About cookies

• Understanding cookies
• Identifying the cookies your website sets
• AllAboutCookies.org

Implementing an opt-in solution

I hope these are useful.

PS: If you signed up for the seminar you should have received an email, very similar to this blog post, a couple of days ago.

Communications

The good folk at civicuk have built a free tool that takes all the sweat out of complying with the cookie regulations.

Cookie Control creates an opt-in for your visitors that is clear, uncluttered and unobtrusive.

You can tell it whether to pop up when the page is loaded, how long to pop up for, where to position it, and what you’d like it to say.

All you need to do is tell it the text you want, the link to your cookie policy and whether to include Google Analytics in the opt-in process.

That last bit alone is very neat, as it means you have control over the thorny issue of Google Analytics.

Analytics cookies are not exempt from the law, but the Information Commissioner’s Office says it is ‘highly unlikely’ that such cookies will be used to prioritise enforcement.

Therefore we have to decide ourselves whether setting analytics cookies is likely to get us into hot water.

Just remember that the cookie guidelines are not as black and white as some might like (I’ve collated links to some of the key documents).

Indeed, Cookie Control’s refreshingly user-friendly terms and conditions warn us that the developers are not lawyers, and that we must use this tool at our own discretion.

Cookie Control is free, very quick and simple, and can be used for as many websites as you like.

Communications

There has been a flurry of people telling us that we need to react to the change in cookie law, and that we must audit our cookies first. That’s all very well, but how? How do we find out what cookies our websites are setting?

Here I give some ways of finding that out. I’ve done it for three Windows browsers (the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome). It’s imperfect because in other tools I was given slightly different results (this may be to do with caching, I don’t know), but it’s a start.

Internet Explorer 9

1. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
2. Press F12, or click Tools > F12 developer tools. The screen should split in two.
3. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Cache > View cookie information.
4. In the main browser window you should now see a list of those cookies that are set by that site. You don’t get as much information as you do in other browsers, but it’s a good start.

Chrome

1. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
2. Click CTRL + SHIFT + I, or click the spanner icon then select Tools > Developer tools. The screen should split in two.
3. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Resources.
4. Expand the ‘Cookies’ menu and click on the domain name of the site you want cookies for.
5. You should see a table of all the cookies being set by that website, including the domains they’re being set from (ie which are set directly and which are set by third parties).

Firefox

I offer you two possible routes for Firefox. The first requires the Web Developer extension, the second requires the Firebug  and Firecookie extensions.

Web Developer extension

1. Install the Web Developer extension.
2. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
3. Click ‘Cookies’ in the Web Developer toolbar, or go to Tools > Web Developer > Cookies > View cookie information tools. The screen should split in two.
4. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Resources.
5. You should now see a list of those cookies that are set by this site, similar to that shown by IE 9. You don’t get as much information as you do using Firebug (see below), but it’s a good start.

Firebug extension

1. Install the Firebug extension.
2. Install the Firecookie extension.
3. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
4. Press F12. The screen should split in two.
5. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Cookies.
6. You should now see a table of those cookies that are set by this page only.
7. However, you can export all the site cookies as a tab-delimited text file by clicking the ‘Cookies’ drop-down in the sub-menu.

Communications

I’m curious: has a piece of music ever made you laugh? Out loud?

Certainly music can suggest humour – and is often used to that effect in plays and films – but can it be funny for the sake of it?

Music certainly elicits emotions: it can excite us and soothe us, make us feel optimistic or dismal.

But can a piece of music, devoid of context, make us laugh? That is, with no title, lyrics, description, external narrative or accompanying visual (eg performers, actors, pictures).

I’m intrigued, because I can’t think of examples of where I have laughed at a piece of music for its own sake.

Have you? And, if so, what music was it? I’d be interested to hear.

Ramblings

Slowly, I’m realising that my online reputation flowchart has been quite valuable to some people. I made it in my spare time and released it to the world for free, but I didn’t think to ask for feedback.

So, it would be really good to know how it has helped people (not least because I’m talking at the Bath Digital Festival next Wednesday about quick digital wins (and I’m bricking myself)).

Maybe it guides your responses to a hostile website, or serves as a reassurance to managers that are nervous of engaging online. Or maybe something else entirely.

However it’s helped, I’d love to hear about it and share your stories. And you may remain anonymous if you wish.

Either leave a comment here or use the form below.

Ramblings

It’s a bit ambitious, but I thought it would be fun to try and get stories from forty people who turn forty this year.

I had wondered about threading them together, like Arabian Nights; I might still do that, at the end, but let’s keep it simple for now.

So, the theme is simply ‘1972’.

The stories will be presented online in some way and will all go live at the same time (hopefully sometime before the end of 2012 else we miss the point).

The story can be about anything you like, fact or fiction. There are just three rules:

1. You must turn forty in 2012;
2. Your story must have some connection to the year 1972;
3. Try to keep your story relatively clean and inoffensive.

Fancy joining in? Please register your interest below. If enough people are interested, I’ll go ahead with it.

Ramblings

Three years ago I made a flowchart to help people manage their response to how others talk about them online. It was well received, which was a nice surprise.

It was a re-working of an existing flowchart, and in trying to simplify the language I had, inadvertently, made the first ‘yes’ thread a little confusing. I have now tidied that up, at last.

Download the flowchart from my original post

Communications,Digital engagement

Yesterday I met Fiona Joseph, an interesting lady who has written and published a book about Beatrice Cadbury.

‘She’s written a book about who?’ Yes, I don’t remember hearing of her either, and I was brought up a Quaker.

Beatrice Cadbury was a Cadbury heiress who, it seems, took her principles in a different direction to her brothers:

‘Beatrice Cadbury, daughter of the world-famous chocolate empire, grew up with all the privileges: a fine mansion with servants, a well-rounded education and the chance to travel the world and see all its glories.

‘But being a ‘have’ in a world of ‘have-nots’ was troubling, and in 1920 she decided to ‘give back’ all the Cadbury shares she had inherited to the Bournville factory workers … with unexpected consequences’.

I’m keen to read it. I’m particularly curious to see how Fiona has treated, as she calls it, Beatrice’s ‘astonishing journey from respectable Quaker girl to bold anti-capitalist and peace activist’.

Because these days the two things often go hand-in-hand; and Quakers have always tended towards the front of positive social change. What interests me about Fiona’s subject is how values from the same strong roots can push people in very different, but highly principled directions.

Fiona has published the book herself. She showed me a copy, and it’s certainly the most professional-looking self-published book that I’ve seen.

Beatrice: The Cadbury Heiress Who Gave Away Her Fortune was published only a week ago and Amazon had no copies when I looked. There is a Kindle edition though, and Fiona tells me there will be copies in at least one of the Waterstones in Birmingham city centre.

I met Fiona at the monthly Birmingham Social Media Cafe.

Culture

As I posted a silly poem the other day I thought I may as well post more, for posterity.

This one is from 1994 and started life as a song(!). About three years ago I added two more verses but forgot to write them down; I spoke them into my phone and then the phone broke.

Bicycles of Life

I’ve got a bicycle,
Which isn’t like a tricycle:
It’s got two wheels,
A tricycle has
Three.
And if I had a tandem
I wouldn’t pick at random
The person who would share
The ride
With me.

I’m very choosy:
I don’t want some old floozy who is
Going to give up when her legs get
Tired;
I want a steady pedaler,
With a good grip on the handlebar,
A girl by whom our journey’d be
Inspired.

And as we tour the countryside,
Not having to pay for the park-and-ride,
We’d see all sorts of interesting
Things;
We’d learn lots about history
And attempts at solving mysteries
Like dinosaurs, and bicycles
With wings.

We’d cycle through all sorts of weather,
Singing silly songs together;
Occasionally we’d stop for cups of
Tea;
We’d design aquatic bicycles,
Over bowls of Ricicles,
And then we’d go and try them out
At sea.

I’ve got a bike,
Which isn’t like a trike:
A bike’s got two wheels,
A trike’s
Got
Three.
And if I had a tandem
I wouldn’t pick at random
The person who would
Share
The ride
With
Me.

Ramblings