Recent content on Joe's Blog

 Start with Part 1 . 
 
 Bellows are a mystery to me. Even now. There are plenty of tutorials showing you how to draw lines on paper and then fold them up, but my brain doesn’t find it easy to visualise it. Easily solved, I’ll just make a model.

 Start with Part 1 . 
 
 I just wanted another portable harmonium. Whether that meant buying or building one. 
 I saw one on eBay, listed as a fixer-upper that doesn’t play. I had to get it. In the best case I would have a harmonium. In the worst case I would have learned something. 
 The seller was quite open about it not working. I took the gamble, and met him in a car park…
I should be clear that I already have a harmonium. It has three octaves, two ranks (voices) and knee-pedals to operate the swells. It’s small, and folds up smaller. If you saw me carrying it you might mistakenly think I was struggling with a very heavy suitcase.
Long story short 
 I put Cloudflare and a CAPTCHA on Folk Tune Finder. It’s a pragmatic decision, which ensures that the limited resources of the site are used for the people it’s intended for. It’s an uneasy trade-off that doesn’t align with all of my principles. It does, though, align with the fundamental principle of folk tune finder: helping people to find tunes.
I have been asked to pass on the following message to Three Bean Salad Podcast : 
 
 Esteemed Beans, 
 Your recent episode, “Elevators”, was so flagrant in its profligate use of jingles that I must break my silence and share my top secret research project. 
 Unlike many, I don’t use your podcast to go to sleep. But I do use it to wake up, and the jingles really…
None of the below is particularly original. That’s kind of the point. 
 
 Paper 
 I’m addicted to paper. When reviewing documents I prefer to print them out and scribble on them. That’s all well and good in an office located on a planet with infinite trees, but I find myself in neither of those situations. 
 As a programmer, I also find it useful to scribble…
My son is nearing his second birthday, which makes him nearly two years old. When he was only four months old I decided that I would make him something with buttons. I didn’t have much more of an idea than that, but I ordered one hundred illuminated buttons and started mulling what to do with them. Nothing much happened for a few months; I knew this was a long term plan. But every so often…

 
 This was a micro-slot talk at Oxford Geek Nights #51 . 
 

 
 
 
 

 As my son found his feet and began to walk, he found his hands at perfect height to reach the piano. Music is very important to us, and I could not have been more delighted to see him walk over to the piano and press the keys with the tips of his fingers.

 This is the ninth of the eight boat stories , and quite possibly the last. 
 
 “May the road rise up to meet you”, goes the saying. 
 In eight years I spent living on a boat, the water did rise up to meet me quite suddenly once or twice: one minute ‘down there’ and the next ‘rushing up to meet me at speed’. On other occasions, during floods, it…

 This is the eighth, and penultimate, of the eight boat stories . 
 
 My first boat, Dawn, arrived with a Lister LR2 diesel engine. When I bought her, the boat was about 20 years old, but the engine was double that. What lives, I wondered, had the engine had before it ended up in a boat? 
 It wasn’t a terribly long after that that my father laid his hands on a very slightly…

 This is the seventh of the eight boat stories . 
 
 Canal boats aren’t quiet. They may seem that way from a distance, but, when underway, the captain is often unable to hear the first mate over the sound of the engine. Important communications, such as offers of cups of tea often go unheard. At least, that’s the most generous interpretation of the occasional lack of tea.…

 
 This is the sixth of the eight boat stories . 
 
 Boats are akin to swans. Which is to say that they’re like icebergs. Whatever their appearance, there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface than you’d think. On an afternoon stroll down the river, one might spot one or more boats, swans and / or icebergs. And unless someone’s having a really bad day,…
2019 
 
 Programme Committee, PIDapalooza 2019 
 Programme Committee, Wiki Workshop at The Web Conference 
 Committee, 5:AM Altmetrics Conference 
 Keynote talk, Metrics in Transition Workshop 2019 . “The role of open scholoarly infrastructure in metrics” 
 Talk, PIDapalooza 2019 
 
 2018 
 
 Programme Committee, PIDapalooza 2018. 
 Talk, PIDapalooza…

 
 This is the fifth of the eight boat stories . 
 
 People get funny ideas when it comes to naming boats. After all, our boat is called Monstronauticus and it’s virtually the only name that my wife and I could agree on. Our son happily avoided a similar fate. 
 Who can explain it 
 The phenomenon can be explained by good old British bureaucracy. Like cars, every…

 
 This is the fourth of the eight boat stories . 
 
 Experts agree: the best way to learn something in depth is immersion. Whether you’re trying to pick up a new language or learn a new skill like boating: in at the deep end, you’ll be the wiser for it. 
 Many boaters will say that you’re not a real boater unless you’ve fallen in ’the cut’.…

 
 This is the third of the eight boat stories . 
 
 I spent the first week aboard my floating home-to-be surrounded by the sounds of nature trampled underfoot by the chugging of the diesel engine, the wail of tungsten carbide disc on steel, underscored by a whirring petrol generator. Though nature is famously noisy, that week definitely represented the triumph of industry over…

 
 This is the second of the eight boat stories . 
 
 Whatever happened to that Lister LR2 engine that valiantly got us from Staffordshire to Oxford on only one cylinder? That was hoisted out and replaced with a model with only marginally higher horsepower? 
 It sat in my father’s shed for years. That is, until I met someone that I knew I wanted to spend my life with.…
November, fast unfolding as I speak, marks eight years since I stepped onto a boat and called it home. Boat-buying typically starts in summer, when all is bright, exciting and verdant (if you’re lucky). Like house-buying, it can take ages. There’s an array of things to fix: Surveys, licenses, insurance and, in my case, an engine. I’m not the first to move in just as a brutal…

 
 This is the first of the eight boat stories . There will be more to come, including more engine excitement. 
 
 After much searching, I found the boat that I wished to call home. Dawn, for it was she, was moored in Staffordshire. My father and I both booked precious time off work and, after testing the suspension and kicking the tyres, we set off for the week-long journey.…
Barbara Helen Newman was my grandmother. She died aged 99. I would like to write a few things down to celebrate her life, keep her stories going and tell you a bit about her. Of course her personality and presence is what really counts, but I’m not sure I have the ability to adequately distill a description of her character out of the day-to-day interactions I had with her. Her quips and…
I presented these ideas at the altmetrics18 workshop. You can read a slightly more formal version of this blog post here. 
 These five principles are my answer to some of the difficulties and problems I have observed in the past couple of years. In that time I have been collecting the kind of data that altmetrics are built from, and talking and working with researchers. Altmetrics data is…
Zohreh Zahedi and Rodrigo Costas recently published a comparison of altmetrics data providers. Included in the comparison was Crossef Event Data, the service that I have been designing and building for the last couple of years. I am writing this blog post as a personal response to their study, “General discussion of data quality challenges in social media metrics: Extensive comparison of…
This blog post goes with my talk at Oxford Geek Nights . It’s about the work I’m doing at Crossref but the talk and this blog post are provided in a personal capacity, and don’t officially represent Crossref. That mostly means I don’t have to use American spelling. Which is fortunate for you, as I’m really bad at accents. 
 What does ‘scholarly’ mean?…
Which came first? 
 I am, after a lag of a few weeks, finally writing a few words about my Gemini PDA . As tradition, I’m writing it on the device itself. 
 I don’t feel that it’s possible to write a fair review after a short amount of time. I’ve had my BlackBerry Passport, my current phone, for about 4 years and I only just feel qualified to start mulling it. My…
Today marks the release of the Digital Folk report , a study into the way that folk music is being played and shared in the digital age. The report opens with a timeline of some of the tools available and their history. It reminded me that Folk Tune Finder is ten years old this year - the folktunefinder.com domain was registered at half past nine in the morning on the 27th of January 2008. This…
A couple of years ago I fished a large chunk of wood out of the river. It had a very satisfactory heft, oblongularity and poise. A piece of timber solid not only in body, but in character. In short: a perfect doorstep. 
 I spotted it floating in a weir and thought ’that would make a fine doorstep’. We shan’t dwell on the story of how I hoisted it out of the river and, in…
One of my new year’s resolutions is to try and be more intentional about the way I lead my life. That includes a close look at habits and deeply wired-in behaviours. 
 Last year I had the epiphany that whilst chocolate, ginger nuts, IRN BRU and sugary comestibles were very enticing and almost unthinkable to give up, I’m far better off without them in my life. I’ve known this…
My wife sent me an email. It conveyed words to the effect: 
 
 It is snowing! 
 
 I replied: 
 
 Is it now 
 
 We make a point of sending each other grammatically ambigious emails. 
 And that made me realise that in the sentence 
 
 “Now it is snowing” 
 
 has at least two levels of word-order to contend with.
Working with colleagues spread across Massachusetts, New York, California, Oxfordshire, London, Britanny, Victoria, Lower Saxony (and that’s when they’re not travelling) means that face-to-face conversations aren’t universally available. Instant messaging is good because it’s the next-best thing to direct contact. 
 With geographical distance comes timezone distance.…
On November 30th 2016, the login feature of FolkTuneFinder.com will be removed, and you will no longer be able to use favourites and group tunelists. 
 One month ago I wrote the a blog post about sign-in on FolkTuneFinder and placed a message on the site. I also put word out on the FolkTuneFinder Facebook page . Since then I have recieved only two messages. There are 5,367 accounts on…
The Royal Mint are launching a new pound coin. It’s 
 
 The most secure coin in the world 
 
 according to their website. I saw it linked from BBC news. 
 
 The site looks good. It’s all about how businesses should look out for the new coin and adjust their security practices. 
 
 It goes into some detail about just quite how secure this coin is.…
Skint is a weekend of music and dancing, with workshops, bals and sessions all run by volunteers. I’m on the committee. 
 This year’s Skint was a joy. I am immensely grateful to everyone who came and made it what it was, which, as I’ve said, a joy. 
 These are not the best photos in the world, but they are mine. 
 
 Bundpolska Workshop. 
 
 
 
…
Summary 
 
 I want to remove the ‘favourites’ / ‘bookmarks’ feature (and then the ability to log in altogether). I would make sure that no-one lost their ‘favourites’ lists and could transfer them elsewhere. What do you think? Email me at joe@folktunefinder.com , but preferably read the whole piece first! 
 
 FolkTuneFinder is used by up to…
We found an oak in the corner of a field in Oxfordshire. In the tree we found a colony of bees. The bees were making the most of a warm day with an abundance of wild flowers. From the rate they were coming and going I estimated the colony to be about the size of my bees. The hollow must be a cubic foot or more. 
 I hope they’re ready for winter. They looked like they could handle…
I sometimes to go to conferences. Sometimes I talk. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes both. 
 
 
 
 What? 
 What?? 
 Why? 
 What did/will I say? 
 
 
 
 
 PIDAPalooza 
 Reykjavík, November 2016 
 Discussing persistent identifiers for research objects. 
 To share experience and best practice about the use of persistent identifiers. 
 It's…
I’m not in it for the honey. 
 A refrain I’ve repeated for a year and a half. Bees are the most incredible creatures. I think humans are hard-wired to find fascinating what bees are hard-wired to do. A social insect, forming colonies from which intelligent behaviour seems to emerge. An insect which, on an individual basis seems to have enough character to be charming, but when viewed in great…
I think that summer is a far better host to ‘new year’ than winter. If you’re lucky enough to be able to take time out to enjoy it, it offers a chance to stop whatever you were stuck doing for a little while and think about it. A reset, and chance to look backward on the last year and forward on the next. For me, winter is all about hard work, when everything’s an effort. Hardly the time to stop…
I’m sitting on the bus writing this on my BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu edition tablet. It promises ‘full convergence’ so, taking it on face value, I thought I’d start typing a blog post using the on-screen keyboard at work then continue with a bluetooth keyboard once I get home. 
 The tablet ships with LibreOffice, gEdit, mystery ‘browser’ and Firefox which might…
None of the regulars I speak to at The Old Pump in Aldershot have a bad word to say about ‘hapless’ Sandra. She’s has been a well-liked member of the community since before it was known as The Old Pump, before when it was known as the Pumping Station and before that, when it actually was the pumping station for Aldershot’s sewage system. ‘Some things never…
I got my bees in early 2015. They seem to have a good first year, increasing from a nucleus to a full hive, eating voraciously and putting away stores. But, as winter drew in and the year came to a close, I knew that they, and I, would face the first real test.
Happy new year! Happy new Folk Tune Finder ! Why not try it out? 
 Those of you following along at home will know that this is version 7 , and that I release approximately one new version per year. This one’s a big one, with lots of changes. I’ll concentrate on four.

 Standards are high at the annual Christmas lights event. It’s important that every entry is a strong in order to outperform the competition.
Cooking an evening meal, I reach for the oregano and then for the thyme. As the herbs start to work out where they are, why they’re here and what they’re meant to be doing, a familiar but confusing aroma issues. This doesn’t smell so much of my dinner as my beehive. And not in that cooking-with-honey way.
There are lots of kinds of beehives, but many of them have the same construction: a brood box, which is a large space for the colony to live, and supers, which are smaller boxes, added on top, in which bees make honey and which beekeepers sometimes have to take away for their own good (the beekeepers’ own good, not the bees’).
I’ve had my beehive for over two weeks. It’s full of honeybees, and getting fuller. In that time my neighbours have had two nests of very different varieties of wild native bee: leafcutters and bumblebees. They’re not camera-shy.
My nucleus is building up strength. It takes 40 days from its egg-laying to a worker bee going out on its foraging missions (bees spend their first ten days in the hive doing household chores). This means that the bees now out foraging were eggs long before I acquired the nuc.
I stopped off to wish my bees a good afternoon and to ask after their mother. One worker was clearly in some discomfort.
Inspecting a beehive is the central mystical ritual of beekeeping. Seeing the bees at work, spotting the queen scuttling around and appraising the hard work they are all doing is, I’ll be honest, one of the major draws for me. It’s something that should be done as infrequently as possible because it disrupts the hive, stresses the bees and interferes with the environmental conditions…
Some background to timelapsebeehive.com 
 I’ve wanted to keep bees for 20 years, and I’m finally getting round to doing it. There’s a lot of nonsense going around about how it’s a new middle-class fad, but I recently dug this book out. It’s called the Golden Throng and it was printed in the 1940s.
To start with something worth saying: 
 **Do not feed bees honey. **If you find a tired bee, mix it up some sugar solution. One crystal of caster sugar to one drop of water should do. Honey from the shops, which is usually from a foreign country, and even honey from a more local hive can contain fungal spores which can cause serious diseases, like American Foul Brood. 
 Now that’s…