I’ve started making apps with Cordova / PhoneGap. My set up is somewhat unconventional as I am just creating the projects at the command line, writing the applications using web technologies and signing them myself. I am not using the PhoneGap build service or any emulators on my machine. I Read more…
Sometimes I am asked to do quick social network analysis for friends or family, I am quite often surprised how often people offer me their Facebook password to do the analysis! One thing you should never do give out is your Facebook password to anyone, no matter how well you Read more…
Writing about an on going conversation that you are having with someone when you haven’t quite got your head around yet is a difficult task, it does help you to think the problems through but it leaves you with a mess of a blog post. Mark and I have been Read more…
You know those people who establish dynasties so powerful that their names echo through the centuries? I am one of them. – El Vice Chancellor Sim University (U.S name: Theme University) is a series of hit real-time strategy simulation games created and developed by a one man indie outfit. Read more…
A while ago I used a combination of Facepager and R to find reoccurring phrases in the comments section of the BNP’s Facebook page. The idea was based around a conversation with a friend where I explained that I found it hard to talk to BNP supporters because I just Read more…
The Learning Locker requirements page recommends a LAMP style stack to install on, I use Mac OS X, which is close enough and because I want to keep my Apache, MySQL and PHP stuff self contained I use the free version of MAMP which is great for the most part Read more…
I wanted to find out what people were saying on the facebook pages of extreme political parties. At this stage I wasn’t bothered so much about what the party was saying, but what the comments on the posts where saying. The task was to find n-grams in a CSV file Read more…
If you want to grab comments from one post, the Graph API Explorer might be easier. I’ve been trying to find ways to poke the Facebook graph that will be easy for people who find working with the API directly difficult and currently I am using a tool called Facepager Read more…
Sex education at my high school school was limited to a single day. The boys would go in to a classroom with their P.E teacher equipped with a condom and a banana, the girls would get a visit from a lady from Procter & Gamble equipped with bags of free Read more…
Welsh writer Dylan Thomas, who was very fond of a drink, once quipped that ‘an alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.’ When I first came across the quote by Dylan Thomas I liked it because in my mind I was changing it to Read more…
