Blogger, continued

It's certainly easy to open a blog with Blogger, but I had some trouble making mine look the way I wanted. Too many things, I found, were locked down behind the Template Designer interface. For example, I didn't want the background gradients at the edge of the text area that came with the first 'Simple' template, and it took several minutes to realise I was supposed to express this by choosing a different template.

Neither did Template Designer give me control over the text size, or font properties other than colour, to apply to the blog description. It didn't give me control over the text size to apply to date headers. And I couldn't have my blog title appear in capitals (which seemed important). On the other hand, you're free to edit the HTML template, where I could do these things.

Blogger

I think my blog has found its final shape, so it's time to post my thoughts on making it, along with what I hope to get out of 23 Things and my previous experience of social software. My only experience is of bookmarking sites like Delicious and Connotea, which I used around 2006: I wrote my library school dissertation on indexing in these systems. I'm not sure message boards count, but in my teens (the late 1990s) I followed one dedicated to the cinema of the nouvelle vague. Oh all right—Nintendo games.

What I hope to get out of 23 Things is a better awareness of the variety and possibilities of social software, through a weekly prod into trying out different systems. My blog, where I'll report what I've done, I also wanted to be anchored in living and working in Cambridge, which I hope explains the bulletins from civil society. Something I've realised this week I should think about is how professionalism sits with a political commitment. Perhaps I could start by looking into the work of the Haldane Society, for lawyers.

I'll post later on making my blog.

Against the EDL

The English Defence League, the racist street movement now two years old, will rally in Cambridge on 9 July. Its stated aim is to counter Islamic extremism: wearing a veil, opening a mosque, shunning lager and so on. On a named day, supporters gather in a town with a big ethnic minority population and do their best to frighten it. They march, they chant division and hatred, and sometimes they riot—as in Luton on 24 May 2009 (the movement before it was named and organised), and Stoke on 23 January 2010.

Many EDL supporters are recruited from football firms, and must come out for some of the same things they find there: a feeling of collective identity and power, the excitement of street violence. They don't sign up to a political programme. However, members of the fascist BNP were quick to take organising roles in the movement, and seem to be shaping it to their purposes. Since 2010, the EDL and its sister Welsh Defence League have targeted a May Day trade union demonstration and a socialist party meeting: a move towards classic fascist tactics.

Last night I went to the first meeting to organise a counterdemonstration in support of our city's diversity: twenty or more people crowded around tables in Jaffa Net Cafe, Mill Road. I won't be in Cambridge on the day (Margot is reading at a poetry festival) but I think the event will be great. Librarians should support it. Our profession's values—I'm thinking of intellectual freedom, rationalism, common property—place us in total opposition to fascism.

From eleven o'clock this Saturday, 25 June, I'll be on a Unite Against Fascism stall outside the Guildhall in case any one would like to say hello.

Promise

I promise to post something directly to do with library work before the end of the 23 Things programme!

30 June strikes

Some good speeches at the public meeting in the Guildhall last night, called to build support for the joint strikes on 30 June. There was a speaker from each union involved: ATL, NUT (school teachers), PCS (civil servants), and UCU (university and college staff: members in post-'92 universities will strike).

The government's line on pensions is that public sector workers need to retire later, pay more, and get less because 'we're living longer'. What—since 2006? All the speakers last night reminded us that we sorted this one out, in reforms in 2006 (for teachers) and 2007 (civil servants). The myth of the gold-plated pension was also hounded through the evening.

The ATL and NUT speakers, Martin Johnson and Kevin Courtney, complained about the government's negotiating incompetence (on public display last week, with Danny Alexander's clumsy intervention). Kevin, Jill Eastland from UCU, and Mike Black from PCS, were all keen—as I am—to put the pensions raid in the context of the wider attack on workers and public services. ATL's position is different, with its concerns narrower.

Platform and floor, we all deplored the government and rightwing media's attempt to set private and public sector workers against each other; most memorably an NUJ member, whose union had to fight to defend journalists' pensions last year.

I'll be sure to join the lunchtime strike rally on Parker's Piece on 30 June.

iGoogle

I set up my iGoogle start page yesterday. I have news feeds from two papers, the weather report, and a daily Oscar Wilde epigram. And briefly a copy of Space Invaders. I was happy with the 'Classic' theme, but Margot told me I was boring and made me look for one more distinctive. I ended up with a photograph of boats moored at Port Said.

I understand what iGoogle is now. I'd expected to be able to add any site with an RSS feed to my page. In fact, you assemble your page from purpose-built applications: gadgets. It's another Google product, Reader, that works with feeds.

Playing Space Invaders at work reminded me that the PC games I played as a boy sometimes had boss keys. The boss key would pause the game and display a spreadsheet (that is, while your boss walked past). Of course on a modern windowing machine you just hit Alt, Tab. I would imagine.