Introduction to my Critique Last month DETI announced a Consultation on their (i.e. Arlenes) Strategy to make Northern Ireland “into one of the most innovative regions with the UK”. I’m known to rant and rave about the use of the word “innovation” at the best of times, so I’ll just put that attitude on the shelf and highlight a few of what I think are the “ok” points and the decidedly questionable points in the strategy. First off as a general comment that I’d otherwise repeat over and over again going through the draft, other than the words “Northern Ireland”, and excluding some of the case-studies, this could be an innovation strategy for any region in the world. The stated “Barriers to innovation” read like they’re straight out of a Business Studies textbook, and in general, the (lengthy) exposition around this ideal of “innovation” is little more than a 34 page definition of what DETI considers innovation. (It’s a loaded word and everyone is entitled to have an opinion on what it means. I guess we know DETI’s now at least). Speaking of repeating, this does repeat itself over and over again, just take my word for it here and I won’t raise it individually… ...

Inspired by a pretty good write up by Cynofield as to his setup for getting a Raspberry Pi to “phone home”, I thought I’d set out how I do it. I have a machine that lives behind a ‘security’ infrastructure that makes my life a living hell. As a result, I set up automatic persistent reverse shells going back to other machines I use, so if I connect to those machines, I can get into the secure environment, without anything nasty being able to get in with me. ...

UPDATE I’ve long left QUB since this post was writted so as expected, IS have changed things again. If you’re hitting this, head over to Ryan McConville’s updated instructions QUB Information Services can be a bit of a mess, so in the interest of saving time, here is what works for me. In the below, the asterisks* mean that the value may be called something different depending on your mail client. Let me know in the comments if you find anything different and I’ll try and keep this reasonably up to date. ...

I’m leaving Northern Ireland, and I’m moving to Liverpool. Via Portsmouth. I have spoken with a few people about the situation I find myself in, and a few more people about my decision, but I want to get it all down somewhere. Where did this come from? The short answer is that a series of unexpected events mean that it makes sense to move my research. Recently, my PhD supervisor, Prof Alan Marshall, was offered a research Chairship at the University of Liverpool, which he gladly accepted. It’s a great move for him (Another Russell Group, one of the original ‘redbrick’ universities, etc etc), but that’s his life not mine so all it does is provide an option. (Disclosure: I also work with Alan on his spinout Wireless Security company, TOM Ltd) ...

I was digesting “The Design of Design” by Fred Brooks as a bit of holiday reading, which talks in great depth about the nature of technical and architectural design from a practical perspective, and it made me thinking about my own experience and the “future” of that experience. Blessing or curse, due to my inability to say no and (publically) boundless patience exploration of a range of areas, in technology, security, academia, business, and society; several people have made flippant, off the cuff comments about some form of predicted success, usually financial or technical. ...

Had an interesting if annoying problem recently that I assumed would just fix itself eventually. But when you’re sick of prodding a power button to force a machine to reboot, you gotta do something. TL;DR**_ if you’re getting messages like “Restarting System” on an attempted reboot, try setting the reboot=pci kernel boot flag_** To do this, at the grub boot menu, press e to edit the current boot parameters. Find the line starting with “linux” (this is the line that actually kicks off the linux kernel) and at the end of that line, put “reboot=pci”. ...

Finally decided to move my research work across to GitHub; seems the ‘in’ thing to do. Also I wanted to get more into the Git swing of things and using intermediary tools like hg-git seem a bit contrived for a 1 person project. I’ve enjoyed using Bitbucket but it’s just not quite as polished. That and GH has better integration to pretty much everything… Sorry. Went through the process described here but it’s not really explained very well, so I’m adding my touch of idiot-proof magic. ...

I was skimming through the Oral Statement from yesterday’s Assembly, with a specific interest in Dr Stephen Farry’s discussions on the NI Economic Activity Baseline Report (everyone loves Baseline reports these days, but very few ever seem to get followed up…) can came across a Question and Response between Sammy Douglas (E. Belfast) and Dr Farry. Mr Douglas: […]Will he outline what his Department is doing to ensure that we are educating our young people in the skills that the workforce needs? ...

UPDATE 7/3/13 : See Bottom So I was ranting at @Translink_NI earlier and they helpfully responded with their service complaint submission system This was my hopefully helpful response Why does the #26 service stop so rarely at the NISP when compared to the stops just 2 minutes down the road at the BMC? While this is a 2 minute bus journey (ok 5 if you could there, back and turning time…), it’s a 10 min walk. ...

QUB Relevant: Mostly PGR or prospective PGR Just out of a great meeting with QUB Information Services regarding: Researcher/ Student webspace Email Wifi and VPN Web Space For a while now, this has been a bee in my bonnet; many other institutions provide User-Dirs or Public Facing Pages that, while being slightly monitored, are in the control of individual researchers and students. These draw attention to the bleeding edge of an institutions academic research while maintaining ownership of the content. ...