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Well, it looks as though 2009 will be the year I finally start to do this "social networking" thing for real.  I've been running this website for a few years now - originally set up to host my genealogy work for my family, it became something a bit more interesting when I embarked upon the Joomla! journey.  My first Joomla! site was the revision of my plain html North Bucks Road Club website using Joomla!1.0. I then reworked  this website using a release candidate of Joomla! 1.5.x, and subsequently set up a website for a conference in Oxford that I helped organise (this site has been removed as it's no longer needed).

This site has been upgraded to Joomla! 1.5.9. The initial upgrade from the release candidate to the final release version in summer 2008 was a disaster, and I had to rebuild it from a saved sql file. At that point, I switched to MyBlog to handle the front page.  I've also started using an extension that permits finer granularity in user groups, so that selected users can collaborate on documents, such as wikis.

In December, I finally upgraded the North Bucks Road Club website to Joomla! 1.5 - I was rather apprehensive given the problems I'd had with tis website, but all went remarkably smoothly.  At that stage, I started using Community Builder to add functions such as personal messaging for the membership.

Also in December, I upgraded the website I'd set up for the now-defunct cycling club Northwood Wheelers to Joomla!1.5.  I also became a bit concerned that this blog, which is my main voice on the internet was becoming a bit diffuse in subject matter.  With my 2-up timetrialling team mate, I set up a splinter blog, Team Grumpy, hosted by Google's Blogspot, and then a week or so ago another blog, Wonderful Life, which I initially set up at wordpress.com.  Feeling a bit limited in configurability there, I installed my own Wordpress software on my main website, and set things up quite nicely, I think.  I can now compare three styles of blog site:

Wordpress and Blogger are astonishingly easy to set up - probably less than five minutes, and you're in the blogosphere.  They are quite versatile packages (particularly Wordpress).

If you download and install Wordpress on your own server account, it turns out to still be a really simple installation.  I did this by adding the Wordpress data tables to my original Joomla! database (this means that backups of my Joomla! site bring the wordpress blog along as well.  You can have a free reign on editing the style of the template you're using.  There are oodles of Wordpress templates out there.

Joomla! however, remains my favourite CMS - it is hugely adaptable, with over 4000 extensions available. Many templates (both commercial and free) are available.  Whatever you want to do, you can do with Joomla!

There is a chance I may get some experience with another CMS, Drupal,  which I did play with a little last year, on a local test installation.  I've not really got anything to add there, as my experience is so limited.

The social networking side of things have come on my radar somewhat more recently.  I have accounts on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, and I have an account at LibraryThing.  I started all that principally to get my websites some publicity, and I'm a little worried by  the possibility the whole thing will turn out to be an enormous time-waster!  

North Bucks Road Club

Northwood Wheelers

Team Grumpy blog

Wonderful Life blog

There's been a bit of a rumpus echoing through the blogosphere following a series of pop sci articles about Darwin and his legacy (see for example this review of recent stories).  Generally, and presumably to attract readers, many make some kind of provocative claim in the title, such as "Was Darwin wrong?" or similar.

In contrast, the February 2009 edition of National Geographic features a rather excellent article by Matt Ridley: Darwin's Legacy. In a refreshing change from the tabloid-style hatchet jobs often seen in the press, this is a measured view of how modern biology has built on Darwin's foundations, and quite responsibly points out that Darwin, for all his breadth of knowledge never knew the physical basis for inheritance.

As one might expect from National Geographic, the accompanying photographs are both beautiful and inspiring. The picture skowing the ray skeletons in particular made me want to know more about the research it illustrates. i would have liked to include a thumbnail here, but the gallery is flash animated. The opening paragraph is particularly striking: 

Just two weeks before he died, Charles Darwin wrote a short paper about a tiny clam found clamped to the leg of a water beetle in a pond in the English Midlands. It was his last publication. The man who sent him the beetle was a young shoemaker and amateur naturalist named Walter Drawbridge Crick. The shoemaker eventually married and had a son named Harry, who himself had a son named Francis. In 1953, Francis Crick, together with a young American named James Watson, would make a discovery that has led inexorably to the triumphant vindication of almost everything Darwin deduced about evolution.

The main feature article, Darwin's First Clues - he was inspired by fossils of armadillos and sloths is by David Quammen and is also well worth a read, as an exemplar of science writing.

The latest in the ongoing saga of our fly shipment from the USA is that our packet of flies finally made it to the lab.  They've been in transit for exactly three weeks*, and of course kept in in known conditions.  I'm very grateful to various people at Animal Health, who were able to make an exception to the regulations.

Nonetheless, I think the application of tight control of over the international transport of live insects such as these is a bit over the top - the legislation that I've looked through seems principally aimed at commercially important farm stock and other animals important to the human food chain.   I understand there's a general unhappiness in the UK Drosophila research community, especially since the international postal union recently relaxed its regulations regarding the transport of live Drosophila through regular mail.  I'm not particularly optimistic that we can make a change to the enforcement of the new regulations, but it's most definitely worth a try.

*After their three week holiday (mostly spent at Stansted Airport), the fly vials are a bit smelly, but at least some of them still have living larvae in. 

See also my previous posts Border Guards vs Drosophila, part 1 and part 2.

The UK Government's plans to assemble a joined up database state appear to be drawing closer.  In the rather innocuous sounding Coroners and Justice Bill Part 8 - Data Protection Act 1998 (c. 29) lies an interesting clause, 152, in which the government empowers itself to authorise largely unlimited data sharing.

The bill's summary is as follows (my emphasis - at least it flags up the change that interests me):

A Bill to amend the law relating to coroners and to certification and registration of deaths; to amend the criminal law; to make provision about criminal justice and about dealing with offenders; to make provision about the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses; to make provision relating to the security of court and other buildings; to make provision about legal aid; to make provision for payments to be made by offenders in respect of benefits derived from the exploitation of material pertaining to offences; to amend the Data Protection Act 1998; and for connected purposes.  

 Visiting clause 152, we find the following:

152
Information sharing
(1)
After section 50 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (c. 29) insert-
"Part 5A
Information Sharing

50A
Power to enable information sharing
(1)   Subject to the following provisions of this Part, a designated authority may by order (an "information-sharing order") enable any person to share information which consists of or includes personal data.
(2)   For the purposes of this Part-
"designated authority" means-
(a)   an appropriate Minister,
(b)   the Scottish Ministers,
(c)   the Welsh Ministers, or
(d)  a Northern Ireland department;
"appropriate Minister" means-
(a)  the Secretary of State,
(b) the Treasury, or
(c)  any other Minister in charge of a government department.

It goes on from there.  This has alarmed the No2ID crowd, who've been publicising this sort of attampt to build a joined up super-database for some time.  They are recommending we write to our MPs  via http://www.WriteToThem.com (though how much weight your MP can have if he or she is in opposition is unclear!).

It makes you wonder what else gets sneaked into these bills.  One other thing, when does Wacky Jacqui's communications uber-database plan come up for public consultation?