Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

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Porn and Social Media #SMCLondon

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This was a talk I gave at Social Media Camp London in 2009. In it, I describe my experiences working with user-generated-content, pornography, and other adult material. This was one of my earliest BarCamp talks, and contains several ideas which now seem quite outdated.I was attempting to warn people about accepting UGC - not only the danger it posed to their sites, but also to their sanity.The…

Speech to TUC

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Logo for the Connect Trade Union.

Terry Eden (Connect) speaking in support of Composite Motion 10. I want to focus on public procurement and the role it can play in driving forward social and environmental goals and, in particular, raising labour standards. The money public authorities spend on buying goods and services amounts to £108 billion every year from major capital projects to buying office stationery. Our public money …

Doctor Who "Rose" - a review of the CulTV review

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A scene from The Simpsons. The comic-book-guy dismisses something as the "worst episode ever".

This is a necropost - resurrected from one of my ancient USENET posts. In an exclusive preview of the new series, GEORGE MURPHY tells CulTV why the show is possibly the worst thing you will watch on British Television in 2005 CulTV's review of "Rose" Here's my exclusive review of CulTV's review. Get over it, Granddad. I sat and watched it with a bunch of guys (and girls! You know, girls -…

I also have a Blackberry

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Photo of an old black and white BlackBerry.

I use a RIM Blackberry (6720 I think) to get my emails and browse the web on the move. I think its interface is deeply lacking and the hardware is flakey to say the least. But it has an amazing keyboard. I couldn't imagine typing anything this long using predictive text - or even handwriting recognition. I still love my Treo 180 - but its consigned to a drawer until there's a Blackberry client…

Review: Teal Movie

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Treo 180 Smartphone.

This is a Necropost. Resurrected from a long forgotten PDA review website. Summary TealPoint's TealMovie 3.50 claims to do the impossible - and it delivers. Palm Pilots are great for displaying text, there's no doubt about that, but I've never seen one handle full motion graphics with any kind of clarity before... until now. TealMovie 3.50 allows you to convert AVI and Quicktime movies into a …

Icons are usually not culture-neutral

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A row of colourful icons.

This is a necropost - resurrected from one of my ancient USENET posts. Some web-browsers use "Stop Loading" icons that were represented with USA stop signs. To anyone else in the world, that's just a red octagon. Similarly the spell-check button in MS products is a tick over an "ABC". I don't know what the spell check button is like in countries with a different lexicography. Also, in…

Review - Hauppauge DEC 1000-t

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A small box of electronics.

This long-forgotten review has been resurrected from one of my ancient USENET posts! It uses a D-Sub9 to Scart socket rather than a standard SCART. You can't flick to radio channels without pushing the "radio" button first. You then have to press TV to get back to TV. It doesn't come with an RF splitter or remodulator - which means you'll lose all your analogue channels. It is nice and small! …

Disappearing Computer (2002)

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The old logo of the University of East Anglia.

In 2002, I wrote this dissertation as part of my B.Sc. at UEA. I've kept this edition as close to the original as possible. I've added in links (where they still survive) and inserted a few comments where I was ludicrously wrong or unexpectedly right. This paper is not especially well-written and, if memory serves, received only a adequate mark. Terence Eden - 2016 Executive Summary This…

Review Mello MP3 Player

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A grey plastic box with blue buttons and a small LCD screen.

This review was orginally written for a now-defunct website. Terence Eden - 2016 The Spec Mello Branded Cyprus CompactFlash MP3 player (v11) + 128MB Compact Flash card (a 128MB CF card gives you 124MB (130658304bytes) which is just about enough for 2 hours of 128Kb music. If you go down to FM quality (64kb) you'll get 4 hours worth of music.). Manufactured by…

Uses for multiple monitors

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Three big CRT monitors.

This is a Necropost. Reanimated from an ancient site. Programming (great having the API in one monitor, the IDE on another and the output on the third!) Web browsing + email + Trillian + winamp all in easy reach. Writing documents on the centre monitor and having the references on the two side monitors! Sorry for the crappy picture - someone buy me a digital camera... please! Config 3342 …

Users are socially conditioned to believe that tasks should be difficult

· 1 comment · 550 words


An old photo of me, wearing a silly hat.

This is a necropost - resurrected from one of my ancient USENET posts. One of the problems I've encountered is that most people (users and, to an extend, designers) are socially conditioned to believe that tasks should be difficult. They expect a learning curve that isn't always logical. It stems from childhood when we don't understand something and are told "that's just the way it is". Users …

Review: Pratchett "The Last Hero" Illustrated by Paul Kidby

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Book cover featuring a very old barbarian standing on a mountain.

This review was written for a now-defunct university website. Terence Eden - 2016 Another year - another Pratchett book. I am usually the first in the queue to read his latest offering, I was a little reticent about purchasing this tome; it's quite short (160 pages), it's illustrated and his last offering, "The Thief Of Time", hadn't left me with much confidence in my favourite author. It's…