Matthew Revell

I saw the phrase “stolen from Carmen” and it led me to write this. It’s pure fiction, very rough and I wouldn’t usually post it here but I quite enjoyed writing it. It hasn’t benefited from editing or more than just a few minutes in a text editor.

Last night, when the rain made bubbles in your windscreen glass, I tried so hard not to look.

Motorway lights flashed amber as we passed; gave me seconds-long glimpses of the face I’d so long dreamt I’d wake to. Your hand on the gear-stick — shaking with the vibration of that dying car — pulled at me. But touching you — even there, alone — would have too soon shattered our odd little truce.

Songs in minor keys played on the radio, drew tears across my cheeks. No matter: as I counted down the miles I knew I’d always hold close the memories of that, our final journey.

Soon, we came to the sea and my thoughts turned to that one night we’d spent together. I swallowed hard as I remembered the shivers your fingers sent through me, the ache you nurtured. Those few moments — stolen from Carmen — would be the barrier to any normal future I could hope for.

Out of the car window I saw the bridge and felt the seconds slipping away; yet again I was falling towards something, out of control. You stopped, I opened the door; could’ve sworn I heard the ping of a submarine from beneath the waves. You stared directly ahead but I saw it: that quiver of your eyelid meant more to me than anything you might have said.

Within seconds, you were nothing more than tail-lights and memories.

After seeing yet another friend get an iPhone I decided it was time I got hold of a phone that would give me email on the move and something more akin to a usable web browsing experience.

The iPhone wasn’t an option for me: I don’t run Windows or Mac OS, I didn’t want to pay a lump sum up-front and I want to be able to use my phone as a modem for my laptop.

I’ve only ever really been happy with Nokia phones and have heard great things about the N95. For the past six months I’ve been using the Series 60 3rd edition Nokia 6120 and it’s great. Three offered me the N95 — at the £15 I’m paying now each month — so it seemed I’d be getting more of a good thing but for the same price.

So far, I’m quite disappointed with the Nokia N95. It’s slower than the 6120, by a noticeable margin, and it has hung more times in the past day than the 6120 has in the past six months. The screen seems less crisp, the 5 megapixel camera oddly appears to produce fuzzier images than the 6120′s 2 megapixel camera and by Baal is it large.

The interface is clunky in comparison to my hopes, the iPhone and, yes, even my 6120. The battery life seems poor. The wifi support — a major selling point for me — can’t handle DHCP with my Linksys router.

So, the good: the larger screen is welcome and the GPS seems to work (although I haven’t left the house with it yet). There is more but none of which I couldn’t have had with the 6120. Opera Mini, for example, provides a better web browser than the standard S60 browser but I could have had it with the 6120.

Perhaps what I really wanted was unlimited mobile data so I could get email on the move and not a new phone.

I really do want to find more positive to say about the N95 but, having come from the 6120, it hasn’t yet wowed me; I s’ppose I’ve got 18 months to find it.

Tomorrow I start a new run of the Wolverhampton Politics Show on WCR FM!

I have a new time slot — 8pm to 9pm Fridays — but it’s still 101.8 FM and wcrfm.com to find the stream.

This week my guests are the Conservative Councillor Carl Husted and Wolverhampton South West Liberal Democrats Chair Colin Ross.

Subscribe to the podcast if you’d like to listen but can’t tune in at the time.

Each month, we in the Launchpad team make a new release.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve learnt some of what works — and what doesn’t — when announcing our releases. I thought I’d share some of that here.

Style and content

Keep it:

• Relevant: announce only what is of interest to the majority of your readers and what they can use “out of the box”. Direct your most ardent readers to the relevant milestone page in your bug tracker’ for the full details. Consider direct communication with those groups who are affected by a specific change. Ignore things that help you, the developer, rather than the reader.
• Personal: “The user” is not an abstract: they’re the person reading your text. Speak directly to them and show them how each change affects them. Use examples.
• Easily understood: don’t assume too much of your reader. Give them enough background to understand the problem you’re describing and your solution.
• Well ordered: start with the exciting, most relevant, stuff. Assume your reader has a limited attention span because, y’know, they do.
• Enticing: your readers are lazy and promiscuous. Suck them in by trailing the highlights in your headline.
  • Bad: ACME releases a RoadRunnerStop v1.2
  • Better: RoadRunnerStop 1.2: now easier to catch your lunch
  • Better: Catch more road runners with ACME RoadRunnerStop 1.2
• Benefit-led: tell your reader how you’ve fixed their life.
  • Good: Save time uploading branches to Launchpad
  • Not so good: Launchpad now supports Bazaar stacked branches
  • Bad: Launchpad will no longer OOPS when you attempt to alter a conjoined slave bug-task
• Plain-speaking: your readers aren’t stupid but you should err towards commonly used words and shorter sentences with fewer clauses.

Format

Launchpad release announcements have four parts, in order of importance:

• headline/subject line
• introduction
• detail of each change
• supplemental information: where to find more detail, other announcements, etc.

Examples

Take a look at the Launchpad releases page for some examples of our past release announcements.

My favourite Liverpudlian living in Sweden, Patrick Finch, is moving on from Sun Microsystems to look after the European side of Mozilla’s Firefox marketing.

I mention this for two reasons:

• his excellent blog has moved to patrickfinch.com
• it’s the ideal opportunity to remember the classic Silicon.com headline “Peter Fuchs off to TheBrain.com“.

Patrick’s Sun blog was home to insightful and incisive comment on the free software world and I expect his new blog will continue in that way. Congrats on the new job Paddy!

Here’s a post I’ve made to the Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute blog:

Nerves are jangling here at the Institute. We’re just four days away from the very first episode of the Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute on 101.8 WCR FM!

So, what do we have planned for this first show? Here’s a taster:

• The Cynic’s Guide to 9/11 Conspiracy Theories: a documentary looking at alternative explanations for what happened on September 11th 2001, the conspiracy theorists behind them and the sceptical response. Features former MOD UFO investigator Nick Pope on the sceptics’ side.
• The Generalist Party: interview and debate with two guys from Grimsby who’ve started a new political party.
• Dan Whitehouse live: local singer-songwriter Dan Whitehouse will be in to play live in the studio and talk about his music.
• Illustrator Sarah Ray: interview with the local illustrator.
• Musician Dan Bryk: interview with and music from the Canadian musician who has released his latest EP under a Creative Commons licence.
• Topical political debate: continuing the best of the Wolverhampton Politics Show, we’ll be discussing the political stories and themes of the day.

Plus there’ll be arts news, a run-down of what’s on in Wolverhampton, general chat and more!

Join us between 7pm and 10pm on 13th June. Tune into WCR FM on 101.8 FM if you live in Wolverhampton or go to wcrfm.com and click Listen Live.

Here’s how to get in touch:

• Email: radiophonic@wcrfm.com
• Text message: 60300 – start your message with “WCR radiophonic “
• Phone: 01902 572257 during the show.

Despite the rumour that nothing happens in Wolverhampton on a Wednesday, yesterday evening I saw Dan Whitehouse play at Alchemy, which is next to the Little Civic in Wolverhampton.

The night was organised by Colour Promotions, who are starting to put on events such as this in the city. Wonderful to see!

I’ve only recently come across Dan’s music, thanks to Neil Calloway, my co-host on our new show The Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute. Dan’s songs come across as snapshots of moments of realisation, told with benefit of hindsight. I was impressed by how his sound filled the venue with just a guitar and a bloke playing the box (okay, there was a proper name for it…)

I’m pleased to say Dan’s on the first episode of The Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute on 101.8 WCR FM at around 9.30 on the 13th June. He’s also hosting a new night at the Light House called Live at Lock Works on the 19th June.

Yesterday I recorded episode 2 of the Launchpad podcast, Launchpod, with Joey and Elliot.

In it we interviewed Launchpad developers Graham Binns and Jono Lange, who are over at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Prague. There’s also Joey’s number of the week and Elliot talks about the best way to register a project in Launchpad.

Let me know how you think we could improve the podcast.

On June 13th, I start a brand new radio show on WCR FM. From 7pm – 10pm (and sometimes midnight), I’ll be joined by Neil Calloway for The Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute!

Replacing the Wolverhampton Politics Show, the new programme will take in art, debate, politics, philosophy and more. I love radio that takes me on unexpected journeys and I hope, in some small part, The Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute will achieve that.

Something I’m particularly excited about is that we’re planning to use a mix of pre-recorded mini-documentaries and reports, with live studio discussion. We’re also hoping to showcase the best of the other shows on WCR FM.

Naturally, a podcast of the best bits of the show will be available shortly after broadcast.

I hope to blog more about the new show, as time allows, and in particular about the process of planning and making the show.

I’ve just published the first episode of our new Launchpad team podcast!

Rather wittily, we’ve gone for the name “Launchpod”, which I think is rather excellent and was suggested by Launchpad user gschaefr.

In this first episode, amongst other things we talk to Tony Wright from RescueTime. RescueTime’s a service for tracking how you use your time and their community-developed Linux client is developed using Launchpad!