Recently I came across Barlow's Manifesto which was written by John Perry Barlow. 

The manifesto was written as a direct criticism of the Communications Decency Act in 1996. Barlow and others saw this act as a threat to the "independence and sovereignty of cyberspace". 

I find it a fascinating read as this was a time when the Internet was barely visible to most of society, yet John Barlow, (who was also a lyricist for the Grateful Dead), could see that any level of governance could have huge ramifications on the growth and scope of "the net". Barlow was clearly an early visionary of what cyberspace would become, and it's interesting how much of what he said back in 1996 is still relevant today.

I started blogging occasionally some years back, circa 2008 I guess; and it's been pretty on and off since then. However it's been on a couple of platforms like wordpress and blogspot etc. Over the coming weeks I'm going to try and gather up some of those old articles and republish them here. However I'm going to republish them with their original publication date, so that this site has some sense of chronological order. Please excuse the mess in the meantime, and perhaps enjoy some of these old musings. I will also tag them with the tag "old blog".

I won't move across all articles, probably leaving behind anything that is just opinion, is very dated or just lacks any real relevance. If you really want to see it, most of it's at garyquigley.wordpress.com.

One of the frustrating things of running a blog, is that you actually have to write stuff occasionally! I suppose nobody actually makes you do a blog, and it's questionable as to whether anybody is actually reading it anyway!

However, there is something in my head that says it's a good thing to do, not least because it can bring some level of catharsis to you. Actually, I needed to check the word catharsis, as I was more inclined to use the word cathartic. Of course, what I am trying to say is that a blog can be a cleansing experience of all those things that are rattling around your head.

I came across a blog post this morning* that really opened my eyes about charity giving. The post is titled “5 things charities secretly spend your money on“.

I’m naturally quite a cynical person, (“oh really”, shout my friends…!), and always felt things aren’t quite as they appear when it comes to charity walks and specifically all of the “easy” ways of giving. But the level of fees paid to event management companies and other subcontracted firms is shocking. To my mind when I hand over my contribution, I like to think the greater percentage has gone to the cause, not to some other hanger on.

Sent this to the #stargazing programme, as I created it, and they said Brian Cox was up for putting it on the show tonight - whether that actually happens remains to be seen, but made me laugh!

Although my work life is in a specific area of IT not specifically related to programming, it would seem I've always had some level of involvement with this side of computing.

In fact I started my working life as a programmer back in 1989, but the reason I got that job was because as a kid I'd learnt to program my ZX Spectrum. Over the years I've programmed various languages like Basic, C, DataFlex, HTML and PHP, and somehow have always found a reason in any non programming jobs to use my programming skills to make various work flows easier.

Look's like I've always been keen on the idea of blogging, but as per now, not very good at doing it on a regular basis...

Why do I say that - I've literally just falling across a blog that I started back in 2004 and had completely forgotten about!

See my pointless ramblings at http://cheekie.blogspot.co.uk/!

[* Updated 17 May 2013]

I decided to write this post because I've been playing a long-term waiting game for the pebble watch, and I really don’t want to take up half of a review with my views on the delivery process when it eventually arrives. Just to remind you the pebble is a smart watch where the greater percentage of the intelligence is in a Bluetooth connected smartphone whether that be an iOS or android device. However, the watch would allow you to interact with various bits of software on the phone without ever removing it from your pocket; oh and of course allow you to read the time! It turned out to be a hugely popular kickstarter campaign as they ended up with 68,929 backers and $10,266,845 of their original $100,000 goal.

As we approach the UK General Election in May, there seems to be a growing feeling of “why should I bother to vote, as they are all the same”. So it occurs to me that a lot of our decision making is based on a number of headline facts, rather than a detailed analysis of the parties’ manifestos.

But frankly who wants to trawl through the pages of all these manifestos to find out whether a party really stands up for the things you find important in life? Currently there are 12 parties with representation in the house of common, and many more that would like seats - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_Kingdom

A YouTube video going viral at the moment is "The Expert", and no wonder...

I'm pretty sure anybody with any technical capabilities, myself included, have been "The Expert" in meetings like this...

So I guess any blog has to start with a post of some kind, and obviously this is going to be mine… There you go; my first statement of the obvious!

In principle I don’t actually get blogs… Now there’s a good statement to start a blog with. Why don’t I get them? Well who’s interested in what I have to say?! I guess, in principle no-one is and everyone is at the same time – it just depends on what you have to say. I did start one a number of years ago, but  I didn’t do it for very long.

As someone who works in IT and therefore spends a lot of time in front of a computer screen, I'd long realised that it's very easy to get distracted. One of the other areas that concerned me was the fact that because of the highly accessible nature of information, are we, (am I?!), losing the ability to learn?