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This is a very useful post if you're looking to roll your own Design Structure Matrix (http://www.dsmweb.org/) visualization tool.

I'm about halfway through this on my Kindle.

I had seen Pandas referenced online and had been meaning to look at it at some point. Reading this book has forced me to pay attention. The Pandas dataframe type is well explained here and is now firing my mind, I'm just spinning off into various applications that hadn't occurred to me before reading this book.

In summary, I would definitely recommend it so far.

I suspect this was driven by frustration.

HMG are driving hard to push government to citizen interaction online to reduce costs and speed up the transactions. The financial transactions are a huge amount of money passing over the Internet leaving aside the serious duty of care they assume for vulnerable or at-risk citizens.

This relies on knowing who is driving the browser you're transacting with. when you're dealing with the entire population there are a lot of people who it's difficult to establish a valid identity for.

Knowledge-based authentication is the 'good enough' answer used by commercial providers but for a significant proportion of the population it's broken by their social network use and footprint.

I've used mongodb for a recent prototype. It was brilliant, I iterated through the data model as I coded.

However, I am now very aware that I have an implicit schema in my code that will be harder to understand in 6 months than a database schema.

I traded fantastic flexibility in initial development against easily maintained longevity.

I suspect I will move to something more relational but have also taken on the need to really understand the trade-offs I'm making. I've started reading Seven Databases in Seven Weeks to fill in some of my gaps.

Ben Goldacre was on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning discussing his book with a representative of the pharma industry.

Platitudinous and evasive answers from the industry rep while referring to Goldacre's 'extremist' views. He's hit a nerve and they don't appear to have a good rebuttal.

For those with iPlayer access you can here it again here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mw2d4

Edit: Ben Goldacre piece was at 08:34. Excerpt of just that section is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9754000/9754505....

Agreed, it may be my age but I think as IT professionals we have a responsibility for the real world impacts of the systems we build and/or run.

I see this as a similar to an engineer seeing a mainstream news report of an unintended side effect of large scale engineering project.

It would seem to me that open standards are the answer to walled gardens rather than 'Free, open source and federated'.

I don't know of any standards-based activity discussing a twitter-like capability but multiple interoperable implementations, open and closed source, free and for money, provides an 'ecosystem'.

I would contrast an ecosystem to a platform. A platform is owned or controlled centrally whereas a successful ecosystem isn't. A well-managed platform ultimately provides the most benefits to the platform owner whereas a successful ecosystem provides the benefits to the most successful entities within it, a playing field to compete within.

I think this has set a precedent that paid-for tweets must now be marked as such with maybe a #ad to be legal in the UK.

This is a great site, will likely be very handy for me over the summer.

Couple of things that immediately jumped out as useful additions for my particular use case: 1) A 'family friendly' filter on places 2) A 'kids' filter on events 3) A filter based on distance 4) Even better a filter based on how long it takes to drive to the event or the place (maybe using Google Maps directions estimates?)

I'm definitely going to use this over the next few weeks.

Of particular interest is the PDF listed on that page "How will the data protection reform affect social networks?".

The right to be forgotten especially.

There's a free PDF download following registration.

I think it is statement that is worth repeating regularly. Too often I work with technologists who refuse to consider a moral or ethical dimension to the work they do.

The technology may not inherently have an ethical or moral dimension but the uses to which it is put often do.

In the UK, especially in London the situation suggests I shouldn't give to beggars, I should give to the homeless charities.

There are reportedly more hostel places than homeless people and those hostel places are 'free at the point of delivery' to the homeless that use them.

There has been research done, supported I think by the homeless charities, that suggests that the money given direct to some homeless is used to fuel drink and drug addictions and may help cause a higher rate of death or serious disease.

The recommendation (According to Radio 4 at least) is to give to the homeless charities not to the homeless.

I know change happens, maybe it's a function of my age but this increasingly feels like I am living in a different world to the one I started my career in. Interestingly it's no the technology that that feels different, it's the loss of people and companies that shaped the older world.

Seems like a wood circle, no stones and no henge mentioned.

The author makes a good point. These areas have been off the UK media radar for a long time. They haven't had a voice.

That said it seems at the moment that this is less political and more economic/criminal activity. What will be interesting is the effect of network communications (Twitter, facebook etc etc) in shifting the balance between Police and rioters.

I suspect (But have no direct evidence) that a smaller but more highly trained, equipped and organised Police was effective against a much larger disorganised mass. The tools for communication appear to give the rioters an increasing level of cell organisation that reduces the impact of the Police 'force multiplier'.

May explain why they are struggling to respond, just too many rioters with just enough organisation.