Finally bowing to modern two-way communication, I’ve enabled comments for this blog. To add your own thoughts to one of my posts, click on the little link which says “No comments” (or the number of comments that there are). And fill in the form. Please say “Hello” now to check it works!

If you get the email subscription to this, note that I’ve migrated it from Yahoo Groups to the new blogging software I’m using. Let me know if this email is or isn’t working, or doesn’t look right. I’ll post to the Yahoo Group soon, and then shut it down if everything is fine.

This is the sort of thing Julian was after when he thought up Public Whip…

Today we’ve launched our first finished mySociety project. It’s called WriteToThem and it performs magic. OK, not quite magic, but some things which haven’t been done before. Go on, try it out:

1. Enter your postcode.
   • Find out all of your elected representatives.
     • And then easily send them a letter.

I’m betting you didn’t know who your local councillors or your MEPs were before, never mind had such a convenient way of contacting them.

This afternoon it was sunny, and I went out to look at the crocuses near the back of St John’s and Trinity colleges. They’re roughly here on a map. Every spring I wait for them to magically appear, the first magnificent sweep of flowers, they make the eyes glow to stare at them. Today there was even a bee happily buzzing between them, as if in a childrens’ book. You can kneel down and peer, but no amount of biology will resolve the flowers’ mystery.

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“Which MPs are the most assiduous, the most expensive, the most inquisitive, and even the most revolting?” Last night Stef and I were on “Today in Parliament”, Radio 4 talking about TheyWorkForYou.com and Public Whip. Rather than explaining further, you can just listen to it. The item starts 9 mins 15 seconds into the programme. Be quick though, BBC Listen Again only keeps it up for a week.

On Wednesday a couple of friends who work at the Cambridge University Library showed me round. The only bit I took notes on was the book conservation section and the bindery. The UL is a copyright library, so gets all books printed in the UK for free, and it also buys foreign books and pamphlets. In total over 120,000 new books arrive every year. Some of these are lent out, and many of those have to be rebound to be strong enough. As well as all these new books, they also have lots of very old ones.

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Last week, some of us finally made Directionlessgov.com, a search engine as your interface to the UK government. Have a go, it’s actually quite useful. It’s a bit of an in-joke, but makes a simple point well; these days everyone finds everything by Google. Normal people don’t go to fat, carefully crafted “web portals” like Directgov.

I saw this myself yesterday when my Mum was trying to give towards relief after the Tsunami. At the time the appeal website wasn’t yet up, and she searched for all sorts of things on Google, none of which got anywhere. In the end going to Oxfam’s home page first, then following the prominant link, worked well. But it was far harder than it should have been.

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There’s one strange thing which makes the job of writing software quite unlike any other sort of artisan. You can finely craft something just once, yet thousands, even millions of people end up using it.

Four years ago, I spent maybe ten evenings making the first version of a useful tool that I wanted myself. And then the occasional evening every few weeks for the next two years improving it. Ever so slightly obsessive, but not compared to the amateur mechanic who spends all summer in the garage building a kit car.

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(Third and final part of a series. It’ll make more sense if you read First Two Days at Burning Man and Middle Two Days at Burning Man first. And What is Burning Man? if it’s still puzzling. The photo to the right is of the polyps I found in the desert on Friday. The photo below of the viewing platform in Illumination Village.)

Saturday

• Shower queue, long now. Ice cream while waiting.
• Repainted green, another two coats.
• Burning man - paniced prepare
• it was an art car rally!
• standing on my shoulders to get better view- Group party hopping
• spinning thing to sit on
• fell asleep everywhere
• braziers warm- Dawn

Sunday

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The charity that I work for (“shadowy social-software funders mySociety” as we were described in NTK) are hiring. We’re looking for someone to make all the websites we’re building as easy to use as possible, as well as look good. Or as the job advert says, “Strong PHP experience” and “Fanatical obsession with usability”. Please tell anybody you know who might fit this description, and post to relevant mailing lists.