100,000 page views

100,000 page views isn't huge...but for a blog that was meant to be a way of collecting links and thoughts and not really aimed at anyone in particular - though you might see a strong leaning to things such a privacy, astronomy, mathematics, computer science - I consider this to be quite a milestone.

And here it is, reached at 22:27 on 22 December 2015:

Nadolig Llawen

Hyvää Joulua

God Jul

Merry Christmas

Google Blogger and EU Cookie Laws

This is very kind of Google...providing you with an automatically generated privacy notice to European customers as detailed on the Blogger settings page:

This to me highlights a few problems with privacy laws and compliance:

• Firstly, you have to understand EU privacy laws
• You have to understand how to write such a notice
• You have to understand what systems such as Google Analytics etc actually collect and process.
• You might have to provide an opt-out mechanism such as Google's Analytics Opt-Out.

For 99.999% of bloggers (+/- a few %age points), I strongly doubt that any of this is understood or even known about at all.

So while Google might come in for some criticism for its dominance in the information gathering domain, they at least try to make things easier for their customers.

Then there's the EU Cookie Consent Kit which guides you through at least one part of the consent notice maze.

As an exercise, write a simple website...now work out what privacy notice you should display. Just to make it interesting, you are not allowed to have any contact with a privacy lawyer nor anyone who has a detailed knowledge about such things.

This quote by Einstein (often misattributed to Feynmann) sums up privacy laws and the average person writing a blog:

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother

Our privacy laws have become so complicated and often so misaligned with technology that they can not be easily understood by the average Internet user.

Privacy Engineering - The Book ... real soon now, I promise

Final push to complete the draft. Many many thanks to all that have provided numerous comments...We're probably looking at late July after the editorial process and the production of the first proof copy.

Ian Oliver (2014) Privacy Engineering - A Dataflow and Ontological Approach. ISBN 978-1497569713

Official Website: www.privacyengineeringbook.net
Facebook:  facebook.com/privacyengineering

Writing...

Despite writing supposedly being cathartic...ha!...writing anything, from an academic paper to a forthcoming book is not a linear stream of word but a moulding of multiple, parallel, concurrent streams of conciousness into something appearing a whole.

I thought of the analogy with moulding a piece of clay into a work of art...and it works until you realise that piece of clay is probably a piece of s*** that you're holding. At which point you throw it away, wash your hands and feel disgusted and what you've done...

...and then feel more disgusted as to the time you've wasted and the work you've put in and what you've thrown away...warts and all...

It is at that point that you realise that somewhere in that piece of p** was a nugget of gold. So it's on with the rubber gloves to fish out that "clay", find the piece of gold (which may have just been a flash of sunlight if the first place), clean it off and continue with the moulding of your writing until you've achieved something that you're happy to abandon in public view. Just hoping that you've managed to wash off all the smell...

Hemmingway got it right:
The first draft of anything is shit. 

...anyway I'm off to read Pirsig and walk the dog...maybe simultaneously....

Food Blogs

An advertisement for a friend who is both a chef and a photographer....

From a Cook's Heart
 
I recommend the roast garlic soup.....