During my long drive to work I was pondering on how many different programming language I have used. There have been many over the last thirty years.

My first experience of using a computer was at upper school. Our maths teacher, Mrs Jaworski started a lunchtime BASIC programming course before we started computing as a subject. She showed us flowcharts and how they related to the various commands. To actually try anything we had to take turns on a Teletype connected to the local college via an acoustic coupler. I immediately took to it. After some time there were just two of us using the terminal most lunchtimes playing around with trying to write simple text games and generating long strips of paper output. When we started on O Levels we would go to the college once a week so we could get a terminal each. They even had VDUs, i.e. screens instead of paper!

A couple of years after that first encounter I saved up enough to at least contribute to my first computer, a BBC Micro. The BASIC on that was pretty powerful with the ability to declare procedures and embed assembly language. I wrote lots of programs on that, many to generate graphics, including my first Mandelbrot set. That would become my standard test program to write with a new language. I played a little with the 6502 assembly too.

At Coventry Poly I did electrical engineering, but we had some programming lectures, first on BASIC and later on Pascal. We used their Harris mini computers for that, but I did my project on a Beeb when I built an interface to turn it into a simple oscilloscope. I think we also did a course of writing machine code with the hex pad on a 6809 board. I also had a look at Forth on the mini after reading books about it.

During my first few jobs I wrote applications in dBase, Turbo Pascal (including OOPS), Turbo Basic and C++. I'm not sure I ever wrote anything significant in C.

A later job was for a company, Intuitive Systems, that produced their own programming language called I/S2. I was doing IT support there, but got to play with and test the language. I think it was similar to Visual Basic, which I haven't actually used.

My second home computer came a long time after the Beeb when I bought a second-hand Amiga 500. I didn't do much programming on that, but did play a little with ARexx and E (not sure if it's that one).

Another job used Microsoft's Quick BASIC for a car rental system, which was later converted to Magic, a table-based programming system that is good for building applications with lots of screens accessing databases. The skills I learnt on that led to my current employer who were major Magic users. The huge application they produced for the TV industry has now been converted to C#/.net. Both versions run on Oracle, so I do lots of PL/SQL programming too, along with a little Java.

Despite programming for a living I haven't done much for fun since the Beeb. I've looked several times at Python as it seems an elegant and powerful language. I've written a few small programs with it, the most useful of which generates playlist files for my music collection. My choice of PyBlosxom as a blog platform was influenced by the possibility of coding for it, but I've not done more than play with that. Recently I have started looking at Python again after finding libraries that could form the basis of a couple of applications I wanted to implement, a Jabber/XMMP bot and a FOAF parser. The latter is by Luke Maurits who I have started corresponding with. He's a bit younger than me and so had many more options when he started programming. The tools have come a long way since I was entering BASIC line by line into a Teletype and hoping it would run. I need to do some serious reading to get into what something like Python can offer me. There are several on-line courses I will be looking at.

I've been using the standard Pyblosxom comment plug-in for a while. It works, but has limited options. The other day I saw that my friend Wulf has started using the Disqus comments service. This allows visitors to either sign in with various types of identity or to leave anonymous comments. You can track you comments on any site using the service.

A quick Google revealed that someone had already implemented a Pyblosxom plug-in for Disqus. This was very easy to install and seems to work. I want to get a few things tidied up such as showing the number of comments on each entry. I also want to tidy the general layout of the site. The long archive list is untidy. Any suggestions? I'm not much of a web designer.

My job requires me to drive around 40 miles into London several times each week. I travel alone in a medium-sized car and the roads are full of other single occupant vehicles. My car, Vauxhall Zafira diesel, is reasonably efficient for its class at 46mpg, but it's still a relatively inefficient way of getting around. A few years back I was doing the journey by motorbike. That did a slightly better 60mpg, but there are cars that could do similar. The bike saved me a bit of time in general, but came with the disadvantages of increased risk and getting cold and wet in winter. I can get the train to work, but it costs more than using the car and takes a lot longer.

We're a two car family, but that's almost essential with us both working whilst living in a large village with limited public transport. If we got rid of one car and I always took the train would not save us much, if any money. Much as I want to be green we have to live within our means. I could try and find a job that required less travel, but it's not the best time to be doing that.

What I'd like is a much more efficient vehicle that still offers the comfort and safety of a car.For a couple of years I've been following the progress of the Loremo car, a lightweight diesel car that promised up to 180mpg. It's still not out and currently scheduled for a 2011 launch. It has some unusual features like lifting the front of the car to get in and having a pair of rear-facing seats in the boot.

This week I saw that Volkswagen were showing off their own mini diesel hybrid. This is even more minimal with only two seats, but that's perfectly adequate as a commuting vehicle. So what's stopping them putting it into production? I'd buy one if the price was reasonable.

That VW reminded me a lot of the old Messerschmitt bubble cars. Perhaps the time has come again for a more human-sized car. Not that they would be any use to this chap.

It looks like my band may be on hold for a while as some people either have work commitments or want a break. That's a shame as I was looking forward to playing some gigs. I need to meet up with the others some time to discuss the options.

Meanwhile, I've been working on my little acoustic project by learning some more Pink Floyd songs. This has been done on my Dean Performer electro-acoustic. I've been looking up tab for the songs I want to play. The web is a great resource for this, even if the music companies are not so keen on it.

Other members of my family are also getting into guitar. My son is getting on well and my dad has just upgraded from a budget (Lidl) guitar to a better quality Yamaha classical. I'll have to check that one out. I wouldn't mind another classical as it would better suit that type of music. I've been digging out my old music books to play some of that.

I'm keeping an eye out for any possible musical collaborations. I just can't get into travelling too far to play given my limited spare time. So if anyone around Arlesey, Stotfold, Henlow or nearby wants to play some guitar for fun then I could be interested.

Long-term readers (anyone?) would know what I've been interested in the possibilities of the Semantic Web as a way to make some of the data on the web more useful by giving it some context. I've written before about possible semantic social systems utilising the FOAF data model. This is a file format that can store details of a person and their relations to other people. It can link to FOAF files belonging to those other people to allow their net of connections to be explored. One advantage of this over sites like Facebook is that it allows each person to control their own set of data without relying on a third party and another is that the data can be processed by various software or web sites.

What I would like to see is a piece of software, either running on a PC (or other device) or web site that reads my FOAF file and then allows me to do things like viewing the latest updates that my friends have made to whatever sites they use, based on data in their FOAF files. This could be blog posts, music they have listened to, photos they have uploaded or anything else that can have an RSS/ATOM feed. I can do something like that with friendfeed, but that relies on people joining that particular site or me creating profiles for my friends.

FOAF has been around for a while now, but has not really become mainstream. I know that a number of sites can generate FOAF files based on the data they hold, e.g. the identi.ca microblogging service (my data).

I think one reason for the lack of adoption is that it requires a bit of technical experience to get started. There are various sites that can generate a file based on data entered into web forms, but then you have to upload the file to a web server you have some control over. My own file started with one generated by FOAF-a-matic and has since grown as I learnt about more possibilities. I tend to just use a text editor, but the RDF format is very strict about the data structure and mistakes make the file unreadable by software. I think there must be some tools out there by now that make it easier to update a file. What it needs is a button you can click on in your browser that extracts appropriate data from a site belonging to someone you know and inserts that data into your FOAF file.

Another issue with this sort of data sharing is that it does not provide a way for you to limit exposure of certain data to selected people. I don't include things like my date of birth, address and phone number in my file as they could be misused by some of the less desirable abusers of the internet. I have thought that I could have something on my server that allows friends to access certain data using their email address as a key. Email addresses can be stored in the file in hashed form to make it easy to check for a match without giving too much away. I realise that it may be fairly simple to guess an email address if you know a person's name and web site, but I don't know if the bad guys are doing that. In any case you could email a security key back to the given address to permit access. I don't have enough experience of web programming to know exactly how this would work.

Obviously many people do not have their own web server where they can upload arbitrary data, although many may have some web space provided by their ISP. Ideally we would all have our own domains to prevent issues with details changing when you move to a different provider.

I just felt the need to get this stuff down after thinking about it today. I know there are some projects out there that are working on stuff like this, but I'm not aware of any that past the alpha stage. I'll be happy to be told otherwise. I still harbour a desire to do some programming in this area myself, but have not found the time. Foaflib looks like the Python library I wanted when I looked into this a while back. I'll try to have a look at it. It may allow me to achieve my aim of generating the root page of this site from my FOAF file.

I like to think that Facebook is not the future of the web. Is there hope or has Tim Berners-Lee's vision been forgotten in the gold-rush?

One of the things I love about the internet is how you can engage with people all over the world, including artists you admire. Some, such as bassist Steve Lawson, spend a lot of time talking to their fans on-line in order to build a more intimate relationship and mutual respect. It may not sell as many records as an expensive marketing campaign, but leads to a more loyal following and enhances the enjoyment of the music.

This week a post appeared on the Six String Bliss guitar forum linking to the latest creation by Jeffrey Jones. I commented that these instruments, whilst beautiful, seem beyond the reach of most musicians and that my own tastes are more for utilitarian musical tools. Today Jeffrey himself has responded to my comments with a lengthy post. I've responded to let him know that I appreciate his work even if it's not what I would necessarily buy myself even if I had the money. It's great to hear his side.

I aspire to having a guitar built to my own specification one day, once I figure out what that might be. You can pay an awful lot for an off the shelf guitar, e.g. the Gibson replica of Billy Gibbons' Les Paul. That seems destined for a collector's wall. For a fraction of that price there are plenty of luthiers who will build you a custom guitar. Gordon Smith, who built my main guitar, offer limited customisation options, but others can build almost anything you can imagine. Maybe in a few years I'll be a good enough player to justify splashing out.

I've not got together with the rest of The Barking Spiders since our open rehearsal performance due to holidays and other events. People have other commitments at the moment, so I don't know when we will next play together. Meanwhile I'm doing a fair bit of playing. I'm alternating between the band songs and some acoustic pieces for my own enjoyment. I've been working on a few of the classical pieces I played in my teens. I fancy the idea of collaborating with someone on some acoustic guitar work. This could incorporate any combination of classical, jazz, folk and perhaps some ideas I have for acoustic versions of classic prog tracks such as songs by King Crimson. This depends on finding someone and the time to work on it, but it's a possible path. Since joining the band I feel that more options are open to me. I intend to find a local teacher who can help me build the skills to develop those options.

Our summer holiday this year was a couple of weeks at Camping Village L'Atlantique in southern Brittany. We had a ready-erected tent from Vacansoleil. As well as not having to take all our camping gear this also meant that we got proper beds and a fridge. It's a great site for families with a set of pools with slides and the beach a few minutes walk away. The weather was good enough for us to be in the water almost every day. We were in the sea a lot, which was very clear and made for some fun snorkeling.

Once we were there we didn't use the car much as you can explore a lot of the area via cycle tracks. I do quite enough driving anyway. I don't speak much French, but had enough to get by in restaurants.

A couple of bonuses on this trip were an afternoon at Portsmouth before we caught the ferry exploring the old ships and then there was a little festival near the campsite where we saw some local musicians as well as a great English/Irish/French folk band I'd never heard of called Churchfitters. We liked them so much we bought their album.

From Gigs