brendan@work

UK fishing communities – who is stealing your right to fish?

Landing mackerel in Mousehole, less than 5 commercial fishermen still fish from here

UK fishing communities are having their fishing rights stolen from them. Having lived in a fishing community in the UK for four years and fished for pleasure and profit, I have seen the devastation of this policy, and the myriad of other EU and UK fisheries policy, has wrecked on the livelihood of local small boat fishermen, who make up 75% of the UK fishing fleet.

Again we see big business forcing the hand of politicians for their own gain rather than the protection of a public resource and livelihood of those that depend on it.

The decline of the British fishing industry is often blamed on the EU quota system – the means by which European policymakers decide how many fish European fleets are allowed to catch every year. Less is generally said about how the UK government allocates their share of EU quota domestically – and how this unfair allocation represents a stealth privatisation of public rights, destroying the British fishing industry and the coastal communities that depend on it.

Read on: Who owns the right to catch fish? Manchester United?

New project: Helping the move to Open Source, Lazerteq

Lazerteq Security’s administrative staff have been having continued issues with the default applications provided with the Microsoft operating system they purchased and installed on their work stations, ranging from malware, viruses, software bugs and various usability issues.

I’ll be consulting with Lazerteq to assist in the move to Open Source software for as many applications as possible to alleviate some of these ongoing issues.

The first phase of this is an initial migration of core applications like web browsers, email clients and “office” applications, accumulating in the move to an open source Linux based operating system for their work stations.

If you’d like to know more about the benefits read on, or contact me for more information. Continue reading “New project: Helping the move to Open Source, Lazerteq”

New project: How to catch a fish

I’m pleased to announce my collaboration with the author on the publishing of “How to catch a fish” by Ross Waters.

‘How to Catch a Fish’ is the ultimate kick start for anybody interested in catching fish.

Never before has so much information been condensed into such a wonderfully coherent and understandable way. Volumes of useless details have been slashed in favour of nailing down the crucial ‘need to know’ basics that will enable the reader to enjoy this age old sport to the full.

Every scrap of information in this book is useful and worth knowing. Subjects covered are different types of fish, all you need to know about equipment, bait, location and other worthwhile subjects.

There is no useless waffle within these pages. After reading this book the complete beginner will be exceedingly well equipped to head into the great outdoors and start catching fish.

Ross approached me towards the end of last year about the book he’d written. He wanted some assistance in publishing the book but had no idea where to start and wanted to avoid the traditional route of approaching a major publisher for the process.

We kicked of the project a few months back and I’m pleased so say that we well on our way to the book being available in August via a custom built Drupal website, print, via Lulu.com and Amazon, and also electronic devices such as the Amazon Kindle, Android devices, iPad and iPhone via iTunes.

My involvement is from a technology advisor and project management perspective. I’m guiding the decisions on the technical aspects of the document, delivering it online and in print, putting together the creative and technical team, managing them and the project itself.

Notably all text and artwork for this book are Creative Commons licensed.

I’ll post major updates to this blog on the project status, but if you want more detailed and up-to-date notifications then follow the project via Twitter (@how2catchafish.com), identi.ca (@how2catchafish.com) and our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/How-to-catch-a-fish/162112150498184)

Pin It on Pinterest