Thursday

On Thursday night I headed down to Brighton after work for the d.Construct web conference. I’ve been looking forward to it for ages, so I can’t say I wasn’t buzzing a bit. Met up with Dave when I arrived, and also Adam Bardsley who I’d met at the WSG event back in July. We headed down to Heist for the pre-event social type get together and I got to say hello to a few faces I already knew, and also meet some people who I’ve known around and about online, but had yet to meet face-to-face. The nice thing about having been to BarCampLondon the weekend before meant there were plenty of faces I recognised.

<h4>Friday</h4>
<p>Stayed out a bit too late on Thursday, so was a little sleepy first thing on Friday but the amazing weather soon picked me up.  Summer hasn’t left Brighton yet, apparently.  We (myself, Dave and someone he works with) located a little cafe for breakfast, then made our way over to the Corn Exchange.  After receiving lanyards (which also doubled as programs for the day) and goodie bags we went in for tea and coffee and to say hi to the people we knew there and meet even more people.  And then the day began for real.</p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/phae_/239219627/"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/82/239219627_36f19f14c9_m.jpg" alt="Photo of the conference theatre"/></a>All of the sessions and speakers were interesting and insightful.  Each spoke from experience which is more important than anything.  The downside to the sessions was possibly the length of time the speakers spoke for - they didn’t leave much room for Q&amp;A sessions, and that is often the most useful part of a presentation.</p>
<p>Even though Flex isn’t my area, I really enjoyed <a target="_blank" href="http://aralbalkan.com/" rel="friend met colleague">Aral Balkan</a>’s session (and meeting him again) since he is just a little ball of energy and so enthusiastic.  I’d not seen much about Flex, but was suitably impressed.  <a target="_blank" href="http://2006.dconstruct.org/speakers/#barr">Jeff Bar</a>’s presentation about Amazon’s APIs was neat too - the Human Turk, especially.</p>
<p>A highlight of the day for me was definitely the <a target="_blank" href="http://upcoming.org/event/104699/">Microformats Picnic</a>.  It was a rather short-notice idea <a target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com" rel="friend met colleague">Jeremy</a> came up with in the previous week, and only a handful of people had marked themselves down as attending - but the good weather must have prompted more to join, since there were a lot of people listening, including random Brighton passers-by, to Jeremy explaining what Microformats were, how to use them and answering queries!  It was slightly surreal with the indian twinkly music in the background though, coming from further down into the park.</p>
<p>Since I wore my Microformats shirt to the event (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=microformatstshirt%20dconstruct06&amp;w=all&amp;m=tags">along with a few others</a>), I got to discuss Microformats with plenty of people who were interested in using them, so it was fun for me.  A few people have since emailed me to find out more, or get some advice.</p>
<p>After the conference, I grabbed some dinner with <a target="_blank" href="http://nascentguruism.com/" rel="friend met colleague">Steve</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://kurafire.net/" rel="friend met colleague">Faruk</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://blog.fatbusinessman.com/" rel="acquaintance met colleague">David</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://trovster.com" rel="acquaintance met">Trev</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://ben-ward.co.uk/" rel="friend met colleague">Ben</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.workingwith.me.uk/" rel="acquaintance met colleague">Neil</a> and then we headed down to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.the-terraces.co.uk/">The Terraces</a> for the after-party.  </p>
<p>The after-party was fun, although we missed the tab, but not to worry.  Everyone was in a good mood, and there was plenty of chat related to the topics we’d seen during the day and generally throwing ideas about - mostly in mine and my friend’s cases, how to incorporate Microformats into various mash-ups!  </p>
<p>As the party wound down, <a target="_blank" href="http://allinthehead.com" rel="friend met colleague">Drew</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://andybudd.com" rel="friend met colleague">Andy</a> rounded a few of us up for cocktails back at the delegate hotel.  I think we finished up around 3am!</p>
<h4>Saturday</h4>
<p>Decided to stick around on Saturday since the weather was continuing to be lovely.  Got in contact with <a target="_blank" href="http://notes.natbat.net/">Natalie</a> and met up with the crowd from the night before.  Dave and I watched Natalie and <a target="_blank" href="http://simon.incurio.com" rel="friend met colleague">Simon</a> have a go at the <a target="blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/phae/239221977/">bungee-trampoline things</a> and then had lunch at “Oh So Social” followed by a wander along the sea-front to watch the “eXtreme” skateboarding, have a dig through some second-hand books, and a trip to the Lego store to drool over the new Mindstorm robots (£180!!).  </p>
<p>I ended the day with the group having a BBQ down on Brighton beach, followed by a game of werewolf (I wasn’t a wolf at last, but they still lynched me!).  Made it home by 11pm, shattered but very pleased.</p>
<h4>After</h4>
<p>The backnetwork really comes into its own now that the event has happened.  I’m a bit rubbish at remembering names, so the fact that a majority of people have included their photograph on their profile (and most have managed to include a useful, proper, photo) has made it easy for me to mark those people I’ve met and grab any contact information I need.  </p>
<p>I collected the odd business card for mobile numbers, but generally there was no need for them.  Good because business cards get lost, and it’s more environmentally friendly (yes, computers aren’t, but we’re running them business cards or not).  </p>
<p>Also, I can grab my new friend’s links as as XFNified blog listing, and subscribe to them all in one go.  </p>
<p>The other nifty thing is everyone’s profile page collects photos and blog posts that include them.  You can see mine here: <a target="_blank" href="http://dconstruct06.madgex.com/people/person.aspx?person=francesberriman">My backnetwork profile</a>!  </p>
<p>I hope they continue to use it for future conferences because it’s a really great resource.</p>
<p>If you have a flick around on the <a target="_blank" href="http://dconstruct06.madgex.com/">backnetwork</a>, you’ll find all the links to other people blogging about this and photographs, so I don’t need to make you a list!  Go forth and explore.

I recently readded XFN tags back into my links (read: blogroll), which are another Microformat open standard. As with most microformats it’s very simple, and some blogs will do it for you by default. What it basically means is you add rel=”relationship” to the link of the person to give the link some additional meaning.

For example, if I wanted to link to my friend Lana, I can write:

<a href=”http://lanadenise.wordpress.com” rel=”met friend”>Lana’s blog</a>

This indicates that Lana is a friend who I have met. If you leave out the “met” it can be a friend you haven’t yet met (i.e. online). There’s a handful of predefined relationships that should be used but there’s just enough. You can indicate family members, co-workers and vague connections.

Why would you bother, I hear you ask? Well, it gives some extra meaning to my markup for one. You know how I love semantics. But after badgering my Dad onto Wordpress so I’d have a legitimate reason to use a family XFN tag, we discussed some of the awesome things about it (which had also been mentioned on #microformats). For example, my Dad has a website because he’s interested in finding, and being found by, distant relatives. Imagine a few years down the line when everyone has a blog (don’t they already?) and use XFN tags on the links to their other family members with blogs. You could easily pull up a diagram based on these interconnected links and see who is related to who. An instant family tree!

Alternatively, you could look up people who work together, or instantly pull up a group’s social network based on reciprocated links. Also, it means I can tie other websites that I use to this page, providing they all show the rel=”me” which will ultimately end here. (See Identity consolidation with the XFN rel=”me” value.)

<p>So, I added that, and after spotting that I had accidentally misspelt his surname and telling me that I should blog this, <a target="_blank" href="http://tantek.com" rel="friend">Tantek</a> suggested I also <a target="_blank" href="http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard">hCard</a> the links.  Not a bad idea!  So now you can grab my friends names, websites and what they mean to me all in one go.</p>
<p>Apart from my inability to spell some names correctly, XFN is a very simple to add but fully loaded tag for links, so I had no issues with implementing them.  </p>
<p>I think it’s something that will be relied upon more and more in the future for a range of uses and services, so it’s really worth adding now and getting a grip on.  Mixing XFN with <a target="_blank" href="http://microformats.org/wiki/vote-links">VoteLinks</a> (which I have yet to use anywhere) and <a target="_blank" href="http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-nofollow">no-follow</a> seem like an interesting prospect and perhaps could be useful for better determining page ranking or just aiding web searches.  I’m no innovator, but I’m sure someone will come up with a good way to utilise these features together.</p>
<p>The question is, what should I format next?  <a target="_blank" href="http://microformats.org/wiki/hresume">hResume</a>?

Drew Mclellan (developer of the awesome hKit) and I have discussed a Microformats Social here in the UK for a while but never got anywhere with it, but now we’ve named a date and want to see levels of interest.

We’ve gone for a Saturday - 30th September. So, it’s a little breather after the upcoming events. If you think you can make it, please register your interest either on the wiki page, or the upcoming.org events page. Drop a comment to say if you’d like to do something in particular on one of those pages or on here. This is mostly designed to be a social, but it’ll be an opportunity to discuss any projects you’ve got on the go, get more involved, or clarify any problems you might be having.

We were thinking a trip to a microbrewery would be appropriate - so if you know of one in London which is easily accessible (i.e. near a tube) and wouldn’t mind a hoard of microformateers visiting, let us know about that too.

If you’re at BarCampLondon or d.Construct then you can always talk to us about it there too (or we may draft you into coming along!).

This article is rather old now, but has been linked to a few times recently. Just wanted to say that I don't actually use the example below anymore, as I have since upgraded Wordpress and used the sandbox theme as the basis for my own, which comes with it's own microformat goodness. The example below is still valid though and should be useful to you if you want to understand how it works or still want to do it yourself.

As promised, here is my PHP hAtom Wordpress loop. Feel free to do as you like with it.

To start: The first thing with implementing something like this is it’s a really good excuse to do a code review. I had a look at the way I was using my headings and abbrs etc. and moved them about a bit. It becomes clear pretty soon that if you’re not using your HTML tags in a semantic way, it’s harder to think about adding additional levels of meaning (the microformat classes).

When I first added hAtom I didn’t also add it for my comments. This meant I could use hFeed around the entries. You can’t nest hFeed though, and since this loop will sit around the comments loop on a permalink entry, it had to be sacrificed and instead the page is taken as hFeed (which is the fallback) and the hFeed wraps around the comments loop (which I can also post if you’re interested). If you don’t hAtom your comments, put hFeed back in around the main entries, as this is a field that should exist if possible.

Entries loop with hAtom:

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post hentry" id="post-<?php
the_ID(); ?>">
<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="<?php
the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"
title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title();
?></a></h2>
<h3>by <span class="author
vcard"><span class="fn"><?php the_author()
?></span></span>
on <abbr class="published" title="<?php
the_time(’Y-m-d’) ?>"><?php the_time(’F jS Y’)
?></abbr> </h3>
<?php the_bunny_tags(); ?>
<div class="entry-content">
<?php the_content(’Read the rest of this entry »’); ?>
</div>
</div> <!– end hentry –>
<p class="righted">Posted in <?php the_category(’, ‘) ?>
<strong>|</strong>
<?php teb_word_count(); ?> | <?php
edit_post_link(’Edit’,'’,'<strong>|</strong>’); ?>
<?php comments_popup_link(’No Comments »’, ‘1 Comment »’,
‘%Comments »’); ?></p>
<?php comments_template(); ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<p><?php next_posts_link(’« Previous Entries’) ?>
<?php previous_posts_link(’Next Entries »’) ?></p>
<?php else : ?>
<h2>Not Found</h2>
<p>Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.</p>
<?php endif; ?>

I’ve added some linebreaks and such to make it a bit more practical for a fixed width blog, so don’t take too much heed of the actual layout.

The bold parts are the hAtom sections (although the bunny tags also produce the “rel=tag”). The parts in italics are plugin calls. Note also how you incorporate hCard as the author. The publish date uses the datetime design pattern on the abbreviation. I chose not to include a timestamp as I don’t publish more than once a day (as a rule, anyway).

Do not fret those of you who aren’t into working up your own code, or perhaps are using wordpress.com - The Sandbox theme (available to .com users also) now has hAtom!

As you can see, it’s pretty simple. It’s just a case of going through and basically labeling the correct parts with the correct classes (making sure you have instances of all the must have classes). If you follow the link above to the hAtom wiki page on the microformat site, you’ll find some tools for testing your implementation.

Sleep is another of my armchair interests. I saw an interesting documentary last night about night terrors, and with Rich discussing dreams on his blog, it reminded me about my own odd sleep condition; sleep paralysis.

I did some research on it a couple years ago but never turned up that much information (imagine that, a time when the internet didn’t know everything). I had a look about today, and there is a lot more about it available. I suffer, a term I use loosely, from sleep paralysis, or more precisely Hypnagogia with sleep paralysis, and have done for about 5 years now and with a frequency of about once every week to a fortnight. Apparently it’s common (around 25% of people experience sleep paralysis either in this form, or the more common hypnopompic state which instead occurs when waking). It’s almost the opposite of sleep walking, in that rather than the brain switching off and the body carrying on it’s activities, sleep paralysis feels like the body has switched off and the brain is still awake.

<p>It’s pretty weird at first, because if you don’t realise you’re asleep (like I didn’t the first few times) you’re convinced you’re paralysed and therefore not doing too well.   Because I’m aware of the experience, I’m able to lucid dream once I’ve grabbed back a bit of control and moved past the anxiety. I’ve experienced a lot of the recorded strange sensations though, from thinking I’ve got up and done things as normal, being convinced I’m going to die (”the fear”, which is unavoidable but fightable), feeling like I’m moving (sliding, spinning or falling) and imagining people (including “the intruder”).  Napping in the afternoon sun on my back, which I don’t get to do much anymore, is the most reliable trigger for it, for me.</p>
<p>Sleep is a funny thing.</p>
<ul>
<li><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A6092471">An interesting BBC explaination</a>.</li>
</ul>