RISC OS Awards

LOL Don’t expect anything RK3288 coming from me in the near future! I have other tasks to deal with right now. So to sum it up .. Don’t vote on me! :D

David:

Those have been the categories for the last three or four years, and nobody has objected before. (There were fewer in the first version, and additions were made as the result of requests and discussions – possibly by email, possibly here on the ROOL forum).

For the ‘best foreign language’ one, Rick’s explanation sums it up well, but I’d add that with RISC OS (and the developer-base in particular) being so Anglo-centric, it means the vast majority of things that fall under my radar have UK origins, which in turn means there is much less likely (though not impossible) to be anything from further afield in any of the categories. That, IIRC, is precisely why the category was first suggested to me – a combination of ensuring inclusion where there might otherwise be none and highlighting some non-English resources in a largely English-language community.

As for the overlap possibilities, I mostly disagree – the only thing that really comes close to an overlap with it is best new development, for which “development” doesn’t necessarily refer to software or hardware being developed; for example, the re-licensing of RISC OS 5. As it happens, that particular example is also one that could overlap between the two categories – it could be described as a show of initiative, but RISC OS Dev acquiring Castle also deserves an entry, and I want to avoid having two competing entries from the same company in the same category.

The bottom line is that the categories you suggest I drop are ones that allow me to include things that don’t fit so well elsewhere. This is one of the suggestions I will respectfully disregard.

Don’t forget – or perhaps you don’t know (see your quoted comment and my reply straight after this paragraph) – that each question can be skipped. The default option for each is to suit people who have no interest in, or ability to offer an opinion on, that category; for example, some people can’t attend shows.

Generally, people are put off surveys that are too long, asking too many questions and don’t complete them.

Is it safe for me to assume from this that you haven’t voted in previous polls? Because the 13 questions of the awards poll is only the first part. There’s also the survey! :p (Which, of course, can be skipped altogether).

Bryan:

Best website has got to include StarDot, and maybe the Acorn Computers Enthusiasts group on Facebook (ick) too.

Stardot probably could – but at the moment I have six options (plus the default and the alternative suggestion), which is my preferred maximum. So which option needs to go? I’d be inclined to suggest the WIMP programming video tutorials, which I suspect has a narrower audience than Tim’s colour conversion tool.

As for the Facebook group, I didn’t know about that one – largely because, as you say, “Facebook (ick)” – but it’s not alone. There’s also a RISC OS Pi group, for example, and probably others. As such, should the argument be for Facebook (ick) itself to be the nominee? I’m going to veto that one, I’m afraid.

As for NetSurf; my starting point was as usual what I’ve put on RISCOSitory in the year and I didn’t see any NetSurf mentions, other than in passing on a couple of other things, but I’m sure work must have progressed on it. *cough*WROCC syndrome*cough*.

Again, I currently have six in that category, so a case for inclusion needs a reason and a case for exclusion of something else.

Chris: Sorry about that. A quick search on RISCOSitory tells me I spelt it correctly there! :)

Michael: Fair comment; On that basis, I think your RK3288 port might be better suited in the innovative/interesting project category – which would bring the number for that up to six (but reduce new development down to three).

Vince, thanks anyway for all the work you put into running the awards each year. I was just trying to reduce it! :-)

Ah, okay.

The actual hard work is purely reviewing the year’s news to see what I’ve reported on, and list it in a spreadsheet under the (or each) category I feel it fits – then eliminating all but six in each (if there are that many to start with). The number of categories makes no difference in that respect.

Once that (and any discussion here) is done, it’s all semi-automated. I update the spreadsheet and save it out as CSV, then feed the file into a program that generates the form.

The other end of the process starts off semi-automated, and the only manual job is to update the graphics to show the right year, which doesn’t take long, and to put together the web page. (And I could automate that as well, if I wanted to. I probably should, TBH.)

I should also update the spreadsheet each and every time I post something to RISCOSitory – and when I first devised this approach, I did actually start doing exactly that, until I got ridiculously busy and in my rush to get to other things, basically forgot.

No further comments on this?

If not, then pending one thing (I’m waiting for a reply to an email) I can update the changes into the spreadsheet, tidy up the wording and links, then run the set up program – all of which I’d like to do this weekend.

In fact, stuff it, I will do it this weekend; if I don’t see that reply by then¹, it’ll be too late.

¹ First contender for the Broken Cog category next year. :p

(Edit – didn’t set up the footnote correctly!)

Discuss, suggest, complain… whatever. As usual, I’ll weigh up what’s said, explain my reasoning if necessary, change my mind, stick with my original ideas, ignore suggestions, take suggestions on board, etc., and eventually produce the poll.

I think that ROOL’s successful work behind the scenes to get RISC OS 5.26 back into NOOBS (as of October 2018) with updated firmware which works on all models (including Pi model 3 A+ only very recently produced) deserves a huge vote of thanks. The SD card image therefore exists but it is likely that the extended HardDisc4 element of it is exactly the same as the 5.24 version along with the PackMan mismatch and this may be the reason that it is not (yet) on the downloads page. So perhaps a broken cog as well?

Ben certainly deserves thanks for getting it on NOOBS, but it is possibly worth reinforcing that it was at ROD’s request/initiation. It was our first mandate on aquiring Castle – to get back on NOOBS, in time for the Open Source announcement. Thanks to Ebon, Ben was able to take time off his day-to-day work for Pi Foundation to update NOOBS with RISC OS. A brilliant team effort, I think really, and one which I hope we can repeat in future co-operative thingumies.

The best category for that, I think, would be best new development – which is looking a bit sparse with the changes already made, so there’s room for it.

However, my take on that explanation is that the credit should go to (at least) ROOL and ROD together – but both already have individual entries in that category, so they’d be competing against themselves in a joint effort. I try to avoid that (as I’ve said), but OTOH, ROOL+ROD is arguably not the same as either ROOL or ROD.

I think on this one, it might be a case of I’ll flick a coin when I finalise/update the spreadsheet.

Not that I want to give you even more work (sorry!) but don’t you need to do the London Show report before asking people to vote on the best event?

Otherwise they will be voting without having all the details, and we know where that leads… :-O

Otherwise they will be voting without having all the details, and we know where that leads… :-O

I vote Remain with last years setup. Of course I’d be out voted by cat or something with a similar intellect. :)

Not that I want to give you even more work (sorry!) but don’t you need to do the London Show report before asking people to vote on the best event?

In an ideal world, yes – but in a realistic world, it’s not going to be possible unless the awards poll doesn’t take place for at least another month, possibly more¹.

What I’ll do is, rather than link to my show reports for the two that I can, I won’t link to my show reports for any of them. Instead, I’ll link the three UK shows to Mark’s reports on Icon Bar. I think that’s a reasonable approach.

¹ This weekend, for example, as well as finalising the poll² finishing off the directions I’ve written for the new SW venue, and writing a pre-show post, I’ll also be moving most of my belongings from where I am now to a flat I’m moving into, as well as building a pile of flat pack furniture ready for when I actually move, which should be Tuesday (when the internet services will be switched on – if nothing goes wrong). And there’s still a ton to do there – my only chair(s) will be my old, tatty desk chair and a new one I’ve bought.

¹ Edited to add that fairly important task that I forgot to include originally. ;)

I’ve updated the draft list again.

That version now has one item that I’m going to decide on by flicking a coin. Unless there are any further comments by the time I update the spreadsheet to match, what it now says (not the actual wording) is what the final poll will be. (For example, NetSurf was mentioned, but I’ve seen no reply to my challenge to justify it and suggest what comes off that category – so as it stands, NetSurf won’t be included).

The 2018 polling form is now live.

I’ll formally announce it later in the week.

I wasn’t expecting to have an internet connection when I got home today (my broadband and TV service is supposed to be cut off here today, ready to be carried forward and installed at my flat tomorrow) – but it’s all working, so I’ve posted out some initial announcements.

Having only posted the link above last night to this site and the RISCOSitory Twitter account, I’m encouraged by the early results. There are already 23 votes in (a bit over 20% of last year’s total) and about a quarter of those include email addresses that I don’t instantly recognise.

If we ignore the possibility of my memory being rubbish, that’s quite a good sign, I think. :)

Perhaps before there’s too much backslapping, NOOBS needs much more testing.

On the strength of all the “RISC OS is back in NOOBS” messages . . .

1. Bought a Pi 3B+ and NOOBS from Pi Hut this week
2. I tried to install RISC OS
3. “RISC OS cannot be installed. Size of recovery partition too large.”

Hey, I wonder why there aren’t more RISC OS users? [face/palm]

What size was your NOOBS SD card? If it was less than 8GB then this may have caused problems.

“RISC OS cannot be installed. Size of recovery partition too large.”

I can confirm this problem. NOOBS 3.0.0 Offline was installed on a newly reformatted 8GB card. Only RISC OS was selected to be installed, the 8GB card is too small for Rasbian as well.

Entertainingly a NOOBS Lite RISC OS only install worked, complete with the spurious yellow flash.

P.S. Someone has been here before!!

P.S. Someone has been here before!!

Reading that a few times, if I’m understanding the issue correctly, the problem is that the NOOBS base install files have expanded to the point where they are now occupying that special spot where the bodged in Boot “partition” would sit.
Probably not going to get a proper fix until true partition support comes to RO, although someone may create a new NOOBS safe bodge.