Another round of some interesting links on the web, this time the Register provides the bulk of information:
More soon 🙂
Following on from the previous post about switching to typepad, it now seems very unlikely it will happen – you have to pay for type pad… Bah.
It looks like the quest for a WordPress-LifeBlog plugin / work around will have to continue.
I found a collection of old photos on my PC hard disk. These were taken about three years ago and look much better at smaller resolution.
Still – while flickr will allow me to host them, I may as well share them 🙂
Right, generally speaking, I much prefer Word Press as a blogging tool over Blogger and Typepad – however it seems a typepad account is on the cards.
Why?
It is the only one which works with the Lifeblog software on my Nokia phone. Bah. The Lifeblog software was itself a comedy of errors as despite Nokia saying “it comes installed (N73 phone)” the one I was supplied with by 3 didn’t have it. Would Nokia provide it as a download? No. I had to (after much web searching) get the version supplied for the N80 and then install it. Typical wonder of todays modern world.
Anyway, as I was saying, the Lifeblog software will only “talk” to Typepad. There is an interesting thing on the Nokia site:
Interested in Partnering with Lifeblog?
Lifeblog has an open posting protocol so anyone can make their blog service compatible with our software. To find out more, download our blogging specification document:
However, call me old fashioned but isn’t it the job of the “new software” to be able to talk to the old ones not the other way round. I can post to Wordpad from Flickr, Deepest Sender, Performancing even MS packages. What is so special about Nokia? Bah.
Well at least it being an open protocol means I can either see what chances I have of writing a connector between wordpress and Lifeblog or finding out some one else has already done it.
If not – you will soon see a typepad blog supporting this 🙂
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/6058952.stm
Magistrates have fined a man £200 after finding him guilty of putting paper in a recycling sack for bottles and cans only – breaking council rules.
What is the United Kingdom coming to. £200 fine for putting junk mail into the wrong sack (and the write up gets confused over if it was the wrong sack) as part of a VOLUNTARY recycling scheme.
Sheer madness. But it seems the council had issues with this gentleman.
Mr Reeves was served with a warning notice in April this year when he put his bins out a day early because he was going on holiday.
Then in June a green recycling bag was found outside his ground floor flat in the Mount Pleasant area of the city containing both paper and bottles and cans.
Being a bit curious about this, I had a further look and these two paragraphs intrique me (emphasis is mine):
Swansea Council enforcement officer Martin Lemon said: “There is a recycling scheme available in which paper can put into a green recycling sack and glass bottles and tins can be put into a separate sack.”
And
“My colleague informed me that he had opened a green recycling sack and that he found a piece of junk mail with Mr Reeve’s name and address.”
Now call me old fasioned but what is wrong with paper being in a green recycling sack? I hope it was a mistake with the BBC reporting or the council really are insane.
Spending a rainy Sunday afternoon surfing has it’s advantages. I came across Robert Cringely’s excellent site (I, Cringely) and reading through it I found an interesting article about “unlimited broadband.”
In the post, Robert Cringely discusses Verizon’s broad band deal – opening with:
How much Internet service is “unlimited” Internet service? If you are a user of Verizon Wireless’s Broadband Access wireless Internet service, “unlimited” means five gigabytes per month or less. The company is quite specific in its advertisements that the service is for unlimited e-mail, web surfing, and corporate intranet use, but not for downloading music or videos or running servers. (read more)
Sadly, this redefinition of English is not confined to American advertisements. Is it possible to get Advertising Standards to take action?
Well, I used to think Technorati was bad at searching the blogosphere for posts and the like. Then I discovered Blogger’s search tool. Wow. It is bad. It really is that bad.
Now, in the past we here at WhyDontYou have ranted about the problems with blog indexes like Technorati (mainly that unless you are a major company or can public relations yourself to get a billion back links you will never show up), but blogger seems to be drowned under the weight of spam.
Out of curiousity, I did a search for “Open University” Technology Web Design, as I know there is a fairly good blog on TT380 and wondered if there were any more.
Sadly, if I only had Blogger search I would never know. I wouldn’t even know the TT380 blog existed. At the time of my search, the first page of results was almost entirely spam. There are a couple of “real posts” (not exactly blogs though) followed by pages like this – http://bonjourarraonsons77327. blogspot.com/ 2006/09/ soccer-team-strategies-with-3-4-3.html – pure garbage which appears to be there for the sole reason of getting links to other spam sites indexed by google.
It is insane. Blogger is powered by Google. Given the difficulty in getting first page results on Google, you would think this applied to Blogger as well. Obviously not.
Still, in my opinion google is getting less and less relevant now. I find http://uk.yahoo.com produces more, worthwhile, search results and pages I design get indexed there faster. Is this the dawn of a new Yahoo?
Anyway, on a more serious note – the TT380 site is excellent. Well worth a visit and a shame it isnt higher placed on the Search Engine.
Well, never again will I even give the slightest bit of creedence to phrases like “the camera never lies.”
This picture was taken at Old Sarum on 23 Sep, then heavily edited in Photoshop. While the overall image hasn’t changed – that is only because it was decided not to change it. It has been heavily enhanced in the green grass and blue sky (as you can see).
There were also a fair few people in the picture, but they got in the way and ended up being Clone Brush’ed out 🙂
Well, it is August now. The weather has cooled down somewhat so there is a chance that we can get some more blog entries out this month.
History and Technology seem to be the leading lights on the horizon of possibilities – based on the main things I have been looking at of late.
One “top tip” – read the book BARBARIANS by Terry Jones. It really is Brilliant.
Genuinely a quick one today. Have you ever noticed when you google phrases like “AJAX tutorial,” you get MILLIONS of hits (and I mean over 12 million here). Happy days you may be tempted to think, however on investigation nearly all the hits are to pages with links of other sites – which in turn have lists of links and so on.
I am sure Mobius would have been proud of this….
Anyway, not wishing to be left out – here are some of the “cool” AJAX related links I have been looking at today. Some are better than others…
Some good links for first timers:
If it helps – you can find a round up of “50 AJAX Toolkots and Frameworks” which is more interesting than it sounds at – http://www.maxkiesler.com/index.php/weblog/ comments/ round up of 50 ajax toolkits and frameworks/
Seriously, if you know of any better AJAX related links let me know!
Reasonably short one (for now).
Todays issue of New Scientist (cover date 24 June 2006 for those who want to keep track) has an interesting editorial in the “Comment and Analysis” section. It was written by Mr Richard Kock (cited as being a Businessman and Author) and Chris Smith (Lord Smith of Finsbury), who is a former UK minister for culture. The thesis they put forward is described in full in “Suicide of the West.” (Book on the right here)
Now, without spoiling either the article or the book (as I havent read it, I cant see how I could spoil it though…) the crux of their entry in New Scientist seems to revolve around the west’s approach to technology.
The overall implication of this article is that from the middle ages onwards, (“sometime between 13th and 15th centuries” is the term used), Europe took the technological lead over the rest of the world and now the “West” has lost this lead. A lot of the article is reasonable and fairly well thought out. It is certainly undeniable that in the developed West, “science” is under attack from a variety of sources – creationism, mysticism, even sheer lunatics. One good point from the article in New Scientist is the comment that there appears to be more apparent belief in magic than at any time since the middle ages. (Although I’d like to see any one prove it…)
I can certainly agree that in a random selection of newspapers there is more about “mystical” properties of various stones, hats, bells etc than really makes sense in this enlightened age and when over 40% of the worlds last super power are creationists it is worrying.
However, this is where the logic and reasearch seem to depart. Mixed in with quite promising, insightful, study there are some bizarre commentary. In a nut shell, the authors of the article are making the point that the reason science advanced so well from the end of the middle ages to today is that people in the west (“Christians”) had an unshakeable belief in a single, all powerful God. They posit that this belief meant people also believed it was possible to determine the “true nature” of the universe, because this almost-human God must have created everything in a logical manner. Since the 1920s, the authors assert, this religious conviction has departed and science has “eaten away at its thought-foundations.”
As an example of the Why, the Christian-west overtook the other world cultures the authors point out the (ahem) Fact that this belief in a Single all powerful deity is unique to Christianity. This is used to explain the rapid advancement from about 1300 onwards. Well, obviously the followers of Judaism and Islam may have a few words to say about this. Sadly, this single error highlights a complete lack of any understanding. The authors have a reasonable comment to make (Developed world is madly turning away from science), however for some mad reason they base it on this. Islamic scholars were well ahead of the Europeans well into the Middle ages. Islam, for example, still maintains the scientific ethos as a core value – yet their advancement failed to keep pace with the west.
Sadly, the article in New Scientist doesnt go as far as a solution – although the implication is that it is tied into beliefs. Taking this as the Author’s end goal, it is quickly falsified by the Middle East. Sadly, there is no simple answer to the modern lack of scientific interest or understanding. It may have many roots, buried deep in different areas. It may simply be down to the sheer volume of information we expect everyone to know today (basic mathematic skills, for example, vastly outstrip even the most educated 2000 years ago), it may be down to cultural or religious direction. It may be down to all these things.
This article doesnt do much more than identify and already identified problem. As the authors own historical knowledge and research is woefully lacking, I dont hold much hope out for their “Insights.” Anyway – read the book and let me know what you think.
I know it is almost heretical in todays society, but is too much choice a bad thing?
The Ubuntu 6.06 installation I am using to write this took about 20 minutes to install and set up. Today I went through the package manager and spent nearly 90 minutes finding packages to install. The choice of packages is almost endless (well it appears that way).
One of the wonderful things in Linux is the amount of software available – but is this always a good thing? Will productivity be improved when people spend a third of their day installing software they will probably never use?
Well, this is an interesting one. Following on from the CoFaud problems mentioned in the last post here, where I was trying to search Google for a Windows service called CoFaud – but got no hits at all, I tried the search again today (after the web server reported Google had indexed the page) and still no hits.
Out of curiousity, I did a technorati search for the word CoFaud. Now, I know that the blog entry was in Technorati as it was there at the top of the list.
However, the search produced no hits. Even when I searched through my favourite blogs only, I still go no hits on CoFaud. When I went to the Why Dont You Blog entry page though, the CoFaud article is there at the top. It seems that for some reason, Technorati is not showing the proper results. Either it’s search engine is broken or they are manipulating the results in an underhand manner.
Whichever it is, it is wrong and it goes along way to reinforcing my beliefs that this obsession people seem to have with Web 2.0 and the “social net” is not a good thing.
I have been looking through the services tab on a Windows XP machine and I came across a reference to a serice called “CoFaud” (currently disabled). There were no clues as to the path for this service or what is function was.
Out of curiousity (and obviously to make sure it wasnt a trojan/virus etc), I ran a google search – http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Cofaud+windows+service but this returns exactly ZERO hits.
Even a search for the term “cofaud” only returns 30 hits – almost all names and nothing to do (as far as I could) with a potentially rogue windows service. Does anyone have any idea what this service is?
Well, despite my (ahem) reservations regarding Ubuntu I finally cracked and installed the Dapper Drake version (6.06) today.
So far it has been a breeze to install and configure. I have to admit that despite the restrictive admin settings this is a very good and simple distro.
I may even grow to like it one day.
