On a scale of 0 to 10 for lameness, this post is clearly at the low edge of being mobility challenged. Nevertheless, does anyone else find they are getting half their music choices from the adverts?

My first foray into the demonic underworld of people who choose music on the basis of consumer promotions was the Joanna Newsom “This side of the blue” from an IBM advert – IBM no less. Soon followed, on the sort of downward path normally associated with Faust, by Jose Gonzales’ “Heartbeats” (Sony Bravia.) Now, it’s Bedouin Soundclash “When the night feels ” (T-Mobile)

Argh.

I find there is even a website devoted to this shameful practice. http://www.tvadmusic.co.uk/ It describes itself as “your number one website for songs from UK television commercials.” It just feeds the problem, by pointing out new adverts you have never seen.

Sorry.

Tonight at 22:00 http://www.rb3tv.com the band including Tom – related to most of the people writing this blog – broadcast from Barfly, Liverpool.

Counter-intuitively, if you click on tune in- don’t click the icon, click the WORDS beneath. You need winamp or Internet explorer (plus a plug in) – surely everyone has them?

The front page of the Guardian on 7th August 2006 says that the much-vaunted new biometric passports can be cloned, as established by some one called Grunewald and reported in wired.com

The article might appear to give some cheer to those of us who seriously object to the belated attempt to turn Britain into Oceania (or whatever it’s called in Orwell’s 1984.) However the Home Office is not deterred. It insists the data is still “safe”- the new biometric passport being one of the “safest in the world”. How many other countries have a biometric passport? Is there a league table of their safeness? Who is top?

The Home Office says that the data can’t be modified even if it’s possible to copy the chip. Well, obviously we have to believe them, because no one has ever spoofed or altered material held on computer, have they? Who would imagine such a thing ws even possible?

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.

Well, July has drawn to a close with the lowest monthly blog totals yet… Sorry.

Sadly, August is likely to produce the same output – lots of offline things to occupy WhyDontYou’s time and the prospect of sunny weather.

We will try to blog whenever possible though and come the autumn things should return to normal.

I have been playing around with some images, trying to generate good effects. I am still not convinced this is “lomo” but it does produce some stunning pictures and can be done in Fireworks, Gimp or Photoshop pretty easily:

Well, as I said before, I actually quite like this effect. I am happy to listen to what others think or if you have done something similar please let me know.

Well, if there had ever been any doubt, I am obviously going soft as I get older. I am starting to like this months .net magazine! Argh.

Before I seem mad, there are the usual bucket loads of things which really annoy (and simple mistakes are high on the list – this new editor hasn’t actually improved anything in that respect). However, their tutorials are getting better.

In the past, the .net tutorials have gone from patronising to rocket science with no in-between step, and generally were uninsteresting and uninspiring. This month they are actually quite good. As an example, the “lomography” tutorial (using photoshop to put lomo effects onto pictures), is quite interesting and pretty inspiring.

I am not for one second saying the output appears properly “lomo,” however it is a good tutorial for adding effects previously not thought of combining (by me at least). You can see the outcome of a lomo practice on some stonehenge pictures:

Stonehenge Lomo,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

Let me know what you think.

Well, it seems like this site doesnt get “refreshed” on Technorati for at least 26 minutes (that is the fastest I have managed to get a post to show up there.)

Does anyone know if this is normal?

Short one – the summer 2006 copy of .net has an interesting article on how to secure PHP scripts used in e-commerce (and generally to be honest).

While overall the article is very well written there is one glaring thing I think is way off the mark. Given that this is not a beginners topic and that on the third page the Author (Paul Hudson) talks about editing the httpd.conf file to restrict the X-Powered-By header PHP adds, it is strange that the advice about PHP includes is simply to rename them all from .inc to .php.

First oddity, it has been quite some time since the standard for php includes was filename.inc but this is minor. Now Mr Hudson’s concern is that people can access the .inc directly and view it as plain text (if they know the name of your .inc file), which is obviously a problem if all your DB logon data is in one.

Now the solution is massive overkill. If you had a site with (say) ten pages calling the same 10 *.inc files it would be a bit of a pain to change the files to .php and the include() to the new name. Now what if your site was ten times that size? Drama to say the least – even with good old grep.

Surely the simplest, most common sense solution is to (like mentioned on p84) alter the way the server handles the file? In apache this works – AddType x-mapp-php5 .inc as does AddType application/x-httpd-php .inc.

One change and everything is resolved.

Is this easier or am I mad?

Well hubris aside, that is the title of a pull out box in the Summer 2006 .net Magazine (p 11 for the spotters). This pull out box is on the letters page and highlights the happy comments people have submitted.

Now, the .net redesign is pretty good. The content has improved a bit. There are still mountains of typos and some pretty pointless bits but overall it is good.

However, and this is a big however, by the time someone has got to a quarter height box on page 11 of the magazine, they have probably bought it. What value is there to any one who has bought the magazine to know that “Stormfx” says “Best..net.ever. Absolutely love it. Rock on!” (I blame comic book guy for the new writing style….)

Now, I may be mistaken but in things like magazines the space is important. There is only a limited amount and the main priorities are advertisments (to bring in profits and keep prices down) and content (to make people buy copies and sell more advertisments). It is actually quite easy, the hard part is finding the happy medium.

Why on Earth did anyone sanction this use of space to simply say “I like your new style?” (six times)

What is the purpose of printing this sort of message? Is it to convince the casual browser to buy the magazine (in which case, why 1/4 height box on page 11)? Obviously this implies that the casual browser is not going to be tempted by the actual quality or quantity of the “real content” but is going to be swayed by the raves of total strangers.

Is it to convince people who arent’ happy with the new style that they are in a minority? This happens a lot in corporate communications: Often as a result of disgruntled employees causing problems and inefficient managers bringing in PR companies to convince everyone they are happy. It doesnt work. If people aren’t happy, listen to their problems and try to fix them, or at least explain why you cant/wont fix them. Simply telling everyone they are in a minority does not improve worker morale, and does not improve reader satisfaction. (George Orwell has a LOT to answer for).

One, possibly more likely, reason could simply be that in the typical chain of a company telling each other how well you have done is better than doing something (well or otherwise). This could just be the new editor showing his chain of command what a great thing his changes have been.

Personally I think it stinks and the space would have been much better employed with more letters, even an advert would have been better if they have so much space….

I know it has been mentioned before, but why doesn’t technorati update their records when a Ping is sent? WordPress automatically “pings” (informs them there is an update) technorati when each new post is made, yet it seems to take about 12 hours for this to get through. Now, when some one else pings this blog, or posts ping other posts, the update is instant – yet technorati cant seem to manage this.

Does technorati have a system where the most popular blogs get the most frequent updates (or similar)? If so, then this reinforces my opinions about an already two tier internet.

Quick one – sorry about the recent lack of posts. Its is blindingly how and sunny here so, as you can imagine, sitting at a PC is far from anyones mind 🙂

We plan to write more soon.

Well, the year continues to hurtle past. It seems like only yesterday I was discussing the “Latest issue” of .net magazine and its structural overhaul, when all of a sudden the next one lands on my doormat.

Loathe though I am to admit it, things are getting better. Miraculously, .net has dragged itself out of the slump it has been living in over the last few months and is once more a good, readable, magazine.

Still…. nothing is perfect…. 🙂

THe Register points out that passport fees are going up by a third in october. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/24/passport_fees/. Supposedly the extra charge is “provides enhanced security and reassurance for the holders” according to at the Home Office. Oh, that’s OK then.
The Home Office also announced it was pressing ahead with the hated ID system, according to the Register 11 July.
I feel more secure already…………….

A system that is going to cost £6.2 billion plus “local costs” had better be good. That’s what the NHS compuerisation is supposed to cost. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5118538.stm on 26 June 2006)
Assuming the UK population is 60,609,153 (July 2006 est.) on https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/uk.html and that the mentioned billion is the US billion (thousand million) that makes the cost £102.29 for every person in the UK or £153.22 for every person of working age (16 to 65, based on the same webpage)
I suspect that’s quite a bit more than GP gets for a year’s care. What are we getting for this? Was there seriously some problem with patients’ getting the wrong records? On a scale that would justify this expnditure? Seems more than unlikely to me.
There are plenty of news items about cutbacks in nursing and other staff, of NHS trust hospitals going bankrupt and so on. Could this £153 not be spent on doctors and nurses and paramedics and dentists and ambulance drivers and cleaners and radiographers?
In my GP’s surgery, the problem is getting an appointment – working your way round impenetrable arrangements that change every few weeks. Attempt to find an NHS dentist and even achieving the much-mocked British teeth become a distant dream. For all the complaints about the Health Service, I have yet to hear of anyone whose records have been lost. So what purpose will it serve?
I am probably a lot more computer-oriented as the next person and it’s always good to see jobs in IT. However, if I break my leg, I wont be yelling for a database technician.