Amazingly, many workplaces (e.g. mine) are actually encouraging their managers to allow people to watch the World Cup in worktime or give time off to watch it – although in exchange for some repayment of the time spent. This is because it somehow now seems to be our patriotic duty to support our national football team. (That’s “soccer” to you in the USA though I would also require you to wash your mouth out after saying it)

I am all for this principle of time off for leisure activities. It could just do with being extended. E.g., we actually had good weather this week for the first time this year. I will happily swap a few hours in the sunshine for a couple of hours in work in January. I will even pretend to be watching the World Cup if i have to…..

I do enjoy watching football when there’s a good goal or a fancy bit of ball juggling. I just never realised it was my patriotic duty before.

Yes, things move at a slow rural redneck pace here in the UK, at least as far as undertsanding US politics. However, I have just found out about “net neutrality” and why it is no longer going to exist.

No less a person than St. Tim Berners-Lee voiced concerns over this, reported  on the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5063072.stm. He said that this would be a dark period for the Internet.

The so-called COPE Act (What is with laws having to have snappy names now?) was passed by 321-101 votes. This will basically make it OK to have two levels of Internet – the good bit for the companies that can pay and the duff bit for the rest of us. The bill was opposed by Google, E-Bay and Amazon (and a “film star” I’ve never heard of.) They unsuccessfully tried to get support for an amendment that would guarantee equal access.

Having only just heard about this and understanding as little as I normally do about US politics, let alone the business imperatives underlying the Internet, it seems ominous. I need to look into it. If anyone can explain it better, please write to us here.

Another invented addiction – to text and email – discovered. According to the Register and even today’s television news (so I am told anyway) people are now claiming to be addicted to text and email.

Come on. Doing something repeatedly, even obsessively, is surely not a disease.  People too dumb to see that spending 10p every couple of minutes to text mnnglss ste are just stpd. 

At least this explains spam - the random strings of words that I used to think existed only to stop me from bothering to even look for real emails aren’t from shady businesses. They are really from poor deluded email addicts and we should try to help them not condemn.

Re- previous blog entry. Good points there but Technorati is still infinitely more democratic in its effects than Google, in that the ordinary person still has a chance of getting listed. Granted it may take a while but at least you’re not starting from a position of 80000000 down if you happen to blog on a popular subject.

I don’t have blogs sorted by authority, just by date. In fact, such are the vagaries of my PC, that I can’t even choose to see Technorati’s lists by authority or by langauge because it just decides that English doesnt exist if I try that.

Following on from a recent (if misguided) attempt to try some SEO type experiments (and validate some of the, ahem, advice given on various websites) it seems my opinions of Technorati are in need of a review.

First of all, in the past we have ranted on about the problems with this new web “paradigm,” where every one is supposed to get into social bookmarking sites and the like, so I will try not to repeat it here. In a nutshell though, as more people become dependant on del.icio.us, technorati, Digg and their like, it will become much harder to get noticed as a “new” website.

For example, if you started a brand new website with all manner of cutting edge information in your blog – no one will ever see you. It will take weeks to get indexed in Google. Technorati are pretty much always a few hours behind your updates (unless you are a very high “ranking” site) and when you do a search the default is to return links to sites with more inbound links (and a higher technorati rank) than others.

This is all well and good, and within reason does actually show what is more important on the web. However, it is (IMHO) drastically assisting the inherent polarisation of the internet. Gone are the days where the net produces even a semblance of a level playing field.

If you want to get noticed by Google you need to either sponsor a lot of links or have such a PR juggernaught that you get mentioned on hundreds of other websites. Are either options realistic for the one-man-bands that web trading often characterises?

If you want to get noticed by Technorati it is even harder. You need lots of other blogs to link back to you. In some cases this will just create even more link farming than there is at present. WordPress for example comes with a default Blog roll of about eight blogs – when you search for them on Technorati they get very, very high rankings!

With about one and a half million blogs on Technorati there has to be some way of ranking them, but isnt the risk of making popular sites more popular and killing the smaller sites something to be avoided? If this was a debate about Tesco/Walmart/Sainsbury etc killing off the small shop then people are in uproar about the need for “grass roots businesses.” Why are we allowing, even encouraging, it on the internet?

Almost daily I get emails from reasonably respectable businesses asking for link exchanges – occasionally offering to sweeten the deal with a cash payment – and this is especially true for websites with a reasonable Google PR. The problem with this (and with all systems) is that it is pure abuse of the system. Website X ends up with a high page rank (or Technorati rank) not because it is good, cheap, accurate or anything – just because it has engineered itself more inbound links.

Add into this mess the problems with Digg and del.icio.us and you can see that trying to start a new, popular, website or service these days is going to be VERY hard.

Now to make matters worse, it seems Technorati is as close to random, when it comes to updating, as possible. For example, each time a new entry is made on this blog it sends a ping to Technorati (and gets a “thank you” saying the database has been updated). However, you have to wait about four hours before the post appears in a search. This is not the case for some other sites – generally ones with high Technorati ranking.

Once more, it is reasonable for them to have some system in place – however, this one makes the “hidden blog” situation even worse. People searching for “Interesting Topic XYZ” will generally be pointed towards already popular sites. The newer / less popular ones remain hidden.

As the other ones become more popular they get more links, faster updates and become even more popular. Starting to see signs of an exponential growth curve here…

Is this right? (In every sense of the word?)

Ubuntu’s quest for world domination seems to be gaining pace.

Apart from the fact they use an interesting business model (not only is the software free, but they will PAY THEMSELVES to send you the CDs), Ubuntu must be paying off the computer press for the huge amounts of advertising. The sheer volume of mentions in printed materials combined with the insane amount of websites talking about them (sadly, including ourselves) points to just one thing.

Ubuntu is actually a cover for the Cybermen (or Daleks) who are trying to take complete control of all the computers on Earth. Where is the Doctor when you need him. What else could explain the insane choice of names (By the way – “Ubuntu” is not an “african word”) – Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edbuntu…. I mean… Really.. What HUMAN would think of this!

With the Dapper Drake (6.06) version of Ubuntu they add in a “Long Term Support” package, which although somewhat vague on the Ubuntu site seems to mean they will be happy to support and patch this version for longer than the others.

This is a strange “selling” (*) point for a Linux distro – which largely relies on the work of the “commons” to produce upgrades / patches and so on. It is pretty much required for *buntu though because of the crazy way they tie you in to using the PC in the manner set up for you. A far cry from the reason most people turn to linux…

I am not as massive “enemy” of *buntu, I just think it is a shame that the desire to match Windows on the Desktop means that people are slowly turning Linux into windows. More and more people are growing up computer literate now, people have had years of internet experience, installing pretty much ALL distros is very simple now – so why get rid of the one remaining difference.. User customisability?

Do not let the *buntu take over be complete. Use linux. Use it every day. Use a different Distro every day!

(*) Odd choice of words for something free, I agree. But I couldnt think of anything better to use 🙂

Old Wardour – Watercolour,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

(Loathe though I am to divert from the SEO experiments…)

This is one of the old wardour photographs I took a few days ago (The original is online as well). It has been put through photo shop and given a water colour filter.

Generally speaking, in the past I never rated the photoshop filters. When you work on small, or self made, images the filters are pretty pointless.

However, given a large photo like this – with lots of data in the first place – the filters work fantastically.

Almost looks real 🙂

Anyone reading this blog would be baffled by the doubling up of entries. It reached epic prportions yesterday when i found I had posted the same thing four times. This was mainly my fault. At least I know it’s my fault but I can’t work out what I’ve done wrong. I will see how many times this turns up. Then delete the entry for utter pointlessness. And where has tech gone from the category list. Thats definitely my fault fot adding a new one.

D’oh. Back to the drawing board. Technorati tells you to stick a chunk of code in your blog that tags it for them. Word Press tags arent doing it

The number 666 is so decorative, it looks like a trio of little pigs’ tails. (Cue for a fairytale) Is that why it’s the number of the beast?

I have to do a 666 post before midnight or I’ll change into a pumpkin. (Cue another fairytale).

Although, being something of a pedant, I can’t really see 06/06/06 as a legitimate candidate for the day of the Beast. It’s really 06/06/2006, well 6/6/2006 even. This number is mainly remarkable for being one of the few dates in the year when British and American dates collide and are correct in both systems. If you’ve ever had to deal with spreadsheets where the data has been imported in one date format and you’ve found half your dates get rejected and almost all the others are wrong, you know what I’m talking about.

I have worked out a solution for this. Try to stop Excel (we name the guilty here) from trying to parse the dates itself, first. Insert 4 columns next to the column with the duff dates. In the first cell of one column, type =month(reference the first cell in your duff date column); in the next column put =day(reference the cell etc); in the third put =year(etc, are you beginning to detect a pattern?)

Now, concatenate* these in the fourth column, using

=the cell address with the day in &”/”& the cell address with the month in &”/”& the cell address with the year in

This cell should now hold something like =b2&”/”&c2 &”/”& d2 The cell display should show a date. If you are lucky, it will be in English date format.

Copy all four cells down until you can see a correct date for every date in your range, in the fourth column. Select the lot, copy them then paste the values over the existing formulae. You can now delete the columns holding the original dates, the days, months and years. You will be left with a column of dates in English format. Apply English date format as well, if you need to. (Even if it’s not applied and the dates are displayed in American date format, they are still correct English dates, i.e. 15/11/06 is seen as 15th November not an invalid date that’s trying claim there are 15 months in that year)

(Obviously, reverse the day/month order to change English dates to American. Start saying rout for route and Baysil for basil, while you are at it)

I hope you are impressed. This blog is not just a pretty face shamelessly trying to get higher in the blog reading stakes by picking out words from Technorati’s top searches. As you see, we also provide a public service.

* Concatenate is computerese for joining strings together. It really is a word. Yes, I was just showing off.

Need I say anything about Heather Mills except that she shares a first name with my good self? Would this constitute gossip central or even gossipcentral? :-p

Is she playing in the World Cup? Almost certainly not. Well, I was going to say something flippant there about her probably reduced capacity to score goals in a football match. However,this blog has already blotted its copybook in terms of its callous flippancy, reference Haditha posts apology, so I will pass up the opportunity to make it even worse.

Snort is completely great for finding out what your network is doing. If you want to obsess over every wierd packet passing through your bandwidth, snort’s your program.

And without any due modesty, I would refer you to my introduction to using it on www.sci-tech.co.uk(specifically http://www.sci-tech.co.uk/snortguide1.php)

This guide is the latest in a series on detecting malware, viruses and trojans. The articles are mainly aimed at people with limited specialist knowledge or experience but who have normally working brains. That basically means people about two hours behind me in their experience of network intrusion detection – that’s why it’s a newbies guide. I am certainly a pure amateur myself in this.

The snort guide tells you how to get it and how to use it – very briefly in both cases. If you have any questions or want to contribute your own views or experiences, please email us at sci-tech.

The shameful bit aside I have to report a certain degree of success. There was a comment. Archaeoastronomy, I salute you – despite being pretty well unable to spell your blog name properly – and thank you for your good advice. Your blog is really good, as well, as we’ve already said here.
That was not the royal “we”, by the way, it referred to the collective writers of these blog pages.

This encouraged, and with my conscience appeased, I will have another stab at more of the same. I reserve the right to be as flippant as before but this time I will try and avoid being flippant at the expense of massacred people.

However, when I say a certain degree of success, this has got to be mightily qualified. The pages didn’t actually appear in Technorati lists. Agreed this may turn out to be a major stumbling block to the whole scheme. My new plan of attack is therefore to limit the references to one or two at a time. Here I will talk about gossip central. Just don’t tell me there is a serious subtext to that. (There is probably a US TV programme or something with that name but you will have to bear with my ignorance if you want to extract any reading matter from this page.)

Gossip is dull when it’s not malicious and evil when it is.

The one thing that makes it even remotely compelling is actaully knowing the unfortunate person that the gossip is about. Gossip about people you have never met is just a story with a very short narrative and rarely has a decent punch line. I can’t even begin to guess why there are dozens of publications that contain nothing but “gossip,” produced by publicists, about people that you have not only never met but who you would cross the street to avoid if they weren’t celebrities.

The gossip consists mainly of whether they are too fat or too thin. If you are unlucky enough to know anyone who obsesses about their own weight like that, you probably steer well clear of them. If you really do know someone who discusses other people’s weight/cellulite/ clothing choices in the sort of prying and judgemental detail that the magazines discuss z-list celebs, you have probably already injured them in some excruciating way. If not, why not?

And if you actually spend your own cash on these magazines, why not buy some of the Guest Publications featured on Have I Got News for You instead? Mattress Manufacture News or Lawn Ornament Collectors’ Monthly would easily outstrip the readability of Heat magazine and would give you a much-needed new interest.

I’m sorry to have to admit to being not just shameless in trying to get some blog visits but also horribly callous, not to mention poorly informed.

When I threw in the Haditha, Loretta Nail and Clay Aiken words, I was just treating them as words. I wasn’t even thinking of what they referred to. While this blog yields to noone in terms of superficiality, this was really going too far for common decency. If you were offended, you were completely right.  I was offended myself when I thought about it.

All of which means, that I will report on the succcess or otherwise of the shameless venture in a separate blog, next.

Normally I wouldnt create a whole new blog entry for a reply but I suspect this time it is a better way of communicating. On my last article about Linux Format, I had this comment:

Very good blog.
However, I am tempted to argue the toss on having things for people who can’t do things already. Just because soemone can’t use WordPress to setup a blog successfully (that would be me, then) it doesn’t mean they may not want to use Linux (that would soemtimes be me, then)
Windows-based PC mags dont have to just stick to writing about things to do with Windows do they? They usually have something like “Total N00bs guide to sending an email” as well as how to integrate Excel with a beowulf cluster through using a load of port hacks (or something on that level of complexity that actually makse sense)

While I can see (partially) where you are coming from here, I dont agree. The idea behind “total newbie” guides for Linux is an ideal use for a Linux magazine and is, frankly, what is totally missing from the market. The main issue with the wordpress tutorial is that it showed nothing that isnt covered by the WordPress site itself. By the time you have worked out how to download the software you are pretty much walked through everything that this tutorial cover.

Critically, and this is important, Linux is far from a mainstream Operating System. How many adverts do you see for PCs with Linux pre-installed? When you go to PC World / Currys.digital (or whatever Dixons have become) or any of the other high street retailers, can you buy a PC running linux off the shelf? In a word, no.

Anyone running linux in the UK has probably installed it themselves. Even with the idiot friendly versions like Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS this is infinitely more complex than getting word press up and running. Word press is easier to install and configure than any of the CMS packages you may have come across (eg., DragonflyCMS, phpNuke, postNuke, Jabber, Mambo, etc). It is seriously easy to set up. Even babies can do it. The hard part of WordPress is getting it to talk to your database. This is what LXF has to say about that:

Copy the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and open it in a text editor. Change the “MySQL settings” line to match your database configuration – if you’ll be hosting the blog on a remote server, your hosting provider will have the database details.

Brilliant. How helpful is that? This is followed two steps later by this little chestnut:

You’ll also need to set up a blank MySQL database on the server, using the name you specified in wp-config.php. Your host may provide a configuration panel to do this, but if you can log in to the remote host provider directly, enter mysql to log in then create database name ;

Do you feel that will help you? Seriously, software like WordPress is a market leader for a reason. That reason is everyone from child to OAP can set it up and get blogging in seconds.