Monthly Archives: August 2003

If you go down to the tip today

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You’re in for a big surprise. Well, I was. Firstly there was no queue whatsoever to get in. Then, in the pile of unwanted electrical goods I found two good-quality tape decks (one Sony, one Technics, both 3-head, Dolby HX-Pro monsters), a CD player and a minidisc recorder.


So the minidisc doesn’t actually work. Everything else does. I’m going to pay £20 to get it looked at, and then we’ll see.


Today was a very good day. Apart from Saints drawing a blank against Birmingham, of course. At least we didn’t lose. It could be worse…

Yet another reason not to use Windows

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I use a mixture of Mandrake Linux and Windows 2000 on the small LAN I have set up at home. I was unaffected by Blaster/Lovesan because I patch my boxes regularly and run a firewall.

But this is no reason to be smug. The recent virus/worm attacks have munted the internet for all users, of whatever platform, because Windows is so insecure. As Mike Wendland (“Mac Mike”) says:

So this Mac user is indeed affected, inconvenienced and bothered. I’m unable to access my work e-mail because of this. Too many Mac elitists act secretly delighted that Windows machines are so vulnerable. It’s nothing to gloat about. — http://ej.typepad.com/macmike/2003/08/macs_are_affect.html

If you’re going to insist on using Windows, even when Linux is just as easy to use, at least get virus protection and a personal firewall!

BBC NEWS | Technology | New computer virus hits inboxes

You keep going, you stop, you get ill

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Life lately has been so manic: we have been heavily involved in the design of Lorna and John’s wedding, which was on Saturday. Months of nervous energy expended, a big Grolsch-and-champagne-fuelled blowout, a late night, then…a sore throat and a dodgy tummy.


Oh, and I really can’t stand people who change lanes without indicating…

Google: not always a good thing

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The received wisdom of the Google era has been "content, not keywords". All well and good, you may think: the better and more relevant your content, the higher your search engine position.


Back in 2000, I wrote a post about selecting my fantasy football team. When I imported this, along with the rest of my Blogger blog, into Movable Type, I needed to come up with a title for the post. As it involved selection, and because me and my mates used to recite the chant from Craig David’s Rewind ("When the crown say b0, s3l3cta!") for a laugh, you know, ironically, I called it B0 S3l3cta. Or the non-haxored version (I don’t want more hits from Google, thanks).


So, along comes a TV programme with a name not unlike that of my post, people search for it and end up here. For some reason , some of them start calling me things like "duschbag" and "gay", possibly because (a) they’re idiots, or (b) they didn’t realise that it had nothing whatsoever to do with said TV show. So I delete and censor their comments and close the discussion.


Not much more to say really, apart from "don’t use titles of as-yet-unthought-of TV programmes as titles of blog entries"…

Impending third blogoversary

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A long time ago (three years, actually) in a galaxy far, far away (or rather, at Blogger) I started a blog. The date of the first post was August 9th 2000 and I said the following:

I decided to set up another blog, this time for general stuff. I have to say – this rocks…

Another blog? What? Well, I had already set one up for my obsolescent Vinyl Obsession project, the posts from which have been folded into the music category here at it could be worse. So, to be honest, I’m not really sure when my first ever blog entry was, but we’ll go with August 9th, 2000.

I know this is all very self-referential, up-my-own-backside stuff, but I don’t care. This blog, blogging technology and the blogosphere itself have all come a long way since 2000. Blogs have been described as hubristic and self-opinionated garbage, but they are now on the mainstream media’s radar. This probably has a lot to do with the writing of the Baghdad Blogger during the recent war in Iraq, and the unique and unrivalled perspective that he gave to the events unfolding around him.

But what has The Blog contributed to the wider Web? Its rise coincided with that of the Web Standards Project, and it is obvious that the renaissance in content-driven personal Web sites — using the then-new standards-compliant (CSS + valid (X)HTML) ways of designing Web sites — encouraged the eventual adoption of these methods and technologies in such high-profile, commercial sites as Wired and ESPN.

On many personal Web sites, many of which are blogs, much beauty, clarity and — let’s face it — good typography has been the result. So much so that it smarts to see good money being thrown away on Web sites that continue to be implemented in old-fashioned ways.

“Hubristic and self-opinionated garbage” they may sometimes be, but The Blog has changed the Web, if not the world, for the better.

Update: Oh, and I’ll be blogging every day (where possible) during August, in celebration.