September 2007 Archives

Bloggerheads will return soon, but in the meantime Tim Ireland has set up a temporary blog in order to talk about what happened at the end of last week.

As you may have heard, the response by UK bloggers to this issue has been amazing. Over 250 blogs are now following the story. Here's the current list (which is almost certainly out of date by the time you read this).

Curious Hamster, Pickled Politics, Harry's Place, Tim Worstall, Dizzy, Iain Dale, Ten Percent, Blairwatch, Davide Simonetti, Earthquake Cove, Turbulent Cleric (who suggests dropping a line to the FA about Mr Usmanov), Mike Power, Jailhouse Lawyer, Suesam, Devil's Kitchen, The Cartoonist, Falco, Casualty Monitor, Forever Expat, Arseblog, Drink-soaked Trots (and another), Pitch Invasion, Wonko's World, Roll A Monkey, Caroline Hunt, Westminster Wisdom, Chris K, Anorak, Mediawatchwatch, Norfolk Blogger, Chris Paul, Indymedia (with a list of Craig Murray's articles that are currently unavailable), Obsolete, Tom Watson, Cynical Chatter, Reactionary Snob, Mr Eugenides, Matthew Sinclair, The Select Society, Liberal England, Davblog, Peter Gasston Pitch Perfect, Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe, Lunartalks, Tygerland, The Crossed Pond, Our Kingdom, Big Daddy Merk, Daily Mail Watch, Graeme's, Random Thoughts, Nosemonkey, Matt Wardman, Politics in the Zeros, Love and Garbage, The Huntsman, Conservative Party Reptile, Ellee Seymour, Sabretache, Not A Sheep, Bartholomew's Notes on Religion, The People's Republic Of Newport, Life, the Universe & Everything, Arsenal Transfer Rumour Mill, The Green Ribbon, Blood & Treasure, The Last Ditch, Areopagitica, Football in Finland, An Englishman's Castle, Freeborn John, Eursoc, The Back Four, Rebellion Suck!, Ministry of Truth, ModernityBlog, Beau Bo D'Or, Scots and Independent, The Splund, Bill Cameron, Podnosh, Dodgeblogium, Moving Target, Serious Golmal, Goonerholic, The Spine, Zero Point Nine, Lenin's Tomb, The Durruti Column, The Bristol Blogger, ArseNews, David Lindsay, Quaequam Blog!, On A Quiet Day..., Kathz's Blog, England Expects, Theo Spark, Duncan Borrowman, Senn's Blog, Katykins, Jewcy, Kevin Maguire, Stumbling and Mumbling, Famous for 15 megapixels, Ordovicius, Tom Morris, AOL Fanhouse, Doctor Vee, The Curmudgeonly, The Poor Mouth, 1820, Hangbitch, Crooked Timber, ArseNole, Identity Unknown, Liberty Alone, Amused Cynicism, Clairwil, The Lone Voice, Tampon Teabag, Unoriginalname38, Special/Blown It, The Remittance Man, 18 Doughty Street, Laban Tall, Martin Bright, Spy Blog The Exile, poons, Jangliss, Who Knows Where Thoughts Come From?, Imagined Community, A Pint of Unionist Lite, Poldraw, Disillusioned And Bored, Error Gorilla, Indigo Jo, Swiss Metablog, Kate Garnwen Truemors, Asn14, D-Notice, The Judge, Political Penguin, Miserable Old Fart, Jottings, fridgemagnet, Blah Blah Flowers, J. Arthur MacNumpty, Tony Hatfield, Grendel, Charlie Whitaker, Matt Buck, The Waendel Journal, Marginalized Action Dinosaur, SoccerLens, Toblog, John Brissenden East Lower, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Peter Black AM, Boing Boing, BLTP, Gunnerblog, LFB UK, Liberal Revolution, Wombles, Focus on Sodbury..., Follow The Money, Freedom and Whisky, Melting Man, PoliticalHackUK, Simon Says..., Daily EM, From The Barrel of a Gun, The Fourth Place, The Armchair News Blog, Journalist und Optimist, Bristol Indymedia, Dave Weeden, Up North John, Gizmonaut, Spin and Spinners, Marginalia, Arnique, Heather Yaxley, The Whiskey Priest, On The Beat, Paul Canning, Martin Stabe, Mat Bowles, Pigdogfucker, Rachel North, B3TA board, Naqniq, Yorkshire Ranter, The Home Of Football, UFO Breakfast Recipients, Moninski , Kerching, e-clectig, Mediocracy, Sicily Scene, Samizdata, I blog, they blog, weblog, Colcam, Some Random Thoughts, Bel is thinking, Vino S, Simply Jews, Atlantic Free Press, Registan, Filasteen, Britblog Roundup #136, Scientific Misconduct Blog, Adam Bowie, Duncan at Abcol, Camera Anguish, A Very British Dude, Whatever, Central News, Green Gathering, Leighton Cooke (224), , Skuds' Sister's Brother, Contrast News, Poliblog Perspective, Parish Pump, El Gales, Noodle, Curly's Corner Shop, Freunde der offenen Gesellschaft, otromundoesposible, Richard Stacy, Looking For A Voice, News Dissector, Kateshomeblog, Writes Like She Talks, Extra! Extra!, Committee To Protect Bloggers, Liberty's Requiem, American Samizdat, The Thunder Dragon, Cybersoc, Achievable Life, Paperholic, Creative-i, Raedwald, Nobody's Friend, Lobster Blogster, Panchromatica (251).

I haven't mentioned this before, but over on Bloggerheads Tim Ireland has been shining a lot of light on the activities of Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov. It seems that the light was getting a little too bright as the people who host Tim's web site have had legal threats from libel lawyers representing Mr. Usmanov. The hosting company have responded by turning Tim's server off.

Having Bloggerheads taken off the web is bad enough. But Tim's server also hosted a number of other sites including those of Craig Murray (former British Ambassador in Uzbekistan who knows more about Mr. Usmanov than Mr. Usmanov is comfortable with) and Boris Johnson. These sites will also be missing until a solution is found.

I got this news from Chicken Yoghurt. There are plenty of other links from that post if you want to get yourself up to speed on the issue.

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day. So...

My pirate name is:

Mad Davy Rackham

Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

You'll have noticed (I hope) that blogging has been pretty light round these parts recently. I've got things I want to write but I don't seem to have much enthusiasm for it. I think that at least part of the problem is the new version of Movable Type. Oh, it all looks very lovely, but for some reason it's running incredibly slow on my server. For example, when I rebuilt all of the pages a week or so ago, it took over 24 hours. I have a lot of entries (over five years' worth) but it shouldn't take that long.

I'm currently running the blog as CGI programs. It would get a lot faster if I used FastCGI instead. I'll be moving the site to my new server over the weekend so I'll do a bit more investigation then. Hopefully I'll have it all fixed in the next few days.

But in the meantime, sorry if it's all a bit dull (and broken) here.

Oh, and Matt Hickford pointed out to me yesterday that some of the permalink URLs are broken. MT seems to be confused as to whether spaces in entry titles should be converted to hyphens or underscores. I'll get that fixed too.

I'm moving domains around to different servers. Last night I moved mag-sol.com. Except I did a spectacularly bad job of it. Oh, I moved the web site. And the subdomains. But I completely forgot that mag-sol.com is where all of my mail ends up (even if it's sent to dave.org.uk). So I forgot to set up a mail account on the new server.

This morning I was a bit surprised to find that Thunderbird couldn't log into my mail account. Of course, the DNS updates had propogated overnight and it was trying to log into a non-existant account.

I quick bit of panicking this morning and I think I've got it all working again now. But if you sent email to me in the last twelve hours and you got a bounce message, or you don't get a reply today, then you might consider resending it.

See, this is why I'm not a sysadmin.

Update: Still a few problems apparently. Looks like procmail isn't working on the new system yet. Which means that a) my mailing list email isn't getting filtered into the correct mailboxes and b) spamassassin isn't processing my mail.

Might be best if I just ignore email today.

I treated myself to a Nokia N800. It arrived yesterday and it looks like a lot of fun. Expect many N800-related links in my delicious feed over the next few weeks as I get to grips with it.

Now. What applications should I be installing?

A christian group have been producing posters and other materials using catchphrases from TV shows like Catherine Tate and Little Britain. The BBC is reporting that Tate, along with Little Britain's Matt Lucas and David Walliams have been speaking to lawyers about the situation.

The posters have apparently been withdrawn. But I hope that the comedians take the christians to court and get some kind of compensation. I'd be livid if my work was misappropriated by christians.

It's only the second victim, but already I'm running late.

On September 8th, 1888, at about 5:50am, the body of Annie Chapman was found in Hanbury St, Spitalfields, London. This was just over a week after the murder of Polly Nichols. The next murder in the series wasn't for another three weeks.

Why can't journalists understand simple maths? Today it's the turn of the Daily Mail to get it spectacularly wrong.

The worthless degrees that add nothing to your pay

Graduates with degrees in accountancy will earn almost double in their lifetime than their counterparts with an arts degree, research suggests.

...

But accountancy graduates gained the most financially, earning up to 40 per cent more than arts graduates.

"40 per cent" more isn't quite the same as "almost double".

The Telegraph is slightly confused:

Online crime hits 300 per minute

By Ben Farmer
Last Updated: 10:09am BST 06/09/2007

More than 300 internet crimes are being committed every hour...

Hours? Minutes? Which is it?

Ah well. It's only numbers. I don't suppose it's important.

Spread Shirt are company that allow you to design and print your own t-shirts. They also allow people to set up online shops selling t-shirts that they have designed. There are two Spreadshirt sites, one for the US and one for Europe.

A couple of months ago I saw a shirt in a Spread Shirt shop that I wanted to buy. Unfortunately, it was in the US store, which means it would be shipped from the US. And that would cost about $10. Shipping from the European site is £2.20. I decided I didn't want the shirt that much and forgot about it.

Yesterday I decided to dig a bit further. I couldn't really understand why I couldn't order the shirt from the US but have it printed in and shipped from Europe. Isn't that the advantage of print-on-demand shirts? They can be printed anywhere. So I emailed Spread Shirt customer support (in the US) to find out how I could do that.

I got a reply in a few hours. They explained that the two Spread Shirt sites were run completely seperately and that the two systems weren't joined up in a way that allowed the process that I was suggesting. It wasn't the most helpful of replies. I could have guessed what they were going to say.

But at the bottom of the reply was an invitation to fill in a survey rating the help I had got from customer service. And as an incentive to fill in the survey they promised a coupon worth $5 in any Spread Shirt (US) shop.

So I filled in the survey and then ordered the shirt using the coupon, which effectively dropped the cost of shipping to $5 - close enough to the European cost to make it not work worrying about the difference.

I still think that the differentiation between their two systems is crazy. If you're an international company, then you should really try and act like one. But it's nice that they give you a backdoor method to get round the problem.

I've seen some cheeky 419 mail in my time, but this one (which arrived over the weekend) is the first that claims to be from a British MP and former minister.

Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 5:06:03 +1000 [31/08/07 20:06:03 BST]
From: "phewitt@parliament.gov.uk" <saleimh1@bigpond.net.au>
Reply-To: patriciahewitt1992@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Patricia Hewitt MP

Dear Friend,

I got your contact after a search for a person with whom I can entrust
with a charitable projects.

I am Patricia Hewitt, the last Secretary of State for Health here in UK
before the present one Alan Johnston. I like to introduce a project
that will get to do with charity in your country and any neighbouring
country around you: Please let me know what your response will be to an
offer to receive charity investment funds in cash if you will understand
the fact that I have my reputation and intergrity to protect as the
last Secretary of State for Health here in UK.

1. The said fund amounts to Seventeen Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars
(US).

2. The said fund is in cash and will be make available to you in same
state.

3.The fund is intended to be invested into any charity organisation
through your agency in the said purposes within your country.

4. This transaction will result to you being paid a commission of 30%
off the investment capital and the balance destributed to charity
organisations of your choice or reinvested and the net income used for
rehabilitating charity organisation in and around your country through your
agency annually for the period of some time at least five years or
above.

5.You must understand that I desire absolute confidentiality and
professionalism in the handling of this project and as a result of that and
for security reasons to my reputation as the former Secretary of State for Health
under her excellency Queen Elizabeth, I will not be able to always
communicate with you but my lawyer will take up the processing on my behalf
and get the funds processed and released to you without any delay.

I'm a person that has a very big heart for the less priviledge people
which is one of my top priority which is to positively uses my office to
affect the life of so many people which is why I am doing this. I am
not in any way going to benefit from this transaction financially but I
will be very happy if you will be sincere with me to handle this
project with utmost sincerity and confidentiality and use the funds for the
purpose which I have above explained to you.

Please respond urgently if you are interested so I can give to you the
details of my lawyer and commence the transaction properly and please
if you know you are not ready and trust worthy person, please don't
reply this message.

You can check more about me out at
http://www.patriciahewitt.labour.co.uk/ but the website is presently
under mentainace due to the high rate of fraudulent activities but you
can also check more about me out and google.co.uk and please do not try
to contact me through any of my personal information you may lay your
hand on the internet because all my phones are connected to the British
House of Parliament data base and if the British government get to know
about this funds, our effort to get the funds secured for the purpose
of charitable investment plans will be jeopardise. But you can call me
on any of my number you can get on the internet for normal greetings and
do not try to introduce yourself or discuss this transaction but just
call to make sure I'm trully what I tell you I am for you to be sure
that this transaction is free from scamers.

Please send your response to this E-mail: patriciahewitt1993@yahoo.co.uk

Sincerely.

Patricia Hewitt MP,
former Secretary of State for Health
233 Owen Walk,
London SE37 88AQ
http://www.patriciahewitt.labour.co.uk

I've updated this blog to use Movable Type version 4. So far it all looks rather nice.

You'll notice that the design has changed. I've reverted to using the default MT templates. I'll add back some of the other bits and pieces over the next couple of weeks.

Oh, and I've (finally!) switched to using a slightly more sensible URL scheme for the blog posts[1]. The old URLs should still work courtesy of Apache redirections and some advice from Paul Makepeace.

There may, of course, still be some teething problems. If you see anything weird then please let me know.

[1] Oh, ok, I admit it. It was the default for the new version of MT and I didn't notice until after I'd regenerated the site.