Recently in Rants Category

This weekend, and next week, my house-mates and I will have friends staying over, and consequently I spent a couple of hours last night tidying up.

Amongst the rubbish that we'd accumulated, there were a number of plastic bottles. Though we do have a monthly doorstep recycling collection from Bradford Council, this is only for paper, glass and cans - not plastics. Thankfully, I work for an organisation with a commitment to recycling and sustainability, so I bagged the bottles up and brought them with me to work this morning to recycle then, rather than having them dumped on a landfill site with the rest of our household waste. I also brought in a few dead non-rechargeable batteries as we have recycling bins for those too.

So, this morning, when putting these empty plastic bottles in the plastics recycling box, someone stops me and accuses me of trying to inflate my organisation's recycling figures, by bringing waste from home.

Obviously anywhere that has a recycling rate of almost 70% has the right to brag about it, and it's quite possible that the reason that this is so high is because some people are bringing waste from home which otherwise could not be easily recyclable. But I think it's a bit rich to assume that the only reason that people bring in their own rubbish is to increase the figures. Had I not brought those bottles and batteries in, they would have ended up taking yet more space on a landfill site. The batteries in particular contain harmful chemicals and you are not supposed to put those in landfill at all (although I'm sure many of us do just chuck them in the bin when they die).

So the next time you see me walking in with a couple of bags of plastic bottles, it's because I'm doing my bit for the environment, and not because of some statistics. Okay?

Just got home after work after braving a heavy downpour of rain. It's been raining all day, but, of course, it had to crank it up just when I left work - and it's a half hour walk home.

So now I'm in a spare change of clothes, since when I got in I was wetter than an otter who, having just won a wet t-shirt competition, decided to throw itself into a lake. Even my underwear was wet through.

And then 5 minutes after I get inside, the rain stops and the sun comes out! Obviously I'm in for bad karma today...

(This rant was posted here because it wouldn't fit in 140 characters)

I previously mentioned that things aren't going so well in the internet department at our new house.

Here's the situation: We moved in last week to find that there was no BT master socket in the new house. There is a BT line but the socket had, for whatever reason, been removed and the hole in the wall had been plastered over. The master socket is BT's property, so legally this should only have been removed by BT themselves, although I think this is unlikely.

My two housemates had a Sky subscription in their previous flat and wanted to bring it over to this new house. As well as providing the TV signal via a satellite dish, Sky also provided internet access and calls via the Sky Talk package - though BT Openreach operated the line as is normal. Without a connected BT line in the new house, we can't use Sky.

The problem is that BT will charge us £120 to fit a new master socket. This is a hefty charge - almost certainly the equivalent of several months of the Sky subscription.

Chris did give me a head's up about this article on MoneySavingExpert.com which describes how to get a free BT line installed, but it's not without catches. It's a limited-period offer which expires next week, you have to sign an 18 month contract, and you have to make 10 billable calls a month (although they can be included in an inclusive call package). Those 10 calls must also be billed to BT, so we wouldn't be able to take up Sky Talk and may have trouble getting our broadband from Sky.

If we lived in somewhere more remote, this would leave us stuck between a rock and a hard place - pay a huge upfront connection charge or tie ourselves into a restrictive long-term contract. Thankfully, Bradford isn't very remote and therefore we have a third option in the form of Virgin Media.

Update: BT will not honour the offer if your line has been 'tampered with'. Unfortunately ours has (the master socket should not have been removed) so we'd have to pay the £120 charge either way.

Virgin don't charge an installation fee, and are in fact offering £20 off your first month's bill at the moment, so it will be significantly cheaper. There is a Virgin master socket in the house, too, and we wouldn't need to have Sky come and fit a satellite dish for us. That being said, Sky does tend to have better customer service than Virgin (although I have spent the past 2 years with them with few complaints) and Sky are offering us a good deal to stay with them.

In any case, it doesn't look like the situation will be solved quickly - I'll most likely be away in France when it is sorted, so it'll be 3 weeks before I'll have internet access at home. Provided we don't find any more problems.

Paynova is a site in the ilk of PayPal, Google Checkout and Nochex in that it offers merchants secure online payment services, and a personal account system for users that remembers their card details. CD-Wow is one of Paynova's clients and so rather than re-enter my card details every time I buy from them (which admittedly is 3-4 times a year but it saves hassle) I can use my stored details.

All users can save their card details and make small transactions with the site, but to make transactions over £100 you have to validate your account. PayPal does this in a relatively simple manner, but Paynova require you to send them a fax, containing "a copy of your bank-/credit card (front and back), a copy of your ID card, username of your wallet and contact information".

Yes, they want me to send a fax. To Paynova's HQ in Sweden.

In other words, rather than use their 128-bit RC4 encrypted HTTPS web site to send my details, they want me to send an unencrypted fax across international borders. A quick Google search found a number of ways that faxes can be intercepted, and it's said that the US routinely monitors the contents of faxes in its bases around the world (the nearby RAF Menwith Hill base is allegedly among those used).

Somehow I don't think I'll be in a rush to verify my details. The potential for identity fraud from this is massive - anyone who can intercept the fax has my name, address, date of birth, passport number and credit card number.

Dear Vocus Public Relations,

Recently, I have been receiving press releases from several of your clients in my personal email address (as noted by the .me.uk domain suffix). I would like to express my displeasure at this and ask you to stop.

Your clients have included 'Adesta, LLC, a systems integrator and project management company for communication networks and electronic security systems' and another which I deleted after not understanding what the company actually did - but then I'm not exactly up on providing vertical synergy solutions or whatever marketing speak used.

This latest email refers to a contract that your client has to build a fibre-optic network in Austin, Texas. Well, good for them. But why do I need to know this? I live in Bradford, England, which is several thousand miles away. I'm not a tech columnist, I'm a personal blogger with a few entries about technology, some stuff I've done on my computer and cat pictures. I've used the phrase 'fibre optic' precisely twice in 6 years of blogging, and one of those was to describe a Christmas tree. And I'm not a potential company investor or client, I'm a heavily-indebted recent graduate in a low-level administration job at a university.

Oh sure, you let me opt out of mailings from your individual clients, but I've had several emails from a variety of your clients and they're all a load of rubbish as far as I'm concerned. Please let me opt out of the lot and leave my inbox alone, before I report you for spamming.

Yours annoyingly,
Neil Turner

I've chronicled my issues with the Royal Mail in the past, and one of those now has over 50 comments. Still, they continue to do things that annoy me.

Take yesterday for example. I'd ordered an IDE hard disk enclosure from Dabs, which was to be delivered yesterday. But it wasn't.

Instead, we got a 'Sorry, you were out' card. But we were in. The person who should have been delivering the item actually didn't have it, so he just put the card through the letterbox. No knock on the door, no ring of the bell, nothing.

While this is mildly annoying on its own - surely, a 'Sorry, your package was too big to carry' card would have at least been more accurate - this time the Royal Mail had to rub salt on the wound. You see my current house is within sight of the local Royal Mail depot, and in the past I've gone there in person to collect items (mostly out of desperation as they never answer the phone if you ring them). Going there would be a 10-minute round trip, so no big deal.

But, of course, this item isn't being held at our local depot. Oh no, that would be too simple. Instead, it's in Bingley. Bingley is 7 miles away in the Aire Valley, on the other side of Bradford city centre. So rather than hold it at the depot that is a mere few hundred yards from our house, it's at a depot that takes a good 20-30 mins to reach by car or public transport.

I've arranged for re-delivery of the item online, but it now won't come until Saturday. If, of course, they actually pay attention to the request - I'm not holding my breath. Otherwise it's going to be lengthy quest to get it.

Not done a ranting entry in a while....

MySpace

MySpace tries to be useful by emailing you when one of our friends has a birthday in the coming days. I'm sure someone finds this useful, but I have my own way of tracking birthdays so it's useless to me. But you can only turn off all email notifications, not just birthday notifications, so you don't get an email if someone posts a comment on your space or sends you a message, which are actually useful to me.

But to be honest I'm pretty much considering leaving MySpace as I rarely log into it anymore and all the friends who I actually care about use Facebook now anyway.

Facebook

Facebook needs a privacy option called 'Stop my friends from constantly inviting me to add new applications'. I don't want to be a pirate or zombie, I have no desire for a new wall, I don't care what type of romantic I am and I couldn't give a monkeys that someone has decided to bitchslap me. If your application is really that useful then I'll probably find it myself.

I also don't want to be asked at every bloody opportunity if I want to share this application with my friends. I said 'no' the first time and I haven't changed my mind.

Don't get me wrong, some applications are good and I've written about my favourites, but some, in my opinion, abuse Facebook and will probably make people less likely to use the site. Every time I turn down a request to add an application makes me feel like I'm letting that friend down, or at least questioning their judgement, and I've seen examples of people who have given up on Facebook because they've become swamped by application requests. I've blocked the common ones but I still get requests for others that I could really do without.

Orkut

Give me a reason to visit you. I use you even less than MySpace.

This is really starting to take the piss. I've phoned the Royal Mail 4 times now and they still haven't delivered the package that they're holding for me. So this afternoon I decided to walk over to their depot, on the basis that it isn't actually as far away as I thought (though it's still about half an hour to walk there each way).

But guess what? Their office closes at 12:30pm, and it wasn't until 3pm that I got there. In other words, I wasted an hour of my time and meant I was walking around in temperatures that were barely above freezing.

I really am tempted to lodge an official complaint. I've not managed to get through to a human at their depot all the times I've phoned (10 times now, including the times when it's not been answered at all). I can't even get the item delivered to my local post office around the corner because I haven't been able to phone them up. My only option now is to wait until Friday and go in then, since I get Friday mornings off. If I don't do it then I'm going to be stuck - Saturday I'll be at Hari's parents near Birmingham, and I don't have any other free mornings next week. The item will be sent back next Friday if I don't claim it.

It surprises me that in this day and age you can't arrange for undelivered items to be redelivered or redirected online yet. This is 2006, people.

I'm not best pleased with the Royal Mail right now. I had a package that should have arrived last Friday (16th Feb), but unfortunately no-one was in at the time, so we got one of those "Sorry, you were out" cards. Since I don't have a car, I can't go and pick up the package and instead have to rely on arranging a re-delivery. This is where the problem lies.

Bradford South depot has never been particularly reliable at answering the phone, but usually you can at least leave a message on their voicemail and the package will arrive when you want it to. But lately I've either not even got through to voicemail (the phone just rings off into infinity) or I leave a message and nothing happens as a result. I've been trying to get this package delivered for a week and a half now and it still hasn't turned up, and if it isn't delivered in the next week and a half (by next Friday) it'll be returned to sender. The contents of the package are quite important and I would like to have them as soon as.

I'm really considering complaining to Royal Mail. It's starting to get silly.

Ignore this post. A very kind soul at the university re-opened the account for me so everything's rosy again :) .

According to the university computer centre, I'm no longer a student, and therefore my login and email account have been deactivated. This is despite the fact I'll be re-enrolling in 10 days time, and that I use my email account for work within the university.

Normally students get a 'grace period' over the summer where, after graduation, they may still use university facilities and have access to university systems. This grace period must have ended some time in the early hours of this morning. It now means that I cannot log on to any machine in the university using my credentials, nor can I access my university email account or use Wifi. It's the loss of my email address that annoys me the most as I have things like my PayPal account based around that address.

It does seem incredibly harsh that the university has cut my access like this, especially as my student profile, from which the data about my status is taken, clearly states that I have provisional attendance for the next academic year. The university should have either waited until after the enrolment period is over before deactivating old accounts, or only deactivated those where the student was not coming back to study in the next academic session.

I've spoken to the university's IT helpdesk and they've said there's nothing they can do until I re-enrol, so it means I'm going to be pretty much without internet access until my enrolment is processed (or if we somehow manage to get broadband at home in the next 10 days). Even after that I'm not entirely sure whether I'll still have all of the emails I've saved in my account over the past three years or any of the files in my university user space.

All in all, I'm pretty pissed off. But, on the other hand, it's not like I'm expecting to have a lot of time to use the internet over the next few days anyway.

In case you're unaware, you can now combine your Yahoo! and Flickr logins so that you have one less password to remember (all new users need Yahoo! accounts to sign up). Unfortunately, as I've found, if you combine your logins you're no longer signed in to Flickr persistently like before - your sign-in period expires after 24 hours so you have to log in again afterwards. Which is really annoying when you're used to the old way :-/ .

While the 24-hour maximum sign-in limit is in line with Yahoo!'s other services, I preferred the Flickr way. With a bit of luck one of those cool Flickr people will read this and offer a way of allowing persistent sign-ins, but until then bear this in mind before your combine your accounts.

Update: Yay, a response from Flickr:

Q: OMG, it is really annoying to have to log in to Yahoo over and over many times a day just to get my Flickr fix! [This is not a question.] Uh ... isn't it annoying?!!?

A: Yes, it really, truly is. It's enough to drive one batty. And it's a bug. And a fix will be out soon. It's taken a while, but for security reasons we couldn't do the quick fix here. Just be patient for one more week :)

Or, you know, if you merged your Flickr.com and your Yahoo! ID and it is driving you crazy, then we'll unmerge your account. All you have to do is write to us (read the announcement from last week for details). You'll still have to re-merge it later, but by then things will be muuuuuch smoother.

Excellent :) .

Back in January I wrote about how Tele2 have been annoying us with unsolicited calls asking us to switch our phone to them. Since then, TalkTalk and Toucan Telecom have done the same, so they also go onto the boycott list (along with Esso, Nestle, Bacardi and probably GoDaddy as well). This is despite us being registered with the Telephone Preference Service as not wanting to receive unsolicited phone calls.

However, it looks like we've been lucky. BT's recent advertising campaign has focussed on rogue salesmen from competing telecoms companies who have switched people's phone lines over without permission. The Guardian had a consumer article about it in April (TalkTalk being the main culprit again) and again later on that month in a special report. The practice is known as "slamming" and used to be widespread in the energy sector - salesmen would either forge peoples' signatures or ask them to sign a form to say that they'd 'visited' (but that they actually consented the switch). The next thing the customers knew would be a letter from their original supplier saying goodbye and a welcome letter from some random supplier.

Making unsoclicted calls is one thing but slamming is something else altogether. I'm sure if this happened in the US there'd be a class action lawsuit in the works but as it is I'm not sure what punishment, if any, these companies are getting, other than a few mouthy webloggers like me ranting about them.

I'm getting a steady stream of copies of (what I believe is) the Mytob virus. They come in emails with subject lines like:

• "*IMPORTANT* Your Account Has Been Locked"
• "Your email account access is restricted"
• "Notice:***Your email account will be suspended***"
• "Notice: **Last Warning**"

The body asks you to view the message in the attachment, which is an infected zip file.

They all seem to be coming from the same infected computer, but are being sent via their ISP's mail server, which incidentally is Energis. I'm getting at least one of these every couple of minutes.

Yorkshire Water sent us a water bill this morning. Which would be fine if this bill wasn't for the next 12 months - it's quite likely that we'll all be moving out come June and therefore don't want to be paying for 8 1/2 months water that we won't be using. So I phoned their customer service line, expecting to be on hold for hours and then have a blazing row with someone with broken English and coming away fuming.

In fact, after phoning their billing line I was told I could be rung back at my own convinience, only needed to press one button on the menu and was through to a human almost immediately, who sorted everything out incredibly quickly. It was so quick that I was actually disappointed that I couldn't get on my high horse and rant at them.

But at least it means we'll be paying £32.70 and not £131.14, which is good.

Yesterday I saw Super Size Me, and today I watched the second episode of Jamie's School Dinners. Both have a common theme - the problem with junk foods and the companies behind them.

I've mentioned bad driving in Bradford a few times, but one example today really worried me. There was an Asian family in a rather full car, with what looked like the grandmother in the front passenger seat. Standing on her knee was a young girl (probably no more than 4 years old) - not only was she not wearing a seatbelt she wasn't even seated. Had the driver needed to make an emergency stop she'd have been straight through the front windscreen. Which, alas, with all the other dodgy drivers in Bradford, is probably more often than elsewhere.

Surprisingly enough, legislation on wearing seatbelts wasn't introduced because a few politicians got stoned one night and thought it was a good idea at the time - it's there because wearing a seat belt can help to save your life in the event of a crash or an emergency stop.

On a brighter note, it appears the Bradford branch of the Halifax bank are much more used to dealing with cheques in foreign currency than in York. Whereas back home the cashier originally thought they didn't accept them, and then had to get supervisor over to help him deal with it, the cashier I had today knew exactly what to do and got it done quickly and without any fuss. I imagine this might be because Bradford's population tends to have more people with relatives in foreign countries so they're probably more used to dealing with cheques in all manner of currencies.

And while I'm here I might as well let you know that like everyone else I have a ridiculous amount of Gmail invites (well, 50) to give away to anyone who wants one.

I really should set up a separate weblog for ranting, but anyway, here's another thing that's been getting on my nerves lately.

Near to where I live is Haqs, a supermarket that mainly caters for the local population which is pro-dominantly Asian. At the moment, it's open from around 9am until 8pm every day, including Sundays. However, there's now a big sign outside saying that as of the middle of February, it'll only be open between 12pm and 6pm on Sundays. The sign cites the Sunday Trading Act of 1994 as the reason for the change.

As far as I can gather, the act says that large shops cannot open on Sundays without permission from the local authority, and generally any permission to open is restricted to 6 hours trading. Smaller shops can generally open when they like on Sundays - the local Jacksons is open 8am until midnight 7 days a week. I'm guessing that Haqs has been found to be too large to qualify as a small store and has therefore had to restrict its opening hours.

While I can understand this from a Christian point of view (keeping the Sabbath day holy and whatnot), the vast majority of people who work and shop there are not Christian. To them, Sunday has no special significance. Why then should they not be allowed to work or shop late on a day just because it has special meaning to the country's dominant religion? If you want to leave the Sabbath day holy, then don't go shopping on Sundays. But please, repsect those of us who don't follow Christianity and give us freedom to do so.

Don't know how much coverage this got in the states, but last week the total cost of the war in Iraq topped $150 billion (source: Cost of War).

And yet the total combined debt, including interest, owed by third world countries to the IMF, World Bank and western banks is around $70bn.

So America could have used the money to single-handidly write-off the debt of many countries, allowing them to concentrate on healthcare, education and infrastructure investment instead of debt repayments, and still have $80bn left over for the war. Which, interestingly, was only meant to cost $87bn in the first place. If you want to see what $87bn would look like in dollar bills, see this page.

In fact, if you take Afghanistan into account, the US has, thus far, spent well over $200bn of US taxpayers' money on wars that have thus far yet to find any weapons of mass destruction (to the point at which US forces have now given up the search), nor Osama bin Laden himself.

I'm reminded of this partly by this year's Make Poverty History campaign, but also this entry by Les about his cousin Diane. She was one of 45 million Americans (16% of the population) who cannot afford health insurance. She died of pneumonia, a disease that is so easily treated that you rarely hear about people dying from it these days. Unfortunately she couldn't afford a visit to a doctor for a diagnosis.

If only some of that money had been diverted into setting up a welfare state for all US citizens. We Brits have managed to keep the NHS going for the past 60 years, so I'm sure America could pull something off. There are 45 million people out there in the world's richest country who simply cannot afford to be ill. That just isn't right.

incidentally it's Cover the Uninsured Week from April 30th until May 8th. I know quite a few of you are reading this in the US so you might want to check it out.

I have a policy whereby I don't buy from "cold callers" - companies who call at the door or phone me up with whom I have had no previous relationship. Similarly I don't buy from junk mail or spam.

In any case, there's been a guy who's been calling us every night this week so far asking for my housemate (he pays for the line rental for our phone) - each time I've been the one who's answered because he's been out. Turns out the guy is from Tele2, and wants us to change our phone to them (fat chance when we're already getting a very good deal on One.Tel). So, Tele2 go onto my list of companies to boycott, joining the ranks of Nestle, Bacardi, Esso / ExxonMobil and various others.

Windows Media Player has decided that it won't install a codec for me because it hasn't been digitally signed. Well gee, thanks, because I really wasn't keen on watching that file I'd spent two hours downloading.

Okay, to be more specific, I downloaded Revenge of the COMMoNISTS, which is a video shot at the Creative Commons 2nd birthday party. The video uses a proprietary audio codec for the sound which I didn't have installed, so when I played it, Windows Media Player phoned home to microsoft.com, and downloaded the codec. However, this codec wasn't digitally signed, and as far as I can tell as of Windows XP SP2 unsigned codecs won't be installed automatically.

Now this would be fair enough if I could then choose to ignore the warning and install it anyway - the file was downloaded from Microsoft's own web site and was made by a large, reputable, multi-national electronics company, so I don't imagine it was going to be virus- or spyware-infested. But the dialog simply told me it had been blocked, and that was the end of it. It didn't even tell me what codec this was, so I couldn't have gone to download it myself.

In the end, I downloaded Privoxy, a proxy server with filtering capabilities, to capture the URL that Windows Media Player was downloading from and then download it manually from this URL and install it myself, after which the video played with no problems. But I really shouldn't have had to do that.

With drivers, if the driver is unsigned then Windows gives you a big warning but still lets you continue and install it. It's the same with downloads in IE, although that's probably because the vast majority of files you can download from the internet are not yet digitally signed anyway. But why can't this be applied to codecs as well? Heck, if Microsoft are that worried that I might mess my system up by installing a rogue codec, have Windows Media Player create a Restore Point so that I can run System Restore if need be.

Here's the registration form for O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference. If you're a student, you get a 65% discount, but only with "proof of status, a copy of ID & class schedule". Fair enough, but you have to fax the details to O'Reilly in the US. I just find the necessity for faxing information for an emerging technology conference somewhat antiquated. Maybe they should do what Microsoft did with their Student Options site and require Athens or something to check status (I don't know what system is used in the US).

While I'd love to go, even with a student discount it's going to be very expensive even without considering flights and accommodation. I just hope NotCon is running again this year.

incidentally if you use the code 'et05bb' you get a 5% discount, courtesy of BoingBoing.

I have some more new about Victor Ruttoh, a fellow student at Bradford who is being removed from the UK for a very minor violation of the working hours that his visa allows. You can read previous items from 29th Oct and 26th Oct.

The immigration service have not dropped their case against Victor and unless there is an unlikely complication Victor will be on a plane back to Kenya this evening. He does now have a solicitor who is working with him, both to challenge the removal and for action against the immigration officer who assaulted him, which left him with a badly swollen eye. He has, however, said that he'd rather be back in Kenya than spend another day in the Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre where he has been held for several weeks. From what I've heard it sounds like hell on earth in there.

The student union are co-ordinating a petition to hand to the government, asking them to overturn their decision and allow Victor back into the country until January 2005 when his visa was due to expire anyway. This would allow him to complete his studies and get his masters degree. I've uploaded the petition here (small PDF) - if you want to collect signatures yourself, please do so and then send the completed sheets to:

Communications Officer
University of Bradford Union
Richmond Road
Bradford
BD7 1DP
United Kingdom

When you consider that a plane ticket to Kenya, plus several weeks' accommodation in a detention centre, costs a lot more than the £15 (or so) that Victor accidently earned extra, I think you'll agree that this is pretty extreme action to take. #

Well, here's to 4 more years of...

• Erosion of civil liberties
• Human rights abuses
• A worsening economy
• Wars with countries based on flawed intelligence
• Environmental destruction
• Deepening health crises
• Political corruption
• Dumbass laws in the name of 'security'
• Persuance of the Christian agenda over other religions/idealogies
• International hostility

...to name a few.

More from Ben Hammersley, Dan Gillmor, Ryan Morse, Wil Wheaton and Daniel Glazman, plus The Beeb on how this affects Blair. BoingBoing is doing a good job aggregating opinion too.

I'm just glad I don't live in America.

I think we all know what's happening tomorrow. When it comes to this blog I try to avoid politics, but I will say this:

If you are a US citizen and you have a vote, please, get out there tomorrow and vote, if you haven't already. Only you, the US people, can really decide the result of the election. Campaigns like those of the Guardian show just how much outsiders would like a vote. You guys are lucky to have that vote, so use it wisely.

I thought I'd give you guys an update on Victor Ruttoh, the student threatened with removal from the UK because he worked 2 1/2 hours more in a week than he was supposed to.

Sometimes the immigration laws we have in this country (and indeed Europe as a whole) really iritate me. Today is one of those days.

An overseas student came to Bradford to do a postgraduate MA in Peace Studies. From what I can gather, to support himself, he also took on part time work - postgraduate degrees aren't cheap so this is hardly surprising and many students do it. However, he did more work than his visa allowed, and, as such, he's now been detained in Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre down in Middlesex, near Heathrow Airport and is awaiting deportation back to his home country.

But get this - he only worked 2.5 hours over the limit. Seriously. And for that, he's being held in a cell and then getting deported. The student also alleges that he was physically assaulted by an officer involved in the deportation process.

Naturally the student union are incensed by this and will do everything they can to allow him to remain here to complete his studies (the university are also working on the issue), but I felt I had to write about this here as I really cannot see the logic in resorting to deportation for such a minor breach of visa limits. It doesn't send a very positive message to other students who want to come and study here but whom may need to support themselves financially while studying.

Update: There's now a follow-up with more information.

This saddens me. Some people seem to think that students are a load of middle-class kids using government money to get drunk and steal traffic cones while not learning anything useful and getting into university with worse and worse A-level grades.

I am not a happy bunny.

Now that my own laptop is back, I went to install the drivers for my iPod Mini so that I could use it. During the installation it said it needed to set the iPod up so that it could be used. Fair enough, I clicked okay and continued with the installation.

And then I found that by doing that I'd reformatted it.

So now all the music (around 90 songs) that I'd uploaded over the past few days is gone. There was nothing to warn me of this happening either.

Apple, if this is your idea of stopping people sharing files between computers then you really need to sort your policies out. Either that, or you need to get the idea that an increasing number of people own more than one computer, or may well need to reformat their computer and start again.

I'm just thankful this happened now and not a couple of months down the road when I had more music on there. The annoying thing is that some of the music is now on a computer back in York which I won't have access to for some time, so I'll have to do without it for now. Hmmmph.

InternetSeer joins the likes of WebProWorld and NatWest on the list of companies that have annoyed me for one reason or another. In this instance, I had unsubscribed from their weekly marketing-filled emails which briefly told you whether your site was up and how well it was responding - my predecessor at Scrapie had signed up for it and I inherited the email address. With the site being mostly reliable I felt I didn't need the emails anymore so a few months back I unsubscribed.

And then last week, the emails came back. The account had somehow (not my doing) got re-activated, with my predecessor's name too. So I've unsubscribed again. And with a bit of luck that will be for the final time too.

I've just finished watching the very, very last Big Brother show for this year (the one-week-on, catching-up-with-ex-housemates documentary), and during the ad breaks, there were two adverts for universities - the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and Edge Hill. And that worries me.

First off, the UCLan advert in particular was a very flashy affair which looked like an advert for some kind of hair product (I was expecting an endorsement of Shockwaves or VO5 Extreme Style or something). That must have cost a bomb to make - and the fact it was during Big Brother meant it can't have been cheap to broadcast either. So, come Thursday if you're looking at a university place, would you go for a university that spent your tuition fees on... errr... tuition, or on fancy TV adverts for next year's Freshers? Remember, on a 3 year degree, you'll be giving your university around £3500 for tuition alone - make sure you're getting your money's worth.

Secondly, you have to think why they're advertising. Now I know that almost all universities have some courses that go into clearing but if they're so desperate to get students on board that they need to resort to TV advertising, then maybe they're not such a good university. UCLan does have a bit of a claim to fame because of its project with Preston City Council to make Preston a Wifi city, but a scour of Google News didn't find anything really noteworthy about Edge Hill.

Of course, I do have my own interests here - should you be going through Clearing this week I might be the one you'll speak to if you phone Bradford as I'm working on the central helpline for a couple of weeks. But before you or your parents pay out for an education, think about where you're putting your money and what you're going to get from it.

In any case, if your A-level results are out on Thursday, good luck :)

So we're looking at getting a new server for the house. Part of the reason why I haven't mentioned much about this server before is because there's much to say about it, other than that it doesn't work (dud hard drive). And it's quite old and probably needs replacing.

Being a server, we'd need something like this:

• Big hard disk, so that it can be used as a central file server. 80GB minimum
• Reasonable about of memory - 256MB minimum
• Reasonable processor - we'll say around 2Ghz
• Networking built-in
• Some kind of graphics but nothing too fancy. Built-in graphics would be fine
• Sound card isn't necessary but probably inevitable
• Some kind of CD rewriter would be very useful. Probably don't need to be able to play DVDs
• Monitor, keyboard, mouse etc. aren't needed, we just need the box
• Needs USB for the ADSL modem but doesn't need a built-in modem

With this in mind, I searched eBay and found something roughly like what we wanted. And I got within 5 minutes of the auction closing with a good bid price (around £150) when the auction was closed prematurely because the item was "no longer available". Blarg.

I reckon it was because the seller wasn't too happy with the price the item was to sell for, especially as it was a company who made custom PCs. But anyway, if any of you know a UK company that can sell us a system like I described for £200 or less than please let me know.

Via Boing Boing comes news that sp2torrent.com, a site which offered Windows XP SP2 to download via BitTorrent, has been shut down after its hosts were served with a DMCA takedown notice from Microsoft.

This annoys me quite considerably. Firstly, the fact that MS can use an act to force a web site to take down a file that is freely available anyway. When you download SP2, there's no box to tick to show that you agree not to distribute the file (or agree not to do anything with it), and it's not warez. There is a license agreement but this isn't shown until you run the program. I really can't believe the DMCA can be used to take down something is legitimate as this - there's no lawbreaking or breach of agreement going on here (although IANAL).

Secondly, this site is doing Microsoft a favour. It's taking the load off their servers and spreading it around, meaning that everyone gets a better download speed.

Thirdly, in one case the site's hosting company was issued with a takedown notice for simply linking to a couple of BitTorrent trackers. It didn't actually host the file.

Of course, MS have probably done this to distance themselves from legitimate uses of P2P technology - due to P2P's dodgy image the company will appreciate the positive image it will get for being tough on P2P, especially when anti-trust trials appear on the horizon. But it's still sad to see a site like this be forcibly shut down in such a way.

In the meantime, if you have KaZaA or an eDonkey or Gnutella client, use the links on the Bitzi lookup page to download SP2. You can use the MD5 checksum on that page to verify that it is the same file as the one available from sp2torrent.com and from Microsoft.

Some lovely spammer has decided to use random addresses at this domain as return addresses for spam that has been sent out from a zombie computer on an American broadband ISP, and as such I'm getting a few bounce messages from mail servers. What annoys me is that these messages are bouncing back when the headers on the original mail are obviously faked. Take for example this line:

Received: from neilturner.me.uk (user-xx-xx-85-254.knology.net [xx.xx.85.254]) by imsantv03.netvigator.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id i79HTQNs020335 for <xxxx@xxxxxxxx.com>; Tue, 10 Aug 2004 01:29:28 +0800

All the mail server would have to do is lookup neilturner.me.uk to find that its IP address is completely different. It would then realise that this email is probably faked and as such there's no point in bouncing it. Of course, if the mail server had a proper spam filter it would realise it was spam anyway and would have disregarded it.

Since Jay is ranting about how Bank of America sucks, I'll rant about how the NatWest bank annoyed us on Monday.

To pay the bills for the house, we have a separate bank account, which, supposedly has an overdraft set on it. Then, all the bills (electricity, gas, phone, internet etc.) come out of that account, and we pay into it in advance.

Last week, PlusNet tried to take the money we owed them for next months' internet (seems a bit early, but whatever... ). They needed £29.99 via Direct Debit, and that day, some money had been deposited into the account, taking the balance up to £30. So, if all had gone to plan, PlusNet could take their £29.99, leaving a penny. Remember, we also have an overdraft on this account, or so we thought.

But no, it wasn't that simple (is it ever?). NatWest took the £30, and instead of paying PlusNet, denied the transaction, and used it as a fine against us for not having the money in the account for long enough before the transaction took place. So now not only was the account empty but PlusNet hadn't been paid. The first we knew of this was on Monday when PlusNet apologetically suspended our account. A quick call to their billing department sorted it out (they were happy to take that month's payment via Switch on this occasion) and we were back online. And thankfully I didn't need it for anything vitally important at the time, but if I had I'd have been immensely annoyed with NatWest.

It also appears that, despite us asking for a small overdraft, they haven't set one up on the account. So, we had to get some money in there pronto to make sure that the next bill went through okay, seeing as NatWest insists that the money is in there a few days earlier. And it's not helping that we're now £30 out of pocket because of this. It's possible that the money that had gone in hadn't cleared in time, but in theory the account should have gone into the overdraft to cover it, shouldn't it?

Of course, this is probably in their small print somewhere but it does seem incredibly harsh. If you're in a similar situation, you may like to look at another bank.

There's something seriously gone wrong with Lockergnome. In May, I wrote about their RSS Resource feed which was no longer including HTML links. But now, all of its email newsleters, despite being delivered in HTML, don't have links in the article. Instead, you now have to click on a link beside each item to go the Lockergnome web site, and then follow the links. To me, that's just plain stupid.

It's obvious that this has been done to try to increase advertising revenue but it means the newsletters now take twice as long to read through, not helped by all the coupons and special offers entries which are only of use to those in the US and often aren't for anything I'd want anyway. The general quality of the newsletters has, in my mind, also decreased - I don't like how Windows Daily is now little more than an aggregation of content from several other sites. I used to look forward to reciving it when Chris wrote the whole issue himself.

So, alas, after 4 years, I'm afraid the Lockergnome honeymoon is over. I've unsubscribed. Sorry Chris, et al.

Lately, what with sorting out this placement and various other stuff, I've been using public transport quite a bit. I don't drive, and don't intend to until I need to or have the money to pay for a car, the fuel and most importantly the insurance (which for young males is extortionate - darn statistics), so for long distances the bus and the train are my only reliable options as lifts aren't always available.

Today, on the bus back from the station, there was a toddler who was having an über-tantrum. No really, he was screaming the place down. Which is what toddlers do from time to time - I did it when I was that age and I have no doubt that many others do.

But someone sat down next to me (the bus was standing-room only and I was stood in the aisle) was complaining bitterly, about this "annoying little infant" and saying that he and his parents should be kicked off. Now, I'm sorry, but kids have tantrums. He and his parents are perfectly entitled to be on that bus - and you're only on it for a bit over 5 minutes anyway. If you're that keen on peace on quiet while travelling, buy some headphones and a walkman. It works for me.

I'm a bit annoyed by the number of emails I have received asking me to remind me to renew my BlogRolling Gold subscription (which I probably won't be because I don't feel like I need it anymore). The subscription doesn't run out for another month, yet I have still had 5 reminders - the earliest one coming in April, a whole 3 months before the expiry date.

While I appreciate that email isn't the most reliable medium, I personally think that BlogRolling are being too prolific in their reminders. Maybe a couple within a month of the expiry date would be fine, but hounding people for money with a whole three months to go is a little excessive in my opinion.

Let it be said now, I am really not enjoying revision. There's a million and one things I'd rather be doing than cramming my head with facts about public key cryptography, e-commerce strategies, secure electronic transactions, the distributed object model, early standardisation, remote method invocation and various other long words that really should mean something to me but don't.

But I have an exam tomorrow morning that is 80% of one of my modules, so I don't exactly have any other options. Bah.

I'm not going to be watching Big Brother habitually this year. I saw the opening show last night and hardly took a liking to any of the housemates. They've evidently been chosen to create the maximum amount of tension, for example, choosing someone who hates asylum seekers alongside a former asylum seeker, and it's almost certainly been done just to boost ratings. incidentally a poll on the official site asks the question "What do you think of the housemates" and already 59% say "What a bunch of freaks".

But, based on my first impressions, I hope Shell wins this year, or, if I had to choose a bloke, I'd go for Ahmed, although I don't agree with some of what he has to say.

Oh no! A gallon of fuel in some parts of the US may cost more than $2! It's a catastophe!

Oh please. America has some of the cheapest fuel around. Let's do some maths. According to this article from Friday, a litre of unleaded petrol in the UK was around 80p. There are about 4.5 litres in a gallon, so 80 * 4.5 = 360, or £3.60.

Today's pound-to-dollar exchange rate is 1:1.782, so £3.60 works out at $6.42. That's more than 3 times what you pay. While much of that is government fuel duty, that's (supposedly) there to discourage people from using their cars and instead use other forms of transport, or buy vehicles with more efficient engines. Kasia has a good post from an American perspective.

(Warning: this is a late-night rant and may or may not make sense)

Ryan's got a good rant about people who say his site is ... erm ... not very good. Sometimes, I wonder whether people think that there's a limit to the number of web sites that can exist on the internet, and therefore those that aren't as good or popular as others need trashing out of existence to free up space, or something.

The internet is of an infinite size, and can accommodate many, many more sites. For some - eh, why not - For many, this site is probably boring and uninteresting, yet some people actually do read stuff on here and find it useful. Same with Ryan, I presume.

Just because you don't find it interesting, it doesn't mean you have to bitch and whine about. Go somewhere else.

By the way, I really don't appreciate it when people compare my mother to a prostitute. Comments like that are deleted on sight.

In a university that has around 10,000 machines, you'd think that we'd have a good patching policy. But no.

The Sasser worm has taken out the vast majority of machines in the university, with the computer centre being completely shut because none of the computer work (and preumably as a damnage limitation exercise and/or so that the computers can be patched). The only computers that are working are those in our department which dual-boot to Linux and the computers in the magazine office, which I patched myself a couple of weeks back.

All this when many people have to hand in their dissertations on Friday and when I myself have coursework in on Friday, plus three assignments in next week. Consequently I, and probably several thousand other students, are not happy bunnies. Grrrrr.

There's another Googlebomb in town. The Pro-Bush camp want to get the word 'waffles' to point to articles about John Kerry. So the Pro-Kerry camp do the opposite - getting the word 'waffles' to point to articles about GWB.

Oh come on! Googlebombs are a fad, and one that was interesting for a bit last year, but is now just getting petty. And in any case, waffles are a potato-based snack - I'd expect to be able to get information about those, not some political mud-slinging about the presidential campaign in a country that I don't even live in. Let this fad die before every Google search has wildly distorted results pushing different peoples' political agendas.

[Originally written last night but someone in China decided to launch a DoS attack against my host before I could post it]

And it was going so well...

Today a round of bug fixes for SP2 was released via Windows Update. None seemed to affect my setup directly but I installed them anyway. Anyhoo, Automatic Updates has a "feature" which, if you choose not to reboot your computer immediately after the updates are installed, will remind you via a popup dialog to reboot every 10 minutes or so. The dialog as two options - Reboot Now and Reboot Later. I was only going to be using the computer for an hour or so before shutting down so I decided to hold out.

The problem with this dialog is that it steals focus - it will always come to the foreground and unless you switch to another task the keyboard reacts to that window. And that's the problem. I was finishing off a blog entry when this dialog popped up, but because I was typing it stole focus, and I happened to be typing a word which included the accelerator key for 'Reboot Now'. So, that unsaved entry of mine disappeared as my laptop prepared for shutdown. Grrr.

Fortunately, it was only a short and replaceable blog entry, not an essay or something important that I'd been working on for hours. Had it been that, I'd have been really cheesed off. But I think this deserves a bug report as if this gets in to the final release I don't think I'll be the only one who will be hit by this.

It's not the first time something like this has happened to me though. Once, on my old laptop, I hit the Windows key instead of the spacebar while typing (laptop keyboards have ridiculously small spacebars), and then typed a word with two 'l's in it. Try pressing the Windows key, followed by l and then l again, and you'll be logged off. Suffice to say I wasn't best pleased. Thankfully, this Toshiba has the Windows key and the Delete key swapped around so all hell doesn't break loose should I accidently hit it. It takes some getting used to but I actually prefer this layout.

On a brighter note, this is probably the only bugbear I've had with SP2 so far, other than IE crashing when browsing MyCokeMusic.com. I sent in an error report about that one. In fact, a friend of mine reckons that SP2 fixed a bug which caused his computer to crash while playing some games, although it may also be that he turned down his AGP speed.

Interesting I actually bought a Coke bottle today but I didn't win a free song from the MyCokeMusic site. Coca-Cola have seemingly learnt from Pepsi since the code is on the inside of the label, and you don't know if you've won until you tap the code into the web site. They also seem to have been generated using an algorithm so entering a random series of letters won't work :(

Normal blogging will resume tomorrow - I've been in the capital all day and I'm positively knackered. Walking up all 193 steps at Covent Garden tube station didn't help either.

Just browsing the Apple Store today. No reason, but I checked out the current price of a 40GB iPod - £398.99, or $723.41. This seemed a bit pricy, so I jumped over to the US store, to find the same spec iPod at... wait for it... $499.00.

So, apparently it costs $224.41, or £123.70 to ship an iPod over to Blighty. Hmmm.

If I ever decide to buy an iPod, it looks like I'll be asking one of my stateside friends to buy it for me and have it shipped over cheaply then. I don't really see how shipping and VAT can amount to that much. And, yes, this is a re-hash of a rant about the iPod Mini but it just seems rather unfair that Americans get one price and Brits get another one.

State officials in the US state of Georgia have just voted to ban genital piercings for women (via Fark). The bill was supposed to ban all kinds of female mutilation, including by consent, but went as far as also banning genital piercings, so even adult women wanting to get their thingies pierced wouldn't be allowed to. And the guy who proposed the amendment banning piercings had this to say when told that some women actively seek to get their wotsits pierced:

"What? I've never seen such a thing," Heath said. "I, uh, I wouldn't approve of anyone doing it. I don't think that's an appropriate thing to be doing."

Any reason why? As long as piercings are kept sterile there shouldn't be any risk to health from doing it. I can understand the original reason for this bill going through but this goes too far. Women should have the choice to do this to themselves, should they want to.

But then, this is Georgia, a state which bans sex toys (which you can buy on the high street over here) and has religious organisations which want to ban books like John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" from schools because they're 'offensive'. Hmmm...

While I really appreciate it when people drop me an email saying how much they like my (much neglected) Movable Type templates, and appreciate it even more when that email also include a PayPal donation, I'd like to point out that I'm not an all-out MT and HTML boffin. While I'm happy to sort out basic issues with the templates, or blame them on IE, please understand that I don't know everything about running a blog in MT. I'm still learning every day, and I've been using it pretty much daily for over 18 months now.

I can offer you one really useful piece of advice though: RTFM. No, seriously, the Template Tags page in the MT Manual is excellent, and it's how I've learnt most of my 1337 MT $k1llZ. And if you get really stuck, do a forum search of the MT Support Forums. Usually I'm never the first person to experience the problem I'm having and someone has already posted there and been given a solution which works.

The weather is conspiring against me today. I keep meaning to nip out for a paper and some lunch, but every time I decide to go it starts raining. And then when it stops, and I close down my applications and get my shoes on, it starts again!

And this isn't any old rain, oh no. This is sideways rain. No, really, it's coming in almost horizontally, since it's coupled with some really strong winds. It was like this yesterday too, except at times the rain was replaced by hailstones. Not good when you're walking up the really steep bit of Great Horton Road with a rucksack full of shopping.

And to really take the piss, it was sunny too. Sun, sleet and heavy winds, all at the same time. Welcome to Bradford.

My father assured me via a text message yesterday that over in Seville the weather is lovely and sunny, which doesn't do much to help things. Let's just hope that when I return to York sometime this week (either Tuesday or Wednesday, I'm a bit unsure at the moment) that the weather there is somewhat more... unschizofrenic.

I've mentioned this now and again over the past few months but I'm now only checking my old myrealbox.com address roughly weekly, since barely anyone emails it now and it was getting spammed to hell.

It's also a magnet for spam, and a regular flow of Netsky variant D came flooding in today. Which is somewhat inexusable for the following reasons:

1. It uses the .pif extension. Of all the gazillions of emails that have ever been sent, I bet that about 5 have had legitimate attachments with a .pif extension. All the rest will be viruses, and so it's a no-brainer to block emails with attachments that have that extension.
2. MyRealBox claims to have virus protection. So why aren't these emails being blocked for being infected with viruses?

I know MyRealBox is only an 'experimemtal' service and they're now no longer taking new signups but blocking these emails would seem obvious to me. It would certainly save them disk space on their servers.

I've already had someone rip the piss out of me over at Orkut. If you can log in, take a look at this discussion, but here is the post anyway:

neil is more a total cliche than a "luzer."
a white, lefty liberal, who doesn't believe in god, and likes goofy/slapstick humor. and SHOCKING, SURPRISE here:
also, dresses casual contemporary!!
SEE YOU AT THE DAVE MATTHEWS CONCERT, AFTER YOUR SHOPPING DATE AT ABERCROMBIE.

(it's probably against the Orkut ToS to do that, but, heh)

Congratulations, you're able to read my profile. Just because I'm perhaps not the most interesting person out there doesn't mean you have to attract attention to yourself by making me look stupid.

Yay for IBM for writing non-futureproof software.

I wanted to download a Java application from IBM's web site, just to try it out and see if it was of any use to me. After filling out a registration form where I was required to say where I work (as such, I'm now 'working' for the student magazine), I downloaded this 5.6MB zip archive, only for it to not be able to find a compatible JVM environment. Now, admittedly, it was designed for 1.3.x, but would run on 1.4.0. Since I (allegedly... ) do Java as part of my course, I naturally have the latest version, which is 1.4.2. Which is apparently invisible to the installer of this Java application (created using InstallShield), since it couldn't find it.

It popped up a message telling me that I could manually tell it where the JVM was, so I did, using a command line parameter. But no, it still wasn't seeing the damn thing.

In the end, I gave up. It's not like the program was that important anyway and I don't really have the patience to get it up and running. Come on IBM - if you're so big and clever, then you could at least allow your programs to run on newer versions of the JRE, or at least update your program so that it does.

Does anyone actually like Absolut vodka? I got a set of four 50ml bottles for Christmas, and so far I have had the Mandarin and Citron flavours, plus a shot of the Peppar flavour which I got free yesterday. And they were all vile, particularly the Peppar one which is I personally believe is some kind of Swedish conspiracy to make you drink it without realising that it is really chilli flavour.

But, it's alcohol... and it's not costing me anything... and I suppose it tastes alright when mixed in with orange juice. Still, I have four more shots to work through at some point - Kurant and Original. Maybe I could flog them on eBay.

Just won a 4-port USB on eBay for a total cost of £6.69 (seemed like a good deal to me anyway). The seller was a professional who uses AuctionWorks as a payment management system. It's good, but I had a devil of a job trying to read the text on the buttons.

This wasn't helped by the existence of two buttons next to each other that did different things. I had to look at the source code just to be able to see what I was clicking on. Not good usability.

Like just about every other news site at the moment, OnlineBlog has a summary of what was announced at the MacWorld conference. The big thing was the iPod Mini, a smaller version of the existing player with a maximum capacity of 10GB 4GB and a choice of colours (the bottom-of-the-range normal iPod will now have a 15GB drive with no hike in price).

So far, so good, but here's the scandal. When it goes on sale in the US in the very near future, it will cost $249, which works out at around £138 - about the same price as many comparable players here. But in April, when the mini iPod is launched in the UK, it'll cost... wait for it... £199.

No offence to Apple, but how can they justify increasing the price by £61 (nearly $110 US)? I doubt shipping and the extra value-added tax we have to pay here really amounts to that much of a difference - remember that we're talking about a price that's 30% higher. Unfortunately, with the iPod becoming a bit of a fashion icon on both sides of the pond, Apple may well get away with it.

Corporate greed was something that Apple die-hards seem to use against Microsoft, but is Apple guilty of it themselves?

Update I: Ben's ranting about it too and it's not just the iPod Mini that Apple have done this with - almost the full range of new products Apple are releasing will have huge price hikes when they are released in the UK and Europe.

Update II: Ken at Breaking Windows is also ranting about pricing, but this time from a US perspective. Including $60 for a one-button wireless mouse...

Update III: Since people have been saying it represents 'excellent' value for money, I'd like to point out that the Creative Jukebox Zen is the same price on Amazon and has a 30GB HD - more than 7 times the capacity of the iPod Mini. Stated battery life is also 14 hours as opposed to iPod's 8, and the battery is actually replacable.

Update IV: Apple is to review the pricing after the outcry over the high price. Even with VAT added, the iPod Mini would be £38 more in the UK than the US.

Although this is about blogging, I've also posted this to Rants because I haven't had chance to rant in a while. My rant is about blog permalinks with super-long URLs - 'Sending TrackBack pings indiscriminately makes you a TrackBack spammer' on Redemption in a Blog is an example of this. (side note: the article is worth a read)

Firstly, I'll admit this: since changing to using URLs which have the title in, the URLs have got longer, but then I tend to keep my titles pretty short. But, if I were to post an entry called 'The rather fantastic entry with the unnecessarily long name', I'd end up with an url like http://www.neilturner.me.uk/2003/Dec/28/ the_rather_fantastic_entry_with_the_unnecessarily_long_name.html. Catchy, isn't it?

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the trim_to="x" attribute. This global attribute, which should certainly work in Movable Type 2.6+ and probably older versions too, will let you specify x, which is the maximum number of characters to use in the tag's output. I've used it on my template blog since I could forsee the URLs getting quite long, although I made the mistake of selecting 15 characters - 20 is probably a better number.

How do you implement it? Here's how I would do it: <$MTArchiveDate format="%Y/%b/%d"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1" trim_to="20"$>.html . Bung that into your archiving configuration and you're done. I'd do it on this blog if it were not for the fact that it would probably break all the permalinks yet again (if someone can tell me how to implement without doing that then I'd be most greatful).

There's also the matter of underscores, which I'd love to do without if I could. I'm sure I could use Brad's Regex plugin to do it but a more basic plugin which would allow me to add a removechars="_" attribute or something would be nice.

One thing we Brits are good at complaining about is how US-centric computers and the internet are. We habitually complain that 'color', 'maximize' and 'center' are spelt incorrectly and are forever scratching our heads over the meaning of 'zip code' and 'trash can'.

So it's probably little surprise that I'm about to rant about how US-centric Epson is. For some reason, this laptop doesn't want to automatically search the internet for a driver my printer, unlike the last one which would magically download the driver for me without asking it. No, this one gets in a paddy because it can't find a driver, so, last night, I went to Epson's UK site to download the driver. This driver wasn't digitally signed by MS, and from the looks of things was quite old - it resembled the Windows 98 driver for my parents' Stylus Color 660 - but it worked.

Anyway, I seem to remember being able to use a signed driver that was a lot more XP friendly, so today I visited Epson's US site. Sure enough, they have a more recent driver available. And in this case, 'more recent' is 17th July 2002 - which begs the question: just how old was the driver I was using originally?

Honestly, you yanks get all the fun :(

While I'm ranting, I'll also complain about how difficult it is to get a copy of the J2SE JDK. Sun's web site seems to be smoking crack today, and, naturally, there are no mirrors to fall back to due to Sun's licensing, or something. What worse is that it's not the first time I've had problems trying to download the damn thing. I'd stick with the JRE if it weren't for the fact that I'll need the JDK to compile Java apps some time in the future.

I've now been waiting for 3 hours for a file to download across Shareaza. 3 hours! It's not like it's an absolutely fantastic song either, just one that I've heard in clubs quite a lot and only found out the title and artist this morning (thanks again, Google). I'd buy it if it weren't so old and therefore so expensive, and like most dance music artists there's no album to buy, it seems.

The worst thing is that I've been first in the queue for 37 minutes now. Either someone is downloading one helluva file before me or I'm being pushed back in the queue. Pah.

If I was home I'd leave this as an overnight job but since I'm on dialup I'll get disconnected in under an hour, thus putting me to the back of the queue again.

Update: It's finally downloading. 3 1/2 hours later.

Someone I emailed a week or two back seems to have got himself infected with a virus, since I'm getting messages with trojan horse viruses attached disguised as MS security patches with the exact same headers as his legitimate reply to my orginal email. I'm glad I have message truncation turned on as each message comes with a 140k attachment - not fun when you're on dial-up.

According to someone who just commented on a really old entry:

i dont understand how a person cannot believe in god. because if one doesnt believe that their is a god, than that means their is no right or wrong

Could someone explain to me the rationale behind that? Since when did I have to resort to a divine being who allegedly exists to know what is right or wrong?

You can probably tell that I'm a law-abiding citizen, so I must be getting my sense of morality from somewhere. Just because I choose not to follow the teachings of the bible, that doesn't mean I'm some immoral prat.

Here is the comment as posted.

This was just posted as a comment to my review of MSN 6.0:

I think the review was done on a leaked copy because I haven't seen any MSN available from www.msn.com with built-in message logging. [url=**removed***]This is an exceptional webpage for MSN addons etc[/url]

Not only is it factually inaccurate (I'm pretty sure there is message logging in it), but the URL went to a web site for an American group that stands for the rights of 'white people' (ie they're a load of racist biggots), hence the reason why the URL was removed.

Remember, I know your IP address. Within 30 seconds of receiving the comment I knew that this idiot was posting from Auckland, New Zealand, and the name of his ISP. Please, don't post a load of trash on people's sites.

I smell. No really, I stink of fags. That's cigarettes, not homosexuals. Besides, I can't imagine a homosexual would smell any different to a heterosexual or bisexual person. But anyway, I digress.

I spent lunchtime in the pub after a failed attempt to find a lecturer for a lab we were supposed to be having. Now this pub, and I have to say it is a very nice pub with excellent food, does have a non-smoking area. But there's nothing preventing cigarette smoke from drifting over and making you smell like a tramp. That's a 'bum', for you Americans. Not a British 'bum' though. If I smelled like a British 'bum' I'd be very worried. But anyway, I digress.

While I am thankful that some effort has been made to provide facilities for those who don't want to have to suffer from other peoples' dirty habits, they could perhaps be made a little more effective. Extractor fans and better ventilation would be a start. As it is, these clothes were clean on today and they already smell like they've been hung over the top of a factory chimney, albeit without the soot stains.

You know, smokers should really be glad that, at least at the moment, the NHS pays for my asthma prescriptions. Otherwise, if I was out in a pub/club/restaurant and needed to use my inhaler, and had the misfortune of not being able to sit away from someone inhaling cyanide, carbon monoxide and ammonia, I'd be inclined to invoice them for the Salbutamol that I've had to waste as a result of their selfishness. But anyway, I digress.

My father's digital camera arrived a few minutes ago. The box on the left is the box that was delivered. The box on the right was the actual box for the camera, inside the bigger one.

Ah well, at least I have plenty of giant bubble-wrap to play with. And incidentally, I used my own camera to take the photo.

1. Expedia flash banner ads on Multimap which slow my poor PC down to a crawl.
2. Insect bites here there and everywhere.
3. The infernal über-zit below my lip that still hasn't gone away.
4. The fact that my parents are both off work today.
5. The continuing battering my firewall is getting from port 135 viruses.
6. The 'mail undelivered' messages I keep getting for mails I never sent.
7. People who still whine about my stance on MSN Messenger Plus! . It has spyware. Yes, it's optional, but it doesn't explain on clear terms what it does, and it shouldn't even be there in the first place in my opinion.
8. MT-Validable wrecking my Unicode escaping (apologies to all Mozilla users)

On the other hand, my student loan has been processed and will be available within the next 6 weeks (it's 3 weeks until I go back, but I do have some spare cash), and I'm going car shopping. Though not for me.

Darn you Royal Mail, darn you to hell.

Back in April, I sent a form off to the Student Loans Company (SLC) which confirmed that I wanted to take out a £3000 loan for my forthcoming year at university (£3000 is the maximum amount I am entitled to based on my current financial status). This also gave details of my bank account and National Insurance number etc.

Anyway, yesterday evening it came to me that I've not heard anything from SLC since then, so today I rang them up (it's a freephone number). After giving over my automated response number, PIN code, student support number, name, address, telephone number, post code, eye of newt, essence of rabbit and the souls of my first three children, I was told that my form was never received - all they had got was a letter from York Council saying I was entitled to the £3000 if I wanted it.

Great. This now means that despite deliberately sending off my form way back in April to guarantee that my loan cheque will be available to collect in September, I still have to play the 'loan lottery' (due to the number of other people applying around about now) as to whether the cheque will be ready on time. All because of one sodding piece of paper getting lost in the post.

Yes, I'm annoyed. I suppose it could have been worse - I could be realising this in 30 days time when I set off back to university, to find that my cash won't be available until November or something, and then having to live off baked beans and porridge for the first few weeks until I get some money together. But still, all that forward planning, now gone to waste.

Thanks Royal Mail, thanks a bunch.

While on my Technorati binge earlier today I came across http://rectaratio.blogspot.com/ . Now I've deliberately not made that a link because I'm about to slag it off.

It's a weblog which generally focusses on religious issues, and provides comment on recent news stories. And, as you're probably aware, there's been a bit of a gufaffle about homosexual men in high positions in the Anglican church, on both sides of the atlantic. Now, while everyone is entitled to their opinion, to be honest, I think this guy is just plain wrong in his arguments, and treats gay men as if they are a menace to society. He also talks about the US and UK have been corrupted by modernity, and describes England as a Moslem, pagan, or atheist society that will need to be thoroughly evangelized in a repeat of Saint Augustine of Canterbury's mission.

I can only think of five letters to describe this person, and they are B, I, G, O and T, in that order. But hey, I suppose freedom of speech should be a right, even if I wish some people shouldn't use it...

This article from BBC News Online is one of the more recent articles that criticises the NHS, the National Health Service in Britain. The media are full of articles like this - as a country, we slag it off almost as much as we slag off the weather. And anyone who has ever been to this country will know that the weather is our national obsession.

Everytime you open a newspaper, there's something about a 'crisis' in the NHS; how people have spent months waiting for operations, or those who have had to wait on trolleys in corridors because of the lack of available beds in hospitals. What annoys me about this is that we're so bloody lucky to have the service.

Take Firda, whose family is having to pay US$300 for every day that her mother is in the intensive care unit. Then there's Jake, who's having to pay $420 for a problem with his back. And Kim had some dental problems a few months ago, which weren't exactly cheap.

Now, without wanting to gloat, thanks to the NHS I'm not in that position. The NHS is a state-funded system, unlike the private services that exist in the US, and, presumably, Indonesia. We pay a little bit more tax, and the money from that funds the hospitals, ambulances, doctor's surgeries, dental practices - everything. So no matter whether you're on the dole or earning Roy Keane wages, you are guaranteed adequate healthcare.

I'm unsure of the statistics but in the US there are millions who don't have health insurance, and are basically in a position where they cannot afford to be ill. No wonder the US was recently ranked at #37 by a World Health Organization report. The UK was ranked 18th. Cuba, the communist state that the US dispises so much, was ranked 39th, only two places behind (full list). Admittedly, the UK's provision of healthcare is only average for Europe, but 18th out of 190 is pretty good.

(Oh yeah, France comes top and Indonesia is a disappointing 90th, but even Colombia reaches 22nd place.)

In short, I just wish the media would stop whining so much about a system that, in general, works well. Maybe that's why prospective Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean wants to introduce something similar in the US if he gets elected.

The Daily Sucker is only a relatively recent addition to the blogroll. But I'm already having second thoughts about whether it deserves to be there.

It boils down to this: its author, Vincent Flanders, has been describing Mozilla and Netscape as being on 'life-support machines', following the announcement that Netscape Communications will not release any new versions and that the Mozilla Foundation has been spun off. There is, of course, some truth in that: Netscape is officially dead. I'm not arguing that point.

What I want to argue about is the idea that Mozilla is also dead, because from where I'm sat it quite blatantly isn't. Look at these past couple of weeks - Mozilla 1.5 alpha was released, along with a release candidate of Firebird and another build of Thunderbird. Mozilla Sunbird has just started development, and the Mozilla home page has just been redesigned to target end users. If anything, the Mozilla Foundation is more active than it ever was.

Of course, if Vincent happened to be 'just another blogger', this may not have mattered. But he isn't - he's published two books and is seen as an authority on sensible web design. People listen to him, and if he says that Mozilla is dead, then they take note.

It seems strange when you consider that one of the ideas he is trying to put across is that sites should work in all browsers. Yet I see barely any mention of Opera or any of the other browsers (like Safari or Konqueror). Yes, most people use IE, I'll give him that. But if you're preaching interoperability, and then criticising the opposition, you're giving very confused messages.

So far, I've only removed two blogs from the blogroll because I haven't agreed with them, and they were both more than a year ago. I don't really want to have to do it again. Vincent: while you're entitled to your opinion, try doing your homework before you reveal it so publicly.

This is a message to anyone in the York area who is going from door to door asking people if they want their drives redoing.

Yes, we know our drive is in a bit of a state. Yes, we know we live in a comparitively wealthy area and probably have a bit of cash to spare. But we are not interested. We have two local builders who have offered to do it while we are away on holiday (who, I might add, were recommended to us by some friends), so there.

We don't want your 'bit of tarmac you got from the bloke down the pub'. We don't care about your paving slabs that have been stolen salvaged from a pristine development in some posh area of the city. If we wanted to deal with someone in a white van with a sticker with 'A1 Drives' and a mobile phone number on it, we would have rung you. Don't call us, we'll call you.

Now, leave us in peace. All right?

After two nights where I was able to get an acceptable night's sleep, my rest was broken again. And yes, I have an exam at 9:15am this morning. Do I want to wring someone's neck? Well, what do you think?

Just come back from yet another fire alarm. I have an exam at 9:15am this morning. I am not amused.

Thank you, Ben, for finally saying something sensible about this damn war with Iraq.

Okay, this is a message to all UK people: please, please, please go and buy "The Opera Song (Brave New World)" by Jurgen Vries featuring Charlotte Church. It's absolutely one of the best songs I've heard in a long time and totally must be number 1 this week, or else. Come on, it's only £2.99, and it comes with the video on CD-ROM. Heck, even Wollies and WH Smith are selling it, so there's no excuse!

(or buy it from Amazon for £3.99)

Um... yeah.

If you visited the blog yesterday evening or early this morning, my apologies. I'd tried to post about the redesign, but Mozilla kept reporting 'The page contains no data'. So I resubmitted it. 3 times.

Then, when the page finally loaded, it turned out that it had been posted 4 times. So, I needed to rebuild.

30 minutes later, only the first 40 entries had been rebuilt (the entire rebuild process normally takes about 30 seconds), so I gave up, and put up that temporary message. Fortunately the server is back up to speed this morning, so rebuilding didn't take quite so long.

Another change that I forgot to mention: Ben Hammersley has now made it to the blogroll. Yes, it's another geeky technology blog, but it's interesting. O'Reilly have also just published a book by him, on RSS. Sounds like they chose the right man for the job.

Yesterday I went into town, basically because I was bored (most people were regaining sleep after Friday night) and also because my mum's birthday is coming up so I thought I'd get her a card and a pressie. Anyway, in the main shopping street outside Boots, there were three people, standing in the middle of the street, shouting, at the top of their voices, why Jesus is brilliant and that we should all worship him.

This, I would like to remind you, was occuring in Bradford, where Christians only make up about 60% of the population. Boots, the shop they were standing outside, has some of its signs in Arabic to help those whose English isn't too good. I'm sorry, but at least 2 out of 5 people don't agree with you, and I personally don't appreciate having someone shout instructions to me that I don't believe are right. If they were demonstrating or protesting about something, I may not have been so annoyed, but the fact that they assumed that people will listen to them and take in what they say, when a considerable portion actually disagree, drives me nuts. And by the way, it's Ramadan at the moment.

Keep your beliefs to yourself. I'm sure most of us are responsible adults who have made conscious decisions about what we want to believe; we don't need someone shouting at us about stuff that doesn't apply.

As you may have heard, the next version of MS Office, Office 11, will only work on Windows 2000sp3/XP, and that support for Windows NT and 98 expires next year. This annoys me.

Among web users (which I admit is not the same as office users), Windows 98 is the most popular OS, as proved by theCounter.com Global Stats, with 50% of web users using it. If MS were to stop supporting this OS, they would alienate a large proportion of their users.

Furthermore, Office 11 won't even work under Windows Me, an OS that was only released 2 years ago. While very few businesses use this, it will certainly alienate the home user.

I have to agree with Tony here. OpenOffice.

The Guardian are running an article called 'Meet the new Zionists' on the front page of their G2 supplement. This article, coming from an atheist who believes in peace, equality and selflessness, really exasperates me.

It reports how the Christian Coalition of America is backing Israel in the Middle East conflict, with the usual Bible references as to why. But some of the comments made really annoyed me, such as the following:

Robertson prefers to dwell on Arab plans to drive Israel into the sea and the iniquity of Yasser Arafat and "his gang of thugs". But he also cites the stories of Joshua and David to prove Israel's ownership of Jerusalem "long before anyone had heard of Mohammed".

Okay, so I'm not religious. But this whole 'my religion is better than your religion' really pisses me off.

It gets worse. Another Christian group were campaigning against the state of Israel, because their interpretetation of the Bible says that supporting Israel is wrong. Ooookaaayyy then...

But to top it off, I feel I have to quote a certain Jerry Falwell:

Falwell, on Robertson's TV show, blamed the attacks on, among others, "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians".

The other week Falwell called Mohammed a terrorist, which might have accounted for his unexplained non-appearance at the conference.

Where I live, making comments like that in public would have you assasinated before you could even have chance to apologise.

Time to vent some spleen...

Today was the dreaded CASS lecture, which actually wasn't too bad; certainly not as abstract as last week. Though if it weren't for a certain person sat next to me it would have been far better.

You see, I made the mistake of sitting next to a certain male greek student who has to transport his ego around on the back of a lorry. Yep, he loves himself, and he assumes everyone loves him too. So when he talks, stamps his feet, prods people and throws stuff at everyone he thinks he is the man. Oh please.

Look, I go to lectures to learn. I could not go of course, but then I wouldn't learn anything, which would defeat the purpose. If you don't want to be there, get up and leave, and let those of us who do want to come out with a degree do so in peace. You wouldn't like it if I came into your room and prodded you while you were sleeping - how do you think I feel when I'm trying to concentrate on what I'm being taught?

Ugh. Men. They should be eradicated. Or castrated. Or something.

There is someone I want to kill. Well, maybe not kill, but certainly inflict pain on. Here's the scenario: at about 2:30am I got into bed, and started to drift off. Then at about 2:50am, the bloody fire alarm goes off. So I had throw on my dressing gown, pick up my keys and evacuate the building. Remember that this was about 3am in the morning - it was cold, it was raining and I'd had 5 VKs and a shot of praline vodka earlier on in the evening. I was not a happy bunny.

Anyway, it was a false alarm, and once it had been deactivated, everyone went back to bed. Then, at 6am, the bloody thing goes off again. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!

So, as you can tell, I'm more than slightly pissed off. But I did have a good night last night besides that - initially we went to the pub across the road to watch the Manchester United vs Everton match (which was 85 minutes of not much and then 5 minutes of class playing by the reds... and yes, I am a Liverpool supporter), but then went along to Vodka Nationwide, which was as good as, if not better than last week. I'm just glad I have no lectures on Tuesday mornings.

This annoyed me slightly: Police seek 'good samaritan'. A young woman has an epilleptic fit and collapses, then a stranger comes along, pretends to be a friend and instead lifts £60 from her wallet. Not very nice is it?

On second thoughts, I'd better clarify my position with regards to what Bill Thompson has to say - I agree that the US is using the fact that it is the world's most powerful country to exercise its laws on the internet to the advantages of its own corporations, and I agree this is wrong. I also agree that the DMCA is a pile of b***s***.

My reservations are with the use of Trusted Computing. I really don't like this idea. My computer runs what I want it to run, not what Microsoft or any other corporation wants to me to run. I have a vast catalogue of MP3s because its convinient to have them on the PC to play, not because I want to trade them with the rest of the world. In fact, if CDs where cheaper, then I'd buy more of them, because I believe in supporting the artist, not some fatcat music industry boss. Trusted Computing would restrict me way too much, and thwart the development of rival software. It's bad, I tell you. Baaad.

As for US laws, the fact is, I'm not a US citizen. I've never even been to the country. So why should I have to abide by its laws, particularly as I had no say in whether I think the law is good or not? At least here in the UK the public has more leverage when it comes to law-making - you only have to look at the "Snooper's Charter" earlier this year where the public outcry forced the government to make a U-turn and admit the bill shouldn't made law.

Though I suppose we don't have huge corporations heavily lobbying the government - yes it happens but not on the same scale as in the US. I bet half of the bills either passed or awaiting decision in the past few years over there are unconstitutional, due to the fact that they restrict the rights of individuals and grant more rights to the corporations and industry groups like the RIAA.

For the Americans reading this, please don't take it as an attack on your country - if it weren't for the US the world wouldn't be where it is today, and I have many friends living across the pond. But, let's face it, your government sucks.

One of my fellow editors, bunda, mentioned something interesting in his weblog, and it reminded me of something I read in the Guardian this morning, about atheism in America, taken from the Free Inquiry.

I was shocked to read this quote from George Bush Snr: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.. As the article put it, To see how outrageous this is, try substituting 'Jews' for 'atheists'. Why do people, particularly some Americans (emphasis on the some), have such a problem with us atheists? They seem to be okay with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and the like, who also believe in a God (or gods), but can't understand those who don't believe any God, and accuse us of being "communists" (so... okay, I occasionally get communist tendencies... doesn't make me a bad person does it?).

What scares me is the "Religious Right" of America who lobby state officials to introduce laws that hinder atheism, like in Alabama where biology textbooks carry a warning sticker to remind people to take the theory of evolution with a pinch of salt. Now I'm not going into which theory I think holds the most water, but that's just not fair. You don't see that on copies of the Qu'ran do you?

Sorry for ranting, but this really got my p*ssed off today. It just feels that some places in the States are oppresive towards other religions. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, or in Saudi Arabia, or Iraq. And I don't see Alabama on Bush's "Axis of Evil"...

I've been thinking about my personality lately. If I was to describe myself for something, I'd definitely state that I was 'open-minded' and able to see both sides of an argument (which is why I rarely have absolute opinions on anything). Why am I talking about this? Well, while reading through a few blogs today, it came to me that I have two opinions about people who don't update their blogs much.

As you can probably tell, I try hard to update this at least once every day, even if I don't have much to say. Most other bloggers do the same. But I've noticed that some aren't so quick off the mark - take Lori Lookwood's and Randy Nieland's blogs as an example. Lori does update from time to time (though she seems to be having problems with Movable Type - half the time the site isn't working), but Randy goes through weeks without updating. The last update to his was June 10th - nearly a month ago.

Now hold on a minute. You gotta remember that people are busy - Randy has to write a daily newsletter, maintain a couple of websites and look after his computers / ferrets / Diana as well. I'm sure blogging is much lower on his priorities in life. And it's his blog after all - as the saying goes, if you have nothing good to say, don't say anything. Maybe he just doesn't like updating.

But I do find it frustrating that every time I visit, the same old stuff is up there. I want to be able to find out what he's been doing, or what he's found on the web. I don't want to read the same old stuff over again.

So I'm in two minds here. Part of me gets annoyed at this, but the other half tries to be more understanding. Guess it's like in those cartoons, where you have the angel and devil representing the two sides of your conscience. I suppose I'llhave to go with the angel - I mean, you can't expect everyone to update. And to write an email saying "Oi, sort your site out!" would be rude, wouldn't it? But still... I wish they did.

So, Adele was evicted. It's a pity - although her two-facedness was showing through, I certainly preferred her to Jade, who basically does my nut in. I certainly feel sorry for Alex - he seemed visibily dejected after the announcement was made.

What's worse is that if Jade gets evicted next week, it'll make Kate the only girl left, along with four men. I guess that's the problem with having a pro-dominantly female audiance watching the show - they tend to like the men better. I do hope that Kate goes on to win (however unlikely it is), it'd be nice to have a girl winning it.

Hmm... appears Blogger is having a few problems at the moment...

A quote from 'Dave', who has added the following to the guestbook:

Neil, before you slate the BNP check out their website first.Todays left are nothing more than a bunch of undemocratic egotists.My parents voted Labour when they actually stood for something.Today only the BNP stand for ordinary ,working class British. WWW.bnp.org.uk cheers.

'Undemocratic', eh? The Labour party were elected democratically, will hold a referendum before joining the €uro, and haven't abolished the democratic system. How democratic do you want them to be? I'd like to see you trying to organise referendums for every major political decision, while ensuring that they are fair and unbiased.

As for working rights, which government introduced the minimum wage? I'm sorry, but I will never support a party that discriminates against people just because of their colour or religious beliefs, unless there is no alternative. And as it stands, there are plenty.

Admittedly the Labour government has its problems, and I don't like all of its legislation (particularly the anti-privacy bill), but on the whole I'm pleased with it. I do tend to agree with the Liberal Democrats more, particularly with their comments about the current 'Queen Mother's Funeral-gate' faff that the right-wing press seem to be obsessed with.

This article from The Observer has been troubling me. It was published in late February, but I was reminded of it today, and a second read made me realise how shocking it is.

The article goes into detail about attempts made by right-wing religious groups in America to have Darwin's theory of evolution removed from syllabuses, as well as other ways of forcing people to believe the Bible's version of events against those of other cultures and religions. This sickens me. Although I generally avoid religious discussions (since if I say my point of view they turn into arguments) I can say that I'm an atheist who subscribes to Darwin's theory. Admittedly I was baptised into the protestant Anglican Church, but I wasn't even 1 year old at the time so I had no real option. I think it is irresponsible of these people to try and insulate the American public of other theories, particularly when these theories have some kind of fact behind them. The only evidence to prove the theory of creation is the Bible and a few philosophers.

I also think that law-makers in the States forget that their country is very multicultured - how would a muslim, buddist, hindu or jew feel after being told that they were wrong? Perhaps we (as in the US, and the UK too) should look to the French political system where religion is kept well away from politics and education.