Posts from 2005

So Typepad had plans to implement resilient disk storage but had an outage before the work was complete, which meant that users lost access to their treasured blogs as a consequence.

Elsewhere del.ico.us celebrated the Yahoo! takeover by having an outage that also meant that users lost access to their bookmarks.

I also noticed that the transaction log on the database used by Newsgator filled up over the weekend and the forums were also unavailable this morning.

My UK ISP appears to have suddenly been taken by surprise by a slight increase in users which has broken their email infrastructure causing sporadic access to email for a period close to seven days. Isn't anyone at Blueyonder responsible for capacity planning ?

I wanted to export my Newsgator feeds into OPML and experiment with SearchFox, who kindly gave me an account, to take part in the beta program.

Only one slight problem, Newsgator doesn't support OPML export. Strange but true.

I am fortunate that my job takes me to lots of exotic locations (Prague, Bergen, Amsterdam, Munich, Oslo, Nice, Paris) and now, err, West Bromwich.

The last time I was here was in October 1981 when I attended a game at The Hawthorns between West Bromwich Albion and Manchester United. The game got underway and the United fans started a chant:

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside Oh I do like to be beside the sea

Oh I do like to walk along the prom, prom, prom

And say, GO HOME West Brom

Only, 'Go Home' was substituted for a different, more colourful phrase in the English vernacular to the same effect.

Anyway, as the game was pretty uneventful, the United fans kept repeating the last line ad infinitum which was quite funny.

Next thing I knew, a policeman grabbed hold of me and my mate and escorted us both down the steps to the pitch, through a gate and led us away.

I was stunned into silence but my mate was more vociferous repeatedly asking 'What had we done ?'. This was understandable as he was a Brighton fan who had just come along for something to do and wasn't even singing.

We got led away alongside the pitch, past the United fans who applauded us (for some odd reason) and were taken to the police control room. The copper asked us for ID and took our names. He then cautioned us. We protested that we had done nothing and weren't even singing the obscene chant.

To my amazement, the copper said 'Yeah. I know but we had to do something to quieten things down'

Then I realised that we had been ejected from a football match because we happened to be standing adjacent to an aisle (easy access for the coppers without having to pull us from the middle which might provoke more trouble), the coppers knew we were together as a pair (and not in a larger group) and precisely because we were not the types to be cause trouble.

We were then kicked out into Handsworth Road where youths were lobbing stones into the United section and the copper warned us 'Listen. You've been cautioned. But if you enter the ground again and I see you, you will be arrested'.

So we ran the gauntlet of stones back to the station. As we did so, inevitably we heard loud cheering from the away end.

We got home and were soon ~~safely wrapped up in our beds~~ back in the pub, drinking hard, regaling our friends with the anecdote in the pub as we learned the final score. 3-0 to United.

I just downloaded an interesting, wide ranging interview (sorry podcast) by Tom Raftery with Matt Mullenweg and Donncha OCaoimh, the two leading developers behind WordPress. Matt and Donncha talk about their backgrounds, hosted WordPress.com, features in 2.0, blogging, spam, plugins and future WordPress developments.

Tom also happened to ask a specific question about my concerns for the WordPress business model and Matt provided some reassurance that there is a revenue stream through partnerships (hosting companies) so both guys do have enough money to eat, drink Murphys and wear clothes.

I am using the Newsgator Online RSS reader and simply want to order my most important, must-read blogs (i.e mine) at the top. It doesnt seem like an unreasonable requirement. From a cursory glance at the documentation, it is not immediately clear if I can even do this in Newsgator. This is a little irritating as I now have to do some work to scroll down to 'Oracle' or rename the folder as 'AAAOracle'. And, yes, you're right, I am very lazy.

Then I stumbled across a blog article on SearchFox which is another Web based RSS reader (like Newsgator) but with an interesting personalisation and recommendation engine which automatically bubbles your favourite, most frequently read articles and blogs to the top of your reading list.

This sounds interesting. It is a pity that SearchFox is another Web 2.0 application that is in beta and currently open to a selected few who must apply for an account. Still, I sent them a polite email citing my recent review and asked for access to evaluate their product. I even used a Gmail address to prove my Web 2.0 credentials. I sent the email yesterday and am now polling my Google Inbox every ten seconds.

I stumbled across SearchFox on a arbitrary blog search on feedster about RSS and it struck me that, in the past, I would use Google (Web, Groups), TuCows, SourceForge, Freshmeat to find OpenSource, free RSS readers.

However most of these sources are relatively out of date and had failed to unearth SearchFox when I was recently looking for RSS readers. The fast moving blogosphere is much better suited to finding these sort of hip, new Web 2.0 applications.

Those nice people at bloglines have responded to my recent review of RSS readers and my scathing comments about the sluggish performance. > We feel your pain

Or maybe it is just coincidence.

Just got my car a shiny, new MOT certificate as an early Christmas present. The MOT certificate is a pre-requisite for renewing the tax disc which expires at the end of the month.

The format of the MOT test certificate has changed and all MOT's will be recorded on a computer system at the Vehicle and Operator Agency (VOSA).

This means that you can now apply for your road tax online as VOSA can also verify that the vehicle is insured using another computer system.

Good news for me. One less trip into the Post Office.

Bad news for car criminals.

I subscribe to an RSS feed from the BBC about Manchester United.

This feed contains match reports, previews and general news about Manchester United.

However, the BBC has an infuriating habit of throwing in content from the Message Boards which are a forum for 'fans'. Think 5 Live's 606 radio phone-in but worse.

Worse, this article appears in the feed as a new article on 15 December. This is a thread from the '606 message boards - Liverpool'. Newsgator displays the title as 'If Liverpool don't give Chelsea a run for their money this season, then we certainly will soon - DG' and the Web page thread is named 'well played today' referring to Liverpool versus Chelsea.

Why ? What possible relevance does this content have to MUFC ?

Not many things make me laugh out loud.

Pete Mitchell and Geoff Lloyd on the Virgin Radio breakfast show were very funny.

Now they are leaving. Time to burn a few more CD's for the tedious journey into work.

Once upon a time, I flew back from Lausanne in Switzerland to London. Although the skies were clear, there had been heavy thunderstorms earlier in the day so the plane was forced to hold above Heathrow. We flew around and around in circles for so long that we eventually had to divert to Bournemouth to refuel.

This impromptu diversion confused the trio of Swiss people sitting behind me who thought London was 'quite small' and 'very green' and why 'is no-one getting off' after we had landed and sat around for 15 minutes on the runway at this small, provincial airport.

This confusion was because British Airways were too incompetent to put a French speaker on the crew on a flight from Switzerland. In fact, when he realised he wasn't actually in London, one of the Swiss passengers then politely asked a stewardess why no announcements had been made in French.

Events then descended into farce when the stewardess then made an announcement for 'any French speaking passengers to make themselves known to the cabin staff'. The same Swiss passenger duly volunteered and he then made an announcement over the loudspeaker system directed primarily at his two fellow Swiss passengers who were sitting right there, next to him.

So, after a complimentary drink to placate the Brits and prevent rioting, we finally arrived 2 hours 30 mins late at London Heathrow. The final straw was that it took British Airways a further 45 minutes to get a set of steps and buses over to the remote stand at Terminal 4 so we could actually leave the plane.

As I finally left the plane at 21.45 on a Friday night, I was tired, fed up and just desperate to get home. The pilot was stood at the exit door, smiling and saying 'Good night' to all passengers.

I paused and told him that, while I understood that the diversion due to the weather was unavoidable, it was an absolute joke that the British Airways could not arrange for ground staff to meet a plane that was over 2 hours late. The only consequence for me was that my tea was cold. However, plenty of other passengers on that flight were desperately trying to make connections to America and Asia. If the steps had been in place, they might just have had a slim chance of making their onward connection. With this additional delay, there was absolutely no chance.

The pilot just smiled again (which was quite irritating in itself) and replied 'Yes I know Sir. It is embarrassing and bloody unacceptable and I can assure you that I have made my views known in no uncertain terms.'