Posts from March 2006

On Friday, I was surprised (and honoured) to receive an email from Prince Philip.

A Channel 4 documentary about 9/11 and the controversial photographs capturing the final seconds of people who jumped to their deaths.

Harrowing and yet compulsive viewing. Not for everyone and the sort of program you might expect a warning about the content (21:00-22:30) which some may find disturbing, upsetting or offensive.

Instead, Channel 4 announce ‘This program contains images and video footage featuring repetitive patterns that may cause problems for people with photosensitive epilepsy’. Bizarre. Truly bizarre.

May the 2,967 innocent people who lost their lives that day rest in peace.

Everything was in its place. Then I went and changed everything (again). My therapist says this is a character defect and a sign of subliminal procrastination.

Hard reset Palm Pilot. Download Thunderbird extension to sync address book. Doesn't work.

So now my Contacts are in Thunderbird (periodic manual export/import) and I am using the Palm for Calendar and Tasks. If it's good enough for Dave Allen, then it's good enough for me.

Next Action: Wait for Thunderbird/Sunbird to fully support Palm synchronisation.

There is a terribly sad story in the UK about clinical trials that have gone (badly) wrong leaving six people critically ill in hospital.

Radio 5 carried an interview with a person who has taken part in previous trials. He was so full of praise for Parexel that I thought he was a stooge.

That was, until, he uttered the unfortunate words

'So, 1,000 GBP for one trial and 750 GBP for the second. For a student, that is a lot of money and can actually be life-changing'

Just went to delete whiteside.wordpress.com.

Hit Yes I am really, really sure I want to delete this blog for eternity. Yes. I acknowledge I will never be able to access the blog again or reuse the name ever. Or, in vi terms, ':q!'.

Received an email from the WordPress Workflow Monitor Agent. Clicked the link to confirm I really, truly do know what I am doing and do indeed want to consign the blog to Room 101.

[ Wonder why some ~~idiots~~ people end up posting on the Support Forum 'HELP !!! I've deleted my blog by mistake' ]

Watch in horror as browser fleetingly accesses 'andyc.wordpress.com' instead and brings me to this dashboard. So, on second thoughts, I think I will leave things just as they are.

Thanks to Igor (who is a human being and not a monster) kindly modifying an inbound link, an article briefly appearing in Dave Sifry's Link Cosmos (a proud moment indeed) and a citation from this very odd gentleman, this blog has edged up the Technorati ladder

Day 211. Technorati Rank: 145,329 (33 links from 19 sites)

However, the grim realisation is slowly dawning that there is more chance of MUFC catching Chelsea than my humble blog overtaking Stowe Boyd. Consequently, I have reluctantly lowered my sights and now have Doug Burns (bathing in the afterglow of the HotSos effect) on my radar.

Technorati Rank: 74,565 (161 links from 33 sites)

13. Years since Manchester City reached the quarter finals of the FA Cup.

30. Years since Manchester City last won a trophy.

The best football banner in the world was very simple and understated - just two large digits at the Stretford End. The number was incremented on or around 28th February each year.

The banner is no longer at Old Trafford (following the Glazer takeover) but can still be seen at FCUM matches apparently. Easier to get tickets too.

I have been unable to administer this blog for a couple of days. However, thanks to the unstinting efforts of Ryan and Donncha, I am pleased to say the problem is now resolved.

I was trapped inside a recursive, infinite, endless loop hell which severely tested my sense of humour after 28 minutes. In fact, I was positively irritated, frustrated and tending towards 'annoyed'.

I was aware there were a few issues at WordPress following recent changes. Initially, I assumed my problems were related and just waited. However, then I saw people merrily posting away on their WordPress blogs (and not just Scobleizer who has a custom template and a dedicated server farm).

I tried a few things myself (cleared cookies, different browsers, different computers) but all to no avail. I started a self-help group for affected bloggers. I scanned digg, reddit, tailrank memorandum, Google (and the BBC World Service) in vain for mention of this catastrophe in the blogosphere.

I posted a few rapid fire entries on my new shiny blog (the soon to be, sadly, departed 'whiteside.wordpress.com'). I thought up a fantastic new tag line - 'interminable bytestream'. I used the Performancing for Firefox blog editor which was excellent and was also impressed by the recently released Metrics.

However, I persisted reading and posting to the WordPress support forum and eventually got into an email dialog with Ryan. His email actually 'thanked me for my report' (as if I was somehow doing him a favour), apologised for 'breaking my blog' (as though I am a paying customer), described the progress so far (interesting) and assured me they were 'trying to put it right' (reassuring).

And within a short period, they did.

I am a fan of WordPress. I like their software. I like their humour.

I pay absolutely nothing for the service so I really cant complain when it breaks.

However, today is the second day I can't access my blog on WordPress.

Nothing on Technorati. Nothing on Digg. Nothing on tech.memeorandum. Nothing on TailRank. Nothing from those Wordpress 'A' listers, Scoble and Winer.

In fact, as I could see other people sporadically blogging on WordPress, my paranoia took hold and I started to wonder whether I was the only person in the entire blogosphere affected by this problem.

Then, finally, I read the following posting from Matt Mullenweg in the WordPress Support forum

We're shifting some things to address the problem, and there is new hardware and such coming online as soon as we can get it.

So, that's fine. An update from someone in the know although the phrase 'new hardware...when we can get it' makes me slightly uncomfortable and reaching for my Blogger details and the non-existent WordPress 'export' button.

Anyway, I am sure that when a spate of other high profile Web 2.0 companies (del.icio.us, Blogger, TypePad) had problems in December last year, the news was plastered all over Technorati and elsewhere.

So, are WordPress so fantastic and so powerful, that they are actually beyond reproach ?

Normally, when something isnt working, I get a little annoyed.

However, with WordPress, you just have to smile.