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 ...

I just downloaded an interesting, wide ranging interview (sorry podcast) by Tom Raftery with Matt Mullenweg and Donncha O’Caoimh, 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 doesn’t 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. ...

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. ...