My support for the Disqus commenting system used on this blog is well documented. I have also had great support whenever I have had minor issues with a service I paid precisely nothing for. Disqus are a small company with less than 10 employees. However, Disqus are not a cottage industry operating out of Daniel Ha’s garage. Disqus are funded by venture capital (Union Square and angel investors) and raised $500,000 in the last round of funding (March 2008). ...

This is the first in a series of ‘open letters’ when I send emails to people who I admire or have had a major influence on my life. I will post my ‘open letter’ and subsequently will post the individual’s response (with their permission). To kick things off, an open letter sent in February 2008 to Tony Hawks (UK author, comedian and occasional ’talking head’ on those interminable BBC series that look back to the 1980’s). ...

The gift that simply keeps on giving. ‘914 scam’ - if you don’t know the correct name, you may already be doomed to failure. ‘reasons for isolation’ - spending too much time on the Internet searching for ‘reasons for isolation’. “craig gordon” “ian curtis” - odd combination of a dead pop star and a living Sunderland goalkeeper. ‘my wife’s shapely legs’ - yeah right. Take those stockings off. Now. “(“current vacancy” or vacancies or opportunity or careers or “working with” or “working for”) and (“oracle dba” or oracle dba )and london” - with such a superlative grasp of search term syntax and semantics, you would simply be wasted as an Oracle DBA. ‘dead bodies in the floor boards’ - stop it. You are worrying me with the use of ‘in’ as opposed to ‘under’. ‘how to become a virgin again’ - Please sit down. Have a drink. I have some bad news for you. ‘ian curtis hanged ice block’ - Look I’ve already told you twice This is an urban myth. ‘make friends under 14 to 16’ - try Facebook or Beebo. Just don’t get caught. ‘oracle killed siebel’ - Mr. Ellison with the lead piping in the library. ‘selling strategy of siebel system anatomy’ - yet another reason I don’t work in sales. ’the most important decision of my entire life’ - undoubtedly left disappointed at my lack of insight. ‘urinal pulled his zipper down’ - yet another reason I always favour a private cubicle. ‘why durex gossamer withdrawn’ - apparently on the advice of the Pope.

Last night, I flew home to London from Hamburg, near Germany. The flight was punctual and uneventful enough apart from the fact I was sitting next to a blind man. When the seat belts sign extinguished, he got his laptop out, booted up and started typing into a completely black screen. So, I assumed he must be blind and using a braille keyboard. However, this gentleman wasn’t blind. He had been reading ‘High Life’ while we taxied onto the runway. Oh and he also had a complimentary copy of the Financial Times. ...

For reasons that are too long and tedious to recount here, I have had cause to rebuild my Lenovo T61 laptop many times over the last month, using a bewildering range of operating systems, Linux distributions, live CD’s and dual boot configurations. During this time, gparted and an external USB 500GB disk drive have become very close and reliable friends. In fact, I have only lost data once and, inevitably, that was due to my own stupidity. ...