…not to bury them. 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 am a fan of WordPress. I like their software. I like their humour. I pay absolutely nothing for the service so I really can’t 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. ...

Normally, when something isn’t working, I get a little annoyed. However, with WordPress, you just have to smile.

My old company used Exchange Server. I used to use Outlook for mail. My new company uses IMAP. So now I can use Thunderbird for mail (news and RSS). No more wasted time puzzling over why filter rules suddenly stop working. No more wasted time messing around with proprietary PST files. Fast, flexible, powerful search capability. All my Outlook data imported seamlessly. Small change, massive improvement.

Up by around 13,000 due to an arbitrary inbound link from the WordPress tags page Day 202. Technorati Rank: 173,971 (29 links from 16 sites) However, this may be the last in the very popular ‘From Zero’ series for two reasons: I have exhausted all decent subject lines and puns starting ‘From Zero’ Apart from creating a load of splogs or bribing people, I have exhausted all known avenues for inbound links I may well now turn my attention to PubSub where my ranking is a much more satisfying 66,425 (InLinks 0, OutLinks 0, Entries 0) and I simply do not believe that hurtful person who told me PubSub only track a total of 66,426 blogs. ...

Some football fans change allegiance and cheer on other British clubs in Europe. I don’t. Good bye, for another season, to the translator.

The Armstrongs is a BBC2 fly on the wall documentary about a small, family owned double glazing company in Coventry. While this subject doesn’t sound too inspiring, the program is absolutely hilarious. Last week, the husband and wife owners travelled to France in an attempt to diversify and increase dwindling sales. Amazingly, they chose to translate their business proposition using Babelfish which may be adequate for children’s homework but resulted in an unfortunate translation of ‘conservatory’ to ‘music academy’. Consequently, the subtitles revealed that couple asked their French prospects: ...

The following celebrities have graced my blog with the odd (in some cases, very odd) comment: Matt Mullenweg (WordPress) Dave Sifry (Technorati). Original post deleted as it was an unfounded criticism of Technorati (filed in the Bugs database under ‘idiotic user’) Stowe Boyd (Web 2.0 ‘A’ lister) Thomas Kyte (Oracle) Paul Stamatiou (student extraordinaire) Doug Burns (roaming, humorous, loyal, Scottish Oracle DBA type) Norman Whiteside (MUFC) One of these is a joke. ...

Thanks to Jeff Hunter kindly updating the link on his blogroll, this blog has awoken from a period of slumber. Day 201. Technorati Rank: 187,013 (28 links from 15 sites) Don’t ask me why 3 links and 3 sites have been added (instead of 1) since the last update. Who am I to question the inner workings of Technorati ? However, /Message is currently positioned at an impressive 4,586 (514 links from 269 sites) and Stowe Boyd’s beaming face and black beret continue to taunt me so the struggle must go on. ...

I spurned my first few invitations to linkedin.com as I already get plenty of spam email. However, I finally succumbed but now I am very fearful that someone, someday will receive the following endorsement from me so please, please don’t ever connect to my network. “Simply the best technical consultant, called Norman, who lives in Inverness, I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Mr. N. Brightside has an awesome and exceptional knowledge of PowerPoint internals. Definitely a member of my A-Team. PS. Always stands his round too which is also important.” ...