Author: Richard

What a Pair of Tits!

| Richard

Last night I watched Louis Theroux’s documentary on plastic surgery.

No, the subject of this entry isn’t about the rather ample surgery receptionist Louis interviewed, but about the two middle aged men having their pecs enhanced with implants. As Louis pointed out, they did look like small women’s breasts. I wondered why someone would want to have their body enhanced to look more muscular and “manly” when in fact they were looking more like (bad) transsexuals…

This documentary followed Top Gear which included the three presenters heading off to Southern and Central Europe in search of some great roads and apparently being crap at it. Now this crapness element is getting a tad boring and over-played as it’s in every feature they run. If they’re that incompetent, sack them.

But whilst they were gadding about at 9 mpg they were accompanied by a helicopter for some nice aerial shots. No doubt all of this was paid for by the licence fee, etc. and yet when Louis Theroux wanted £2,500 for plastic surgery as part of his documentary, the BBC wouldn’t pay.

Garmin i3 Dead … Just Over a Year Too

| Richard

Yes one year and a few days after I bought the Garmin i3 satnav unit, it’s effectively knackered.

The USB connector is also the port for charging the unit on the move and unfortunately the connector is only located by four tiny soldered points and as it’s plugged in when in the car and then out to remove it for security and then plugged in to update the Points of Interest (speed camera locations, for example), etc. (repeat ad infinitum).

The trouble with that is that – as in my case – the connector eventually gives way as it did for me on 2nd September and the unit cannot then be updated or charged, so I ended up spending a fortune on batteries on a recent round trip to Scotland.

It’s a real pity as the unit was fabulous.

Yuku Features and Security

| Richard

Just a couple of snippets from one support thread as nothing much is happening over at yuku (well, apart from staffers disappearing; the expression “rats leaving a sinking ship” spring to mind).

Firstly, remember that one of the key ”benefits” of yuku is “google friendly URLs”. I see. Let’s look again at that support thread’s URL: it’s http://support.yuku.com/topic/3493/t/–did—-fix–wasn-t-broke—-place-.html

Somewhat different from the actual topic title of “So why did you have to fix what wasn’t broke in the first place?” Now I wouldn’t call that URL Google-friendly, would you?

Secondly, have a look at this reply in the message thread, apparently from a user called Ben. Nothing untoward there? Now read this later reply:

“Well that’s odd - I don’t remember making that post up there (#17). Maybe it’s down to bad memory on my part, but the time of the post is 7:18pm in my time zone - and I was NOT on the PC between 7pm and 7:35pm. What is going on?”

The answer? It was a yuku staffer logging in to that user’s account and posting. Yes, isn’t it reassuring to know that if your message board is on yuku or you have a user account on there, ezboard, Inc. can log into your account and post away pretending to be you without you ever being the wiser! Of course, compare that with, say, a vBulletin where as an administrator, I don’t have access to a user’s password (other than the ability to set a new one, but then they’d be aware of that).

And given the documented antics of certain staff (and indeed, ex-staff), they’re the last people I’d ever trust.

The Trouble with Blogs…

| Richard

Addictive things, these blogs.

But if, like me, you’re often out and about and between computers, you too may have suddenly thought of something you would like to share with the blogosphere. And, like me, you may have been frustrated that you couldn’t, because by the time you’ve made it to somewhere with a computer and an Internet connection you’ve forgotten what it was you were going to blog about.

Now I know I can blog by e-mail (or using Shozu) using my mobile phones, but when I’m hacking along the road in my car or on my bike, the last thing I should be doing is composing an e-mail using the tiny keyboard (even if the handset is in a cradle).

No, what would make a killer app. (or plug-in) for WordPress would be a voice to text posting facility, somewhat like the Voice Post feature on LiveJournal but with instant, automated transcription.

Now that would be cool (and remember where you saw the idea first!).

Mercedes C-Class: Pretentious? Moi?

| Richard

There’s an advert presently running on the TV in the UK for the latest version of Mercedes’ C-Class. It’s cringeworthy in the extreme. Why? Well how about this exchange between a couple of voices from the ad.:

“I’ll see your design and raise it!”

“That’s how real design works.”

Does it, bollocks!

I had no idea that “real design” involved a couple of wannabe yuppies exchanging pretentious and indeed meaningless phrases. The things we learn from TV … like not to buy Mercedes in case we get tarred with the same brush as those commissioning such utter shite or the ‘lifestyle’ it tries to convey.

The Trouble with e-mail…

| Richard

I have registered hundreds of domain names over the years. And going back to the glory days before Spam was a significant problem, I’ve always been used to having “catch-all” e-mail addresses and with that in mind, using onlineresource@domainname e-mail addresses with no worries: registering at websites with theirname@mydomain e-mail addresses knowing that e-mails sent to those addresses would find their way to me.

If I started to receive Spam to one of these addresses, it was easy enough to set up that e-mail address as a null mailbox so that any Spam would get nuked.

But the Spammers then decided to start using anynumbersandletters@mydomain e-mail addresses to Spam or unscrupulous(!) list sellers would simply make them up and add them to their x million e-mail address lists. So the Spam would increase.

And then they decided to forge the From: addresses using their made up e-mail addresses so not only do you receive the Spam, but you also receive all the bounce messages too.

Which is why I came back yesterday evening to find 7400+ bounce messages waiting for me, the majority of which were sent to one old domain name. So I then had to use Google Desktop Search to find all the e-mail addresses I’d used with that domain name and do the opposite of what I’d always done: kill the catch-all setting and set up new individual addresses.

All because of some bunch of lowlife scum…

Vodafone Business – Worse Than Useless

| Richard

Last week, I was away on business and when I tried to connect to my office PC using my 3G Datacard, I was unable to.

Back at the office using a wireless connection, I was able to connect “remotely” with no problems, so it’s not a problem with either my PC or my laptop.

I am going away for a few days soon, so I have just tried again and failed again. So a telephone call to the support number from Vodafone’s Mobile Connect software help files was made. They can’t find the datacard’s number in their records but then when I tell them it’s a Vodafone Business account, they redirect the call to Vodafone’s business centre at Newark. After 40 minutes on hold - I kid you not - I finally get put through. They are apparently experiencing high call volumes - never a good sign…

Once past the people who DHAFC (Don’t Have a F*****g Clue), I finally got through to a techie called Kevin who went through all sorts of troubleshooting before deciding that we needed to set up two configurations in the software: one for regular web browsing and webmail, etc. and one for establishing a remote desktop connection. Unfortunately, the version I had downloaded very recently from Vodafone didn’t have the ability to set up multiple configurations, so he set up an FTP account for me to grab version 9.2 which when installed and set up now seems to work fine, if a tad clunky as I need to switch configurations depending upon what I need working.

Of course, the fact that earlier versions of the software and/or the settings at Vodafone worked just fine before the “upgrade” with none of the profile switching is neither here nor there. I wonder if Vodafone hired Microsoft’s Windows Vista team to write it…

JavaScripted e-mail Links in WordPress Pages

| Richard

You may want to include an e-mail link in your WordPress Blog’s “About” page or elsewhere, but no doubt you don’t want this harvested and you’ve found you can’t simply add the JavaScript to the post or page as it gets nuked.

So how about a workaround?

Firstly, you need to create an external Javascript file with this code (amended for your own needs, obviously):


function obfuscate() {
var ppclink = "Click here to e-mail us";
var ppcname = "nospamthanks";
var ppchost = "yourdomainnamegoeshere";
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + ppcname + "@" + ppchost + ">" + ppclink + "")
}

NB: the “@” sign is represented in the code as “& # 64 ;” with no spaces.

Save it as something like emailobfuscator.js and upload it to your server.

Then in the post or the page you want to include it in, add the following code:

<script type="text/javascript"
src="/scripts/emailobfuscator.js" mce_src="/scripts/emailobfuscator.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
obfuscate();
//-->
</script>

You will almost certainly want to uncheck the “Use visual editor when writing” checkbox in your User options before this will work.

And the finished result should look like this: