Submitted by johnh on January 19, 2008 - 22:52.
I'm not picking on Damien in particular (well, other than purely for sport), but:
You know who else comes to your site with a referer field containing "google.com"? Yup, Google Reader users.
Everyone using this plugin is basically slapping people who've already subscribed with a rather insulting message implying we're freeloading.
Cut that out, would ye?
Submitted by johnh on June 17, 2007 - 18:33.
Posts like the one below get traffic like crazy, I've found. This last year over ten thousand people have come looking for instructions on how to undelete a message from Thunderbird.
Submitted by johnh on June 17, 2007 - 18:31.
For people in the future who come looking...
The Sky installer will try to do the normal thing and set the box up with a dialing prefix of '142'. This is the 'anti-141'. Its purpose is to make sure your Sky box carries caller ID when it phones home.
Your Digiweb Metro phone line can carry this call, even though it's VoIP (they're using cable telephony protocols rather than regular SIP VoIP).
However, 142 doesn't work on Digiweb Metro. In fact you don't want a dialling prefix at all.
To set your box correctly, choose 'Services' on your remote and then key in '401 SELECT' to expose the technicians' menu. Dialling Preferences is option 3. Press the red button to reset all these options to the factory default of tone dialling with no prefix. Press Select to save this and make a call. If nothing happens, press Select a few more times until it starts dialling.
If the call is unsuccessful you'll get a full-screen error. If it works, you'll get dropped back to the main Installation menu. At this point you're done and can push 'Back Up' a few times. Et voila. You will now not be disconnected for not phoning home.
Submitted by johnh on June 13, 2007 - 14:46.
In which your author restricts himself only to things which are not obvious. Stuff we've covered before is not included, and stuff which doesn't contradict known expectations of me is also not included.
Now, let's be fair -- I've got some game / cred / {insert 'street' term here} when it comes to being opposed to what the US government has been pulling off in Shannon in the last six years. I spent seven entire years of my life on this sort of thing.
But I think that if any Green Party members in the Mansion House in Dublin today use it as a reason to vote against the coalition deal, they're crazy batshit insane. Seriously, there's an improvement on the table -- not just in regard to Shannon, but on a huge tract of other issues. Frankly, voting against that improvement is nearly as bad as strapping the electrodes onto someone yourself, in my opinion.
I'm not pro-choice despite being adopted. I'm pro-choice because I was adopted.
I'm a lousy radio DJ.
I'm a pretty good presenter when there are people to interview. I can run a desk. I can schedule a radio station. I'm a journalist by trade and I definitely know one end of a news bulletin from the other.
But talking about nothing and playing records? Hopeless. I've got nothing to say, mostly because of a deeply-held conviction that nobody listening to the radio gives a stuff what I think. (You don't count. You came here on purpose.)
I have never, ever, ever bought anything on eBay. Not once.
Anyone else want to confound expectations? Damien? James? Bernie?
Three things minimum. Pass it on.
And remember: This isn't "things you didn't know". This is "Really? I would never have guessed."
Submitted by johnh on May 27, 2007 - 19:04.
Nobody seems to be talking about it, but Webjay will close next month, according to a well-concealed announcement on Wednesday.
Yahoo bought it only sixteen months ago.
Presumably it'll join Blo.gs, which Yahoo bought some time back from Jim Winstead, assuring him throughout that they'd be taking good care of his baby. Last December 11th, someone at Yahoo broke it, and it remains buggered to this day. Nobody's built anything to replicate what it did yet, either.
Two examples, off the top of my head, of Yahoo rushing in, buying something which worked for thousands of people every day, and promptly smashing them to pieces.
So, if you need to make a couple of years' salary as quickly as possible and you don't mind having someone erect a permanent monument to your wasted effort and the kicking of your users in the face... why not give Yahoo a ring?
Submitted by johnh on April 19, 2007 - 04:41.
(This one was going to be titled "Everything you like is stupid".)
So I signed up to Twitter because -- despite hating everything I heard about it -- it occurred to me that I could probably lash something interesting together using it with a radio computer playout system. Plus, if I send text messages myself it costs money, whereas if I can pump them through Twitter then Evan Williams coughs for them instead at international rates. Which serves the fucker right for coining millions of dollars making a gigantic Google pollution machine, frankly.
Except... it doesn't work.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that there are three ways to interact with it:
The best part about this is that it's not remotely clear whether this is supposed to happen (perhaps it's one-way traffic only, there's no explanation one way or the other on the site), or not. Is it broken or just shit? What's the sound of one hand clapping? Who cares?
So, in a nutshell, for those of you who basically figured it's all a bunch of Emperor's-new-clothes bollocks and/or as pointless and vacuous as MySpace/Bebo/ADD-ME-PLZ-ASL-ILITERAT-TXTSPK-WNKRS.com...
...you were right.
To the rest of you Irish tech types who've all bought into this Kool-Aid hook, line and sinker, I've got a very serious question or two. Where the hell did your critical faculties go, then? This is total crap. If it worked I could see a couple of possible uses but it doesn't work, FFS, and a quick scan of their own 'status' account makes it very clear that I'm not just unlucky today -- it's been not-working half the time for bloody ages.
If this rubbish came from the Irish government or Eircom you'd (rightly) be tearing it to pieces. Come on, people: "trendy" isn't an excuse.
Update, some time after the writing: One of the dozen-or-so messages I typed into IM just turned up, out of sequence, 53 minutes after I typed it. Whoopee-doo.
Update 2, shortly after that: There's a star graphic next to updates. When you hover the mouse over it it says nothing at all. Click on it and it lights up. Click again and it un-lights. What the hell is that then? And am I the only one who finds it laugh-out-loud funny that this appears on my monitor mere millimetres from the message "© 2007 Obvious"?
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Submitted by johnh on February 12, 2007 - 15:00.
So, I was just reading something from Scrivs a moment ago and right there, in the middle of a post from a web designer discussing the subject of web development, was this (highlighting added by me):
Very, very well played, sirs. If you ever want to hire real web developers instead of people who only know how to slap stuff around in Dreamweaver, I'll be happy to pass on some details.
But still - clever use of the Googles, what?
Submitted by johnh on February 2, 2007 - 22:41.
Reminded of these today, but remembering the wrong brand name hampered me considerably to begin with. Maxell, not Memorex.
Submitted by johnh on August 29, 2006 - 15:38.
A: Sabrina got a dog.
This is our new houseguest. She's called Eimear and originally came from a shelter, which is why she's entirely undersized and could yet do with some more dinners as well.
Also, doesn't like walks. Eventually we're hoping she'll get over this fear of everything in the universe.
Submitted by johnh on August 10, 2006 - 14:16.
It's that time of year again where I leave home for three weeks and spend every waking moment in the pursuit of all the stress and long hours I need.
Evidence of this can be heard at Festival FM on 87.7FM in the City of Edinburgh, and elsewhere since I finally got the streaming server going. So you can listen to me every day (except this weekend) on the World Wide Inter-Information Super Web Nets at the rather civilised hour of 6pm.
Next week, when my Station Manager's Cellphone isn't ringing every 45 seconds, we'll be putting my money where my mouth was in Dublin in March, where I pissed off the entire Irish podcasting community after being asked a question I wasn't there to answer.
Specifically, I was saying that I find most podcasts unlistenable or pointless, because so many of them try to do things which radio is better at, and so few treat the process as an opportunity to produce (in the studio sense of the word), which for my money is the only potential benefit of not being live.
That said, Festival FM is incredibly podcast-friendly, what with the hundreds of comics, actors, artists and producers coming through the place, thirty or forty times per day, and doing interview/plugs for their shows which last about 15-20 minutes. So you might like some of these as podcasts next week.
Me, I much prefer to listen to it as it happens. Give it a try.
Oh, and feel free to annoy me during the programme as it's happening (another thing you can only do live) by mailing studio@festivalfm.net. Those playing along in the UK can also text 'festival ' and a message to 60300.
