Good evening and goodnight

Friday, January 2, 2009 ~ 7 Comments

I’ve mentioned this before but the internet is evil and keeps me awake at night.

Since then I’ve realised that the problem isn’t the computer, the internet, or anything that is posted on the internet. It’s me.

Yeah, yeah, obvious, I know.

So, what I think is really needed (something graybo hinted at in the comments to that post) is to add a human… wait! SOCIAL… factor. After all, isn’t these very social websites that are keeping us all up until the wee small hours?

One last check for Facebook updates, a quick peek to see if anyone else has twittered in the last 3 minutes, and maybe just a teeny tiny glance at the RSS feeds, all of a sudden it’s 2am. Again. And you are getting up in 4 hours and, for some reason, your employers expect an honest days work from you (we’ll cover THAT one another time).

What I’m proposing is some form of website where you and your ‘friends’ can monitor the fact that you are online. You’d set your preferred bedtime and, as and when you are spotted online at any of the social websites you use, your friends would be alerted and they could all start hassling you to go to bed.

Admittedly, such a system is not without flaw. For one thing the method used by your network of friends would most likely have to be something online which would, no doubt, led us straight back to square one.

“Ohhh a tweet from X telling me to go to bed… I really should!… ohh look… Y has updated and posted a link… *click* “

I’m sure we can work round that issue though.

Which leaves only one other problem with such a solution. Out of everyone in your network of friends, across all of the myriad of social websites, SOMEONE has to be last to bed, so who nags them when it’s 4am???

Bagsy not last!!

My name is important

Thursday, October 23, 2008 ~ 9 Comments

If you get a moment go check out www.mclean.com or for that matter www.mclean.co.uk. I own neither unfortunately.

Both are high-level domains, both are classed as desirable (read, expensive) and both are currently being used… for nothing. Well I’m sure they bring in money for the person who owns them and has them sitting their forlornly with nothing but adverts on them.

It’s rather sad.

And very bloody annoying.

I pay for the domain names I have and I don’t mind doing so but having contacted the owners of these particularly domain names, domain names which obviously I might, maybe, be interested in using (dear first time reader, let me introduce myself, I’m Gordon McLean). Alas I’ve either heard nothing or the topic turnst to money and some rather large amounts are mentioned.

So, I’m setting up a blog appeal to raise sufficient fu…. no, I’m not really.

I just wanted to say that, you know, it’s annoying. My Mum and Dad have put HUGE amounts of effort into tracing our genealogy and where better to start putting the information than in the domain name for our family.

To be frank it just seems mean that these people are allowed to sit on these domain names and do nothing with them or than earn money for hosting adverts. Isn’t the internet supposed to be better than that?? They are the worst kind of leech and whilst I know that this blog post isn’t going to change their opinion (I’m sure they will point to the $xyz dollars they earn each year by sitting on those domains) it’s just a bit… crap.

Private Private

Friday, August 15, 2008 ~ 14 Comments

Continuing the terrible titles, this is a take on Catch-22, for no particular reason other than being able to play on the word “private”. Think yourselfs lucky I didn’t choose the schoolboy route and go with “Show us yer privates”.

Oddly the only reason I’m writing about this is because Twitter is currently dead, if it wasn’t then my comment on the issue would’ve been something along the lines of “@plasticbag - nice pic on BBC website! And don’t some people get in a tizzy sometimes..”.

At this point I should probably explain that I’m talking about the recently opened Fire Eagle service which

“… stores information about your location. With your permission, other services and devices can either update that information or access it. By helping applications respond to your location, Fire Eagle is designed to make the world around you more interesting! Use your location to power friend-finders, games, local information services, blog badges and stuff like that…”
[from Fire Eagle help page]

It’s a smart idea, and one which plays nicely into the fact my iPhone has GPS built-in so I can ping exact location information back to the Fire Eagle website at any time I choose. Clever.

But, of course, the privacy nutters (I use the term advisedly) have leapt all over this, stating that locational information could be stored by any of the 3rd party websites or applications that use Fire Eagle and then they’ll know where you have been!

Don’t get me wrong, I realise such things could be abused but from what I can make out Fire Eagle has considered such things. For starters they let you control the level of granularity of the geographic information that you share with other services, from pinpoint co-ordinates to a “I’m near this city” level location. Whilst you can purge your current location from the service at anytime, the privacy busters are more concerned about the historical information that could be stored.

Now I can see that will be an issue for some people, and that having a system know where you’ve been is worrying as it will, no doubt be used to guess where you will be at a given time and then… umm… yeah. Not sure what happens then.

Worse is the possibility of a hi-tec burglar watching out for your location changing before breaking and entering your house. These days I’d guess it’s not that hard to find an address for someone who looks rich, use Google maps to get the geographic co-ordinates of their home and then just wait until they update Fire Eagle with a new location (hey hang on, that DOES sound simple, eep!!).

Or, you know, if you are worried about it DON’T USE IT!!

And no, I’m sorry but the argument of “some people won’t know any better” doesn’t cut it. If they don’t know any better why are they signing up for a service they don’t understand? The Fire Eagle website does a pretty good job of telling people what it is all about so perhaps we need to shift a little responsibility on to the individual?

I’m sure some of you have stronger opinions on this topic than I do, I’d love to hear them. But be prepared to be mocked for, if I’m honest, I really don’t believe the end of the world is nigh because someone knows where I am.

Wordle

Thursday, July 24, 2008 ~ 3 Comments

Requires Java, click for fullsize (then create your own!).

Redirecting Question

Friday, July 11, 2008 ~ 5 Comments

Note: This is a techie question, all those not interested, look away now.

(and no, I’m not doing very well at the whole ’staying away from the blog to be productive thing…)

[update]SORTED!!!
That nice man wot writes Hydragenic came through for me (apparently he would ‘not be defeated’, he cracked it second time round).

I’ve added the following line to my .htaccess file on the gordonmclean.co.uk domain:
RedirectMatch 301 /index\.php/(.*) http://www.onemanblogs.co.uk/index.php/$1

And now when you click this link (which points at the gordonmclean.co.uk domain) you’ll be properly redirected back to this domain (onemanblogs.co.uk).
[/update]

I received an email the other day. It was a nice email, the very kind I’d hoped my 404 page would generate.

The problem is a simple one. I moved domains a while ago, so some of the links that still exist point to my old blog URL (which is still live but is no longer a blog).

Following one of those links (from Lifehacker.com I think) will take you to this URL. Which is currently displaying a 404 error message.

To get to the correct page, all you need to do is edit the URL, replacing “gordonmclean” with “onemanblogs”. Simple.

So why the hell can’t I figure out how to write the appropriate .htaccess commands to get it to do that automatically.

I don’t want to redirect everything, only anything that has “/index.php…..” in the URL. Shouldn’t be THAT hard, right?

Well I’m stuck. So, dearest technical interweb friends, help!!

Cry for Pixar

Friday, July 4, 2008 ~ 5 Comments

No doubt this will be covered in further detail elsewhere (and to my shame I can’t remember which blog I spotted it on) but this story, buried in the comments on a thread on Metafilter is amazing.

The short version is that, opening viewing one of the first trailers for Wall-E, a girl found herself bursting into tears as she was so moved. She video’d herself doing this, posted it on YouTube, and some Pixar staff found it and emailed her (this was all on a personal basis, not driven through the company at this point). Apparently word got round Pixar and ultimately ends up with the girl and her boyfriend being invited to the staff premiere screening, flown out and put up in a hotel, and then, before they showed the movie, being introduced to the staff as, by that point, everyone knew her story.

Schmaltzy? Yes. But to me it demonstrates the passion Pixar have for their movies.

Having read To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios the story certainly fits with the ethos that powers the studio and is a touching insight into how Pixar operates. Yes, of course they have a cold, heartless, business side, but there is no real reason why they did all of that other than because watching the girl’s video touched THEM. Pixar have given this story zero publicity (and yes you cynics, I’m sure they are happy it’s been revealed but they aren’t making a play on this I don’t think).

I never did write up my thoughts about that Pixar book but suffice to say if you enjoy their movies, and are a bit of a geek like me, you’ll LOVE it. It covers everything from business decisions (including why Steve Jobs got involved) through to their commitment to make good movies, regardless of technological barriers.

They are a unique company in many ways, as this story only goes to show.

Why the internet is wonderful

Friday, June 6, 2008 ~ 4 Comments

Gather one, gather all, let me tell you a story, let me regale you with a simple yet powerful tale of the wonders achieved when the internet and compassion of (wo)man join in harmonious union.

OK, maybe not. But I do have an excellent example of how this interwoven online life we lead is actually a good thing… bear with me though, as this covers many tangents.

It all started with an RSS feed…

[cue wibbly wobbly dream sequence]
wibbly wobbly wibbly wobbly

[cut to dashingly handsome man, idly checking his RSS feeds]
(more…)