November 28, 2005
Holledge's 4th Law
If there is a hiatus, following a hiatus, that hiatus will be greater than the hiatus that preceded it.
Time to catch up. I have a huge amount of material to post. I will try to get at least some of it up.
Posted by Simon Holledge at 08:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 09, 2005
Hiatus
British Telecom kindly restored my broadband connection on Friday 7 October.
When we moved to Haddington three weeks ago, they originally told us there was no line to the house. Eventually they discovered there was one, but until the number was put in their database, I was not allowed to apply for broadband. Then when I was able to apply, they did not enable it by the agreed date.
It would be better if the telecoms did not control access to the internet. They never expected to have it, showed scant interest in DSL when it first appeared, at first attempted to delay its implementation, and then tried to squeeze as much money out of it as possible when they realized what had landed in their very corporate laps.
What are the alternatives? I have always argued that just as we own our own houses, cars, washing machines, computers and indeed telephones we should aldo be allowed to own the 40p-worth of copper wiring that links it to the nearest CAB box (I believe that is the right technical term) or, if practicable, the whole individual installation up to and including the unique line card in the local telephone exchange.
At the point where the individual line meets the larger system, the user should have a free choice of services from internet and telecom providers.
Posted by Simon Holledge at 07:30 PM | TrackBack
January 24, 2005
'Nofollow'
I now have ‘nofollow’ installed. This is the latest measure against comment spam.
Spammers typically try to place multiple links on a target site in order to improve their website ranking on Google, and other search engines. ‘Nofollow’ tells the search engines to ignore the comment spam links.
Posted by Simon Holledge at 12:14 AM | TrackBack
January 22, 2005
Throttle!
I am still getting up to a hundred or more comment spams a day, so I have put on a ‘throttle’ which prevents more than one comment being placed every 2 minutes. I hope this won’t inconvenience any humans, only the machines that spit out this garbage.
Posted by Simon Holledge at 09:30 PM | TrackBack
January 17, 2005
Crippled blog
I am having tech problems at the moment - hence the few posts. I was trying to improve my defences against comment spam - unsuccesssfully!
Posted by Simon Holledge at 12:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 01, 2004
Moving to Callander II
Today is our first in Callander: the beginning of a (doubtless) fascinating and exciting experience of country life. Moving was an effort: one van load and six car loads transported from Edinburgh to Callander, but now that is over. All we have to do is unpack and enjoy the fabulous clean air.
Last night, we said goodbye to Edinburgh with a Scottish Opera Tosca at the Festival Theatre - more about that later - and drove here afterwards with the back of the car stuffed with miscellaneous belongings. In fact we couldn’t get all of them in. We had to leave a table and chair with friends en route - for later collection.
Posted by Simon Holledge at 12:36 PM | TrackBack
November 23, 2004
Moving to Callander I
Today we went to Callander to collect the keys of the cottage where we will be living for the next six months or so. We will be moving everything from Edinburgh to Callander by the end of the month! The M9 motorway is direct and apparently in good repair: we can do the journey in a relaxed 75 minutes.
Posted by Simon Holledge at 05:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 24, 2004
Launch
The blog is now open and public.
As expected it has taken about a week to put together. The French ISP, where the Skakagrall is hosted, did the PERL script for me. I am using Movable Type, the de facto standard, which is 'powerful' but tricky to set up. The design is developed from one by Movable Style movablestyle.com/.
COMMENTS are welcome. The blog is written and tested on Mac/Safari 1.2.3. We have checked on Windows/Internet Explorer and it seems to look right, nevertheless reports of anything malfunctioning would be much appreciated.
Posted by Simon Holledge at 10:52 AM