Archive for the 'Internet' Category

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More Erosion of Civil Liberties

Published on 20 May 2008 in Cellcomms, Internet, News, Public and Society. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I can’t recall who it was who said that the time to bring in oppressive legislation to clamp down on individuals’ civil liberties was when there was any fear and uncertainty of the kind that the Government continues to spread as part of the so-called War on Terror (itself started in response to US foreign policy and their illegal invasion of Iraq, which we decided to join in as the 51st State…).

We are already one of the most watched countries in the world, in terms of CCTV cameras per capita, so perhaps the news that “Ministers are to consider plans for a database of electronic information holding details of every phone call and e-mail sent in the UK” shouldn’t really come as any surprise.

Whilst they’re more than welcome to plough through the Spam I receive – more than 1,300 yesterday alone – and take action against the spammers, they can fuck right off if they think I’d be happy for some shiny-suited, job-protected twat in some local authority or agency to be able to read my private messages to friends and family.

It’s none of your business!

And this piece by AC Grayling in the Guardian pretty much sums up my thoughts about those who trot out the trite “if you’ve done nothing wrong…” nonsense, although far more eloquently than I could.

Free Hugs

Published on 10 April 2008 in Kewl and YouTube. 0 Comments Tags: .

I’m a great believer in smiling, saying “please” and “thank you” and just generally being ‘nice’ to people who are usually expecting the same old shit, just a different day. A little bit of charity every so often doesn’t go amiss either.

A friend just posted this YouTube video on their blog »

Look how people start off by ignoring the guy offering free hugs. Then when someone breaks the usual barriers and goes for it, it seems to break the log-jam until everyone’s doing it and there’s some happiness being spread around. If only real life could be like this more often…

WordPress 2.5 Built-in Galleries

Published on 30 March 2008 in WordPress. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Hmm. An intriguing new feature, those one. It even has the ability to be tweaked to inlude photos from other pages and posts as a gallery.

See?

It’s just a pity it doesn’t load them as a lightbox.

I Love Angelina Jolie!

Published on 17 March 2008 in Bikes, Internet and News. 0 Comments Tags: .

Well! Who could resist yelling that (from Red vs Blue: Real Life vs Internet) in relation to any story concerning Angelina Jolie and that lucky bastard Brad Pitt.

Yes, it turns out that Brad and Angelina have decided to buy a $20M dollar house in Provence after they managed to get consent to build Brad his own personal motorcycle race circuit in the garden.

Bastard!

Now let’s all go home and masturbate!

See Mike Draw

Published on 3 March 2008 in Comics, Kewl and WordPress. 0 Comments Tags: .

I love this guy’s work. Here’s one of the funnier ones:
Batman!

Web 2.0 – The Management-Speak

Published on 20 February 2008 in Internet, Project Management, Work and WTF. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Over a sandwich this lunchtime, I started reading an article in the February 2008 edition of “Project” magazine about using Web 2.0 technology to aid communication within a project team.

But I must admit to a true “laugh out loud” moment when I read the final paragraph:

“It is by leveraging Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate excellent collaboration, the dissemination of the common vision, streamlining of workflow and delivery of rapid authorisation processes, that organisations can create the highly effective working environment required to keep a project focused on the corporate objective.”

Pardon?

Management-speak at its best!

New Honda TV Ad: Problem Playground

Published on 4 February 2008 in Adverts, Honda, Kewl, TV, Vehicles and YouTube. 0 Comments

Courtesy of Creative Review Blog, comes a link to the new Honda ad which I reckon is pretty interesting and captures the attention. And unlike CR Blog, I don’t find the voiceover patronising.

See for yourself »

favicon

Published on 24 January 2008 in Internet and Vehicles. 0 Comments Tags: .

I’m a tad miffed: a favicon I prepared for The Revcounter han’t been used there. Oh the humanity!

PayPerPost

Published on 22 January 2008 in Adverts, Internet and PayPerPost. 0 Comments

As readers of my blogs should by now be aware, I have been running Google AdWords on them for a while now; they generate a small amount of revenue every time a visitor to the site clicks on one of them.

Always keen to ‘monetise’ my blogs, I came across payperpost by following a link from another blogger’s website (I forget who now).

PayPerPost basically act as the middle man between potential blog advertisers and bloggers: we are given the choice of “opportunities” whereby an advertiser wants bloggers to either review a product, website or service or to simply help create a ‘buzz’ about something such as the launch of a new website, artiste or whatever.

The potential advertisers then make an offer to pay x number of dollars for a blog entry that matches their criteria: as a blogger I can see what they want and if I am prepared to review or mention the product or service or to help create that buzz then I can.

Some advertisers will want only a positive flavour to the potential blog post in which case as a blogger you can choose whether to write it that way, or – as is the case on this blog – choose not to write the review at all.

Advertisers can choose either to invite the whole blogging world to write a blog entry or they can approach individual bloggers to write a review for them. There’s a button over there in the sidebar to allow potential advertisers to contact me directly to negotiate a blog entry here.

So it’s early days yet for me: I’ve only just received approval for this blog from PayPerPost. We’ll see how they do … and yes, they are paying me for this entry!


visordown.com – Alternatives?

Published on 11 January 2008 in Bikes, Internet and Trackdays. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

So then, given it is abundantly clear that the new Visordown is how it’s going to stay, I decided to do something about it. The alternatives were to put up and shut up, start a new message board or join another one and effectively leave Visordown behind.

Now, what makes a decent message board are first and foremost the people who post on it and secondly the software that runs it.

So I posted this suggestion on visordown.com:

“The old visordown.com was running vBulletin software which is just about to have a major upgrade released: see this thread over on vBulletin.

Now, although I can see why this change has taken place from the owners’ perspective, from the users’ perspective it’s not been a complete success, shall we say, with lots of folk asking for the old visordown.com back.

So what if something the same only new, starting from scratch was to be offered?

I have a spare licence for vBulletin that I am happy to pay to upgrade and install on a server somewhere. I have a couple of domain names regsitered that might be suitable:

TrackDayHero.com (currently pointing at my blog); or

BikeChatBoard.com (ditto).

I’d start by running Google Ads and a supporter scheme with benefits for supporters, so just like the old VD really. No publishing house looking over our shoulders, so perhaps more relaxed?

So, would anyone be interested?”

There was a lot of interest, but I was also reminded about the Revcounter which is shortly to be ported over to vBulletin and already has some of the old Visordown members on there. So to avoid duplication, my suggestion is on the back-burner and can be set up if needs be. In the meantime, I’ve changed the redirect for www.bikechatboard.com to the Revcounter.

overtone