I was just browsing around today and I noticed the following link.
If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers..
There is a lot of truth in this article, although I would extend it to developers in general. How many times have you heard “Blame IT”.
When someone asks a developer to create something or comes up with a design spec invariably it is wishy washy crap. When the developer complains that there is not enough information they will get looked at funny and told that it is there job to do this sort of thing.
Another favourite is being told to use your common sense. “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”, using common sense to decide how something should operate or look when it is not really the developers decision how something should operate or look is a path fraught with danger.
You can’t take shit and make roses but we are always expected to. Next time you decide to point the finger at the developers ask yourself “Did you give them what they needed?”.
Name and Shame
Having just had a rant about the dodgy techniques employed by some advertising agencies I had an idea.
Lets suppose that there is a website dedicated to highlighting techniques used by advertisers with the advertisers names etc. If a lot of bloggers decided to then link to that site the page rank of the site would increase for that particular incident. The worse the incident the more bloggers will feel the need to link to the story which in turn increases the likelihood that the story will be seen by more poeple.
What this means is, if agencies or any other body decide to employ methods that are not particluarly friendly in nature then there is a good chance it will come to the attention of this website and they will get named. When lot of links are inbound to the site then the rank for this negative page will climb higher in the search engines which will hopefull discourage more of the same.
Unfortunately this is not really going to work for real spammers who really don’t care if their name is dragged through the dirt. It would only really work if the people we where naming had an investment “In their Good Name” which limits its usefulness since most of the scum employing these tactics don’t care.
Don’t Vote for John Kerry
I just noticed a link in my weblog that goes something like this.
206.65.72.35 – – [21/Feb/2004:04:20:47 +0000] “HEAD /blog/ HTTP/1.0” 200 0 “http://www.blog.johnkerry.com” “StarProse Referrer Advertising System 2004” 0 www.thingthong.co.uk
What is this. A quick search on google led me to an explanation, Basically this guy John Kerry (Running for President) has either employed an advertising agency which are using unscrupulous means to get his named mentioned in every Web server log in the planet OR one of his unscrupulous rivals is doing it to upset every web administrator and searh engine tech on the planet OR some deranged individual has done it, god knows why.
I am not too sure which of the three I would believe out of the above since I imagine they are all as likely as each other.
What I will say is this. If John Kerry has stooped low enough to employ these tactics for self promotion then don’t vote for John Kerry. If it was one of his rivals that stooped this low to sully his name in connection with these tactics then don’t vote for John Kerry’s rivals.
Rss List of Banned IP’s
I was messing around with RSS again and I noticed another possible use for it. There seems to be a lot of abuse on the comments facilty and I was thinking about ways that this could be reduced. One way I though of was to build a database of IP address’s that are banned from using the comments facilty. This is not actually a very good way to do it due to DHCP and various other hacks that can be used to circumvent whatever we do. While playing around I built the following
RSS file of Banned IP address’s.
There are a lost of things that could be done to make this a much more comprehensive list and I am sure I could come up with a simple script to parse the file and insert it into the banned IP list in moveable type (I have not checked this). It would rely on good editing and weeding which is something I have not got the time to do. It would also rely on a trust network of some desrcription to add and remove IP address’s from the list.
What it could be used for is as a list of Possible spam addresses. What I mean is, if you find an IP in this list then check the content of the message or vice versa.
On the other hand you could just take a stroll over to Jay Allens website and sort your spam out that way. I have just installed it and needless to say it was a flawless install. I just hope it does its job as well 😉
FOSDEM
Unfortunately I was unable to make FOSDEM this year. I wanted to go but a new job and Jenny working shifts means that what chance I get to see here I take and she has Saturday and Sunday off. Last years FOSDEM was meant to be a bit of a laugth and I missed it as well.
Odd Phone Call
Got a phone call from a mate last night after 1am.
Harry “Hello!”
Bob, “Hi Harry, where was the 1920 olympics held?”
Harry “I think it was Antwerp”
CLICK.
5 Minutes later
Harry “Hello”
Bob “Hi Harry, Who where the 10 countries recently admitted to the EU”
Harry “You again!”
Harry “Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Hungary and Malta. What do you want to kn…..”
CLICK
It was only then I realised that he was in the middle of a quiz in a pub in Ballykelly NI.
Styles
I need to have a look at the various styles for MT. I like georgia_blue but it is not that easy on my eyes. I will not be writing my own because I have not got the time so It will be a default css for me. I am going to ask J which she prefers and probably run with that.
Installed MT
I decided to take a night off maths and do something else for a change. I have been meaning to install some type of content management tool for a while to save myself some time and tonight was the night. I decided to install Movable Type so hopefully I will be able to keep a more up to date blog.
First impressions are good, its very easy to use and I have managed to make several entries already. I also managed to transfer my old HTML blog over which was a bore but luckily there was not too much of it.
I also have to thank the person/s who runs www.movablesytle.com for making their style sheets freely available and all they ask for in return is the credit.
XSLT and FOP
I was given the job of creating a pdf using FOP and XSLT yesterday and since I had never used either before to any great degree I had resigned myself to several days of googling but I managed to all but finish it today. It was surprisingly easy to get the bulk of the formatting done but due to FOP’s lack of support for widows and orphans the rest will be a bit harder.
I also had a lot of trouble trying to get “analyze-string” to work. I eventualy fudged a regex of my own using “substring” and it seems to do the trick
M203
Maths has started again. I have started M203 and handed in my first peice of coursework today. It looks like an interesting course and I am looking forward to getting stuck into it. It seems to be soaking up an awful lot of my time at the moment.