Mat Bowles

Site update, I said I'd install WP-MU but my webhost doesn't support the software, it'll run WP but MU needs more resources--I'd need to open a support request with them and even then it's not guaranteed they'll make the necessary changes, it involves more than a few redirects :-( So back to plan A, indivdual installs per person, bloody annoying, was hoping for a universal login, but, well, it'll do.

Instead, tomorrow I might, if I can get the impetus together, go to the CARNAVAL DEL PUEBLO in Southwark. Or drag myself up north for the Innocent fete. Anyone else made a firm decision either way, and/or interested in either?

Today, apart from playing with webhosting stuff, updating all the old Blogger stuff I was using and moving it, I've also been shopping. I mentioned I was looking at mice, well, on a whim I went into Maplin, and ended up with a wireless mouse & keyboard combo, so I can type from anywhere in the room now, which is nice. I also, just might, have bought 6 books in Waterstones (and no, 'm not going to look at how cheap they would've been on Amazon)-I went in for the Fforde, and bought a whole lot more, bloody 3-for-2 offers. Oh, I might have bought about 6 months supply of Lush stuff, and encountered my first example of a bad shop assistant in there.

And I ate a whole Lyle's Golden Syrup cake. For breakfast. Healthy eating plan? Yeah, right...

Some great stuff in today's worcester LJ code push, prompting my desire to test a feature. Still, one good thing, but would've liked to know it was happening; they've changed the tag limit from 100 to 1000, so my careful go back and split up my 'life' tag that I've been doing for the last month or so became fairly pointless overnight; has made the tag cloud itself look better though; it works out all sizes based on the biggest used tag, so having none over 100 makes the mid range tags look much bigger. Külness.
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However, still planning to decamp my journal hosting reasonably soon; NB, not leaving LJ, just hosting my journal elsewhere as well as here, not sure how to handle comments yet, but I'm not the first doing it and it seems to work for them. So, via lj2wordpress, Infotropism – Weaning yourself off LJ: Why you might want to. Followed up by a series of how-to guides, quite a nice post that.

• El Reg reports that you can now rent people to join your protest in Germany. Potential protesters get paid, but aren't obliged to agree unless it's something they agree with. Hmm, attack on the principles of democracy, an example of 'everything for sale', or a simple way to motivate otherwise apathetic activists? Let's face it, if you were going to be paid to turn up at the next Parliament Square protest, you might actually do it, right?


• Right then, Life On Mars I've heard many many good things about this show, and then today mng linked to loveandgarbage who was linking to this awesome trailer for the next series, which shows the main characters as if they're in Camberwick Green! How cool is that? I hate to do this, but The Sun has the best version of the promo picture. So, maybe I should've bought the DVD box set in the January sales for £20 after all? Ah no, Sendit has it for £16 and Choices for £14. Bargain. Now if Mike had any decent image manip software, I'd be iconning myself up, they're so cool.


• Now, I read about this on roughtype a few days back, but have been busy/net deprived, but Wikipedia has implemented rel="nofollow" for all outgoing links. This is a BAD BAD THING. Now, whatever we think of Google the corporation, Google the search engine, and specifically the PageRank formula, is essentially democracy in action. The readon it works is because it aggregates all the links out there and figures out which are the most popular (and therefore useful) sites. rel="nofollow" is there for webmasters to say that they don't trust a link, or they don't want to vote for it. By putting nofollow on all its outgoing links (in a spurious and useless attempt to fight spam), Wikipedia is effectively both denying other sites their votes (and opting out of the democracy), but also asserting clearly that their content is untrustworthy, cannot be guarnateed and they don't want to give legitimate credit.  That last links to a Wordpress Plugin that I'll be putting in next time I update, and from now on I'll be nofollowing any links to Wikipedia that I make, and I urge others to do the same.  If they want to opt out of the Google democracy, they should do it both ways (as, for example, daweaver's The Snow in Summer already does) and say they don't want inbound links either.  Of course the real issue is linkspam in the form of blog comments, and of course disreputable Search Marketers who do things the bad way, as Tim described one company to me, a bunch of spamming twunts.
• Last up (for now) Wordpress 2.1 is out, which means lj2wordpress should be kicking start a little more, I need to catch up with some things, and reply to a few emails, but this particular project looks like it'll have real legs.  After all, Livejournal is slowly dying.  Journal Press will rock.  Hopefully.

Oh, for those not scrolling back again; I've got a place to live in London, start moving in Saturday.  Comes with wireless broadband and all bills included, which will be nice.

OK, firstly, I am not sober. Not drunk, but not sober. Second, the link in my last post was to here at livejournal_uk, I used LJ Hook to insert the link and didn't check it as I was running out the door.

Third, Terry Pratchett is a god among men. Great public speaker, very funny, observant (as in, spotted and asked me the correct spelling for my name and was just generally cool), and, well, my credit card got used for a few more books. Not really an issue, it was birthday money, honest.

Fourth, I love LJ. As in, I love the community. Just over a year ago, I went to S-C with nadriel. When there, I met two cool people. She who was to become faeriecween and the lady known as innerbrat. I've obviously got to know the former rather well, but I've actually met the latter three times in person total. Today was the third time. Yet we talked, got on, chatted, as if we knew each other and were old friends. Because of LJ. Because we've commented, helped each other out, advised, consoled, taken the piss, etc. I think this is a good thing. Tonight, also met rowanberries, who seems slightly more insane. Not as nuts as some on my f-list, but still.

( LJ wittering )

Oh, the title? It's a reference to his next book. Which sounded very cool. And involved a joke with a clockwork vibrator. Seriously.

Oh yeah, innerbrat? liz_marcs here. Red Dwarf + Buffy. As discussed.