Category Archives: Comment

06May 2010

Vote BNP? They can’t even run a website!

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If (for whatever insane reason) you stumble onto the BNP website today, you’ll find it’s a single page “temporary” site. Temporary? On the day of the general election?

Maybe visiting one of the other site pages, as indexed on Google, would shine some light…

A message from Simon Bennett due to the volume of phone calls and emails I am receiving:

This website and domain are no longer in my control. I have not sabotaged it. The domain name has been pointing to the new BNP server since last night (5th May) which is completely out of my hands. If your Emails are affected, again this is completely out of my hands and control.

If you are reading this message it is because they have set up their server incorrectly and this needs to be resolved by the new webmaster.

It is important to note that I have been working hard to negotiate a seamless switchover of the website, but for reasons unknown to me the leadership have chosen to force the domain from me, steal my work, data and systems and go it alone rather than paying for it. I will continue to work hard to try and resolve the situation quickly, professionally and amicably. This is in the hands of Nick Griffin and Jim Dowson, not me.

It should also be noted that they have decided to put a personal grudge against me before the interests of the party and its members. This was not a fight of my choosing.

I guess that’s what happens when you get involved an organisation such as this. Screw your own people over? Yep.

16Apr 2010

Google Reader redirect issue – security concern?

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Around 2pm today, I found that attempting to display Google Reader caused a redirect to a Google Docs login page – more specifically, a signin page for Google employees1.

Looking on Twitter I found only a couple of other people reporting it, although one person mentioned it in relation to a blog from Google SEO expert Matt Cutts. I also follow his blog feed, so I guessed it was related.

Google Reader would briefly display so I clicked on the first unread item title – this caused the feed entry to open seperately and mark the feed item as read. Eventually I got down to the Matt Cutts feed item and, after clicking on that, my Google Reader worked perfectly again. I sent details of the workaround to those on Twitter reporting the same problem.

Matt Cutts has now stated..

Doh! Sorry about the redirect on the most recent blog post. Should be fixed now

The post itself contains a video and, possibly the cause, an embedded Google Docs presentation (did he originally have it pointing to a protected document?).

But this obviously raises a question about security of Google Reader. How is it possible for a news feed to cause Google Reader to, effectively, stop working and divert to another web page. Is this a vulnerability that could be exploited by spammers, for instance?

I’ve sent a Tweet to Matt Cutts and will report back if I get any further details.

  1. Well, I assume so – it was insisting on an email ending with google.com! [↩]
17Mar 2010

Acer Aspire Weirdness

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Last night, after putting my Aspire One into hibernation only a few hours earlier, I turned my Netbook on to find it performing a full Windows boot. Not only that, but as soon as it started loading my profile, it would instantly turn off.

Worry.

So I booted under safe mode. It turned off.

Panic.

I rolled it back to the previous restore point. It then worked. Hurrah.

And it’s behaved since.

The restore point was taken yesterday morning  – I wonder why? I can’t remember installing any kind of update or running any kind of system function that would have created a restore point. Hmm, I’m guessing something happened though and my first reboot after that caused the power issues.

It definitely need an eye kept on it.

02Mar 2010

NAS replacement

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I’ve run a home NAS system for a number of years now – to be honest, I’ve used it for not much more than a backup drive. However, having it connected to my wireless network means that I can backup my Netbook to it.

The other week there was a strange power failure in my area. After that my NAS (a Maxtor Shared Storage II 500GB device) started making clicking and general drive noises that weren’t, well, healthy. They’ve now stopped but it’s not a good sign.

One thing I didn’t check when I purchased it though is how to replace the drive when it’s out of warranty. The answer is… not very easily. In fact the NAS runs Linux and requires the NAS’ operating system installing onto any new drive. Oh, and it’s not very easy to even get at the drive.

So, I’ve decided to look for a replacement – and this time I’m going to get one where I can easily swap the drive, if I need to.

The best option appeared to be the Buffalo LinkStation Pro LS-XHL. This comes with a drive built in and, after asking on their forums, it would appear that replacing the drive on that is not easy either.

I’m now looking at the ZyXEL NSA210 which, although not the quickest, is the one recommended by PC Pro. And, more importantly, comes diskless and is therefore easy to swap drives (I’ve read the online documentation to confirm too!). I’d probably stick in it a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green.

I’m just awaiting Maxtor (sorry, Seagate) to get back to my customer query, before I give up on my existing NAS.

14Feb 2010

Tracking internet usage on Android

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3G Watchdog

My HTC Hero, on a T-Mobile contract, comes with “Unlimited Internet*”. But that asterisk at the end then points to a line which states “Subject to fair usage policy”. However, that line doesn’t actually link to anything. Thankfully a quick Google finds the result.

Basically, my “Unlimited Internet” is 3GB. Now I’m not going to go off on a rant about this, especially as the ASA have deemed that as little as 250MB can be regarded as “unlimited”. Indeed, most network providers are supplying 512MB of 1GB limits, so my 3GB is quite good.

But, how to monitor your internet usage on Android?

First of all install the app 3G Watchdog – this will track your 3G data usage. You’ll now need to know 2 important pieces of information – your usage cap and what time of the run that cap runs from. In the case of a T-Mobile Android account, this is the aforementioned 3GB and from the 1st of the month (rather than the date on which you started your account).

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