Only just noticed (on a random trawl of the web) that the Guardian did an article about Sky box upgrading and mentioned my website.

Yes, mine. Not anybody else’s. Mine.

Makes ya proud, it does.

Although I would like to point out that the “huge” 250 GB hard drive upgrade that they mention is, well, nothing. With Copy+ you can put a 1 TB drive in. Oh yes.

Sometime ago I added a modification to the Copy+ forums that would notify the administrator when a new post was added (allowing him to quickly remove any spam, as well as respond quickly to genuine questions).

However, after some security upgrades by the site host, all emails seemed to stop working. This was because it wouldn’t allow mails to come from email addresses that didn’t belong to the domain - as this domain didn’t come with any email capability, this was therefore a bit of an issue. The solution was to use SMTP instead.

In time, though, we realised that the new post mod didn’t use SMTP. So, the other day, I found another mod which works in a similiar way, but uses SMTP. This has fixed the problem nicely.

Oh, and I took the opportunity to add PHP Speedy to the Copy+ site (though, not to the forums).

Apparently the UK gets a lot of earthquakes. But they’re not usually very strong, so last nights was the first time I’ve experienced one. And it was a doozy. Okay, so a magnitude of 5.2 isn’t huge, but if it’s your first time, it’s rather frightening.

At 1 o’clock I was rudely awakened from a bad dream by the whole house shaking, in particular my bedroom wardrobe which was vibrating violently. Coming out of a nightmare into that meant that reality and my dream blurred and it caused me to panic. Living close to the M1 and a train line doesn’t help either, so I had no idea of what had happened. Anyway, I soon calmed down but then suffered from shock. Nothing was on the TV for quite some time, but eventually the news of the earthquake trickled through. It was quite some time before I wandered off to bed again, so I’m feeling rather (yawn) tired today.

Tonight, I attempt to become the BMTG Vice-Chairman. My speech has been modified again, but I made a final print last night. It’s actually quite good, even if I do say so myself, and I’ll publish it here afterwards.

Fingers crossed.

Finally… Copy+ has had an “emergency” update as Italy’s equivalent to PC World wish to promote it. As it didn’t actually work for Sky Italia (it makes you wonder whether they knew what the software was for), Stuart has made the appropriate changes so that it now will. If you have a Sky+ / SkyHD (or foreign XTV equivalent) box and haven’t come across this software, it’s rather useful. And free.

I’ve written only recently about various examples of poor service from companies. Unfortunately, I’d like to add two more.

I recently ordered a USB hub from eBuyer. Except that an SD memory card turned up instead. I contacted eBuyer by phone and they said that they’d email me return instructions straight away and despatch the hub once they’ve received the card back. Let me get this straight… despatch the item that I ordered (and was expecting to receive today) once I’d sent back the item they sent to me by mistake. Their cock-up.

And I’ve not, a number of hours later, received an email, so I’ve sent them one of their “enotes”. I’ll see what happens. Especially now that I know the SD card is worth twice the cost of the USB hub.

Next up, Play.com. Today, for the second time in the last month, I’ve had to joy of needing to contact them. They no longer have a way of being contacted online - you have to phone them. And after experiencing 20 minute delays just after Christmas, I was in no mood for such delays. Today I gave them 10 before hanging up and then cancelling my order. If they’d an online method of being contacted, I would have been quite happy to have waited a day or two for a reply. What I don’t have time for is hanging on a phone, especially when I’m “in a queue” and being charged for it.

Lastly, a quick update on onlinememory. If you remember, they offered to provide me with a discount once the Sansa’s were back in stock. They now are. Unfortunately, weeks later (in fact nearly a month) and I’ve had no response and their telephone number is dead. It doesn’t look good.

Do you spot a pattern here - issues with online technology companies??

Away for all this a minute, I’m winding up Artiss Web Design. I’ve not had the chance to do it properly, so will be converting all links to point to this site. Additionally, I’m transferring all the back-end databases to here as well (which has a quicker server). Copy+ has already been converted in this way. However, if you come across any problems with any of these sites (or bmtg.org.uk) then please let me know.

Maybe one day I’ll even get the chance to finish pulpsf.com. But, then again…

Ad-blockers. Browser plug-ins that get rid of website adverts. Nasty, annoying adverts. And Adblock Plus for Firefox is one of the most popular add-ons that you can get.

Except, of course, the reason why so much on the web is free is because they make some money from these adverts. Suppress them and they end of withdrawing the service or charging for it. Usually it’s the former.

The Copy+ website provides a unique, useful piece of software for free. Instead, we make money from licensing and from some non-evasive adverts at the top and bottom of each page. So, as I’m sure you can imagine, I’m not keen on ad-blockers.

However, I’ve had a number of Copy+ visitors reporting that with Adblock running the website doesn’t display properly. I’ve had a look and - yep - I can see it happening but sure as hell don’t know why (because I don’t know how Adblock is working).

So, I posted to the Adblock forum. Instead of some useful advice, I got criticism of my code. Yes, it was my fault. My fault that it worked perfectly fine with Adblock turned off but then didn’t with it turned on. Of course. How foolish of me.

So, guess what? That’s right - I’m going to change the site to detect Adblock and not let you on if you have it installed or turned on. The Adblock people could have just helped me work with it, but they weren’t prepared to. It’s only fair.