Lacking commitment First Direct Safari Safe

Well they've been working on it for a while and last week First Direct officially began support for Safari. Previosuly they'd just said use Firefox.

They're still working on a few bugs, printing etc. but it certainly shows they've had demand from their user base to support the best standards compliant browser in the market.

I never want to go home

Come on look at the weather and it is only may.

Fire alarm

It was 0630. Not usefull.

Mac Store down... we all wait with bated breath

On the back of this from Mac Rumors, I found that the UK Apple store was indeed down...

Annoying Windows update

I've been in Windows a lot recently, the convenience that Parallels offers me means I can run windows and the Cisco VPN client to connect to the corporate network but still have full access to the web etc. from my Mac OS X host. Usually when the Cisco client connects you lose all other network connectivity from Windows.

Anyway today Windows decides to be a complete pain in the arse...


It would not quit it, then I wondered out to make a coffee, came back and it had beaten me to the punch and closed down all the stuff I was coding, my VPN session and was in the process of rebooting, completely ruining my train of thought... highly annoying.

Joost for Friends 0.10.2

I sat down this evening to eat some dinner and found that Joost was blocking my old version and forcing and upgrade. You will remember I back tracked on the last upgrade because it was wholly unstable.



I clearly had no choice this time, so I set about installing the new version which so far seems to be lovely.

They're calling this one Joost Friends Addition I assume that's in reference to what is now open season on invites.


Joost did a channel rescan upon opening, there is a truck load of new stuff, and annoyingly some old stuff missing a whole host of Total Recall 2070 is missing. Previously it was most of the series that was present and only missing maybe the last six episodes, now however about half of that has vanished.


There is a new panel for sending an e-mail to pals telling them what you're watching, the e-mail and you can rather funkily include a link to a page about your chosen program on which they can click a link to launch Joost, assuming they have it already.

After exploring some of the new stuff, including a channel from Ardman Animations of Creature Comforts fame (Which features heavily) and the same creators of Wallace and Gromit (Which isn't available).

I did a bit of digging under the hood and found they've moved the "anthill" cache and some files into their own directory, including a "shared.xml" file that appears to contain some information on transports, my ip and some codified record of what segments I've shared maybe.


It also wiped out my previous 2gig cache file, which luckily I'd made a copy of earlier today whilst trying to reclaim some hard disk for parallel's swap file, I'd moved it to an external disk - I have now restored it, whether this works still I don't know until I next start the Joost client.

Rupert Murdoch's musings on new media

Here Is an open letter on new media, and social networks from News Corps. main man, and owner of the abomination that is mySpace.com

Some choice excerpts follow...

"Old media can survive--and thrive--in this new environment, but they must adapt. We must learn how younger generations of consumers prefer to receive their news and entertainment, and we must meet those expectations."


"Far be it from me to suggest that either I or my company have all the answers. No one does. But the future of media is a future of relentless experimentation and innovation, accelerating change, and--for those who embrace the new ways in which consumers are connecting with each other--enormous potential."

To be honest I have mixed feelings on the Man Murdoch, I feel he wields to much publishing power especially regarding the News in this country. To be honest I'll never forgive him for buying the cricket. Howzat.

New Get a Mac ads.

Here are three new get a mac adverts, you all know I love these things. This time my favorite and possible my favorite one ever has to be "Genius" although coming in a close second is "Chose a Vista"


"She's good very good"

Chose a vista is great because I was recently trying to explain to an aging relative why there were so many versions of Vista, and once I'd covered the 32bit platform, I dare not go into the 64bit versions. Incidentally I know someone who tried a 64bit vista and they had a reaction much akin to the one demonstrated here - nothing worked. So he quickly formated and went back to his 32bit Vista, which some stuff worked with. Except Skype, and his Sound Card, and some bits of his Graphics card... well you get the idea.

I love these because despite being pompous and arrogant they simply amuse me. I know my enthusiasm can sometimes put people off making the switch or even trying the "dark side" but every so often someone who I helped "see the light" sends me an e-mail with a line like this...

"I don't think I'd go back to a PC"

It warms, me truly it does. I await the goat trader's opinion on Justin's new shorter hair cut and Oxford shirt and change from the status quo.

New ECS building update

Petty Poltics Local Elections 2007

This road has had gigantic pot holes for months and months and months, then all of a sudden local elections roll around and boom...


Now call me cynical but isn't that just a big shinning co-incidence. All the prospective councilors were whoring themselves, metaphorically speaking, and having their minions post their literature around the place. What annoyed me most was that when people just leave leaflets all over the show, those leaflets quickly become liter.



Southampton City Council has been No Overall Control for a while, and despite some comings and goings of councilors it remained - NOC.

New Joost Adverts

It is not big news but I did notice some new adverts on Joost today, Intel, HP and VirginMoney. I only got pics for the first two.

Super Thursday Election 2007 and Fraud

The polling stations have just closed and the final checks will be taking place before moving the votes to the counting stations. Remember that the postal votes have pretty much already been counted, although can't guarantee properly since election agents have been having some difficulty getting in.

Last week Harriet Harman was taken to task on electoral fraud in a Q & A at Southampton University. Whilst she stated that we could have 100% genuine votes if we "locked down" the process but that "would crush turn out." This indicates a certain apathy towards the problem of electoral fraud.

I had a postal ballot for my local council elections. The way a postal ballot works is that you apply for it without needing a reason. You then some days before official polling day receive your ballot paper, listing the candidates from which you must select. Along with two envelopes.


You are to mark next to your candidate with a cross as per normal. You then place the ballot paper in one envelope along with a signature statement, all of which you place in a second envelope seal up and send back to the registrar person.

Herewith I have my concern. Here is my signature slip.


This goes in a big envelope with my vote. I tried a little experiment, I placed a cross in an arbitrary box and placed the "ballot" in its envelope then held it up to the light.



You can plainly see, if that was a real vote, who the cross was by. Remember that goes in an envelope with my signature and my date of birth. Now I wouldn't dream of casting aspersions on the officers of my local council BUT it takes not a lot to see who the person signing my statement (me) has voted for.

Now we don't live in a time of political discrimination (much), however I still highly value the confidentiality of my vote. Further more whilst again not dreaming of smiting professionalism of the election officials, one of the problems had in 2005 was the theft / binning of votes (by one side of the others). Hence I'd have thought it paramount to keep the contents of the ballots secret.

Given all it would take is thicker envelopes... with that funky black pattern that obfuscates the the contents like the banks use when posting out your PIN., it doesn't seem like much to protect us from turning well and truly into a banana republic.

I hope that online voting is safe and secure.

Fine rant over. Good luck to all candidates I know standing. I'm in for a thrilling night of election commentary.

Parked outside the union guitar hero ii

The continuing saga of the Joost Beta Invite situation

So as you can see I've got my 999 invites. I had to revert back to an old version to get the stability back. When I then logged in it showed me as having all the invites.



As you can see, the program consistency is still lacking, that could however be because I have reverted to the old version. I'll have to keep my nose to the ground for another update.

UK Billboard Mac Advert with Mitchell and Webb

I was out dining over the weekend and spotted this poster board advert, I'd not seen this one before so I decided to post it here for you all.

Avoiding spam scraping

The recent spate of people requesting Joost invites all over the web, mainly in digg.com comments. Has led to some people setting up websites to "distribute" their invites. Whilst I'm not doubting the integrity of most web users. I did wonder whether this was a bit of an opportunity for the bad people. You know the sort, those with nefarious aims.

Most of the 250+ digg comments for the story are people leaving their e-mail addresses for invites. I've even had a couple three on this blog I get about 6 readers.

The entire thing reminded me of a rather nifty trick I spotted the other day for obfuscation of your address online. It was after my meeting with Harriet Harman MP I was intent on e-mailing her some evidence of a point someone made at our Q & A to which at the time she seemed reticent to admit.

Anyway, on HH's site you'll notice the obligatory contact Harriet page. As is the fashion these days her e-mail is listed in the name at domain dot com format. However what I thought was pretty cute was the mailto: link that was also present was also somewhat concealed. its a technique I've never spotted before. It both hid the address from the plain site of the spiders / bots etc. and still yielded a new message window when clicked upon.



You can see the link actually calls a javascript function called "linkTo_UnCryptMailto('arguement')" the syntax of the incorrectly named function aside (surely it should be unencrypt() ?)

Briefly what the function is doing is a nifty bit shift on the string passed to it, then making this the link that the browser acts, I assume a correct mailto: link.

It isn't big, it's not that clever it just caught my attention. Well done her designers for putting some level of protection in. On further reading I found the site is powered by Typ03, is this part of their standard install ?

Joost Beta invites and Joost 0.9.4 instability

According to this at macnn Joost beta testers have been gifted a bunch of new invites. Mac and Windows users can also download the newest Joost client.


I have yet to receive my extra Joost invites, so to all those needy folks requesting them, as soon as I do I'll hook you up.

I did however download the new mac client, 0.9.4, and I must say I'm a bit disappointed. I since the upgrade, had to create a new Joost name, OK annoying but not devastating. What is devastating is that the client is up and down like a tarts knickers (Hat tip to my boss and his Welsh accent.) I seriously get no more than 120 seconds of viewing before poof its gone.



I posted the same said information on digg.com in the comments section of the story linking to macnn, and within minutes received two comments on the original review post requesting the invites... that I haven't got, but when I get them I let you know.

BAE Profit warning

Here is a report on the Reg about a BEA Q1 profit warning. Its about time for us to bribe someone for a defence contract then yes ? It's OK then we'll ask Tony to write another un-influencing letter to have any ensuing inquiry quietly closed.

Vote blue go green

It is almost as if nature is reminding us of the re branding exercise.

Voting and technology.

According to this report the public want e-voting.
Despite my critique to a minister of the state last week about the sheer ineptitude of most large scale IT proects, which was met with a "Well we do lots of piloting" it appears that e-commerce if nothing else is having an effect on the way people post their ballots. I reckon this wasn't quite what we're supposed to do with our universal suffrage.

Microsoft versus ODF and big business access to the law makers

Here is a recent article about a proposed bill in Florida was given short shrift by the M$ lobbyists, eventually working to have the "offending" paragraph removed from the proposal.

This is a scene set to playout across the US and to me merely highlights the amount of access and influence the lobby groups sponsored by big business can get. This is why groups like the RIAA can have internet radio nearly destroyed at the stroke of a pen and no real non-profit can afford to fight that kind of power.