Monthly Archives: December 2006

ITV Censorship

2

The film Uncle Buck is on and I just happened to glance at it. It’s a great film and I’ve seen it many times.
When Buck goes to the school there is a scene with his niece Maisie. She is sat in the classroom and when she answers a question the young male teacher brandishes a ruler and says “Blasphemer“. They cut it. Why?
That means they put that word on the same level as ‘Fuck’. On the same level as nudity, sex.
But isn’t the word ‘Blasphemer’ something that applies to all religions? So a Muslim could use it as readily as a Catholic? So it is a multi-religion word, a multi-religion concept…….. except when it is used in a family film and the word is being applied to the Christian god. In such a case it requires censorship. Bizarre. Pathetic. And indicative of a terrified corporation who dare not offend anyone. Except Christians.

When a GPL theme is not a GPL theme

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I was asked to find a 3-col theme for someone today so off I went to the WP forums to find one.
Some clicking later and I find a potential candidate:

It is released under GPL. [1]

I go to the website and see:

License
Anaconda comes with GPL (GNU Public License). Both Mollio & K2 are released under GPL. The only thing we require is that you keep the attributions and linkbacks in the footer without any change.

Now I know the person who wants this theme does not want any backlinks but it’s no sweat to edit the footer.
I download the theme, and open the footer. There is no credit in the footer. So I go looking and find that the theme includes a ‘functions.php’ file – and at the bottom of that file are a few lines that hook into the ‘wp_footer’. It’s GPL – I can rip that out and be perfectly within my right to do so.
I check the CSS:

License: Released Under the “GNU Creative Commons License”,

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/

Yep, there it is again. GPL. So why make it so damn difficult to remove a footer link – after all, most users won’t go near code like that. I go back to the site and find a post titled ‘How to remove attribution link / link back from anaconda theme for wordpress’ and in that the author says:

Anaconda Theme requires an attribution link at the bottom of each page.

You can’t do that. It’s GPL.

However you may not want to have this attribution link / link back in every page of your blog for some reason. Here is what you can do to remove the linkback / attribution legitimately and feeling good about it.

To remove the linkback / attribution from the theme we require that you purchase your attribution free copy of Anaconda for 30$ (per blog),

Pretending you are being generous with the GPL just to then con people out of $30 is way off line.

Needless to say. the add_action line at the bottom of the functions.php file will be deleted ;)

I bought a Creme Egg today.

1

The guy behind the till said I could buy mini eggs if I wanted but he’d have to get them from the back. Easter bunny porn? No – instructions from on high that you can’t have easter before Christmas so no eggs on display until Boxing Day. How did I get hold of said Creme Egg? There were 4 tills, each with two boxes of them. Tricky to miss the build-up to Easter really.

I like Amazon. Like it a lot. Don’t buy a whole lot from it but it’s a decent place for reviews at least. Books are good but on Amazon I could wishlist it or click away. It was all I could do in Borders today to not ask for a trolley.
I like books anyway but with so many out for the spending season I could spend so much on them. So many books, so little time. Though I must say I’m not keen on hardbacks. There’s something about a hardback that yells BOOK! which a paperback doesn’t do. A paperback doesn’t force a reading position on you, it has only the one cover unlike hardbacks which look naked without their ‘dustjacket’ (what a quaint word), a paperback is easier to carry, easier to pack into a bag. And a paperback becomes more friendly as you read it and your presence starts to tell on it. A pristine paperback is an unread book. So it was a shame that most of the books I wanted were indeed in hardback. I shall wait…. the publishers will weaken to consumer demand :)

Auto-clicking – where?

4

Click “Ads by Goooooooogle”

This site is a splog.
It is stealing my content and that of many others.

Response:

Thank you for your note. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act …..

Like I expected any difference. Looks like I’ll have to fire up a browser (I have K-Meleon just for this) and sit there clicking off those splog ads. How many before they get looked at – not for stealing others content oh no, but taking a dime from the multi-million monolith? 100 clicks? 200? Same IP – clicky clicky. Mouse gestures are such damn useful things. That’ll get you frigging attention won’t it. Click click click. Where are these auto-click scripts I here about? I want one to let loose on splogs and other such garbage. They must exist. I want one. Hell I’ll take more.

Leaving older comments

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I had an email today from someone who wanted to close all his old posts to comments but he wanted to know if someone wanted to comment there. That seemed odd which was accepted in the end. But it made me wonder … when is a post so old that you would not comment? Does it matter? Does it depend whose blog? Topic? Mood? When is a post too old? Can a post be too old where it is not news-based maybe? But then new news could impact what was said in old news which makes comments valid. I’d not really noticed before and I don’t know what I do.

In not out

3

One of the first purchases I made from Onetribe were quills (the image below is from their site, I hope they don’t mind..). I bought an African Porcupine Quill and a pack of smaller American Porcupine Quills. The large one fits through my septum quite comfortably and it’s quite the thing to twirl through one’s fingers while reading the news, feeds etc. It’s quite decorative.

The smaller ones are.. not quite so useful. Probably because they are so small. They’d be good as a series of spikes in existing but narrow piercings but otherwise they sit there looking like a game of pickupsticks. Until earlier…. the large quill when felt from the tip to the root is smooth, really smooth. In the opposite direction it feels ever so slightly different. Not rough, just different. Maybe it was rough when I got it and use has smoothed it. But the smaller ones have had less use. And they are more pointy. Very much so.

Feeling these from tip down is also smooth – my fingers glide down the surface. The other way – it gets rough halfway into the black point. It’s distinctly rough. But what does that roughness actually mean? The back of the hand is relatively nerve free so I lay the quill along the skin and gently pushed it in. It went about 3mm into the skin. That’s not a long way and because the quill is so sharp it didn’t hurt much. That proved nothing of note. I gently pulled the quill out. Well I pulled it in the opposite direction anyway. I pulled it to the point that it was raising my skin significantly from the back of my hand. I tried twisting it. I put it back where it was, held the skin tight with one finger and tried to pull with another. No go. This had not the slightest intention of moving. Somewhere in my head was this voice saying “And why did you do this again?” and “Just how sterile is that quill?”. I actually let go of it and had it spikely waving around. There was nothing else for it though – it had to come out. So I held firm and quite literally tore it out. I watched as the skin rose to a point before popping – I felt those little skin cells being ripped – and sinking back into position. It didn’t hurt so much as making more of a hole than it should have done. And all from a quill that felt every so slightly rougher at one end. How you would cope with a few or more…. ouch.
Porcupines. They deserve respect.

An editorial purpose.

Reply

The BBC have had a pop at Clarkson about a “gay jibe”

Four complaints from viewers have been upheld after he agreed with an audience member that a car was “a bit gay”, on a programme screened in the UK in July.

It never ceases to amaze me that programmes which are seen by millions cab be castigated simply by the opinions of so few people especially when the BBC said of the comments that they “had the potential to offend“. It does not say they did offend, just that they might. What? I get offended by their daytime junk TV yet they still screen it. Maybe I should complain too? Note too that he did not say it, he merely agreed.

What really gets me about the BBC post is this quote:

The BBC complaints unit said there was “no editorial purpose” for the remarks.

There’s no editorial purpose to 90% of Top Gear! And that’s why we not only watch it but love it. Leave it and those who present it alone – you BBC types just don’t know when you’ve got gold do you?

To Lisa Morgan, Chief Exec, The Game Group PLC

2

I – like I am sure many others – placed my order for a Wii when it clearly stated on your website that you had stock. If had not said that then I would not have placed that order. I don’t care for the weasel words about “expected” or “anticipated” I care only for the fact that your website had the words ‘in stock’ on it. This strikes me as inefficient would you not agree? I not only didn’t get the machine on the day but I did not get told about it by you until several days later – this inefficiency strikes again. In an email that same day I get told I will get a controller on the day of release – despite that day being in the week before. Do you pay these staff? I phone to complain and I am told by the girl on the other end that she would never order from your company. Why ? And then today I get another email…..

we will be unable to fulfil your order before Christmas. We are sorry to bring you such disappointing news and although we may receive more stock before Christmas there will not be enough time to despatch to you for the 25th of December.

Now what does that picture – taken from the website RIGHT NOW say? “until 2.00 pm on the 19th December to order in time for Christmas – or 2.00 pm on 21st December for items which are despatched by Special Delivery” and yet here I am, on the 18th with your company saying that it’s too late. Now it’s either too late or not too late. A box in a warehouse that can be delivered is pretty much the same as another isn’t it?
So where are they then Ms Morgan? Why are your company throwing pre-orders away? Stocking them in the shops maybe? No, you wouldn’t be THAT bad would you?

but there again maybe you really don’t give a flying one for the “already caught so we have their cash” customers.

I have spent hundreds of pounds in your stores, right from when it was the tiny Electronic Boutique operation and this time you just blew it all away. Every bit of loyalty has gone. The market is too open now for fuckups. Had your site been honest and I was sitting here without one, fine, no problem. Honesty is good. Don’t pretend, just say it as it is. But you said you had when you obviously did not – and that’s wrong. I have Virgin, HMV, Tesco, Choice, HMV and other places to go for games. I did buy from you, I no longer will. Not that my few quid matters much but you are paid the big bucks to run what you would like to think is decent company and this will hopefully have dented the loyalty of others who trusted you to deliver…..

Lisa Morgan, aged 35 … immediately prior to her joining the Group, was part of the commercial team at Dixons Group plc.

Now to whoever appointed her that is where you went totally wrong. Never get anything from Dixons.

Metal Hearts

4

While out with the dog last night I remembered a company I bought something from about 20 years ago and they had a cool name. And it was available so I bought it. Given the roots of the name and that I still do play games, I think I’m going to write a games blog. Well more a blog about the games I really like than a big games blog type thing. But in getting some details together I need a utility. I need to be able to take multiple screenshots and have those stored for retrieval. So I press PrtScn say 10 times while playing and I get 10 screenshots ready for me. I’ve not done an exhaustive search but if you know of such a beast……

Five Things You Don’t Know About Me meme

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Engtech has tagged me so here goes:

  1. I pierced my left nipple myself
  2. I have been in a padded cell
  3. I want to live somewhere really cold
  4. I have a very short temper and am really easily bored
  5. I wish I could go back to a certain moment and say what I should have done

I suppose that last one is a regret but at least 1 person might know what and where.

Tagging: Gordon – wank – David – Shep – whoo
(And yes I know at least 1 person in there will hate me for the tag :) )