Neil's World

Fixing MT's Performance

2008-06-04T21:26:04Z

I've mentioned a few times that I have been having problems with Movable Type's performance - high CPU usage and timeouts. The CPU usage turned out not to be caused by MT, but the timeouts were - most of the time when rebuilding pages I would get a blank page because it took so long.

Quack, at Does It Echo? just upgraded to MT4.1 and in doing so he installed Temper - short for Template Profiler. It counts how long each template takes to rebuild when entries are published and outputs the times to your activity log - this means you can then single out any templates which are taking too long.

It turns out that 2 templates were taking over 10 seconds each to rebuild. One was a category archive feed, easily fixed by limiting it to the previous 15 entries, and the other was a block which outputted the 'recently commented on entries' code that appears throughout the site, which I've disabled for the time being. This has solved the timeout problem, although some other pages are taking up to 4 seconds to build - I'll investigate these later

But it now means that using MT is much more bearable and it means I have one less reason to switch away from it.

Been away, going away...

2008-05-22T10:44:27Z

I've been away from this blog for some time - 2 weeks almost - which is mostly due to being busy at work and having very little free time at home as I've been playing World of Warcraft a bit more than usual lately (but now have a second level 70 character as a result).

So what's happened over the past 2 weeks? Well, based on my recent Twitters, here's what I've been up to:

Been testing out Firefox 3 RC1 and Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1. Firefox 3 is looking really good now, especially on Macs where the improved performance and native theme make it even more of a joy to use. Thunderbird is obviously an early alpha build but it too is much faster, as it inherits many of the optimisations that were undertaken for Firefox. Unfortunately it's not yet very stable, but it is at least usable.

Now that I have more than a smidgen of free space on my MacBook, I installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron in Parallels. Unfortunately, despite updating to the latest Parallels release, the Parallels Tools for Linux package doesn't work with this release of Ubuntu so there's no adaptive window sizes, cursor integration and clock synchronising. It's a shame as apparently VMWare Fusion does support the latest Ubuntu release. I haven't played around with Ubuntu much but it looks good, and including Firefox 3 is a bold but welcome move.

Speaking of Twitter, I would recommend the TwitterFox extension if you use Twitter and Firefox, as it's quite a handy little extension which lets you read and interact with your Twitter friends. It doesn't have masses of features, but it's intuitive and it works with Firefox 3 already.

Google Reader's 'Trends' feature has an unexpected use as a way of digging out feeds which haven't updated in a long time. I found one that had gone dead in October 2005 that I was still subscribing to. I also found a few sites which had changed their feed URLs without redirects so I wasn't receiving updates any more.

This, unfortunately, isn't the return to regularly scheduled blogging, as on Saturday I'm going away for five nights in camping barn in the Lake District with some friends. It's really in the back-end of nowhere - it doesn't even have a connection to the electricity grid so all power comes from a hydro-electric generator, and it's highly unlikely that there will be any mobile phone reception there either. So until I return on Thursday, you may not hear a peep from me, either on here or on Twitter.

UK Banks and Encryption

2008-05-06T10:41:40Z

Here's a short survey I have done on the levels of encryption employed by UK banks for their online banking systems, and whether they use EV (extended validation) security certificates.

Ideally, sites such as those that deal with money should be using the strongest encryption available (256-bit AES) and use an EV certificate (the green bar) to allow the user to verify that the site isn't a hoax.

UK Online banks
Bank name	Bit strength	EV?
NatWest	128-bit RC4	Yes
HSBC	168-bit 3DES	No
Halifax	128-bit RC4	No
Lloyds TSB	256-bit AES	No
Barclays	256-bit AES	No
RBS	128-bit RC4	Yes
Alliance & Leicester	128-bit RC4	No
Abbey	128-bit RC4	No
Nationwide	128-bit RC4	No
Co-operative Bank	128-bit RC4	No

All tests were carried out on Firefox 3 Beta 5 running on Windows, and data is from the login screens only, not actual online banking sessions.

The test results are slightly concerning. Though RC4 is largely safe, there are a growing number of attacks used against it, especially when used for securing WEP wireless networks. AES, on the other hand, has fewer known flaws, but it should be in wider use.

The lack of sites with EV certificates is also surprising, particularly as phishing is a growing problem and all of the sites listed here have been targeted in emails that I have seen. Only two sites have them and they are owned by the same parent company and use the same domain.

More thoughts about 3 Mobile Broadband

2008-04-25T13:06:19Z

After promising I wouldn't blog too much about the 3 Mobile Broadband dongle that I'm trying out for 3 Mobile Buzz, I then managed to not blog about at all for a couple of weeks, which was clever... Anyhow, here's another blog post, and, as you'd expect, the dongle is what is helping me post this entry.

Right now I'm on my lunch break in a place that normally has free Wifi. Unfortunately the Wifi isn't working (DHCP seems to be failing so I get a self-assigned IP address), so it's a chance to try out the dongle. Here, the signal quality is good enough to get HSDPA, which means I get speeds equivalent to lower-end DSL or cable-based broadband packages. In theory at least.

Wireless broadband does have more issues with latency than fixed-line broadband, and this is noticeable when browsing web pages as it takes longer for images, CSS files and JavaScript files to download. Simple pages load quickly, but complex ones will take some extra time. This does make it appear slower than the Wifi connection that I'm used to here, even though I should have a higher top speed (if memory serves correctly the Wifi is capped at 512 Kbps, whereas HSDPA starts at nearer 2 Mbps).

Although this is a free trial, if I was to buy one of these then I would definitely go for a package with at least 1 GB of included data transfer. Running my computer normally while connected racked up 6 MB of downloads after doing very little. Now this is probably down to things like Firefox updating its phishing and malware site lists, Plaxo synchronising my address books, iScrobbler sending data to last.fm etc. If I had been paying 10p per megabyte, which is what many packages were offering recently, I'd have racked up 60p already through background tasks alone. This is one of the main differences between a dongle you plug into your own computer and the internet experience you get on your PDA or mobile phone.

I'm also starting to get a feel for the battery requirements that the dongle puts on over and above normal battery drain. My battery only has about 50% of its capacity remaining, which usually gives me just under 2 hours on a full charge. With the dongle in, I can probably lose half an hour and get about 1 hour 25 minutes. So it does have a noticeable impact on battery life, but it doesn't totally drain it. Still, older batteries may suffer a bit.

Going Beta

2008-04-22T23:24:20Z

I'm giving Movable Type 4.15 Beta 4 a whirl on here. It's supposed to deliver a large raft of performance improvements, which considering the recent issues I have had with performance should be very welcome. Time will tell if it makes it a difference.

MacBook hard disk upgrade complete

2008-04-17T22:17:07Z

I'm probably boring you all now with my incessant ramblings about the hard disk upgrade, but the good news is that it is done and dusted. I picked up the correct screwhead from Maplin and switched the drives over without any major problems, although I would advise you that when you boot the computer up after switching the disks over, you press Command, Alt, P and R at the same time to reset the PRAM (see this article for more info) as you may encounter minor booting issues otherwise.

The old disk is now firmly screwed into its USB enclosure and is acting as a Time Machine device, as well as a place to put files. I decided that it would be best to go with HFS+ for Time Machine, but made a 4 GB FAT32 partition so that I can access files from other computers should I need to. As it's such a small enclosure and came with a nice carrying pouch, it lends itself well to being used as a portable file store.

Unsurprisingly I have noticed a performance improvement with the new drive - on the old drive I was frequently pushing for free space and so data fragmentation was likely to be a major problem, but with this drive the data has been laid out from scratch and there's well over 150 GB of free space on here at the moment, so fragmentation shouldn't be an issue for some time to come.

So what's my next project? Hari's computer needs some TLC in the heat-dissipation department. Since the new year it's had major problems keeping cool, so while I was in Maplin I picked up a rather large can of ~~whoop-ass~~ compressed air to give it a good clean out. I'll also check that its temperature sensors are pointing in the right places and that the fans are working correctly.

The saga of the MacBook HD upgrade

2008-04-17T08:59:43Z

This upgrade to my MacBook's hard drive is proving to be more effort than I first thought. I was hoping that, by now, I should have had the new drive fitted and working, but as of now it's still not in there. Here's a brief recap of the problems I have encountered:

Problem 1: Wrong disk enclosure

For some reason, when ordering a USB enclosure to hold the new disk while I copied all my files across to it (and to hold the old afterwards), I managed to order an older IDE enclosure, rather than a newer SATA enclosure. This is important because the MacBook only uses SATA hard drives and so the IDE enclosure is basically useless. I still have it; if you want to buy it off me drop me a line, but note that it's only good for 2.5" (i.e. laptop) IDE drives and not the usual 3.5" drives you get in desktops.

Problem 2: The Royal Mail misplaced the replacement disk enclosure

I ordered the original enclosure from dabs, but went to Amazon for the replacement as it was going to be quite a bit cheaper (and there was a model with good reviews). It should have been delivered on Wednesday last week, but neither myself nor Hari were in the house at the time and so we got one of those 'Sorry, you were out' cards. It said to wait 48 hours, so we did, but it hadn't been returned to the depot by Friday. Or by Saturday. I didn't go on Monday or Tuesday but did make it down there yesterday, so I finally managed to get my grubby paws on it.

Problem 3: Wrong type of screwdriver

If you're like me, you'll have more screwdrivers than you care to admit. I have at least 7, and most of those have interchangeable heads with a wide variety of screwheads. In other words, give me a screw and I should be able to screw it in. Unfortunately none of my screwdrivers or screwheads are of the Torx T8 variety, which Apple use to screw the MacBook's internal hard drive to the drive plate. I have T10, T15, T20 and T30, but they're all too big, and the design of Torx screws makes it basically impossible to use another type of screwdriver. So now I can't change the drives over until I can get hold of this coveted screwdriver.

On the plus side, I have now got the new drive in the enclosure and have used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the entire contents of my existing driver over to the new one, ready for the switchover. I also appreciate your comments about what file system to use; those that I have received so far have been good but it has occurred to me that I may well be using Time Machine on the external drive (the drive that is currently in my MacBook) so this may well restrict my choices.

Going Wireless

2008-04-07T15:48:57Z

Thanks to the guys at 3 Mobile Buzz, I am trying out 3's mobile broadband service free for 3 months, in return for some blog posts about the service. I have the Huawei E169G USB modem, which allows me to get 3G broadband internet access wherever 3 have a signal (and GRPS/EDGE if a 3G service isn't available).

I'll post a full disclosure soon, but to show that it's working I am posting this sat in the local bus station, where it has already proved its worth. Hari has been away at her parents for the weekend, and so I have gone to meet her. However, having checked the details of her coach online, I have found out I had the wrong time and have instead come several hours early...

Of course, I could have phoned her, but it's nice to be able to look a less of a prat in front of your girlfriend. There's no Wifi here whatsoever so without the modem I would have had no internet access.

So, as I said, I'll post more about the modem, its capabilities, and the wider implications of mobile broadband on the UK internet market as the days and weeks go on. If you're contemplating purchasing one - say, for example, you find internet access on the train useful and have found that the Wifi service provided by your train operating company has declined recently - then I hope this will be useful.

I owe Movable Type an apology

2008-04-05T17:21:04Z

Sometimes you should never jump to conclusions before looking at the evidence. I requested a list of scripts which were causing problems, and this was the result:

process	count	CPU	secs
php	14871	5656.85s	94.28 CPU minutes
mt-postacomment	39	27.70s	0.46 CPU minutes
awstats.pl	8	11.20s	0.19 CPU minutes
imapd	55	8.81s	0.15 CPU minutes
mt-feed.cgi	8	7.00s	0.12 CPU minutes

So, as you can see, it's not Movable Type's comments after all - in 1 day, it was using a mere 30 seconds of CPU time, compared with an hour and a half for PHP. Now 'php' includes all PHP scripts on the site, which does include parts of Movable Type - namely the dynamically generated pages and the search results. But there are other scripts on here - my own tag search script and some bot-banning scripts. I have disabled these other scripts, and reduced the number of pages being served by dynamic publishing, to see if this makes any difference. Hopefully I will find out soon.

So this means I won't be switching to Wordpress right away. I will keep it on here for now, in case I want to take a look at it, but for now I'll stick with Movable Type. I will re-enable comments, and I have brought over the entries and discussions from the temporary Wordpress blog so that they're here to view.

No April Fool this year

2008-04-01T08:55:06Z

In the past I've tried to pull off an April Fool's joke on the 1st April, but I haven't been able to think of a good one for today. My best effort involved a Rickroll, but then I decided it would be too clichéd - even YouTube themselves got in on the act.

Here were my other ideas:

Announcing I was quitting blogging - again, too clichéd.

Announcing I had a job at Microsoft

Announcing that I was going to move to Bodoni in San Serriffe.

Re-design the site to make it look like it was from the mid-90s (done this year by Improv Everywhere)

Announcing that I was going to sell my Macs and switch to an Amiga.

Anyway, enjoy the rest of internet prank day - as usual, Wikipedia has a good list of pranks.

MacBook upgrade

2008-03-27T13:56:36Z

I've had my MacBook for over 18 months now and during that time it has served me very well. Unfortunately I'm starting to hit its limitations and so it is due a bit of an upgrade.

The biggest problem right now is the hard drive, which is practically full to bursting. I had 2 GB free this morning but only after deleting a lot of stuff (which now needs to be copied back over) - this was due to the fact that Fury of the Sunwell came out for World of Warcraft and it requires a minimum of 1.6 GB to install (although you get most of it back after it has patched your game files). Part of the problem is that I have both Mac OS X Leopard and Windows Vista (by way of Parallels) on there - Vista's virtual hard disk occupies around 13 GB of space, which is a lot when the total drive capacity is only 60 GB.

Also, when running large applications like World of Warcraft or Parallels, it starts to struggle a bit with just 1 GB of RAM (this is something I never thought I'd say 10 years ago...).

So, I need to upgrade the hard disk and get another gigabyte of RAM. I've been holding off any upgrade for a while because I imagined it would be quite expensive; however, in actual fact, I can do the who she-bang for under £100, and that includes memory from Crucial and a branded hard drive. Though I can't see this happening right away, in a couple of months I should have enough cash spare to justify doing this.

Hopefully, the bigger RAM and hard drive will provide the performance boost I'm after. The graphics on the MacBook is still a weak point but it provides passable Warcraft performance and I can't upgrade it, so I'll bear with it.

Orkut it out

2008-03-20T15:44:41Z

Someone that I don't know today sent me a message on Orkut, the social network owned by Google. As it happens I responded - it wasn't spam and the person was quite polite and had a genuine question to ask. But this represents what must be the first time I have used Orkut this year.

Orkut was the first social network I ever joined, back in January 2004, when these sites were new-fangled; indeed Orkut was in invite-only beta at the time. Back then, quite a few of my online friends were there and so I was quite active, even setting up a group or two. But later on that year my usage of the site waned to the point where I go months between logins. None of my friends use Orkut anymore - my online friends are all on Twitter and everyone else is on Facebook. I'm a member of MySpace but, like my friends, I'm no longer active there anymore.

So why, 4 years on, are people still using Orkut? Certainly none of my friends are. But Orkut is big in some countries like Brazil and India, thus explaining why, when I logged in, I found lots of messages in Portuguese and spam offering matrimonial sites and jobs in New Delhi. I don't really have any Brazillian or Indian friends - most of mine are European or North American, and it's in these places that Facebook and Twitter are doing well.

Maybe Orkut will have a renaissance, but on my visit today it appears not a lot has changed in 4 years, bar a new design.

Anyone else still using Orkut regularly?

The Mac Mini Media Centre: an update

2008-03-19T16:21:53Z

In April last year, which was nearly 11 months ago, I introduced The Mac Mini Media Centre Project. This was a project to convert my Mac Mini, which was becoming rather under-used, into a media centre - a computer connected to a TV and controllable by a remote control that can play DVDs, show TV channels and play recorded media (music, video etc.).

As you can tell by the lack of any news since that post (bar a promise five weeks ago that I would write an update) I haven't made massive progress. However, the machine is now running as a media centre, albeit not how I originally envisaged it.

Right now it is missing a number of the promised features - it won't receive TV signals, and cannot be operated via a remote control. But it is connected to a TV and I do have the relevant hardware to allow it to receive DVB-T broadcasts.

The reason for this is partly down to where we live, i.e. Bradford. The geography of the area isn't favourable to TV broadcasts and so we only have patchy coverage via a shared aerial. As such, we opted to go for cable from Virgin Media, which requires their set-top box and makes the TV receiving aspect largely pointless as most of the same channels are available (Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three currently excepted, but we don't watch them anyway). We also have a perfectly good standalone DVD player.

The Mac Mini therefore now sits in the bedroom. It still has media centre software, in the form of MediaCentral, and outputs to a television set by way of Apple's official DVI-Composite/S-Video adaptor. However it also acts a wireless bridge for a PlayStation 2, since there's no network connection in the bedroom, and also is the host computer for our printer. Yes, we have a printer in our bedroom.

I am hoping to add an infra-red receiver so that I can use a remote control with it - as it is an older Mac Mini it didn't come with one as standard. Right now we have to use a wireless keyboard and mouse which is workable but less than ideal. As far as this blog goes, I hope to do a review of MediaCentral and also the TubeStick device for receiving DVB-T broadcasts on a Mac.

Fixing a broken iPod

2008-03-18T09:32:37Z

I was going to make one of two posts today:

How I fixed my broken iPod

What iPod to buy in place of my broken iPod

Thankfully, this post is the first one.

I have an iPod Mini, bought in August 2004, which has hit a spot of bother. Well, okay, I dropped it, and afterwards it kept crashing or giving me the dreaded 'unhappy iPod' screen (which is like the Blue Screen of Death for iPods) when playing music, especially when skipping tracks. So here's how I fixed it:

Because my iPod was formatted in Windows (a concious choice, see rant below), I plugged it into Hari's computer and ran ScanDisk, and opted to do a full surface scan to fix any bad sectors.

Next, I opened iTunes on the Windows PC and did a restore on the iPod, wiping the existing firmware and files and replacing it with the most recent firmware.

Then, I reloaded my music.

And now it works fine. Quite what went wrong originally, I am unsure, however by running ScanDisk I could have it mark any damaged parts of the disk as bad. If I had more money I would have bought a copy of SpinRite which is apparently very good at getting hard disks back into working order (or at least letting you know that your disk is fubar'd).

I may still consider buying a new iPod eventually but I'm torn between which model to buy, so that blog post may still come. At least now it's not so much of a priority as my current iPod now seems to work fine.

And now for my rant about iPod formatting. If you format your iPod on Windows, it will be formatted with the FAT32 file system, readable by Windows and OS X (and pretty much every other modern operating system). Format it on OS X, however, and it'll be formatted with the HFS+ file system which only OS X can read. Since Apple now ships Boot Camp with Macs and has been promoting the ability to run Windows if needed, why not let Mac users change the file system used when formatting? If needed it can be some option hidden away in an obscure corner of iTunes where your average Joe User who has no idea what FAT32 or HFS+ are can safely ignore it. But it would be nice to have the option, rather than having to use a Windows computer.

Facebook Events

2008-02-28T20:01:14Z

Created using Skitch, hence the funky but un-graph-like arrows.

Earthly movements

2008-02-27T10:47:59Z

Well, that was interesting. As you may already know, most of England was hit by a small earthquake last night. Though it was in the early hours of the morning at around 1am GMT, I was awake at the time (yes, I know, on a school night...) and felt it.

At first we thought someone had slammed a door, perhaps in the flat upstairs, but as Hari and I were both on World of Warcraft at the time we soon found out from friends that they had felt the earth move too. Turns out it measured 5.3 on the Richter scale and was the strongest quake we've had here in almost 25 years.

Bradford is far enough away from the epicentre for it not to have caused any property damage and I've certainly not heard of anyone having any problems - just lots of people being curious.

Interestingly though at least 25 of my friends on Facebook now have status messages mentioning something about the quake. These include some exchange students from California who never realised we had earthquakes here (which we don't, usually), those who were woken up by it and were begrudgingly posting before going back to bed, and those worrying about the aftershock. Which I managed to sleep through, incidentally.

OS X Leopard 10.5.2 is what you've been waiting for

2008-02-12T13:33:52Z

It's often said that you shouldn't upgrade to a new version of Windows until at least Service Pack 1. So if you've been holding out from upgrading from Tiger to Leopard, then version 10.5.2, released yesterday, should be what you've been waiting for.

The update weighs in at over 300 MB for the full version (Software Update only needed to download 180 MB), plus there's a follow-up Leopard Graphics Update to install afterwards. It's a lot to install but then it does fix a lot of residual bugs that weren't fixed in 10.5.1 - finding Windows computers with shared folders now finally seems to work properly, for example. But there's also some new features - stacks can now be made into Tiger-style lists if you so wish, the menu bar translucency can be disabled, and Time Machine has its own menu bar icon (but this can be disabled if you don't use it).

The Graphics Update is also worth installing, especially if you use your Mac for gaming (stop laughing) - World of Warcraft users report much higher framerates and I can back this up too with my own experience.

Macworld has an article detailing some of the changes (thanks, Robert) but most of them seem to be background stuff that you won't see from day to day. In any case, if you've been waiting for Leopard to become more stable, your wait should be over.

Domain spam

2008-02-11T15:12:52Z

(Picture by Matt Haughey, hosted by Flickr, CC by-nc-sa licensed)

This is what happens when you list a real address on your domain's WHOIS record. Especially when it's a long-established and popular domain like metafilter.com.

Thankfully, Nominet, the non-profit organisation who operates publicly-registered domain names, lets domain owners opt out of providing contact details, provided they are individuals (businesses still have to divulge their addresses). This is what I have done with this and my other domains, and is the main reason why I prefer to use .uk domains instead of generic international domains. If someone was desperate to contact me then simply visiting the web site would allow them to find my email address and any legal matters can be pursued via my host who is listed on the record.

It's no surprise that

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a href+"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/domain_privacy">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mathowie/2250877835/"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2232/2250877835_3629936282_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Domain related junk mail" /></a> 
(Picture by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mathowie/">Matt Haughey</a>, hosted by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/">Flickr</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_GB">CC by-nc-sa licensed</a>)

<a href="http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2008/02/08/domain-related-junk-mail/">This is what happens when you list a real address on your domain's WHOIS record</a>. Especially when it's a long-established and popular domain like <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/">metafilter.com</a>.

Thankfully, <a href="http://www.nominet.org.uk/">Nominet</a>, the non-profit organisation who operates publicly-registered domain names, lets domain owners opt out of providing contact details, provided they are individuals (businesses still have to divulge their addresses). This is what I have done with this and my other domains, and is the main reason why I prefer to use .uk domains instead of generic international domains. If someone was desperate to contact me then simply visiting the web site would allow them to find my email address and any legal matters can be pursued via my host who is listed on the record.

It's no surprise that <a href+"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_privacy">Domain Privacy</a> services are popular - I'm sure many that use these services actually have 'nothing to hide', as it were, but just don't want to get bombarded with junk mail.

(It's interesting to note that one of the letters in Matt Haughey's junk pile is from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_One">Capital One</a> who send us lots of junk mail addressed 'To the householder'. This is precisely why I will never apply for a Capital One card)

On a related note, a couple of changes to my email mean that I should be getting less spam now. My old student email address has now been de-activated as I'm no longer a student, and I've finally closed an email alias that I was using a few years ago in the RSS feeds for this site. RSS 2.0 annoyingly requires an email address when listing the author of an item and so I set up a special alias for this - I'm not using RSS anymore (we're <a href="http://www.atomenabled.org/">Atom Enabled</a>, baby!) so I've closed the alias since it's not being used for anything useful.

Movable Type 4.1

2008-02-09T19:41:57Z

Well, I finally got around to upgrading to Movable Type 4.1. It's not the massive change that 4.0 was, but there's some nice touches and I like the new entry composition screen. Not had much time to delve into what's new, however.

The upgrade wasn't without a hiccup - I originally installed it over the top of 4.01 (itself installed over the top of many other versions, including Betas) and upon finishing it didn't work. Installing to a new folder, and then copying my plugins over, seems to have done the trick, thankfully.

Verifying with Paynova

2008-02-08T16:00:24Z

Paynova is a site in the ilk of PayPal, Google Checkout and Nochex in that it offers merchants secure online payment services, and a personal account system for users that remembers their card details. CD-Wow is one of Paynova's clients and so rather than re-enter my card details every time I buy from them (which admittedly is 3-4 times a year but it saves hassle) I can use my stored details.

All users can save their card details and make small transactions with the site, but to make transactions over £100 you have to validate your account. PayPal does this in a relatively simple manner, but Paynova require you to send them a fax, containing "a copy of your bank-/credit card (front and back), a copy of your ID card, username of your wallet and contact information".

Yes, they want me to send a fax. To Paynova's HQ in Sweden.

In other words, rather than use their 128-bit RC4 encrypted HTTPS web site to send my details, they want me to send an unencrypted fax across international borders. A quick Google search found a number of ways that faxes can be intercepted, and it's said that the US routinely monitors the contents of faxes in its bases around the world (the nearby RAF Menwith Hill base is allegedly among those used).

Somehow I don't think I'll be in a rush to verify my details. The potential for identity fraud from this is massive - anyone who can intercept the fax has my name, address, date of birth, passport number and credit card number.

Miscellany

2008-02-07T14:00:22Z

As well as wining about unsolicited press releases from a clueless PR company, here's some other things that I've wanted to blog about lately but haven't:

As an epilogue to my most recent Royal Mail saga, the package did arrive on Saturday as requested, albeit at 7:30am. Now I'm not normally awake at that time even on weekdays (I get up at 8am to be in work for 9, since it's a short walk away) never mind at weekends, but, hey, it arrived. And Hari now has a working external hard drive again, which is good.

Related to that, be wary of the Western Digital My Book series - this was what necessitated ordering the package (a USB IDE disk enclosure) in the first place. Hari's unit was only around 15 months old when the soldering on the USB socket on the hard drive enclosure completely broke away, so it couldn't be connected to a computer. You'll also have a devil of a job getting the drive out of the enclosure should you wish to do so.

Looking back at an old entry, five years ago today I wrote about macmoz.org, a site for resources about Macs. Back then I didn't have a Mac (I do now) but apparently the site has been dead since 2004, which is a shame. Obviously it never took off.

Speaking of Hari, as well as getting a new enclosure for her hard drive, she also now has a graphics tablet to play with. This was actually my Christmas present to her but it's taken me until now to get it set up on her computer - though she could probably do it herself, but never mind. It's a Wacom Bamboo One, which is one Wacom's smaller but cheaper tablets aimed at those starting out. I've heard good things about Wacom tablets and this was the only one in my price range, so although the drawing area is small I went for this rather than a larger tablet from another manufacturer. It works well, and once you install Wacom's drivers it is very accurate (it can work on XP without drivers but the accuracy leaves something to be desired; it's also Mac compatible). It also suits Hari well - she's left-handed but uses her right hand for the mouse, so being able to draw left-handed is much easier, and she's drawn some good pictures already.

icanhaz.com is my new favourite URL forwarding site, in the ilk of tinyurl.com. I can haz shrt urls? Kthnx.

You may remember back in April I mentioned I was going to begin the Mac Mini Media Centre Project - a project to turn my under-used Mac Mini into a media centre. It was to be a regular series of posts detailing each step of the project, but I only managed the one introductory post. The good news is that there has been some progress and the Mac Mini is now running as a media centre of sorts, but not quite in the same way as originally envisaged. However, I do hope that I will get around to posting more information about what I have done, and what I planned to do and didn't.

And yes, I've still not upgraded to Movable Type 4.1. All in due time, all in due time...

Open Letter to Vocus PR

2008-02-07T09:33:05Z

Dear Vocus Public Relations,

Recently, I have been receiving press releases from several of your clients in my personal email address (as noted by the .me.uk domain suffix). I would like to express my displeasure at this and ask you to stop.

Your clients have included 'Adesta, LLC, a systems integrator and project management company for communication networks and electronic security systems' and another which I deleted after not understanding what the company actually did - but then I'm not exactly up on providing vertical synergy solutions or whatever marketing speak used.

This latest email refers to a contract that your client has to build a fibre-optic network in Austin, Texas. Well, good for them. But why do I need to know this? I live in Bradford, England, which is several thousand miles away. I'm not a tech columnist, I'm a personal blogger with a few entries about technology, some stuff I've done on my computer and cat pictures. I've used the phrase 'fibre optic' precisely twice in 6 years of blogging, and one of those was to describe a Christmas tree. And I'm not a potential company investor or client, I'm a heavily-indebted recent graduate in a low-level administration job at a university.

Oh sure, you let me opt out of mailings from your individual clients, but I've had several emails from a variety of your clients and they're all a load of rubbish as far as I'm concerned. Please let me opt out of the lot and leave my inbox alone, before I report you for spamming.

Yours annoyingly,

Neil Turner

RIP Apostolis 'Akis' Koustas

2008-02-04T13:06:59Z

Just heard that one of my friends from university, Apostolis Koustas (better known as Akis) was shot dead in Greece, while on military service. He was a fun guy and leaves behind a lot of friends here, especially amongst the bar staff of the union. He will be missed by many of us.

RIP, Akis.

Trimmit

2008-02-01T21:24:09Z

Apple's introduction of Universal Binaries - programs which can run on both PowerPC and Intel architectures - was, on the whole, a good idea: consumers didn't have to ensure they had the right version or know what type of processor their Mac had. But the big disadvantage was that this meant including compiled code for both architectures, which basically doubles the size of each application.

Enter Trimmit. Trimmit will cut your applications down to size by safely removing the architecture that isn't needed by your computer. So, if you have an Intel Mac, it'll cut out the PowerPC code, and vice versa. It will also remove various junk files and debug symbols, compress any TIFF images included in them, remove any language translations other than your own and do some general cleaning.

To give you some idea of the potential space savings, I ran it over Microsoft Messenger:mac and decreased the application size from 24.3 MB down to 11 MB. Similar savings where made with other programs.

Obviously an application like this is not without risks - some programs run integrity checks to ensure they haven't been modified and will refuse to run if they have had their guts stripped out. Others may work in strange ways. Trimmit thankfully backs up all programs that are trimmed but it's worth verifying that they work after their surgery. There's also not a lot of point running it on programs that you update frequently as you'll have to run Trimmit each time you update, potentially decreasing any space savings.

But for those stuck for hard drive space, Trimmit may offer some welcome relief.

Still not pleased with the Royal Mail

2008-01-31T11:13:32Z

I've chronicled my issues with the Royal Mail in the past, and one of those now has over 50 comments. Still, they continue to do things that annoy me.

Take yesterday for example. I'd ordered an IDE hard disk enclosure from Dabs, which was to be delivered yesterday. But it wasn't.

Instead, we got a 'Sorry, you were out' card. But we were in. The person who should have been delivering the item actually didn't have it, so he just put the card through the letterbox. No knock on the door, no ring of the bell, nothing.

While this is mildly annoying on its own - surely, a 'Sorry, your package was too big to carry' card would have at least been more accurate - this time the Royal Mail had to rub salt on the wound. You see my current house is within sight of the local Royal Mail depot, and in the past I've gone there in person to collect items (mostly out of desperation as they never answer the phone of you ring them). Going there would be a 10-minute round trip, so no big deal.

But, of course, this item isn't being held at our local depot. Oh no, that would be too simple. Instead, it's in Bingley. Bingley is 7 miles away in the Aire Valley, on the other side of Bradford city centre. So rather than hold it at the depot that is a mere few hundred yards from our house, it's at a depot that takes a good 20-30 mins to reach by car or public transport.

I've arranged for re-delivery of the item online, but it now won't come until Saturday. If, of course, they actually pay attention to the request - I'm not holding my breath. Otherwise it's going to be lengthy quest to get it.