clivemurray.com

…long live Twitme.

I used to use Twitter Tools to notify Twitter when I posted to this here blog, but it just packed in working one day. I fiddled with it, uninstalled and reinstalled, and next time I posted it worked. This week it packed in again. So fuck it. From reading forum posts and FAQs I’m sure it works fine for the developer, and for x other people, but that just doesn’t wash when you’re one of the people for whom the product fails, so bugger it.

Twitme to the rescue – if you’re having similar problems with Twitter Tools, you can find Twitme in the WordPress plugins search page, though be sure to uninstall TT first if you’re going to switch – they don’t play together.

And if you’re using TT and it’s working fine, great! Stick with it! For me, it broke, so I replaced it. YMMV.

–c.

EDIT: Scratch that, Twitme didn’t work either. Does anyone know of a reliable Blog->Twitter WordPress plugin, or am I just running up against Twitter’s innate flakiness here?

I fairly recently started using Posterous (google it yourself if you’re interested) as a handy way of posting things to this here blog of mine.

Also recently, on two occasions now, visitors to this site have reported to me that they are getting Malware warnings in Safari or Chrome, warning that this site is infected with some kind of virus or trojan or something.

The code in question seems to be a little iframe loading up from some random IP address that I’ve never heard of. A quick google reveals that I’m not the only one having this problem.

So – OK, I understand the problem, but how the hell did that iframe get into my code? Since it ended up in a post auto generated by Posterous, I can only point the finger at what is unfortunately an otherwise excellent service.

I shall not be using Posterous again, so let’s see what happens. Please report any Malware reports or warnings you get while visiting this site, and if it happens again I will continue investigating.

Thanks to those who pointed it out this time, and apologies if any harm was caused.

–c.

If you spend all day on the internet like I do (working, dammit!) then you may well have seen this already as it’s been around almost everywhere, and that’s normally enough to keep me from posting a “hey wow look at this!!!” link, but in this case it very much bears repeating.

Anyone who’s spent any time clicking randomly around YouTube will know that people are wont to post videos showing off their musical skills, be it their latest band video, the fact that they can play Pachelbel’s Canon really well, or just singing a few warbley notes in that horrid R&B “hunt-a-note” style that still seems so popular. (Mariah Carey has a lot to answer for…)

Imagine, then, that someone took the painstaking time to hunt down loads of videos on YouTube, and remix them into new coherent – and viable – musical entities. Brand new songs, composed of unrelated pieces of music, played across the globe by people who never met.

Imagine that this person cut together not one, but seven of these songs, and that they all work beautifully.

Imagine no longer. I stop talkee, you clickee watchee. It’s called THRU YOU, and it rocks my socks. (That link goes to track 3, which is my favourite, but you should really take the time to check them all out.)

–c.

Anyone who works in IT in this country, and probably most of those who work in development, will know The Register even if they aren’t regular readers. It’s the premier UK-based tech news site, and it covers everything from new bleeding edge hardware to trends on the web, to whether Bill Gates or Steve Jobs have had a crap that day. It’s a well respected, often well written site, and I myself often post links to the Register when trying to prove or back up a point about some tech-related discussion.

But.

I absolutely fucking detest its tone of voice sometimes. Just as I can’t stand the idea in some agencies that the techies and the designers don’t mix, or that Mac users and PC users should stay out of each other’s way, or any of the other ridiculous stereotypical nonsense that can easily spring up in technical communities, I hate the sneering way that The Register looks down on certain things with a kind of knowing, pally ridicule which implies that everyone reading agrees with them.

Examples? It’s in the lexicon. Twitter is referred to as a “Web2.0rhea outfit“. Second Life is referred to as “Sadville“. The iPhone is the “Jesus Phone“. There are others. In one article the site TechCrunch was referred to as “the Special Olympics of Web2.0″.

It just winds me up – it’s lazy journalism. It’s not just giving me the news, it’s spinning it before it gets to me. As it happens, I have an iPhone and I use Twitter (though not Second Life) but it’s not just about feeling wounded – give me more credit than that.

I just like to make my own mind up, that’s all.
–c.

There’s a Hillary Clinton one as well.

The Clinton ones are all negative, and the Obama ones are all positive.

Oh… I just tried John McCain too, and that one’s a dead end, though it does at least exist. It seems Mike Huckabee is not your new bicycle.

Anyway… Owen Wilson borrowed your lawn mower.
–c.

Apparently Barack Obama is your new bicycle.

That’s all very well, but Fidel Castro is fluent in the language of love.

You heard it here first.
–c.

The list you’ve been waiting for all this time, broken down the way it should be.

–c.

Great article by Charlie Stross about thirty years of… um… progress?

–c.