Motorcycles

Props to Herts County Council

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I’m quite impressed with Herts Council. There’s a well-used roundabout near me that needs resurfacing, the road surface has deteriorated a lot, and is now quite dodgy for motorcycles – you have to pick your way around the holes. If you go off your line and clip one of the holes, some of them would be enough to cause loss of control, or at least a scare.

I reported it to the council using their online reporting facility on 21/02/2006, and noticed one morning this week that a sign has been put up advising of roadworks starting soon.

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Information Security

WordPress 2.1.1 considered dangerous, upgrade now!

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Uh-oh. According to this security announcement from WordPress, a server hosting WordPress downloads was recently compromised, and a cracker modified the 2.1.1 download, adding code in wp-includes/theme.php and/or wp-includes/feed.php.

The announcement states:

It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file. We have locked down that server for further forensics, but at this time it appears that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched by the attack. They modified two files in WP to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution.

This is the kind of thing you pray never happens, but it did and now we’re dealing with it as best we can. Although not all downloads of 2.1.1 were affected, we’re declaring the entire version dangerous and have released a new version 2.1.2 that includes minor updates and entirely verified files. We are also taking lots of measures to ensure something like this can’t happen again, not the least of which is minutely external verification of the download package so we’ll know immediately if something goes wrong for any reason.

If you downloaded 2.1.1 in the last few days, you may have a compromised version. However, for safety, even if you downloaded it before then, it’s probably worth upgrading anyway. Get 2.1.2 from the WordPress download page, then follow the upgrade instructions.

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Uncategorized

Doesn’t The Social Web Realize that People Talk?

Trevor Baca asks: Doesn’t The Social Web Realize that People Talk?

From the linked page:

In the course of putting together the presentation I asked myself why much of the 2.0 hoopla isn’t about voice.

We’re telecom innovators. We think about people and communications and technology a lot. And we look at Myspace and can’t help but wonder how all that happened without us. Put another way, just how did social computing get so social without voice?

First, let’s check the observation. Tens of millions of messages, perhaps, pass through Myspace daily. Those messages are text, images, or both. But not voice. And yet voice seems so obvious. Friend online? Click here to ring both your phones. But no.

On flickr we find photos from everywhere in the world. And looking at everybody’s stuff even turns out to be fun and engaging. And we can see exactly who took what, and why. But click here to ring the photographer’s phone? Again, no. No voice.

Perhap’s it’s because voice communications are too real-time – you immediately demand the other party’s immediate and full attention.

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Wibbles

Are all drivers selfish ignorant idiots?

Okay, my first rant post for my new blog :)

Maybe not quite all, but the majority of drivers out there seem to be inconsiderate idiots who care about nobody but themselves.

I ride to and from work in London on my motorbike, and I’ve lost count of the number of times people randomly change lanes without even looking.

Tonight on the way home, I came across a broken down car – a girl, on her own, in the right-hand lane at a set of traffic lights, with a broken clutch cable.  All the other drivers were squeezing past, some even beeping horns and looking generally annoyed, but not one of them bothered to actually see if they could help.  Even when helping push her car across the road into a side-turning where it was safe, people weren’t leaving room, just endlessly trying to fight their way through.

I know London traffic is horrible and we all want to get home as quickly as possible, but c’mon, surely a tiny little bit of common decency isn’t that hard?

Uncategorized

Welcome to my blog

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OK, I’ve been considering blogging properly for a while, and sod it, I’m actually going to give it a go.

I had a very basic custom “blog” facility on my main website, but I managed a post about once every 6 months (if that).  I briefly considered writing my own blogging system in Perl, then I came to my senses and realised that wheel has been re-invented way, way too many times already.

Besides, we may be using WordPress at work soon, so becoming familiar with it would be pretty useful for me.

Right, now it’s time to set WordPress up just how I want it, and figure out how to add my “shared items” feed from the excellent Google Reader to the sidebar, and a blogroll of links to friends blogs.

David Precious – professional Perl developer, motorcyclist and beer drinker