Michele Neylon :: Pensieri

Prince August Special Offer On Roman Soldier Moulds

Wed, 14 May 2008 15:50:16 -0500

When I was a lot younger I used to be a big Prince August fan.

At the time they didn't have as many moulds and models to choose from, but over the last few years their range has been expanding quite a bit.

Their latest crazy offer is the moulds for the soldiers on the left for a mere EUR2.50 during the month of May.

I think I still have all the original moulds and other bits and pieces in a box somewhere and I really should get round to digging them out.

Play With Last.fm

Wed, 14 May 2008 07:59:50 -0500

Last.fm's team have made available a couple of web applications that they put together in their spare time.

The "Playground" currently has three applications which take advantage of the huge amount of music data that last.fm aggregates.

You probably won't improve your life much with any of these little apps, but they are fun to play with.

Checking the typos of artists names can be a great way to while away the time, but you could also use the info for seo.

Of course if you wanted to manipulate the data yourself they do offer both data feeds and a full API (though there are licensing conditions to be aware of). For the top artists for users in Ireland try this XML feed

Debian (and Ubuntu) SSH / OpenSSL Security Hole

Tue, 13 May 2008 15:34:10 -0500

Earlier today both Debian and Ubuntu maintainers announced a serious security issue with both Open SSH and Open SSL.

There is, of course, a post about it on SlashDot, but if you'd rather skip the crud (ie. some of the rather inane comments) and are running a Debian (or derivative system such as Ubuntu) do a dist-upgrade as soon as you can.

If you're using SSH keys you'll need to generate fresh ones, as any keys currently "in the wild" maybe vulnerable to brute force attacks.

More Dumb Irish Spammers - itext.ie

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:17:45 -0500

Don't you just love dumb spammers?

itext.ie seem to fit neatly into that group.

Their bulk unsolicited email this afternoon checks all the boxes for spam of the worst kind.

spammy subject line - check
html email with bad use of colour - check
zero personalisation - check
no unsubscribe options - check
no explanation of why email sent - check
non-compliance with EU directives on email - check

Yes, itext.ie are real geniuses

The email looks like a viagra spam or similar to be honest, so I wonder how successful it will be

IE Domains For 21 Euro

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:20:30 -0500

Damn - two Blacknight related posts in the one morning ....

Anyhow .. .As of about half an hour ago we've dropped the price on IE domains to 21 euro.

Go to our main site to check for available domains or to transfer your existing domains.

VPS Site Update

Tue, 13 May 2008 05:39:45 -0500

We've just revamped the VPS hosting site to make the order process a bit simpler.

We know it doesn't display properly in Safari, but this will be fixed.

House Hunting Pet Hates - Price on Application

Tue, 13 May 2008 03:27:22 -0500

I'm still trawling property listings sites on a semi-daily basis and I've now got alerts setup with Daft.ie

Of course buying a house involves some basic economics. You have a buyer (me) and a seller (either a previous owner or a developer). For the seller to be able to make their money they need to be able to find a buyer who either has the money required or the ability to get their hands on it.

So why on earth would anyone list a house with the mysterious "price on application"?

If I have a budget of say 300k there is no point in me looking at a house listed at 400k.

What can possibly be gained by listing houses without guideline pricing?

Maybe I'm missing something essential and basic from the "big picture"

Irish Media Contact Directory Updated

Mon, 12 May 2008 09:51:19 -0500

I meant to mention this before the weekend, but didn't get a chance.

The Irish Media Contacts Directory 2008 edition has just been released.

The directory is split into four main sections:

Print
Broadcast
Media Services
Politics

It also includes an "experts" section which is useful if you are looking for an informed comment on something.

It would be really nice if they gave subscribers access to the data in CSV format, as that would be very useful for mailing lists etc.,

The directory retails at EUR90 and is available via the site

More James Bond Goodies

Sun, 11 May 2008 08:44:39 -0500

This year is turning out to be a bumper year for James Bond fans.

The Ian Fleming centenary has acted as a wonderful catalyst for the likes of Penguin, who are releasing a series of new covers, which are simply gorgeous.

Here's the one from Casino Royale:
It maybe new, but it's got that wonderful 60s retro feel.

The full set of books will be available at the end of May, though they haven't announced if they will be making a box set available yet.

Of course there's also the new Bond film which is set to be released on October 31st.

Earlier this year Royal Mail released a set of stamps to commemorate the centenary, while the Imperial War Museum is holding a really nice exhibition.

Of course the main thing behind Bond was the books, so you could do worse than spend some time acquiring some of the first editions. While you can get some of the first editions for as little as 30 or 40 euro there are some going under the auction hammer next Friday for prices ranging from 500 euro to ten thousand euro. More information is available on the Bloomsbury Auctions' site (you can bid via eBay)

Official Google Blogs Now Accepting Comments

Fri, 09 May 2008 14:41:24 -0500

While I've always found the official Google blogs to be good sources of information they lacked interaction as comments were disabled.

They've now changed their policy and are accepting relevant comments

From what I've been able to work out they haven't enabled comments on all their blogs as yet and Google staff don't seem to be engaging with the public. So it seems like it's a bit of a one way street. (If someone can find me evidence to the contrary I would appreciate it)

Of course not all blogs accept comments and for some people there is a very good reason why they don't. Seth Godin, for example, provides a clear explanation on his policy and it makes sense. But if you do allow comments, shouldn't you at least reply to them?

Top Gun Tshirts

Fri, 09 May 2008 09:03:55 -0500

Top Gun is not a "chef d'oeuvre', but it's great fun.
It has dated a bit since its initial release over 20 years ago, but it's still enjoyable (Yes I do have the special edition DVD and the HD DVD release.)

So how about Top Gun tshirts?

Amazon Phishing Emails - How Not To Handle Abuse

Thu, 08 May 2008 19:38:35 -0500

Either there's an upsurge in Amazon phishing emails or the phishers only got my email address recently.

I've had about half a dozen phishing emails today purporting to be from Amazon regarding my "seller" account.

To start with I don't have a seller account.

The other giveaway sign is that although the links are similar to Amazon domains, they aren't Amazon domains.

They all seem to be subdomains of by.ru, which appears to be some sort of free hosting solution based in Russia (I don't speak Russian, so I'm only making an educated guess)

Unfortunately, while Amazon do have a facility for reporting phishing emails it is clearly not aimed at the "casual" end user or anyone who is short of time. It consists of a rather convoluted series of web forms instead of a simple email address.

While the likes of Paypal, Ebay and most of the major financial institutions make it relatively easy for even a novice to report phishing emails Amazon dare to be different.

While they may be getting the reports in from honeypots etc., surely it would make more sense to facilitate end user reports?
Am I missing something?

Irish Media Confuses Terminology Again

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:53:38 -0500

The Irish media must have been really bored this morning or just looking for a big headline. I guess its all an anticlimax now that Bertie Ahern is gone and thew new cabinet are in place.

According to RTE there was a "security breach", while Morning Ireland used the term "hacker".

What were they talking about?

Was a major ecommerce site hacked?

Did private and confidential information leak into the public domain?

No. All that happened is that Damien Mulley worked out where a file was on the Data Privacy Commissioner's site before they announced it to the public.

Hardly newsworthy and hardly a "security breach".

The report itself is a totally different matter, however.

Dvds.ie Offline Temporarily

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:03:21 -0500

DVDs.ie has been taken offline, as the server simply did not have enough RAM.

I've ordered extra RAM and will put the site back online once I have the RAM installed.

For the past 48 hours the site has been slow, while the server itself has been nearly always inaccessible via ssh, due to MySQL eating cpu and ram. It seems like the GoogleBot started crawling and "upset" the backend, which is more than a bit silly.

Ah well.. I needed to get more RAM for that server anyway

Sunday Business Post Coverage

Tue, 06 May 2008 09:59:37 -0500

While I was away over the last few days in London that does not mean that I was either out of "the loop" or that emails didn't stop arriving!

This weekend's Computers in Business supplement with the Sunday Business Post contains three mentions of us:

My monthly column
The annual hosting report
The wiki infamy thing was picked up by them and is on the inside back page, even if they got the cartoon character wrong