This And That

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It’s been a while…

I see that Amazon UK have started their DVD Rental scheme (like Netflix et al) [Link in top left corner of the page]. I also received an offer from WH Smith with a similar scheme. The WHSmith’s offer seems a little better if you watch a lot of movies. £13.99 per month for unlimited quantity, three at a time. Whereas Amazon’s offer is £9.99 per month but a maximum of 6 per month, three at a time. Other deals are Amazon £7.99 per month, four per month, two at a time, and WHSmith £9.99 unlimited, one at a time. Both offer free postage both ways; WHSmith says first class both ways, Amazon doesn’t specify. For my viewing pattterns, neither of them represent good value! I seem to watch less than one movie a month. But then if I has something as convenient as this, I would probably watch more. I’m sure Jan and Jamie would.

I’m pleased to report that Kitten’s Spaminator is handling about 90% of my comment spam (up to 300 a day). A rename of wp-comment-post.php has eliminated a couple of brain dead script kiddies. WordPress’ own spam blocking comment moderation currently catches 99% of the rest, but I have to manually moderate those. I just need to eliminate the rest of those. I’ll investigate some more of the WordPress Plugins to stop the spammers.

I’m this close to implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I’m thoroughly convinced, I just need to get over the hump of that initial process. Actually I have started and managed to throw away two bin bags full of old paperwork and magazines.

Gmail continues to impress me. I use it everyday and it is currently my main email system. Though now that Thunderbird has reached 1.0, I’ve installed that and I’m testing it too. I need to be careful though: I have (almost) all my email either redirected or copied to my Gmail account. But I can still pickup up some of it via POP3 with Thunderbird. I don’t think I want to then have Thunderbird also retrieve some of the same mail from Gmail via POP3 (now that is supported). I guess I really want an IMAP interface to GMail (I think it will come eventually) with Thunderbird as another way to access that and acting as a local backup by making an offline copy.

Firefox 1.0

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Firefox 1.0 is now released!

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – November 9, 2004 – The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced the worldwide availability of the Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser.

See press release for more.
Download it from Mozilla’s homepage. Full details are available on the Firefox homepage.
I’m using it now and it’s great. There were couple of annoying issues with the last pre release version but they are now fixed.

I may back it out later as a couple of extensions I use haven’t yet been updated. But then I’m not doing anything that requires them at this moment.

Update: In the end I didn’t back this version out, and by the end of the day had updated my extensions to 1.0 compatible versions. Verdict: Get it now you won’t regret it.

More Gmail Updates

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Although it is not yet mentioned on the ‘New features’ page, Google have added a ‘report phishing’ link to gmail. It’s under the more options link when viewing an email.
I forgot to mention a while ago that they started marking emails with from addresses at gmail.com, but which were not sent through gmail with the following.

Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information.

And then they don’t make all the links in the email clickable anyway!
Unfortunately, this one is applied too rigorously for me, or at least the rules are too simple minded. For exampe, anything on a mailing list from someone with a gmail account gets flagged thus.

Legendary radio DJ John Peel dies

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Yesterday, John Peel – longest serving Radio 1 DJ and musical hero of mine – died suddenly in Peru. The BBC have several stories:

He had a huge impact on my musical tastes, introducing me to a diverse range of music. A range which I still continue to enjoy today.
Back when I used to listen to his show religiously, I was in the fortunate position of being able to help, in my own small way, promote some of the bands he championed. I worked in a record shop in the late 70’s early 80’s, and used to try to stock anything that Peel played that I liked.
I went on to get involved in working with new and independent bands firstly on stage and promoting shows, and later in studios, and working with video and early computers!

His loss to the world of music his huge. But my deepest sympathy goes out to his wife and children.