Monthly Archives: November 2008

The Sky is the limit?

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Grrr! Rupert Murdoch you are an asshat of colossal magnitude, a douchebag (great word) of such enormous proportions that you actually have lots of smaller douchebags orbiting you.

Where do I start? Our very old Panasonic Sky Digibox died recently – you wouldn’t have considered it a difficult thing to replace, would you? Order one from Sky and the £129.99 charged elsewhere becomes £65.00 – bonza, except Sky insist on charging you an additional £65.00 for an engineer to come and install it and to “check your installation”. Even with a BSc in Information Technology Systems and with over six years experience in working with software and electronic systems, it seems that I was not qualified to unplug the old box and install a new one. I should point out that the only reason I called the guy from Sky a prick was because he undeniably and indisputably was one; his attempt to justify the need for an engineer by convincing me that faulty wiring could lead the signal quality to drop and that this in turn could cause the box to short out and explode was laughable. To add insult to injury, Sky were unable to promise me the Thomson digibox that I wanted – the Amstrad and Pace models look the same but have been widely criticized for their performance. Luckily, thedigiboxshop.com came to the rescue, they provided the exact box I wanted, at a reasonable price and delivered it promptly too.

Fast forward past the installation of the box and my struggle to get Sky to authorize my viewing card for use with the new box to last Sunday night. Survivor Series. £14.95 on Sky Box Office. I ordered the event and set my DVR to record it, as I had done every month for the last how-ever-many months, unaware that whilst the old box didn’t support Macrovision, then new one had already ratted me out to the DVR, which had subserviently stopped the recording. Cock. Despite countries like France empowering the consumer and making copy protection pretty much illegal, the UK (and Sky in particular) seemingly can’t get enough of the stuff. The only solution to this problem that Sky can offer is Sky+, but that costs a fortune and limits me to watching the programme in the same room that it was recorded in, within a week of it being recorded and within 24 hours of me starting to watch it.

Maybe the torrentors have got it figured – I should “steal” the programmes that I want to watch and dispose of my Sky subscription altogether. If only there were another way to exercise my right to view the programmes that I have paid for (insert evil laughter here).

NB: Kids, torrenting copyrighted software, music, TV and/or movies is wrong and you shouldn’t do it – doing so will leave you feeling guilty and ashamed.

You can’t see me!

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I had been getting a veritable cornucopia of spam from a particular range of IP addresses (94.102.60.150 through 153). After getting fed up with the strange, hash-like comment spam, which askimet was initially missing, I googled for the address and found this brilliant post detailing someone else’s experience of the same problem and an explanation of how to fight back; it actually also included a host of “me too” comments, as it seems this may be a case of a new spam tool being tested before full deployment!

I have now added a .htaccess file to block everything emanating from 192.102.60.* and having read this follow up post to the original explanation, plan to install the Honeypot plugin too.

You can’t see me!

Post tune: Wu-Tang Clan, Triumph, Legend of the Wu-Tang

Political Apathy (3.5)

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Not a full update, hence the point release, but still quite telling…

This Saturday a Labour party person knocked on my door for the purpose of introducing me to the Labour candidate for my constituency. He enquired about whether I consider myself a Labour party supporter (I don’t) and how I would rate my level of support for the Labour Party ranging from 1 (none) to 5 (complete devotion); my answer was 0. He continued his questions by asking one of those stupid, hypothetical “if I held a gun to your head” type questions – would I vote red or blue, if I *had* to vote tomorrow. I begrudgingly selected the Tories, but informed the Labour person that I would in fact not vote for either party. He paused, before intimating that I was one of those people “seeking an alternative”, as if to suggest that none existed. I quickly pointed out the existence of Caroline Lucas. The Labour person stood back aghast at the beast that stood before him – a hoodie with an active interest in politics. Clearly shocked by the threat that this mutant species provided to the Labour-Conservative domination of British politics, the Labour person retreated back to the pavement, stopping only to offer reassurances that an election was still a long way off. I’m still not sure who he was reassuring, him or me!?!

One year later…

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It was in the third quarter of 2007 that I made the “very brave decision” (well that’s the way everybody else describes it) to quit my job without having another job to go to (that will teach me to take advice from a fictional character!). I’ll let you in on a little secret, I really didn’t know if I’d done the right thing, hell, it wasn’t until the early part of 2008 that I knew I’d done the right thing. Nevertheless, on Thursday 8th November 2007 (I think?), my dream of freedom became a reality. I believe that it was mid afternoon that I left; I’d had my fill of writing documentation and clearly wasn’t getting anywhere near any code ever again (I’m a Software Developer) and so I decided that my time would be better spent searching for a job*.

In between responding to emails and trawling the job boards, I decided to chart the course of my adventure by way of a blog and to draw up a list of targets that I should aim to meet within the next year. My main motivation for switching jobs was the chance to be better, to achieve more and I felt I should be holding myself to this; tangible, measurable targets seemed a good way to test myself. I’m not going to share what all of my targets were, that would be telling, but suffice to say that judgement day has arrived and I have dispatched five of them (there were seven).

Paying off my student loan is number six, unfortunately my dedication to number two (maintaining my position on the graph of age vs bhp) meant that this couldn’t be achieved. Do I really need 2.5 litres of engine to propel me around Sussex? You’re damn skippy I do! And yes Chris, I am reinstating this target onto next years list (Focus RS?).

As for the blog, you’re reading it now; this website has changed so many times in the last year (and as always there are more changes ahead) but this blog has always been a part of it. Be sure to come back soon and read about my continuing battle to avoid becoming a cog – to infinity and beyond!

JoJo (unashamedly me, since 1984).

*By and large, recruitment agents are twats.