Being there (private)
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Archive for March 2008
Week to 30 March 2008
- Pop music, Estelle / Kayne West and Duffy remain number 1, James Blunt's a … plus good news for Leona Lewis, and bad tidings for Bill Kaulitz.
- TV and radio, AM, FM, all that jazz.
- News of the week, Yeeeeeeees.
- Weather this week cold and showery.
When we were wolfs (private)
A rather fun week-end away, including a long description of a long game.
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Those large upsets in full
How we calculate upset figures for unranked sides, plus a review of the recent friendlies.
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow (private)
Relationship matters, the Severn Bore, dance, YADIS, and a letter from Dave of Feltham.
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Week to 16 March
- Pop music, Duffy and Duffy are this week's number 1, Panic at the Disco don't, Elbow and Hard-Fi do well, so do MGMT. We discuss the careers of the four most successful chart acts of the century, and find that we've seen this week's top five before, and will again in a month.
- TV and radio, Unexpected praise for Barney Harwood and the Daily Hell.
- News of the week, Spanish election results, Goldsmith's Lesser Folly, the end of the Six Nations for this year.
- Weather this week windy and wet, and cold to come.
Not blown away (private)
Surviving the big blowy windstorms of March 2008, going to see Barry Cryer and Colin Sell, and more.
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Poutine, or not Poutine
On 2 December, SUP announced the first Fifty And Fifty Day Plan for its new acquisition, Livejournal. In the interests of fairness, justice, intellectual honesty, and other even-handed concepts that are completely alien to the ruling cliques in Russia, we have refrained from commenting until the 100 days expired.
The 100 days expired to-day, 11 March. This is our view of progress against the targets SUP set itself, against the Five Tests we proposed for Livejournal in June 2005, and the Implicit Zeroth Test we made explicit six months later.
We are of the opinion that SUP is so closely linked to the Poutine regime as to be an integral part of it. SUP had a chance to demonstrate its commitment to freedom of speech by standing up for democracy in Russia, by publicly distancing itself from the policies of Mr. Poutine and his hand-picked successor. It failed to take that opportunity, and we work on the presumption that this was deliberate inaction.
Our conscience does not permit us to support SUP's policies of censorship, intimidation, bullying, and deceit. We do not support the execution of those policies, and we do not wish to fund them in any way, nor do we wish to encourage other people to fund them. SUP's aims are clearly at odds to the values we hold, and at odds to the subset of values that we hold as non-negotiable.
The status quo shall apply.
We are unable to resume posts to Livejournal so long as Livejournal's owners are in breach of the Social Contract, and so long as those owners are imposing conditions of censorship. This includes direct comments to posts on SUP-owned servers. We do expect to continue to send emails, where this is possible, and where we deem this appropriate.
We will continue to permit the Tiny version of this site's RSS feed to be syndicated on Livejournal, out of respect for the readers. Any interference with this syndication - including its censorship, or the introduction of commercials into the feed - will result in its immediate and permanent cessation.
We will continue to authenticate through our existing account so that we might read secure posts. We encourage those contributors who post securely to explore alternative methods, and we hope to lead by example.
We have recently established a Trusted blog, held on our own server space, which will contain those matters we do not wish to expose to the entire public.
Set up
The FA Cup continues, nine goals at Stuttgart, and Lyon-Bordeaux gives a winner. Plus the Rest of Europe tables.
Week to 9 March 2008
- Pop music, Duffy and Duffy are this week's number 1, Westlife and Alphabeat go up, and We Are Scientists.
- TV and radio,
Skins
hits the mark, not much else does. - News of the week, Gaza's stripped, Paisley's out, the Spanish election is over, but there's one in Serbia, and shocks in the FA Cup.
- Weather this week cool, with some wind to come.
A rather large catch-up post (private)
It's a rather large catch-up post. Hence the name. Covering A Song for Europe
, Schwartz, dance class, and plans for the next few months.
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Week to 2 March 2008
- Pop music, Duffy and That Whingebag are this week's number 1, we think about the recent spate of very fast climbers, and are interested in what's missing from the top 10.
- TV and radio,
Skins
gets better, Terminator gets terminated, Fantasy, Paddington Bear, the News Quiz, and the earthquake: not earth shattering. - News of the week, elections in Cyprus, Hamburg, Italy, good news in Kenya and Human Rights, and whatever happened to plastic bags?
- Weather this week mostly dry, windy week-end.
Slightly more substantive, but still tending towards test, post (private)
Four jobs and four places from the past.
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Do it yourself
There's an adage in these parts: if you want a job done properly, do it yourself. Indeed, if you want a job to be done and remain done, do it yourself.
Observing these points, new entries in the private blog will therefore be moving to Ice Crystals, where they will mingle with notifications of posts here. All are welcome.
Comments policy
The majority of posts here are pointers to other work we've done on other sites, which have their own comments facilities. In order to centralise discussion, comments on these pointers are disabled.
From time to time, we do publish new thought on this site, or prefer to use the comments facility here. In these cases, please remember that you are commenting as guests in our private space. We reserve the right to delete posts for reasons of offence, defamation, provocation, imbecility, blatant irrelevance, or otherwise at our sole discretion.
In order to post, commenters are required to provide a working email address. The address you provide is only visible to the blog administrator, who will not disclose it to anyone under any circumstances. The IP address from which you're posting will also be recorded.
We do not encourage the use of second identities, though we accept there may be circumstances where the poster deems this necessary. We shall treat these cases on their merits, should they arise.
We currently use Akismet, a plug-in that claims to trap spam comments. It is prone to incorrectly identifying spam, particularly where commenters include URIs. In any event, comments containing two or more URIs will be held for moderation.
Revision history: 25 March 2008 (adding spam paragraph); 1 March 2008 (original post).
Private sub-blog
If you wish to read the private sub-blog, you need to do three things:
1) Register
2) Comment
2½) Wait
3) Read
Registration is required because this is a private sub-blog, one that contains information we might not wish to show to mother. You need to authenticate yourself somehow, and this is our chosen how. Here's the registration page.
The registration information required is minimal: a username (which you won't be able to change) and an email address (which you can). The server will send an email confirming your username and giving you a password. Entering this information in the logon screen will take you to the account page, where you can change your password, give other information, and so on and so forth.
You'll also have the opportunity to say "Remember me", which will set a small cookie so you don't have to enter your password every blimmin' time. Alternatively, the "Private posts" link top-right will take you to the logon screen, and then to the private posts.
You will need to provide a working email address in order to receive the password. The address you provide will only be visible to the blog administrator, and we won't disclose it to anyone under any circumstances.
Strictly speaking, commenting on this post is not required. However, we've set things so that commenters must be registered, and their first comment will only be posted on our approval. Putting a comment to this post (perhaps explaining who you are and how you know us) will allow us to overcome this small hurdle for all time. If you prefer not to comment, there will be another wait when you do reply to something.
It's then necessary to wait. When you register, the server will send an email to us. When you comment, the server will send another email to us. Once we've recovered from the flood of emails, we'll confirm your comment, and turn your user from a regular Subscriber to a Friend. We'll generally be doing this in the early evening UK time.
(For those who know Wordpress: Subscribers can read posts, and comment upon them. Friends are a new group we've created through the Role Manager add-on, they have access to the Private posts we make.)
The final step is to read what we write, and comment on it. We're not going to tell you how to do that.
If you only want to see the private posts, they are all in a hidden category "Private". The URL is http://ccgi.daweaver.free-online.co.uk/category/private
We are not aware of Wordpress supporting an authentication method that would enable us to supply an RSS feed of this category, so we will continue to publish brief notifications in the main site feed. Those who are still using Livejournal will find the feed at ![[info]](http://code.sixapart.com/trac/livejournal/browser/trunk/htdocs/img/syndicated.gif?rev=3264&format=raw){kind=small}
tsitsoss_rss
Last revision: 1 March 2008 (original)