Category: Blogging

I’ll never insult the German people again

~ Inquisitor

I just downloaded the full install of XP SP2 at 4.7MB/second. MB, not Mb. MB. It actually took IE longer to do its stupid “copying from C:\temp to D:\” thing than it did to download the file. I didn’t think you could get an Internet connection that fast in the real world… Firefox took seconds to download, too.

Yes, I’m in Germany. Not for the World Cup (that would have been a disincentive normally), but on a student exchange programme that Shall Not Be Named. I’ve been going around the country for a while and haven’t had an Internet connection, but now I’ve settled down and registered for in-room Internet, and the connection is fast, fast, fast. So expect Deutsche-Blogging from now onwards for a few months.

I’m in the East in a small, pretty (apart from where the DDR got a hold of it) university town. The weather is hot and bright, and yet not too disincentivising. It’s a beautiful country, too. And electronics prices here are surprisingly low – I just bought a 512MB SD card for €16.99 (£11.76) from the German equivalent of Comet, K&B, which as far as I can see only eBuyer type places can beat in the UK. And wouldn’t you rather buy from a shop than eBuyer? I know I would.

It’s going to be an interesting few months, that’s for sure. In the meantime, however, I’m going to go off to my local large screen, drink beer (obviously, this is Germany) and watch Germany-Italy with my fellow trainees. Speak to you later.

This blog is experiencing turbulence

~ Inquisitor

I'm testing out each of the themes that I can put all-new custom headers on. This one is not it, so there will be a bit of faffing around with look and feel until I find one I'm happy with. This may well be the look and feel I had at the beginning of the day, so watch out…

Edit: Problem solved. Now using the Contempt theme and a nice new header. Back to blogging about something…

Dear wordpress.com…

~ Inquisitor

Don't suppose you could block the Ukrainian hacked box at [195.225.177.81] that has been putting 20 spam comments a day on my blog for a while? Sure, all the drug-and-links-pages adverts have been going into akismet anyway, but it's obvious there's nothing but bad stuff coming from there and it would probably be worth blitzing.

May I suggest IP banning for the next round of upgrades? Just a thought.

Yes, I have changed my theme again!

~ Inquisitor

Emire has been changed to show the titles of my articles in a particularly ugly way, so I've gone to a quite nice one (Connections) for the time being.

Note the wonderful new WordPress.com feature, a CUSTOM HEADER! What do you think?

Thank you WordPress!

~ Inquisitor

New themes – and one of them’s actually stylish. I have now switched to Emire 1.0 for, hopefully, the forseeable future (unless they add K2 or a K2 clone.)

Somehow…

~ Inquisitor

I managed 127 hits yesterday (Saturday). Thank you all.

And, of course, Lordi (the Finnish monster-metal band, singing a song called "Hard Rock Hallelujah") managed to win the Eurovision Song Contest by the simple tactic of having the most tuneful and most impressively performed and choreographed song. Wish I'd put a bet on it – agnetha on the DVD Forums is boasting she'd won £170.

Why can't we do that? My own personal thoughts: if Robbie Williams, a consumnate entertainer and fantastic live performer, was to enter he'd walk it. Instead, we enter Daz Sampson, and we end up 18th. Just a small consideration.

Change in comments policy

~ Inquisitor

Since I'm seeing people double-posting because of the moderation lock, and so that I don't have to delete them in the comment queue, I have disabled pre-comment moderation for first posters for the time being.

Spamming will be deleted; anything that hits Akismet, hits the WordPress word list or has more than two hyperlinks in it will be held in the comment queue for moderation. If I get more spam, pre-comment moderation for first posters goes back on.

Hopefully, that won't be necessary! 

Blog housekeeping

~ Inquisitor

I've signed up for del.icio.us and so now you'll see some of my favourite more, um, random web favourites on the left hand bar. I've also added the WordPress hit counter and a Recent Comments indicator.

I thought of changing the theme, but this is still the best one; although if wordpress.com update some of the ones they have, the look of this blog could change soon. In the meantime, enjoy the already linked peregrine cam.