Joe's Jottings

Category: Technology

Technology based posts

Twitter hacked – not the end of the world, no surprise, and a badge of honour.

There’s a scene in the movie ‘Blazing Saddles’ where the Waco Kid, being asked why he’s ended up in prison for drunkenness, bewails the fact that when he was the well known gun-slinger everyone wanted to try and get him, so they could be the new number one. He tells how he eventually hung up his guns when he heard a voice yelling ‘Draw’, turned around to fight, and nearly shot a 5 year old child.

He turns his back on the little brat, who then shoots the Waco Kid in the ass…..

Life in the online world gets like that, too.

Apparently Twitter was hacked last night by an outfit called the Iranian Cyber Army. The story broke on the Mashable web site – I have to say that were I not receiving Tweets from Mashable I wouldn’t have known, as I’ve been getting (I think) Tweeted over the period of the hack and I can quite happily see their home page. The fact that this is now being reported as a DNS based attack means that it wasn’t so much Twitter that was walloped as that traffic to Twitter was diverted elsewhere for a while …

Anyway, let’s face it – this is a slap in the face to Twitter (indirectly) but isn’t the end of the world. At least some of us – if not most of us who’re not using the DNS system that was compromised – are still Tweeting and the world will not slide to DEFCON1 because the global inanity stream was temporarily interrupted for the Digerati.

But, assuming these chaps ARE who they claim to be – a group with Iranian sympathies – we shouldn’t be surprised. A campaign was organised through Twitter earlier this year to protest about the clamp down on civil rights in Iran. This attack may be regarded by the originators as ‘payback’ and goes to show that in Cyberspace, as in the real world, ‘people power’ is not a one way street. The big boys do sometimes have their day of successful protest as well. Governments can quite easily learn the fine arts of online civil disobedience, and do it with greater ease than the folks running the protest.

When people use a site as a base or launching ground for civil disobedience, campaigning or protest then it will become a target for those who object to the issues being promoted. That kickback may come in the form of debate, negative campaigning against the site, abuse of people on the site, legal efforts to remove or silence the site, or, as here, technical efforts to remove the site. Which means that more and more sites used by people to organise campaigns will either have to become ‘hardened’ to protect against attack or stop carrying legitimate material that someone, somewhere, is pissed enough about to want it removed.

We may be heading in to a period of ‘big boy’s rules’ in cyberspace where sites that permit the exposition of people power are simply taken down by this sort of online activity. But if that happens to your favourite site, and the cause is just, don’t be sad; regard it as a badge of honour that your activities have upset someone enough to want to take you down.

Remember the words of Winston Churchill ‘ ‘You have enemies; that’s good – it means that you have stood up for something sometime in your life’.

December 18, 2009
Iframes in phpBB

I am currently tinkering with a phpBB3 installation for a forum I ran until the summer of this year – Coffeehouse Chat. I shut the site down in the summer, but am now contemplating opening it up again. However, I want to try a few new things out on the site, including some ’embedded content’ where I include content generated elsewhere on my site in forum posts and pages.

The easiest way to do this seemed to me to be use the HTML IFRAME tag, but I wanted to do this within the context of Forum posts, and didn’t want to get in to having to create separate template pages for these special pages within Forum threads. I therefore decided to use BBCode tags and use those to code IFRAME tags.

There are always warnings about implementing any form of BBCode that can in principle allow a user to put code from another site dircetly in to your page – and quite rightly so. However, I felt reasonably comfortable about the approach I was going to take, as rather than make available a ‘generic’ BBCode version of an IFRAME tag, I was going to create a series of BBCodes that would only insert an IFRAME tag with a pre-specified URL and other attributes in to the page.

The approach was as follows:

Install the code that I wanted to run in the IFRAME within a sub-directory on my web server.

Tweak that code so as to run within a window that would fit comfortably within the space available for a conventional phpBB forum post.

Within the phpBB administration screen, create a new BBCode to generate an IFRAME specific to the application in the sub-directory. For example:

Here I decided that to add my game of ‘Battleships’ to a page I would simply create a BBCode tag called [battleships].

Write the corresponding HTML code that will be inserted in the page when the phpBB is encountered. In this case, it’s as follows:

Because the URL is pre-set to a location within my own site, there is no problem if users of the Forum choose to use the BBCode on their own posts within the Forum.

The BBCode command can thus be placed on any page and brings in content generated from the predefined URL. I’ve used this approach to embed some Javascript applications in Forum posts, and it works very well as a means of delivering customised content within posts.

December 17, 2009
The Dr Johnson License….

I appreciate that this is likely to be one of those posts that will annoy some folks, but, here we go. A couple of days ago I was invited by two or three separate people to join Facebook Groups and sign petitions against the UK Digital Economy Bill. Now, I believe that we need a Digital Economy Bill like I need a hole in the head; what we actually need is less red tape and a more hands off approach from Central Government to let entrepreneurs get on with the job without requiring a chit from a bureaucrat to go to the toilet. However, I didn’t sign any petitions or join any groups; why? Because the total pre-occupation of everyone was whether it’s right to have a legal structure in which it’s possible to remove or restrict someone’s Internet access if they’re guilty of or accused of sharing copyright materials.

There are some truly stinky parts of that bill, like there are with most pieces of New Labour legislation – but I want to look today at the filesharing issue in a wider sense.

Let’s start with the ‘The Internet is an essential part of modern life and it shouldn’t be possible to be cut off from it.’ argument. Bollocks. Water is essential. A roof over your head is essential. Electricity and Power are pretty important. And yet you can lose all of these by simply not paying your mortgage and utility bills, ultimately resulting in being thrown out of your house and living in a cardboard box. If that’s possible, why on Earth does anyone living in the real world and not in Second Life think that your Internet connection should have some sort of God-given right of protection? And as for essential – quite a few people manage quite happily without an Internet connection, thank you very much.

In the context of this argument, what the Internet HAS done for some people is to allow them to access, free of charge, a large tranche of media that they would have had to borrow off of their friends 20 years ago. The actually physical act of borrowing and copying probably restricted copying in that few people had the brass neck (or stamina) to borrow 20 CDs from a friend and copy them in one sitting, for example. The Internet is, no doubt, an essential tool for people in ripping off media. I’ve heard most of the arguments, and there are some good points on both sides of the debate. Rather than re-hash the usual debates, here are a few observations to provide food for thought for anyone approaching this argument with an open mind.

We have a number of open licenses like Creative Commons, Open Source, etc. Why shouldn’t it be possible, therefore, for a creator of software, film or music put their material out through a proprietary license that requires payment to use the material? After all, I am restricted with what I can do within the GNU licence, for example; I have to allow other people to copy the material – it’s part of the GNU licence and I am more than happy to play along with that. If you want to have a recording of a film, then you should surely, by the same logic, abide by the license of that film. Typically pay money and don’t copy it. No one is forcing you to adopt that license – you have the choice not to buy the DVD. Similarly with Open Source; if I don’t want to pass on my source code to other people, I choose to write my own code and not use the GNU license. I can see no difference.

I’d be interested to know how many people who regularly engage in file sharing of copyrighted materials have ever created something non-trivial and original and have tried to sell it. I may be wrong but a quick poll of folks I know (outside the professional digerati) would indicate that the answer is ‘not many’. Perhaps to have experienced running a small business that deals with created works like software, or publishing a book, etc. might change people’s attitudes a little. Same argument as above; if I wish to place material I create in the public domain or under GNU or CC, then it’s my right to do so, and your right as consumers of media to take advantage of my action. If, on the other hand, I choose to publish under what I might start calling the Dr Johnson License (‘Only a fool writes and doesn’t get paid for it!’) then you have a right to not purchase what I produce, and I have the risk of not seeing my works go out in to the world. If you make an illegal copy of my work, then I have a right to pursue you to make you abide by my Dr Johnson License – just as the creators of software licensed under the GNU license can pursue someone who breaches that license under the law.

I’ve heard the argument of ‘try before buy’ and it’s a good one. Which is why I have a Spotify account – legal music downloading, free of charge, some advertising, no actual physical ownership of the music outside the service even if I pay a monthly fee (which removes the ads). I have to say that I find the latter a pain in the rear – there are some advantages to having physical ownership of the files – but then again, it’s THEIR license and I choose to go with them or not. It’s an imperfect system. If you download stuff on a ‘try before buying’ basis, then perhaps the case could be made to allow you to download any piece of media with a built in duration, that renders the media unplayable after, say, 30 days unless you buy it – the act of purchase then generates an unlock code. The argument has been expressed that downloaders tend to be purchasers of music – again, I’m yet to be convinced. Anecdotal evidence from people I know would suggest that whilst they may purchase material, the value of that that they download illegally vastly exceeds that which they purchase.

To all the freetards, can you explain why wrong for me to put the material I’ve created out in to the world, want to be paid for it, and take action when I’m not? I am exercising my personal, creative freedom to want to be paid for my work. If my view of my own value is wrong, don’t pay me – but don’t copy either.

December 8, 2009
Playing the game of War

One of my ‘guilty secret’ films is the 1982 John Badham movie ‘War Games’, in which a teenager inadvertently starts the countdown to World War 3 by hacking in to a military computer system. He thinks he’s playing war games, but the computer thinks that it’s the real thing and starts counting down to a real missile launch. At the end of the film, the youth and the computer’s inventor manage to convince the machine to stop it’s attempts to launch the missiles by telling it to try out various game scenarios in which the result is always the same – mutual destruction. The computer, smarter than most politicians, remarks that nuclear war is an interesting game; the only way to win is not to play.

Shame General Jack D Ripper didn’t get the message….(left)

I was reminded of this film the other morning when I read on the BBC’s web site that a couple of Swiss human rights groups have published a paper in which they protest that it’s possible to commit war crimes in many modern computer games. Now, the fact that this is deemed newsworthy in a world in which war crimes of varying magnitudes are committed every day of the year is quite depressing of itself; perhaps these chaps need to look up from playing ‘Call of Duty’ and see what’s happening and what has happened in the last 15 years in the world – not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but closer to ome in Sarajevo and Kossovo. Seriously, the fact that games are discussed in this context brings little credit to academia and belittles the true war crimes that go on. Does this mean we should re-visit films like ‘Platoon’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’? Should we ban ‘Star Wars’ with it’s depiction of whole planets being zapped out of existence? Do we purge episodes of Star Trek and Stargate from our collective media experience because of their story lines?

There is little evidence to suggest that playing these military oriented games desensitizes young men; many Western soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will have played games like these and are still traumatised by what they see. War crimes have been a feature of warfare from days immemorial; we can go back to places like Lidic and Malmedy in World War 2, the use of gas warfare in Iraq in the 1920s to subdue local guerillas, etc.

The academics comment that the games ‘permit’ war crimes to be carried out in the game scenarios; I wonder if they’re suggesting that the games should somehow prevent this. Some games do have game play that ‘punishes’ such activities in terms of the chance of ‘winning’ n the game, but are the academics suggesting that the games actually forbid activities that are war crimes in the real world? I hope not….and here’s why.

The gamers have free will within the context of what the game allows them to do. They will almost certainly behave in a way that they wouldn’t behave in real life, and I do think that most people playing ‘Call of Duty’ will realise that there is a difference between Xbox mediate pixel slaughter and real world combat. If the activists are suggesting that the ability to commit a war crime in game is more likely to encourage people to do the same thing outside of the game, then there are two options; some sort of modification to the game play that punishes such activities in the game by a modification of the game scenario, or some sort of total block that restricts the course of action of a player in these scenarios. Now, if the academics believe that gamers might suffer from blurred reality when they commit a game based war crime, logically they must also believe that that other game events also might affect their view of reality.

So….where the game scenario is loaded against war crimes, a player may take the decision that they can do it anyway and live with the game consequences. There is no moral judgement here by the player; they’re operating purely within the game mechanics and dealing with the consequences of their activities in a game theory scenario rather than the more complex world of free will and morality. By the academic logic, the gamer would behave in a similar way in real life, ignoring the morality of the decision in favour of some vague ‘live with the consequences’.

The second scenario is even worse – by the logic of the academics it would appear that a gamer attempting a real world war crime will be somehow prevented from doing so by a kind of ‘deus ex machina’. That hand of God? Friendly aliens? Just in time intervention from a superior officer? Who knows….

Whether folks like it or not, a game is a game is a game. Whilst I find some game scenarios morally repugnant, if you accept that the lack of controls in war games to stop people doing certain acts may encourage them to do those acts in real life, you also have to accept that the ability to do any action in a game will encourage that act in real life. The result, therefore, should be to ban everything with the exception of ping-pong. If you don’t accept this, then you need to leave well alone and accept that freedom of will in the game world reflects freedom of will in the real world, and that what truly matters is the character and moral compass of people.

November 26, 2009
WPMU Installation to support sub-domain blogs
I’m currently renovating a site of mine – Coffeehouse Chat – with a possible view to re-opening the Forum side of it with new and improved features – including better integration with Social Media and User Blog hosting on the site. And there was the issue – I wanted to install WordPress-MU – the multi-user edition of WordPress – in such a ways so as to support user blogs in sub-domains on the main site domain – e.g. something like joesblog.blogs.coffeehousechat.co.uk

This is a two stage process that is outlined in the documentation. the first part is the setting of Wildcards in the DNS settings for the server, and the second part is installing a .htaccess file that actually handles the processing of the redirected incoming requests.

Installing the .htaccess file is nice and easy. the file is below – it comes with WordPress-MU named as htaccess.dist – simply put it in the directory containing the WordPress sofwtare and rename it to .htaccess.
```
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase BASE/

#uploaded files
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?files/$ index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*wp-content/plugins.*
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?files/(.*) wp-content/blogs.php?file=$2 [L]

# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*/wp-admin$
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ $1/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule . - [L]
RewriteRule  ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-.*) $2 [L]
RewriteRule  ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*\.php)$ $2 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>
```
So in my case – WordPress-MU installed in a folder called blogs – this file goes in to that folder.

Now, the second part – the Wildcard DNS settings. Some time ago when I set up an installation of WordPress-MU I had to get my hosting comapny to deal with this for me. However, this time, a little advice from Samuel at Prime Hosting showed me how to set it up from within cPanel, so I’m going to share that with you here. If you’re not using cPanel, there may be other ways in your own control panel to do this.

In my installation, WordPress-MU is installed in a fodler called blogs off the root of my public_html directory. I have set up a subdomain – blogs.coffeehousechat.co.uk – to point to it, so that when a user enters this domain they go to the blog create / sign in page. Now, after checking that this worked happily, I logged in to cPanel for the coffeehousechat.co.uk domain and selected the ‘Subdomains’ control from the Domains panel.

Now the cunning bit…note that this may not work for you in complicated web site set-ups where multiple redirects are involved – but it worked for me.

In the ‘Create a Subdomain’ box, (below) enter ‘*’ as the subdomain name – giving *.coffeehousechat.co.uk in my case – and enter the folder on the server where you want things to redirect to as the ‘Document Root’ – in my case public_html/blogs.

Once this is entered, press the create button. The grid at the foot of the screen should be updated to reflect teh changes just made:

And that is that!

A user entering, say, www.test.blogs.coffeehousechat.co.uk will be directed to that blog if it exists, or be prompted to create it.
November 18, 2009
ASP.NET and Oracle – how to stay sane!
I’m currently doing some development work using ASP.NET against an Oracle database. I have to say that I’ve had more frustrating development experiences, but most of those involved mainframe computers or…oh yes….Visual BASIC 6.0 against Oracle. Just what is it about Oracle and Microsoft? Gah!

Anyway – rant over. In this piece I’d like to share a few useful tips for developing with ASP.NET and Oracle if you’re used to developing with ASP.NET and SQL Server. There’s nothing magic here, and I’m no expert, but hopefully these pointers might assist anyone else in the position that I’ve found myself in!

Identity Fields

One thing that looks missing from Oracle in the first instance is the ‘Identity’ field that is often used a Primary key field in SQL Server. It IS possible to implement this in Oracle – one has to use what’s called a ‘Sequence’ and either include a trigger on the ID field of the table to give you the sequence number added automatically or remember to add it via the INSERT command:
```
CREATE SEQUENCE table_seq
    MINVALUE 1
    MAXVALUE 999999999999999999999999999
    START WITH 1
    INCREMENT BY 1
    CACHE 20;
```
This generates a sequence called table_seq, starting at 1, incrementing by 1 each time, and going up to a VERY large number! The CACHE 20 line tells Oracle to generate a cache of 20 values from the sequence. To use this sequence after creation, you can access it via an INSERT command as follows:
```
INSERT INTO datatable
(id, name)
VALUES
(table_seq.nextval, 'Joe Pritchard');
```
the ‘id’ field is the PK field of the table, and the table_seq.nextval gets the next value from the sequence. To create a truly ‘auto incrementing’ PK field, you create a trigger on the table:
```
create trigger datatable_trigger
before insert on datatable
for each row
begin
select table_seq.nextval into :new.id from dual;
end;
```
Run this and then you can add a new row to the table without specifying the id field:
```
INSERT INTO datatable
(name)
VALUES
( 'Joe Pritchard');
```
Boolean Fields

Oracle doesn’t support them. the best approach I’ve found is to have an integer field and treat 0 as false and 1 as true. This then works well with ASP.NET checkboxes. For example:

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText=”Is Admin.” SortExpression=”IsAdministrator” >

<ItemTemplate > <asp:CheckBox runat=”server” ID=”IsAdministrator” Text=’<%# Bind(“IsAdministrator”) %>‘ Checked=’<%# Bind(“IsAdministrator”) %>‘ />

</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>

Don’t forget the provider Name

When setting up a SQLDataSource control, don’t forget to specify the provide Name in the ConnectionString. If you do, the error message obtained is not exactly meaningful at first glance, referring as it does to Unicode!

<asp:SqlDataSource ID=”SqlDataSource1″ runat=”server” ConnectionString=”<%$ ConnectionStrings:ConnectionString %>“ ProviderName=”<%$ ConnectionStrings:ConnectionString.ProviderName %>“

This also requires you to specify the Provider in the ConnectionString:

< add name=“ConnectionString“ connectionString=“Data Source=www.myserver.co.uk;User ID=jp;Password=test;Unicode=True“ providerName=“System.Data.OracleClient“/>

Watch table and field name lengths

This can be extremely frustrating. And I mean extremely! If you are likely to find yourself explicitly specifying the table name and the field name in a SELECT statement, for example, then the combained length MUST NOT exceed 30 character (this includes the ‘.’ separating table and field – so keep table and field names as short as is practicable.

Quote marks around table and field names

When putting SQL statements together for use by SQLDataSource or other ASP.NET controls that use the OracleClient provider, don’t forget to surround the Oracle field and table names with quotation marks:
```
SELECT "id", "name" FROM "names"
```
or
```
SELECT "names"."id", "names"."name" FROM "names"
```
Parameter Handling

If you are using Parameters with a SQLDataSource control, don’t forget that the OracleClient uses a colon instead of the ‘@’ sign:

DeleteCommand=’DELETE FROM “moad_agrippa_users” WHERE “UserID” = :UserID’

The other thing to note is that the parameter does not require quotation marks around it.

I hope this piece has been useful – it will act as an aide-memoire for me the next time I come back to work on Oracle / ASP.NET sites!
November 12, 2009
Exclusion 2.0 – is daft jargon necessary?

I just came across this on my Twitter feed – a reference to a ” ‘Future of the web’ Turtle” at Open 09. Yup – a turtle. After some Googling about and learning more than I ever wanted to know about our green, aquatic co-travellers on Planet earth, I eventually went to the Open 09 web site where I found the following:

“And in the true spirit of social media, the content of the sessions will be decided by the delegates contributing to what will happen on the day via the OPEN 09 blogs. The blogs are the virtual spaces where the themes for sessions – we’re calling them ‘Turtles’ – will be debated and decided. We’ll be adding more Turtles that focus on particular areas of the creative industries.”

Ahhh…that explained it. A blog for a session / seminar. Cool. So why call them turtles? This seems to be an increasing habit amongst the more bleeding edge practitioners of web development to create a new (and often meaningless) lexicon to describe what they do.

Sorry, guys, but this is the sort of meaningless jargonny media-waffle that just produces an exclusive air around a lot of these sorts of events. My own impression is that the same people attend the round of conferences and seminars, chucking ideas around, hatching turtles, but rarely communicating what the Hell is actually happening to the rest of the world.

I earn my crust through web and software development. As I said to a potential client / colleague yesterday – I’m a ‘meat and potatoes’ sort of developer. My clients expect me to deliver reliable, working systems within budget that add value to their business. For many businesses, Social Media is still something that swallows up their bandwidth rather than adds to the bottom line, and I’m not sure that this sort of jargon helps us get any sort of message across.

My view of jargon is that it’s used by people of a shared culture to reduce the amount of communication necessary to get a particular concept over to their co-practitioners in an agreed form. This fad simply makes it looks like we’re trying to keep these sorts of events as ‘parties for the cool kids only’ and that cannot be good.

Or that we’re trying to hide the fact we have nothing relevant to give businesses – which is even worse.

November 10, 2009
I was a twit not to Tweet!

Many moons ago I posted a piece on here – ‘Am I a twit not to twitter’. Well, I’ll admit it. Yes, I was a twit not to Tweet, and I’m happy to say that. I can’t argue with objective facts, so here’s my brief thoughts on what converted me. Just in case anyone wishes to follow me, I’m on twitter, funnily enough, asJoePritchard. Serious lack of imagination there but no excuse for missing me!

So, here are my hints and observations from a beginning Twit! There are plenty of articles around with more detailed hints and tips of how to use Twitter, and I’m not going to re-hash what’s said elsewhere. These observations are my personal thoughts and insights, for what they’re worth, as to how I found that Twitter could be useful.

Two Way Street

I think the first thing that I learned about twitter (or rather had it pointed out to me) was that it’s a two way street; if you want people to follow you you need to follow people, and that you need to have an idea of what you want to gain from Twitter.

Identify what you want

Apart from keeping up with your friends and colleagues, I’ve found Twitter invaluable for getting a good newsfeed from sites of interest. In fact, I’ve found it a better proposition than RSS feeds.

Use a Twitter Client

When I first tried Twitter out, I used the Twitter web interface to use the Twitter service. It didn’t work well for me – so this time I decided to try out a couple of dedicated Twitter applications. I have Twhirl and Tweetdeck installed and they’ve both made using Twitter on a regular basic much easier – I just leave them running quietly in the background, they dynamically update, and they make it a pleasure to Tweet.

Think of it as less intrusive MSN

I’ve actually used Twitter as a form of MSN with some people – it’s more spread out in time than a typical MSN conversation, more compact than Email and certainly doesn’t clutter my inbox with lots of short mails.

Use it for promotion

I’ve recently re-activated this Blog and integrated it with both Twitter and Facebook, and have been studying the referral logs to see where blog referrals are coming from. There does appear to be a fair amount of traffic from Twitter. A recent event I participated in – ActionForInvolvement’s Climatewalk – made significant use of Twitter in the run up to the event to promote it and encourage re-tweeting about the event. Again, I gather that the results were well worthwhile!

If you need to, run multiple accounts

I was considering tweeting on behalf of my business from within my ‘personal’ Twitter account but I’ve decided to set up a separate account for the business. The reason? People following my business may not be very interested at all in everything else I do. Let’s call it ‘brand protection’ – I want my business brand and my ‘JoePritchard’ brand to be different entities online. Whilst folks who know me will know that I run ’em both, the separation will be useful for business connections who I really don’t want in my personal life – and vice versa!

Be picky in following and blocking

Spam has certainly increased on Twitter. When someone follows me, I’ve got Twitter configured to mail me. I always go and check out their profile, and then determine first of all whether to block or not. Folks who look like spammers always get reported; if someone seems to be mainly pedalling MLM or just looks ‘dodgy’ in terms of their content or places linked to – again, block ’em. I can’t understand why American High School kids of either sex can think that I can be interested in reports of their weekends drinking or shopping and don’t bother completing any parts of their profile – sorry guys, you get blocked. I know this sounds arrogant of me, but I want followers who know me or who are interested in what I say or consider that I somehow add value for them. If you are a US High School kid who IS interested in what I say, then let me know – but have something of interest to me on your profile, somewhere! In return, when I follow, I want to be following people that I know, am interested in or who add value to my online life by introducing me to new stuff or ideas. Twitter does seem to encourage the ‘numbers game’ in people. I prefer quality.

And that’s that – I’m going to start using Twitter Lists shortly and will let you know how I get on. And then there’s the API stuff….watch this space.

November 3, 2009
Luvviedom rules – time for a dose of reality for some?

I rarely post twice in succession on the same item. But hey, it’s a very wet November 1st, it’s Sunday, we’re still in recession and I’ve let my tea go cold. Oh, and the issue concerned is one of those things that annoys me at so many levels – including making me wonder “Why am I so bloody annoyed?”

It’s Mr Fry again. After the rattle throwing episode I mentioned here last night, it appears from this article on the BBC that the rattle was, in fact, on a length of elastic and has come back to Mr Fry’s hands. “Huzzah! Call off the state mourning! Tell the luvvies to stop weeping! Let Guardian readers rejoice! He’s not leaving Twitter! ”

Now, let me state immediately that I am a big fan of Stephen Fry’s portrayal of the immortal Jeeves – the box-set of Jeeves and Wooster is currently spread out in front of the TV – and his magnificent General Melchett. However, on Twitter, he’s a writer. Writer’s get critiqued – it’s part of the job. It’s inevitable that occasionally you will produce a stinker of an article (I know I have) or even a boring Tweet or Facebook status. Again, I know I do….. It comes with the territory and to be honest if you don’t balls up occasionally and mis-read your public I wholeheartedly believe that you’re not pushing the envelope hard enough.

We now have Alan Davies wading in:

“Alan Davies, who stars with Fry in the television quiz QI, also waded in, calling the criticism of him “moronic”.”

Hello? Earth calling Alan? Why is criticism of Stephen Fry ‘moronic’? He’s human like the rest of us and will occasionally be boring to someone. If not, it isn’t personal enough. Some of my friends may well be very interested in the fact that I baked bread a few days ago. Others won’t give a toss. And that’s what life is like, Alan. You can’t please everyone, all of the time. (Oh Lord…I like Alan Davies as well….sorrrrry….)

The original poster of the ‘boring’ comment has apparently been on the receiving end of abuse from a baying mob of Twitter users. This is the dark side of Twitter – dare to make an unpopular comment and the local-yokels will be turning up on your electronic doorstep with burning brands, pitchforks and nooses looking for an online lynching.

I’ll give Stephen Fry his due – he commented as follows:

He wrote: “Arrived in LA feeling very foolish. Wasn’t the fault of the fellow who called me “boring”, BTW. A mood thing. Sunshine will help. So sorry.

“Feeling terrible for that poor guy. He had every right to call me boring. Not his fault it caught me at a vulnerable time. Pls be nice to him.”

He also apologised to the critic.

All now appears to be well in the world of the Luvvies. But maybe Fry and a few other celebrity Twits, Bloggers and Facebookers need to get a dose of reality from this story. If you put yourself up in this way you will get criticism. It’s inevitable. But these critics are your fans and people who bother about you. They keep you gainfully employed and support your lifestyle. And that lifestyle is a privilege that your fans give you – when you’re in LA or wherever, whinging about a perfectly legitimate item of criticism, or here in the UK calling someone who dared to criticise someone ‘moronic’ – do remember that those fans of yours who don’t have your ability and lifestyle actually pay your wages.

Be grateful to them. If you engage in conversations with them through Social media, play the game and be mature enough to take the occasional bit of crap.

In other words, grow up, stop whining, and appreciate your privileged position.

November 1, 2009
Luvvie Strop Throwing 2.0
There are days when we all feel like chucking it in. There have been a couple of occasions when I’ve basically thought that using a certain web site, dealing with a particular individual or organisation or even working for a specific client. But recently the media luvvies have been having a bad attack of stroppiness. A few weeks ago Lily Allen declared herself a ‘neo-Luddite‘ and disappeared herself from the online world. And tonight, Stephen Fry has announced he’s considering leaving Twitter. Given that he’s the ‘poster boy’ of that particular online service here in the UK, one has to wonder what has driven him to it.

Let’s think what could be behind it…
- He’s been the victim of a massive Twitter based attack, as was experienced by journalist Jan Moir after this article?
- He was outed as a raving heterosexual?
- He was subjected to an intense online bullying campaign?
- His privacy was violated and all sorts of personal information were posted online?
Sorry, but no. Apparently Mr Fry is contemplating quitting Twitter because, accoridng to the BBC:

The disagreement began when the other tweeter said “I admire and adore” Mr Fry, but that he found his tweets “a bit… boring… (sorry Stephen)”. That same tweeter later revealed that Mr Fry had blocked him as a result. [Stephen Fry] sent a message – or tweet – to the user with whom he fell out, saying: “You’ve convinced me. I’m obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone.”

What the Hell? Fry has said in The Guardian that he is still considering his position. I’m sorry, but this is a grown man who has been in the public eye for years, an author, an actor. And he takes his bat and ball home because one person out of 900-odd thousand followers on twitter dares to say ‘You’re a bit boring?’ He’s claiming that there is too much aggression and unkindness. Oh please, for…feck’s… sake. Whilst I appreciate his long battle with depression, there are lots of people who’ve suffered the same way and who manage to get through this nasty, aggressive and unkind world without the support systems and good will that Fry gets.

Sorry Stephen – time to take some advice that I was given when I was in my 20s. I received a bad review for a book I’d written. My publisher asked me whether the magazine had my name, the book title and the book ISBN correct. They had. My publisher then commented that folks would still buy the book if it appealed to them, and that very few reviews had massively negative impacts on sales – the advice was to simply read the review, take on board anything useful, then move on. And he was right; I sold books, learnt a little something and just got on with things.

Stephen – please – get a grip man and don’t throw a luvvie strop 2.0.
October 31, 2009