My WordPress plugin auto-upgrade stopped working sometime around WordPress 2.7. Being of an indolent persuasion, I stopped bothering trying. Maybe it was the browser – but it didn’t work on either Firefox or Internet Explorer on Windows. And when it didn’t work after the upgrade to Wordpress 2.8, I tried it on 64-bit Kubuntu. It didn’t work on Midori, Konqueror, Galeon, rekonq, Epiphany or Dooble either. And then came the upgrade to WordPress 2.9. Which is where it all went panic-inducingly wrong… Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, Ernie, we do. Some wonderful person has updated Ernest’s Wikipedia page with the sort of information that makes people like me cry, basically. But what really made me purr was seeing that the link marked “listen on line” pointed here. To esotechnica.

The end of the page says:

Perhaps it can be seen as a fitting tribute to a man who must have been so popular in his day and who had faded into almost total obscurity in the years since, that now, 100 years later, his music is attracting increased attention on Internet websites where his songs can be streamed, downloaded as mp3, or experienced as videos of the original discs being played on authentic gramophones of the period and that these same records are now being eagerly purchased from online auctions.

No, I don’t think Ernie was ever that popular. I think he sold quite well, but if you asked people who bought his records, they would talk about the song, not the singer: this was really the way things worked until the charts started in 1952 – about 30 years after Ernie stopped recording.

To tell you the truth I think there are a few “Pikesters” (I’ve tried to phrase that as best I can) who have somehow come across Ernest’s music (not all of them have been badgered into it by me!)

And I think we Pikesters are a bit obsessed. I know I am. Case in point: I have approximately 300 78 rpm singles, most of which I will take any price for, mainly to offload them to somewhere they won’t get broken. But the 7 sides of Herbert Payne? I may never sell them. “Who’s Sorry Now?” Best Ernie record in my collection…

Fiddler allows you to inspect web browser traffic, see what Internet Explorer (or Firefox) is up to. Very useful for web developing and debugging, and for other purposes, too, such as sussing out the link so I could bring you this. Read the rest of this entry »

Google have launched a new service, called Google Public DNS. DNS, for those that don’t know, is the system that translates a domain name – such as www.esotechnica.co.uk – into the actual address that the computer connects to its services: such as retrieving a web page like this one, retrieving (or sending) your email, downloading a file, or just checking what time it is.

But before I talk about what Google Public DNS is and does, it’s worth reminding ourself what life was like before DNS… Read the rest of this entry »

Bit of an oddity, this. I spotted on All About Microsoft (written by Mary Jo Foley, who’s been covering the company long enough to know more about them than most MS executives, I should imagine) that Exchange Server 2007 doesn’t work on Windows Server 2008 release 2. The question is: why doesn’t it? Not that they haven’t got form for this kind of nonsense, of course. Read the rest of this entry »