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The Curious Case of Canadian Marmite.

Michael 30 March 2010 18 Comments

As many of you may know, I am something of a Marmite addict. If you don’t know what Marmite is there are plenty of references on the Internet and if…

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Let’s Face it…

Michael 13 November 2009 2 Comments

I was going to be nice to Google today. Really, I was – I started out thinking “Wow, for the first time ever, I will have to write a weblog…

Narrative Nothing in particular

The importance of being regular…

Michael 8 October 2009 2 Comments

One of my favourite new weblogs is Crabby Old Fart, http://crabbyoldfart.wordpress.com/ – On his front page he states: “It’s Important to be Regular… Now posting once a week whether I…

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A tale of two shittys.

Michael 18 November 2008 1 Comment

As I kneed myself in the face yesterday whilst trying to sit down on a North American toilet, I came to a startling realisation about why North Americans know very…

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Sale on the High Streets.

Michael 19 September 2008 1 Comment

I spotted that Dixons have packs of 20 Maxell C60’s on sale at the moment for £4.49 so I am going to buy about 10 packs this afternoon.I’ll get the…

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London Olympics 2012

Michael 27 August 2008 No Comments

There’s no point me harping on about this, you know full well my assumption is that it will be a disaster best avoided. That said, I am prepared to let…

April 7^th 2025: The WordPress theme from 2010 that I insist on using is apparently riddled with performance issues and incompatible with everything. I have switched to a theme from 2012 that seems more stable and doesn't set off all the alert panels. It also works on mobile browsers though I had to add an "about" page.

April 3^rd 2025: I tried to write one post per decade, but failed. One every 12 years seems okay, and it's a follow-on post to the last one. Also the site isn't mobile friendly yet. Since I am not mobile friendly, this is never going to be a priority.

October 2024: My old Wordpress MU finally broke too much to maintain it. I moved my sites off onto individual instances so now this thing stands alone, and I have broken all the very legacy pretty themes and fonts.

April 2010: I have moved this from its old home so we'll see what happens now.

October 2009: I am trying to be a little more regular with posting. Wish me luck!

April 2008: I have been a little bitter and cynical the last couple of months. If you want lighter more amusing stuff then maybe you should skip the top few postings.

When Safety Forgot about Scammers
For a while, I’ve been thinking about how the online dating moderation space shifted from focusing primarily on tackling masses of spam, much of which was scam-related, to prioritizing individual safety. In theory, that should’ve been a good thing – but in reality, something important got lost along the way. I feel somewhat responsible for… Read more: When Safety Forgot about Scammers
Down the rabbit hole of Trudeau’s gun ban in Canada
I’ve been meaning to write something about Trudeau’s gun ban in Canada for about 2 years now, mostly as a follow-up to my 2013 post about the British bans. I kept putting it off. Partly because the subject is annoying, and partly because I knew I’d end up rewriting it a hundred times anyway. I… Read more: Down the rabbit hole of Trudeau’s gun ban in Canada
Everything is good in moderation; except moderation…
I thought it was about time to write an article on how I was recently fired from my job with one of the Internet's leading moderation companies. It's been a couple of months now, so I am confident that I can write this in a non-reactionary way since I am trying to be informational rather than adversarial; I am not even going to mention their name and I am confident that very few people will actually know for sure which company I am referring to. I am not worried about libel; I am well covered by the new UK whistle-blower laws - But pending the result of a couple of potential criminal investigations against the company I think I will keep names out if for now.
We’re the Sweeney, son, and we haven’t had any dinner…
In the last few months, I have read an awful lot of articles and watched far too many YouTube videos about gun ownership and the British gun ban. I didn’t set out to do this at all; it’s just that I sometimes read articles about guns and they link to other things – And somehow… Read more: We’re the Sweeney, son, and we haven’t had any dinner…
Windows 8 and all that.
The first time I was upset about an operating-system upgrade was in 1984. PRIMOS had a minor version upgrade to 19.2 and whilst I had retrospectively complained about the change from 18 to 19, that didn’t actually affect me. This change from 19.0 to 19.2 was a disaster because things I had written and hacks… Read more: Windows 8 and all that.

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