Ultralab’s Mark Constable found and emailed the following link:

http://slartibartfast.ultralab.net/tomsmith/?q=node/view/120#comment

Basically, Tom Smith from The Other Blog (which I’m loving the new look of) wrote some stuff and did some work with us on anti-spam. If you click the link, you’ll find that the spammers spammed the anti-spam thread.

I’m constantly battling with spammers attacking the blogs hosted on ‘Captain Birdseye’ (my trusty server). Birdseye goes out every morning for me pulling RSS feeds from around the Internet and while she’s doing that, I’m in the SQL database blocking IP addresses that spam some entries on blogs hosted on Birdseye. I’ve found some truly bizarre stuff while exploring the IP records.

On Thursday last week I headed round to the server ‘Slartibartfast’, with Jonathan to try to begin to understand the spamming on Slartibartfast.

Slartibartfast hosts blogs for other Ultranauts. Reviewing my Old Blog, (which still exists on ‘Slartibartfast’, but redirects to ‘Birdseye’) we discovered some interesting stuff about ‘Movable Type and how it works and stores comments.

A year ago action was taken to try and stop spam on Slartibartfast, and on the active hosted blogs, that seems to have worked with an anti-spam field added and required to confuse the robots trying to post rubbish.

Thanks to the team from APU Chelmsford Library for coming together for an introduction to Ultralab with Neil Boughen and myself today at 9:30 - 10:30.

Was really interesting meeting you, if you have any questions or thoughts regarding the technologies and projects we discussed, please add a comment below, or phone or email.

Have a great day!

Yesterday evening I received a ‘desperate call of help’ from my mate Chris. Chris’ PC computer is trying to run Microsoft Windows XP, and has been getting slower and slower and slower by the day.

So I headed round to the house of Chris to see if I could find the problem(s).

Starting the machine takes 15 minutes, closing it down takes another 15 minutes. When running Internet Explorer the machine would announce that it needs a restart due to an unexpected error in the operating system.

The machine runs a 20 gig drive, of which 4 gig is used. The machine is 2 years old and the speed is 1.47 ghz.

After about an hour and a half, and countless calls back to my brother at home (he uses a PC too) we found the problems and managed to speed up the computer. It was incredibly frustrating awaiting the machines response to commands, clicks and window moves.

Basically, after an age we identified that almost all the applications installed on the machine were attempting to start as soon as the computer is turned on, some applications were attempting to start twice. The machine was connecting to the Internet on startup and doing all kinds of other weird stuff.

The confusion began when the applications which were launching on startup were then hiding in the background, and refusing to respond. This meant that when Chris (or fiance Tracey) started an application, it could be running two or three times. I don’t understand this, how one application could start two or three instances of that application. Why would it want to do that? I can’t do that on OSX.

Pressing a key on the keyboard would awake a reaction from the machine about 20 seconds later, moving a window, or scrolling would cause all sorts of visual problems, jolting, spinning hourglasses and long long periods of nothing happening.

The most amazing thing I found was the incredible amount of time the machine wanted to be restarted, popping up a box saying that an essential restart was required. We turned it off and on about 10 times, and each time it got a bit slower on startup…..but at least it was not taking half hour to go off and come back on again.

So in Windows, go to ‘Start’ then ‘Run’ type in ‘msconfig.exe’ hit ‘return’ and watch the panel popup called ‘MSCONFIG’. Now click ‘Startup’ and just see how many applications are launching on your startup. I was amazed. I turned them all off, which upset the computer, which turned some of them back on by the next time I checked!

Overall the most amazing element of the entire process was ‘Un-install’. I cant believe how much time it takes to un-install a program (in Mac land we call it an ‘application’) from the machine. When deleting an application on a Mac you simply put the unwanted folder in the bin. Job done. On a PC, oh my word, each program seems to have a whole procedure.

I’ve had a look at the Microsoft Crash Gallery this morning and found a screengrab experienced last night:

In the mid 90’s it was becoming familiar that people were developing completely new identities when partaking online.

One of the most interesting areas we studied at University was how the Internet became a safe comfort zone for, in particular shy people who could meet, talk, discuss, relate and share their thoughts, hopes and dreams with other people, without leaving the house. The study (I’ll look it up) found that where they found it difficult to interact socially and feel comfortable in an unfamiliar environment, the opposite was indeed the case when refining themselves a social life online, which would become a safe and comfortable place to be.

Kris, Carole, Alex, Tim and myself were only talking about ‘Online Gaming’ the other day, along with online identity. Gaming online has grown at a tremendous pace, providing real visual worlds where people can walk around, online and trade, build a house, have a family and fight a war, against other ‘real’ players.

Of course, these days, there are lots and lots more people who indeed ‘live online’, building their social network, spending every spare minute logged in, and interacting and communicating with others with a similar lifestyle. Indeed now more and more people, particularly in South Korea are living in virtual game world, run through the Internet, trading real currency, for game currency…selling gaming weapons and wealth online, for cash offline.

Here is some of the links we shared:

BBC News | Losing yourself in Online Gaming.

More interesting is the whole relationships developed online , emerging in the gaming arena, following the countless relationships which are being forged by strangers over the Internet:

BBC News | Life lessons in virtual adultery

Then there are now the people who will kill in real life, to continue their quest online:

BBC News | Fantasies inspire

I’ve not been here for a while, partly because I’ve been busy, doing bits and bobs, loads of stuff to write about, like our day with Apple, and the next generation of Internet stuff….but I’ve not got round to writing about that stuff yet….

April was a pretty hectic month, with seven days holiday in Norfolk thrown in for good luck. Norfolk is a great county….and my dear satnav lady gets very confused as we get lost in the maze of country lanes. The shops in the villages are interesting, everyone says hello to everyone, Norfolk people are polite and friendly.

The most scary thing is….that at exactly this time, five years ago, I’d finished my final exam and completed my BSc. (Hons) degree. I remember watching as other students who were frantically trying to complete their final dissertation, I’d finished mine weeks earlier.

Where have those five years gone? What will come in the next five years?

In July 2000 the degree results were published, in November I graduated, and was then hired by Ultralab on the same day.

The past five years have rushed by, it needed to go slower.

I’ve only done one masters module in the two years, I’m thinking about switching to face to face teaching from online learning, as I’m not sure that I personally am able to focus and achieve as well as I did when I took part in taught teaching at higher level. I am interested now in a Masters level course in marketing and will be exploring this further…..I think….