Wow what a statement Google have made.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
Can Google bully the Chinese government?
Will Google see a profit drop from pulling out of China?
Would it be permanent?
Which are they really most annoyed about, that they got hacked or China’s freedom of speech issues?
So many questions too few answers.
Google have done it again, they have created a masterpiece of ingenuity that allows the seamless collaboration of people and bots on seemingly useless subjects.
I have had a wave account for a week or so now, and I have got a group of buddies that wave regularly but we have not yet found anything useful to collaborate on. We are enjoying the experience none the less, the ability to multi play Sudoku or get a bot to Piratify everything that is said is fun but somehow not what I was expecting.
Recently wind power made a new record by providing nearly 50% of Spain’s electrical requirements! however this was in the middle of the night on a very windy but not very cold Sunday night, a time renowned for its very light usage of electricity. I enjoyed reading the register’s article on the subject www.theregister.co.uk
This and the discovery of a website protesting against the building of new nuclear power plants in the UK got me thinking, If people are protesting against and no one is protesting for then it might give the public/government a slanted view of opinion. I personally am pro nuclear power and cannot wait for the world of cheap and limitless energy that fusion power will bring, but for the moment fission power will help us to reduce our CO2 while continuing to be a first world nation.
The question is thus, should there be a pro nuclear blog? (I am not asking are you pro nuclear but should there be a blog dedicated to the debate?)
I have in the past been able to achive great miles per gallon in my little yellow rocket but today I reached a new low 
I picked my wife up from work in the centre of brimingham (UK, west midlands) and parked in the city centre next to the outdoor market. To my horror when we came to leave at 18:00 the que to exit the car park reached all the way to the 9th floor!
Even though I only ran the engine when moving switching it off when it wasn’t needed we 45 minutes later the mpg was down to this awfully low point.
I beat my own personal best, I managed 76.2!
My little car
Fab VRS
Sorry for the colour problem but it was 2am and my camera didn’t want to work in the dark.
Now how many cars can do that and a standing quarter mile in 16.1 !
Recently I have found myself wanting more from life, I wanted to wake up earlier, goto sleep later and feel more refreshed. I was told I was mad but Then I found an Aloe Vera drink that has helped me find my pep. Its from Forever living and I have been so impressed with the product I have decided to help share it with the world.
The Aloe berry nectar isn’t the tastiest drink in the world and I only drink 30 – 60 ml a day but in a matter of weeks I have found I can concentrate for longer, think clearer and tackle all the days chores with a smile on my face. Don’t take my word for it, try it!
Recently I have been asked to take on the task of licensing, in the process of doing so I was introduced to lady licensing blog a wonderful resource for all things Microsoft Licensing.
The page I found most interesting is the one on SQL Server as it says quite clearly that you do not have to pay twice for a simple mirrored SQL server setup! This is wonderful news as it means I can offer my MD an increase in availability for the cost of some tin and an OS! he will be happy.
I found a blog entry by the CTO of Sun UK called “Message to MS: Adopt Firefox now to radically innovate against Chrome”
http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/entry/microsoft_need_firefox_against_chrome
We will see, I don’t see MS dropping IE any time soon. However I do agree that chrome is Google’s first attempt at capturing the client enviroment and I don’t believe it will stop with just a browser. I predict a Linux version soon, followed by a Linux distro with chrome embedded. This distro would be free and distributed the same way as AOL disks were only a few years ago.
I wait with bated breath to find out what happens.
Today I attended my first BCS meeting, It was an eye opener. I now know the power of networking and hope to write a proper blog entry dedicated to the subject but in the mean time I am going to just write about the other incredible discoveries I have made today.
MySQL and C# on Vista in VS2008
After a debarcle trying to get VS2008 Web Developer Express to install on my copy Vista Business N (Long story again no time to explain) I got arround to trying to use MySQL and C# for the first time.
It works! its amasing that you can get a MS language to use a non MS DB! but its far from native.I have found loads of blogs and other technical documents describing how to get it to work using the proper SqlDataSource component but found non that worked on my fickle machine untill I found this guide on scribus. To cut a long story short it works.
Click here to goto the download page of .net MySQL connector 5.2
Nagios and then some
If you are in the monitoring game you must of heard of Nagios. I use it regulary but have found a branch product that as far as I can tell blows it out the water. http://www.opsview.org/
MythTV with non Digital TV Tuners
Well I tried and I failed. As far as I can tell Myth TV requires a digital tuner or a shed load of luck. I have a WinFast TV2000 XP Global and I can’t use it. Under Ubuntu I tired Myth TV to no luck, the chipset is detected but I cant get the setup correct. When I try to use the card I get Tuner unavailable error. In windows things get worse, The WinFast software requires a windows media player .dll which of course I don’t have because I have Vista business N. What a polava. Only thing for it now is to use VLC.
Search engine conundrum
Search Engines are a confusing breed of web application. They exist in a limbo state between the fully automated computer land and the human driven application. When you create a site you have to add it to the search engnines to get them to ‘crawl’ your site, and from then on you have lost control of what it finds when it finds it or even IF it finds your site at all…
How to make your site invisible by using robots!
Some time in the dim and distant past of the web ( about 1997 :p ) a draft specification was written that stopped web crawlers from crawling a site. This allowed the owner to hide pages, and now allows you to hide entire sites.
This special file is very simple and is called robots.txt. This text file hides at the root of your website, for example www.theinevitabletruth.co.uk/robots.txt
A file that told all the web crawlers to go away would look like this….
User-agent: * Disallow: / Where the User-agent: could be followed by google or msn The Disallow: could be followed by nothing or a specific file/directory that you want to hide!
How to make it more agent friendly
Computers are not very good at reading natural languages they prefer more structure and as such to help your crawly friends you have to write something especially for them.
The best example is a Sitemap (the S is deliberate it denotes the use of the Sitemap xml based protocol )
The simplest example of a Sitemap file is a plain text file containing a list of web addresses one per line, for example I could put this in a plain text file called sitemap.txt and locate it at http://www.theinevitabletruth.co.uk/sitemap.txt
http://www.theinevitabletruth.co.uk/
http://www.theinevitabletruth.co.uk/whatsmyip
And then add a line to my robots.txt that describes my Sitemap
Sitemap: http://www.theinevitabletruth.co.uk/sitemap.txt
If you think of any more hints and tips then please comment on them.
