I read this brilliant blog post by Wouter Groeneveld looking at how many dead links there were on his blog. I thought I'd try something similar. What is a broken link? Every day, I look at the On This Day page of my blog and look at that day's historic posts. I click on every link to see if it is still working. If it isn't, I have a few options. If the site is working, but the content has moved, I change the link to point at the content. If the site is dead, or the content isn't there, I…
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This is the 3,000th blog post I've published on this site! Bloody hell! I first started a blog on Blogger.com in 2004 - twenty years ago. Like all blogs, I managed half a dozen posts before I forgot about it. Cut to 2007 and I decided to launch shkspr.mobi as a weird site dedicated to rendering Shakespeare's plays in txt spk. Judging by Archive.org I was still using Blogger. By 2008 I was blogging most months. And then I never really stopped. In early 2009 I switched to WordPress which led…
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I know they say you should never read the bottom half of the web. This blog has existed in one form or other since 2004. Since then, I've approved TWELVE-THOUSAND comments. Most comments - but by no means all - are delightful. People wanting to share their own stories, add something to the discussion, or politely disagree. I moderate heavily. If someone is rude or abusive, their comment isn't published. Unless it's really funny. In all the years of running this site, I've only had to…
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Early Internet pioneer, Jon Postel, beautifully captured the "Robustness Principle" for networked communications. "Be strict in what you send, and generous in what you receive." That is, any computer sending data to another, should stick closely to the specification for that communication channel. Any computer receiving data, should expect that the sender isn't following the principle, and interpret the data as best as possible. This is what makes the modern net work. We expect errors in…
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I don't run adverts on this blog. The most I do is the occasional Amazon Affiliate link when I'm reviewing some tech. I'm happy with that. The site doesn't cost me much to run, and I'm lucky enough that it increases my reputation and online goodwill. But I've been thinking recently about ways to make a more material gain from my blogging, tweeting, StackOverflowing, and GitHubbing. So, here are your options! Giving To Charity I've started a fundraising page with the Charities Trust to…
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Media Discovery (New Web Ltd) is encouraging blogs to run paid for advertorials, without disclosing to their readership that the content is an advert. This appears to be in breach of the advertising industry's code of practice. Anyone who has ever run a blog is probably familiar with these sorts of email - I get one or two a week. Hi Terence, I recently sent you an email about hosting an advertisement on your site. I hope you received it, if not it may have ended up in your junk folder. I…
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The fifth anniversary of my blog went by without me noticing. I don't know if I'm a narcissist, but I quite often find myself re-reading old entries. Sometimes it's because I've Googled for the solution to a problem, only to find I helpfully blogged about it yonks ago - other times I'll read an article and think "Hmmm, I wrote on that subject a while ago," and go off to find what I used to think. With over 560 entries - ranging from single images to thousand word screeds - it's tempting to…
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As we enter another NaBloPoMo - where I try to write a blog post each day in Novemeber - I thought I'd take a look back at how this blog has developed. On Friday, October 30, 2009, I switched on WordPress statistics so I could get a better idea of what was popular on my site. My average traffic back then was 80 visits per day. Not bad for a backwater blog. Since then, my writing has been getting better (I hope), my content has become more interesting, and I've had several stories which have…
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This is a sponsored post from ebuzzing I've been pleasantly surprised by ebuzzing. They're part of the Wikio Group, who are focussed on getting bloggers to post about about brands that they like - and get paid for it. Despite running a backwater blog on obscure mobile phone related nonsense, I often get emailed by companies wanting to promote themselves here. Sometimes they offer review goods to keep, sometimes cash, sometime they don't want anyone to know they're…
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This has been a really tough NaBloPoMo for me. Work has been frantic - meaning that my lunchtime blogging has been restricted to a quick bit of copy editing. I've also had some wonderful new toys to play with - which has distracted my attention. But the biggest problem? My Android phone. Don't get me wrong, I love Android - but for typing, it's nowhere nearly as good as my BlackBerry was. I spend a lot of my time on trains, so I'm used to being able to bash out a fairly lengthy post or…
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Almost a year ago, I postulated a way to turn the tables on the News International paywall. After playing around for a bit, I discovered that it was easy to block The Times from reading a blog, but I couldn't find an easy way to disable the paywall on receipt of payment. So, I've set up a voluntary paywall. It's in the sidebar - and looks something like this... This was partly a way for me to play with the Google Checkout API - which is surprisingly easy to integrate and works flawlessly …
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This blog is proud to be XHTML 1.0 Strict Compliant. Just like it is polite to use correct spelling and grammar for human readers, I believe that correct markup is "polite" for rendering engines. I've recently started using DynamicWP's Simple White Theme. The theme is excellent, but generated around 60 validation errors. Luckily these were caused by a scant half dozen errors in the source code. Here is a quick summary of the errors, why they need to be fixed, and how to fix them. (more…) …
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