Isle of Skype

Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022

Isle of Skype

There are things I still sort of like about Skype. I use it a lot for video calls (although for work and muti-party video it's pretty much all about Google Hangouts these days). I have a Philips phone that integrates with Skype for international calls (they seem to have discontinued it, and while the calls are cheap the UI is baroque). But the IM is horrible. It can't remember which messages you've seen between devices and so you're constantly trying to figure out what you have and haven't read.

And the IM on the desktop is nothing compared to the horror of the Skype Android app. This slowly spins up and by the time it's loaded previous messages your battery is dead.

Imo.im made Skype IM tolerable on Android and possible on a Chromebook. In the last week it seems that Skype has kneecapped them and blocked their servers from signing in. I'm limping by with IM+ Pro at the moment, but it's slow and buggy and frustrating.

I sympathize with Imo.im. I've been stiffed by Skype before as an officially sanctioned partner so it's no shock that they'd take out this kind of tool.

It would be nice if they could fix mobile and web access to the network first though.

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Gray Whales at Fort Funston

Updated on Sunday, September 18, 2022

Gray Whale Spout at Fort Funston

Photo and video of Gray Whales at Fort Funston in San Francisco.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Gray Whales at Fort Funston #photo #whales #video Gray Whales at Fort Funston, photo and video. San Francisco, California. )

The curious case of the missing slugs (in BlogEngine.net 2.8)

Updated on Thursday, December 26, 2019

2013-06-16 Update: There is now a patch for the issue discussed below.

I just upgraded to BlogEngine.net 2.8 as it contains a fix for broken links from Facebook. There were a couple of hitches that I'll share in case they help anyone else.

I messed up the first upgrade attempt because the updater utility updates the source folder (containing the newly downloaded 2.8 code) instead of the destination folder (containing the current version of your blog). This is a little odd and the result is I uploaded an unchanged instance and then embarrassingly complained the the Facebook bug hadn't been fixed. It had, just not in the folder I was expecting. I probably didn't pay enough attention to the instruction video.

Having got that out of the way I discovered that new posts were appearing with a bad link (to /.aspx instead of /blog-title.aspx). I rarely post using the editor as I have a home-grown post by email service running. After a bit of digging it turns out that prior to 2.8 you could leave the slug empty when creating a post but now this results in the bad link. Luckily there isn't much effort require to fix this, you just need to set the slug before saving the new post:

In the middle of playing with this my live site died and started returning a 500 error. No amount of uploading the working local copy would fix this. Happily Server Intellect have outstanding support and restored a working backup for me in the middle of the night. Thanks chaps!

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(Published to the Fediverse as: The curious case of the missing slugs (in BlogEngine.net 2.8) #code #blogengine.net How to fix bad links in BlogEngine.NET caused by missing slugs - quick patch instructions. )

Really BA?

Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015

Really BA?

Not to pick on British Airways but yes, that screenshot is real. It's a marketing email opt out that has not only been pre-populated in favor of spam but has then also been disabled.

Previously.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Really BA? #marketing #ba A British Airways marketing opt-out checkbox that is both pre-checked and disabled for your convenience. )

Book reviews for April 2013

Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

4/5

Makes sense...

 

 

The Mirage by Matt Ruff

4/5

A brilliant and detailed transposition of 9/11 in America to 11/9 in Arabia. I thought it was going to be a one trick pony but Mirage also delivers a solid thriller.

 

 

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Bernal in Bloom

Updated on Saturday, October 1, 2022

Bernal in Bloom

Wildflowers bloom in Bernal Heights Park with downtown San Francisco in the distance.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Bernal in Bloom #photo #bernal #sanfrancisco Photo of wildflowers blooming in Bernal Heights Park with downtown San Francisco in the distance. )

Sealions

Updated on Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Sealions

Photo of the moment a sealion dives into the bay at Fisherman's Wharf.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Sealions #photo #sealion Photo of sealions at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, California including the instant that a sealion splashes into the bay. )

Thank you Feedly

Updated on Friday, May 22, 2020

Thank you Feedly

It has been brought to my attention that I've been whinging too much recently

So I'd like to take a break from that and say how much I'm enjoying feedly. It's a wonderfully well designed RSS reader. I use the Chrome Extension version and the Android app. It preserves the Google Reader keyboard shortcuts so I can sail through my subscriptions and it brings back social sharing. 

I looked at feedly once before and didn't really get it. I thought it was just one of those algorithmic recommendation news manglers that tries to guess what you want to read. It might do that on the home page but the 'All' view is a perfect replacement for Google Reader. 

I love it. I want to pay for it to make sure it stays around. Thank you feedly. 

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Thank you Feedly #marketing #feedly #software Feedly is an awesome RSS reader and the ideal replacement for Google Reader for RSS fans. )

Might there actually be grounds to sue BA on the basis of a frequent flyer program that never lets you actually fly anywhere ever?

Updated on Sunday, October 23, 2022

Comments Restored

Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022

I've restored all the comments that vanished after I removed Disqus last weekend. This is after a considerable effort to get everything out of BlogML and into WXR a couple of years ago. At some point I'll just have to give up and decide it's faster to write my own blogging and commenting system but for now Facebook Comments are enabled for all posts.

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