The website Christian Concern for our Nation takes up their cudgels to stand up for a sacked housing officer Justice for Duke Campaign. In common with many religious sites, there doesn't appear to be a comment feature for curmudgeonly atheists such as I to respond. Any road, the article describes how

Bible-believing Christian Duke Amachree, married and father of 3 children who had served Wandsworth Council as a Homelessness Prevention Officer diligently for 18 years, was dismissed in circumstances Christians and non-Christians alike across the country rightly view as completely outrageous.

Well this non-Christian (actually atheist) doesn't find it completely outrageous, at least based on the evidence presented by CCfoN.

Cyclingnews.com reports that Valverde To Concentrate On Tour De France In 2010.  Well, I guess unless CAS rule against him...as cyclingnews.com point out:

The main barrier to riding the Tour in 2010 may be the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Earlier this year the Spaniard was given a two-year suspension by the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI). The ban, based on his alleged connection to Operacion Puerto, applies only to races in Italy. He has appealed the ban to the CAS, with the International Cycling Union and the World Anti-doping Agency also filing a separate case which asks that the ban be extended worldwide.

It's not clear to me how sports justice is being served by the response of Cycling organisations such as the UCI and the national federations to the whole Operacion Puerto enquiry and the Spanish legal processes.  The latter moves at what can best be described as a glacial pace.  But why are some individuals (e.g. jan Ullrich) penalised and not others?  Seems to me that by the time Operacion Puerto is fully investigated, many of the athletes will have retired.

Scott's Last Expedition - The Journals of Captain R. F. Scott (Folio, 2009)

This was one of my selections for my 2009-10 membership of the Folio Society.  It is Volume 1 of the original publication of the account of the Ill-fated 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition to reach the South Pole.  Ultimately of course, the Polar expedition itself came to grief, with the three remaining men dying in their tent trapped by unusually severe weather only a few miles from their next depot of fuel and food (famously, Lt Oates had sacrificed himself a few days earlier in an effort to save the others, while Evans had died earlier, partly as a result of injuries sustained on the return march).

Late-ish yesterday afternoon, I finally got around to trying out the new time trial bike (for a very short spin due to fading light):

This was my first trial with Speedplay pedals (X-1 titanium) - amazing levels of float, feels like sliding on ice, but very good.  Current (and final specs):

...The Register: Spain warned on filesharing cut-offs, in which we are told that Commissioner Viviane Reding (the saviour of internet privacy in the UK) has said:

"If Spain cuts off internet access without a procedure in front of a judge, it would certainly run into conflict with the European Commission."

I think Lord Mandelson should take note, in light of his Digital Economy bill.

The unelected Sith Lord Mandelson, who appears to have collared vast acres of political power in the UK via his all-encompassing ministry has his Digital Economy reports Ars Technica: UK "Pirate Finder General" law innocuous now, could get ugly.  This bill seems to fit the needs of big media rather than any form of human rights and justice.  Ars Technica reports:

The bill implements the Digital Britain report, which was completed earlier this year and attempted to chart a course forward for Britain in a high-tech world. It initially imposes two obligations on ISPs: they must forward warning letters from copyright holders to their subscribers, and they must maintain an anonymized list of the number of such warnings received by each subscriber. If a copyright holder asks, they must be shown the list, at which point the rightsholder can go to court and seek to uncover the names of the top offenders, and then sue them. There are no sanctions, but such sanctions could be coming. The government has written "reserve powers" into the law that can be deployed at a later date without needing Parliamentary approval.

I've been playing around with a number of blogging tools, looking for something that will run with each of my blogs (I'm using Joomla! 1.5, Wordpress and Blogger).  An additional complication is that in this website, I'm using a specific blogging module called MyBlog.  Over the last few weeks I've tried the following:
Blogilo (formerly Bilbo Blogger - a name I prefer!) - this is a Linux desktop application with which one can compose blog posts offine, then upload to the blog when ready.  It definitely works very nicely with my self-hosted Wordpress blog, but whenever I try setting up my Blogger account, it just dies.  For Wordpress, then, very versatile.  I couldn't at that time see how to hook it up to my Joomla sites (but see below).
BloGtk - A Gnome application for the Linux desktop.  I couldn't get either Wordpress or Blogger accounts set up with it.
Gnome-blog - potentially really nice toolbar app for the Gnome desktop.  I persuaded this to connect to my Blogger account ona desktop PC, but not using my laptop.  I couldn't find much advice on the interweb.
Drivel - An attractive name and interface, but again, I couldn't make it see the Blogger account, and couldn't figure out how to get it to work.
Deepest Sender - a Firefox add-on for blogging while exploring the web.  Has a very attractive interface, seems to set up well with Blogger, but throws an error when posting the article.  Didn't test with Wordpress.
And finally - ScribeFire - another Firefox add-on, and a bit more fully functional that Deepest Sender.  This definitely works with Blogger, and I've set up an account for the Wordpress blog.
I wondered whether ScribeFire could be made to work with Joomla - a quick Google search came up with this blog article: Posting to Joomla with ScribeFire.  I've followed the steps, and this is the first attempt to post in MyBlog within my Joomla site.  Here's hoping. (Though I can't see how to add tags to the post, and nor does it offer to complete meta info fields)

software, blogging, internet

I figured I'd better make sure my own house was in order if I was going to blog about web tracking!  I've reviewed my websites and blogs, and find the following.

Flies & Bikes (this website) - Ghostery doesn't reveal any trackers.  Joomla sites do, I think use cookies however.

Here's a <sarcasm>nice</sarcasm> tracker revealed by the excellent Firefox plugin Ghostery. According to the forum at nodpi.org, this tracker was noticed by a poster on Guardian Unlimited, and it tracks when people highlight and/or copy text, and phones home (presumably to the company HQ in Canada) this information tied to your IP address.

Apparently the noscript Firefox plugin will block it (as does Ghostery). Ghostery says this about Tynt Tracer:

The Register reports that the UK Government's much-vaunted and euphemistically named Internet Modernisation Programme (which of course represents State snooping on a vast scale) is going ahead as planned (Massive net surveillance programme on schedule).

This huge endeavour, which seeks to monitor and track all electronically mediated communications in a (probably vain) hope that patterns useful in crime detection may emerge was apparently begun in 2006, despite a consultation exercise that completely passed me by (I must have blinked at an inopportune moment). According the The Register:

A quick update on the blog article on persuading Evolution to cooperate with  MS Exchange 2007.

I can confirm that the procedure works fine, that I can read/send emails, view edit my calendar, and view/edit tasks.  Contacts access seems a bit flaky, however.  And my work's Exchange server appears to be set up to require a secure VPN connection when using Evolution off-site.  Which I suppose is no bad thing.

So, here's the situation.  I've been happily using the Evolution email/calendar software with Ubuntu GNU/Linux for several Ubuntu releases for some time now.  Of course, this was with the MS Exchange 2003 that my workplace uses.  No problem, using the exchange connector plugin for Evolution.

Earlier this year we were upgraded to Exchange 2007, whereupon everything changed - I was no longer able to access the mailserver or calendar.  Aha! I thought, I'll find an appropriate plugin for Evolution.  Well, that was a little easier to say than achieve.  Firstly, many websites refer to an apparently now unavailable plugin named Brutus.  Secondly, after I identified the plugin to use (evolution-mapi), it didn't seem to work.

I've been visiting a couple of prestigious Research Institutions this week, and delivering presentations of my current research work. This was fine and dandy - I'd updated my standard presentation as appropriate to the audience, and with new data. For this I generally use Open Office, which has a rather good presentation app, called Impress.

Unfortunately, I ran into an issue with output of the slideshow to a projector. My laptop is a slightly aged Sony VGN-TX5XN - about 2.5 years old, with a meagre 1Gb RAM onboard. As soon as I plugged in the cable to the projector, the display went black, with only an immobile mouse cursor visible. I rescued the situation by using a PowerPoint version I'd made (not perfect, but good enough for the job) on the host's XP laptop.

This looks to be good.  As legal blogger Jack of Kent writes today (Libel Reform: Free Speech is not for Sale), two pressure groups, English Pen and Index on Censorship, have conducted a joint inquiry into English libel law - their report is now available on a new website:

The Libel Reform Campaign

Some weeks ago, I noted the existence of Google's Sidewiki (Is Sidewiki evil? (Probably not, but it's annoying)) and mentioned that I'd planned to install a Sidewiki blocker on my websites.  Well, I've done that.  I've also installed the Google Toolbar thing, and now have a Sidewiki button nestled up there next to my Firefox URL box.

Every so often, I click on it to see if a website has any Sidewiki annotation, but thus far, I've yet to see one.  Does this mean that Sidewiki's a flop?  Or just reflect the nature of the sites I visit (many are forums or blogs with pages of relatively transient interest)?  And need I have bothered to install a Sidewiki blocker at all?

Apparently this isn't a wind-up, though it sure looks like an early April Fool.  Here's an 18 button mouse from OpenOffice.org, from a report in The Register (OpenOffice.org pushes gamers' buttons with OOMouse):

I anxiously waited for some try roads to take my new pride and joy (Cervelo P3 time trial frame; The new time trial bike) for a spin.  Being as I was off to the USA first thing Sunday morning, I got all set up to ride it on Saturday.  Tubs pumped up, bolts tightened, new cycle computer picking up the GPS satellites...only to discover issues with the heatset being loose.  And the rear wheel pulled.

By the time I'd got that dealt with it was getting dark.  So, the maiden ride will have to wait until I'm back from the USA.

Cyclingnews.com reports that the Belgian press claim that Astana are offering Alberto Contador a huge wad to stay with the team for four years (Astana offer Contador up to €8 million per year).  This is apparently double what Contador has asked for to stay.

Interestingly, Astana's finances have been sufficiently rocky that they nearly didn't get to start the Tour de France this year, and they were sufficiently dilatory in completing their UCI paperwork that Contador has an exit right from the team.  Whether Astana would be able to come up with the cash, is something of a moot point.

Dear old A. N. Wilson has an article over that the Daily Mail, prompted by the recent sacking of the chair of the Government's drugs advisory committee (Yes, scientists do much good. But a country run by these arrogant gods of certainty would truly be hell on earth).

There's a cracker in the article which kind of gives the game away:

Here's a physics lesson from a homeopath. I can't wait to pass this by my colleagues in the Physics Department.

Apparently this is subject to a takedown notice. Make a copy for posterity... Hat tip - PZ Myers