Andrew Ferrier

Tip for anyone who blogs and uses Google Reader:  the new ‘Discover’ feature of Google Reader enables you to see how many people are subscribed to your blog. Select ‘Browse’ and search for your blog using keywords. When you’ve found it, it’ll show how many subscribers there are. Take the number with a pinch of salt: it is, of course, only one of many blog readers, albeit a popular one.

I’ve been getting a lot of spam comments on my blog recently, which even Akismet isn’t catching.

So I was amused to get this comment today:

hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments ,
I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site….

I think you can see where it’s going. One can’t help but feel that just maybe he knows a lot of spammers and knows I get a lot of spammy comments because he is a [fill in the obvious blank]. How frustrating.

Oh yes: is this legally blackmail?

Of recent months, the frequency of posts on this blog has declined from a peak of about two a day to once every few weeks. This is primarily because I’ve realised that such a high posting frequency isn’t sustainable, and it isn’t giving me the ROI I’d hoped for. Combined with some personal projects I’ve been working on in the past week or two, I simply don’t have the time to write all the articles I want to. I hope my writing is still interesting to my friends, family, and strangers – but it has become, and probably will remain, more sporadic than it once was. This blog isn’t going anywhere, and I’ll continue to post – it might just not be as often as it used to be. I hope you continue to enjoy it.

As always, feedback is very welcome.

I’m heading off to San José this weekend to take part in an IBM Redbook Residency. I’ve never contributed to a Redbook before, and by all accounts it’s an intense experience. I’m hoping to take some time out to see the Bay Area, but I probably won’t be writing here very frequently – I’ll be using this mainly to chronicle tales of the California sunshine. I hope to get back to writing for real when I return in mid-March.

If you’re trying to get in touch with me, my usual email addresses and mobile phone number should work just fine.

I recently installed the Subscribe to Comments plugin on this blog. However, it seems to have attracted far too much spam. I’ve therefore disabled it again until a version is developed that’s a bit more hardy against spammers. You can always subscribe to an RSS feed for the comments on any post (as you can with any WordPress-powered blog) by appending /feed to the permalink URL for that post.

This blog has now moved to my new domain andrewferrier.com. You shouldn’t notice any change if you are using a web browser or a well-designed feedreader to read it, as all parts of the old blog (including permalinks, RSS feed, etc.) should permanently redirect to the new one. You might just want to check that your RSS reader is pointing to the new blog though, or alter your browser bookmarks. The redirection will disappear in a few months. I’d appreciate it if you can let me know if you see any problems with the new blog.

Update 2007-01-13: I should add that some feedreaders will treat all the items in the feed as new, because the GUID will have changed. Just mark them all as read. Apologies for the inconvenience.

I’m not sure what the blogosphere-approved name for it is, but I had my first truly negative comment on this blog the other day. I’m not quite sure why the author chose to leave it, but he’s right in a roundabout way: I do like holding the market to account, like any amateur economist.

To that end, here’s a positive story: if you’re looking for a letting agent in or around the Winchester area, I can’t recommend the Winchester Letting Company highly enough. They’ve been superb from day one: helpful and friendly. The two problems I’ve had so far with my flat have been resolved in less than 12 hours, including when my boiler broke this morning and they resolved it before lunchtime. They charge no ongoing fees, and are generally all-round helpful folks. If you’re looking to rent somewhere round here, give them a try.

Hope that helps tip the balance a little, folks. As always, if you have any thoughts about what I write – good or bad – please feel free to leave a comment.

I’ve been away for the past few days, so haven’t had a chance to write recently. Normal service will be resumed soon. In the meantime, happy Christmas!

I’ve noticed that my blog’s been splogged – unsurprisingly, using one of my film reviews that contains some ‘adult’ words (see here for the NSFW copycat). Does this mean I’ve made the blogging bigtime? I’m still only at Technorati rank 147,804 – although (in a not-at-all-sore-loser fashion) I feel the same about Technorati as Richard does about Sun – what exactly is the point?

A quick Google search for “common myths about” turns up ~315,000 hits. Apparently, there are a lot of myths about:

• Sex
• Atheists
• Copyright
• Science
• Gifted Students
• The Apple Mac
• Web Design
• Earthquakes
• West Nile Virus

The last one is the most surprising. I’m not even sure what the West Nile Virus is. Perhaps that’s why there are myths about it. But at least as regards the other subjects, it seems to be a slight cheat, and writing cliché, to ‘correct’ a set of myths without demonstrating that they exist. For example, here are some alleged myths concerning the subjects above:

• Married couples have less sex [if I might be slightly glib, this sounds a bit like the argument that crime rates go up when you jail more criminals].
• “If it doesn’t have a copyright notice, it’s not copyrighted.”
• Atheists have no sense of morality, since morality comes from God.
• Scientific knowledge can only be discovered by highly trained professional scientists.
• Gifted students do not need help. If they are really gifted, they can manage on their own.
• Quitting [smoking] is just a matter of willpower.

Does anyone really believe any of this stuff anyway, or are these myths mythical?