Random ramblings and ravings of Richy B
Just a bit of advance warning for y’all: within the next 6 hours there will not only been another very long awaited “Guess That Movie” image BUT there will also be a movie review type thing AND a joke post AND (if I get time) a personal post!
Yep: I’m going to be blogging again 😉
Some of you may have noticed that my Blocking Free Email Domains post appeared, then reappeared as “Post deleted” and then reappeared properly – and I think an explanation is in order.
Basically, that post lists over 12,000 domain names that provide free email addresses (i.e. like Hotmail and Yahoo) but the content management system I use for my blog – MovableType – doesn’t accept posts over a certain size (no, I’m not sure what the maximum post size is: all I know is the domain name list got truncated mid-way through the “d’s”).
So how did I work around it? Basically, I uploaded the body of the post (which includes the list of domain names) into a “storage/holding/cache” area of the blog’s webspace (which also holds things like cached adverts – the mini “guess that movie” sidebar generation system etc etc) and then just used a PHP include_once command to make the list appear “inline” of the post.
However, if you do do this yourself, there is something you should be aware of. It’ll break your site’s search functionality (including the auto-highlight functionality provided by MT- Ref Search) – not a major biggie, but something you should be aware of.
Ever had to block “free” email address domains (such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Mail.com etc) but couldn’t find a source of the domains used? Well, since I needed to do a very similar thing – I managed to get a little list compiled: it’s only got 12,302 domains on it, so it’s not too comprehensive yet and it doesn’t really cope well with the “free subdomains” systems (you know the anything@yourname.example.com style free addresses), but it’s a start.
If anybody has any more contributions to the list, please feel free to add them as a comment – or, if you’ve got a really long list and don’t want to bother merging them/checking them against the list here – just leave a quick note and I’ll contact you about it.
(For those of you reading just the “summary” of this post – you’ll have to read the full article for the long list of domains):
Ok, I was just watching the Lisa eviction/Jon re-entering episode of Big Brother and then watched the start of Graham Norton where he took the mikey about Lisa being voted out of the BB house (she’s the most unpopular housemate ever). So there I am around 10 minutes after I saw Jon, fresh back in the house, go to the toilet, Steph talking about how they’ll have 2 evictions next week and that he probably got in via a public vote and Jon saying he can’t say anything yadda yadda yadda.
I then turn on to “E4” (the “subscription” version of Channel 4) which is showing “Big Brother Live” and see Jon going to the toilet, Steph talking about how they’ll have 2 evictions next week and that he probably got in via a public vote and Jon saying he can’t say anything… Hang on! Either there’s a glitch in The Matrix (aka “Deja Vu”) or else “Big Brother Live” is anything BUT live.
Is there anyone else even semi-following Big Brother UK that have noticed other similar instances why the so-called “Live” version isn’t live?
Another minor moan is the fact that they keep on cutting the sound on the “Live” version: I’ve heard this is either to to technical sound problems or with housemates swearing etc: but has anyone else noticed that they never cut the sound on the Live broadcasts on Channel 4 (i.e. the evictions and Saturday Night Challenges)? Hmmm….
Blarg. I really thought I had things under control at work, but it seems I’ve been proved wrong. For the last fortnight, I’ve been working around half-an-hour to 2hours extra every night before leaving the building and doing work at home to try and clear the back log (I’ve got now 6 data centres to look after: comprising over nearly 100 servers PLUS around 40 search engine placement clients: some of which are paying a few £100s every month and are therefore entitled to quite good service 😉 PLUS I’ve had a couple of new clients in the last week PLUS writing a self-promotion search engine optimisation site which is already gathering customers even though we’ve hardly lunched it PLUS keeping up to date with what Google et al have been doing).
Yep, in short I’ve been extremely busy and sometimes, when I’ve got home, just fallen straight to sleep. Combine that with the fact that I’ve got all my “own business” stuff to do (I’ve noticed a downturn in the amount of revenue coming in from the sites so I’ve got to do something: I’ve spent today trying to slash costs and by the end of the month should have saved myself $2,000 a year).
I’ve got “task lists” at work to try and keep me on top of work related stuff, but when you get stuff that’s more important then others and then others that are even more important than that it can get very confusing and some minor things do get left behind…
Anyway – that’s my excuse of not blogging much recently: I’ve hardly had time to eat (and I’m not kidding: the cat’s been fed more often than I have – a couple of time’s I’ve had to survive on half a sandwich all day lone), but there’s some light on the horizon and it’s concerning on GESF (green eyed southern friend)…