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Richy's Random Ramblings

Influential Twitterer

February 8, 2009
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It appears I’m as important as my ego has been telling me. I’ve been on Twitter less than 48 hours and already famous well-known people such as Robert Scoble, Martin Belam (aka Currybet), Chris Prillio, Danny Choo, The Planet (the web server company), Isabel Wang, Neil Turner, Katy Bairstow and even His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has joined my army of minions and are following and listening to my every word.

If all those famous names are following me, I’m obviously very important and you should be following me too (/me does mesmerising hand-waving movements).

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Does God really exist? It’ll be down to the Advertising Standards Authority to decide…

February 6, 2009
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As you may be aware, the British Humanist Association’s “There is probably no God” bus advert campaign was reported to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority for being “offensive and denigratory to people of faith” and “challenged whether the ad was misleading because the advertiser would not be able to substantiate its claim that God “probably” does not exist” (see the ASA’s update where they said it was “not in breach of the advertising code” and “the ad was an expression of the advertiser’s opinion”) in the BHA’s “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” bus adverts.

I now wonder if the ASA will receive, and take action, against the Russian Orthodox Church, the Christian Party and Trinitarian Bible Society for stating “There definitely is a God”, “There definitely is a God; so join the Christian Party and enjoy your life.” and “There IS a God, BELIEVE. Don’t worry and enjoy your life.” in their own bus adverts. Source: BBC News and Daily Mail.

I just hope that all of those three organisations can, with their statement of fact (“definitely is a god” and “There IS a God”), can substantiate the existence of God to the Advertising Standards board – and the fact that their advertisement would be offensive and denigratory to people of other faiths and those who do not believe in the existence of God.

Paypal Express Checkout and Recurring Payments

February 4, 2009
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Are you, like me, using Paypal Express Checkout for integration into your shopping cart/ecommerce site?
Are you, like me, utilising the Paypal Subscriptions (Recurring Payments) options to set up future payments?
Are you, like me, getting a blank page when you are trying to setup a Recurring payment (maybe using the PHP NVP kit) after clicking “Agree and Pay” on the “Review your payment” page of the Paypal sandbox or live site)?

If so, the problem may be because you are sending an “AMT” (Amount) of 0 to Paypal: I did this because I didn’t want to actually take any money now…

It appears this is a long standing issue with the SetExpressCheckout section and RecurringPayments on Paypal and to avoid the blank white page, you’ll need to just send a nominal amount (such as 0.01) for Paypal to process “now”. However, Paypal does charge you a 20p transaction fee on the live system, so you may need to adjust your entire Paypal Express Checkout integration.

Internal Server – Firewall workaround needed

February 3, 2009
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At work, we’re developing something on an internal server which is behind several firewalls and routers, but we need to allow a third party website (Paypal to be exact) to be able to connect to the web server.

It is nearly impossible for me to put this machine either on the public internet or make a hole in the firewall tables (basically, it’s behind our internal NAT providing router, which is then on a NATted firewalled building router, which is then on another NATted firewalled building providers router/VPN – and then the ISPs NATted firewalled router). As you can imagine, being behind 4 routers each with their own firewall configuration and us being unable to get the rules changes makes this a bit difficult.

However, along with the Linux based web server within our LAN, I do also have a remote Linux server with spare IPs. But how can I setup a connection so that the 3rd party can go to http://testdomain.myserver.example.com which then connects to my remote Linux server which then, somehow, connects to the LANed server.

We can make as many outbound connections on whichever ports we like from our LAN (so I can connect the LAN server to the remote server), but then how do I do the connection and how do I then forward the requests inbound?

Any ideas?