I just whipped up a very simple little WordPress plugin called WP Mail SMTP. It’s not my first plugin, I’ve created quite a few for clients, but it’s the first one that I’ve published in my own name. It’s already listed on WP-Plugins.net and I’ve submitted it to WordPress.org, how very exciting! 
Monthly Archive for August, 2007
I went to see Fuerzabruta this evening. It’s a truly awesome show. It’s hard to describe exactly why or what the show is, but it’s definitely spectacular. I believe Fuerza means Force and bruta means Brute, so the literal translation of the name is brute force.
It’s an immensely physical show with some amazing staging, lighting and effects. It’s a highly technical performance, there’s lots of ropes, pulleys and other equipment. The music is fantastic, the sound system kicks some serious ass.
You’ll almost certainly get wet, you might get soaked, and I think everyone will enjoy it. If you can, I highly recommend you go see Fuerzabruta.
I received the most sophisticated spam email I’ve seen this weekend. The text of the message was:
Man you have got to tell me where you picked her up. I saw this on the web, it has to be you. see for yourself… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKfyzCIq1ls
Cunning readers will notice that although it looks like a link to a YouTube video, it is in fact a link to another web site (an IP address), which is presumably the spammer’s site. I came very close to clicking the link, but something about the message seemed a bit off (the fact I had no idea who the sender was maybe!).
Spam is getting smarter. I think the solution lies in trust mechanisms and authorised emails.
I’m considering getting some new business cards printed. They’ll cost about £10 for 100 or £16 for 250. But here’s the all important question, do they look good?
Comments on a postcard…
While playing with my xorg.conf file I accidentally turned off the scrolling area of my trackpad. Normally, if you put your finger at the right hand side of the trackpad, you can scroll up and down. If you put your finger at the bottom of the pad, you can scroll left or right.
In figuring out how to resolve the issue I discovered something deeply awesome. Circular scrolling. Now, starting from any side of the pad, I can move my finger clockwise round the trackpad to scroll down, anti-clockwise to scroll up. Just like the iPod. It’s outstanding on long documents where even a scroll wheel becomes tiring.
Gotta love linux baby!
For the techies, here’s the relevant section of my xorg.conf (see man synaptics for more info):
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "CircularScrolling" "1"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "SHMConfig" "true"
EndSection
I also discovered another great application synclient which allows you to change the touchpad settings on the fly. It also allows you to monitor touchpad input with the -m flag. It’s great to test your settings and figure out what works before committing the changes to xorg.conf.
A friend recently told me about rakeback poker sites. When you play poker, you pay a small fee to the casino for the use of the table, this is called a rake. If I introduce you to Poker Website X, they will pay me a percentage of your rake. The latest affiliates offer to share that percentage with you, it’s called rakeback.
I think this concept will take off and spread to other affiliate schemes. For example, the travel related site BeWelcome.org could sign up as an affiliate with somebody like Expedia (an online travel agent). If BeWelcome receive 5% of user spending, they could split that with the user. The result as a user is a 2.5% discount on Expedia.
The same principle could apply to any number of affiliate schemes. From selling books to cars or credit cards. I think there’s a great untapped market here, particularly amongst existing community web sites like Facebook and MySpace. These sites could command impressive deals with affiliates and offer their users great bargains. It’s a win-win.
Using the purchasing power of 30m Facebook users to get better deals would be great for business on all sides.
I went to see The Ballerina Who Loves a B-Boy tonight. It was an awesome display of physicality. Some of the break dancing was utterly amazing. Guys swinging on their hands without their feet touching the ground, spinning on their heads, it was very, very impressive.
The plot was a little ridiculous, but the focus was really the dancing. The ballerinas were good and there was some fantastic dancing from the other guys, but for me, the break dancers really stole the show. Backflips, hand stands, dancing on one hand, it was all in there. At one point, one of the dancers had two hands on the lighting pole and was holding himself up horizontally. Insane!
If you’ve got £12.50 to spare (thanks bro) then it’s definitely worth seeing.
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