I’ve been having some server issues over the past 48 hours. Turns out there’s something on the OpenCouchSurfing wiki that causes the server to crash. I haven’t had a chance to fix it yet, so the wiki is offline for now. I’ll get onto it on Tuesday.
Since yesterday morning, Skype appears to be down. It’s not completely dead, but I can’t log on, and I can’t add any new contacts. Oh, and I can’t make any calls!
Time to look into the open protocols for Voice over IP and free myself from the closed, proprietary protocols of Skype.
Edit: You can see the latest Skype service status here.
I’m delighted to announce that my brand new Treo 680 arrived today. Much sooner than anticipated. After much eBay research and repeated furious bidding, I finally managed to steal a bargain on a brand new Treo 680 at £130.17 on Friday night.
I debated at some length whether to pay an extra £2 for express delivery. I opted to chose patience instead. Then I watched DHL’s track and trace system with delight as I followed the path of my new gadget from Dublin to Edinburgh in only two days. Wonderful!
It’s working like a charm. One or two sync issues with Fedora 7, but more on that to follow… 
I discovered a great service recently called AuctionStealer. You enter an auction item number from eBay and it will submit a bid for you in the closing seconds of the auction. You get 3 free snipes a week, or you can sign up for their premium service for $9 a month. Wonderful!
Alas, from a high of 3rd, I’ve slipped to 12th place on a search for Callum. Being number 1 for Callum Macdonald is no longer enough, now I must also dominate the world of Callums. If you’d like to help me, please post a link to my lovely site and entitle it simply Callum, for like Madonna or Bono, I need no further introduction…
Thanks to James for introducing me to the Govan Law Centre and their Unfair UK Bank Charges information. I’ve taken up the fight. I’m writing to Smile demanding the refund of £430 of charges and to Bank of Scotland demanding the refund of £110 of charges.
If they are unwilling to refund my charges I plan to take them to court in 14 days. This is war. It’s on. Bring it…
Note: I have not provided links to the aforementioned banks websites because I believe those banks suck and I do not wish to offer them any sort of web-recognition!
I installed Scuttle a few weeks ago to take my bookmarks online. I logged in for the first time in ages and discovered I’ve been spammed. I’ve had hundreds of user registrations and a bunch of links submitted. After a little database cleansing the spam has now been removed and the registration closed. No more Scuttle spam I say.
In my view, spam has reached a new low. I now receive fake e-cards with a generic message like “You have received an e-card from a family member, click here to see it”. If the click here address starts with an IP address (a bunch of numbers) I delete immediately.
I’m also getting spams with PDF documents attached. The email is blank, but the PDF contains the spam message. I opened the first one out of curiosity, now I delete immediately.
It’s getting harder and harder to separate genuine and spam emails. Particularly as some people are not very precise with email (blank subject lines, irrelevant subject lines, and so on).
My advice is thus, please use BCC instead of TO when mass emailing. I think this is the single, simplest thing people can do to cut spam.
YouTube is an amazing source of entertainment. I’m just loving it. The internet here in Hong Kong is actually fast enough that you don’t have to wait for the video to load, and it’s uncensored, which is a breath of fresh air!
Goodbye Thailand, hello freedom of speech. Now to watch that controversial video of the King again…
I went water shopping this morning. It’s 4 or 5 flights of stairs to the ground, so we drew straws as to who would make the trip. I got to the supermarket and began comparing the $9 bottles of water with the $5 bottles (Hong Kong dollars that is, otherwise that’s just crazy expensive!).
To my delight, the $9 bottle said “Product of Scotland”. So in preparation for going home I bought two six-packs of 2L bottles for the great value price of only $66. A little taste of home in preparation for my return on Friday!
I’m about to jump in the shower for the last time in Bangkok (at least for the foreseeable future) and then it’s off to the airport to begin my long journey home. It’s Monday morning here in Bangkok, I’ll get home on Friday night. Adios Bangkok, it’s been … an adventure!