gdp's Comments

The Art of Sanity : 3...2...1...and we're back

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:11:36 +0000

I do not claim to be Sara's better half. She is my better half. Women are always mens better half.. I mean how would I even suggest otherwise???... :P Now, I'm heading off to erase all mention of my address from Google... ;) Seriously though, great post. And as one of those "crazies" myself, I too get more than a might irked when we all get lumped into one bag because people can't distinguish between an illness, disorder or just plain fucked up psycho... Oh the power of ignorance and stereotypes....

WinExtra : Windows Live Writer – not such a dead man walking after all

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:37:14 +0000

Awesome, just when I was starting to give up hope :) Custom field support!! :)

WinExtra : Windows Live Writer a dead man walking? Please say it ain’t so Microsoft.

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:42:15 +0000

I've not heard anything about any new developments in ages and to be honest I've even lost track of who is on the dev team for this. Unfortunately I fear, when it comes to WordPress, development is moving far to rapidly for most offline editors to keep pace. And with the new image editor shipping in WP 2.9 they days of a solid desktop client may be numbered. Also, with regard to Live Writer, which I still love BTW, when you insert an image in a post it doesn't end up in the WordPress Media Gallery, which means it's not available for thumbnail generation which is becoming more and more prevalent with magazine based themes.

Suburban Oblivion : Think the Drama Doesn't Affect You? Think Again.

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:23:34 +0000

It's a remarkably narrow view of the world to believe that the actions of a few can't and don't have an affect on everybody in the community. Cities and towns can get a bad reputation due to the actions of a handful of people, it's not as if the mass populace is doing it. We as a group are judged by the actions of our peers and it's events like this that stick out in the minds of others... To simply sweep it away and ignore it is to doom history to be repeated. But with a little discussion and openness, maybe some good can come out of this for everybody rather than just ignoring it and hoping it will do away. You want an example of how this stuff affects us all? For those people who choose to monetize their blogs it's events like this that make them think twice about associating their brand with bloggers... It may not have an immediate impact but in the long term, if the blogosphere doesn't get it's act together it will. And there is no time like the present for talking :)

Paul O'Flaherty : The FCC, TSA, @MyBottlesUp And Why Bloggers Can't Be Trusted

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:52:15 +0000

LOL.. The jury is no where near out on that one. First off ask yourself why would they doctor it? Nic is a woman with apparent substance abuse problems which in itself would be enough to begin to discredit her story if they wanted to go down the road of bashing her in a PR sense. The TSA have no need to take the time, or effort, to put out doctored footage. They've dealt with worse accusations before and in all likelihood, if they had done something wrong they would have taken the standard line of "this is our policy blah blah blah.. but we are investigating any possible breach of policy"... and then swept the entire thing under the carpet. It would have been far easier to just ignore it than to risk releasing doctored footage which, if it was, would surely come back to bite them in the ass at some point. It simply doesn't make sense from a public relations view to doctor the footage. The potential ramifications would be far too damaging. In a case of "put up or shut up" they put up because, for once, they knew they were right. Also, Nic admits in her rebutal post that it is her in the video but she can't explain how her son is mysteriously beside he in the stroller. She'll have to look into it???

in the video, it looks as though my son is playing happily in his stroller while i am being searched with a wand. obviously this is the big discrepancy with my story, since he was not in my sight at that time, and one that i too am thoroughly looking into.

Nah, I have to cry foul on this one. She wanted attention and she obviously got it.

Paul O'Flaherty : The FCC, TSA, @MyBottlesUp And Why Bloggers Can't Be Trusted

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:28:44 +0000

I never claimed that you know her, nor do I care. The fact of the matter is that whether you want to believe it ot not, actions like this do reflect on all of us especially in term of our credibility as a community. You don't believe she fabricated it for attention! Hmm.. well then how about all the mentions in her twitter stream about selling her story? Not exactly the thing someone who is traumatized and suffering from anxiety cares about now is it? And I never claimed that you can't think on your own. I was merely pointing out that if this was, say, a man lying about the actions of a TSA and saying that he was beaten up, and then the video evidence proved that he wasn't, he would be torn to shreds by bloggers. And lets be truly honest. Watch the video. Now if anxiety is truly affecting her that bad that she has such a sense of distorted of reality, should she even be alone with the child? What if she attacks the next TSA agent she *believes* has run off with her child? I have and I am calling bullshit on this.

Paul O'Flaherty : The FCC, TSA, @MyBottlesUp And Why Bloggers Can't Be Trusted

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:53:16 +0000

My only response here is that you either didn't watch the video and/or are refusing to accept the reality that it disproves 99% of what she claimed happened... or that you are protecting her because she is part of the mommyblogger community and now is considered "not well". I am sure that if it were someone form outside the community they would be vilified for such behavior.

Paul O'Flaherty : The FCC, TSA, @MyBottlesUp And Why Bloggers Can't Be Trusted

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:14:19 +0000

I believe I said exactly that in my post Alex!

Paul O'Flaherty : What a difference a fan makes

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:36:37 +0000

Sorry Kevin, it's been a ling time since I had that machine and it has been relegated to a recycling bin somewhere. Sorry I can't be of further help.

Paul O'Flaherty : FTC Guidelines : They're Not About YOUR Blog!

Thu, 8 Oct 2009 03:54:59 +0000

Yep Steven and I have history :) LOL And a good one at that :) There's very few people I respect more in the tech blogging world than that cranky git! :)

Paul O'Flaherty : The Fall, and fall of Internet Explorer.

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 20:00:00 +0000

LOL, you couldn't have picked an older post to comment on? It's almost 5 years old at this point. I'm using 2.4.11 as well and never noticed any IE8 problems, but then again I've been tinkering with it for so long.. I'm not sure what's left of the original.. LOL I'm assuming by the "link at the top to google" you mean the advert. I've actually manually inserted the code into the header.php between the "headerad" div tags that start at line 70. If you drop me an line via my contact form and let me know what troubles you're having I'll get back to you asap and help you as best I can.

Paul O'Flaherty : FTC Guidelines : They're Not About YOUR Blog!

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 19:46:47 +0000

I'm looking forward to it :) You know I'll be keeping an eye out :)

Paul O'Flaherty : Just An FYI About Email Forwards

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:58:52 +0000

Yeah, it's amazing how many people discover that button and little else.. LOL

Paul O'Flaherty : Hack Sociable to work with YOURLS - Quick and Dirty

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:10:01 +0000

Thanking you kindly, and yes, I'll get to nagging him :)

Paul O'Flaherty : How Twitter Can Reduce User Headaches

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:38:22 +0000

I see where you're coming from, but it's a vicious cycle as you gain followers you gain more spam followers and also get exposed to more people that you may want to follow :) And for those of us with more followers some of these changes would make things better :)

Paul O'Flaherty : Scoble Admits Incompetence Yet Blames WordPress

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:59:34 +0000

I agree with you, but I'd rather they ship them as quickly as they do instead of waiting and running risks :)

Paul O'Flaherty : Friendship Is More Than 140 Characters

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:45:40 +0000

I do the same thing myself in my RSS reader. I love having everything in one place instead of having to trek off all over the web to find out what's been going on :)

Paul O'Flaherty : What XP Netbook Manufactures Aren't Telling You?

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:31:57 +0000

Jay Monster, here's a little more info. This is Symantecs breakdown of the 5 critical patches that were shipped by MS this month. As you can see only 1 of the fixes a problem in XP and that patch was issued because of the extended support for XP Professional for business and as such worked for XP Home. You can see more information about that particular patch here. You'll see in the text that Microsoft is listing it as:

Critical for all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP

If they were supporting XP Home it would have said "for all supported editions of 2000 and all editions of XP"... This should help with explaining where some of those updates came this month :)

Paul O'Flaherty : What XP Netbook Manufactures Aren't Telling You?

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:19:43 +0000

Microsoft have been guided by their own lifecycle supoprt schedule which existed way before the OEM's came to Microsoft asking for an extension on XP Home. I linked to the it in the post. The simple fact of the matter that while Microsoft may choose to ship updates, especially ones that it makes for the extended business cycle that are compatible, the chances are that the majority of the "boatload" of updates you talk about are likely for other Microsoft programs on your computer rather than XP Home itself. Programs such as the windows "live" programs, office etc.. will all continue to be updated regardless fo which OS they are running on and will come through windows update. Also it's not against precedent for Microsoft to ship patches for out of cycle software but it is a rare and exceptional circumstance. There is no conspiracy here, at least on Microsofts part. They were very clear from the outset about when mainstream support would be ending for XP. They are not "pulling any card" as they put it. The support lifecycle for XP has been publicly available for literally years. There is no Microsoft conspiracy in this, just consumer ignorance which the OEM's have relied on to ship their product. They knew that without XP netbooks would remain in the realm of the uber geek as they would have had to use linux or another light weight OS. They approached Microsoft and asked to be able to sell XP for longer. Microsoft agreed in 08 but also made it very clear that support would end in April of 09.

Daily Shite : Lady Gaga Imitates a Used Tampon

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:17:08 +0000

The video has been updated Chris and should be working now :)