This week just flu by for me. :( (Fortunately, it wasn't the worst strain ever.) But it did mean I was in character for Spooks. (They should have shot him when he was in the car - there's no cure so he was gonna die anyway, and it would have stopped everybody else dieing. ) Anyway, here's my feverish excogitation - how many chilies must you consume for them to count as one of your: Could you manage it?

Other Blogs: If you think you are blogging anonymously - read this. • Fat? Maybe plastic is to blame...
Doctor Who: Wrestling with assistants - Sally vs Donna • Memento Mori: First Blush

Have you watched a steel bar being stretched until it snaps? As the strain increases, the impending break seems inevitable. But you're never sure when or where it will happen, until—suddenly—the metal thins and – Twang! – ruptures, springing back like an elastic band. Well, I'm involved with an £800,000 (~$1,600,000) building project. And since its inception in 2004, a single man has carried the project forwards – bulldozing opposition, raising ~£200,000 and managing two phases of construction. But on Sunday, after a month of emails going unanswered and meetings being skipped, he resigned to spend more time with his family. It was almost exactly four years ago that I sat in his living room discussing what to do about the problem building. Back then, he rejected simple renovation, as had been attempted before, refusing to volunteer his time to a mundane restoration, but insisting on dramatic redevelopment. There was a surfeit of boundless optimism in those initial meetings, and I became the "young fart" constantly jabbing at the breaks and attempting to slow the enthusiasm – partly because I'd seen the odd "Grand Design"-type programme on the telly and partly because I'd managed a minuscule—but long running—open source software project, and knew how big, time-consuming, and slow, even simple projects can be. We also differed on our approach to marketing. He rejected my gaudy designs and my "colourful" (but in no way profane) language, insisting on tedious, weakly argued letters, and relegating me to event publicity. The first time we debated this, I had the support of a committee and won – receiving sixty responses to my survey; by the second time it was just us, and I lost – his questionnaire receiving only three responses. I hoped he had learnt his lesson. But last year—with the help of an overzealous BT spam filter—he bypassed me, so I resigned my position on the fundraising committee. (It was the website for this project which was eventually delisted – an event that is apparently to be reversed by a pre-agreed change of management.) However despite these conflicts, he won the grants, talked money out of donors, and managed the architect and builders while holding down a teaching post. And despite our run-ins, and my every attempt to squirm out of dealing with him, I quite liked him. He was cleverer than many of the staff. And I've nothing but sympathy for what all he's going through – as will be the case with anybody who's experienced relationship breakdown. I always expected his bullish insensitivity and determination to forge ahead, whatever the "human cost", would cause the project to implode. Instead these shortcomings seem to have undermined his home life – a price even his biggest detractors would never have asked him to pay. But it leaves our charity in the middle of a vast building project, with work now needed on other buildings, and additional funding woes beside. Be it for better and for worse, we wouldn't be where we are without this bloke. But I've had a couple sleepless night wondering how the things will move on and how much of the role I should reasonably try and fill.

Other Blogs: If you think you are blogging anonymously - read this. • Fat? Maybe plastic is to blame...
Doctor Who: Wrestling with assistants - Sally vs Donna • Memento Mori: First Blush

It's all change over at TV.com's Doctor Who Fanfic series. Already there've been more drop-outs than Lin's quiz. And now GreenLion, our "head writer", and the guy who instigated the project, has abandoned us. So I've bullied AndrewReeve into taking the helm. And he's not just got the ball rolling, he's set up a Tennis Ball Machine and had it peppering us. So I've had a busy week "returning serves". But while the series may have been idling, I haven't. I've drafted 6,700 words and 35 scenes of my episode. Buried in amongst that lot you should find some laughs, some excitement, plenty of flashbacks, and—hopefully—a joyful tear or two. Progress is frustratingly slow – I'm about half-way through – but progress is happening, and that, for me, is huge. *Aghh! The title of this post was going to be Ecce Homo - but bloody TV.com censored "Homo". Eyyyeh!

A TV.com blog resembles a "proper" blog about as closely as a bouncy castle resembles a medieval one. And as much fun as these "toy" blogs are, they do lack cornerstone features – like a proper categorised Table of Contents and trackback (Grrr!). But would you approach blogging any differently if you had—or were still using—a WordPress blog or Myspace page? I ask this because, prompted by Kristine Lowe*, I've been pondering "What it means to be a blogger" and "What blogging is". My tenuous conclusion (no doubt to much mirth in Web 2.0 circles) is that a blog is simply ones on-line home (or office). I went further and suggested a blog is like a "face": the place on the web that allows you to stop lurking and start speaking, interacting, and being admired (or hated) by others. But hey, I'm feeling zapped and am short of a blog this week, so I'll throw open the floor. Thoughts? Ideas? Answers? Send them on a postcard, if you've cracked my identity; else post them in the usual space. * No, I don't know who she is, either – but that's never stopped me before.

Other Blogs: If you think you are blogging anonymously - read this. • Fat? Maybe plastic is to blame... • Wrestling with assistants - Sally vs Donna

I've just got wind of a new and revolutionarily innovative website being designed by a bunch of Harvard Psychologists. Most social networking sites don't take account of people's bad moods; but these pscyhe boffins are doing just that, and designing their site to better manage the schisms and conflicts which inevitably emerge within any on-line community that's been up and running for more than 20 minutes. For instance, remembering the old adage to "Keep ones friends close, but ones enemies closer.", the site—tentatively titled face-off-book.com—will provide an enemies list (rather than a friends list), so you can monitor the gratuitous slanders and insults perpetrated against you by other community members. A loose and constantly varying coalition of allies will automatically be assigned to every user – calculated on the principle that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", provided she's not my enemy already. Every user's blog will be audited by seasoned staffers searching for racist, sexist and homophobic abuse; and those omitting it will be censored. Users may also be reprimanded for failing to author a constant stream of overly-melodramatic PMs. Interviews are already underway for forum moderators. Some of the internet's most notorious trolls have been short-listed; the designers hope this will guarantee the forums provide an unending source of abuse to wantonly enrage the most sanguine user, and send everybody else into total apopolexy. A bespoke level system will reward posters with contribution points for every complaint received, and offer bonus points for causing other users to storm off and sulk, even if the members then return resurgent and reinvigorated a few days later. Viruses will be emailed to every address registered for the site; and registration of an email address will be compulsory. Gaming and hacking will be actively encouraged – indeed without them the site will be unusable, as javascript embedded in the page will monitor click patterns, and on detecting mounting user frustration, will trigger the site to crash, redirect the page to an advert, or simply drop you back to level 0. But on the bright side, you will be able to talk about class and style. Anybody revealing their real-world identity will be visited by a team of crack, mutant ninja weevils, dispatched to give them a good spanking with some stiff celery, and then steal their soiled underwear for sale in Japanese booth. And the whole site will be hand coloured by Chinese toy manufacturers, using highly toxic, lead-based Azo dyes. In short, if Endemol teamed up with Machiavelli, there could not be a more sick and twisted site for winding people up. And the designers expect a substantial section of TV.com's membership to take to it like skiers to fresh snow...

Other Blogs: If you think you are blogging anonymously - read this. • Fat? Maybe plastic is to blame... • Wrestling with assistants - Sally vs Donna

As well as all those pretty pixels, image files contain snippets of text called EXIF data (after the standard that defines them) or more generically metadata. Typically this is boring stuff: the manufacturer's prosaic and tedious gubbins about the make and model of the camera; the settings used to take the snap; the name of the graphics software that acquired and touched-up the image. But a naughty cameraphone[1] can slip your full name into the mix – where, as Lin found out, any idiot surfer can extract it with a swift click of their mouse.[1b] That's not quite an obvious a mistake as it sounds: Windows and Internet Explorer, the popular Paint.net, and even EXIF-aware Photobucket all missed the information. So I've checked everyone on my friends list, and, as far as I can see, nobody else has dropped their name into the public domain. The rest of you lurkers, will need to check your images NOW – because the cat's out the bag. In my tests, Opera, Photoshop and Flickr were all able to see the offending data; I can't vouch for other software. However, I have set up a website which will tabulate metadata – and, more importantly, remove it. Remember, too, that images (except those on Flickr[2]) can be traced back to the hosting site via their URL – allowing any surfer to browse your album, inspect the photos' EXIF data, and search the associated comments and annotations for identifying biographical details. Photo albums should be private (as indeed many of yours are) or you should use a separate account for blog images (as the rest of you seem to have done); the latter is intrinsically more secure. Anyway, once I had Lin's full name I was able to pinpoint her with Google using info she'd supplied in her blog. If she'd of been an Australian or an American, I'd of snarfed her address from public records (try whitepages.com.au or www.anywho.com respectively). But the UK is rather backward in the field of privacy invasion (thank God!), and I couldn't access her contact details without putting my hand into my wallet. However I did unearth Lin's redacted—and possibly out-of-date—address on www.192.com, so for a few quid I could have sent her some roses.[3] While the slip-up with the photo made it easy to identify Lin, in principal there was enough information in her blog to have pulled her out of Google – although I couldn't see anyone stumbling onto the correct inquiry. But as an example, suppose my bio had mentioned, amongst other things, that I was 25 years old and studying at the University of Kent. Then anybody could have googled for "University of Kent" + "25 years old". Of which the second entry is this CV of Kattan Fouad.[4] And if my blog had recounted experiences of life in the the Middle East, or mentioned I worked for a bank, then it would be certain you'd found me. However if I'd commented on my Scottish ancestry, or blogged about my failing my driving test, then you'd know to carry on searching. And that how it works. If there is any overlap between information on TV.com and the wider web, then that correlation can be uncovered with Google. And it's not just information you've opined on yourself, but information recorded about you by colleagues, employers, family, and all the information held in publical databases. Again, I've run these kind of identity attacks against every anonymous user on my friends' list, and I've apprised people where I've found issues; but this time consuming and I've been far from exhaustive in my searching. If somebody wants to find you enough, particularly if they're prepared to pay, then they probably can. So my advice, for those of you wishing to remain anonymous, is to hang on to as many personal biographical details as possible: including Date of Birth (or equivalently your age and birthday); the town you grew up in; your educational history – particularly the University you studied at; your employment history and profession – even vague hints.[5] Oh, and if you decide to go surfing for yourself on the web (not a bad idea, in itself), make sure you delete Google's cookies before and after you search – otherwise you'll of told Google who you are. That said, many journalists and bloggers (some of them with young families) use their real names on the web without trouble. So I'm not sure this is actually an issue. My own contact details have been online for years, and the only death threat I've ever received came yesteday; however the use of Shaun The Sheep headed note paper tipped me off about the origin. Footnotes: 1. Although I've not found a digital camera that inserts its user's name, they do insert a unique serial number. However, so far as I can see, there is no easy way to exploit this. 1b. As Mark pointed out, it's not just image files which contain metadata - Microsoft Office files store your name and organisation, and much of the editing history of the document. 2. But N.B. if you comply with Flickr's TOS and include a hyperlink back to them, it's a cinch. 3. Actually, I was so annoyed that a geek who'd been so adamant they didn't want to be identified had been so easy to crack that I said I was going to mail her a bill for my services... 4. Kattan is just some random guy I alighted on - I'm not him; he's not affiliated with this blog; I'm not at the University of Kent; etc... But all the best Kattan - hope you get some good offers. 5. And if you surf from work, then you're leaking the details of your employer to anyone with a decent web counter.

Other Blogs: Fat? Maybe plastic is to blame... • Wrestling with assistants - Sally vs Donna

After reading this, go give Lin some love – because I've just scared her witless by extracting more personal info from her blog than she thought she'd revealed. And I've left her stranded far outside her comfort zone. :| I will not explain the technical details yet – because, although I've not looked, I'm sure there are others who've exposed their identity in a similar fashion, and I want to give you all time to correct the error (once I've had time to look). But if you want to blog anonymously then don't blog about your personal life, because, sooner or later, you'll make Lin's mistake and/or the slow drip of personal information will allow an amateur like me to break your identity open.* And in other news, I've noticed I seem to be sprouting hair on my back, which, like Pinnochio, may tell you something about the sort of person I am. :( ;) But if you're pretending to be someone you're not: BE AFRAID.

At the start of each episode of BBC TV Show Room 101, host Paul Merton asks his guest whether they had trouble coming up with a list of pet peeves to be "consigned" to the eponymous "Orwellian oblivion" of Room 101 (where "the worst thing[s] in the world reside.") Well Paul, after starting my list of TV.com peeves, my waters broke and the vitriol wouldn't abate. So here are a few of my TV.com hates (with thanks to Lin winding me up like a clockwork mouse last fortnight). 1. Forum Searching – it doesn't work. Not one bit. Try searching the Numb3rs forum for a post labelled "Fic:", and you'll end up with every Fanfic post for every show and every blog on TV.com. No wonder people are continually starting new threads about the same topic – they can't find the old ones! It should be possible to search the "topics" for one particular show. (Tip: I use Google to search TV.com; for example by appending site:tv.com/numb3rs to a query, Google will search the Numb3rs section of TV.com. But the results are always a little bit out of date.) 2. Bug Reporting/Feature Requests. I use a lot of free software. And the quid-pro-quo of doing that is taking the time to document and report bugs; it's just polite. These days every app uses a bugzilla-derived tracking system to manage bug- and feature-requests. Each request or report is issued a "ticket" and assigned to a developer; bugs can be discussed and the status can be tracked from beginning to end. It's not the bee's knees, but it is a helluva lot more attractive than wading through piles of forums (particularly given (1)), or happening to know the right blog to comment on. C'mon TV.com, implement a decent bug tracking/feature request system. (And as an aside, if TV.com opened up its source code—and offered CPs—then I'd probably submit patches.) 3. Forum Titling. Probably the worst piece of visual design on TV.com is the repetition of a topic's title on every, single bloody post: Not only is it a waste of space, but the human brain's visual cortex is adept at subtracting repetition from a scene or image, and so your "eye" gaily skips over the forum title, in the process overlooking the date (which hardly changes from post to post, anyway). I have to consciously look at the date on posts, in order not to get caught out by old threads that have been revived. But if the site was altered to put the posting-date under the poster (see below), then you'd take in the date at the same time as noting the poster. And while fixing that, how about localising the dates (i.e. offering something other than MM/dd/yyyy) and giving the day—rather than the date—of posts within the last week, so assisting the brain to gauge the age of the post. 4. Cla$$ & $tyle. Okay, I can use a $tyle attribute to attack people with vulnerable browsers. Except, no I can't – because the site prohibits me from using these attributes (as well as many legitimate ones). So why does TV.com take the extra step of of blocking all instances of $tyle and cla$$? I should be able to use these words in ordinary prose (or URLs). If there are a handful of exceptional ways to get round the prohibition—and I haven't given the issue any detailed thought, so maybe there are—then deal with them specifically. But don't bin $tyle and cla$$ – it's lazy programming, and equivalent to being tied down while already wearing a straight jacket and inside a padded cell. (And how about considering wiki-markup? Because then all the security issues would disappear, while still being able to do all the formatting.) 6. And finally... The Sodding Users. TV.com would be soo great if it weren't for all the darn stupid users, with their pointless shipping threads, and their irritating whines about their favourite characters being dropped, and their vapid retarded suggestions about shows. Who do they think they are – high-paid network execs? The site would be much better if everyone was banned. C'mon TV.com, when are you going to take action on that? ;)

It could have been Terry Thomas in a scene from Monte Carlo Or Bust. Reigning Formula 1 World Champion Fernando Alonso refused to exit his McLaren-Mercedes pit box, while his rookie team mate, Lewis Hamilton, queued behind him, desperate to receive the fuel and fresh tyres necessary to complete his final qualifying lap for Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix. But the waiting Englishman could have got out his cockpit and played a game of bowls – he waited that long. Ferrari, McLaren's closest rivals, weren't in the game around the tight, twisty Hungarian circuit; the contest for first slot on Sunday's starting grid was between the two McLarens, and Alonso wasn't willing to play fair. Finally, after ten seconds of “stalling”, the Spaniard rolled away, allowing the Englishman access to his pit. Then, refueled and with fresh “boots”, Hamilton rushed round the track. But he was unable to reach the start-finish line in time to comence his final “flying” lap. Meanwhile Alonso, who had ambled past the start an aeon earlier, found the Hungaroring at its fastest, enabling him to turn a 3 tenths-of-a-second deficit into a 1 tenth lead, threby claiming pole position for tomorrow's race. Passing is absolutely impossible at the Hungary track, so whoever arrives at Turn 1 in the lead will be favourite to win the race. That makes it one of the two most important qualifying sessions of the season. We'll never know whether Hamilton would have found the extra time, but he'd been the fastest driver all session, and it seems likely that the rookie would have clinched pole if he'd been allowed the opportunity. Now, however, it looks like Alonso will get the top step bringing him level with Hamilton in the race to win the Formula 1 World Championship. As soon as Hamilton missed the chequered flag, McLaren-Mercedes team principle Ron Dennis, a man who probably looked miserable at his wedding, wrenched the headphones off Alonso's trainer, and shepherded the Spanish physical instructor down the pit lane with a hand on his shoulder – and trust me, there has never been a more menacing hand on shoulder in the history of motorsport, and probably not in the history of the world, either. The implications were—indeed are—that the Spanish-speaking trainer was involved in the farrago, and that even now he is receiving a bollocking of biblical proportions. Ron, however, refused to comment. Hamilton, too, was reticent in the post-race interview, saying only, “I think you saw what happened.” No footballer would have been that restrained. Indeed, most Formula 1 drivers would have let rip. Nevertheless, waves of animosity rolled off Hamilton, and third-place driver Nick Heidfeld seemed to be edging towards the door, unwilling to be in the same room as the McLaren pair. Big Brother couldn't have poisoned the air more thoroughly. Despite today's drama, tomorrow's race is unlikely to be thrilling. The High Noon shoot-out happened today. And Alonso, who so often was the victim of gamesmanship at the hands of Michael Schumacher—not least in qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix last year, when Schumacher “crashed” his Ferrari to prevent Alonso taking pole—today showed himself willing to play similar games. Undoubtedly, it was the biggest “crash” of Alonso's career – as he flew off the morale high ground and into a gravel trap. But it was gripping telly.

Yesterday, I cooked lamb curry. This isn't a dish that's a regular fixture on our household menu, as not everybody is keen on lamb. But I like lamb, so I treated myself. However by the time I came to prepare the meal it was getting late, and I was tiring, so I didn't plan a recipe, just cobbled it together it “on the hoof” using curry-like ingredients. Consequently I faffed it up; it really tasted awful. At least it did to me; everybody else liked it... *shrugs* Sometimes life’s like that. :)

--Spod